;)
The Commentariat -- April 2, 2019
Afternoon Update:
Rebecca Shabad & Heidi Przybyla of NBC News: "The House Oversight Committee voted Tuesday to issue subpoenas seeking information on both the White House security clearance process and on the process that led to the administration's decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. The panel, led by Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., voted along party lines 22-15 on a resolution to subpoena the testimony of former White House personnel security director Carl Kline to discuss the security clearance process at the White House."
Brett Samuels of the Hill: "The House Oversight and Reform Committee voted Tuesday to authorize subpoenas to compel Trump administration officials to provide documents related to the addition of a citizenship question on the 2020 census. The committee voted 23-14 along mostly party lines to approve three separate subpoenas, ratcheting up the panel's legal fight with the administration. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) joined Democrats in authorizing the subpoenas, which will allow committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to seek testimony and unredacted information about the controversial change to the decennial survey. One subpoena is aimed at securing testimony from Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Gore. A second subpoena is to compel Attorney General William Barr to turn over a memo to Gore from James Uthmeier, general counsel to the Department of Commerce, in fall 2017. It also would demand any Department of Justice communications about the citizenship question with the White House, the Republican National Committee, the Trump campaign or members of Congress. The third subpoena is targeted toward Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and seeks unredacted copies of several documents and internal communications related to the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census."
"The Party of Health Care"? Never Mind. Eileen Sullivan & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "President Trump announced that Republicans would not present a health care overhaul proposal until after the 2020 election, punting on coming up with a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, which the administration is currently fighting in court to invalidate. The issue now will dominate presidential campaigns in the months leading up to the 2020 election.... It was not immediately clear on Tuesday what the Trump administration would do if courts ruled in favor of abolishing the health care system established by President Barack Obama. Last week, the Trump administration broadened its war on the health care law by arguing that the entire Affordable Care Act should be invalidated." ...
... Update: McConnell Burst a Trump Bubble. John Wagner & Erica Werner of the Washington Post: "President Trump abandoned plans to press for a vote on a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act ahead of next year's elections following a conversation with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican said Tuesday. McConnell told reporters that he and Trump had 'a good conversation' Monday afternoon in which he said that Senate Republicans had no intention of trying to overhaul President Obama's signature health-care law during a campaign season -- a move many in the GOP saw as politically perilous, given that the issue helped Democrats in last year's midterm elections. 'I made it clear to him we were not going to be doing that in the Senate,' McConnell said, also pointing out the difficulty in crafting a bill that could pass the Democratic-led House. 'We don't have a misunderstanding about that.'"
Stupid Presidunce Tricks, Ctd. Chris Isidore of CNN: "The entire US auto industry would shut down within a week if ... Donald Trump goes through with his pledge to close the US-Mexican border, according to a leading expert on the industry. That's because every automaker operating an auto plant in the United States depends on parts imported from Mexico, said Kristin Dziczek ... of the Center for Automotive Research. About 16% of all auto parts used in the United States, both at assembly plants and sold at auto parts stores, originate in Mexico. Virtually all car models in America have Mexican parts, she said. Because of that reliance, she said the auto industry would stop producing vehicles relatively quickly."
Puerto Rico got 91 Billion Dollars for the hurricane, more money than has ever been gotten for a hurricane before, & all their local politicians do is complain & ask for more money. The pols are grossly incompetent, spend the money foolishly or corruptly, & only take from USA.... -- Donald Trump, in a tweet this morning ...
The $91BB payout is a giant lie (see Tim Elfrink's article, linked below), & Puerto Rico is "USA"; ergo, it can't "take from USA." -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie, writing for the real world ...
... Daily Beast: "In an explosive interview on MSNBC Tuesday morning, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley referred to Puerto Rico as 'that country' twice -- even though the island has been a U.S. territory for over 120 years. The mis-identification came while Gidley was defending Trump's Tuesday morning tweetstorm slamming Puerto Rico and its need for 'too much money' after the devastating Hurricane Maria in 2017.... Trump 'says Puerto Ricans are taking from the USA,' [host Hallie] Jackson responded. 'Puerto Rico is part of the United States. People who live in Puerto Rico are U.S. Citizens. You're rolling your eyes and I don't know why you&'re rolling your eyes.'"
How to Give an Interview & Say Nothing. John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner on Monday dismissed concerns raised by a whistleblower about the White House's security clearance process, saying President Trump's administration has faced 'a lot of crazy accusations' during the past two years.... Kushner, who Trump ultimately demanded be granted a permanent top-secret clearance despite concerns of intelligence officials, told Fox host Laura Ingraham that he 'can't comment for the White House's process.'... During the Fox News interview, Ingraham noted that [long-time White House security advisor Tricia] Newbold had said she has 'grave concerns' about the security-clearance process and asked Kushner if he poses a 'grave national security concern to the country.' Kushner laughed and said: 'Look, I can say that in the White House I work with some phenomenal people and I think over the last two years the president's done a phenomenal job of identifying what are our national security priorities. He's had a great team in place that are helping implement it, and I hope I've played a good part in pushing those objectives forward.'"
Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC: "April 2 marks Equal Pay Day, our annual reminder that women's pay is not in fact equal to men's. Not nearly: Women make about 80 cents to a man's dollar. That's a wage gap of nearly 20 percent, and unfortunately, at the rate we're going, it will take nearly 41 years -- until 2059 -- to achieve parity. For Hispanic women it won't happen until 2224, and for black women, it's 2119." Mrs. McC: That is, women, on average, have worked three months into 2019 to receive the same pay men, on average, made in 2018. ...
... Jean Chatzky of NBC News: "Black women earn 63 cents for every dollar that men do, Native American women earn 58 cents and Hispanic women make just 54 cents." ...
... Anna North of Vox: "But matters are actually worse than any of these numbers would suggest, according to a 2018 report by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), a think tank that looks at public policy through the lens of gender. Measures of the pay gap typically compare the wages of men and women working full time in a given year, as Emily Peck notes at HuffPost. But women are more likely to drop out of full-time work to take care of children or other family members. To account for this, the report's authors looked at women's earnings across a 15-year period, and compared those with men's. What they found was a pay gap nearly twice as big as what's traditionally reported: averaged out over 15 years, women made just 49 cents for every dollar men made."
Zachary Basu of Axios: "2020 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders announced Tuesday that he has raised $18.2 million from more than 900,000 individual donations since launching his campaign on Feb. 19.
~~~~~~~~~~
The Trump Scandals, Ctd.
[Hillary Clinton's] server was easily hacked by foreign governments, perhaps even by her financial backers in communist China. Sure they have it. Putting all of America and our citizens in danger, great danger. -- Donald Trump, "foreign policy" speech at NYU, June 2016 ...
(The FBI said Wednesday that it has no evidence Hillary Clinton's private email server was compromised even though President Donald Trump tweeted a news report that alleged the Chinese had hacked it. -- AP, August 2016)
Maggie Haberman: Did you tell General Kelly or anyone else in the White House to overrule security officials? The career veterans --
Trump: No. I don't think I have the authority to do that. I'm not sure I do.
Haberman: You do have the authority to do it.
Trump: But I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it. ... I was never involved with the security. I know that he -- you know, just from reading -- I know that there was issues back and forth about security for numerous people, actually. But I don't want to get involved in that stuff.
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is only part of the exchange in which Trump denies he was involved in deciding any security clearance issues. The transcript (pub. February 1) of the whole interview is here. ...
... ** Rachel Bade of the Washington Post: "A White House whistleblower told lawmakers that more than two-dozen denials for security clearances have been overturned during the Trump administration, calling Congress her 'last hope' for addressing what she considers improper conduct that has left the nation&'s secrets exposed. Tricia Newbold, a longtime White House security adviser, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that she and her colleagues issued 'dozens' of denials for security clearance applications that were later approved despite their concerns about blackmail, foreign influence, or other red flags, according to panel documents released Monday. Newbold, an 18-year veteran of the security clearance process who has served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, said she warned her superiors that clearances 'were not always adjudicated in the best interest of national security' -- and was retaliated against for doing so.... White House officials whose security clearances are being scrutinized by the House Oversight Committee include ... Ivanka Trump..., Jared Kushner and national security adviser John Bolton...."(Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is another example of Trump tricks that are both legal & impeachable offenses. And yeah, all the best people. ...
... Update. The New York Times story, by Nicholas Fandos & Maggie Haberman, is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "... the argument that Trump could be either a witting or unwitting asset of the Russians is missing the much less speculative potential national security threat. And we shouldn't underestimate the importance of a named whistleblower stepping forward in this manner."
Newbold also raised concerns about new White House security clearance policies that she says put the nation at risk. For example, the White House security office no longer checks the credits of applicants, which she said keeps reviewers from knowing whether applicants could be susceptible to blackmail because of their debts. -- Washington Post, linked above
The lady who makes you put your shoes in a plastic bucket at the airport? She had to have a credit check to get that job. Ditto the dude in the toll booth on the turnpike. It's almost like these Trump assholes aren't serious about national security. -- Betty Cracker, Balloon Juice
** Jerry Nadler in a New York Times op-ed: "The entire reason for appointing the special counsel was to protect the investigation from political influence. By offering us his version of events in lieu of the report, the attorney general, a recent political appointee, undermines the work and the integrity of his department. He also denies the public the transparency it deserves. We require the full report -- the special counsel's words, not the attorney general's summary or a redacted version. We require the report, first, because Congress, not the attorney general, has a duty under the Constitution to determine whether wrongdoing has occurred.... The attorney general's recent proposal to redact the special counsel's report before we receive it is unprecedented.... We have every reason to suspect that the unedited obstruction section of the Mueller report resembles the report that Congress received from the Watergate grand jury in 1974. That evidence showed that President Richard Nixon had attempted to obstruct justice. It did not recommend that the president should be prosecuted. It did not say the president should be impeached. It simply stated the evidence so that Congress could do its job.... If President Trump's behavior wasn't criminal, then perhaps it should have been." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Say, maybe the House should impeach Bill Barr for obstruction. ...
... Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A group advocating for journalists and First Amendment rights is asking a judge to clear away one of the key obstacles the Justice Department is citing as grounds for withholding portions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's final report: the presence of information gathered through the secret actions of a grand jury. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a petition Monday with Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court in Washington, asking her to rule that officials need not withhold from the Congress -- or the public -- any grand jury material in Mueller's report on his probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The move comes as Attorney General William Barr has pledged to prepare a version of the report for public release ... that the department would have to excise grand jury-related testimony and evidence." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Heidi Przybyla & Josh Lederman of NBC News: "A coalition of the nation's biggest progressive grassroots organizations is activating a nationwide protest plan in response to Attorney General William Barr's expected failure to meet an April 2 deadline set by House Democrats to release Special Counsel Robert Mueller's full Russia report to Congress. With hundreds of locations set across the country, Stand Up America, MoveOn.org, Indivisible and Public Citizen are among the groups orchestrating the April 4 'Nationwide Day of Action,' according to a release provided to NBC News."
Rod Rosenstein's Mysterious Charm. Mike Levine of ABC News: "Four months ago, shortly after ... Donald Trump's Twitter account sent out an image suggesting Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should be prosecuted and imprisoned for appointing special counsel Robert Mueller, the president took the rare step of telling Rosenstein it was a mistake, according to a former Justice Department official informed of the conversation. As described by the former official, the mea culpa came in a private phone call, within days of Trump retweeting the meme that showed Rosenstein, Mueller and several Obama-era officials behind bars. '[W]hen do the trials for treason begin?' the Trump-endorsed image asked. But on the private phone call afterward, Trump insisted to Rosenstein that he didn't notice the veteran prosecutor in the image's background before it was retweeted, according to the former official. Publicly, Trump stood by the controversial post."
Here's what happens when a white supremacist sits in the Oval Office & terrified lackeys hold the Senate:
Emily Cochrane of the New York Times: "The Senate on Monday blocked billions of dollars in disaster aid for states across the country as Republicans and Democrats clashed over President Trump's opposition to sending more food and infrastructure help to Puerto Rico. Most Senate Republicans refused to endorse a recovery bill passed this year by the House, citing Mr. Trump's opposition to the bill's Puerto Rico funding and their own concerns that the bill lacks money for Midwestern states that have since been devastated by flooding and tornadoes. (An amendment that would have added the funds was blocked earlier in the day.) And for their part, a majority of Senate Democrats balked at a measure drafted by Senate Republicans that included the money for the Midwestern states, arguing that about $600 million in nutritional assistance for Puerto Rico was not enough for the island.... With the defeat of both procedural votes, it was unclear how lawmakers would overcome the impasse and end the indefinite delay in disbursing funds." ...
... The White Supremacist Weighs in. Michael Burke of the Hill: "President Trump on Monday evening criticized Democrats for voting against a GOP disaster aid bill, which Democrats said didn't go far enough to help Puerto Rico.... 'The Democrats today killed a Bill that would have provided great relief to Farmers and yet more money to Puerto Rico despite the fact that Puerto Rico has already been scheduled to receive more hurricane relief funding than any 'place' in history,' Trump tweeted. 'The people of Puerto Rico are GREAT, but the politicians are incompetent or corrupt. Puerto Rico got far more money than Texas & Florida combined, yet their government can't do anything right, the place is a mess - nothing works,' he added." ...
... There's More. Tim Elfrink of the Washington Post: "Trump, who has reportedly said in private that he doesn't want 'another single dollar' going to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, again complained about funding for the island and called San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, a frequent critic, 'crazed and incompetent.'... In his tweets, Trump raised a familiar, contested figure for disaster relief in Puerto Rico. Although the president has repeatedly claimed that $91 billion has been spent there, that figure actually reflects a high-end, long-term estimate for recovery costs; a fraction of that has so far been budgeted, and even less has been spent.... While disaster relief is traditionally bipartisan, Trump's reluctance to pay more toward Puerto Rico's recovery has opened a gulf between the parties."
Trump as Sick Humorist. Jill Colvin & Colleen Long of the AP: "As he threatens to shut down the southern border..., Donald Trump is considering bringing on a border' or 'immigration czar' to coordinate immigration policy across various federal agencies, according to four people familiar with the discussions...." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: While I was waiting for the AP page to load, I amused myself thinking about what totally inappropriate person Trump could appoint to such a job. The name that came to mind was Kris Kobach. Wouldn't that be hilarious? The page loaded, & I read the second paragraph of the report:
Trump is weighing at least two potential candidates for the post: former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, according to the people, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. ...
... Trump writes his own punchlines. And we thought he didn't have a sense of humor. He must be trying to put satirists out of work. ...
... Update. As forrest m. points out in today's thread, Kobach is not Trump's best pick ever. That honor may go to Sen. Rick Scott (RCrook-Fla.), whom Trump has named his top TrumpCare guru. Scott & his senatorial sidekicks are "going to come up with something really spectacular," Trump sez. Charles Pierce: "Apparently, the grift du jour is pretending that the administration*, and the Republican Party behind it, actually has a replacement plan ready to go if and when the Supreme Court scuttles the Affordable Care Act, which the Department of Justice last week announced it would no longer defend. There is no plan. There is no plan to create a plan.... The way I know this is because of the person the administration* has chosen to lead the fight for the 'plan' which will never exist. It is the equivalent of hiring Bernie Madoff as Fed chair. From the Orlando Sentinel: '... [Rick] Scott's new role is a long way from his political origins in 2009 and 2010, when as one of the earliest critics of Obamacare, he launched ads arguing that pre-existing condition protections would cause premiums to skyrocket.... Scott also was the CEO of the hospital company Columbia/HCA in the 1990s, who resigned four months after a federal inquiry into the company was made public. The company was later fined $1.7 billion in 2000 and 2007 for what was then the largest case of Medicare fraud in history." ...
... Update 2: So then Ken W. points out that Rick Scott said this weekend that he expects Trump to come up with his own damned plan. I can't get the link to the piece by LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik because the LA Times is very mean to me, but this is it. Maybe you'll have better luck. Meanwhile, here's a part of the transcript of Scott's remarks on CBS's "Face the Nation" this past Sunday: "... I ran the largest hospital company. I care about the cost of health care and that's what I've focused on.... I loo forward to, you know, to seeing what the president's going to put out." Luckily, Scott is very anxious to get everybody's views on health coverage. Uh, everybody except the millions of Americans who are not executives in the healthcare industry: "Look, I- I want to listen to everybody's ideas. I've sat down with the pharmaceutical companies, the PBMs, the insurance companies, the hospital industry, the pharmacies to ask them their ideas. I- I think the best way of doing this is discuss everybody's ideas and see what we can do."
Another Stupid Presidunce* Trick. Reuters: "... Donald Trump's threat to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border would hit American consumers -- in the gut. From avocado toast to margaritas, the United States is heavily reliant on Mexican imports of fruit, vegetables and alcohol to meet consumer demand. Nearly half of all imported U.S. vegetables and 40 percent of imported fruit are grown in Mexico, according to the latest data from the United States Department of Agriculture. Americans would run out of avocados in three weeks if imports from Mexico were stopped, said Steve Barnard, president and chief executive of Mission Produce, the largest distributor and grower of avocados in the world." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I suppose this doesn't matter to a man whose favorite meals come from McDonalds. But I want my damned avocados.
Matt Stieb of New York: "According to a new book by sportswriter Rick Reilly, Trump’s impulse to cheat also applies to the golf course. In Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, Reilly claims that Trump 'cheats at the highest level. He cheats when people are watching and he cheats when they aren't. He cheats whether you like it or not. He cheats because that's how he plays golf ... if you're playing golf with him, he's going to cheat.'... Trump claims he has a 2.8 handicap.... As the [New York] Post notes, 'Jack Nicklaus, winner of a record 18 major golf titles and generally considered the greatest golfer in the history of the game, has a handicap of 3.4.'... LGPA pro Suzann Pettersen says that Trump must collude with his caddy ahead of time, for 'no matter how far into the woods he hits the ball, it's in the middle of the fairway when we get there.' The president also allegedly tampers with the game of others in his party: former ESPN football announcer Mike Tirico recalled that Trump's caddy told him that Trump took a ball Tirico hit onto the putting green and threw it 50 feet away into a bunker." Thanks to Jeanne for reminding me about this stupid story. (Also linked yesterday.)
In Case You Wondered if Trump Is a Heartless Ghoul. Jonathan Swan & Sam Baker of Axios: "As he was deliberating last year over replacing Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, President Trump told confidants he had big plans for Judge Amy Coney Barrett. 'I'm saving her for Ginsburg,' Trump said of Barrett, according to three sources familiar with the president's private comments. Trump used that exact line with a number of people, including in a private conversation with an adviser two days before announcing Brett Kavanaugh's nomination. Barrett is a favorite among conservative activists, many of whom wanted her to take Kennedy's spot. She's young and proudly embraces her Catholic faith. Her past academic writings suggest an openness to overturning Roe v. Wade. Her nomination would throw gas on the culture-war fires, which Trump relishes." (Also linked yesterday.)
White Supremacist Administration Cuts White Supremacist Intel Ops. Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "The Department of Homeland Security has disbanded a group of intelligence analysts who focused on domestic terrorism, The Daily Beast has learned. Numerous current and former DHS officials say they find the development concerning, as the threat of homegrown terrorism -- including white supremacist terrorism -- is growing. In the wake of this move, officials said the number of analytic reports produced by DHS about domestic terrorism, including the threat from white supremacists, has dropped significantly. People in and close to the department said this has generated significant concern at headquarters."
Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "The Supreme Court's opinion in Bucklew v. Precythe, which it handed down Monday on a party-line vote, is at once the most significant Eighth Amendment decision of the last several decades and the cruelest in at least as much time. Neil Gorsuch's majority opinion tosses out a basic assumption that animated the Court's understanding of what constitutes a 'cruel and unusual' punishment for more than half a century. In the process, he writes that the state of Missouri may effectively torture a man to death -- so long as it does not gratuitously inflict pain for the sheer purpose of inflicting pain. And, on top of all of that, Gorsuch would conscript death penalty defense attorneys -- men and women who often gave up lucrative legal careers to protect the lives of their clients -- into the ghoulish task of laying out the method that will be used to kill those clients. It's a breathtaking sign of just how much the Supreme Court's new majority is willing to change -- and how quickly they are willing to impose that change on the rest of us." Read on for the part about Brett Kavanaugh: next -- firing squads! (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mark Stern of Slate: "On Monday, five justices of the Supreme Court authorized Missouri to torture a man to death. In the process, they appear to have overruled decades of Eighth Amendment precedents in a quest to let states impose barbaric punishments, including excruciating executions, on prisoners. The court's conservative majority has converted a once-fringe view into the law of the land, imperiling dozens of decisions protecting the rights of death row inmates, as well as juvenile offenders. Its ruling signals the end of an Eighth Amendment jurisprudence governed by 'civilized standards' -- and the beginning of a new, brutal era in American capital punishment." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: The ruling is a reflection of conservatives' lack of imagination & empathy. The likelihood of any of the Supremes becoming death row inmates is close to nil, so they can't imagine themselves (or their friends) having to suffer an excruciating death by lethal injection (or firing squad!). Every time the conservative Supremes decide in favor of human decency is an instance in which they (or their friends) are or might be affected by a no vote. So Anthony Kennedy has voted for gay rights & reproductive rights.
Presidential Race 2020
Neil Vigdor of the Hartford Courant: "A Connecticut woman says Joe Biden touched her inappropriately and rubbed noses with her during a 2009 political fundraiser in Greenwich when he was vice president, drawing further scrutiny to the Democrat and his history of unwanted contact with women as he ponders a presidential run[.] 'It wasn't sexual, but he did grab me by the head,' Amy Lappos told The Courant Monday. 'He put his hand around my neck and pulled me in to rub noses with me. When he was pulling me in, I thought he was going to kiss me on the mouth.' Lappos posted about the alleged incident on the Facebook page of Connecticut Women in Politics Sunday in response to a similar account by former Nevada legislator Lucy Flores. Lappos, 43, who is now a freelance worker with nonprofit agencies, said she felt extremely uncomfortable when Biden approached her at the 2009 fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th, where she was volunteering. At the time, Lappos was a congressional aide to Himes, who she said was not in the room when the incident took place." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Al Weaver of the Hill: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday that a pair of allegations of inappropriate kissing and touching against former Vice President Joe Biden should 'not at all' disqualify him from the 2020 race. 'No. No, I do not,' Pelosi told reporters when asked if she thinks the allegations from two women are disqualifying. 'I don't think that this disqualifies him from being president,' she said while walking to the House chamber. 'Not at all.'" ...
... Michelle Goldberg: "Flores, Lappos and Biden are probably all telling the truth. There are countless photos of Biden behaving in the ways that Flores and Lappos describe: squeezing women, rubbing their shoulders, leaning in too close. All this was open, not furtive, presumably because it never occurred to Biden that he was doing anything untoward.... But if Biden was more oblivious than predatory, his history still puts him out of step with the mores of an increasingly progressive Democratic Party.... Biden's issues with gender, after all, go far beyond chronic handsiness.... Beyond gender, on issue after issue, if Biden runs for president he will have to run away from his own record.... The widespread assumption that Biden would pose the strongest challenge to Donald Trump is unwarranted.... He is a product of his time, but that time is up." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: For all of his flaws, I really like Joe Biden. And I think Goldberg is right.
Zachary Basu of Axios: "Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris announced Monday that she raised $12 million from more than 218,000 individual contributions in the first quarter of 2019."
Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: "Pete Buttigieg announced Monday that his presidential campaign had raised more than $7 million in the first quarter of 2019, a significant sum for a mayor who was little known outside of South Bend, Ind., only a few months ago." (Also linked yesterday.)
Peter Beinart of the Atlantic: "Beto O'Rourke isn't known for his wonkish heft. But in his formal announcement for president on Sunday, the former Texas congressman offered one of the most important policy proposals of the nascent presidential campaign: He argued that to solve America's problems at the border, America's leaders must 'help people in Central America where they are.' In so doing, he began laying a foundation to effectively rebut Donald Trump on his signature issue: immigration." ...
... Yeah, That Could Work. Kevin Sieff of the Washington Post: "Until last week, U.S. officials held up El Salvador as proof that foreign aid could help curb migration. The partnership between the two countries drew praise from diplomats, members of Congress and even America's top border enforcement official. Then President Trump announced that he was withdrawing economic assistance to the Central American country and its neighbors Guatemala and Honduras. 'They haven't done a thing for us,' the president said Friday. The claim baffled development officials and Salvadorans, who saw the country's cooperation with the United States on security, civil society and economic development as a success story, inasmuch as it achieved the Trump administration's goal of slowing the flow of migrants heading north to the United States. In the past three years, both El Salvador's homicide rate and migration flows have declined sharply. More than 72,000 Salvadorans were apprehended crossing the U.S. border in 2016. By 2018, the number had plummeted by more than half, to fewer than 32,000." Mrs. McC: Everything Trump does is stupid.
Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Justin Baragona of the Daily Beast: "Fox News host Tucker Carlson began his highly rated primetime show Monday night by taking potshots at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and MSNBC host Chris Hayes, labeling the progressive lawmaker a 'moron' while mocking his cable news competitor's masculinity. Last week, Hayes hosted an MSNBC town hall event on the proposed Green New Deal, featuring Ocasio-Cortez.... 'Chris Hayes is what every man would be if feminists ever achieved absolute power in this country: apologetic, bespectacled, and deeply, deeply concerned about global warming and the patriarchal systems that cause it,' Carlson said.... He added: 'So it's official. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a moron and nasty and more self-righteous than any televangelist who ever preached a sermon on cable access. She's not impressive, she's awful.'"
Huh. Apparently Tucker himself is "bespectacled." But I can see where he would want to kick sand in the face of a wuss wearing glasses -- as long as storms caused by global warming don't wash all the sand away. As for feminism & the patriarchal system, Tucker is a manly man who keeps his wife at home, barefoot & frequently pregnant. Perhaps that's her choice; perhaps it is Tucker's command.
Beyond the Beltway
Maryland. Ian Duncan & Yvonne Wenger of the Baltimore Sun: "Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, facing a call by Gov. Larry Hogan for a criminal investigation into the book deal that paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars, announced Monday that she will take an indefinite leave of absence because of her health. The Democratic mayor's office issued a statement Monday saying she had been advised by her doctors to take time to recover from a bout of pneumonia that hospitalized her for five days last week. With the mayor's health deteriorating, she feels as though she is unable to fulfill her obligations as mayor of Baltimore city,' the statement read in part.... The statement did not address the scandal over the books - a series she authored featuring a young girl named Healthy Holly aimed at promoting exercise and good diet -- that has quickly overtaken the mayor. A no-bid deal with the University of Maryland Medical System was first reported by The Baltimore Sun last month.... Council President Bernard C. 'Jack' Young, also a Democrat, will take over temporarily as mayor.... Under the deal with the medical system, UMMS paid Pugh $500,000 for copies of the books while she served on its board.... Pugh was among nine members of the 30-person UMMS board that had contracts or other business deals with the medical system. Pugh and two other board members have resigned. Several others were placed on leave. On Monday, The Sun reported that health insurer Kaiser Permanente also paid Pugh more than $100,000 to purchase copies of her books from 2015 to 2018. In September 2017, the city's spending board, which Pugh sits on and controls, awarded Kaiser a $48 million contract to provide health insurance to city employees from 2018 through 2020, with options to renew."
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Reader Comments (14)
Agent Orange's Best Healthcare Ever plan is going to the cat nip "independent" voters need to pull the lever for the GOP, just like that "Giant Middle Class Tax Cut" was the magical potion Drumpf rolled out days before the Blue Wave crashed.
I can't wait for the debates when Drumpf blows smoke up our collective asses about his AmazIng Healthcare with nary a page of evidence to support the brazen lies.
@safari: You're right. If Trump deigns to debate the Democratic nominee, she should begin every response with: "Remember, everything Donald says is a lie."
Appointing Kris Kobach to immigration czar doesn't sound quite
as bad as putting Rick Scott in charge of the president's* health
care agenda. Isn't he the guy who defrauded Medicare and Medicaid
out of millions of dollars? Maybe I'm confusing the criminals, it's
so difficult keeping track the last 2 years or so.
@forrest.morris: Right on all counts. Scott's company had to pay a total fine of $1.7 billion, & at the time set a record as "the largest health care fraud case in U.S. history." So, yeah, Scott is perfect to design "Trump"'s healthcare plan.
Thanks for pointing out the most perfect Trump recruit evah.
When is a scam not a plan?
Maybe only when it's so obvious that even the rubes can detect it.
On “Meet the Press" last weekend even the former Florida governor (and criminal) punted. When asked about his marvelous new healthcare plan last weekend, Rick Scott said he was waiting to see what the White House came up with.
And it was a pleasure to observe his discomfort.
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-scott-trump-health-20190401-story.html
@Ken Winkes: Thanks. I can't read the LA Times, so I went straight to the transcript. Looks like the TrumpCare "plan" will devolve into a bilateral firing squad. Trump will blame the Senate for not coming up with a plan & the Senate will blame Trump.
The most revealing part of the interview may have been Scott's belief that he's talked to everyone about the problem, where "everyone" = healthcare industry reps. This is the encapsulation of GOP thinking. It's the perfect gaffe. And Scott seems oblivious to its being a gaffe. He sees nothing wrong with relying 100 percent ("everybody") on the "ideas" of industry execs. And more than 4 million stupid Floridians voted for Scott to go the Senate & ignore them.
The republicans will be working on their health care plan until
the 2020 election but of course nothing in it will be made public
in order for the president* to convince his cult members that it's
going to be the best evah so just vote for me. After that all will
be forgotten and millions will have no coverage and blame it all
on the Democrats. Unfortunately it's not just his cult members
who will suffer but millions of others.
For years now, have been trying to figure out what it means to be a "conservative," and am still working on it. Have to. Most often a label of mere convenience, what it means to be a conservative has been, let's say since the Goldwater-Nixon years, a moving target.
But the Pretender (or his rise to political prominence) has managed to boil conservatism down to its current essence.
A conservative wants to hold onto things he or she values. So what do present-day conservatives want to preserve?
Not Senate traditions. McConnell rides roughshod over those quaint ole things.
The Bill of Rights? Not so much to a Pretender who exhibits obvious comtempt for the rule of law and makes a practice of calling his political enemies traitors and criminals.
Fiscal responsibility? See the Great Tax Scam.
Family values? Which would those be? This administration is setting records for ist blatant lies, the number of its scandals and the extent of its double-dealing, and the Greedy Old Party faithful is just fine with all that.
The environment? These days, not even a sick joke.
How to sort it out? I'm thinking of those old punch card sorters that had you shove a steel rod or needle into the massed cards to select only those cards with aligned holes or notches. For today’s conservatives you don’t need many rods.
How about these four?
White.
Male.
Money.
And the Power to preserve the above.
Simple really, and obviously very appealing for simple minds.
Reprehensible as such white-male-money conservatism might be, its corollary is a political problem for Democrats. By implication at least, Democrats have to a degree become the party of the non-white, the female and the poor, and among the older generation (many here marvelous exceptions), that’s not a winning platform.
The Vengeful Baby
Trump's attacks on those three Mexican countries calls to mind several considerations.
First, if you're intent on keeping yourself healthy, especially past those years when you can pour any amount of cuckoo crap into your body and still get up and function (i.e., the twenties into, maybe, the early thirties), what is the single best course of action you can take?
(We all know this by now) Prevention! Yes. Eat right, exercise, moderation in all things, and go light on the bad shit.
And what if you don't? Liver damage, major systems collapse, obesity, heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, cancer, dementia, death.
Sound like fun? Of course not. So...prevention is definitely and provably a good thing.
Same with foreign relations, especially when talking about neighbors. The single biggest reason immigrants gravitate to the US border is to escape the chaos, violence, and insanity going on at home. As has been shown, directed assistance to a place like El Salvador can dramatically affect the numbers of migrants trying to get out of Dodge. This is preventative medicine.
So what does Trump do? Cuts off all prevention aid. It's like stopping all exercise programs and putting the population on a diet of Super Size sugar water and fast food. The body starts to rot and bad shit happens. THEN everyone heads north.
Great idea, Donald!
Which brings us to the reason he's doing this.
Punishment. Punishment for not being white and for pissing off the god of the north, Donald J.Trump, father of White Supremacy.
But whence the urge to punish? Nietzsche has an answer. In "Genealogy of Morals", he walks the reader through the history of the morality of punishment. Somewhere in there he comes to the realization that punishment, for some, is not designed for correction, it stems purely out of cruelty and the desire for revenge.
This sounds eminently Trumpian. One could spend hours, days even, running Trump through the Nietzsche mill. Nietzsche, in many ways, beats Freud to the punch when divining the source of unbridled desire, especially in regards to things like violence and cruelty. It's what Freud eventually calls the ID. Trump is an unadulterated ID monster. Babies want what they want because of their uncontrolled ID. This is Trump. Babies often want things that will not only do them no good, but can be harmful and even fatal (small objects in the mouth, eg). This is Trump too. Rather than dispassionately addressing serious problems and coming up with rational, adult solutions, Trump goes full ID on these situations, going with his "gut" to come up with answers that are worse than stupid, as Marie suggests. They are damaging and could be fatal. And many of his plans involve some form of revenge.
In fact, a scary number of his "solutions" stem directly from this desire for revenge.
Unfortunately for us, this big baby has the resources of an entire political party supporting his every cry for instant gratification, and a huge network of right-wing media outlets soothing his ego and telling him at every step that he is right and those trying to direct his desires in a more positive, adult way are 100% wrong.
REVENGE! It's a dish served every day at the White House.
Ken,
Nietzsche also provides something to consider in your distillation of the rationale for current conservative politicians: the will to power. Nietzsche, however, understood the will to power to be directed into a conversion of one's natural gifts toward being the best version of oneself, the highest achieving. This element seems to have been forgotten by such as Mitch McConnell and Mick Mulvaney and Rick Scott. For them it's power in pursuit of, well, more power. And money. And like Trump with his golf game, making sure the other side constantly runs into situations where their ball has been tossed into a sand trap. If they're gaining on you, simply change the rules to make sure your side wins.
I'm kinda hoping LardAss McFuddle Schtick actually closes the border. "Seals" its fucking tight. And then sits there, arms crossed hugging himself hard, while the whole political machine grinds to a halt over the stupidity of it all.
It'd be a "Trump Shutdown" redux, Master Dealmaker aimlessly shooting millions of his electorate in their collective foot. So much needless economic damage and stress and suffering, all so he and KKK Stephen Miller can get a slight thrill in their shriveled black hearts. Then, like clockwork, nothing would change but the border would open, Drumpf tweeting victory over brown people of some sort.
Most MAGA mouth breathers will rejoice, but those directly affected won't be laughing when it's their own pocket book taking the hit.
No doubt the millions affected will remember the conjob hardships come 2020.
I would like a dose of optimism, safari, that the cult members AND the small business people, or a combo, will connect the dots in 2020 and give the whole mechanism a mighty heave-ho...but I don't have it. The MAGAts don't ever realize they are the ones suffering and who has caused it, i.e. the Greedy Old People (thanks, Ken!)and the Elephant In The Room. Don't we card-carrying Democrats get tired of cleaning up their messes? You betcha-- This time they are uglier, meaner, stupider, sicker, sneakier and more dishonest than usual, and it is all so toxic. And I don't get what the power-hungry get out of it, except the thrill. The Elephant (no offense meant for elephants--) hates the job and is miserably bad at it-- in any other occupation, he would have been fired by now. THAT is our job going further...
So, is Puerto Rico--"that country"--another one of those Mexican countries Trump is now cutting off? I'm picturing one of those Saul Steinberg cartoons, you know, an illustrated topo map showing the United States and everything outside its borders listed as "Mexican Countries" (oh, except for Russia).
Someone please buy these people an almanac so they can keep things straight. All of Central America is comprised of "Mexican countries" and Puerto Rico "takes" from the USA, meaning it's not part of the United States. Is that the idea?
Almanac, encyclopedia, CIA Fact Book, a map, a fourth grade geography class, something. If you're going to bellyache about something, at least get your facts straight about the world. Oh, and don't lie about the numbers either. That would help.
@Akhilleus: They are using their Trump dictionary's definition of mexicans. Mexican is just their catch all for hispanic. For example, "All mexicans are rapists and murderers." To Trump and his knuckle draggers they are all just shithole people from shithole countries trying to replace the white man.
Also you are right, Trump is just a big baby. That is why he is so afraid of being called a baby and why he projects it as an insult onto so many people he hates.