Month: December 2019

Some “alternative facts” are going to kill us

If you have no other reason to spend the next few days researching ways that you might help defeat Donald Trump next year, this should do it. The Washington Post reports that even Trump’s own hand-picked Scientific Advisory Board says that the wrecking ball he and his Republican accomplices are using to destroy environmental regulations are in direct conflict with established science:

For example, regarding the EPA’s plan to reverse a rule that limits what sort of dredging or pesticide applications can take place near smaller streams and wetlands, the advisory board said the proposal “neglects established science” that shows how contamination of groundwater, wetlands and waterways can spread to drinking water supplies. A separate report says the economic models used to justify reducing the average mileage targets for cars and light trucks between now and 2026 were “implausible” based on assumptions about the kinds of vehicles consumers will drive in the future.

….The moves come as the agency has overhauled how it factors science into its decision-making. More than a year ago, the EPA disbanded an expert panel charged with updating assessments of the public health risks posed by soot. In December, EPA’s inspector general concluded it failed to analyze how a plan to loosen emissions standards for truck components would affect children’s health. And it is now drafting a rule to restrict which scientific studies it uses to develop public health policies.

The EPA blew their report off saying basically, “that’s nice, but we’re going to do whatever we want.”  As usual.

This rejection of science is not confined to Trump. Republicans have been doing this for years.  If the science conflicts with their rich plutocratic benefactors profits or their voters’ superstitions, they simply ignore the science. But as with everything else, Trump takes it to a whole other level by abandoning even the pretense of caring. They either ignore all evidence that conflicts with their goals or make up data to back up their claims — and they do it openly.  They are, in essence, declaring that science doesn’t exist.

It is literally hell on earth in Australia right now. And it’s because of climate change. We can’t afford to coddle and appease these greedheads and selfish imbeciles anymore. We have to do everything in our power to elect people who will work feverishly to turn this ship around before it’s too late.

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And thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. I am truly grateful. — d

What does Ghislaine Maxwell know? 

Trump and Epstein, partying at Mar-a-lago

The U.K. paper The Sun reports that a family friend of  Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend and procurer of young girls for billionaire Jeffrey Epstein,  believes she is safe from accountability because of all the “serious dirt” she has on powerful people. Evidently, her rich friends are protecting her and paying her legal bills and she thinks she’ll be able to re-take her place among high society once the smoke has cleared.

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And thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. I am truly grateful. — d

Keeping the Mad King happy

Back in July of 2017 Trump had his totally inexperience daughter “sit in” for him at the G20. People weren’t used to his casual nepotism at the time and were rightly appalled. It set off quite a brouhaha prompting the Whiner-inchief to issue a tweet saying that  such a thing is very “standard.” (It is not. Of course.) The he got mad and tweeted: “If Chelsea Clinton were asked to hold the seat for her mother, as her mother gave our country away, the Fake News would say CHELSEA FOR PRES!,” Trump said.

Good morning Mr. President. It would never have occurred to my mother or my father to ask me. Were you giving our country away? Hoping not. https://t.co/4ODjWZUp0c

— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) July 10, 2017

It wasa good zinger, totally forgotten by everyone by now, but it got 500,000 twitter “likes” and apparently the whole administration went crazy. According o the Daily Beast:

That kickstarted a weeks-long investigation, prompted by the secretary’s office, into who exactly at the Brussels mission had access to the Twitter account and hit “Like” on Clinton’s tweet, according to two former U.S. officials…At least 10 people were interviewed about whether they, as administrators of the account, had mistakenly or deliberately pressed the “Like” button. All of them denied any wrongdoing, those sources said. One individual familiar with the exchanges said the secretary of state’s top managers in Washington “wanted blood” and called Brussels numerous times demanding the name of the culprit.

They never found the nefarious culprit but they made the twitter account accessible to only two people and undoubtedly kept n eagle eye on both of them going forward..

Apparently, the State Department is still vigilant in its monitoring of various twitter accounts mostly because it’s so difficult to align State Department policy with the president’s inane tweets. They never know when Trump is going to abruptly change course and undercut the work people are doing in the field.

The Beast writes that nobody knows whether Trump was aware of the Chelsea hunt but plenty of people in the White House were:

According to two former White House officials, word of the “Chelsea Clinton thing,” as one of the ex-officials said they’d dubbed it, soon reached the halls of the West Wing, where it became a piece of gossip and facepalming among Trump aides, many of whom were still trying to root out perceived foes in their ranks, often by labeling enemies in conversations to the president or to senior staffers as “Never Trumpers,” “anti-Trump,” and “leakers.”

This is no way to run a Superpower. In fact, it’s no way to run a city council. Or a lemonade stand…

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And thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. I am truly grateful. — d

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Remember the story of the McDonalds worker supposedly writing “fucking pig” on the cop’s coffee cup?

Yeah, it was a hoax. The 23 year old cop had been a member of the military police in Iraq for years and had only been on the force for 2 months when he did it. He’s been fired.

The police chief very wisely had the McDonald’s manager with him at the press conference and a bunch of cops went over to the restaurant to have coffee. But I’m sure the incident left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths (and not from the coffee…)

I don’t expect people to agree on much in this country. But I don’t think it’s too much to ask that people on all sides stop making up victim stories. We all watched the Jessie Smolett circus. But all kinds of people do this and in this heated environment it’s ridiculous.

Who is Trump listening to on Iran?

This is such a disingenuous argument. There were no attacks on US forces in Iraq by Iranian-backed militia from 2014 through the end of the Obama admin (the Iran deal was in 2015).

Trump needs to own the fact that jettisoning the deal has made Iran more, not less, provocative. https://t.co/y8ty8teVMY

— Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) December 30, 2019

Iran killed an American contractor, wounding many. We strongly responded, and always will. Now Iran is orchestrating an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. They will be held fully responsible. In addition, we expect Iraq to use its forces to protect the Embassy, and so notified!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2019

The danger here is that Trump will ignore the American Iraq and Iran expertise, hawkish and dovish alike, that’s been developed over the past three decades because he “knows more than the generals” and listens to America’s adversaries instead. This is a complicated situation and he is not up to the task.

From what I understand, this strike in Iraq was strange and no one really understands why it wasn’t aimed at Syria. Since it was for the killing of an American contractor in a rocket attack, it sounds like a Trump decision to me. Eddie Gallagher probably talked him into it at the party.

While he may give Republicans heartburn on many of his foreign policy and national security “ideas”, Trump and his advisers have always agreed on one thing: Iran. They all agreed that the Iran deal was terrible and that it was important to maintain Iran as an enemy, for reasons that never made sense to me.

Trump has demagogued the country throughout his presidency (even as he hugged Kim Jong Un as his best friend.) Obviously, much of this has to do with Trump’s relationship with Saudi Arabia and the hawks will never get over 1979 but it has looked like Trump was heading for some kind of confrontation from the beginning.

2020 may be the year. Lindsey Graham is out there this morning saying that Trump has “put the world on notice that there will be no Benghazis on his watch.”  He seemed excited.

We are still running the Happy Hollandaise end-of-year fundraiser. If you would like to support this kind of independent media as we cover what is going to one doozy of a political year, you can do so below.


And thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. I am truly grateful. — d

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Where this is headed
by Tom Sullivan

Conservative resentment of whites’ flagging demographic dominance became more pronounced over the 2010s. Hugh Hewitt might blame liberal snootiness if he likes (he does), but that’s not why over the last decade Republicans needed “surgical” gerrymandering like Viagra for keeping up their membership in Congress.

Hewitt complains Donald Trump’s opponents are “millions whose self-regard was greater than their esteem for the people’s vote” even while admitting, yes, yes, we know Trump lost the 2016 popular vote.

But against that resentment, the GOP’s own “autopsy” on the 2012 race found former Republican voters described the party as “scary,” “narrow minded,” and “out of touch,” a party of “stuffy old men.” Younger voters rejected them. Minorities thought “Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.” Rather than adjust course, Republicans spent the decade resembling those remarks.

Charles Gaba used Twitter Monday to illustrate how much America has changed and how much the Republican Party has not. Membership in the House caucuses tells the tale.

📣 UDPATE: OK, I've added Native American/Alaskan (4 total) and Asian/Pacific Islander (13). Several members fall into multiple categories, of course…Rep. Bobby Scott is a member of the CBC but is also Filipino by birth, etc.) pic.twitter.com/8pObFqby7J— Charles #GetCovered-ba (@charles_gaba) December 29, 2019

At Salon, David Daley (“Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count“) provides a brief history of REDMAP, the Redistricting Majority Project that flipped state houses red in 2010 and gave Republicans a decade of heavily gerrymandered district maps in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Ensuring minority rule became a goal for pocket-Constitution-carrying Republicans. Once in control, the minority dug in, passing voting restrictions. Florida Republicans undermined a state constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to felons. In Texas, they made it a felony to cast an ineligible ballot by accident, which happens among immigrants and ex-felons unsure of their voting status. Several states passed legislation making it more difficult to mount voter registration drives, etc.

Daley concludes his grim summary of a democracy hijacked:

We stand on the verge of the next redistricting cycle, which will begin in 2021, without the prospect of intervention from the federal courts, with the gerrymander wars headed south and the prospect of states using citizen population, rather than total population, to draw state legislative districts, all, again, with the goal of standing athwart demographic change and shouting “stop.”

Republicans found rigging democracy is easier than persuading voters their policies have merit. While accusing the left of looking down its maternalistic nose at voters and knowing what’s best for them, Republicans have chosen to trade democracy for the mere appearance of it. That is what its shrinking base demands.

U.S. population growth has seen a steady decline since 2015, new census data shows, stemming from both “a lack of migrants’ entering the country” and “a drop in so-called natural increase, which is the difference between births and deaths.” White population decline has the GOP base spooked.

“In 1980, nearly half of U.S. counties — 1,412 of them — had populations that were almost exclusively (98 percent or more) white,” the Washington Post reported in 2015. “Thirty years later, only 149 counties — fewer than five percent — fit that same description.” Pew reported this year that 109 U.S. counties have become majority nonwhite since 2000.

Robert Jones (“The End of White Christian America“) explains it is not guns or religion driving support for Trump, but “their belief that ‘making America great again’ necessarily entails restoring white Christian demographic and political dominance.” To that end, the Constitution and the rule of law are disposable.

Explaining away Trump supporters as racist is an oversimplification. This goes much deeper than racism to something much more primal. This political moment is about power and who is unwilling to share it.

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And thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. I am truly grateful. — digby

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It appears that Rudy Giuliani’s partner/client/ accomplice Lev Parnas really wants to buy himself some goodwill with the prosecutors who are looking to put him in jail. His lawyer has sent a letter to a federal judge indicating that he wants to share some new information about Trumpworld with the House Intelligence Committee.  Apparently, they’re still interested…

We are still running the Happy Hollandaise end-of-year fundraiser. If you would like to support this kind of independent media as we cover what is going to one doozy of a political year, you can do so below.


And thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. I am truly grateful. — d

“Most admired” list of famous people

Lol. The annual Gallup poll of most admired people is out. It must burn Trump that he’s tied with Obama:

Most admired man:
1 (tie). Barack Obama (18%)
1 (tie). Donald Trump (18%)
3 (tie). Jimmy Carter (2%)
3 (tie). Elon Musk (2%)
5. Bill Gates (2%)
6. Pope Francis (1%)
7. Bernie Sanders (1%)
8. Adam Schiff (1%)
9. The Dalai Lama (1%)
10. Warren Buffett (<1%)

Most admired woman:
1. Michelle Obama (10%)
2. Melania Trump (5%)
3. Oprah Winfrey (3%)
4. Hillary Clinton (3%)
5. Greta Thunberg (3%)
6. Queen Elizabeth II (2%)
7. Nancy Pelosi (2%)
8. Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2%)
9. Elizabeth Warren (1%)
10 (tie). Angela Merkel (1%)
10 (tie). Nikki Haley (1%)

This list is always kind of hilarious. I wonder if he knows that Obama was way more admired when he was president….

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

1. Barack Obama, 30 percent

2. George W. Bush, 4 percent

3. Nelson Mandela, 3 percent

4. Glenn Beck, 2 percent

5. Pope Benedict XVI, 2 percent

6. the Rev. Billy Graham, 2 percent

7. Bill Gates, 2 percent

8. John McCain, 1 percent

9. George H.W. Bush, 1 percent

10. (tie) Bill Clinton, 1 percent

Tiger Woods, 1 percent

Nelson Mandela only gets one point higher than Beck — who’s tied with the pope?

Lol. The right wingers always deeply admire some nut, don’t they?

We are still running the Happy Hollandaise end-of-year fundraiser. If you would like to support this kind of independent media as we cover what is going to one doozy of a political year, you can do so below.


And thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. I am truly grateful. — d

In all the tiresome interviews with Trump voters these days, one of the most astonishing aspects is their total assurance that Trump has kept all his promises but most especially that he “drained the swamp.” They actually believe that he has been a crusader against corruption.

I don’t know if they consciously understand that the right wing fever swamp has defined “corruption” as anyone who disagrees with the president or stands up for the rule of law. But they seem quite sure that Trump and his men are honest as the day is long.

I guess they never see stories like this:

Erik Prince, a major Republican donor and founder of controversial security firm Blackwater, has been referred to the U.S. Treasury Department for possible sanctions violations tied to his recent trip to Venezuela for a meeting with a top aide of President Nicolas Maduro, two senior U.S. officials said.

A person familiar with Prince’s visit said he had been asked to travel to Venezuela by an unidentified European businessman with longstanding ties to the oil-rich nation. The person said Prince did not discuss any business nor receive anything of value during his trip — actions that would’ve violated U.S. financial sanctions on Maduro’s socialist government. 

The purpose of the trip was to meet key players in the crisis-wracked nation, not to serve as an emissary for the Trump administration, according to the person, who isn’t authorized to discuss the visit and spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Ok. Maybe he was just meeting and greeting for no reason whatsoever. More likely he is pitching some kind of business deal. That’s what he usually does. But these “deals” are often for truly nefarious mercenary activity.

Prince has been all over the Trump campaign and administration, most memorably trying to get Trump to privatize the war in Afghanistan and make him the Viceroy. If he’s involved in foreign policy, there’s money in it.

Meanwhile, Rudy’s been active in Venezuela too. The Washington Post reported Sunday that he was on a back-channel phone call with former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro w and former Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX). They report that “both were part of a shadow diplomatic effort, backed in part by private interests, aimed at engineering a negotiated exit to ease President Nicolás Maduro from power and reopen resource-rich Venezuela to business, according to people familiar with the endeavor.”

Rudy has also been financially and “diplomatically” involved in Eastern Europe and Turkey.

The swamp is an ocean. And Trump’s cronies are paddling around in it like they own it.

We are still running the Happy Hollandaise end-of-year fundraiser. If you would like to support this kind of independent media as we cover what is going to one doozy of a political year, you can do so below.


And thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. I am truly grateful. — d

More Ukrainian shoes dropping

They are the shoes of a trio of Bigfoots: Esper, Pompeo and Bolton.

The New York Times has taken a deeper look into what went on in the White House last summer as Trump insisted on withholding aid to Ukraine in exchange for an announcement of an investigation into Joe Biden and false rumors of 2016 election interference by the Ukraine government. It turns out that it was a much bigger deal than we knew. 

Greg Sargent points out that it’s getting harder and harder for Mitch McConnell to justify not calling witnesses in light of what we have learned. He writes:

McConnell badly needs the media’s both-sidesing instincts to hold firm against the brute facts of the situation. If Republicans bear the brunt of media pressure to explain why they don’t want to hear from witnesses, that risks highlighting their true rationale: They adamantly fear new revelations precisely because they know Trump is guilty — and that this corrupt scheme is almost certainly much worse than we can currently surmise.

And he helpfully lays out the story’s key points:

• As early as June, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney worked to execute the freeze for Trump, and a top aide to Mulvaney — Robert Blair — worried it would fuel the narrative that Trump was tacitly aiding Russia.
• Internal opposition was more forceful than previously known. The Pentagon pushed for the money for months. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-national security adviser John Bolton privately urged Trump to understand that freezing the aid was not in our national interest.
• Trump was unmoved, citing Ukraine’s “corruption.” We now know Trump actually wanted Ukraine to announce sham investigations absolving Russia of 2016 electoral sabotage and smearing potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden. The Times report reveals that top Trump officials did not think that ostensibly combating Ukrainian “corruption” (which wasn’t even Trump’s real aim) was in our interests. 
• Lawyers at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) worked to develop a far-fetched legal argument that Trump could exercise commander-in-chief authority to override Congress’ appropriation of the aid, to get around the law precluding Trump from freezing it. 
• Michael Duffey, a political appointee at OMB, tried to get the Pentagon to assume responsibility for getting the aid released, to deflect blame away from the White House for its own role in blocking it. This led a Pentagon official to pronounce herself “speechless.” 
• Duffey froze the aid with highly unusual bureaucratic tactics, refused to tell Pentagon officials why Trump wanted it withheld and instructed them to keep this “closely held.” (Some of this had already been reported, but in narrative context it becomes far more damning.)

They can’t continue to say that there was no pressure on Ukraine or that Trump was withholding the money for normal policy reasons. Everyone in the White House knew this was wrong and possibly illegal. In fact, they went out of their way to try to construct a legal rationale after the fact. (One might call it a “cover-up) 

If Pelosi and the Democrats wanted to let the impeachment articles simmer over the holiday because the crimes are ongoing and new information is trickling out everyday, they made a good decision.

I encourage you to read the whole NYT article. It’s very hard to see how they can continue to insist that we don’t need to hear from witnesses. If they do they will be making the case for everyone to see that Trump is covering up his crimes and the Republican Senate is helping him do it.

The Democrats can take that argument into 2020 with confidence.

We are still running the Happy Hollandaise end-of-year fundraiser. If you would like to support this kind of independent media as we cover what is going to one doozy of a political year, you can do so below.


And thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. I am truly grateful. — d

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