I think he really meant Merry F-ing Christmas but lost his nerve…
You can see why all the evangelical Christians love him so much. Jesus must be so proud.
"what digby sez..."
Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
Social Security expert Nancy Altman has some news
Social Security is in safer hands:
Last week, the Senate confirmed Martin O’Malley to be the next Commissioner of Social Security. This is a major achievement: It marks the first time in over 25 years that the Senate has confirmed a Social Security commissioner nominated by a Democratic president. Indeed, commissioners nominated by Democratic presidents have headed the Social Security Administration (“SSA”) for only eight years of the last 40.
This fact is important because the Democratic and Republican parties have very different views about Social Security. Democrats created Social Security and in recent years have united around the need to protect and expand the system’s modest benefits.
In sharp contrast, when Social Security was enacted in 1935, Republicans in Congress were overwhelmingly hostile. From the early 1950s until recently, mainstream Republicans largely voted for protecting and expanding Social Security, as the program became established and highly popular among voters across the ideological spectrum. But in recent years, as the Republican Party became radicalized, Republican politicians have returned to deep opposition to Social Security — though mostly in a subtle fashion since they know their voters support the system.
One way that they have expressed that hostility is by starving SSA of funding, undermining Social Security from within.
It is important to recognize that Social Security’s funding comes not from the general fund, which has run large and growing deficits. Rather, its funding comes from Social Security’s trust funds, which currently are in surplus in the amount of $2.8 trillion. (In fact, if the trust funds ever have insufficient revenue to pay every penny of costs, including administrative costs, benefits would not be paid. Social Security has no borrowing authority.)
The starvation of the agency by Republican politicians has had its impact. SSA was once known for its extremely high-quality customer service, and considered one of the best places to work in the federal government, if not the best. Generations of families worked for SSA. But over the last 13 years, largely Republican-controlled congresses have cut the agency’s budget by 17 percent, even as the number of Social Security beneficiaries grew by 22 percent.
As a result, the agency’s staffing has fallen to the lowest level in 25 years. Beneficiaries face long wait times at field offices and when calling the 1-800 number. Many offices have closed their doors. People with disabilities are often forced to wait a year or more for an eligibility hearing for Social Security benefits, with many going bankrupt or even dying in the interim. Not surprisingly, employee morale at SSA is low, with recent surveys finding that SSA employees have the lowest job satisfaction of any large federal government agency.
As important as it is to have a confirmed commissioner who has been nominated by a Democratic president, that is necessary but not sufficient. SSA needs a commissioner who will inspire the agency’s hard-working public servants, letting them know that the person at the top recognizes the invaluable work they perform each and every day. Perhaps even more important, SSA’s leader must be willing and able to push Congress for adequate funding.
That is why the confirmation of O’Malley is such an important win for all Americans. That includes Republicans and Independents, as well as Democrats. He has a proven track record that shows he is the right person for the job. He has extensive executive experience from his time as mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland. At his recent confirmation hearing, O’Malley emphasized the importance of listening to frontline workers at the agency. As a confirmed commissioner, he will have the platform needed to share the stories of those workers, as well as beneficiaries, with Congress — and make the case for adequate funding.
O’Malley has other crucial attributes that make his confirmation a big win for all Americans. As important as it is for the commissioner to be strongly supportive of Social Security and an advocate for the agency and its workforce, the position requires a person deeply committed to serving the American people with dedication and compassion. O’Malley is such a person.
As a Senate-confirmed commissioner, O’Malley is in a strong position to provide Americans with the first-class customer service they deserve. That includes restoring the annual earnings statement which the law requires the agency to send out every year to inform Americans about their earned benefits. Importantly, in addition to the fact that the law requires the mailing of the statement to every worker, the mailing is important for letting working families know of the benefits they are earning and correcting errors in reported earnings. Notably, it was a Republican commissioner who ended the earnings statements.
Moreover, O’Malley is the right person to address another serious issue which has been in the news of late. When SSA has inadvertently overpaid beneficiaries, it has been mailing intimidating letters demanding repayment from people who often are not at fault and can’t afford to repay. This is cruel, reportedly causing great stress, literally landing people in the hospital.
SSA should stop this practice. It should also address underpayments. Though not as dramatic and terrifying as demands by the government for payments of large sums of money, underpayments are equally serious. They are quite literally wage theft, since — like private pensions — Social Security is deferred compensation. In this case, though, the wages are stolen not by employers, but by those who are supposed to be serving those it is stealing from.
The agency appears to believe that the law requires it to claw back all overpayments, including those that are SSA’s own fault, and to deprioritize underpayments. O’Malley is perfectly positioned to bring a fresh perspective, to interpret the law more compassionately and to prioritize true program integrity which includes underpayments, not just overpayments. In the highly unlikely event he finds his hands are tied, he is the right person to let Congress and the American people know who is to blame.
And there is another crucial win that the American people will have as a result of O’Malley’s confirmation. Our Social Security system is intended to provide more than just a monthly check. It is supposed to provide Americans with a sense of security that if they lose income in the event of old age, disability or the death of a family breadwinner, Social Security’s earned benefits will be there for them.
When the 2024 Social Security Trustees Report is released next Spring, O’Malley should lead the other trustees in a clear declaration that protecting and expanding Social Security is fully affordable.
That is an important message for the upcoming election. It is essential that Americans understand that whether to expand or cut Social Security is a question of values. President Biden ran in 2020 on expanding — not cutting — Social Security, and paying for it by requiring those earning more than $400,000 a year to pay their fair share. He should now propose specific legislation.
Even though his proposal is not likely to be considered in the current Congress now that “MAGA” Mike Johnson is Speaker of the House, it is still crucial that Biden propose specific legislation and campaign on it. The mainstream media routinely reports that neither party has a plan for Social Security’s future. But that is totally inaccurate.
A majority of congressional Democrats have co-sponsored legislation that expands Social Security while bringing in enough revenue from the very wealthiest to either eliminate Social Security’s long-range shortfall completely or substantially reduce it. In contrast, Republicans have offered zero substantive proposals to ensure that benefits will continue to be paid for the next half century and beyond. Instead, they offer only a process which would leave their fingerprints off any unpopular and unwise benefit cuts.
Their leading proposal is a fast-track commission which avoids hard questions before the election and political accountability, as much as possible, immediately after. Their process would require Congress to vote on the insider commission members’ recommendations immediately after the November election. Members of Congress would have no power to filibuster or even slow it down. The process would leave no time for the public to digest what would be rushed through. Those who lost reelection would have a vote as would those who were retiring. Those newly elected would have none.
That is no way to treat an institution as important and universal as our Social Security system. In contrast, President Biden is championing Social Security for all Americans. He has nominated a first-rate commissioner and, fortunately, the Senate has done its job of confirming the nominee. Biden is fighting for increased funding for SSA and believes, as does the new commissioner, that Social Security should be expanded, not cut.
If the president takes the next step of proposing specific Social Security legislation and runs on it, he will win. The media will not be able to ignore an expansion plan if it is the president’s. When the electorate understands where the two parties stand on Social Security, Democrats will win. They will then be well positioned to move Biden’s expansion legislation in the new Congress.
When that happens, protecting and expanding Social Security will likely be the president’s most important and cherished accomplishment and legacy of his presidency. And his new commissioner, Martin O’Malley, will rightly be known in the future as Mr. Social Security. That will be a win not just for them, but for all of us.
I think it’s a great idea to center Social Security in the campaign. Biden is doing better with older voters than most Democrats (maybe because of all the grotesque ageism thrown at him?) and this issue could be very useful in firming up that constituency. After all, you’ve got Nikki Haley saying that “anyone who says they won’t go after Social Security and Medicare isn’t being serious” and Donald Trump saying that opening up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge will pay for Social Security so he can actually lower Social Security taxes. Let’s just say they aren’t exactly going to be guardians of the program. Biden should take Altman’s advice.
I just wanted to give a shout out to all of my faithful readers to thank them for stopping by Hullabaloo to read our scribbles and put a little something in the old Christmas stocking. I’m a very lucky person and I know it.
I hope you all have a wonderful holiday, whether it’s about church, football, food, family or extra sleep. Or all of the above.
cheers,
digby
As I have done here every Christmas since 2003, here’s my Christmas wish for all of us:
Merry Christmas everyone!
It’s gone viral but whatevs
Today Show (12/15):
A new commercial from the Dutch mail-order pharmacy Doc Morris has left the internet in tears by showing the reason behind a grandfather’s drive to get in shape for Christmas with his family.
Also, get in shape for 2024. There’s much work to do.
Merry Christmas!
Enjoy
This charming song and arresting video by local artist Lord Stryrofoam is a holiday tradition in our household.
Eyes get misty.
More tuneful cuts here via YouTube music including a snappy Kate Bush cover.
Merry Christmas!
Darlene Love’s first Christmas ever appearance on David Letterman’s show
It’s one of the best Christmas songs, IMHO.
Enjoy your Christmas Eve everyone!
No, Trump isn’t invulnerable
A rare article that discusses Donald Trump’s overall vulnerability going into 2024. We all know this, of course, but it’s good to see the media discussing this instead of focusing on him as some sort of juggernaut. He may have a full-blown cult behind him but they do not make up a majority. A significant number of Republicans are leery of him too. He’ll win the nomination easily but all that will do is give him permission to really let his freak flag fly.
As Trump and his rivals enter the 2024 election, there are at least three signs of trouble for the front-running former president.
Here are some of the things that can and will happen to Trump as he pursues the presidency again.
Adverse court rulings
The potential of legal trouble is all around Trump, and could pop up any time.
This past Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court stunned the political world by ruling Trump is ineligible for public office because of the insurrection by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.
The decision could conceivably keep Trump off the ballot in Colorado – inspiring other states to follow suit – but Trump attorneys are confident the Supreme Court will reverse the disqualification ruling.
In the meantime, Trump, his lawyers, and his campaign team must prepare for the possibility of as many as four criminal trials in a campaign year.
Two trials – one in Washington, D.C., and the other in Atlanta, Ga. – involved efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election. There is also a New York state case about hush money payments and a Florida federal case about classified documents.
The D.C. trial was scheduled for March, but is on hold because of pre-trial motions.
The Trump legal team is seeking to delay all of the criminal trials until after Election Day on Nov. 5, and for good reason: A criminal conviction would transform the presidential race.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll this month reported that “some 31% of Republican respondents said they would not vote for Trump if he was convicted of a felony crime by a jury.”
There is also a potentially damaging civil trial looming against the former president.
A second defamation trial for writer E. Jean Carroll, who won a $5 million judgement against Trump in May, is scheduled to start Jan. 15 – the same day as the Iowa caucuses, the start of the Republican nominating process.
Falling poll numbers; rising rivals
Trump’s GOP rivals warn that his continued legal woes will eventually wear out voters who might start to consider alternatives.
Trump’s rhetoric has also escalated, including describing political opponents as “vermin,” saying migrants have “poisoned” Americans; and threatening to prosecute political opponents.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is moving up in New Hampshire primary polls, says voters want to move beyond the turmoil of the Trump era.
“Chaos does follow him,” Haley told Fox News this week.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is banking on a strong showing in Iowa, has also said he would avoid the “chaos” of the Trump years.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is betting his long-shot candidacy on New Hampshire, is Trump’s most outspoken critic on the campaign trail. He says Trump’s legal problems and divisive rhetoric already render him unfit for public office.
Bad voter reaction
The ultimate bad sign for Trump would come from voters.
If Trump underperforms in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15, and DeSantis does better than expected, that will embolden opponents.
If Haley defeats Trump in the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 23, that could totally change the race. Haley also has high hopes in her home state of South Carolina, which holds its Republican primary on Feb. 24.
If Haley does well in Iowa and wins in New Hampshire, “momentum will swing heavily in her favor pre-South Carolina,” said Lara Brown, a political scientist and author of “Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism of Aspirants.”
In that case, Brown said, “both DeSantis and Christie likely will drop out.”
As they walk through a political minefield, Trump and his campaign aides said they are counting on a huge haul of delegates on March 5, the day of “Super Tuesday” primaries in more than a dozen states.
They hope to have enough delegates to clinch the nomination after a March 19 set of big-state primaries that include Florida and Ohio.
Even if he does that – criminal trials still loom.
If Trump is tried and convicted before the start of the Republican convention on July 15, his nomination could conceivably be challenged on the floor.
“Is one of our major parties going to nominate a convicted felon for president of the United States?” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres.
“I don’t know and neither does anyone else,” he said. “We haven’t faced this kind of thing before.”
Don’t let anyone tell you that Trump is invulnerable. It’s always possible that enough Americans will decide that they would rather have a criminal imbecile for president to eke out another win. This country is in that much trouble. Biden is an old man which is apparently the worst thing you can be — even worse than being a deviant cretin. But I still doubt it.
Merry Christmas!
If your Trumper uncle starts going on about how terrorists, convicts and insane people are flooding into the country, you might want to tell him to take a look at this.
Trump’s on record saying that he’ll continue to say that immigrants from shithole countries are “poisoning the blood of America” and it’s worth taking a closer look at his specific claims. Not that there’s any truth in that statement whatsoever. But what exactly is he referring to?
The NY Times did a fact check which is characteristically too euphemistic and polite but it does show that Trump’s lies are worse than ever.
WHAT WAS SAID
“I read an article recently in a paper … about a man who runs a mental institution in South America, and by the way they’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Africa, from Asia, all over, but this happened to be in South America. And he was sitting, the picture was — sitting, reading a newspaper, sort of leisurely, and they were asking him, what are you doing? He goes, I was very busy all my life. I was very proud. I worked 24 hours a day. I was so busy all the time. But now I’m in this mental institution — where he’s been for years — and I’m in the mental institution and I worked very hard on my patients but now we don’t have any patients. They’ve all been brought to the United States.”
— during a rally in Nevada this monthThis lacks evidence. Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed that immigrants crossing the border are coming from “mental institutions” and jails. This particular story would seem to offer specific facts behind that assertion, but there is no evidence that such a report exists.
The New York Times could not find any such news account from the start of Mr. Biden’s tenure in January 2021 to March, when Mr. Trump told the same story at a Texas rally.
The Trump campaign did not respond when repeatedly asked about the source of this claim. But pressed this year by CNN for factual support for the tale, the campaign provided links that did not corroborate it.
Likewise, there is no support for Mr. Trump’s broader claim that countries are “dumping” their prisoners and psychiatric patients in the United States.
“We are unaware of any effort by any country or other jurisdiction to empty its mental-health institutions or its jails and prisons to send people with mental-health issues or criminals to the U.S.,” Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokeswoman for the nonpartisan research organization Migration Policy Institute, said in an email.
The claim evokes elements of a mass exodus that occurred more than 40 years ago in Cuba, Ms. Mittelstadt noted: the Mariel boatlift of 1980. Some 125,000 people fled to the United States, including inmates from jails and patients from mental health institutions freed by the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
“But there has been no present-day effort by any country, to our knowledge, or any credible reporting by media or others that anything of the like is taking place,” Ms. Mittelstadt said.
Of course he’s referring to the Mariel boat lift. He remembers it like it was yesterday. Just like he remembers that Japan was shipping all its cars to the US back in the 1980. Nothing has changed for Trump in the last 40 years.
There’s more:
WHAT WAS SAID
“They’ve allowed, I believe, 15 million people into the country from all of these different places like jails, mental institutions, and wait till you see what’s going to happen with all those people.”
— during a rally in October in New HampshireThis lacks evidence. Setting aside the baseless suggestion that all undocumented immigrants entering the country are coming from jails and mental institutions, Mr. Trump’s estimate of 15 million is not supported by the data.
Customs and Border Protection data shows that U.S. officials recorded nearly eight million encounters at its borders from February 2021, the first full month of Mr. Biden’s presidency, to October 2023.
But even then, “encounter does not mean admittance,” Tom Wong, an associate professor of political science and director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego, said in an email. “In fact, most encounters lead to expulsions.”
For example, C.B.P. data shows that about 2.5 million expulsions occurred under Title 42, a health rule that used the coronavirus as grounds for turning back immigrants illegally crossing the border, from February 2021 until the policy ended in May.
The number of encounters also are based on events, not people, and therefore could include the same person more than once.
The exact number of people who have entered the country without authorization is hard to pin down because there are also “gotaways” — people who crossed into the country illegally and evaded authorities.
But the federal, observational estimates of such people also would not support Mr. Trump’s claim. The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, estimated at a recent hearing that there had been more than 600,000 gotaways in fiscal year 2023, which ended in September. That is also the estimate for fiscal year 2022, according to an inspector general report. And there were more than 391,300 in fiscal year 2021, which began in October 2020 under Mr. Trump and ended in September 2021 under Mr. Biden.
In terms of migrants with criminal records, officials encountered nearly 45,000 at ports of entry since the start of fiscal year 2021. Between ports of entry in that period, officials encountered another 40,000 noncitizens with criminal records.
While Mr. Trump in this instance claimed the country had allowed 15 million migrants to enter, he has at other times predicted that would be the total figure by the end of Mr. Biden’s term. That would be larger than the estimated total population of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States — about 10.5 million in 2021, according to the Pew Research Center.
WHAT WAS SAID
“In the past three years, Biden has spent over $1 billion to put up illegal aliens in hotels, some of the most luxurious hotels in the country. Meanwhile, we have 33,000 homeless American veterans. Can you believe it?”
— during a rally in November in New HampshireThis needs context. Mr. Trump’s figure of homeless veterans refers to a 2022 estimate by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That number includes about 19,500 veterans who were in shelters when the count was conducted. And both the 2022 estimate and a new tally for 2023 — which reported nearly 35,600 homeless veterans — are actually down slightly from when Mr. Trump was in office, continuing an overall downward trend since 2009.
As for migrant housing, Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracted in 2021 with a nonprofit group to house border arrivals at a handful of hotels in Texas and Arizona, as a 2022 homeland security inspector general report details. The contract totaled more than $130 million and ended in 2022. The Trump administration also turned to hotels in 2020 to hold migrant children and families before expelling them.
The Biden administration has not directly spent $1 billion to place immigrants in hotels. But cities are indeed facing steep costs for sheltering and caring for border arrivals — including through hotels. The Trump campaign did not indicate where Mr. Trump had obtained the $1 billion figure, but it is possible he was referring to a federal initiative that provides funding to local governments and nongovernment groups to help offset those costs.
The program was in fact first authorized through 2019 legislation signed by Mr. Trump. While it allows nonfederal entities to seek grants for housing migrants in hotels and motels, it is not exclusive to that. Congress provided the program $110 million in fiscal year 2021 and $150 million in fiscal year 2022.
Lawmakers recently replaced the initiative with a new shelter and services program. For fiscal year 2023, officials earmarked $425 million for the old program and $363.8 million for the new one.
All told, the federal government has allocated about $1 billion since fiscal year 2021, which includes the last few months under the Trump administration, toward local efforts to feed and shelter migrants around the country — not only hotel expenses.
While FEMA discloses recipients of the funding, it does not say how much each grant is used specifically on hotel costs.
WHAT WAS SAID
“We cannot forget that the same people that attacked Israel are right now pouring in at levels that nobody can believe into our beautiful U.S.A. through our totally open border.”
— during a rally in Iowa in OctoberThis lacks evidence. Mr. Trump offered no evidence that people affiliated with Hamas, the militant group that staged a brutal assault on Israel in early October, are “pouring” into the country at record levels. And experts say they are unaware of data that would support that contention.
If the former president’s statement was meant to convey that terrorists more generally are “pouring in” at the border, he could be referring to the rising number of encounters at the southern border with people on a terrorism watch list. The list includes known and suspected terrorists as well as people affiliated with them.
A total of 169 noncitizens on that list tried to illegally enter the United States at the southern border in fiscal year 2023, which ended in September, up from three in fiscal year 2020, according to C.B.P. statistics.
Still, it is unclear what that says about the terrorism threat, said Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. There is no record of a terrorist attack being committed on American soil by an immigrant who crossed the southern border illegally. (In 2008, three brothers who had come to the United States illegally years earlier as children, from Yugoslavia, were convicted of conspiring to kill American soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey.)
Apprehended individuals on the list are supposed to remain in government custody as they await removal proceedings, Mr. Nowrasteh said.
You will note that many of these issues were present during his term. The only reason things got substantially better at the border in his last year is because the whole world was locked down with a deadly pandemic.
This toxic rhetoric is so clearly designed to gin up this issue once again. The right loves it because they are racists and being allowed to spew their hate gives them a major thrill. But everyone else needs to keep their heads and recognize that this long term problem waxes and wanes and start thinking about the future as climate change exacerbates it. Crude xenophobia and rounding up people to put them in camps isn’t going to solve anything.
Climate change is the big enchilada and, in my humble opinion, should be at the top of the agenda for anyone under the age of 40. All the things they care about are going to be subsumed by this issue in any case.
Merry Christmas!
This video from 1987 has been making the rounds. It’s hilarious. And it’s so him:
Liars gonna lie:
He’s always got some excuse.