;)
The Commentariat -- January 25, 2019
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Jordain Carney of the Hill: "The Senate on Friday afternoon easily advanced a three-week funding bill to fully reopen the federal government hours after President Trump agreed to end the shutdown without securing money for a border wall. The funding legislation cleared the chamber by a voice vote. The House is expected to pass the funding bill later Friday and send it to Trump's desk for a signature. The Senate vote came a day after the chamber rejected two proposals that would have reopened the government. But the calculus changed on Friday as federal workers impacted by the shutdown missed their second paycheck and news of delays at major airports across the country dominated the headlines." ...
... Sheryl Stolberg, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump agreed Friday to reopen the federal government for three weeks while negotiations proceeded over how to secure the nation's southwestern border, backing down after a monthlong standoff failed to force Democrats to give him billions of dollars for his long-promised wall. The decision paved the way for Congress to pass spending bills as soon as Friday that Mr. Trump will sign to restore normal operations at a series of federal agencies until Feb. 15 and begin paying again the 800,000 federal workers who have been furloughed or forced to work for free for 35 days. The plan includes none of the money for the wall that he had demanded and was essentially the same approach that Mr. Trump rejected at the end of December, meaning he won nothing concrete during the impasse. But if Republicans and Democrats cannot reach agreement on wall money by the February deadline, he indicated that he was ready to renew the confrontation or declare a national emergency and bypass Congress altogether.... The surprise announcement was a remarkable surrender for a president who made the wall his nonnegotiable condition for reopening the government." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: After the initial announcement, Trump devoted most of the rest of his speech to recounting fantastical horror stories about dangerous immigrants & coyotes binding & gagging the women they were trafficking across the border. He sounded like some joker telling scary, if slightly erotic, campfire stories. ...
... If you look at the 2:40 pm entry of today's Daily Intelligencer (sadly, I can't find any way to isolate these posts), New York writers liveblog the speech. Funny.
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Looks like all it takes is Bob Mueller to get the government up & running. According to the WSJ, Trump plans to announce this afternoon he will sign a three-week continuing resolution. I'd guess that is to distract us from today's release of the Stone indictment. The news remarks were scheduled for 1:30 pm ET, which has come & gone. ...
... Sam Stein of The Daily Beast: "Lawmakers have made notable progress on a deal to end the federal government shutdown five weeks after it first started, several Capitol Hill sources told The Daily Beast on Friday morning.... There will be no funding included in the deal for Trump's proposed wall along the southern border. Nor will the deal include a 'down-payment' as the president requested on Thursday. In exchange for those concessions, Democrats would agree to a nominal amount of money for border security but not a wall.... One Democratic Senate aide noted that the same deal had been discussed 'weeks ago' only to be shelved when the White House said it wouldn't support it. The biggest question mark remains how the president would stomach such a deal and, as importantly, who can sell him on it." --s
Patrick McGeehan of the New York Times: "Significant flight delays were rippling across the Northeast on Friday because of a shortage of air traffic controllers as a result of the government shutdown, according to the Federal Aviation Administration." ...
... Lori Aratani of the Washington Post: "Federal officials temporarily restricted flights Friday into and out of New York's LaGuardia Airport, another example of the toll the partial government shutdown -- in its 35th day -- is having on the nation's airports." ...
... Henry Grabar of Slate: "The revolt of the unpaid federal workers may have begun on Friday morning in Monroe, Louisiana, where two flights were canceled because TSA workers didn’t arrive to open the checkpoint. American Airlines 3243 to Dallas-Fort Worth and Delta Airlines 3942 to Atlanta, both scheduled to depart at 6 a.m., became the first U.S. flights to be canceled during the government shutdown because of a shortage of TSA workers. Security screeners missed their second paycheck on Friday, and call-out rates have surged to between 7 and 10 percent, causing intermittent delays." ...
... Sarah Jones of New York: "Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, told New York on Friday afternoon that she 'just finished' recording a video message to members urging them to get to the offices of their congressional representatives until the shutdown is resolved. 'We're mobilizing immediately,' Nelson said. Asked if this meant that flight attendants will not be going to work, she responded, 'Showing up to work for what? If air traffic controllers can't do their jobs, we can't do ours.'"
E.A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "The use of entrance fees to keep national parks open, along with a sudden decision to bring back department employees to work on offshore drilling and related tasks, have come under fire from House Democrats and environmental groups -- they argue Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and other officials may be breaking the law. And lawmakers are looking to flex their new power once the government reopens.... At the heart of complaints lobbed at several of the Interior Department's shutdown decisions is the Antideficiency Act, which specifies that only 'cases of emergency involving the safety of human life or the protection of property' merit the ongoing unpaid labor of federal employees in a shutdown scenario." --s
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "The wall of Donald Trump&'s campaign and presidency has always operated both as a discrete proposal — an actual structure to be built under his leadership -- and as a symbol with a clear meaning. Whether praised by its supporters or condemned by its opponents, the wall is a stand-in for the larger promise of broad racial (and religious) exclusion and domination. It's no surprise, then, that some Americans use 'Build the wall' as a racist chant, much like the way they invoke the president's name. And it's also why, despite the pain and distress of the extended government shutdown, Democrats are right to resist any deal with the White House that includes funding for its construction."
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is Bouie's "debut column" at the NYT. He is one of the best thinkers on the SOTU around. I'm thrilled he got the Big Job.
So this comes up in the Stone indictment:
... On multiple occasions, including on or about December 1, 2017, STONE told Person 2 [Randy Credico] that Person 2 should do a 'Frank Pentangeli' before HPSCI [House Intelligence Committee] in order to avoid contradicting STONE's testimony. Frank Pentangeli is a character in the film The Godfather: Part II, which both STONE and Person 2 had discussed, who testifies before a congressional committee and in that testimony claims not to know critical information that he does in fact know. -- Roger Stone indictment ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "There is no smoking gun in the indictment when it comes to the Trump campaign's culpability, and for most of the campaign, Stone was an informal Trump adviser -- not actually serving on the campaign.... The most significant reference to members of the campaign, though, could be this: 'After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.' The words 'was directed' loom large here. Who did the directing?... Though we can't say for sure, it seems entirely possible this is Trump. He, after all, would seem to be the person who would have the authority to direct a 'senior Trump Campaign official' -- though it’s possible another senior aide could also do so.... In many ways, this feels like another 'speaking indictment.' There's a hint of something possible to come." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: As we learned from Brian Schwartz of CNBC (story linked below), the unnamed "senior campaign official" is Steve Bannon, assuming Schwartz's sources are right. And Steve Bannon reported to Trump. While it's not impossible that, say, Jared Kushner or Donnie Jr. was the person who "directed" Bannon, normally "directing" an employee is the job for the employee's boss, in this case, Donald Trump, not a more-or-less co-equal employee. ...
** Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "[R]unning through Mueller's indictment of Stone and his charges against Russian hackers last July is the makings of a case that there was, in fact, coordination.... In short, Mueller said on Friday, Trump, or his most senior aides, ordered a trusted associate to bring them into the loop on the fruits of what they knew to be a Russian government hack of American victims -- and on the schedule for its publication. Trump's team could then shape their campaign tactics around this calendar. And last July, Mueller hinted at evidence of coordination in the other direction. His indictment of the Russian hackers said they attempted 'for the first time' to break into email accounts used by Clinton's personal office 'after hours' on 27 July 2016.... That day, at an event in Florida, Trump urged Russia to search for the approximately 30,000 emails[.]" --s ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Mueller is writing these indictments like chapters in a mystery novel. New clues keep arising & so does provocative foreshadowing. Of course, as any experienced mystery reader knows, you have to look out for red herrings, too. But I believe that in the end, we'll find out whodunit, & the who will be He Trump.
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Also too, there's the "Godfather" 1 horsehead-in-the-bed email. From the indictment: "On or about April 9, 2018, STONE wrote in an email to Person 2 [Randy Credico], 'You are a rat. A stoolie. You backstab your friends-run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds.' STONE also said he would 'take that dog away from you,' referring to Person 2's dog. On or about the same day, STONE wrote to Person 2, 'I am so ready. Let's get it on. Prepare to die [expletive].'" So mobby. ...
... Here's all you'll ever want to know about Bianca, the adorable dog Stone threatened to kidnap or snuff. ...
... Update. Jonathan Chait: "The Russia scandal has provided us with relatively few Russia cultural references, but a proliferation of mafia references. The fact that Stone expressed himself this way is not mere color, nor is organized crime even a metaphor for the mindset and Trump and his inner circle. It is actually a reasonably literal description of the Trump organization. In the fall of 2017, a source close to the administration warned, 'this investigation is a classic Gambino-style roll-up. You have to anticipate this roll-up will reach everyone in this administration.' This turned out to be one of the most prescient descriptions of what was to come.... Mueller seems to be in the process of demonstrating that Trump's organization is not like an organized crime family, it actually is one."
... Steve M.: "... at Fox & Friends, this isn't really an indictment at all, because Stone is charged with 'process crimes,' which totally aren't crimes at all. ('Just process crimes' has been a favorite right-wing talking point for a few months now.)... Steve Doocy shrieks 'Where is the Russia collusion?'... Dan Bongino says: '... this is another process crime, where the Mueller investigation -- the result of the investigation has produced the crime. As a result of the investigation, we have this witness -- alleged witness tampering and failure to produce documents." ...
... Matt Naham of Law & Crime: "The latest criticism of FBI tactics made by defenders of ... Donald Trump and/or his indicted former associates is that the ... break-out-the-big-guns arrest of Roger Stone was a bridge too far. Fox News personality Laura Ingraham went so far as to say that Stone was being treated like Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman Loera. The problem is, legal experts in a position to know how the FBI conducts its business say this is standard operating procedure."
Roger Stone, just before he declared his innocence this afternoon, doing his best Richard Nixon imitation. (Roger must be aware that Nixon made the gesture after his resignation, at the moment he departed the White House in disgrace on August 8, 1974.)
Lucien Bruggeman & Katherine Faulders of ABC News: "Paul Manafort, the onetime campaign chairman for ... Donald Trump, made a rare court appearance in Washington, D.C., Friday morning to address allegations lodged by special counsel Robert Mueller that he lied to federal investigators.... At the hearing, defense counsel and attorneys with the special counsel's office debated the merit of Mueller's allegation that Manafort lied to investigators after striking a plea deal with prosecutors in September. The alleged lies amounted to a breach of his plea agreement, prosecutors said.... If [Judge Amy] Jackson sides with Mueller and finds Manafort in breach of his plea deal, he could face up to 80 years in prison, though legal experts say he would likely receive something closer to seven years. Manafort is scheduled for sentencing on March 5 in the Washington case."
Kari Sonde of Mother Jones: "Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine, building on prior research, determined that from 2010 to 2015, firearm injuries amounted to $911 million in inpatient hospitalizations nationwide annually and that 9.5 percent of that cost, or $86 million, was from victims needing to return to the hospital." --s
Jon Henley & Mark Rice-Oxley of the Guardian: "Liberal values in Europe face a challenge 'not seen since the 1930s', leading intellectuals from 21 countries have said, as the UK lurches towards Brexit and nationalists look set to make sweeping gains in EU parliamentary elections. The group of 30 writers, historians and Nobel laureates declared in a manifesto published in several newspapers, including the Guardian, that Europe as an idea was 'coming apart before our eyes'." --s
*****
FBI agents arrested Roger Stone early this morning "after an indictment was unsealed in the special counsel investigation." Story linked below.
The Trump Shutdown, Month Two, Ctd.
Erica Werner, et al., of the Washington Post: "Senators on Thursday embarked on fresh behind-the-scenes negotiations to end the longest-ever government shutdown, and House Democrats struggled to finalize a new border security plan, after the failure of two competing Senate bills forced renewed efforts to find some other way out. It was unclear, though, whether any of the activity would yield a solution, as the fundamental dynamics that produced the shutdown remained unchanged: President Trump's demand for new funding for his U.S.-Mexico border wall, and Democrats' refusal to give it to him.... Speaking at the White House after the Senate blocked his proposed border solution and a competing Democratic plan, the president said that if Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) could come up with a 'reasonable agreement,' he would support it." Mrs. McC: Yes, President* Fickleface von Clownschtick has said that before.
Lesley Clark of McClatchy News: "Mitch McConnell is back at the center of talks to end the partial government shutdown, as his colleagues are hopeful the master negotiator's involvement may be the break that ends the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. The Senate majority leader and his Democratic counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, met briefly in McConnell's Capitol office Thursday after Republican and Democratic efforts to end the stalemate died on the Senate floor. Schumer left McConnell's office with a smile, telling reporters 'We're talking.'... Democrats have blamed McConnell for the impasse, noting that he's refused to take up any House-passed legislation to re-open the government, even though much of it the House bill is modeled after legislation that cleared the Senate in December."
You Can Believe This. Eliana Johnson, et al., of Politico: "Now that the Senate has shot down ... Donald Trump's compromise offer to end the month-long government shutdown, White House officials aren't sure of their next move. But they do know one thing: they're losing, and they want to cut a deal. The president is weighing the idea of a three-week continuing resolution to fund the government, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) revealed Thursday afternoon, reviving a prospect the president has previously ruled out.... While the president has previously dangled the threat of a national emergency declaration, he now considers the move a 'last resort,' according to a source familiar with his thinking." ...
... AND/OR You Can Believe That. Priscilla Alvarez & Tammy Kupperman of CNN: "The White House is preparing a draft proclamation for ... Donald Trump to declare a national emergency along the southern border and has identified more than $7 billion in potential funds for his signature border wall should he go that route, according to internal documents reviewed by CNN. Trump has not ruled out using his authority to declare a national emergency and direct the Defense Department to construct a border wall as Congress and the White House fight over a deal to end the government shutdown. But while Trump's advisers remain divided on the issue, the White House has been moving forward with alternative plans that would bypass Congress. 'The massive amount of aliens who unlawfully enter the United States each day is a direct threat to the safety and security of our nation and constitutes a national emergency,' a draft of a presidential proclamation reads." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: "The ... amount of aliens"? No. You could have an "amount" of water or of money but you have a "number" of individuals or "aliens." The larger point of course is that White House staff don't know what's going on, & that's because Trump changes his mind from moment to moment & speaks out of both sides of his mouth, sometimes in a single sentence or thought sequence. ...
... AND/OR The Other Thing. David Choi of Business Insider: "Trump pitched a new idea: a 'prorated down payment' for the wall. Democratic leaders were not interested. 'I don't know if he knows what he's talking about, do you?,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said to reporters on Thursday. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was equally puzzled...: 'I don't know what that means,' she said.... 'The way forward is clear to me: a three-week continuing resolution that includes a down payment on wall/barrier funding and priorities of Democrats for disaster relief, showing good faith from both sides,' [Sen. Lindsey] Graham [R-S.C.] said in a statement. 'I strongly urge my Democratic colleagues to work with the White House on a three-week CR that includes a down payment on wall/barrier funding consistent with [Department of Homeland Security] priorities.' But Democrats balked at the suggestion, including Pelosi, who told reporters it was 'not a reasonable agreement.'"
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "A Democratic plan to reopen the government without money for President Trump's border wall failed in the Senate on Thursday, sending lawmakers back to the drawing board to forge a compromise that could end the stalemate and bring about a quic resolution to a partial shutdown now nearing its sixth week. A half dozen Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for the measure, but the tally still fell short of the 60 votes it needed to advance, 52-44. The defeated measure is similar to one the Senate approved unanimously in December, only to see Mr. Trump reject it and the House cancel a planned vote on it. Republican views in the Senate have shifted dramatically since then to reflect the president's." ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Thursday's votes on President Trump's and the Democrats' plans to end the month-long government shutdown were never going to succeed. But they sure seem to have reduced Trump's leverage. Six Republican senators wound up voting for the Democrats' plan to reopen the federal government through Feb. 8 without any wall funding. The measure still failed, falling eight votes shy of the required 60, but it got more votes (52-44) than Trump's own plan (50-47). And that's despite Republicans having six more senators. (On the GOP plan, only West Virginia's Joe Manchin III broke with the Democrats, while immigration hard-liners Mike Lee of Utah and Tom Cotton of Arkansas voted against the proposal.) The Republicans who voted against the GOP plan were Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Susan Collins (Maine), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Johnny Isakson (Ga.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mitt Romney (Utah).... Trump is demanding $5.7 billion in border wall funding or he won't reopen the government, but six GOP senators just served notice that they won't hold that line with him.... What [the vote] most definitely won't do is make [Democrats] feel as though they need to give in."
Mild-mannered Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) has had enough:
Mike Lillis of the Hill: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that House Democrats are not working behind the scenes to craft a counteroffer to President Trump's border wall demands as a strategy for ending the history-making partial shutdown. 'That's not true. That's not true. That's not true,' Pelosi said during a press briefing in the Capitol. Instead, the Speaker asserted that Democrats' strategic blueprint remains unchanged: The House will continue to pass spending bills already authored and endorsed by Republicans, while insisting that Trump reopen the government as the prerequisite for bringing Democrats to the negotiating table on his border wall. 'We are doing what we have been doing all along: working on our congressional responsibility to write bills, appropriations bills, to keep government open,' she said.... Pelosi declined to put a figure on the border security provisions to be included in the Department of Homeland Security bill, being spearheaded by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who heads the Homeland Security Committee. But she emphasized that it will come in addition to other border-related funding already included in House-passed bills to fund other agencies with a hand in security, including the Treasury, Justice and State departments."
Sean Sullivan & Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Republican senators clashed with one another and confronted Vice President Pence inside a private luncheon on Thursday, as anger hit a boiling point over the longest government shutdown in history. 'This is your fault,' Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at one point, according to two Republicans who attended the lunch and witnessed the exchange. 'Are you suggesting I'm enjoying this?' McConnell snapped back, according to the people who attended the lunch.... The argument was one of several heated moments in a lunch that came just before the Senate voted on the opposing plans to end the shutdown offered by President Trump and Democrats. The outbursts highlighted the toll the shutdown has taken on Republican lawmakers, who are dealing with growing concerns from constituents and blame from Democrats, all while facing pressure from conservatives to stand with Trump in his demand for money to build a wall on the border with Mexico."
Greg Sargent: "Pundits can claim all they want that Pelosi is being 'as petty as Trump' [in disinviting him to deliver his SOTU address during his shutdown], as if this is all just a matter of interpersonal conduct. That objection is now irrelevant: What really matters is that Trump will not deliver the speech. He will not use this ceremony as a platform to browbeat Democrats or to spread gales of disinformation about the shutdown and about the wall fantasies driving it. He will not use its pomp and elevating power to, in effect, launder his profound bad faith and the resulting deep imbalance of the situation. Perhaps the only antidote to the false-equivalence fog machine is the reality of power -- the power of 'no.' I don't mean to overstate the long-term significance of this capitulation. Instead, my point is that it gets at the deeper problem we all face here: Trump and his GOP enablers are proceeding as if the 2018 elections never happened.... This is the whole reason for shutting down the government: To break the influence that the Democratic House has over whether Trump's wall will be funded, by threatening severe harm to the country until Democrats rubber stamp what he's demanding.... The true nature of the staggering malevolence driving Trump's misconduct here is also being obscured by a great deal of both-sides media coverage." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: As you know, this is nothing new. From Day 1 of the Obama presidency, Mitch McConnell & his ilk wanted to pretend a Democrat president did not exist, right down to deciding a Democratic president did not have the right to naming a Supreme Court nominee more than a year before the end of his administration.
Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times outlines how Nancy Pelosi has "flummoxed" Donald Trump.
Sylvan Lane of the Hill: "Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Thursday that he was confused why thousands of federal workers, who've already missed one paycheck, are relying on food banks during the partial government shutdown. Ross said on CNBC's 'Squawk Box' that he didn't understand why some of the roughly 800,000 unpaid federal workers have flocked to food banks for meals instead of taking out loans against back pay guaranteed by a bill President Trump signed last week. 'I know they are and I don't really quite understand why,' said Ross, who's reportedly worth roughly $700 million.... Hundreds of banks and credit unions have offered low- or no-interest loans against back pay to federal workers who will not be paid until the shutdown ends. But thousands of those employees are still struggling to cover basic expenses, and furloughed federal contractors may no receive backpay at all." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
Wilbur Ross is @realDonaldTrump's Secretary of Commerce. Wilbur Ross is a billionaire. And this is billionaire Wilbur Ross saying he doesn't understand why federal workers not getting paid during the #TrumpShutdown don't just take out loans *to feed their families*. Unreal. -- Sen. Chuck Schumer, in a tweet Thursday ...
Is this a 'let them eat cake' kind of attitude, or call your father for money? -- Nancy Pelosi, during a news conference Thursday ...
... ** David Lynch & Damian Paletta of the Washington Post: "The Department of Commerce federal credit union is charging furloughed employees almost 9 percent interest on emergency loans to cover their missing paychecks, despite Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross saying Thursday that financial institutions were offering 'very, very low interest rate loans to bridge people over the gap.'... Two loan officers reached at the credit union telephone number confirmed the terms, which include interest rates 'as low as 8.99 percent.'... [Ross] described such loans as 'totally safe' for the lender. Since Congress has promised to pay employees for their time away from work, the loans effectively carry 'a 100 percent government guarantee,' Ross said." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Ross's last point is ludicrous, as I understand it. Personal loans typically require no collateral (like, um, your next paycheck). So unless the loan agreement included an automatic wage garnishment clause, there would be nothing forcing the borrower to pay back the loan once he got his back paychecks. And unless the federal government were a party to the loan, which there's no reason to think it would be, there's no government loan "guarantee" whatsoever. I could be wrong on this, but I don't think such loans work the way Ross seems to imagine they do. Moreover, these unpaid workers have to qualify for personal loans, & it should go without saying (to anyone who isn't Wilbur Ross) that people who live paycheck-to-paycheck may not have credit ratings that will get them the lowest-interest loans available. ...
... Mary Olmstead of Slate: "Ross was not alone Thursday in missing the mark on the shutdown's effects on workers. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters that federal workers were 'volunteering' by coming to work without pay. When a reporter challenged Kudlow, he responded with frustration:... '... They honor us by their service.... Democrats have shut government down.... And they do it because of their love for the country and the office of the presidency and presumably their allegiance to President Trump...." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: "Volunteers" showing up for work without pay are doing so because they can be fired if they don't, not because of "their allegiance to President* Trump." Kudlow has come up with a whole new definition of "volunteer." Slaves would have been volunteers, too, under Kudlow's construction. ...
... Colby Itkowitz of the Washington Post runs down some of the tone-deaf remarks Donald Trump & his band of billionaires & nitwits have made about federal workers & contractors financially unprepared to go weeks or months without any income. "When he became president, [Trump] filled his Cabinet with fellow billionaires, almost assuring that they would not understand the struggles of the average American.... The overarching issue is that Trump has surrounded himself with people for whom it is incomprehensible that someone wouldn't have a pool of money to tide them over while they go weeks without pay. That most Americans depend on their ... wages to pay for housing, cars, child care and other expenses that are part of daily life.... According to Trump and his allies, anyone taking a job in public service should be prepared mentally and financially to lose their pay on the assumption that Washington can't do its job." ...
... AND Donald Trump thinks grocery stores should help foot the bill for his shutdown. Mrs. McC: Grocery chains, BTW, operate on a very low profit margin -- something like one or two percent.
Katie Galiato of Politico: "Gary Cohn, the former top economic adviser to ... Donald Trump, told MSNBC on Thursday that his former boss has 'got to get the government open' and allow a steady flow of immigrants into the U.S. to maintain economic growth. Cohn, a former executive at Goldman Sachs, was director of the National Economic Council until earlier this year, when he stepped down amid disagreements over the president's tariff policies.... 'We have over 7 million job openings. We have less than 7 million unemployed people in the United States,' he said on MSNBC. 'If we want to continue to grow our economy, there's only one way to do it -- allow immigrants into the country.' Cohn, who last week called the shutdown 'completely wrong' in an interview with The Boston Globe, added that negotiations should wait until the shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history and in its 34th day, is resolved." (Also linked yesterday.)
Matt Wilstein of the Daily Beast: "The last time he was on Stephen Colbert's Late Show, Michael Moore said that that only way to stop ... Donald Trump would be to 'put our bodies on the line.' On Thursday night, he had issued a new challenge, this one to the 800,000 federal workers who are either furloughed or working without pay during the government shutdown.... Asked by Colbert how this whole thing will end, Moore said there's an 'easy way' to end it. 'Federal workers, don't go to work without pay,' he said. 'And we, the people, we shouldn't be supporting anything that requires someone who's not paid working for us.' He went on to urge all Americans to stop taking flights and delay filing their tax paperwork to the IRS until the government reopens. 'Consult a lawyer first, don't listen to him,' Colbert warned viewers." Includes video.
Sam Blum of Popular Mechanics: "Speaking on Monday at an award ceremony in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., [Association of Flight Attendants union President Sara] Nelson suggested the collective power of furloughed workers and their allies could potentially signal the end of the longest government shutdown in the country's history: 'Almost a million workers are locked out or being forced to work without pay. Others are going to work when our workspace is increasingly unsafe. What is the Labor Movement waiting for? Go back with the Fierce Urgency of NOW to talk with your Locals and International unions about all workers joining together - To End this Shutdown with a General Strike....' Though the AFA does not represent employees impacted by the federal government's shutdown, Nelson advocated the cause for a general strike as a matter of solidarity, citing the 800,000 caught in the crosshairs as the deadlock continues...." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: That's a pretty good idea. Federal employees can't strike, but members of private-sector unions can. If the flight attendants & pilots walked out for a few days, grounding almost all U.S. commercial flights, Trump & McConnell might get off their asses. It should not have to come to that, but most of what's going on in Right Wing World should not be happening now.
Brian Faler of Politico: "The IRS is facing tax season amid the shutdown with new rules that could complicate filing for millions of Americans -- demand a potential shortage of workers to handle the returns -- raising the possibility of refund delays and angry taxpayers. As it prepares to accept 2018 filings beginning Monday, the administration has recalled tens of thousands of IRS employees, but there are already signs that some will be no-shows because they're facing the prospect of working without pay. An IRS union says some are taking advantage of rules allowing them to stay home if they face financial hardships. The public, meanwhile, will be filing for the first time under Republicans' sweeping tax overhaul, H.R. 1, and many will surely be confused by changes made as part of the biggest tax code rewrite in a generation. At the same time, even experts are unsure whether workers have had the correct amount of taxes withheld from their paychecks, which could mean that many people accustomed to receiving refunds may instead owe the IRS. 'The politicians are playing with dynamite if something goes wrong during filing season,' said former IRS Commissioner Larry Gibbs.... 'If you don't pay refunds to people who are expecting them on a timely basis, all hell breaks loose.'" (Also linked yesterday.)
Men get such hard-ons from putting their name on stuff. You guys don't grow up; it's like you need to pee on everything. -- Natalie Keener, character in the film "Up in the Air" (2009) accidentally explaining Donald Trump
This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.
** Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Trump who has spent decades plying the dark arts of scandal-mongering and dirty tricks to help influence American political campaigns, was arrested early Friday after an indictment was unsealed in the special counsel investigation. Mr. Stone was charged with seven counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering, according to the special counsel's office." Includes a copy of the grand-jury indictment. Mrs. McC: For a document replete with "on or about"s, the indictment is pretty easy reading. ...
... Brian Schwartz of CNBC: "Former White House chief strategist and Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon is the unidentified 'high-ranking Trump campaign official' in special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of Roger Stone, CNBC has learned. The indictment released Friday said the campaign official reached out to Stone in October 2016, a month before ... Donald Trump was elected, 'about the status of future releases by Organization 1.' The unidentified organization clearly refers to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.... A person with direct knowledge of the matter ... [said] that Bannon has spoken with Mueller's team, along with the Senate Intelligence Committee, about the exchange." ...
... Update: Suggestions others have made as to who the high-ranking official was: Rick Gates & Paul Manafort. ...
The FBI agents who arrested Roger Stone before sunrise this morning - like all the bureau's 35,000 employees - are not getting paid due to the shutdown. -- Jim Sciutto of CNN, in a tweet
"FBI. Open the Door!" Just another day in Trumpworld. Here's some footage of armed FBI personnel at Stone's Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home:
My first reaction is real simple: this has nothing to do with the President, and certainly nothing to do with the White House. -- Sarah Sanders, to CNN this morning
Right. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "The Senate Intelligence Committee has issued a subpoena to compel Michael D. Cohen, President Trump's former lawyer, to appear before the panel next month to formally correct false testimony that he delivered last year about a proposed Trump Organization project in Moscow, one of his lawyers confirmed on Thursday. The subpoena was disclosed a day after Mr. Cohen pulled out of a public hearing scheduled for Feb. 7 before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, citing in a letter from his lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, verbal attacks by Mr. Trump."
Manuel Roig-Franzia & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Over the past several months, author and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi has emerged as one of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's most vexing witnesses in his probe of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Corsi -- perhaps best known for promoting the false idea that former president Barack Obama was not born in the United States -- has released internal special counsel documents, fulminated against alleged plea-deal offers and published a hastily written e-book outlining his account of interactions with his onetime ally, the longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, a subject of intense scrutiny in Mueller's probe. At the same time, Corsi says, he has been collecting what he describes as $15,000-a-month payments from Infowars, a website that has attacked the special counsel investigation as a deep-state conspiracy designed to topple President Trump. An attorney for Infowars confirmed that these payments continued for the past six months as severance since Corsi lost his post as the website's Washington bureau chief -- a job that Stone helped arrange, according to both Corsi and Stone.... Mueller's team appears to be exploring whether the payments were made to ensure that Corsi would offer investigators a version of events favorable to Stone, the person said."
** Laura Strickler, et al., of NBC News: "Jared Kushner's application for a top secret clearance was rejected by two career White House security specialists after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence on him -- but their supervisor overruled the recommendation and approved the clearance, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. The official, Carl Kline, is a former Pentagon employee who was installed as director of the personnel security office in the Executive Office of the President in May 2017. Kushner's was one of at least 30 cases in which Kline overruled career security experts and approved a top secret clearance for incoming Trump officials despite unfavorable information, the two sources said. They said the number of rejections that were overruled was unprecedented -- it had happened only once in the three years preceding Kline's arrival." ...
... Brent Griffiths of Politico: "Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said on Thursday that his wide-ranging investigation into the White House's process for issuing security clearances 'explicitly covers' Jared Kushner, after [the NBC News report linked above] characterized the way the White House senior adviser obtained his clearance as unprecedented."
Marcy Wheeler, in a New Republic piece, explains how Trump gets his subordinates to lie for him. His suborning perjury is more nuanced than "directing" them to lie: "In this administration, the president doesn't need to order his subordinates to lie for him. It's a daily matter of course. Mueller's team seems to be wise to that, even if Congress and much of the media aren't quite there yet." Mrs. McC: It all sounds very mobby to me: "Yo, McGahn. You're gonna tell Mikey to do the thing about the thing. Right?" "Badda bing, badda boom, boss."
Andrew DeGrandpre, et al., of the Washington Post: "U.S. officials at the southern border will begin sending some asylum applicants back to Mexico on Friday as the Trump administration implements new measures preventing migrants from waiting in the United States while their cases are processed. The initiative, announced by the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday night, follows high-level talks between the two governments late last year as U.S. border officials struggled to contend with waves of Central American migrants fleeing violence and poverty. It will be introduced in California, at the San Ysidro port of entry south of San Diego, and eventually expanded throughout the nearly 2,000-mile border, a DHS official said earlier Thursday.... Immigrant rights groups have opposed it, saying it violates U.S. and international asylum laws and could face court challenges. 'The president thinks he can do this unilaterally,' said Kevin Appleby [of] ... the Center for Migration Studies. 'But it's a blatant rejection of current law.'"
Kevin Breuninger & Tucker Higgins of CNBC: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has proposed a 'wealth tax' on some of the richest Americans. The new tax from Warren, who recently announced her bid to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020, would only apply to Americans with more than $50 million in assets." ...
... Jeff Stein & Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will propose a new annual 'wealth tax' on Americans with more than $50 million in assets, according to an economist advising her on the plan, as Democratic leaders vie for increasingly aggressive solutions to the nation's soaring wealth inequality. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two left-leaning economists at the University of California, Berkeley, have been advising Warren on a proposal to levy a 2 percent wealth tax on Americans with assets above $50 million, as well as a 3 percent wealth tax on those who have more than $1 billion, according to Saez.... The wealth tax would raise $2.75 trillion over a ten-year period from about 75,000 families, or less than 0.1 percent of U.S. households, Saez said." ...
... Hamilton Nolan of Splinter: "The economic inequality crisis in America is not rooted in income inequality — it is rooted in wealth inequality. To solve it, you can't just tax income; you have to forge into the new frontier of taxing wealth.... Most of the very richest people in America — the mega-billionaires, who represent the top tier of wealth that really stretches out the inequality figures -- are not rich because they get paid well each year from their job. They are rich because they own assets, most often financial assets like stock, or entire companies. Their earned income each year may be relatively trivial, but their wealth can grow hugely as stock prices increase. And since America does such a poor job of taxing capital gains and inheritances, wealth inequality grows and grows." ...
... Hmmm. Kevin Drum: "The 16th Amendment allows the federal government to levy direct income taxes, even if the income is derived from real or personal property, but a direct federal tax on property itself is still forbidden by the Constitution unless it's proportional to the population of each state -- which I'm sure is something Warren doesn't have in mind. But nobody seems to be mentioning this. Am I missing something?"
Alex Hern of the Guardian: "Facebook has settled a class action lawsuit that had accused it of allowing children to run up huge bills on their parents' credit cards as part of a concerted effort to maximise revenues. Court documents obtained by the US-based Center for Investigative Reporting, initially sealed as part of a lawsuit filed in 2012, revealed Facebook staffers discussing what to do with the 'whales', as they referred to the high-spending children, before deciding to refuse refunds. Internally, the company described the problem as one of 'friendly fraud', and one staffer, who was in charge of a project to increase the company's game revenues, said it was particularly bad with a few games, including 'PetVille, Happy Aquarium, Wild Ones, Barn Buddy and any Ninja game'. Those games allowed users to buy in-game advantages with real money. But the link was frequently unclear to parents and children. Younger children just didn't understand the concept, while older children and teens were unaware that their parents' credit cards were linked to the accounts until they had run up bills in the thousands of dollars."
Beyond the Beltway
Florida. Jeffrey Schweers of the Tallahassee Democrat: "Michael Ertel, the newly appointed [Florida] Secretary of State of Gov. Ron DeSantis, has resigned after photos emerged of him posing as a Hurricane Katrina victim in blackface at a private Halloween party 14 years ago. The photos obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat were shown to the Governor's Office on Thursday morning. Hours later it issued a statement. 'The governor accepted Secretary Ertel's resignation,' the Governor's Office said. At a news conference on hurricane relief in Marianna, DeSantis addressed the resignation. 'It's unfortunate. He's done a lot of good work,' he said, adding that he accepted the resignation because 'I don't want to get mired in side controversies.' The photo was taken in 2005, eight months after Ertel was appointed Seminole County supervisor of elections and two months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. After the Democrat texted the photos to him last week, Ertel, 49, identified himself as the white man in blackface and red lipstick, wearing earrings and a New Orleans Saints bandanna, and falsies under a purple T-shirt that had 'Katrina Victim' written on it." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: A "side controversy"??? In case you were skeptical of charges that DeSantis was a racist, this should settle the matter. ...
Now, I'm not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I'm simply saying the racists believe he's a racist. -- Andrew Gillum, October 2018
Way Beyond
Venezuela. Ana Herrero & Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times: "The leader of Venezuela’s armed forces declared loyalty to President Nicolás Maduro on Thursday and said the opposition's effort to replace him with a transitional government amounted to an attempted coup. The pronouncement by the defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, came a day after an opposition lawmaker proclaimed himself the country's rightful leader during nationwide protests and pleaded with the armed forces to abandon Mr. Maduro. The defense minister's declaration was a setback for the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, whose claim to legitimacy has been backed by a number of countries, including the United States. In a further blow to the opposition, Russia warned the United States on Thursday against meddling in Venezuela, a longtime Kremlin ally that has received billions of dollars in Russian support.... [U.S.] Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ignored the admonitions and intensified the Trump administration's call for other countries to accept Mr. Guaidó and renounce Mr. Maduro."
Ukraine. Andrew Kramer of the New York Times: "Former President Viktor F. Yanukovych committed treason by inviting Russia to invade Ukraine and reverse a pro-Western revolution that ousted him from power, a court in Kiev ruled on Thursday, sentencing Mr. Yanukovych to 13 years in prison. The former president is a widely reviled figure in Ukraine for his over-the-top corruption -- he lived in a palace with a private zoo -- and because the police shot dozens of antigovernment demonstrators during an uprising in 2014. He has also been widely characterized in Ukraine and the West as pro-Russia -- and even as a puppet of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. The court's ruling was the first to formally determine that Mr. Yanukovych was serving Russian interests while president of Ukraine.... Before his work on the 2016 Trump campaign, Paul J. Manafort was a political consultant for Mr. Yanukovych...."
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The grammar gremlin in me picked up on that “amount of aliens” right away. As Marie points out, “amount” is used for cases in which you can’t distinguish individuals or separate units of a group. If you could, the correct usage would be “number”. But a simultaneous recognition was that, for Trump and Miller, and the rest of the Blight House racists, “amount” is how they think in this situation. They’re not people, not individuals, not even human. They’re icky stuff. Stuff that needs to be cleaned out and disposed of.
It’s not a mistake. It’s how they actually think.
So I guess, they picked the right word, for them.
So Roger Stone moves up to the front of the line as The Confederacy’s newest martyr. They’re never wrong, they never do anything unethical, immoral, or illegal. But if they do, it’s because Liberals MADE them do it. Oh, and for freeedom!
I’m guessing that tattoo of Ticky Dick Stone has on his ass will a great source of interest for fellow inmates in federal prison. “C’mon, Roger. Just one more time. Make him wink”.
Ha, should have been Tricky Dick, but I guess Ticky Dick works too.
@Akhilleus: Yeah, I thought of that, too. You have to recognize "aliens" as individual people, and Trump & Miller can't do that in most cases.
The only way for an "alien" to peal off the amorphous pile of "other" as an individual is to make (or steal) a lot of money & give some of it to Trump or to have a lot of power & be hostile to democracy. It helps if Trump deems said alien "white," but when it comes to money & power, Trump is amazingly color-blind. So Carlos slim is okay; "Mexicans" are rapists & criminals who tie up women & duct-tape their mouths (he said went tot he bound-and-gagged women story again yesterday -- as far as anyone can tell it's a made-up "problem"); the murderous Mohammed bin Salman is a great friend to the U.S.; Muslims are terrorists.
Speaking of the amorphous pile of "other," Emerson made an remarkable -- and perhaps seminal -- observation in his treatise "The American Scholar": "The world — this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around." That is, we become ourselves by observing & learning from the "other"/the world.
So, just as his speech, on the whole, provided an intellectual framework for "American independence" from European thought, it also acknowledged America's debt to "the world" of ideas & actions, whether coming from within or without.
Trump of course is all id. He knows only the "within," and cannot comprehend the "without" nor does he care to. Even tho he borrows his "ideas" from others -- Fox "News" & the Daily Conspiracy Report -- he barely acknowledges his "sources" & often boasts his pronouncements are his "ideas," claiming for instance that the term "fake news" is a term he invented, as if no one had used it before him. When you compare Trump's narrow view to Emerson's expansive view of experience, it's easy to see that Trump is the antithesis of the American idea.
Here's a road map of Move-On events on Jan. 29––lets you find any in your area.
https://act.moveon.org/event/peoples-state-union-speak-outs_attend/search/
"Trump is the antithesis of the American idea" is perfectly parsed. I sometimes feel as though I'm living in a Twilight Zone production in which everything normal has become abnormal which becomes normal and goes to hell.
And hats off to Michael Bennet who turned from a mild mannered Clark Kent to a Superman on the senate floor. Bravo Bennet--bravo!!!!
Will You Meet Me in the Country
Picking up on Marie's contention (absolutely correct) that Trump is the antithesis of the idea of America, and certainly the American ideal, especially as outlined by Emerson, I'd like to pull on that thread a bit.
Emerson's belief system owes much to the ancient Stoics. Marie's reminder that he held fast to the idea that it was necessary to open oneself to the world, to others, in order to become a more complete, more authentic person and to become an agent for good in the world stands in stark contrast to the worldview, such as it is, of the Trumpbots now running the country.
Early in his intellectual development, Emerson was enthralled by the Romantics, especially Wordsworth, not a huge surprise given the interest both had for the natural world. And the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge helped point Emerson toward some of his best thinking on the role of nature in human development.
For Emerson, nature, through the agency of the universe makes us, for better or worse, not the other way around, a thought apparently held by narcissists like Trump--and don't forget how the Bushies believed that they were the creators of reality--must be a winger speciality.
(And here I apologize for a bit of commentia interruptus, but I find it impossible to write or say the phrase "Wordsworth and Coleridge" without recalling Van Morrison's spectacular little masterpiece "Summertime in England", a giant of a song, a stream of consciousness lyric about the natural and spiritual world, especially seen through poetry, including that of Blake, T.S. Eliot, Yeats, and the above mentioned duo. Van asks "Didja ever hear about....Wordsworth and Coleridge? They were smokin' up in Kendal." Of course this never fails to tickle me, the image of the two friends sharing a doobie as they sit on their porch reveling in the sun setting over the lakes. And by the way, can you picture Trump reading either of these guys? Okay, we now rejoin our previous programming, already in progress..)
Reading Marie's reminder of Emerson's sense of the importance of a connection to something outside oneself brought to mind one of my favorite lines from Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations". Marcus, another Stoic, also felt strongly that the individual was responsible for himself or herself, but also had a responsibility to country and to the world at large: "As Antoninus, my city and country is Rome: as a human being, it is the world." (I love when he refers to himself as Antoninus.)
Is there any chance that a self-dealing dimwit like Trump thinks along similar lines? And this is not just a throw-away question. It brings up a vital part of Confederate thinking, especially filtered through the tiny orange brain. The world doesn't matter, others don't matter. The problems of others don't matter. Issues vital to the rest of the world don't matter. Only I matter. Only We (Confederates) matter.
This is not only selfish and short-sighted, but dangerous.
Marcus contends that selfish people harm only themselves (I have to take issue here with the Emperor. The selfishness of Trump harms a lot of people). He goes on to point out that things like "ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness" stem from ignorance. And that ignorance itself, most often comes from ignoring the advice of Emerson to engage with those outside yourself.
Fat chance for this Blight House, where lies paper over the ignorance which covers up the lies, which...well, you get it.
And by the way, if you have 15 minutes, listen to "Summertime in England". Artistry of a high order, baby. Enjoy, and smile. There's a lot of good in the world despite the Fat Orange Monster and his selfish, ignorant gnomes.
And if poetry and song help you to connect with the other, well, so much the better.
Smokin' up in Kendal...ha!
And speaking of ignorance and liars...
I see where Liarbee (isn't she supposed to be leaving? Hurry it up already, willya?) is sniffing that the arrest of Roger Stone has nothing to do with Trump.
Sure. And the Plumbers had nothing to do with Nixon.
Those crazy Republicans and their dirty tricks and lies. They got a million of 'em.
All of these arrests, indictments, guilty pleas, prison sentences...just coincidences. Nothing to do with Trump. Except the one thing everyone who has been arrested, indicted, found guilty, and sentenced to prison have in common is...Trump.
Funny, in'it?
Thanks, Akhillius. I had never heard Van Morrison before. It's not just the lyrics; I love the musicianship.
Thanks, also, Marie, for the grammar lesson. However, since it is Friday, Ancient Aliens is on all day and it's up to its usual hypotheses of conspiracies of "alien" invasions. It's worth considering that Trump, that great lover of conspiracies, believes that the illegal aliens he is talking about are, in fact, "aliens" from "out there" - in which case it would be difficult for any human to decide whether he/she is seeing a "unit" or a "pile of" aliens. amiright?
Just a thought, since none of this has anything to do with Trump...
If Stone and Manafort, Gates, Flynn, Papadopoulos, Cohen, and a half dozen other guys, had never gotten involved with Trump or his campaign, would they be under investigation, arrest, indictment, etc. today?
Stone and Manafort have been ratfuckers for years but only after getting involved with the Trump fiasco are they both in the shit, one is going to prison for life, the other probably should be.
But none of this has anything to do with Trump...
Those folks at 'Fox & Friends' got that 'process crime' phrase from
packages of 'process cheese'. They've been eating too much 'process
cheese' and are suffering from brain constipation.
Process crime is just a side effect. It isn't real. Process cheese is
also a side effect, a combination of ingredients. It isn't real.
Glad I'm into real cheese.
Forrest,
You're talking about people who think Cheez Whiz on the broccoli is the last word in haute cuisine.
Hey do you think what we have is a processed presidency? In which case they picked the really stinky cheese, maybe that Gorgonzola that was left in a shoebox in the closet for three years.
Victoria,
Glad you enjoyed Van the Man.
Stoics rule the day it seems. Well, at least where rationality exists.
Today's debut column by Jamelle Bouie in the Times includes this thought:
"But the president’s wall still looms as a racist provocation, a total repudiation of what the historian John Higham called 'America’s cosmopolitan faith — a concept of nationality that stresses the diversity of the nation’s origins, the egalitarian dimension of its self-image, and the universality of its founding principles.'"
The idea of cosmopolitanism began with the Stoics and comes from the Greek word kosmopolitês, "citizen of the world". Marcus at one point notes that "the good of a rational creature lies in a community". Every human, by virtue of her or his rationality, is an automatic member of this community, the universe-city, the cosmopolis, and should be valued as such.
The opposite of this is a closed, pinched, irrational fiefdom ruled by ignorance and fear, populated by a tribe purged of otherness, devoid of cosmopolitan sensibilities. In other words, Trump World.
We busily divide our sorry race into two kinds of people, Rs and Ds, dumb and smart, immoral and moral, but I'm thinking the distinction that may count more than any other is at the heart of Liarby's latest on climate change. It's all in the hands of god, she says...so she doesn’t have to do anything about it.
https://grist.org/article/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-gets-biblical-on-sarah-huckabee-sanders/
That attitude would make her, and anyone who shares it, terminally lazy. Leave it up to god...All those welfare cheats the R’s decry don’t hold a candle to such criminal intellectual and moral sluggishness.
My grandmother ingrained this one into me at a very early age:
“I can’t is a sluggard, too lazy to work
From duty he shrinks, every task he shall shirk.
No bread on his board, no meal in his bag,
His house is a ruin, his coat is a rag.”
While that ditty has likely informed my mundane life, I think it works even better as a metaphor for the sloth of all the Trumpistas so lazy they are thoughtlessly ruining everyone else's life, too.
Ken,
"It's all in the hands of God" is another way of saying that certain people deserve what they get. People are poor. "It's god's will." Others are rich. "It's god's will."
Then there is the old "God did it to punish you" trope. Hurricanes batter us because gays and lesbians are allowed to marry. Diseases spread because liberals allow abortion.
It's a lazy way of thinking but also a get out of doing anything about it card as well.
I heard someone say recently that if god didn't want Trump to be president, he wouldn't have helped him.
I think she meant Putin, but you never know.
While I'm on a bit of a poetry kick today, this one popped into my head:
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast...
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down."
Robert Frost
Looks like a must read:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/books/review/william-davies-nervous-states.html
...for those who can still stand to think about what in hell went wrong.
Good news about the shutdown reprieve. If we can get out of the country tonight, we might be able to get back in a few weeks from now.
Wonder if the Pretender thinks this move will get him a wall?
Hope to goodness it doesn't, not a brick of it, and that when it doesn't we're not back living Groundhog Day all over again.
Have my fears, though It's not as if reason prevails in that small brain.
I listened to DiJiT's capitulation address on the car radio, and got the mental image of Nancy Pelosi standing behind him arm outstretched with a cocked double action Colt held to his temple. You could almost hear the flop-sweat rolling off his Adderall-clammy brow.
Then he went on to his recitation of scary stories -- it was like Pelosi (or "The Speaker of the House," as I call her) had put the Colt on half-cock and stepped to the side, and DiJiT was free to spout nonsense again.
You'll get to hear that stuff about the duct tape again in the SOU, which they can probably now hold next week. But he'll be aware that The Speaker of the House is sitting RIGHT BEHIND HIM.
Also ... I just saw that Coulter now twits that DiJiT is the biggest wimp-prez ever. Poor guy is being pummeled by women from both sides. (PS - Coulter says he replaces Bush 41 as wimpiest ever. How you could call a guy who flew TBDs in the WW2 Pacific a wimp has always puzzled me.)
No Bush about it - DiJiT has ALWAYS been the biggest wimp.
Ak - the first time I read that Frost poem, I thought that he was no farmer and had never been to Ireland.
The walls exist primarily because you have to put the rocks somewhere when you clear a field. Same in most of New England.
A lot of rocks.
Patrick,
Ha-ha. As the direct descendant of Irish farmers (on the rock strewn fields of the Aran Isles, where cousins still own property), and someone who grew up in New England, I get what you're saying. I think for Frost, it was perhaps a response to a particularly curmudgeonly neighbor in flinty New Hampshire.
I have to say that in an aesthetic way, I'm a fan of those low, rock walls. And I guess walls make good neighbors, but mostly if your neighbor is a dick.
Like Trump.
Nancy 2 - Fatty -2
I suppose some would give Fatty a 0, but not me. Caving is worse than losing. It's like giving up, which nets you a negative value.
Fatty Caves. Again. Second time in a week. This is not what racist, misogynistic Trump Boys thought they were getting. They thought they were getting a woman hating, pussy-grabbing tough guy who promised to put those uppity broads in their place and tell them when they could go outside and pee.
Instead, here we have Nancy Pelosi instructing Fatty that he could pee only if he caved, and then, he had to go outside and squat to do it.
And he did.
LOSER.
And what next? We all reconvene in a few weeks and do it again? What makes anyone (including Sean (I love Trump's Nutsack Against My Chin) Hannity believe the outcome will be different? Pelosi has proved to Democrats that if they stand tall and order Fatty to tell his story walkin', that he will tuck tail and do as he's told. Trump has proven that....he's an insignificant, impotent douchebag liar. And now he's been given the heave-ho by Coulter.
He's toast.
Oh, and one other thing that Patrick mentioned, with which I completely agree, is the ridiculousness of a putz like Ann Coulter branding Bush senior a wimp.
No one who climbs into a plane, especially the Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber he flew, that had only been in production for a couple of years, and was required to fly low over enemy ships, through withering anti-aircraft fire, could ever be considered a wimp. Has Coulter ever done this? Or anything even close. I'm betting she'd shit her pants if she was ever in a dive bomber on a dry run.
This is just one of the reasons his stupid kid decided he had to avoid the wimp title at all costs and instead blew up half the Middle East, killed, wounded, maimed, and displaced a million people and cost the US trillions of dollars.
One of the primary tenets of the Stoics is not to worry about what idiots say about you.
Clearly, Republicans have nothing to do with Stoicism.
My final contribution before my wife and I get on a plane with the son (and his family) who sent this to me.
https://www.thecut.com/2019/01/roger-stone-indictment-bianca-randy-credico-dog.html
I knew these people were just plains nuts, but....
From outward signs the dog seems sane enough yet, but still, poor, poor dog.
And one other thing about the latest Fatty cave.
This last month has been like a beginning chess player who screwed up, had no idea what he was doing, gave up all his major pieces and had nothing but his king and a couple of misplaced pawns mired in never-never land, being chased around the board by an opponent who had all her armaments and was just toying with the poor sap.
She finally put him out of his misery with a mate.
The point is that all this could have been avoided four weeks ago if Fatty had just given in. A smart chess player, if he or she has been cornered, understands that it's humiliating to be chased around the board like a jiggly jamoke who doesn't know castling from en passant.
Instead, he subjected millions of Americans to extreme anxiety and distress, all so he could pretend he was still in charge, when all he had was two pawns and his raggedy ass king, being chased down blind alleys as a way of dragging out his shame and degradation.
Honestly, my eight year old could kick his ass. AND he knows how and when to castle.
Time and money wasted and severe emotional distress inflicted on Americans?
Too much losing.
Ken,
Enjoy your trip. Safe home.