;)
The Commentariat -- December 20, 2017
Afternoon Update:
Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "The House, forced to vote a second time on the $1.5 trillion tax bill, moved swiftly to pass the final version on Wednesday, clearing the way for President Trump to sign into law the most sweeping tax overhaul in decades.... The final House vote was essentially a formality, as the changes, which were made to comply with Senate budget rules, did not significantly alter the overall bill."
*****
** Thomas Kaplan & Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "Republicans took a critical step toward notching their first significant legislative victory since assuming full political control, as the House and Senate voted along party lines on Tuesday and into early Wednesday to pass the most sweeping rewrite of the tax code in decades. The $1.5 trillion tax bill, which is expected to head to President Trump's desk in the coming days, will have broad effects on the economy, making deep and lasting cuts to corporate taxes as well as temporarily lowering individual taxes.... The Senate voted 51 to 48, with no Republican defections and no Democratic support.... The day was not without hiccups, however, as several small provisions in the tax bill were found by the Senate parliamentarian to violate the budget rules that Republicans must follow to pass their bill through a process that shields it from a Democratic filibuster. As a result, the House will need to vote again on the tax bill, probably on Wednesday, since both chambers must approve identical legislation. The approval of the bill in the House on Tuesday came over the strenuous objections of Democrats, who have accused Republicans of giving a gift to corporations and the wealthy and driving up the federal debt in the process.... The House voted 227 to 203 to pass the bill, with 12 Republicans voting against it and no Democrats voting for it. Eleven of the 12 Republicans were from California, New Jersey and New York, states that would be hit hard by a provision in the bill limiting the deduction for state and local taxes.... 'Today, we are giving the people of this country their money back,' Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin said before the House vote. When the bill passed the House, a giddy Mr. Ryan smiled broadly and banged the gavel with force as he declared victory." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: You've done enough, Mr. Ryan. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency? ...
Look, we expect that it likely will, certainly on the personal side, could cost the president a lot of money. -- Sarah Sanders, yesterday
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post already gave that one
. Sometime, just to throw us off, you should try moving your lips without lying. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
... Adam Cancryn of Politico: Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) thinks criticism of her support for the tax heist is "unbelievably sexist." "She's also been criticized for conditioning her support for the Senate's tax bill on passage of a pair of bills aimed at stabilizing Obamacare markets. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has pledged to her they will pass -- but House Republicans have balked at any 'bailout' for insurers. That prompted speculation that her demands won't be met, as it's still not certain that the House will accept the insurance measures in a year-end spending bill." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Really, Senator? You're taking money out of Mainers' pockets & giving it to Donald Trump & what irritates you is that pundits have suggested GOP leaders have duped you? And that's so sexist? Well, I for one don't think you've been duped. I think you know exactly what you're doing -- transferring money from ordinary Americans to people like yourself. Your vote on this bill is conscious & unconscionable. Getting all huffy about it doesn't make your shameful act of Grand Theft America any less shameful. I'd say the same about every one of your deplorable GOP colleagues, of whatever gender. Now don't you feel a little grateful that some people think you're just a dimwitted naif & not a mean, craven hypocrite? On the other hand, I've been picking on Bob Corker just because he's a man. ...
... Anyway, let's find out what-all the GOP leadership is doing to keep its ObamaCare promises to you. ...
... Rachel Bade & Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are about to lock horns over Obamacare -- part of a House-Senate clash that needs to be resolved by Friday to avert a government shutdown. McConnell promised moderate GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine that he would prop up President Barack Obama's signature health law in a must-pass, year-end spending bill -- so long as she backs tax reform. But Ryan's more conservative conference is flatly rejecting that idea and urging the Wisconsin Republican to stand firm against his Senate counterpart.... If [Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer [N.Y.] doesn't back the subsidies language -- or the funding bill altogether -- it's possible that McConnell won't have the votes to move the legislation through his own chamber, letting Ryan off the hook." ...
... Collins Bills DOA in House. Alice Ollstein of TPM: "Just a few hours before the Senate prepares to vote on a massive overhaul of the American tax system, a host of House Republicans told reporters that the promises made to secure the vote of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) have no chance of passing the lower chamber and becoming law. Collins announced Monday that she would vote for the tax bill based on promises from President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to support two health care bills aimed at mitigating the expected damage from the tax bill's provision killing Obamacare’s individual mandate." ...
... Steven Dennis of Bloomberg: Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the "The No. 2 Senate Republican, said Tuesday that the GOP's tax bill will make Obamacare 'unworkable,' which he hopes will force Democrats into negotiations to replace the law.... Senator John Thune [South Dakota], the No. 3 Senate Republican, also said he hoped there would be a bipartisan deal but said another option is trying to find 50 votes for a modified version of the Graham-Cassidy repeal bill." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: But you know Mitch is going to tell Susan he really, really tried to keep his promise to her & Susan is going to look "concerned" all the way to the bank. Is it "unbelievably sexist" to call this whole charade a Kabuki dance? ...
.. Alex Shephard of the New Republic: "Over the course of the year, [a few] Republicans have condemned Trump on the Sunday shows and on social media. And now they have banded together to give Trump a major victory: not only a historic restructuring of the tax system, but also a partial repeal of Obamacare.... These Republicans have alternated between bolstering Trump and chastising him, but have never acted with any larger strategy or taken any meaningful action to constrain a president they distrust.... The reason they have caved to Trump is because, for all their objections to Trump's tweeting and the innumerable ways he has damaged democratic traditions in this country, concerns about the deficit or the integrity of the Oval Office or the rule of law or the rights of minorities simply don't have much traction in the modern Republican Party. As many have noted, it has only one, unifying agenda: tax cuts and deregulation. As a result, the efforts to reform Trump's Republican Party from within have all collapsed, out of deference to these narrow policy goals." ...
... Rebecca Kysar & Linda Sugin, in a New York Times op-ed: Republicans have built a tax "system that will not last." The writers blame, in part, the GOP's choice to exclude Democrats from the process. But the writers, who are both law professors, also cite a number of the soon-to-be law's most glaring deficiencies. Most of them we know, but here's one we've missed: "On the international side, an area badly in need of permanent reforms, Republicans have erected planks that appear to violate World Trade Organization agreements. Eventually the United States is likely to have to repeal major parts of the law or face sanctions. Rather than ending tax maneuvers in which corporations shift money abroad, the international system envisioned by the bill actually loses money. What's more, the new international system arguably increases incentives for offshoring assets and income." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Pardon me for being a suspicious witch, but it seems likely that the instability of the tax heist is actually a feature -- one which benefits GOP members of Congress only (okay, and some of their lobbyist friends). Suppose Republicans had done what they campaigned on: a middle-class tax cut, a simplified tax code & a lower corporate rate, which, by eliminating loopholes more equally distributed the burden on corporations. Okay, done. Their donors AND voters are happy. But by creating tax law that Democrats are bound to dismantle ASAP, Republicans have a permanent cudgel with which to batter their donors: "If you don't support us bigly, you will lose all the generous cuts we gave you." This bill uses GOP donors' greed to satisfy the GOP Congress's greed. Neat. ...
... Mark Murray of NBC News: "The tax plan ... has grown more unpopular in the last two months, with nearly two-thirds of Americans believing it's designed mostly to help corporations and the wealthy, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. In addition, the survey finds that Democrats have overtaken Republicans on which party better handles the economy -- their first lead on this question since 2013 and their largest since 2009." ...
... "The Trump Tax." Dana Milbank: "The deeply unpopular bill has the support of only a third of Americans, most of whom (correctly) perceive that it's a giveaway to rich people and big corporations.... USA Today reported last week that the bill had 'the lowest level of public support for any major piece of legislation enacted in the past three decades, including the Affordable Care Act in 2009.'... Republicans are making impossibly high promises, and if anything goes wrong -- if the economy doesn't boom, wages don't soar and the middle class doesn't rebound -- it will be the fault of this legislation, soon to be labeled 'the Trump Tax' by Democrats.... While the 'forgotten man' Trump lured with phony populism gets little benefit, the things that bothered the forgotten man about the tax code -- a tangled mess of loopholes for businesses, the rich and Wall Street -- remain intact." ...
Why are my taxes going down and my assistant's is going up? Can someone explain how that is fair? -- Jason Harbor, a real estate investor ...
... Andrew Sorkin of the New York Times: "The tax bill soaks some ... rich Americans -- but it does not soak the richest.... Some executives are already calculating that they will be paying additional seven-figure sums in taxes. OK, you might want to get out get out your smallest violin.... The two most popular games for the very wealthy will be running their income through pass-through companies, which pay a lower rate, or using a corporation to pay themselves a tiny salary and huge dividends, which will be taxed at the lower capital gains rates.... Private equity and real estate executives, as has been well documented, will make out like bandits under the new system. According to the Tax Policy Center, 5 percent of taxpayers would pay more in taxes in 2018; 9 percent in 2025 and 53 percent in 2027." ...
"The Stealth Repeal of ObamaCare." Joanne Kenen of Politico: "Obamacare survived the first year of ... Donald Trump, but 's badly damaged. The sweeping Republican tax bill on the verge of final passage would repeal the individual mandate in 2019, potentially taking millions of people out of the health insurance market. On top of that, the Trump administration has killed some subsidies, halved the insurance enrollment period, gutted the Obamacare marketing campaign, and rolled out a regulatory red carpet for skimpy new health plans that will change the insurance landscape in ways that are harmful to former President Barack Obama's signature health care law. None of these individually represent a death blow. But in aggregate, the past year adds up to a slow, stealthy erosion of the law. 'They obviously couldn't kill it, so they're trying to starve it slowly,' said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, which helped write the original law."
The Trumpeteers -- All for One & (Sometimes) One for All. Jonathan Chait: "Trump and the congressional Republicans ... have essentially merged into a politically coterminous entity. Trump has absorbed all the liabilities of the congressional party, while his distinctive grossness largely extends to them. Nothing has brought together the union quite so vividly as the tax cuts, Trump's singular legislative achievement, and one the entire party has greeted almost ecstatically.... Americans see the Republican Party as enriching its donor class, and the president personally, at the expense of the broader public. Republicans have addressed these liabilities by simply lying about them.... The regular Republican Party of tax cuts for the rich and deregulation of polluters and the financial industry once seemed to be set apart from its clownish demagogue presidential candidate. In rapid order, the strands have merged together into a party disdainful of transparency and united in self-enrichment."
Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Democrats are backing away from a pledge to force a vote this month over the fate of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children, angering activists but probably averting the threat of a government shutdown at a critical moment in spending negotiations with Republicans and President Trump. With a deadline of midnight Friday to pass spending legislation, dozens of Democrats had vowed to withhold support if Republicans refused to allow a vote on a measure, known as the Dream Act, that would allow roughly 1.2 million immigrants to stay legally in the United States. But a group of vulnerable Democratic senators facing reelection in conservative states next year aren't willing to go that far -- meaning the party is unlikely to muster the votes to block the spending bill." ...
... Seung Min Kim of Politico: "Top senators and White House officials are laying the groundwork for a major immigration deal in January to resolve the fate of young undocumented immigrants whose legal protections were put in limbo by ... Donald Trump." Mrs. McC: Read the story & draw your own conclusions. It looks to me as if this group of senators is acting more-or-less in good faith, while colossal dickhead John Kelly is refusing to tell them how high a U.S.-Mexico border wall he & Fuckface von Clownstick will demand in return for not deporting these young Americans.
Amanda Terkel of the Huffington Post: "The Senate banking committee rejected ... Donald Trump's choice to lead the Export-Import Bank on Tuesday, voting 10-13 against advancing his nomination to the full Senate. Two Republicans joined with Democrats in opposition. Scott Garrett, who was a tea-party-aligned Republican congressman from New Jersey until he lost his re-election bid in 2016, has faced intense opposition from the business community ― including corporations like General Electric Co. and Boeing> ― and many traditional GOP allies, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. That's because Garrett once wanted to shutter the institution that he now is trying to run, and he consistently voted against reauthorizing it. In 2015, he lambasted the Export-Import Bank as an institution that 'embodies the corruption of the free enterprise system.'... Sens. Mike Rounds (S.D.) and Tim Scott (S.C.) were the two Republican votes against Garrett." ...
... Zachary Warmbrodt & Andrew Restuccia of Politico: "The decision by a bipartisan group of senators to block ... Donald Trump's pick to lead the Export-Import Bank marked a stinging defeat for Vice President Mike Pence, who worked for months to boost the nomination despite doubts from some administration officials. Pence continued to push senators to support former New Jersey Republican Rep. Scott Garrett's nomination to lead the bank until the final hours before the Senate Banking Committee met for a vote Tuesday morning.... [Pence & Garrett] served together in the House and are said to share similar worldviews." Mrs. McC: It is discouraging to be reminded that there are others who share pence's pinched "worldviews."
The Top Trumpeteer. Everything Good Is Because Trump. Michael Scherer & Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "During the first presidential debate in September 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump argued that the booming performance of the stock market under the Obama administration should not be trusted. 'Believe me: We're in a bubble right now. And the only thing that looks good is the stock market -- but if you raise interest rates even a little bit, that's going to come crashing down,' Trump said. 'We are in a big, fat, ugly bubble. And we better be awfully careful.' More than a year later, President Trump has turned similar record stock market bench marks into his favorite measure of his personal success in office. [Mrs. McCrabbie P.S.: the Fed has raised interest rates three times this year & five times since the financial crisis of 2008.]... 'DOW RISES 5000 POINTS ON THE YEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER -- MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!' the president tweeted ... Tuesday, marking the 58th time he has mentioned the stock market on Twitter since taking office.... In recent weeks, the president has taken full credit for market performance, even though the recent rate of increase largely matches the bullish run under Obama, which began after the market hit bottom in 2009.... Presidents traditionally have avoided commenting directly on stock values.... Part of the reason is that stock gains typically are not felt by many voters who remain frustrated by their economic situation."
Michelle Nichols of Reuters: "The 193-member United Nations General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim states on ... Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, sparking a warning from Washington that it will 'take names.'... U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in a letter to dozens of U.N. states on Tuesday..., warned that the United States would remember those who voted for the resolution.... 'The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us. We will take note of each and every vote on this issue,' Haley wrote. She echoed that call in a Twitter post: [']The U.S. will be taking names.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I doubt leaders of other countries care about your empty threat, Madame Ambassador. Your crazy boss has turned a once-admired great nation into a pitiful, if dangerous, rogue state. Even if & when the Congress or the voters throw him out of office, the damage he has done will be long-lasting. Who would trust a country where someone like Donald Trump can become its titular leader & a compliant legislature props him up? Rather than making a list & checking it twice, you might want to try seeing oursels as ithers see us. ...
... OR, as Marvin S. put it more succinctly in yesterday's thread, "... America First is working. Looks like we no longer have any allies."
What the Russia Matter Is Really About:
I think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is. He knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president.... You have to remember Putin's background. He's a KGB officer. That's what they do. They recruit assets. And I think some of that experience and instincts of Putin has come into play here in his managing of a pretty important account for him, if I could use that term, with our president. -- James Clapper, on CNN Sunday ...
... ** Martin Longman of Booman Tribune: "James Clapper spent over a half a century working in the American intelligence community, capping his career with a six-year stint as the Director of National Intelligence. It's true that he lied to Congress in 2013 about what kinds of information the NSA collects on U.S. citizens, a crime exposed by Edward Snowden and for which Clapper paid no price whatsoever. You shouldn't forget that when assessing his credibility, nor should you ignore the fact that career intelligence professionals aren't necessarily or generally known for being forthright and honest in their public statements.... Yet, even a skeptic has to note the highly unusual spectacle of a customarily taciturn and circumspect intelligence officer of Clapper's rank accusing the president of being a witting agent and pawn of the Russian state.... His opinion is shared widely in the intelligence community which is precisely why Clapper felt free to express it without any concern that he'd be seen as a kook or somehow shunned by his peers. He was speaking for them, or at least a large plurality of them." Longman links Clapper's remarks to the Steele dossier & points out that Robert Mueller's team "serve[s] and answer[s] to a president whom they highly suspect of being compromised at best and a witting agent of a hostile foreign power at worst." ...
... John Schindler, former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer, in the New York Observer: "... [James] Clapper went on CNN to drop an unimaginably large bombshell on ... Donald Trump.... America's most experienced spy boss publicly termed our president an asset -- that is, a witting agent -- of the Kremlin who is being controlled by Vladimir Putin. Even if meant only 'figuratively,' this is the most jaw-dropping statement ever uttered about any American president by any serious commentator.... This, of course, is precisely what Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation are trying to get to the bottom of -- and, not coincidentally, what President Trump and his supporters are trying just as hard to prevent Team Mueller from unraveling.... In our Intelligence Community, it's widely understood that Donald Trump possesses longstanding ties to the Kremlin which are at best suspect and at worst reflective of an unsettling degree of Russian influence over our commander-in-chief." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Say, have we mentioned that the publisher of the New York Observer is Jared Kushner? (The site is now in a "blind" family trust, but guess what? His brother-in-law Joseph Meyer is the current publisher, making the "blindness" of the trust exactly as sight-impaired as are the doings of the Trump Organization is to one Donald Trump.) Everything is getting curiouser & curiouser. ...
... Paul Waldman: "If Trump's allies thought the facts would prove the president's innocence and that of everyone else involved, they wouldn't be in such a panic.... But there's one Republican who's convinced Trump will be fully exonerated: Donald Trump.... The latest twist, however, is one that could bring the scandal to an entirely new level. Mueller's team has obtained thousands of emails written by members of Trump's presidential transition team.... As Mueller's spokesperson said in response to the White House's assertion that the GSA shouldn't have given Mueller the emails, 'When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner's consent or appropriate criminal process.' The repetition of the word 'criminal' should send shivers down a few people's spines." ...
What Winger Conspiracy Theorists Say the Russia Matter Is All About:
... Eli Watkins of CNN: "... Donald Trump's eldest son suggested Tuesday that the investigation around his father's campaign has been fueled by government higher-ups who have conspired to block the President's agenda. 'There is, and there are, people at the highest levels of government that don't want to let America be America,' Donald Trump Jr. told a gathering of young conservative activists in West Palm Beach, Florida.... In his remarks Tuesday, Trump Jr. railed against special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and attacked the media's coverage of the Russia story, saying the ongoing probe was emblematic of the kind of 'rigged system' the President had railed against during the campaign." ...
... Annals of "Journalism," Fever Swamp Edition. Daily Beast: "A Fox News guest-host on Tuesday suggested the FBI plotted to assassinate ... Donald Trump before he took office. While discussing the text messages of two bureau agents formerly working on the FBI's probe of Russian election interference, right-wing radio host and Outnumbered guest-host Kevin Jackson said he hopes the Senate Judiciary Committee presses deputy FBI chief Andrew McCabe on whether certain texts point to a specific intent, 'whether it was an assassination attempt or whatever.'" Mrs. McC: Just another day at Fox "News." ...
I think ... the Clintons and their operatives in the FBI ... are going to go ahead and make their move to kill the president. I think in the next 30 days, I think they're going to make an assassination attempt. I just -- my gut -- I see all of them together, they're that desperate. They're either going to give up or they're going to activate their cells. -- Alex Jones, Monday ...
I'll take a wild guess & vote for "they're going to give up." That Hillary just has no stamina. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
... Kyle Swenson of the Washington Post: "... on Tuesday, [Republican] criticism [of Mueller's investigation] hurtled across an even more extreme line, when Fox News contributor Kevin Jackson suggested the FBI might have had plans to assassinate President Trump. It's a conspiracy theory that has already been percolating on the extreme fringe, the petri dish for much of the 'deep state' rhetoric.... By his own admission, Jackson's fears of assassination came from 'social media stuff.' But the Fox News commentator was picking up on a frequency beamed out only a day before by InfoWars's Alex Jones.
Eli Rosenberg of the Washington Post: "The White House has taken down a popular online tool created by President Barack Obama's administration that allowed the public to create online petitions, some of which required an official response. All of the petitions, including one that called on President Trump to release his tax returns -- the most popular, with more than a million signatures -- disappeared from Petitions.WhiteHouse.Gov as part of what a statement posted on the site said was part of a maintenance effort to improve its performance. The statement said that the site, as well as all of its existing petitions, would be restored by the end of January.... The Trump White House has not responded to any of the petitions that have circulated on the site since the president took office, many of which have taken a particularly grave tone." Emphasis added.
Fake News Quashes EPA Covert Ops. Rebecca Leber, et al., of Mother Jones: "The Republican PR firm that was awarded a $120,000 EPA contract for media monitoring has pulled out of the deal, days after Mother Jones first revealed the controversial arrangement. The no-bid contract drew widespread scrutiny in recent days, in part because the for-profit firm, called Definers, is overtly partisan and& is connected to a network of GOP political groups ... that have performed opposition-style research on environmentalists.... Mother Jones first reported on Definers' EPA contract on Friday. Later that day, the New York Times reported that an employee at the firm had filed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests seeking records from EPA staffers who had been critical of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt. The controversy continued to grow over the weekend. On Tuesday, two Democratic senators, Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Kamala Harris(Calif.), called for the contract to be canceled. The senators quickly got their wish." ...
... MEANWHILE. AP: "The head of the Environmental Protection Agency used public money to have his office swept for hidden listening devices and bought sophisticated biometric locks for additional security. The spending items, totaling nearly $9,000, are among a string of increased counter-surveillance precautions taken by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who also requires around-the-clock protection by an armed security team." Mrs. McC: If he can't spy on employees, employees can't spy on him. So there. Maybe living in a cloud of pollution has made Scott Pruitt crazy.
Never Mind. Josh Gerstein & Renuka Rayasam of Politico: "A looming Supreme Court showdown over abortion rights for immigrant children in federal custody appeared to be defused Tuesday night after the U.S. government released one of the pregnant teens at the center of the fight, citing new evidence that she is an adult. Lawyers for the Trump administration said a birth certificate for the immigrant known in court filings as Jane Roe shows her to be 19, not 17 as previously thought.... The Justice Department said the immigrant was turned over to ICE and released on her own recognizance. That leaves her free to seek an abortion if she wishes to do so."
Robert McFadden of the New York Times: "Cardinal Bernard F. Law, whose stature as archbishop of Boston and America's senior Roman Catholic prelate was shattered in a maelstrom of scandal, acrimony and resignation in 2002 after revelations that he had protected abusive priests for years, died Wednesday. He was 86 and lived in Rome. The Vatican confirmed the death in a news release." ...
... The Boston Globe, which broke the stories on how Law aided serial child molesters who were priests in the Boston diocese, has links to numerous stories about Law on its front page. They are firewalled, so you can read them only if you have a subscription.
Beyond the Beltway
Your Vote Matters. Gregory Schneider of the Washington Post: "The balance of power in Virginia’s legislature turned on a single vote in a recount Tuesday that flipped a seat in the House of Delegates from Republican to Democrat, leaving control of the lower chamber evenly split. The outcome, which reverberated across Virginia, ends 17 years of GOP control of the House and forces Republicans into a rare episode of power sharing with Democrats that will refashion the political landscape in Richmond. It was the culmination of last months Democratic wave that had diminished Republican power in purple Virginia. Democrat Shelly Simonds emerged from the recount as the apparent winner in the 94th House district, seizing the seat from Republican incumbent David Yancey. A three-judge panel still must certify the results, an event scheduled for Wednesday. Of the 23,215 votes cast in the district on Election Day, Yancey held a lead of just 10 votes going into Tuesday's recount. But five hours later, after a painstaking counting overseen by local elections officials and the clerk of court, Yancey's lead narrowed -- and then reversed. The final tally: 11,608 for Simonds to 11,607 for Yancey."
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Reader Comments (15)
Did I read that correctly? James Clapper said that Putin really knows how to manage an asshat? Oh...was that “asset”? Sorry. In any event he certainly knows which buttons to push and which strings to pull to make his asshat dance. Just wondering which character Trumpskyev would play in a John Le Carre novel? The PM who is duped into betraying his country or the sniveling little chiseler who sells out his family trying to escape the Rusdian sector for a pint of cheap vodka?
@Akhilleus: I think Clapper's comment may be a window into what Mueller really is doing. All we're hearing about are the bits various whisperers tell the press. But Mueller knows what the spooks know, and that may be a lot. Some of what they know surely is not just speculation. We keep hearing that much of the Steele dossier "hasn't been verified." Well, MSM reporters haven't verified it, but Schindler & Longman make me think that Mueller has some strong evidence -- at least strong enough for a Democratic House to bring impeachment proceedings -- to support the conclusion that Clapper presented as an opinion. After all, the consensus is that U.S. intelligence officials have been keeping at least half-an-eye on Trump for as long as a decade. He is not a surprise villain.
While we're all excited about the tidbits we know, Mueller's team well may have deep knowledge of how Russia is using Trump & how much Trump is willing to do for them. It's quite possible that the "meeting about adoption" & Carter Page's wild-assed forays to Russia are minor sideshows compared to evidence the intelligence community has amassed against Trump over a decade.
I'll admit that it's also possible that Trump is right & Mueller is going to report next week that Trump is the greatest patriot in the history of the country & Mueller is sorry he wasted so much taxpayer money putting together an official DOJ document titled "Praise Trump. All Hail Trump." But I think that outcome is less likely than the one Clapper seems to suggest.
Watching the response by Republican members of Congress, I think that at least half of the purpose of the tax bill was just to make them feel successful and happy. Finally they passed a bill!
And BTW, with three 'judges' and now the Export-Import Bank nominee, has Trump finally broke a record for the number declined by the same party?
Rex is smiling ear to ear these days––he finally gets some sugar: The White House has nominated Susan Thorton, (one of the thorns in Bannon's butt–-he intended to get rid of her at State where she is acting head of East Asian and Pacific affairs) to become America's top diplomat for Asia. She is Tillerson's favorite–-will help him enormously (speaks fluid Mandarin). She has clashed openly with the nationalists wing of the Trump administration.
The fly in the appointment is the possibility of an ally of Trump entering into the Asia Bureau as well––Alex Wong, former policy advisor to YIKES!, Tom Cotton. Green tea and envy under the Asian sun.
Rachel showed us videos last night of the hundreds of people in Maine who paraded for hours out in the cold, signs pleading for Susan to do the right thing; people dressed up in crazy costumes in front of stores and libraries with similar signs; People in the hallways outside of Collin's office pleading with her to do the right thing. One of Collin's staunch supporters of long standing came on the program, almost in tears, and visibly angry, said she had had enough and would not be supporting Collins ever again.
My husband had a talk with our accountant yesterday who told him his millionaire clients from New York and New Jersey are screaming bloody murder because of the change in the tax deductions. They hate Trump, our accountant ( a Republican) hates Trump. Our accountant says he has been inundated with hundreds of calls from clients who are fit to be tied. "What a shame about those millionaires," I murmured as I finished washing the dishes."
Here's the story about the impact of the 'global gag rule' that the Trump Administration has taken to new heights, beyond abortion, for these health groups in Kenya. Trump has cut off all funding for these groups that offer abortion services along with vital health services for women. Because of this, many have died. With video.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/impact-of-global-gag-rule-goes-beyond-abortion-for-these-health-groups-in-kenya
Great news this morning. Infamous procurer for and protector of baby rapers, Bernard Law, is dead, dead, dead. If it were possible for him to be revived so he could die again, I'd do it. In fact, I'd do it every day for however many days he served as the Director for the Boston Archdiocesan Office of Baby Raping and Child Molestation.
Because I'm an agnostic, I'm hoping there is some sort of afterlife in which he is dipped in sulfuric acid and subsequently set on fire, a process that should endlessly repeat itself.
OR perhaps it would be fitting for him to be sent back in time, reappearing as a 9 year old altar boy under the "tutelage" of some of Law's most accomplished baby rapers so that he could understand the lifetime of trauma to which he condemned hundreds of innocent children so that he could protect the Church's "good name" and his own privileges as an archbishop.
Well, I'm just glad the fucker is dead. Let's leave it at that.
But, as (more than) an afterthought, shame on the Catholic Church for coddling this criminal, for rewarding him with a choice position of honor at the Vatican, shame and dishonor to everyone connected to this cur.
And a reminder that creeps like Trump are not far removed from priests who preyed on young boys.
Marie,
I hadn't actually thought that Mueller could, at some point, throw up his hands and declare that he's got nothin' and that Trump is a great American after all.
Trump is dirty as they come. He's been a grifter and chiseler his whole life. Rules and laws and ethics are not for such as the Great Donaldo. He makes the laws, he breaks the laws. It's all the same. But it might be possible that Mueller doesn't end up with enough to charge him with anything, which Trump, of course, will tweet as a great victory.
If there is such a thing as justice, that won't happen, but we've all been around long enough to know that justice is never guaranteed. And even if Mueller does damage this baboon somehow, he has already done immense damage to the country and he'll have time to do a lot more before this investigation is finished.
An interesting opinion in NYT (Wilkinson) that reminds us that, historically, democracy came about to protect us underlings from being stripped by the overlords, whereas today's conservative/libertarian randians (GOP congress) believe that libertarianism should keep the masses from redistributing the pelf.
I think Nikki Haley will have an easy time 'taking names' of countries voting against Trump's behavior. All she has to do is name the two countries voting no and subtract it from the list of 193 voting yes.
Just wondering...I know the Clintons are public figures, but is it okay (ie, legal) for someone (terminal asshole Alex Jones) to state that they are going to assassinate the president? Doesn't the FBI get involved whenever someone makes a charge like that? Jones has been successfully sued before for lying about people (the Comet Pizza thing, and the Chobani Yogurt conspiracy theory), but this one seems especially egregious, which is saying a lot considering that one of those other lies had to do with a child sex ring.
I know, I know, first amendment and all that, but it just seems that, once again, wingers go to extremes that would cause apoplectic outrage if liberals did something comparable. Wingers complain about overreach if liberals point out their lies, never mind make up wild shit about them.
The other thing such a claim does (I was going to say besides coarsening the public discourse, but I'm not sure, in the Age of Trump, that public discourse can get any coarser) is to make such talk, and such thoughts (assassination of political figures) more common. I'm not going to say "acceptable", although talk of murdering either or both of the Clintons has been acceptable in certain right-wing circles for decades, but it makes room for such talk, which in itself is deplorable.
Maybe at one time one could make an argument that the Right had something to offer in the sphere of public ideas, but no longer. There isn't a single useful or valid idea they can put forward that isn't tainted by lies, hatred, deviance, and greed.
Remember, way back when were a lot less jaded and cynical and The Decider and his pet shark were engaging in illegal surveillance of Americans? And remember how, at the time, wingers all sniffed that liberals should shut their gobs because if you hadn't done anything wrong, you had nothing to worry about?
What happened?
Now that one of theirs is under the gun, investigations of that sort are horrible, terrible, un-American, obscene...
What happened to not worrying if you had nothing to hide?
Classic winger groupthink. It's okay for them but not for us.
300 words of Christmas cheer for the local newspaper:
The long-anticipated tax reform legislation did arrive in time for Christmas as advertised, but with all its negative press and the many hit pieces on Trump’s record of donating to charities (arbiternews.com), perhaps Mr. Trump’s administration has not gotten sufficient credit for its remarkable generosity. In fact, it has been bestowing lavish gifts for the entire year.
That generosity began immediately with the coal industry as one of the chief beneficiaries (nytimes.com). The Trump EPA has delayed a climate change rule that would have shut down many coal-fired power plants, a rule that imposed restrictions on coal ash disposal and one designed to protect aquatic life in streams fed by power plant wastewater. Congress was equally generous, repealing an Obama-era rule protecting streams from coal mining pollution.
The Department of Interior has also gotten into the spirit of giving by repealing a moratorium on new leases of federal land for coal extraction, overturning rules that would have increased royalty payments mining companies should pay and eliminating a requirement that those same companies self-fund their own cleanup costs.
It would be difficult to imagine a more generous administration, unless you belong to the financial industry. Working with a Republican congress, the executive branch has sided with credit card companies to require forced arbitration to settle disputes, taking potentially expensive class action lawsuits off the table. The rule limiting financial sector bonuses has been dropped, and the Volker rule designed to discourage risky bank investments is again under fire (slate.com).
The Department of Education is “reviewing” rules allowing loan forgiveness for students defrauded by private schools (usnews.com), and in an explosion of largesse, the Labor Department intends to allow employers to take tip money from waiters earning a hefty average of $9.61/hour (cbsnews.com).
Looks like 2017 was Christmas year ‘round.
Lies, Trump, Death
Three of the Four Horsemen, the fourth is Fox and other right-wing media shills.
Think I'm being hyperbolic?
The Smithsonian Magazine (one of the great periodicals in American history; my dad must have been one of the first subscribers. Along with National Geographic and Time, and assorted newspapers, the Smithsonian was a primary portal for a young Akhilleus into the world of history, thought, science, and technology; I awaited it each month with, as the poets say, bated breath) published a recent article by John Barry who wrote a wonderful, if excruciating book, about the 1918 flu pandemic. We are coming up on the 100th anniversary of this horrific event. Interestingly, this terrible flu virus came upon us toward the end of WWI. Let's compare, shall we?
Deaths from WWI: 41 million. Pretty bad, right?
Deaths from 1918 flu virus: 500 million. Words fail.
Not quite an extinction level event, but pretty goddamned bad.
Now here's what John Barry has to say about how and why this thing got so out of control.
Lies. The kind that the current resident of the White House tells without thinking.
"...the most important lesson from 1918 is to tell the truth. Though that idea is incorporated into every preparedness plan I know of, its actual implementation will depend on the character and leadership of the people in charge when a crisis erupts.
I recall participating in a pandemic “war game” in Los Angeles involving area public health officials. Before the exercise began, I gave a talk about what happened in 1918, how society broke down, and emphasized that to retain the public’s trust, authorities had to be candid. 'You don’t manage the truth,' I said. 'You tell the truth.' Everyone shook their heads in agreement.
Next, the people running the game revealed the day’s challenge to the participants: A severe pandemic influenza virus was spreading around the world. It had not officially reached California, but a suspected case—the severity of the symptoms made it seem so—had just surfaced in Los Angeles. The news media had learned of it and were demanding a press conference.
The participant with the first move was a top-ranking public health official. What did he do? He declined to hold a press conference, and instead just released a statement: More tests are required. The patient might not have pandemic influenza. There is no reason for concern.
I was stunned. This official had not actually told a lie, but he had deliberately minimized the danger; whether or not this particular patient had the disease, a pandemic was coming. The official’s unwillingness to answer questions from the press or even acknowledge the pandemic’s inevitability meant that citizens would look elsewhere for answers, and probably find a lot of bad ones. Instead of taking the lead in providing credible information he instantly fell behind the pace of events. He would find it almost impossible to get ahead of them again. He had, in short, shirked his duty to the public, risking countless lives.
And that was only a game."
NOW, class, what do you think a congenital liar like the little king would do, a loser who seeks at all turns to "prove" how great he is, how important he is, and how much better he is than everyone else?
Before you answer, remember that this is a loser who has already forbade the number one agency tasked with handling something like a flu pandemic, from telling the truth. He has ordered the CDC NOT to use words that could illuminate, to the public, the severity and danger of something like a recurrence of the 1918 flu pandemic.
So, my question is more than a bit hypothetical. Barry, in the Smithsonian article, states that the possibility of another killer pandemic is not an issue of if, but when.
And if "when" comes while the Orange Haired Liar is in the White House, how safe do you think we'll be?
Ken,
What a liberal buzzkill! You liberals sure know how to deflate a party. Truth, you should know, is not allowed at winger wingdings. Neither is rationality, decency, or brains. So, off with you, now. We only allow the rich, the racist, the Bible bangers, the bilious, the greedy, and the fear mongers.
Merry Goddam Christmas.
I, for one, could crucify the guy that came up with the idea of Christmas.
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