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Month: April 2019

Cretin in Chief

Published by digby on April 11, 2019

Cretin in Chief

by digby


My God he is an embarrassment:

During a guided tour of Mount Vernon last April with French president Emmanuel Macron, Trump learned that Washington was one of the major real-estate speculators of his era. So, he couldn’t understand why America’s first president didn’t name his historic Virginia compound or any of the other property he acquired after himself.

“If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said, according to three sources briefed on the exchange. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you”…

If Trump was impressed with Washington’s real estate instincts, he was less taken by Mount Vernon itself, which the first president personally expanded from a modest one-and-a-half story home into an 11,000 square foot mansion. The rooms, Trump said, were too small, the staircases too narrow, and he even spotted some unevenness in the floorboards, according to four sources briefed on his comments. He could have built the place better, he said, and for less money.

Yeah, nobody remembers George Washington.

Roy Edroso has the best take:

It’s hard to know whether Trump is genuinely this stupid, or whether he’s merely playing the monied rube here for the benefit of his idiot fans. In either case his act as seen at Mount Vernon is more or less the same as he’s been doing for years: As a self-help huckster, snake-oil salesman, game show host, presidential candidate, and president, Trump’s success is based on putting over the notion that the smart people are putting one over on you, but he will put you wise — he’ll teach you the secrets the smart people won’t share, sell you the “quality” items the smart people hoard for themselves, elevate with an apprenticeship some humble young Horatio Alger who’d never get a break from the smart people; and finally, when given the ultimate prize, he will lock up the Queen of the Smart People, drain the swamp and fix America.

With the Mount Vernon tour Trump is letting everyone around him know that the things smart people like, or rather are pretending to like in order to bamboozle the common people — historical artifacts, indeed history itself, and the homey values of the Founding Fathers — are actually stupid; this supposed “attraction” is just a dump (as Trump called the White House when he got there) and this Washington schmuck didn’t have the savvy and pizzazz that Trump brings to the Big Show. Why waste your time at some rickety old house when you could go to Trump Tower? And if some loser bitches that Trump’s leadership betrays the values of people like George Washington, well, who was Washington anyway except some soldier who, though admirable because he didn’t get captured, didn’t know half of what Trump knows about building a fortune and making a name for oneself? Because the only real values are Trump’s values, and anything else is a trap to steal your money.

Also, he really is stupid. It’s true he has a feral survival instinct and a good bead on what stupid people like himself want to hear. But mostly, he’s just a cretin who believes his own ignorant twaddle.

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Binary BS

Published by digby on April 11, 2019

Binary BS

by digby

Another sign of Barr’s Fox News brain rot from the hearing today. Patrick Leahy asked if the special counsel had explained his decision not to answer the obstruction question himself. Barr said that they’d had a conversation about it.

And then:

Barr: He also has a fuller explanation of that in the report that I’ll be making available hopefully next week.

Leahy: Did he express any expectation and interest in leaving the obstruction decision to Congress?

Barr: Not that—he didn’t say that to me, no.

Leahy: So he said the obstruction decision should be up to you?”

Barr: He didn’t say that either. But that’s generally how the Department of Justice works. Generally grand juries are to investigate crimes and a prosecutor’s role at the end of the day is binary. Are there charges or no charges, or is this a crime or not a crime.

That may be how it works usually but in this case the prosecutor declined to charge …. but also made it clear that he couldn’t exonerate. And we don’t have any clue about whether he said that because the DOJ guidelines don’t allow a president to be charged or whether it’s because the Attorney General believes that if the president does it it’s not illegal.

If it’s a “binary” choice Mueller would have said, “the investigation did not establish that the president committed obstruction of justice” as he said about the election conspiracy, instead of saying, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

We are still operating in the dark here, but Barr’s point of view is pretty obvious at this point. He is going to protect the president and advance the right wingers’ counter-narrative.

The Democrats are going to have to get Mueller to testify.

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Barr and Trump got what they wanted

Published by digby on April 10, 2019

Barr and Trump got what they wanted

by digby

Aaaaand:

Andy Kroll at Rolling Stone:

It took him three tries, but President Trump has finally found, in William P. Barr, the attorney general he’s wanted all along. That is, an attorney general who appears loyal to Trump and seemingly willing to protect the president when necessary, defy Democrats in Congress and investigate Trump’s perceived enemies in the so-called “Deep State.” In his first public appearance since Special Counsel Robert Mueller finished his investigation, Barr did the president proud across two days of testimony before Congress this week.

On Tuesday, Barr told the House Appropriations Committee that he plans to give lawmakers a redacted copy of Mueller’s report “within the week,” but that he has no plans right now to release the full, unredacted version of the report or any of the underlying evidence demanded by House Democrats. “I don’t intend at this stage to send the full, unredacted report to the committee,” he said. When asked whether anyone in the White House had read the report or received a briefing from the DOJ on its contents, Barr refused to give a straight answer. “I’ve said what I’m going to about the report,” he said.

A day later, while testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Barr did even more to satisfy the demands of the president. In an exchange with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), he confirmed that he plans to investigate the origins of the DOJ’s counterintelligence investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign. That probe, code named “Crossfire Hurricane,” began in the summer of 2016 and examined possible connections between members of Trump’s team and Russia’s interference in the election. Crossfire Hurricane laid the groundwork for Mueller’s appointment as special counsel in May 2017, which ultimately resulted in indictments, guilty pleas or convictions for 34 people and three companies. Several of those charged or found guilty, including the president’s former campaign chairman and his first national security adviser, were part of Trump’s inner circle for a period of time.

Trump supporters and right-wing media figures dubbed the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign “Spygate.” In a particularly chilling Wednesday morning rant, Trump called the Mueller investigation an “attempted coup” while accusing those responsible of treason. “Everything about it was crooked,” he told reporters outside the White House. “What I’m most interested in is getting started on … going back to the origins of exactly where this all started.”

That’s exactly what Attorney General Barr told the Senate he would do. When Sen. Shaheen asked Barr whether he thought the Justice Department spied on the Trump campaign, he replied that he thought “spying did occur, yes.” Barr clarified that he wasn’t preemptively blaming the FBI for wrongfully spying on the Trump campaign, only that he was zeroing in on a “failure among the group of leaders there at the upper echelon.” In other words, he has his sights set on people like former FBI director James Comey and Comey’s former deputy Andrew McCabe, both of whom Trump has criticized repeatedly for their role in the Russia investigation. (Later, Barr clarified that he was not in possession of any evidence that points to FBI malfeasance.)

Barr’s testimony on Wednesday has Democrats concerned. “The top law enforcement officer of the country should not casually suggest that those under his purview engaged in ‘spying’ on a political campaign,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said in a statement. “This type of partisan talking point may please Donald Trump, who rails against a ‘deep state coup,’ but it also strikes another destructive blow to our democratic institutions. The hardworking men and women at the DOJ and FBI deserve better.”

He got his Roy Cohn.

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When they called women baby killers they meant it

Published by digby on April 10, 2019

When they called women baby killers they meant it

by digby

One third of women in America deserve the death penalty:

Texas State legislators stayed up well into the morning hearing emotional testimony about a proposed abortion ban.

House Bill 896 would criminalize abortion and classify it as a homicide. Women who have abortions could be sentenced to the death penalty.

One of the legislators brought up the fact that when a person kills a pregnant woman he or she is charged with double murder. Therefore, we’ve already decided that it’s murder and women should be subject to the same laws. That was always the point of enacting those laws in the first place. They play the long game.

This is where the logic of the anti-abortion movement inevitably takes you. No one should be surprised by it.

This guy gets it:

The people who don’t like Trump REALLY don’t like Trump.

Published by digby on April 10, 2019

The people who don’t like Trump REALLY don’t like Trump


by digby

This new YouGov Economist poll has a ton of interesting info. Here are the job approval numbers. You will note that the number for “strongly disapprove” is higher in every single demographic category than “strongly approve.”

In other words, not only is he still hovering at 40% in this poll (as almost all the others) the intensity is  in the camp that loathes him:

It’s still hard for me to believe that Republicans are sticking with him but their brains are rotted by wingnut propaganda so I guess they are just too far gone. But the rest of the country is obviously appalled.

Here are few more findings, all of which basically reflect this dynamic:


A whole lot of Republicans know what he is. They just don’t care.  The rest are just brainwashed, I guess.

Trump’s “exoneration” hasn’t helped him. Indeed, nothing seems to help him.  But none of this means the Democrats are a shoo-in.  Much depends on who they nominate and conditions in the country 18 months from now.

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The emoluments clause will only apply to Democrats going forward

Published by digby on April 10, 2019

The emoluments clause will only apply to Democrats going forward

by digby


This is disturbing but sadly unsurprising. The Trump DOJ is arguing that a president may receive money from foreign governments through the businesses he unethically continues to run while in office:

The Department of Justice has adopted a narrow interpretation of a law meant to bar foreign interests from corrupting federal officials, giving Saudi Arabia, China and other countries leeway to curry favor with Donald Trumpvia deals with his hotels, condos, trademarks and golf courses, legal and national security experts say.

The so-called foreign emoluments clause was intended to curb presidents and other government officials from accepting gifts and benefits from foreign governments unless Congress consents.

But in a forthcoming article in the Indiana Law Journal, the Washington University Law professor Kathleen Clark reveals justice department filings have recently changed tack. The new interpretation, Clark says, is contained in justice filings responding to recent lawsuits lodged by attorneys generals and members of Congress.

Clark’s article notes that in more than 50 legal opinions over some 150 years justice department lawyers have interpreted the clause in a way that barred any foreign payments or gifts except for ones Congress approved. But filings by the department since June 2017 reveal a new interpretation that “… would permit the president – and all federal officials – to accept unlimited amounts of money from foreign governments, as long as the money comes through commercial transactions with an entity owned by the federal official,” the professor writes.

The justice department stance now closely parallels arguments made in a January 2017 position paper by Trump Organization lawyer Sheri Dillon and several of her law partners. On 11 January 2017, just days before he was sworn in, Dillon said Trump isn’t accepting any payments in his “official capacity” as president, as the income is only related to his private business. “Paying for a hotel room is not a gift or a present, and it has nothing to do with an office,” Dillon said.

That goes against what many experts believe.

“For over a hundred years, the justice department has strictly interpreted the constitution’s anti-corruption emoluments clause to prohibit federal officials from accepting anything of value from foreign governments, absent congressional consent,” Clark told the Guardian.

“In 2017, the department reversed course, adopting arguments nearly identical to those put forward by Trump’s private sector lawyers. Instead of defending the republic against foreign influence, the department is defending Trump’s ability to receive money from foreign governments,” Clark added.

A justice department spokesperson declined to comment, but pointed to its filings in the emoluments lawsuits which Clark has noted contain five arguments similar to those used by Trump’s business lawyers. Among the key justice arguments is that the foreign emoluments clause only was intended to prohibit the president accepting gifts and employment compensation from a foreign government, but allows him to benefit from what it calls “commercial transactions”.

Other legal scholars also voice strong qualms about the justice department’s current position on emoluments and criticize the administration’s lax attitude about conflicts involving Trump and his business empire.

“The heart of the matter is that these are clauses meant to guard against undue foreign influence and conflicts of interest,” John Mikhail, a professor at Georgetown Law Center, said.

No Democrat can get elected without divesting of his or her businesses and investments so this won’t be an issue. And if it should come up a Democratic DOJ would take the opposite tack. So this is an exception for Republican administrations only, and specifically for Donald Trump who is unique in his monumental greed and petty corruption. But if they continue to elect such people, as they probably will, it’s a nice precedent for them. Republican residents going forward know that they can have a nice side hustle and their own DOJ and the courts packed full of political hacks and right wing ideologues, they’ll be able to get away with it.

GOP shamelessness has been institutionalized.

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Lindsey Graham and Devin Nunes have a Trumpist ally in William Barr

Published by digby on April 10, 2019

Lindsey Graham and Devin Nunes have a Trumpist ally in William Barr

by digby

… and the threat to any law enforcement power that threatens the president is going to continue:

Get ready. This is going to be a three ring circus like you’ve never seen before.

“Pay me now or pay me later” by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 10, 2019

“Pay me now or pay me later”
by Tom Sullivan

Fram oil filters for decades ran TV commercials featuring auto mechanics touting the basic economics of preventative maintenance. Pay a little now to maintain your car or pay a whole lot later to repair it when things break. That message went down the memory hole in Washington what seems ages ago.

Economists long have seen carbon pricing as the most efficient way for reducing greenhouse gases that induce global warming. The problem is, as the old joke suggests, efficient is not necessarily effective. Actually getting things done gets lost in our obsession with getting them done in the most efficient manner possible.

Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican climate official with years spent as a United Nations climate official, tells David Leonhardt, “An economist would probably argue that the most efficient way to reduce greenhouse gases is to put a price on carbon. But efficient is not always what can be attained from a political perspective. I would rather move now on what we can do than wait for economists’ perfection.”

What once seemed like an idea that could draw bipartisan support is dead, Leonhardt explains, because stalled earnings mean voters have less tolerance for costs added to their energy bills, and because increasingly tribal Republicans reject bipartisan compromises “as a matter of course.” Pressing a few states to adopt more clean energy — performance standards — may be less efficient, but may actually produce better results and leverage Washington from the outside. Tom Steyer’s NextGen is focused on results.

Leonhardt writes:

The key political advantage is that performance standards focus voters on the end goal, rather than on the technocratic mechanism for achieving it. Carbon pricing puts attention on the mechanism, be it a dreaded tax or a byzantine cap-and-trade system. Mechanisms don’t inspire people. Mechanisms are easy to caricature as big-government bureaucracy. Think about the debate over Obamacare: When the focus was on mechanisms — insurance mandates, insurance exchanges and the like — the law was not popular. When the focus shifted to basic principles — Do sick people deserve health insurance? — the law became much more so.

What’s in it for me? is what voters need to know, not just how do we get there and how much will it cost. Framing is key. Steyer’s group focused on getting clean energy initiatives on the ballot in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada. In the Nevada case:

The messages were simple and powerful. They focused on the immediate benefits from clean-energy use, like fewer health problems, lower medical costs and more jobs that pay well. As Steyer said to me, “If you don’t talk about health issues and jobs, then you’ve got nothing to talk about.” In one ad, a white-coat-clad doctor in Carson City describes the damage air pollution does to the lungs and brains of her patients in northern Nevada. “It’s just a disaster, health-wise,” she says. In another ad, a woman named Jennifer Cantley becomes teary-eyed when talking about having to check the air quality each day before letting her son, who has asthma, go outside to play with his friends.

Opposition did not evaporate, but the initiative passed 59 percent to 41 percent.

In Arizona, where the state’s Public Service-funded attorney general succeeded in placing “irrespective of cost to consumers” in the ballot language, the measure failed 69 percent to 31 percent.

There are lessons for promoters of the Green New Deal, obviously. Despite predictions of failure and economic doom, California met performance standards it set years early with little perceptible consumer cost, Leonhardt writes. Ultimately, an “all of the above” approach may be needed to attack climate change rather than waiting for opinion shifts that make carbon pricing politically viable. Progress is more important than efficiency. The problem with past environmental activism was too much laudable honesty about up-front costs and too little emphasis on longer or even nearer-term benefits.

“Pay me now or pay me later” emphasized spending a little now to avoid spending a lot later. The same principle applies to any variety of Medicare for All. Or to current conservative alarmism over the costs of a Green New Deal whose features have yet to be mapped out. What the costs are of losing Florida or Manhattan or the Gulf Coast versus the cost of doing something now to stop it is not a prominent enough feature of the climate debate. It should be.

But that’s not exactly Leonhardt’s point. His analysis of climate change policy suggests so long as we allow the focus to remain on up-front costs and mechanisms, people will lose sight of the end goal and support will not coalesce.

I was a bit young at the time, but do not recall vigorous opposition to the costs of sending men to the moon. Even the deadly fire aboard the Apollo 1 command module only deepened national resolve. The public was too captivated by the prospect of achieving Kennedy’s visionary goal.