The Commentariat -- September 9, 2017
Mike DeBonis & Kelsey Snell of the Washington Post: "President Trump signed a bill Friday to deliver $15 billion in disaster aid and also extend government funding and the federal borrowing limit until Dec. 8, despite objections of Republican lawmakers who booed two top White House officials earlier in the day over the deal Trump struck with Democrats. The measure passed a morning House vote 316-90; every member opposed was a Republican.... Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney ... came to Capitol Hill to urge skeptical Republican lawmakers to back the measure. To many GOP members, the administration's messengers were poorly chosen: Mnuchin is a New York financier known for his past as a Democratic fundraiser. Mulvaney is a former House conservative who spent much of his legislative career browbeating GOP leaders over the national debt and budget deficits.... At several points, according to several members and aides, comments from Mnuchin and Mulvaney were met with groans, boos and hisses. Mnuchin, in particular, drew jeers.... 'His last words, and I quote, was, "Vote for the debt ceiling for me,"' said Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), who leads a group of conservative members. 'That did not go over well in the room at all ... His performance was incredibly poor.'" ...
... Rachel Bade & Kyle Cheney of Politico have more on the Mnuchin-Mulvaney "pep talk." Mrs. McC: One confederate called the meeting "almost comical." No, it was comical. ...
... Paul Waldman in the Week: "The cries of anguish and rage reverberated throughout the land. 'He [Trump] f[uck]ed us,' said one anonymous Republican official. 'It's just a betrayal of everything we've been talking about for years as Republicans,' said former Sen. Jim DeMint, who until recently led the conservative Heritage Foundation.... This is all because Republicans wanted to push the debt ceiling past the midterm elections so they wouldn't have to vote on it again -- the same Republicans who pressed one debt ceiling showdown after another while Barack Obama was president.... The first thing that [Republicans] may not get is that [Trump] doesn't really care about them and their fates. Republican leaders don't want to take more debt ceiling votes because of their own lunatic fringe, which is happy to push the United States to the brink of default if they might be able to use the crisis to squeeze out some cuts to the safety net.... Second, Republicans are surprised when everything comes back to the personal with Trump. He's been perturbed by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell's inability to produce legislative 'wins' for him..., so making an agreement with the Democrats was kind of like a 5-year-old saying, 'I wish Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi were my parents!' when he didn't get to eat cookies for breakfast.... The odds that he has an actual opinion about the relative merits of a three-month increase versus an 18-month increase in the debt ceiling are near zero." ...
... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump on Friday rejected Republican complaints about his decision to work with Democrats on fiscal and immigration issues, chiding his own party for failing to advance major legislation and calling on congressional leaders to begin overhauling the tax code immediately. As the rift between the president and Republican lawmakers widened, the president argued that he had no choice but to collaborate with the Democratic minority to get business done, especially because the opposition has the power to block bills in the Senate, where Republicans do not have the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster. 'Republicans, sorry, but I've been hearing about Repeal & Replace for 7 years, didn't happen!' he wrote in a series of morning messages on Twitter.... 'Even worse, the Senate Filibuster Rule will never allow the Republicans to pass even great legislation. 8 Dems control -- will rarely get 60 (vs. 51) votes. It is a Repub Death Wish!'"
Tara Palmeri & Josh Dawsey of Politico: "... Donald Trump and his agency heads will meet this weekend as a monster hurricane crashes into Florida.... The Camp David meeting is part team-building after a bruising stretch for the administration, part strategy session on giving the Cabinet more sway and part optics for an image-obsessed president during a natural disaster -- giving him the look, and reality, of having an entire government at his fingertips.... The White House is expected to keep the meeting out of the reach of cameras, and the two-day confab with the president is seen by some cabinet members as an opportunity for some face time with the president now that their free-wheeling access to the Oval Office has been curtailed by [Chief-of-Staff John] Kelly."
Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has alerted the White House that his team will probably seek to interview six top current and former advisers to President Trump who were witnesses to several episodes relevant to the investigation of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the request. Mueller's interest in the aides, including trusted adviser Hope Hicks, former press secretary Sean Spicer and former chief of staff Reince Priebus, reflects how the probe that has dogged Trump's presidency is starting to penetrate a closer circle of aides around the president.... In addition..., Mueller has notified the White House he will probably seek to question White House counsel Don McGahn and one of his deputies, James Burnham. Mueller's office has also told the White House that investigators may want to interview Josh Raffel, a White House spokesman who works closely with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.... Each of the six advisers was privy to important internal discussions that have drawn the interest of Mueller's investigators, according to people familiar with the probe, including his decision in May to fire FBI Director James B. Comey.... White House officials are expecting that Mueller will seek additional interviews, possibly with family members, including Kushner, who is a West Wing senior adviser, according to the people familiar with Mueller's inquiry.... Also of interest is the White House's initial inaction after warnings about then-national security adviser Michael Flynn's December discussions with Russia's ambassador to the United States. The advisers are also connected to internal documents that Mueller's investigators have asked the White House to produce, according to people familiar with the special counsel's inquiry." ...
... Betsy Woodruff, et al., of the Daily Beast: "Special counsel Robert Mueller increasingly views ... Donald Trump's trip back from the G-20 summit in Europe this July as a critical moment in his investigation. And as part of an attempt to uncover just what happened on that fateful flight, his team is expected to question several White House officials. Among them will be the president's close adviser Hope Hicks. People familiar with the probe tell The Daily Beast that Hicks — the longtime Trump aide who is currently interim White House communications director -- likely has information that will interest Mueller regarding Donald Trump Jr.'s initial claim that his meeting with the Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was just about adoption.... Hicks was on the Air Force One flight back to the United States after the G-20 summit and played a role in drafting the statement on Trump Jr.'s June 2016 meeting between Veselnitskaya and Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Trump Jr.... There are currently efforts underway to organize a legal defense fund for White House staffers.... In most cases, third parties can pay for federal workers' legal defense funds."
To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm, versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced. -- Scott Pruitt, on CNN
... James Hamblin of the Atlantic: "In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said that now is not the time to talk about climate change.... Fortunately this is not a choice that need be made.... We don't have to choose between helping current victims and working to prevent the next tragedy. This is a false dichotomy of the sort that's commonly used to silence talk of prevention and public health that implicates powerful industries. In the wake of mass shootings, for example, the supposed choice is between mourning loss of life and talking about the instruments of violence.
Palace Intrigue, Ctd. Maggie Haberman & Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "At a staff meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Trump's new chief of staff, John F. Kelly, announced a number of seemingly quotidian internal moves, capped by the appointment of Kirstjen Nielsen -- his brusque, no-nonsense longtime aide -- as an assistant to the president and his principal deputy. Few outside the White House marked the moment, but inside the building, this was a big deal. Mr. Kelly had just handed day-to-day operations to a forceful, empowered aide some of her new colleagues are already comparing to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the feared Vatican enforcer who eventually became Pope Benedict XVI.... The first step in taming 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Mr. Kelly believes, is installing a No. 2 who is willing to be hated. It is Ms. Nielson who sends out the emails announcing internal policy and planning meetings that now contain a clipped addendum -- 'principals only' -- with a stern warning that any subordinates who wander in will be immediately ejected. She is also responsible for keeping Mr. Kelly's no-fly list of aides he deems to be unfit to attend serious meetings, the most prominent of whom is Omarosa Manigault, the former 'Apprentice' star with ... a penchant for dropping into meetings where she was not invited." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: If you read to the end, there's a bit about how Trump is treating Gary Cohn, his top economic advisor who criticized the prez* for his abominable response to Charlottesville. I think I may have used Trump's tactic when I was a teenager.
"A Big Fan of the Moon":
Gail Collins offers some alternative ways of looking at some current events. Mrs. McC: It's pretty easy to agree with all or most of the alternatives.
My personal view is we've got to start looking at single-payer. I think we should have hearings.... We're getting there. It's going to happen. -- Former Sen. Max Baucus [D-Montana] at a talk at Montana State University ...
... "Holy Crap. Max Baucus Now Supports Single Payer?" Josh Marshall: "... Baucus was a critical player in passing Obamacare. And since Obamacare was and is a big step forward from where we were before Obamacare, that's a great thing. But it is difficult to overstate the degree to which Baucus was a critical force among Senate Democrats preventing a more progressive version of Obamacare from becoming law. Really, really critical." Mrs. McC: Yeah, Baucus is the kind of guy we might have thought would pull a Pruitt: "Now is not the time to talk about single payer when we should be helping sick people. Good for him for finally seeing the light. In fairness to Baucus, he may have been exactly right to ease into single payer via the cumbersome private-public mishmash that is ObamaCare.
John Bowden of the Hill: "Two GOP lawmakers have turned their fire on President Trump's Justice Department after it announced it would not reconsider its decision not to prosecute Lois Lerner, the IRS employee at the center of the 2013 political-targeting scandal. Reps. Kevin Brady (Texas) and Peter Roskam (Ill.), who sit on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, issued a statement Friday afternoon blasting the Department of Justice and Attorney General Jeff Sessions's 'deeply flawed' decision not to prosecute Lerner criminally.... Lerner was the head of IRS divisions that oversaw tax-exempt groups when requests from conservative groups began to receive more scrutiny by the department. Lerner acknowledged the improper handling of the applications in 2013 shortly before being put on leave by the IRS and eventually retiring. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Lerner in 2015 under former President Obama, but Brady and Roskam wrote a letter in April to Sessions asking him to reconsider the department's decision. In a letter Friday afternoon, Sessions rejected their request, writing that based on a review of the case, it 'would not be appropriate' to reopen the investigation. While 'the Department's investigation uncovered substantial evidence of mismanagement at the IRS,' the Justice letter said, the probe 'had not uncovered evidence of criminal intent by any IRS official.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Unlike these two Congressional jamokes -- who clearly watch too much Fox "News" (see stories below) -- I'm not going to relitigate the Lois Lerner "scandal." But my best recollection was that a confederate-partisan inspector general brought the issue to Congress's attention, & that further investigation & reporting revealed that Lerner's unit also had "targeted" liberal tax-exempt organizations. She may well have been clumsy in her approach, but reviewing the status of these tax-exempt entities, many of which are on the far side of phony, was her job. If anyone wants to correct my recollection, feel free. This appears to be one time Sessions did something right. So probably not his idea.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
Dylan Matthews of Vox: "Fox News is, by far, America's dominant TV news channel; in the second quarter of 2017, Fox posted 2.35 million total viewers in primetime versus 1.64 million for MSNBC and 1.06 million for CNN. Given that Fox was founded by a longtime Republican Party operative and has almost exclusively hired conservative commentators ... to host its shows, it would stand to reason that its dominance on basic cable could influence how Americans vote, perhaps even tipping elections. A new study in the American Economic Review (the discipline's flagship journal) ... finds exactly that. Emory University political scientist Gregory Martin and Stanford economist Ali Yurukoglu estimate that watching Fox News directly causes a substantial rightward shift in viewers' attitudes, which translates into a significantly greater willingness to vote for Republican candidates. They estimate that if Fox News hadn't existed, the Republican presidential candidate's share of the two-party vote would have been 3.59 points lower in 2004 and 6.34 points lower in 2008. For context, that would've made John Kerry the 2004 popular vote winner, and turned Barack Obama's 2008 victory into a landslide where he got 60 percent of the two-party vote.... The effects of CNN and MSNBC on centrist voters are mostly negligible...."
Brian Steinberg of Variety: "Fox News Channel will part ways with host Eric Bolling, a host and contributor whose on-air presence at the 21st Century Fox-owned network had been growing in recent months, after allegations surfaced that he had harassed colleagues there, the network confirmed Friday.... Bolling, a former commodities trader and best-selling author, had been a longtime co-host of 'The Five,' and more recently helped launch a new late-afternoon show, 'The Fox News Specialists.' He also anchors the Fox News program 'Cashin' In.'... Bolling had vowed to clear his name. The allegations against Bolling were among the latest personnel issues to roil the network that broadcasts such popular shows as 'Hannity' and 'Fox & Friends.' The parent company, 21st Century Fox, is working to acquire the rest of European broadcaster Sky PLC that it does not already own. Attorneys for several employees who have sued Fox News and activists have used the accusations to suggest British regulators not approve the proposed transaction, which remains under government review."
Adam Raymond of New York: "Chris Christie's term as New Jersey governor ends in January and his highly public search for future employment now has him eyeing a spot with cable-news giants CNN and MSNBC. The wildly unpopular Republican, who has the approval rating of a rush-hour traffic jam, has had discussions about a gig with both networks, CNN reports.... But it obviously wasn't his first choice. A year ago this time, Christie was making (literal) burger runs for President Trump in hopes of landing a position in his Cabinet. But as Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon recently revealed, Christie lost his shot at an appointment when he wouldn't support Trump’s endorsement of sexual assault. He also tried to get Trump to use his germy cell phone, a faux pas in Trumpland." Mrs. McC: I can already hear Brian Williams saying, "And now, let's turn to our own Chris Christie...."
Beyond the Beltway
Brady Dennis & Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has been ubiquitous in recent days as Hurricane Irma bears down on the Sunshine State.... But for all of Scott's vigor in readying Florida for Irma's wrath, his administration has done little over the years to prepare for what scientists say are the inevitable effects of climate change that will wreak havoc in the years to come.... Local officials, academics and even some political allies say Scott has scarcely acknowledged the problem and, along with the Republican-led legislature, has shown little interest in funding projects to help the state adapt and become more resilient in the face of storms such as Irma.... He faced a wave of criticism in 2015 after the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting revealed state employees had been discouraged from using the terms 'climate change' and 'global warming.'... The governor's office has repeatedly insisted no such policy ever existed.... Scott's long-standing refusal to acknowledge an issue that many others view as among Florida's biggest threats has had repercussions, his critics say."
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"Well, will you never," my mother used to utter when told something that surprised her like discovering the advent of credit cards––"really? people can purchase anything and everything with that little card? that certainly doesn't bode well." So today when learning that good ole Max Baucus is supporting single payer health care I said, "well, will you never."
The image of Max during those long tedious health care negotiations is still fresh in my mind. And I can see that certain young lady sitting right in back of him feeding him paper after paper along with what looked like gummy bears to keep him going. We first thought she was his assistant but later discovered she was from WellPoint, the insurance company. So now he has had a change of heart and I'm wondering what changed his mind––his stint in China perhaps? Whatever it was I applaud ole Max–-always envisioned him on horseback, wide brimmed cowboy hat riding along that Montana terrain–-a single player in those days.
Re: Rick Scott: Listening to him read the endless directions to his Floridians you get the sense of how difficult this must be for him. The Wash-Po story above gives you a sense of reality hitting him right where it hurts. Will this tragic storm change his mindset? Will we be able to say, well, I never, after he sees the light in terms of that thing called climate change? Some people will call this karma––you can certainly see their point.
It'll be interesting to compare Trump's reaction to Hurricane Irma versus the wildfires in California and Oregon. I'm betting that states which didn't vote for Trump (and don't have Trump properties) get nothing from the federal government.
Perhaps if Mnuchin had worn his St Ronnie mask, they Republicans would have been more likely to respond to the "do this for the gipper" meme. I'm sure that latest Barbie Mnuchin will soothe his angst.....for a Birkin or a few pairs of Christian Louboutin, a nice selection of Hermes scarfs.....Ahhh capitalism.
Pruitt: If you have absolutely no argument for your position, just demand that everyone ignore it. Soulless sentimentality instead. All successful criminals use that tactic.
I think that running full steam ahead on single payer may well lose, but the timing is good. Trump cares nothing about ideology, the right thing to do, history or the mechanics of implementing policy. He just wants a win that brings cheering crowds. He'll throw those mouth breathers under the bus if he gets bigger yayas from another group. If nothing else, I can see it throwing the Republicans into more chaos. Contrary to popular belief, Ryan is not a savant. His intransigent ideology is based on Ayn Rand books and he can't heard cats worth a damn. McConnell is great at obstructionism because it doesn't require a cogent ideology. He merely recycles old failed policies. Yup - I say run with it.
Some random thoughts: Concur on Mrs. McC's memory re the great Lois Lerner "scandal." It was insane, and became even more insane as it went on. She was crucified. And we all knew what was going on...the usual Fox crap. Interesting "study" about the presence of Fox in the last years of elections. Sort of a duh thing... As far as ole Max goes: didn't like him then, probably still don't like him but hope he has had a Damascus moment-- but not counting on it! Yesterday we were in the car a lot, and I WAS impressed with Rick Scott's directives and supposed humanity, but I can't really let go of my former impressions of him. He is still a first-class SOB. Am also pretty excited about Mueller-- he's quite the rat terrier, and I am hoping that he reveals ALL the "mole people," as Charlie is wont to say. So sad that the administration is worried about paying for legal representation. Didn't Trump once state that he would pay for anyone's fees if they were arrested for assaulting protesters at his rallies? Maybe he can ante up.. I'm sure "Daddy" and his cronies/family members are "rallying" around...
This should be of special interest to Marvin. An article in the New Yorker states that apparently researchers at the University of Leeds have discovered a "gene for awfulness". Bearers of this gene exhibit a personality "smug, tonedeaf and lacking in empathy". Unfortunately the sample size, a man and 3 of his offspring is small. But I know of a city where these people congregate.
Cowichan: Ha-- he is pretty funny-- he always hits on something and zings it. I assume you know he's a humorist, but he hasn't displayed a real sense of humor about the presidunce, as 45 is NOT funny... I think 45 wears his gene of awfulness as a badge of honor, possibly under that front weird fluff of hair, where no one ever goes...
Have we heard anything about the battening down of the so-called "Southern White House?" I dread hearing about how much it will cost us taxpayers to fix after the storm damage; somewhere in the news cycle was a piece about how he, 45, committed insurance fraud the last time a piece of property was damaged and he got more than it cost to fix it, and pocketed it, of course. No idea where I got that story, though, so it is incomplete...and possibly false, although I believe just about any story like this...
jeanne, the story you are after would be this one :
http://fortune.com/2016/10/24/donald-trump-hurricane-payout-mar-a-lago/
another story on the same event claims the reason he was able to pocket the cash was because he wasnt required to reinvest the insurance payout in the terms of the policy....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-hurricane-irma-mar-a-lago-resort-florida-storm-damage-17m-claim-a7936126.html
it is something hes done in the past and sadly you can fully expect it to happen again, unless they changed policy terms somewhere.... he may have gotten off lightly from Wilma, but i suspect (hope?) Irma will not be so kind....