;)
The Commentariat -- March 12, 2019
Afternoon Update:
Edward Wong & Daniel Victor of the New York Times: "The United States is withdrawing all remaining diplomatic personnel from its embassy in Venezuela's capital, Caracas, because of worsening conditions in the country, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said late Monday. The move is a setback for the Trump administration, which had vowed to keep diplomats in the country to legitimize the opposition challenger to President Nicolás Maduro, who cut diplomatic ties with the United States in January. Mr. Pompeo said the move reflected the 'deteriorating situation' in the country and the belief that the presence of American diplomats 'has become a constraint on U.S. policy.' The last phrase could be read as hinting at some form of military intervention."
Tom Winter, et al., of NBC News: "Hollywood actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman are among 50 people charged in a $25 million college entrance exam cheating scheme, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday. The alleged scam focused on getting students admitted to elite universities as recruited athletes, regardless of their athletic abilities, and helping potential students cheat on their college exams, according to the indictment unsealed in Boston. Authorities said the FBI investigation, code-named Operation Varsity Blues, uncovered a network of wealthy parents who paid thousands of dollars to a California man who boosted their childrens' chances of gaining entrance into elite colleges, such as Yale and Stanford, by paying people to take tests for their children, bribing test administrators to allow it to happen, and bribing college coaches and administrators to identify the applicants as athletes."
Annie Karni & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: A new book titled Kushner Inc., by journalist Vicky Ward, "portrays [Ivanka] Trump and [Jared] Kushner as two children forged by their domineering fathers ... who have climbed to positions of power by disregarding protocol and skirting the rules when they can. And Ms. Ward tries to unravel the narrative that the two serve as stabilizing voices inside an otherwise chaotic White House, depicting them instead as Mr. Trump's chief enablers." After Donald Trump expressed support for white nationalists in Charlottesville, Gary Cohn "was shocked" when Ivanka told him, 'My dad's not a racist; he didn't mean any of it.'... Appearing to channel her father, she added, 'That's not what he said.'"
Nick Ochsner of WBTV (Charlotte, N.C.): "The Department of Justice has issued subpoenas for a federal grand jury investigation into allegations of election fraud in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District.... The subpoenas come less than a month after the North Carolina State Board of Elections voted unanimously to hold a new election in the 9th District. The vote came at the abrupt end of a four-day evidentiary hearing held by the board that concluded with Republican Mark Harris -- the candidate who received the winning number of votes in the November 2018 contest -- admitting he had given incorrect testimony and calling for a new election."
Tucker Carlson wants you to know you're a horrible person and he's a brave defender of "independent thoughts." Here's Tucker's official Fox "News" response -- adapted from Monday night's brilliant monologue -- to what we horrible people are doing to him -- and to all conservatives who must "police themselves" to toe the line of "progressive orthodoxy." Punchline: "But we will never bow to the mob -- ever. No matter what." As far as I can tell, this is not meant to be funny. ...
... See also Akhilleus's commentary below.
~~~~~~~~~~
Lord Dampnut's Proposal. Jim Tankersley & Michael Tackett of the New York Times: "President Trump sent Congress on Monday a record $4.75 trillion budget request that proposes an increase in military spending and sharp cuts to domestic programs like education and environmental protection for the 2020 fiscal year. Mr. Trump's budget, the largest in federal history, includes a nearly 5 percent increase in military spending -- which is more than the Pentagon had asked for -- and an additional $8.6 billion for construction of a border wall with Mexico. White House officials said the budget would include a total of $1.9 trillion in cuts to mandatory safety net programs, like Medicaid. It also proposes new work requirements for working-age adult recipients of supplemental nutrition assistance, federal housing support and Medicaid, a move the administration said would reduce spending on those programs by $327 billion." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Katia Dmitrieva of Bloomberg News: "President Donald Trump's newest budget forecasts the U.S. fiscal deficit surpassing $1 trillion this year and staying above that level until 2022. The fiscal 2020 proposal sees the deficit expanding to $1.1 trillion for 2019 and 2020, when Trump will run for re-election." --s ...
... Tara Golshan of Vox: "... Donald Trump's administration unveiled its third budget proposal Monday, cementing a vision for the United States that bolsters funding for defense and border walls, while severely cutting social programs for the nation's poorest. The $4.7 trillion budget proposal, which encompasses everything from funding for food aid, education, and health care to national defense, seeks to slash $845 billion from Medicare -- a program Trump notably promised to leave untouched -- $241 billion from Medicaid through major structural reforms, as well as a 9 percent cut across non-defense programs, all while increasing the defense budget to $750 billion, 5 percent more than the 2019 budget.... As Democratic presidential candidates continue to unveil proposals to increase taxes on the wealthy to boost the nation's social safety net, it's clear Trump is offering the opposite vision." ...
... Sarah Kliff of Vox: "Democratic presidential candidates have spent years building a new vision of American policy, one where a lot more of us get our health insurance from the government. I see President Trump's newly released budget as his counterproposal to all that. It envisions a really different future, one where government-run health care shrinks -- and public programs become more difficult to sign up for. Here are some key health policy features of the Trump budget[.]" Kliff runs down the potential effects on health care. --s ...
... Alan Pyke of ThinkProgress: "President Donald Trump's new budget proposal would cut Social Security payouts by $84 billion over the next decade while providing fewer resources to explain the changes to recipients.... Though Trump has previously made repeated promises to shield Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits from the budget ax, his administration asserts that cuts to Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) do not constitute cuts to the Social Security program writ large." --s ...
... Gomez of ThinkProgress: "The White House released its 2020 budget proposal on Monday, proposing more than $1 trillion in cuts to the popular programs Medicare and Medicaid and giving insight into what the executive branch would do if Congress didn't control the federal government's pocketbook. The most notable cut comes out of Medicaid, a health program for people who are low-income or have a disability, which Trump proposes cutting by more than $700 billion over 10 years. The budget calls for Medicaid block grants to states[.]" --s ...
... Kiley Kroh of ThinkProgress: "As President Donald Trump prepares his to release his fiscal year 2020 budget request, he is expected to propose massive cuts to the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) renewable energy and energy efficiency budget.... Trump's proposal will slash the budget for DOE's Office of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (EERE) from $2.3 billion to $700 million -- a roughly 70 percent cut -- Bloomberg reported this week, citing a department official familiar with the plan. " --s ...
... Pompeo Good with Bare-bones Budget. Lindsay Wise of the Kansas City Star & Brian Lowry of the Wichita Eagle (reprinted in the Miami Herald): "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday that $13 billion in proposed budget cuts for his agency won't hurt America's 'swagger' abroad. The Trump administration's budget plan, released Monday, would slash the budget for the State Department and international programs by more than 23 percent, from $55.8 billion to a proposed $42.8 billion. In an interview Monday with McClatchy's Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle, Pompeo said he was deeply involved in preparing the budget and would support it before Congress.... When he became Secretary of State last year, Pompeo pledged to help the agency 'get its swagger back.' Asked on Monday how that would be possible in the face of such deep cuts, Pompeo was unfazed. 'When I talked about swagger it was about going out in the world and having the confidence that as an American diplomat you represent the greatest nation in th history of the world,' he said." ...
... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "I've noted before that Donald Trump lives by a famous dictum from Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist: 'When one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it.'... And the President has outdone himself with his Administration's new budget proposal for the 2020 fiscal year, which is entitled 'A Budget for a Better America:. Promises Kept. Taxpayers First.' 'Promises kept' has a particularly nice ring to it. Almost as nice as what Trump said on that fateful day, June 16, 2015, when he descended the escalator at Trump Tower. 'Save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without cuts,' he declared.... Throughout the Republican primary campaign, Trump repeated this pledge many times and also accused his G.O.P. opponents of wanting to slash the three big entitlement programs. In the general-election campaign, he stuck to the same mantra. A few days before Election Day, he suggested that Hillary Clinton wanted to 'destroy' Medicare..., which she had vowed to expand, and claimed that he alone would 'protect' it.... So how does the 'Budget for a Better America' treat Medicare and the other programs that Trump vowed to safeguard at all costs? By calling for even larger cuts to them than the White House proposed this last year, when it formally abandoned Trump's campaign pledges." ...
... "Blueprint for a Shutdown." Jim Newell of Slate: "The president's annual budget request ... is often portrayed as the White House's 'statement of priorities' for the coming fiscal year. White Houses are typically in on the joke and understand that they're offering a symbolic document. But what if this White House isn't in on the joke...? Then what it has offered, in the fiscal 2020 budget request it released Monday, is ... a blueprint for the next government shutdown.... [Historically,] Republicans would have been perfectly happy to boost defense and cut domestic spending. But they couldn't get such legislation past the Senate's 60-vote requirement. Democrats used that leverage to ensure Republicans wouldn't get their defense spending increase if Democrats didn't get their boosts to domestic programs.... [As usual, this year] there will still have to be bipartisan spending negotiations, the easiest answer to which is always giving Republicans what they want (increases to defense spending) in exchange for giving Democrats what they want (increases to non-defense spending). If Trump proclaims that he won';t sign such a deal..., the country will again careen toward a government shutdown In other words, it sounds exactly like the move that would appeal to him most."
... Sarah Jones of New York: "Donald Trump is nothing if not a man of vision -- a destructive vision, to be sure, soaked in blood-and-soil nationalism and open contempt for the poor. He's not always so skilled at executing that vision, a failure aptly demonstrated by the fate of his first budget. The administration's most drastic proposals ... mostly didn't survive Congress.... Trump is a slow learner. His latest budget, released on Monday morning, closely resembles his inaugural attempt, as it, too, contains welfare cuts that are likely to create a public relations problem for the Republican Party. It probably won't fare any better than its predecessor, and it sets up a costly political battle for Republicans, who will have to convince voters, again, that they're motivated by something other than pure animus for the poor. They'll have a difficult time making themselves heard over the president's budget, which whittles down some of the most popular entitlement programs in the country partly to secure funding for his border fence." ...
... Andy Borowitz of the New Yorker (satire): "Donald J. Trump's $4.7-trillion budget raised eyebrows on Monday when government-watchdog groups discovered that it contained twenty million dollars for bail. The line item for a 'bail fund' was buried in the fine print of the published budget, along with a footnote specifying that the money could be used only to bail out Trump and members of his immediate family. The footnote listed the members of his family who would be eligible to use the funds, including his daughter Ivanka and his sons Donald, Jr., and Eric, but not his son-in-law, Jared Kushner."
Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "White House press secretary Sarah Sanders declined to say Monday whether President Trump believes Democrats 'hate Jewish people,' arguing that reporters should pose that question to Democratic lawmakers. According to an attendee, Trump said Friday at a Republican National Committee fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago Club that 'the Democrats hate Jewish people.'... Sanders said she would not 'comment on a potentially leaked document,' referring to reports of Trump's fundraiser remarks. She took aim at Democrats for a House resolution last week that broadly condemned hate, arguing that the measure -- which overwhelmingly passed with bipartisan support -- did not specifically reference alleged anti-Semitic comments made by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)." ...
... Josh Marshall of TPM: "President Trump is the most successful, prominent promoter of anti-Semitism in American history. Certainly he is the only president who has ever compiled such a record. I wanted to put together just a handful of examples of this ... referencing things he's done publicly over the last three plus years. Just a few examples." --s ...
... Hey, Maybe Paul LePage Can Clean This Up. AP: "Former [Maine] Gov. Paul LePage suggested Monday that the Democratic Party's money comes mostly from Jewish people.... 'The Jewish people in America have been great supporters of the Democratic Party,' LePage said. 'In fact, that's where their money comes from for the most part. They should be absolutely insulted for what she's been saying.'" ...
... AND this exchange is extraordinary. Sanders' response to Jim Acosta's suggestion that Trump tone down his incendiary rhetoric was to amp up the incendiary rhetoric: "[Democrats are] comfortable ripping babies straight from a mothers' womb or killing a baby after birth...." Sanders is like Trump's evil twin:
President* Changes One Crazy Tim Apple Story for Another: Maybe somebody rolled the videotape. According to a Trumpertwee Monday, Trump didn't say "Cook" & you failed to hear it. Instead, "At a recent round table meeting of business executives, & long after formally introducing Tim Cook of Apple, I quickly referred to Tim + Apple as Tim/Apple as an easy way to save time & words. The Fake News was disparagingly all over this, & it became yet another bad Trump story!" Philip Bump of the Washington Post calculates the amount of time Trump saved was 0.27 seconds. Not sure how long it took him to write the whiney-tweet.
The Trump Scandals, Ctd.
I'm not for impeachment.... Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he's just not worth it. -- Nancy Pelosi, in an interview ...
... Joe Helm interviews Nancy Pelosi for the Washington Post Magazine: She "says Trump is unfit to be president -- 'ethically,' 'intellectually' and' curiosity-wise' -- but impeachment would be too divisive."
William Rashbaum & Danny Hakim of the New York Times: "The New York attorney general's office late on Monday issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank for records relating to the financing of four major Trump Organization projects and a failed effort to buy the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League in 2014, according to a person briefed on the subpoenas. The inquiry opens a new front in the scrutiny of Deutsche Bank, one of the few lenders willing to do business with Donald J. Trump in recent years. The bank is already the subject of two congressional investigations and was examined last year by New York banking regulators, who took no action. The new inquiry, by the office of the attorney general, Letitia James, was prompted by the congressional testimony last month of Michael D. Cohen...."
Jonathan Chait: "While Robert Mueller's investigation is (probably?) approaching its conclusion, many other investigations into Trump's corrupt or illegal behavior are just getting started. Trump has long dismissed the Russia probe as a 'hoax' and 'witch hunt,' slogans his supporters have fleshed out with an elaborate conspiracy theory involving a deep state cabal working in tandem with the Clinton campaign to frame him. The task of dismissing all the other investigations is far more diffuse. Trump's strategy is to aggregate the broad category 'miscellaneous non-Russia investigations' into a category he calls 'presidential harassment.'... As usual, indefatigable conservative reporter Byron York is leading the way.... For York, the notion that Trump has done nothing wrong, or at least no more wrong than a typical president, is not the conclusion of his argument but the starting point. From this premise, he interprets all the investigations into his conduct as evidence of the unfairness or desperation of the president's adversaries."
Tom Llamas & Kaitlyn Folmer of ABC News: In an ABC News interview, "Keith Davidson, the former attorney for adult-film star Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, detailed his role in negotiating hush-money deals to keep both women quiet about alleged affairs with Donald Trump, claiming a $130,000 payment to Daniels was 'done for political reasons.'... He also described [Michael] Cohen's anger when the nomination he expected for a key position within Trump's administration, such as chief of staff, never materialized.... 'He confided in me that he was just beside himself, and, in his words, you know, he said, "Can you f---ing believe, after everything I've done, he's not taking me to Washington?'" Davidson recalled. 'He felt that it was a personal embarrassment for him, that he was rejected.'" Earlier this month, Cohen told the House Oversight Committee, under oath, "I did not want to go to the White House. I was offered jobs." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
"Epic Sleaze." Michelle Goldberg: "... it's worth trying to summon whatever is left of our pre-Trump sensibilities and pause to consider the epic sleaze of the unfolding story of Li Yang, also known as Cindy Yang.... News that the owner of a chain of dubious massage parlors was brokering foreign access to the president of the United States should be a big deal. It has the potential to be a sex scandal, an intelligence scandal and a financial scandal all at once.... Both Mother Jones and The Herald found evidence that Yang, who emigrated from China, ran a business, GY US Investments, selling Chinese executives access to Trump, his family and Republican officials.... Mother Jones has reported that Yang is an officer in local branches of two groups tied to the Chinese government.... Chris Lu, a former deputy secretary of labor..., said that when he served in the White House, his rule was that 'anyone who comes in contact with the president or is in the room with the president needs to be vetted. Who the hell is vetting people that are going into Mar-a-Lago?'... Under Trump, America's leadership and its secrets are for sale."
Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the team he assembled to investigate ... Donald Trump and his associates have been funded through the end of September 2019, three U.S. officials said on Monday, an indication that the probe has funding to keep it going for months if need be."
** Nelson Cunningham in the Daily Beast: "There may in fact be two Mueller reports. This is because from the very beginning, Mueller has ... borne two missions relating to the Russia investigation. The most public and familiar one is as a criminal investigator under the special counsel regulations. But Mueller has also carried a second charge, as a counterintelligence expert, with a much broader charge to determine and report the scope of any interference and any links to the Trump campaign.... It is Mueller's counterintelligence report we should really be anticipating. Done well..., it will provide a much richer, broader narrative description of Russia's effort to interfere in 2016, the nature of any links or cooperation between the Russians and the Trump campaign, and whether Trump or his associates were witting or unwitting assets for the Russians (including by obstructing the investigation) -- as well perhaps as conclusions for action.... Neither the special counsel regulations nor Attorney General Barr's discretion will keep Mueller's counterintelligence findings from Congress." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Cunningham, a former prosecutor with SDNY, seems to be just speculating on what Mueller will do with the counterintelligence info he has gathered, but let's hope his speculation is accurate. I would LOL if Trump was doing a "no collusion" victory dance over a brief DOJ report when Mueller dropped a bombshell that vividly condemned Trump -- to the point that even Matt Gaetz & Jim Jordan were left speechless.
Eliana Johnson of Politico: "Dick Cheney lit into Vice President Mike Pence behind closed doors over the direction of the Trump administration's foreign policy, flouting a set of agreed-upon subjects and forcing Pence on the defensive over ... Donald Trump's foreign policy. The former vice president interviewed Pence at the American Enterprise Institute's annual World Forum in Sea Island, Ga., an off-the-record confab attended by approximately 200 top-dollar Republican donors, lawmakers and business leaders.... Cheney pressed Pence about Trump's proclivity for making major policy announcements on Twitter and his off-and-on commitment to NATO, according to four meeting attendees and a source briefed on their remarks. The former vice president, who has kept a low public profile in recent years, questioned whether Trump places enough value on the findings of the intelligence community, which he has repeatedly and publicly dismissed. He suggested that Trump foreign policy has at times looked more like President Barack Obama's -- which Cheney has repeatedly lambasted -- than that of a Republican standard-bearer."
Dara Lind of Vox: "A federal judge [Dana Sabraw] has declared that the Trump administration is legally responsible for all children who were separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border and placed with relatives or other sponsors after July 1, 2017 -- which could amount to 'thousands' beyond the 2,800 separations already acknowledged as a result of the Trump administration's 'zero tolerance' policy of 2017 and 2018.... The order doesn't force the government to reunify these families -- it just declares that their fate is legally now part of this lawsuit, and opens the door to the government and the ACLU to propose specific next steps.... The Trump administration has argued forcefully that this record-keeping task could take months.... [T]he government is so resistant to taking on responsibility for separated children who have left its custody that it's threatening to appeal Sabraw's order[.]" --s
Rebekah Entralago of ThinkProgress: "Illegal crossings at the U.S.-Canada border have risen by 91 percent compared to the previous year according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), even as President Donald Trump remains fixated on building a wall and adding additional agents to prevent migrants from crossing the southern U.S. border.... The largest spike occurred along the Swanton border patrol section, which includes the borders of New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, where 548 people were apprehended in 2018, up from 165 in all of 2017. While these numbers are significantly smaller than the crossings at the southern border, the lack of outrage against illegal activity on the northern border is emblematic of President Trump's war against black and brown immigrants and asylum seekers." --s
Noah Lanard of Mother Jones: "On Monday, The Atlantic published a cover story in which [Dubya neo-con turned NeverTrumper David] Frum calls for a radical cut to legal immigration in the name of promoting assimilation and warding off fascism. Frum cites the election of Donald Trump as evidence of a widespread backlash to immigration.... But do Americans actually think there's too much immigration? The answer, according to polling data, is a resounding no. Last year, only 24 percent of Americans supported cutting legal immigration, down from 40 percent in 2006, according to data provided to Mother Jones by the Pew Research Center. Among Republicans without a college degree, the heart of Trump's base, 59 percent say legal immigration should be increased or kept at the present level.... But given that support for immigrants is now at or near record highs, it's unclear why 2019 should be the year the United States finally adopts the anti-immigration agenda Frum has been pushing for decades." --s
Robert Mackey of The Intercept [March 6]: "[F]irst lady Melania Trump's visit to a school in Oklahoma this week might have accidentally triggered an international incident after reporters in Turkey revealed that the school was founded by followers of a dissident Turkish cleric who Turkey's government blames for an attempted coup in 2016.... Stephanie Grisham, a spokesperson for the first lady, declined to answer a direct question about whether the White House was aware of the Oklahoma school's links to [Fethullah] Gülen before the visit.... TRT World, the English-language arm of Turkey's state broadcaster, spent some time parsing the first lady's visit, trying to determine if it was 'an intentional move or just a faux pas on the part of the administration.'" --s
Presidential Race 2020
Bill Barrow, et al., of the AP: "Democrats picked Milwaukee on Monday to host their 2020 national convention, setting up the party's standard-bearer to accept the presidential nomination in the heart of the old industrial belt that delivered Donald Trump to the White House." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Alex Thompson & Daniel Strauss of Politico: "Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), one of the most outspoken advocates of the #MeToo movement..., spent last summer pressing legislators to update Congress' 'broken' system of handling sexual harassment. At the same time, a mid-20s female aide to Gillibrand resigned in protest over the handling of her sexual harassment complaint by Gillibrand's office, and criticized the senator for failing to abide by her own public standards. In July, the female staffer alleged one of Gillibrand's closest aides -- who was a decade her senior and married -- repeatedly made unwelcome advances after the senator had told him he would be promoted to a supervisory role over her. She also said the male aide regularly made crude, misogynistic remarks in the office about his female colleagues and potential female hires. Less than three weeks after reporting the alleged harassment and subsequently claiming that the man retaliated against her for doing so, the woman told chief of staff Jess Fassler that she was resigning because of the office's handling of the matter. She did not have another job lined up.... The male aide, Abbas Malik, kept his job.... Two weeks ago..., Politico presented the office with its own findings of additional allegations of inappropriate workplace conduct by Malik.... Gillibrand's office opened a new investigation and dismissed Malik last week." ...
... Sarah Jones: Kirsten Gillibrand "... is hardly the only prominent Democrat to be accused of ignoring sexual harassment within her office or campaign.... Gillibrand, though, may be uniquely vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy. As Politico notes, she's used her campaign and her rising national profile to highlight issues of gender inequality.... Despite her recent leftward turn, Gillibrand hasn't been leading the polls for president. This scandal won't exactly help her make her case."
Cristiano Lima of Politico: "Facebook removed several ads placed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign that called for the breakup of Facebook and other tech giants. But the social network later reversed course after Politico reported on the takedown, with the company saying it wanted to allow for 'robust debate.'... 'Curious why I think FB has too much power? Let's start with their ability to shut down a debate over whether FB has too much power,' [Warren] tweeted. 'Thanks for restoring my posts. But I want a social media marketplace that isn't dominated by a single censor.'"
Presidential Race 2016. Nihal Krishan of Mother Jones: "The Federal Election Commission has hit Right to Rise USA, the super-PAC that backed Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential bid, with a record fine for accepting a seven-figure donation from a company owned by Chinese nationals who were in business with Bush's brother, Neil, according to FEC documents obtained by Mother Jones. It is illegal for foreign nationals to be involved in making donations to political committees. Neil Bush, who has extensive business dealings in China, solicited the $1.3 million contribution from American Pacific International Capital (APIC), an international investment holding company where Neil is a board member.... The total combined fine against Bush's super-PAC and APIC, which has not previously been reported, is $940,000, the largest amount levied in a single case against anyone since the 2010 Citizens United ruling. The penalty is also the biggest fine that the FEC has ever handed down due to foreign national participation." ...
... Lee Fang & Jon Schwarz of The Intercept: "The Federal Election Commission has unveiled one of the most significant enforcement actions in its history, citing a 2016 investigative series by The Intercept. That series, 'Foreign Influence,' detailed how Right to Rise USA, a Super PAC supporting the 2016 presidential candidacy of Jeb Bush, received $1.3 million in campaign donations from American Pacific International Capital, a California corporation controlled by two Chinese citizens." --s
Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A federal appeals court has moved to quickly unseal long-secret court filings related to financier Jeffrey Epstein's sexual contact with underage girls, but one judge is expressing some disagreement with the plan. Two judges on a 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals panel considering motions to unseal records in an Epstein-connected lawsuit said in an order Monday that they plan to make public several key submissions in the case unless the parties make a compelling argument in the next eight days why the records shouldn't be released."
Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha
Madeline Peltz of Media Matters: "Between 2006 and 2011, Fox News host Tucker Carlson spent approximately an hour a week calling in to the Bubba the Love Sponge Show, a popular shock jock radio program where he spoke with the hosts about a variety of cultural and political topics in often-vulgar terms. In addition to making many misogynistic remarks and sexual comments about underage girls, Carlson, who was hired by Fox in 2009, also repeatedly made racist remarks. Carlson credited 'white men' for 'creating civilization' and made numerous racist remarks about the Obamas, including agreeing that Michelle Obama would 'be a problem' because she 'turns into a sister' and asking of Barack Obama, 'How is he Black, for one thing? He has one white parent, one Black parent.' Carlson called Iraqis 'semiliterate primitive monkeys' and said Afghanistan is 'never going to be a civilized country because the people aren't civilized.' He also said he had 'zero sympathy' for Iraqis because they 'don't use toilet paper or forks' and that the war could turn around 'if, somehow, the Iraqis decided to behave like human beings.'"...
... Sophie Weiner of Splinter: "Pushing extreme narratives about immigration, racism, and political correctness is the bread and butter of Carlson's current show. What these tapes reveal is a remarkable ideological consistency, dating back 15 years." ...
... Joan Walsh of the Nation: "None of this should be shocking to any sentient being: Carlson is a sexist pig, who has lately become the white-nationalist defender of fragile white men. But it is particularly not shocking to me - because, nine years ago, Carlson called me the C-word to a Salon intern, multiple times, and told the young man I needed to get 'fucked.'... I knew that he was lying when he trashed Samantha Bee for calling Ivanka Trump the C-word. 'That one word that [Bee] used. I don't know any man who uses that word because it is kind of the one word that is actually degrading.'"
Charles Davis of the Daily Beast: "Defending statutory rape committed by women has been a recurring theme for Carlson." Davis cites several examples, including one as recently as 2014. He chose once to have such a discussion with Gavin McInnis, founder of the Proud Boys white nationalist group. "McInnes was previously a columnist for The Daily Caller, which Carlson founded; and in their conversation, McInnes discussed how an editor there once deleted the phrase 'fucking Jews' from one of his articles."
Tucker's Lame Whaddaboudism Self-Defense. Lisa de Moraes of Deadline: "On his first Tucker Carlson Tonight telecast since [Media Matters released audio of his misogynistic, racist remarks], Carlson [said]: 'Why are the people who consider Bill Clinton a hero lecturing me about sexism?' he asked, rhetorically. 'How can the party that demands racial quotas denounce other people as racist? After awhile you begin to think that maybe their criticisms aren't sincere. Maybe their moral puffery is a costume. The fate of the human soul and the moral regeneration of society do not interest 'progressives' who are 'too busy pushing late-term abortion and cross-dressing on fifth-graders,' argued Carlson, whose FNC primetime program, along with those of Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, are among the most popular on cable news, and on basic cable TV." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Maybe you're sensing a theme here. It appears that (rarely-performed) late-term abortion is the right's "defense" against their rampant racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, etc. BTW, Fox "News" issued a strong statement against Jeanine Pirro's anti-Muslim remarks. So far, the fair-skinned & unbalanced network has been silent about Carlson, who enjoys a prime-time slot in the network's illustrious lineup. ...
... Adam Raymond of New York: "The decision by Fox News to rebuke [Jeanine] Pirro for her incendiary comments is notable because it doesn't happen often.... The latitude the network gives its biggest stars became clear as, just hours after its statement on Pirro, it remained silent on Tucker Carlson's recently unearthed misogynistic and creepy comments. A spokesperson for Fox News didn't respond to an email asking why the network condemned Pirro and not Carlson. So, what kind of offense rises to the level of an official Fox News rebuke? Here are some recent missteps that went too far even for Fox."
Jonathan Watts of the Guardian: "Sales of synthetic chemicals will double over the next 12 years with alarming implications for health and the environment, according to a global study that highlights government failures to rein in the industry behind plastics, pesticides and cosmetics. The second Global Chemicals Outlook ... said the world will not meet international commitments to reduce chemical hazards and halt pollution by 2020. In fact, the study by the United Nations Environment Programme found that the industry has never been more dominant nor has humanity's dependence on chemicals ever been as great." --s
Beyond the Beltway
Nebraska. Allegra Kirkland of TPM: The 2018 field director for Gov. Pete Rickett's (DR-Neb.) re-election campaign has sent “a shocking trove of ... private messages ... over ... an online gaming platform popular with white nationalists.... [In the messages, Bennett Bressman says] has 'more compassion for small dogs than illegals' and claims his 'whole political ideology revolves around harming journalists.' He uses the n-word freely and cracks jokes about the Holocaust.... 'I am shocked and horrified to learn that this former staffer made these statements and I had no idea he harbored these feelings. He never expressed these views to me. I condemn these statements and this hateful worldview, which do not reflect my beliefs or the beliefs of Nebraskans,' Ricketts said in a statement." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: You know what, Pete? This is no aberration. This is the kind of fans you attract. That's what should "shock and horrify" you. On the other hand, your buddy Bennett doesn't seem a helluva lot worse than Tucker Carlson, & he's a national teevee star.
Way Beyond
Algeria. Alex Ward of Vox: "In a massive concession after weeks of protests, Algeria-s ailing, long-time authoritarian leader -- who has rarely been seen in public for years -- won-t run for a fifth term as president. On Monday, the 82-year-old Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has led Algeria since 1999 despite having a stroke in 2013 that left him paralyzed and basically mute, put out a statement to quell the concerns of thousands of demonstrators. 'There will be no fifth term,' Bouteflika said.... The remaining question is whom the regime will name to replace Bouteflika." --s
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Nancy Pelosi has a sleeve full of aces. She knows if a dog kills chickens you tie a dead chicken to his neck. Nancy will leave a terrible, nasty, Trump tied to the Republican necks.
Some of them may get rid of the Trump on their necks but many will take him home while they whimper over lost jobs.
Impeachment will take the dog off their necks
Carlyle: That imagery is disgusting...I love it! It begs to be a political cartoon-- maybe you ARE a cartoonist, or you've missed your calling!
About the budget: all dreams come true for the party of Dumpster. I think our newbies on the Dem side will squawk like mad. Hopefully, the oldsters will too.
I've got no real issues with Pelosi's words either on Drumpf's impeachment. She's recognizing the cold political reality that Confederates have completely lost their backbones at the Ivanka Day Spa in the DC Trump Hotel. Any official impeachment proceedings would have Confederates & Faux News all clutching their pearls 24/7 and rising demands for cold, hard evidence that we haven't compiled as of yet. As @carlyle mentions, Pelosi can release the hounds, sit back and see where the many blood trails lead to.
I'm more and more convinced that the main cudgel we have to defeat Agent Orange is death by a thousand cuts. No one single scandal will burst the bubble of the Confederate snowflake safe space. But doing the dirty work, digging up the buried bodies one by one, tracking down all his scandals, documenting them meticulously, and archiving them judiciously, is the key to victory. Once the campaign heats up and Dems have chosen their official candidate, then the voluminous scandals that never hit the mark should be trotted back out, not one by one but in thematic batches to undercut any arguments Drumpf will claim when he's not just vomiting vile filth into the public discourse.
I believe you incorrectly identified Pete Ricketts as a democrat.
On the budget and its values:
The social infrastructure, we knew about, really. The Pretender was lying from the get-go and only fools believed him. Thought he cared about Social Security and Medicare but hated the ACA? It just didn't compute.
But don't see anything big about physical infrastructure in the budget either, so where has all that infrastructure gone? Oh, where or where can it be? I did think the Pretender would spend lots of someone else's money to keep the building trades, where he had significant support, happy until at least late 2020...but...even that promise seems to be gone. We'll get another succession of infrastructure weeks, possibly, but no infrastructure.
I'm a bit apocalyptic this AM, maybe, but this latest Pretender budget seems to portend a hollowed out, polluted nation, its roads potholed, bridges unsafe, its material wealth extracted and shipped to private offshore bank accounts, the vast majority of it citizens scrabbling for food and shelter, but by god, the Pretender and his Mar-a-lago cronies will have a wall and a bloated military to protect the paradise they're created for themselves.
@arosskopf: Thanks. I sure did. And I knew better. I've corrected my error.
safari, as I read your thoughts that DiJiT's confederates' bubbles can be broken by persistent exposition of the thousands of scandals, I saw the mental image of German citizens who were made by U.S. soldiers to walk through the death camps in 1945 and assist in the physical management of the dead. I got those images from contemporary films. Years later it was pretty clear that while those Germans experienced revulsion, almost none felt responsible for what "others" had done.
People are complicated, but a simple observation is that they rarely blame themselves for participating in mass abuses that perform the most horrendous acts. Showing all the GOP-DiJiT horrors to all those MAGA hats will not necessarily get them to reject DiJiT and all his pomps and all his works.
Those people are hopeless. From an election standpoint, the Democrats need to focus on the people who chose not to vote, and motivate them to come out. Your idea of turning over every rock may influence them ... but could also inure them to the horror. People are complicated.
Logical Fallacies and Cowardice.
Poor Tucker Carlson. People are using his own words against him. It's an ATTACK!! By the LIBERAL MOB!
Whew. Where to start with this ball of dung? First, Tucker, people quoting your own words back to you in an effort to demonstrate your hypocrisy and assholery is not an attack. It's people demanding that you answer for your public pronouncements, especially since your platform on Fox reaches millions of people on a daily basis.
So he begins his "defense" by attacking someone else. This is the classic "Pay no attention to what's happening here, look, look, over there. Isn't that horrible?" gambit. And he uses (no surprise) a logical fallacy to achieve it. He says that everyone "lecturing" him on sexism considers Bill Clinton a hero, thus their concerns vis-a-vis his own disgusting comments, are null and void and unworthy of consideration.
End of story.
Wow. With this many leaps of logic he should have gone into the Olympics as a broad jumper. First, claiming that anyone who criticizes you must, ipso facto, consider Bill Clinton a hero is a ridiculous statement. Much more parsing of this contention could be done, but you get the picture. It's a flat out stupid thing to say.
Okay. What next? How can he whip up his fans to support his calling women the C word, not have to apologize, and blame someone else for the whole thing? Oh yeah! Hollywood! Liberal, lying, godless socialists who all hate America. So next he trots out the canard that,in any event, he had only been saying "naughty" things. As if calling women dogs and primitive creatures is just silly, and all in fun, and no one should care about it. His next shot is that those horrible Hollywood types who criticize him use "naughty" words all the time, so how dare they criticize him.
Full stop.
There's a huge difference between what a character in a film or play or TV show says and what a paid talker, in the real world, on TV or radio says. Got that? If a character in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" uses the C word in a dramatic setting it is not in any way the same as a TV commentator using that word to illuminate his personal opinion about certain women. This is not just a silly comparison, it is, again, stupid. In a movie, a character can say "I'm gonna kill you!" and run at someone with a knife. In the real world that person goes to jail. Okay?
Then he tries to rally the old school spirit.
"Hey gang, disregard what I said. The liberal mob is after me. PROTECT ME! Aiiiieeeeee!" It's an appeal to what he assumes (hopes) is a commonality of hatred for liberals who are criticizing him for saying terrible things. He's instructing his fans that he is under attack and demanding that they circle the wagons, because no matter what he said, the fact that liberals are complaining about it is tantamount to hatred of America. This, by the way, is the same guy who recently declared that immigrants make America dirtier and poorer.
And then there is the wrapping of oneself in the flag of conservatism. Those horrible liberals are trying to censor him, dammit! "DON'T LET THEM PREVENT ME FROM CALLING WOMEN THE C WORD!" Sigh. First, no one has the ability (or inclination) to censor Carlson. Fox won't do it. He certainly won't change. And wishing he'd stop being a dick is not anywhere close to censorship. What he's saying, effectively, is that his First Amendment right to be an asshole is being infringed upon by liberals.
It isn't. Full stop. Asking for an accounting of the highly offensive opinions of a public personality is not censorship.
Finally, there is no apology. Because right-wingers, at least those in public settings, don't apologize. Ever. For anything. Admitting a fault is for liberals. This is pure moral cowardice. Nothing less. And Fox is right there with him. He did, apparently, open his Monday show by saying that he would apologize if he were wrong. But then he doesn't apologize. Ergo, he isn't wrong. If this isn't the most mealy-mouthed, simpering, disingenuous bit of coy affectation I've ever heard, I've never heard much of anything in my life. "Oh...if I were wrong, of COURSE, I'd apologize." Then he finishes with a flourish by saying that he will NEVER bow to the MOB!
Cowardice, hypocrisy, and downright dishonesty.
Hey, didn't President Fiscal Responsibility promise to balance the budget in ten years? (In other interviews he said it would happen "quickly".) Maybe he's just upping the difficulty level (like they have for divers in Olympic competition) by running the deficit up to over a trillion dollars over the next three years. Then again, he didn't say which ten years, did he? Maybe he meant ten years fifty years from now. Yeah, I'm sure that's it. Cuz Trump never lies.
WHAT DOES MISOGYNY LOOK LIKE? A brief history: NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/style/misogyny-women-history-photographs.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage
During the recent Oscar ceremony there was a Nike ad with a voice over by Serena Williams:
"If we show emotions, we're called dramatic; if we want to play against men, we're nuts; and if we dream of equal oppertunity, delusional; when we stand for something we're unhinged; when we're too good, there's something wrong with us; and if we get angry, we're hysterical or just being crazy."
Tucker which rhymes with "fuck her" is a small-minded man who tries very hard to be SOMEBODY, but fails at even being decent. And itsn't it interesting that Fox had something to say about Jeanne's comment, but so far has let the "very popular" guy off the hook. Only the loss of revenue from ads will do it?
@ Patrick
Touché, and quite the correlation of images of "digging up the (proverbial) bodies". That gave me the shivers. I wholly agree the seals clapping in their MAGA hats have sold their brains to the microwaves and they'll never back down or admit a single sin of their Dear Leader.
I should've been more specific in my description that the neatly packaged, diluted, easier-to-understand thematic packages of Trump's scandals should be unearthed in a timely fashion and directed to all those "independent" voters; unmotivated, "they're all the same" loathing voters; the simply incurious eligible voter; and the cynical "government is full of crooks" voters. Any and all fence-sitters should get a steady shower of Trump's swamp stench all throughout the debates, and whoever is the Dem nominee should be required to memorize and synthesize the last two years of journalism's greatest hits to counterpunch Trump's bitching and whining with knuckle sandwich of documented facts on live teevee where he can't run away to his helicopter or guarantee his safe space. If the Dems pulled this off successfully, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised Trump cries foul and demands all future debates to be on Fox with Hannity holding his hand or he'll hold rallies with his corndog numbskulls rather than show up and get grilled again.
I realize that American voters chose him already after knowing what a wretched person he was, but now he'll have an entire term of documented failures hung around his flabby neck and poisonous venom of lies and deceit will be his only weapon of choice. I'm not convinced being an abject asshole and serial whiner is going to win reelection, though it will be nail-bitingly close.
It's rather funny how Dick Cheney was giving Pence a grilling about how the Trumpies are not the He-roes of Democracy that the Bush-Cheney administration was.
Pardon while I check back and see what kind of democratic warriors they were.
Okay. Yeah. Just as I remembered. None at all. Abroad, they used 9/11 to expand America's military footprint, not to export democracy. Rumsfeld, at the time, gave the whole game away by stating categorically
"I don’t think [overthrowing the Taliban] leaves us with a responsibility to try to figure out what kind of government [Afghanistan] ought to have."
How are those great democracies Iraq and Afghanistan doing today? Not too good, huh? Not much for democracy, right? Sham elections that don't mean shit. So much for democracy expansion.
And at home? Just a peek at one state, Ohio, where Bush's reelection chairman was also the guy in charge of the voting machines, who promised that he would deliver the state to the R's. He did. Votes mysteriously vanished then reappeared with Bush checkmarks. Funny, eh? Voter roll purges, missing voting machines in Democratic strongholds, locked down buildings where Republicans secretly "counted" the votes...I won't revisit the long litany of examples of the Bush-Cheney penchant for stiffing the voters and the public in favor of the neocon goal of inserting those they considered the rightful leaders of Americans who shouldn't really have much say in the matter.
Then there's Cheney's lecturing of Pence for Trump's aversion to the work of the intelligence community. This from the same guy who deep sixed any intelligence report that didn't sing "We're Going to War" and made up his own, who outed a CIA agent because her husband didn't go along with his War at any Cost agenda. Cheney wagging his finger at Pence over intelligence is like a con man instructing a pickpocket that crime doesn't pay.
Time for Cheney to go back to his undisclosed hidey hole.
To followup on Patrick "From an election standpoint, the Democrats need to focus on the people who chose not to vote, and motivate them to come out." Here's what we can do. Go to Vote Forward votefwd.org
and use their well-organized, efficient tool to send letters to unlikely-to-vote Democrats in key swing districts.
I did it last fall and one of the districts (NC) that I wrote letters for did turn blue (N Dakota, sadly, was a lost cause this time). My 5-year-old grand daughter helped me by choosing the stamps for each voter and putting the letters in the mailbox, while Grandma explained why this is important and someday she would be voting.
@Linda from Denver: Thank you for your work and for involving your granddaughter in your GOTV effort. You and she do us all great service.