Month: February 2019

Nancy says “bring it”

by digby

This House of Representatives is not intimidated:

A defiant Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared on Wednesday that House Democrats would not be cowed by President Trump’s “all-out threat” during his State of the Union address to drop their investigations of his administration, as fellow Democrats pushed ahead with a bevy of sensitive inquiries.

“It was a threat; it was an all-out threat,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters just hours after Mr. Trump’s address and on the eve of a hearing that will launch Democratic efforts to secure his long-suppressed tax returns — one of the inquiries likely to pique the president.

“It’s our congressional responsibility, and if we didn’t do it, we would be delinquent in that,” she said.

All across the House on Wednesday, the gears of congressional oversight — which were mostly still during Mr. Trump’s first two years in office — began to pick up steam.

The Intelligence Committee held its first formal meeting of the year and promptly voted to share with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, transcripts of witness interviews that it conducted related to Russian election interference. Mr. Mueller has already used two such transcripts to charge associates of the president with lying to Congress, and Democrats believe others could have intentionally misled the committee.

The committee’s chairman, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, also unveiled the parameters of a new investigation, to be pursued in collaboration with the Financial Services Committee and others, of “any credible allegations of leverage by the Russians, the Saudis, or anyone else” over Mr. Trump or his administration.

“Our job involves making sure the policy of the United States is being driven by the national interest, not by any financial entanglement, financial leverage or other form of compromise,” Mr. Schiff said.

The Judiciary Committee had called a meeting on Thursday to vote on a subpoena to compel testimony from Mr. Trump’s acting attorney general, Matthew G. Whitaker, if needed. Mr. Whitaker, a loyalist of the president’s who is currently overseeing Mr. Mueller’s work, is scheduled to testify voluntarily on Friday, but Democrats have concerns that he may try to back out or dodge questions.
[…]
Earlier, in a closed-door meeting with House Democrats, Ms. Pelosi had privately lambasted the president.

“He was a guest in our House chamber, and we treated him with more respect than he treated us,” she said, according to a Democratic aide in the room who was not authorized to discuss the private session publicly.

Ms. Pelosi also took a dig at Mr. Trump’s plan, detailed on Tuesday, to invest $500 million over ten years to developing new cures for childhood cancer, characterizing it as paltry.

“Five hundred million dollars over 10 years — are you kidding me?” she said, according to the aide. “Who gave him that figure? It’s like the cost of his protection of his Mar-a-Lago or something.”

Lol…

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Trump’s messin’ with Texas

by digby

El Paso community leaders reacted angrily Tuesday night after President Trump repeated false claims that the city was violent and dangerous before a border wall was built. Trump—apparently acting on bogus information from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton—has made the claim several times in recent weeks, and did so Tuesday night during his State of the Union address.

“The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime—one of the highest in the country, and (was) considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities. Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities,” Trump said. El Paso officials have spent years debunking claims that it’s a dangerous community—former U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke made El Paso’s safety a focal point of his Senate campaign last year—but on Tuesday night, many of them snapped.

The leaders of El Paso are not amused:

“He lies. @POTUS is once again lying and using the #SOTU address to spread falsehoods about our beloved city of El Paso. Fact is that El Paso has been one of the safest cities in the nation long before the wall was built in 2008. #WallsDontWork,” Representative Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said on Twitter

Jon Barela, the chief executive officer of the Borderplex Alliance, which leads economic development efforts in the El Paso region, used similar pointed language on Twitter. He is a former top aide to New Mexico Republican Governor Susana Martinez, and narrowly lost an Albuquerque congressional race in 2008. “President’s message about El Paso is a lie. El Paso was safe before the border wall. The President is living in an alternative universe based on a false narrative and offensive comments about our way of life. I say this as a life long Republican, businessman, and proud American.”

President’s message about El Paso is a lie. El Paso was safe before the border wall. The President is living in an alternative universe based on a false narrative and offensive comments about our way of life. I say this as a life long Republican, businessman, and proud American.

El Paso has repeatedly made lists of the nation’s safest cities for almost two decades. Escobar on Tuesday posted tweets of newspaper headlines dating to 2000 about El Paso’s safe city rankings. Extensive fencing was completed in 2010 under a bill approved by Congress in 2006. El Paso has continued to have lower crime rates than most other U.S. cities of more than 500,000 people. Most border cities also have lower crime rates than cities of similar size in the country’s interior.

In interviews with Texas Monthly after the State of the Union Tuesday night, Barela and Escobar said Trump and others who make false claims about El Paso’s safety are doing significant damage to the community. Barela deals with safety questions frequently during trips to recruit businesses to El Paso and fears Trump’s State of the Union speech will make it even more difficult to build El Paso’s economy. “It’s frustrating to me to have to explain that El Paso is one of the safest or the safest cities of its size in the entire country. Most of these businesses are surprised to hear those statistics and these false narratives and frankly lies that are perpetuated by the administration doesn’t help us create jobs,” he said.

So naturally, this is what he’s going to do:

President Trump’s campaign on Wednesday announced that he will hold his first rally of 2019 in El Paso, Texas, next week.

The rally, scheduled for Monday, comes amid ongoing negotiations between Trump and congressional Democrats as the president tries to secure more than $5 billion in funding for his long-promised border wall.

The location of the event is notable. El Paso sits right on the U.S.-Mexico border and was referenced by Trump on Tuesday night in his State of the Union address as he sought to make the case for the border wall.

“The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime — one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities,” Trump said. “Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities.”

Basically — “fuck you El Paso”

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Disdain and celebration

by digby

Trump’s speech was very dull. But here a couple of memorable highlights:

Who knew clapping could convey rage, disdain and threats of revenge… pic.twitter.com/u9c4lXM4ri

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) February 6, 2019

All those Democratic women in white are actually something for which he legitimately can take some credit. They ran and got elected largely because of him. I’m sure it irks the hell out of him too.

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The walls are closing in on him


by digby

My Salon column today:

State of the Union addresses are almost always as dull as dishwater, and Tuesday night’s was no exception. President Trump haltingly read a speech that sounded as if it were written for someone else and the audience responded in entirely predictable ways. But sometimes these events are interesting simply because they are happening in the midst of a crisis or some other news event. For instance, Bill Clinton gave his speech in 1997 against a split-screen image of the O.J. Simpson jury preparing to deliver its verdict. In 1986, Ronald Reagan postponed his address because of the Challenger space shuttle disaster.

This year may be remembered as the one where cable news networks spent most of the day leading up to the big speech talking about all the new criminal investigations into the president, his business, his family and his associates. The New York Times reported this week that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York has issued subpoenas to dozens of people involved with Trump’s inauguration. His inaugural committee raised suspicions from the beginning: It raised more money than any inaugural in history and nobody knows where all that cash actually went.

This week’s federal subpoenas were broad and included possible charges of conspiracy against the U.S., false statements, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, inaugural committee disclosure violations, and violations of laws that prohibiting contributions from foreign nations and contributions in the name of another person, a practice also known as “straw donors.”

The inaugural committee accepted a lot of money from foreign individuals under unclear or dubious circumstances, and that has become a focus of the Mueller probe as well. The fact that federal prosecutors are now paying attention to that question suggests to some observers that Mueller has concluded that part of his investigation and passed it along to the U.S. attorney in New York. That would tend to confirm the widely held assumption that Mueller is protecting his investigation by farming it out, piece by piece, to prosecutors. The thinking goes that Trump can’t fire every single prosecutor who’s investigating him.

Maybe there’s some misdirection here as well. Some TV commentators are saying this may indicate that the Russia probe isn’t going anywhere and the real action is in the Southern District of New York. That’s very doubtful, in my opinion. Most likely Trump is looking at serious trouble coming from both directions.

On Tuesday CNN reported that the Southern District is also investigating the Trump Organization, or at least has been interviewing executives from the company. It’s not clear what prosecutors are seeking, but I think we know there’s a great deal that would attract suspicion once they start looking. Allen Weisselberg, the company’s CFO, is already cooperating under an immunity agreement in the Michael Cohen campaign finance case, and probably has some good stories to tell. Perhaps this explains the recent reporting that Trump has been pressuring Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, asking “why more wasn’t being done to control prosecutors in New York” and suggesting they were “going rogue.”

There are a whole bunch of prosecutors going rogue these days, if that’s the case. In addition to the New York U.S. attorney’s probe of both Trump’s company and the inaugural committee, New York state’s attorney general is still probing the now-disbanded Trump foundation, while Mueller continues to investigate the Trump campaign, the transition team and the administration. Oh, and the House of Representatives will be holding hearings into all of this as well.

A reporter asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders for comment about the subpoenas sent to the inaugural committee and she said that had nothing to do with the White House. Of course, she would also insist that all these investigations into every organization or institution that has Trump’s name on it have nothing to do with Donald Trump as a person or as president. So it’s fair to say she’s in a bit of denial.

Trump had nothing didn’t to say about all of this in his speech other than vague, impotently threats about how Congress can either have “peace and legislation” or “war and investigation.” Democrats did not seem particularly frightened by it. But if Trump’s not frightened, he should be. The feds are now swarming over every aspect of his life.

By all accounts, the Russia investigation is closing in. BuzzFeed published a new trove of documents pertaining to the Trump Moscow project recently, and they tell a very different story than the one we’ve heard from Trump over the last two years:

The effort to get the tower built was long-running, detail-oriented, and directly entwined with the ups and downs of his campaign. As Trump went from rally to rally, vociferously denying any dealings in Russia, his representatives, Michael Cohen and his associate Felix Sater, worked with Trump Organization lawyers and even Ivanka Trump to push forward negotiations to build a 100-story edifice just miles from the Kremlin. The fixers believed they needed Putin’s support to pull off the lucrative deal, and they planned to use Trump’s public praise for him to help secure it. At the same time, they plotted to persuade Putin to openly declare his support for Trump’s candidacy. “If he says it we own this election,” Sater wrote to Cohen.

Journalist Marcy Wheeler reports that these documents show a timeline that has Cohen and Sater conferring within minutes of the infamous Trump Tower meeting, and then abruptly canceling a trip to meet Putin on the day the Washington Post first revealed that the Russian government was suspected of hacking the DNC. It’s all suggestive of an even more tangled web than we knew.

We haven’t yet seen evidence showing that the Russian government was directly conspiring with the Trump campaign to sabotage the election, beyond that Trump Tower meeting and Roger Stone’s mysterious shenanigans. But this information is important because it shows that regardless of whether the Russians had anything on Trump before the 2016 campaign, they certainly did once he began to lie publicly about not having any business deals there. They clearly knew he was lying, which made him vulnerable to blackmail.

This is exactly the same situation that had the Department of Justice apoplectic about former national security adviser Michael Flynn. When Acting Attorney General Sally Yates raced to the White House on that day shortly after Trump’s inauguration, it was because the DOJ knew that Flynn had lied about his conversations with the Russians. That made him a security risk because Russian agents could clearly hold that information over his head.

Whatever else was going on with Trump and Russia — and there is more for sure — that would have been more than enough to light everyone’s hair on fire in the counterintelligence division of the Department of Justice. It should spark the same reaction in American households too.

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Not the miracle he bragged about
by Tom Sullivan

The president’s sniffing was minimal during last night’s State of the Union address. Policy proposals were, too. False and inflated claims were about what we have come to expect from Donald Trump. The economy is a miracle. The southern border is hellscape of rape, violence, “prostitution and modern-day slavery.” If not for him, we would be “in a major war with North Korea.”

Only two moments stood out.

Richard Nixon in his 1974 address called for an end to the Watergate investigation, saying, “One year of Watergate is enough.”

In an eerie echo, Trump addressed investigations into his businesses and his campaign’s dealings with Russia. After boasting about last week’s jobs report as evidence of an “economic miracle,” Trump added that only “politics, or ridiculous, partisan investigations” could stop it. Trump continued, “If there is going to be peace in legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just does not work that way.” Trump, who has little clue about how it works, may find out the way Nixon did.

But this, this was worth sitting through the rest of Trump’s SOTU (sorry about the ad):

House Democratic women dressed in white for the speech to honor the women’s suffrage movement. Trump, in acknowledging, “No one has benefited more from our thriving economy than women, who have filled 58 percent of the new jobs created in the last year,” touched off a brief demonstration of celebration. Freshman Democrats stood up, pointed to themselves, laughed, applauded and pumped fists in the air. Democratic colleagues applauded and acknowledged the freshman women. Their jobs, won in last fall’s “blue wave” election, gave control of the House to Democrats, and with that the power for Democrats to conduct the investigations Trump complained of earlier. These were not the jobs for which Trump meant to claim credit.

Trump appeared to take it in stride, saying, “You were not supposed to do that.”

He went on, “And exactly one century after the Congress passed the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in the Congress than ever before.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, sitting behind Trump, motioned for her freshman women to stand again and enjoy the moment as she applauded them. Democratic Reps. Xochitl Torres Small, Abigail Spanberger, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib stood and applauded. Elissa Slotkin, Chrissy Houlahan, Deb Haaland, Mary Gay Scanlon and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined them. They began chanting, “U-S-A.”

Tlaib called the moment the highlight of the night:

“We not only look differently, we serve differently and we’re from all different communities,” Tlaib said, adding, “It felt amazing at that moment to look at each other and see a sea of white looking back at us and we were very proud that it was our side of the aisle that was able to do that.”

The president’s side of the room was indeed maler, whiter, and older.

Depending on the outcome of new House investigations into Trump’s involvement with Russia (with possible unsealing of his tax returns); the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian hacking of the 2016 election; and investigations by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York into the Trump inaugural committee’s finances; the president’s side of the room could soon be smaller as well.

Word vomit

by digby

Rick Wilson is a Never-Trumper with a wicked sense of humor. This is an excerpt of his piece called “A Guide To Tonight’s Word Vomit”

You’ll spot several styles and tells in the speech tonight. Here’s what to look for in tonight’s river of Trumpian word vomit, a guide to what’s real, what’s fake, what’s there for base-voter management, and what’s there just to play the news media.

Of course, Trump will engage in some Bannonesqe self-pleasuring on the front end, but that comes with the territory for American’s tallest, fittest, most intelligent President. It will be Soviet in its affront to reality; every promise has been kept, the beet harvest exceeds the Five Year Plan, and tractor production exceeds that of the decadent West. You know the drill. His victory lap will be a field day for Daniel Dale and the army of fact-checkers who catalog Trump’s minute-by-minute catalog of lies.

With apologies to Pink Floyd, all in all, it’s all just a speech about the Wall. The Wall uber Alles Make America White Again crowd is freaked out by last week’s loss, and they’ve been crawling the walls like Ann Coulter on too many diet pills. Since his ignominious defeat last week at the hands of La Pelosi, they’ve been praying for a national emergency declaration so the president can deploy the military for a domestic law enforcement operation … you know, the kind of extraconstitutional statist action conservatives just love.

The Wall from the Pacific to the Gulf remains the singular, all-in promise of the Trump campaign. His nervous, “Call it whatever!” statements are a long way from the imposing creation made of the ground bones of immigrants killed by the laser-turrets and robot attack dogs so beloved of the base, but dumb springs eternal. Trump can’t let it go, even though his losing hand has shattered his Senate coalition.

The media will, of course, fall into one of the traps they so frequently do when it comes to this president. They continue to treat Trump as if his statements, proposals, and policy announcements have any actual weight or merit. These items are added to the Trump speech only at the last moment, and only as concessions by a president whose advisers have as much luck holding his interest on policy as they would teaching a dog Sanskrit.

You’ll hear some big, sweeping, popular ideas in the speech tonight. “We’re going to eliminate AIDS by 2030. We’re going to open a Whataburger on the Moon by April! Puppies and kittens for everyone!” They’ll sound normal, and even presidential.

Ignore them. These ideas and policies are meaningless tripe, the product of focus-grouped and rigorously crafted message-testing. They are the product of a man who sits on a throne of lies, written by the most mendacious public “servants” in recorded memory. Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and Kellyanne Conway’s scent will be all over these policies. (Jared’s scent is of sandalwood and tightly suppressed rage.)

Typically, these kinds of middle-ground happy-talk policies are meant to bridge partisan divides and capture voters outside the rigid ideological silos. Presidents of both parties use them, to varying effect. In this president’s case, they’re meant to capture the attention of 2,500 writers, opinion editors, and columnists. Not one of these idiot-bait fantasies will ever be backed up by meaningful policy or legislative action.

They’re designed to be a touch-back for the White House later; “See, we tried to do a Toilet Seat Safety Standards bill! It was in the State of the Union.”

The media still doesn’t understand this, even after two years of Infrastructure Weeks. Watch how many pixels and column inches tomorrow are dedicated to the presidential vaporware the Troika of Truthlessness shoves into this speech.

This racial arsonist, insult-comic president who lives in a bubble of rage-tweeting and grade-school name-calling has one quality we can all acknowledge: gall. So don’t be surprised when the most divisive, destructive, and dickish president in American history stands on the floor of the House tonight and issues a call for unity, comity, and civility.

Calls for national unity by typical presidents in times of national crisis and emergency may have a little politics embedded in them, but in this case, his call for unity is a sign of this president’s political collapse. It’s weakness, not magnanimity. He’s the class bully suddenly complaining that he is the victim after being punched in the nose by a girl.

Whether they’ll acknowledge it or not, there are problems in Trumpland. Many of the people hurt by the first shutdown looked a lot like the average Trump voter and the reason he ended it was that polling showed he had taken a hard hit with white working-class folks. He bet big and lost big, and the base knows it.

The conspiracy demo of QAnon lunatics isn’t happy that the promised arrests and prosecutions of 60,000 enemies of the state seem to recede ever toward the infinite horizon of fuck-all never. They need stoking, so expect some god-damned numerological signal to them he’s still in the fight against the reptilian child killer cult of Chappaqua.

That’s why no matter what the speech tonight entails, expect a big IV drip of amygdala-stimulating Fox News-friendly agitporn about caravans full of dangerous brown-skinned invaders, and the existential perils of Central American children with Hello Kitty backpacks storming the border. Brace yourselves for lurid, hard intel data drawn from Sicario: Day of the Soldato and fan-fiction horror stories from Sean Hannity’s fear closet.

America will be watching tonight to see a master class in defining the presidency way, way down. Ever the showman, Trump can’t help but disappoint.

This is what I’m talking about when I say that I appreciate them using their dark arts for good.

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Witness the birth of a star

by digby

Stacey Abrams had it from the beginning:

.@staceyabrams gives Dem response #SOTUResponse to #SOTU tonight. Her first time on C-SPAN? Over a quarter century ago. August 28, 1993. Addressing 30th anniversary March on Washington. She was a junior at @SpelmanCollege … Introduced by Lane Kirkland, then president @AFLCIO pic.twitter.com/xCgpLzSPr6— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) February 5, 2019

I hope she does well tonight. This job often ends up being a graveyard for political careers. But she’s awfully good so even if it doesn’t go well, I suspect she’ll recover. Remember, Bill Clinton’s 1988 DNC speech was supposed to have doomed him …

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Trump has had 65% turnover in his cabinet in 2 years

by digby

CNN:

What happened to all these people?

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was replaced by Mike Pompeo after repeated disagreements with Trump.

VA Secretary David Shulkin was a holdover from the Obama administration and among the first to go.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced out, never able to make Trump happy after recusing himself from the Russia investigation.

EPA Director Scott Pruitt was let go after an increasing number of scandals and investigations.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had similar problems.

White House chief of staff John Kelly left, after months of frustration and losing the President’s faith.
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley left with her reputation intact. She got a sendoff from Trump.
Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned in spectacular fashion, with a not subtle letter after disagreeing with the President’s foreign policy regarding the military.

Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the newly elevated House speaker will be behind him and a new Democratic majority, the most diverse Congress in history, will be before him.

Who are the new Cabinet members?

Several Cabinet secretaries have switched jobs. Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney is now also acting chief of staff. Mike Pompeo moved from CIA director to secretary of state. Several of the departed secretaries have not been permanently replaced. Andrew Wheeler has been nominated as Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

William Barr has been nominated as attorney general. He would replace acting AG Matthew Whitaker. Heather Nauert has been nominated to be US ambassador to the United Nations, but that position has been removed from the Cabinet.

Robert Wilkie was confirmed to be veterans affairs secretary. Acting Secretary of the Interior David Berhnardt has been nominated to permanently fill that post as well.

Patrick Shanahan was elevated to be the acting defense secretary since Mattis left the administration. No one has yet been nominated to lead the Pentagon on a more permanent basis.

Trump’s Cabinet has undergone more turnover than any other President in recent memory, according to data compiled by Brookings Institution researchers. They tabulate that 65% of his top aides have been replaced at least once.

That’s more turnover for Trump in two years than President George W. Bush saw in eight years. It’s not much less than Bill Clinton (73%) and Barack Obama (71%) saw in eight years.

Trump says he prefers to have “acting” cabinet members because it gives him more flexibility. This is stupid, of course. These are important jobs and his vaunted “gut” and “very big brain” are incapable of running the government single-handedly. They don’t even do a good job of running his twitter feed.

Someone also needs to tell him that the constitution requires Senate confirmation of these people.

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Where does he find these people?

by digby

Their t-shirts all had a different loathsome quote from Neomi Rao on them. She’s a real piece of work.

Trump’s “regulatory czar” and nominee to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals had quite a hearing this morning:

.@SenBlumenthal: In 2014, you called the Gun-Free School Zones Act a “grandstanding statute.” Do you believe that?

RAO: “No, that–“

BLUMENTHAL: Well then why did you say it?

RAO: “I was responding to person I was interviewing.”

B: I hope you’ll rethink that view pic.twitter.com/MZSYqw42MA

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2019

Oof — Rao struggles to explain articles she wrote at Yale claiming things like LGBT groups spread “myths” about AIDS and arguing that notions of racial & sexual oppression are overblown.

“Your early writings raise questions about your values,” @SenatorDurbin tells her. pic.twitter.com/BrrdfxBiwu

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2019

.@SenJoniErnst tells Rao about her writings shifting blame onto women for rape, “I had a chance to review a number of your writings while you were in college. They do give me pause. Not just from my own personal experiences but regarding messages we send young women everywhere.” pic.twitter.com/iMMrFcGEjz

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2019

Rao is grilled about past writings in which she was critical of restrictions on dwarf-tossing.

It’s like she was on a mission to take the most loathsome position possible on all issues. pic.twitter.com/NSkN4SKOQo

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2019

.@CoryBooker: Are gay relationships in your view immoral?

RAO: … Senator, I’m not sure the relevance of that…

BOOKER: Do you believe they are a sin?

RAO: Senator, my personal views on any of these subjects are things I would put on one side. pic.twitter.com/4geaoaAww3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2019

Aaaand here’s Ted Cruz making sure nobody thinks this woman is the most loathesome person in the room:

Ted Cruz is comparing a man who climbed on the top of a train and electrocuted himself to rape victims, welp, at least it’s Friday https://t.co/MeMK6XkQce

— Andrew Rose Gregory (@arosegregory) February 5, 2019

And yes,  they’re going to confirm this cretin:

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s new chairman, Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), is moving quickly to confirm additional judges. The panel is scheduled to vote Thursday on a slate of nominees, including a half-dozen appeals court picks.

The D.C. Circuit is often referred to as the nation’s second-highest court because it reviews high-profile cases involving government regulations and separation of powers issues and because it has been something of a pipeline to the Supreme Court. Four current justices previously served on the D.C. Circuit.

In recent years, the appeals court has ruled on cases involving gun control laws, the Trump restrictions on transgender troops serving in the military and the use of military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects.

But it was questions about Rao’s early writing rather than the court’s docket that dominated the discussion Tuesday. In a 1994 column, Rao wrote: “It has always seemed self-evident to me that even if I drank a lot, I would still be responsible for my actions. A man who rapes a drunk girl should be prosecuted. At the same time, a good way to avoid a potential date rape is to stay reasonably sober.”

Rao said at the hearing that her specific suggestion about women and alcohol was meant as “common sense observation” about “actions women can take to be less likely to become victims.”

Rao was rated “well qualified” by the American Bar Association this week and Republican Senators defended her record. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) noted she was unequivocal in the 1990s — and now — that anyone who commits a crime of violence should be prosecuted. Her suggestion that college students avoid excessive drinking, he said, is good advice, and he intends to give it to his own children.

“There is certainly nothing disqualifying here,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said. “Judicial nominations have become a blood sport,” a reference to lingering bitterness over Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation battle.

Sure being a far right, extremist, know-nothing is perfectly fine. It’s all perfectly fine.

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Trump works harder than anyone has ever worked in the history of the world!

by digby

Rush Limbaugh makes the case:

Donald Trump is the kind of guy who never has structured a lot of things day to day. Donald Trump purposely leaves a schedule open because he doesn’t know what’s gonna happen day to day. He wants to leave time to deal with pop-ups. He wants to leave time to deal with things that just pop up out of nowhere that he wants to do or people need to see him about. He ran the Trump Organization that way. He wrote about it in The Art of the Deal.
[…]
Just like there’s not a soul that would ever accuse Donald Trump of white supremacy or racism or bigotry! But all of a sudden, he becomes the Republican candidate, and he becomes all of those things. Now he becomes president and becomes lazy to boot. The one thing he’s not is lazy.

The guy gets four hours sleep a night max! So we have this gigantically… “‘He’s always calling people, talking to people,’ a senior White House official told us. ‘He’s always up to something; it’s just not what you would consider typical structure.’” “He’s always up to something.” That’s the White House explaining what Executive Time is: “He’s always up to something.” Now, those of us who know Trump know exactly what that means.

He’s not resting. He’s not sleeping. He’s not slacking off. To inside-the-Beltway types, the Washington establishment types, “He’s always up to something” means, “He’s trying to lie. He’s trying to cheat. He’s trying to come up with ways to trick us. He’s trying to get out of doing things.” That’s what this means to them. If you don’t put everything you do — including every time you breathe — on your schedule, then you’re trying to hide something. You’re trying to cover something up. You’re trying to keep what you’re doing from being known.
[…]
Let me tell you something else. To somebody like Trump the absolute biggest waste of time is a meeting. The most unproductive part of the day is meetings. That’s why I think Trump televises ’em. I think that’s how he keeps himself interested. I don’t know about you, you know I’ve related this to you before, but I had to do all kinds of meetings before my daily television show. And I didn’t like them. I thought they were a distraction.

But they had to be done because there were so many people involved in putting the show together that I just couldn’t go do it like I can do this. I don’t have to tell one person what I’m gonna do. I don’t have tell one person what I want to talk about, one person what I want to say. I don’t have to do one meeting, I never have had a meeting to do this show. And if I had to have meetings, I don’t know that I could last.
[…]
I have never been a specific goal oriented person because I found them limiting. I’ve had generic, big-time, massive goals, but not specific. For example, I had a goal, I want to be the most listened to radio guy. I didn’t have 25 goals before I got there. I didn’t have a goal, “Okay, I gotta become the most listened to in Pittsburgh first, most listened to in Sacramento next.” None of that. The fewer goals I had, the less limiting. You have a set of goals, an opportunity comes up, doesn’t fit with the goals that you’ve set with, you pass up the opportunity. I didn’t want to pass up an opportunity.

I always hate turning out the lights at night because I’m turning out the chance for something exciting to happen. Even if it’s 2 a.m., I hate turning out the lights. I hate admitting that there might not be anything more exciting happening. I understand this business of unstructured time. You’re waiting for things to pop up you can deal with or make things happen, whatever. Structured time is boring, it’s predictable.

Anyway, it’s just the latest salvo in the overall attempt to say Donald Trump is not qualified, Donald Trump doesn’t know how it’s done. And because Donald Trump won’t conform is why we can’t support him and why things will not get done. If Donald Trump would just conform, we might give him money for a wall, but he won’t conform. But it’s really part of the effort to portray him as square peg in a round hole. He doesn’t fit here. We don’t want him here and this is not his world. It’s all part of that effort to eventually drive him out of office.

And there’s another possibility with this, and it is very much so that whoever these six sources are that comprise the leakers of Trump’s schedule, what do you think the odds are they’re just people that Trump doesn’t consult, that Trump does not include, and that their noses are out of joint that they’re not utilized, that they’re not in on whatever’s going on, they’re not included? And so they leak this in a fit of pique trying to embarrass Trump.

Trump’s not an idiot. He’s known that he’s got all kinds of saboteurs and leakers inside his own administration. I think Executive Time on this schedule, like 8 a.m. to 11 a., that’s when Trump’s working, that’s when Trump is working on his agenda with people that he trusts. And one of the reasons he stays in the residence, doesn’t go to the Oval Office, is he’s freezing a bunch of people out that he thinks may not be loyal. And I think they have figured it out, and so they’re gonna leak like a bunch of spoiled brat little kids because Trump is hiding things from them.

I especially liked the part where he compared his own experience as a pampered celebrity with a two hour radio show with that of the president of the United States. But it is true that Limbaugh has the job Trump wishes he has — and how he approaches it. He tweets, he watches TV, he talks to his pals on the phone (about what he saw on TV) he reads bad polls and positive clips and spends a little time as possible getting briefings, reading papers, listening to experts and dealing with policy.

This is obvious. And frankly, even Rush doesn’t sound too confident in his declaration there. It sounds exactly like the weasely rationalization it is.

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