Questions Some Reporter Should Ask Trump
by tristero
Given that you believe there was nothing wrong with your phone call to Zelensky, have you asked him again to get dirt on political opponents? What did he say?
Have you asked any other foreign leader or county?
Do you intend to ask other foreign leaders and countries to help aid your re-election bid?
Greg Sargent Instantly Proven Right
by tristero
It’s time to drop the posture that Trump’s defenders can be shamed into accepting what has been unearthed, or that they can be shamed into arguing from a baseline of shared democratic values, or into arguing over how to interpret a comprehensive set of shared facts.
Instead, let’s rhetorically treat Trump’s defenders as his criminal accomplices. Not just as “enablers” of Trump’s corruption but as active participants in it.
Once this is accepted, it becomes obvious why they can’t be “won over,” because they are actively engaged in keeping the corruption in question from getting fully uncovered, in the belief that they, too, benefit from it, and that they, too, lose out if it’s exposed.
And, sure enough:
Late Wednesday night the Daily Beast dropped some insane news about Devin Nunes’ shady dealings with Lev Parnas and some secret investigations HE was conducting on his own in 2018 which were not publicly disclosed. Lev Parnas’ lawyer told the Daily Beast that Lev “arrange[d] meetings and calls in Europe” for Nunes and his aide, Derek Harvey. They were supposedly to help his “investigative work.”
The Daily Beast reviewed records showing that Nunes went to Europe from November 30th through December 3rd of 2018. He brought 3 aides as well and the cost for this previously unknown trip was over 63,000 taxpayer dollars. Nunes has been one of Donald Trump’s most fervent lapdogs, frequently suspected of leaking sensitive information to the White House that he was able to garner from closed door and classified hearings. This investigative travel only adds further possible proof that Nunes was trying to investigate conspiracy theories that would support Trump’s views about a myriad of issues, including that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.
Kee-rist, these people are corrupt.
Thanks, Chairman Schiff
by tristero
Having watched both a significant amount of the Watergate hearings and about 2/3 of the public testimony this week, there is no doubt in my mind that Chairman Schiff performed an extraordinary public service. He was, in many ways, far more effective than Ervin or Rodino. The organization of the witnesses to tell a coherent narrative, the intense focus of the hearings on a single issue, the actual questioning by Schiff and Goldman — brilliant. The flow of the hearings was so seamless that it belied the immense amount of hard work it took to put these hearings together and keep them on track. And Schiff’s summations were exemplary, both eloquent and and appropriately outraged.
It is surely the case, as Krugman writes this morning, that the GOP is too far out in La La Land to pay attention to the damage they are doing not only to the country but to themselves. But for anyone who is not a professional dissembler, Schiff’s herculean efforts made it crystal clear that:
(1) Trump broke numerous laws re: Ukraine;
(2) The laws he broke were extremely serious;
(3) Trump’s conduct, here and elsewhere, amounts to an egregious betrayal of his country; and
(4) Trump must be removed from office immediately.
For making the case against Trump so crystal clear, Adam Schiff, his staff, and the amazing people who risked their privacy and careers to appear, deserve our deep thanks.
Warren is Doing Great
by tristero
She’s doing so well that today the Times has chosen to feature on their web front page (1) an op-ed entitled “The Danger of Elizabeth Warren,” (2) a fawning puff piece about Joe Biden, and (3) an equally fawning puff piece about Nikki Haley.
Keep it up, Senator Warren. You’re scaring exactly the right people.
The Big Grift
by tristero
Hoo boy, if Democrats don’t make this one of the cornerstone issues of 2020, they’re idiots:
In the 2017 fiscal year, FedEx owed more than $1.5 billion in taxes. The next year, it owed nothing. What changed was the Trump administration’s tax cut — for which the company had lobbied hard.
The public face of its lobbying effort, which included a tax proposal of its own, was FedEx’s founder and chief executive, Frederick Smith, who repeatedly took to the airwaves to champion the power of tax cuts. “If you make the United States a better place to invest, there is no question in my mind that we would see a renaissance of capital investment,,,”
Nearly two years after the tax law passed, the windfall to corporations like FedEx is becoming clear. A New York Times analysis of data compiled by Capital IQ shows no statistically meaningful relationship between the size of the tax cut that companies and industries received and the investments they made. If anything, the companies that received the biggest tax cuts increased their capital investment by less, on average, than companies that got smaller cuts.
“Trump’s playing you for a sucker. Tell, me, you work hard, in construction. How much did Trump cut your taxes? $150 a year, maybe? Well, he cut FedEx’s taxes by $1.5 billion a year. You think it’s fair you should pay taxes and they don’t? You gonna let Trump get away with letting these fuckers pay no fucking taxes at all?”
Checkmate.
Roger Cohen’s Faulty Logic
by tristero
Roger Cohen says the way to beat the “brute” — ie., Trump — is for Democrats to convince “sane, moderate Republicans” to vote for a Democratic candidate, He has in mind a Democrat (sic) like Bloomberg or, in a real pinch, Biden.
As an example of the type of voter he has in mind, Cohen found a white, retired 78-year-old pharmaceutical executive and Republican politician who voted for Trump because: (1) the fellow did not like the “scheming” Clintons; (2) he did not like the way the media mocked Trump during the primaries.
Those are not sane reasons to vote for anyone, let alone Donald Trump. Reason #1 is delusional: the Clintons are schemers, compared to Trump???? Reason #2 is simply a vindictive, self-destructive non-sequitur,
This very same exemplar of a sane maoderate the Dems should appeal to also admires Trump for (1) his energy; (2) his trade war with China; (3) his tax cuts that benefit corporations; and (4) Trump’s “revitalizing impact on American ambition,”
At least two of these reasons (1 and 4) are objectively nuts. The other two are (in addition to being not entirely rational) hard right/libertarian obsessions. .
In short, Cohen has found not a “sane, moderate Republican” but merely one more wooly-brained hardliner with pretensions of thoughtfulness who, given the chance, would gladly vote for a Ted Cruz over any Democrat, including Bloomberg or Biden.
If this is a “sane, moderate Republican,” I see no point whatsoever in Democrats trying to appeal to such people.
Civility
by tristero
Whenever it appears that the Republicans are so profoundly on the ropes that they will collapse, the NY Times goes out of its way to both-side things. Their hackiest reporters go to diners in the boonies to take the pulse of Real Americans (once, just once, they should come to the Metro Diner here in NYC and ask us what we think of Trump). And when things start getting real bad for the GOP, the Times starts publishing letters like this one:
To the Editor:
Re “And in This Corner, Wearing a Red Name Tag …” (news article, Nov. 4), about events nationwide that bring people together in an effort to bridge the partisan divide:
As a Republican living in New York, I would like nothing more than to find a group like this gathering to discuss differing views civilly. I find myself checking all around me in a hush-hush manner before I express my support for President Trump’s policies. Looks of disgust and shock are what make me a closet Republican. I would love to “come out” and find some understanding and acceptance.
Sonia Schwartz
Valley Stream, N.Y.
But I care far more about the poor children this administration is trying to kill than I care that people like you feel too intimidated to defend Trump in civilized society.
.
The Republican Party is a Delusional and Nihilistic Death Cult
by tristero
And you think I’m exaggerating:
The Trump administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations, overriding protests from scientists and physicians who say the new rule would undermine the scientific underpinnings of government policymaking.
A new draft of the Environmental Protection Agency proposal, titled Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science, would require that scientists disclose all of their raw data, including confidential medical records, before the agency could consider an academic study’s conclusions. E.P.A. officials called the plan a step toward transparency and said the disclosure of raw data would allow conclusions to be verified independently…
The measure would make it more difficult to enact new clean air and water rules because many studies detailing the links between pollution and disease rely on personal health information gathered under confidentiality agreements. And, unlike a version of the proposal that surfaced in early 2018, this one could apply retroactively to public health regulations already in place.
“This means the E.P.A. can justify rolling back rules or failing to update rules based on the best information to protect public health and the environment, which means more dirty air and more premature deaths,” said Paul Billings, senior vice president for advocacy at the American Lung Association.
Public health experts warned that studies that have been used for decades — to show, for example, that mercury from power plants impairs brain development, or that lead in paint dust is tied to behavioral disorders in children — might be inadmissible when existing regulations come up for renewal.
For instance, a groundbreaking 1993 Harvard University project that definitively linked polluted air to premature deaths, currently the foundation of the nation’s air-quality laws, could become inadmissible…
And so on, and so on, and so on…
They’re really trying to kill us all. Seriously.
A Warning
by tristero
Democratic Congresscritters are all over the Tube saying things like, “Whoa, when Vindman and Hill and Taylor testify publicly, the American public will finally get to hear live the horrible truth about Trump and his goons.” This is dangerous naiveté.
The closed-door hearings have given the Republicans a tremendous advantage: they know exactly what Vindman is going to say. They know what gets under Hill’s skin and makes her lose her temper. They know Taylor’s weaknesses. In short, they are treating the closed-door hearings as a rehearsal, a dry run, a learning experience, and the Republicans are now fully prepared. It’s about to get ugly.
“About to?” you ask, astonished. Yep.
The Republicans are going to take the gloves off and stop pulling punches. There is nothing I would put past Trump and the rest of the GOP, including histrionics on the floor of Congress, mass arrests, pardons, physical threats, and worse.
Meanwhile, the Democrats seem to be wholly unimaginative about the nature of the threat. They appear totally unprepared for the level of disruption that will begin with the public hearings. If past is prologue, there will be utter chaos. And the truths Vindman et al have to say will be given short shrift as the media focuses on the disruption and madness.
UPDATE: Part of the reason I’m so concerned about what will happen next week is because to date, I have seen no one raise alarms about the suspiciously-timed release of what Trump is claiming to be a “transcript” of a second call with Ukraine.
Obviously, this call’s publicly-released summary will be even more heavily doctored in Trump’s favor than the summary of the July 25 call was, and the release spun in Trump’s favor, a la Barr and the Mueller report. And yet so far, Trump is getting a free pass to publicize the imminent release of the call with no one (at least in the media I check) raising concerns about its potential veracity. In short, those opposed to Trump still don’t fully get how dangerous he is and how nothing he does can, even for a moment, be left undisputed.
The impression I’m getting is that people — Congresspeople, the mainstream press — think that next week will obviously be a slam dunk and Trumpism is in decline. They couldn’t be more wrong. As I see it, they have only begun to fight and now it will start to get uglier than anyone has ever seen before.
Still, A Very Low Barr
by tristero
Looks like Barr has something resembling limits. Can’t quite say he’s growing a spine when it comes to Trump, more like a congealing of oleaginous excretions:
President Trump wanted Attorney General William P. Barr to hold a news conference declaring that the commander in chief had broken no laws during a phone call in which he pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate a political rival, though Barr ultimately declined to do so, people familiar with the matter said.
The request from Trump traveled from the president to other White House officials and eventually to the Justice Department. The president has mentioned Barr’s declination to associates in recent weeks, saying he wished Barr would have held the news conference, Trump advisers say.
Y’just can’t find good help these days.