Hullabaloo

Friday, February 10, 2017

 
What is this kabuki dance you speak of?

by digby

And I'm not talking about Trump's meeting with the Japanese Jrime Minister today ...

I was rolling my eyes the other day about this Gorsuch flap because it was so obvious that they were trying to give some red state Democrats room to vote for him or at least help block a filibuster. I noted that Mitch McConnell knows very well how to get a right wing judge confirmed. They are all very good at this kabuki dance.

Here's the New York Times explaining it:

Veterans of the Supreme Court confirmation process note that the ritual of private meetings with senators is almost completely staged for minimum controversy and maximum impact, with questions discussed in advance, answers honed and rehearsed, and no remark made unless it is intended to withstand public scrutiny.

“You don’t want any surprises, so there’s nothing that you don’t prepare for going into a meeting,” said Stephanie Cutter, a top Obama administration official who shepherded the nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “They knew this question would be coming, and they would have practiced an answer, and this was what he planned to say.”

Ms. Cutter recalled preparing Justice Sotomayor for a meeting with Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, then the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, in which she worked to explain her remarks that that a “wise Latina woman” could reach a “better” decision than a white man. Mr. Leahy left the meeting and promptly repeated the explanation to the assembled reporters, an effort to dispense with the issue before she came before the Senate for confirmation hearings.

“This might have been an attempt to make him look more independent,” Ms. Cutter said of Judge Gorsuch. “He could have created a story line about standing up to Trump.”

Of course it was. The problem is that Trump won't have anyone, not even a winking and nodding Supreme Court nominee, publicly express the intention to stand up to him. He just can't do it. So, it didn't go down as planned:

White House officials insisted on Thursday that Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, was not referring to Mr. Trump’s recent denigration of judges when he said privately that he was disheartened by attacks on the courts.

Mr. Trump said on Twitter that the nominee’s remarks had been misrepresented, a sentiment echoed by the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, during a contentious briefing. A day before, members of the White House team guiding Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation verified that the judge had expressed his dismay in response to questions about Mr. Trump’s insults of judges.

The administration’s abrupt shift highlighted the degree to which Judge Gorsuch’s nomination — a top priority for the president and his core supporters — has become mired in a broader debate over Mr. Trump’s attitude about the constitutional principle of judicial independence.

The president’s feud with the judiciary — he referred to the district court judge who blocked his targeted travel ban as a “so-called judge” and called an appeals court hearing “a disgrace” — is dominating the Senate’s consideration of Judge Gorsuch’s nomination. Senators from both parties are demanding that the judge answer for the president who named him.

Mr. Spicer said that when Judge Gorsuch told senators that he considered such criticism “demoralizing” and “disheartening,” he was referring broadly to any such attacks on the judiciary.

“The judge was very clear that he was not commenting on any specific matter, and that he was asked about his general philosophy,” Mr. Spicer told reporters during a series of testy exchanges. “So you can’t then take that and equate it back to the specific. He literally went out of his way to say I’m not commenting on a specific instance.”

Here's how the Democrats responded:

“We take Sean Spicer at his word that Judge Gorsuch did not mean to distance himself from Donald Trump’s attacks on the judicial branch,” Zac Petkanas, a senior adviser for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. Mr. Petkanas called it proof that the nominee “will be nothing more than a rubber stamp for this out-of-control Trump presidency.”

They literally cannot do anything right.



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digby 2/10/2017 11:00:00 AM

 
It was always obvious he was dumb as a rock

by digby

But people chose to see that as some kind of act because he's rich. There are lots of dumb rich people, especially the ones who inherited their money and then their money made them richer.

Trump is a brand --- like Jessica Simpson. And I suspect she's actually smarter.

Anyway, the chickens are coming home to roost. And they're freaking out.

Being president is harder than Donald Trump thought, according to aides and allies who say that he’s growing increasingly frustrated with the challenges of running the massive federal bureaucracy.

In interviews, nearly two dozen people who’ve spent time with Trump in the three weeks since his inauguration said that his mood has careened between surprise and anger as he’s faced the predictable realities of governing, from congressional delays over his cabinet nominations and legal fights holding up his aggressive initiatives to staff in-fighting and leaks.


The administration’s rocky opening days have been a setback for a president who, as a billionaire businessman, sold himself to voters as being uniquely qualified to fix what ailed the nation. Yet it has become apparent, say those close to the president, most of whom requested anonymity to describe the inner workings of the White House, that the transition from overseeing a family business to running the country has been tough on him.

Trump often asks simple questions about policies, proposals and personnel. And, when discussions get bogged down in details, the president has been known to quickly change the subject — to "seem in control at all times," one senior government official said — or direct questions about details to his chief strategist Steve Bannon, his son-in-law Jared Kushner or House Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump has privately expressed disbelief over the ability of judges, bureaucrats or lawmakers to delay — or even stop — him from filling positions and implementing policies.

After Trump grew infuriated by disclosures of his confrontational phone calls with foreign leaders, an investigation was launched into the source of the leaks, according to one White House aide. National Security Council staffers have been instructed to cooperate with inquiries, including requests to inspect their electronic communications, said two sources familiar with the situation. It’s not clear whether the investigation is a formal proceeding, how far along it is or who is conducting it.

The administration is considering limiting the universe of aides with access to the calls or their transcripts, said one administration official, adding that the leaks — and Trump’s anger over them — had created a climate where people are “very careful who they talk to.”

The president and his allies believe career NSC staff assigned from other agencies are out to get them. In turn, some NSC staff believe Trump does not possess the capacity for detail and nuance required to handle the sensitive issues discussed on the calls, and that he has politicized their agency by appointing chief strategist Bannon to the council.

Last week, Trump told an associate he had become weary of in-fighting among — and leaks from — his White House staff “because it reflects on me,” and that he intended to sit down staffers to tell them “to cut this shit out.”

He also became aggravated after learning about complications surrounding his appointment of one of his top fundraisers, Anthony Scaramucci, to a plum White House job, which Trump blamed on internal jockeying between aides, according to one person with knowledge of the situation.

Trump “was furious,” this person said. “He doesn’t like this shit.”

The White House press office did not respond to a series of detailed questions about the way the president has coped with leaks, in-fighting and setbacks.

Christopher Ruddy, a Trump friend and the chief executive of the conservative Newsmax Media, said “Running the federal government is something new for him, for sure.” But, Ruddy added, “I think if he's demonstrated anything in his life, he is a very fast learner and adapts very quickly. The man is not to be underestimated.”

For all his frustrations, Trump has reveled in the trappings of the presidency. He has taken a liking to the Oval Office, where he spends much of his time working. Following a recent gathering of business leaders, he brought the group into the storied room and showed them around.

But he has also sought refuge from the pressures of the presidency, frequently calling up old friends and sounding them out about golf.

Trump aides joke that they wish their boss would spend more time at his Mar-A-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where they say the president appears more relaxed and at ease. He dispensed hugs and kisses to female guests attending a Red Cross ball at the estate last week, and is scheduled to return this weekend for a round of golf with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Most of those interviewed for this story requested anonymity to describe the inner workings of a White House where they say the tension has been intensified by the president’s propensity for knee-jerk micromanaging when faced with disappointment, and jockeying among aides to avoid blame or claim credit when possible.

The interviews paint a picture of a powder-keg of a workplace where job duties are unclear, morale among some is low, factionalism is rampant and exhaustion is running high. Two visitors to the White House last week said they were struck by how tired the staff looks.

Why anyone thought it would be any different under this dim-witted, puerile braggart I will never understand. I get that his TV addicted voters just bought his TV persona as a brilliant businessman and assumed he had magical abilities to "get things done" and just say "you're fired" if "the government" failed to do exactly what he said. They believe a lot of silly things and they are brainwashed by right wing media.

It's the rest of the Republicans who have something to answer for. There were those who noticed that the Emperor was not only naked, he was stupid and mentally unstable. They were treated like dogs by Trump's shock troops and many of the them backed down. But there were far fewer of these than there should have been.

Now we have this. And the extent to which people are leaking is astonishing. It must be very, very bad.

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digby 2/10/2017 09:00:00 AM

 

The heat is on

by Tom Sullivan

Being president is not like being a billionaire patrician. Donald Trump is accustomed to lots of bowing and scraping and sucking up from eager sycophants and contractors. But outside his White House and Republican political circles, he's not seeing as much of that as president. He hasn't even had a "honeymoon." Last night in San Francisco, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the temporary restraining order on his travel ban from seven Muslim countries. The decision was unanimous:

The three-judge panel, suggesting that the ban did not advance national security, said the administration had shown “no evidence” that anyone from the seven nations — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — had committed terrorist acts in the United States.

The ruling also rejected Mr. Trump’s claim that courts are powerless to review a president’s national security assessments. Judges have a crucial role to play in a constitutional democracy, the court said.

“It is beyond question,” the decision said, “that the federal judiciary retains the authority to adjudicate constitutional challenges to executive action.”

Last night's decision is likely to wind up before the evenly divided U.S. Supreme Court before Trump's nominee, Neil Gorsuch, can be confirmed by the Senate. But even a 5-4 conservative court is not going to relinquish its authority to review executive branch decisions.

Democrats in the U.S. House are applying heat to Trump's business dealings by deploying a seldom-used procedure:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) filed a “resolution of inquiry” Thursday, a relatively obscure parliamentary tactic used to force presidents and executive-branch agencies to share records with Congress. Under House practice, such a resolution must be debated and acted upon in committee or else it can be discharged to the House floor for consideration.

Nadler’s resolution asks Attorney General Jeff Sessions to provide “copies of any document, record, memo, correspondence, or other communication of the Department of Justice” that pertains to any “criminal or counterintelligence investigation” into Trump, his White House team or certain campaign associates; any investment made by a foreign power or agent thereof in Trump’s businesses; Trump’s plans to distance himself from his business empire; and any Trump-related examination of federal conflict of interest laws or the emoluments clause of the Constitution.

Nader's move has an ice cube's chance in hell of making it to a floor vote, but he's getting press for it and making sure the issue doesn't fade from public view.

So far, Trump is finding out it's not easy being king in a democracy (a republic, Republican friends are quick to correct).

Outside the capitol, the strengthening opposition to the Trump administration has taken a few pages from the T-party playbook. Trump's opponents have taken to showing up en masse at town hall events held in congressional districts:

Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz was home in his district Thursday night to hold a town hall at a high school in the suburbs of Salt Lake City. It did not go well. The crowd well exceeded the auditorium’s 1,000-person capacity and the event kicked off to chants of “kick him out!” (re: Chaffetz) mixed with “let them in!” (re: the some 1,000 person overflow crowd locked out of the event).

Several video clips at the Slate link.

For a bit of contrast, let's look at who is not feeling any of the heat going around: business. U.S. New & World Report:

CNBC obtained a memo that suggests Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas – the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee who has championed the regulation-stripping Financial Choice Act on Capitol Hill – is backing new legislation that would further peel back Dodd-Frank regulatory layers by taking particular aim at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The new bill in question reportedly would limit the bureau's ability to police the private sector and scrap its consumer complaint databases. It also would change the structure of the agency's directorship – making it an appointed position open to at-will termination.

In Washington, a lot of politicians are all about protecting the little people from terrorists and big gummint. But from businessmen? Not so much. When you view the economic world through Darwin-colored glasses, you dislike checks on apex predators as much as the Trump administration dislikes checks on lies, torture and profiting from government service.


Undercover Blue 2/10/2017 06:00:00 AM

Thursday, February 09, 2017

 
Pre-Friday Night Soother

by digby

For all you snowbound east coasters, here's a little guy having some fun with it:






And now a little animal welfare politics. Because it's important:

Ever since animal welfare reports — which have been easily available to the public for a decade — were suddenly scrubbed from a government website last Friday, people who love animals have been speaking out.

The reports, which were housed on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) site, included details about animal abuse and suffering at puppy mills, circuses, zoos, laboratories, farms and even SeaWorld. Since they were removed, it's become much harder for the public to be informed about which facilities are good and which are bad for animals.

"All information was removed today. This includes inspection reports for breeders, exhibitors and research facilities," Tanya Espinosa, public affairs specialist for legislative and public affairs at USDA-APHIS, told The Dodo on Friday.

The unofficial Twitter account for the USDA — one of many alternative accounts that arose after the federal government started restricting what information government agencies could tell the public — encouraged people on Thursday to speak up for the sake of transparency, using adorable photos of their pets.

ACTION: Tweet a photo of your pets to your elected officials & tell them to fight the USDA #AnimalWelfare info blackout! (1/3) Instructions: pic.twitter.com/nWDHfot3fK

— AltUSDA (@altusda) February 8, 2017

@SenateGOP @HouseGOP @altusda Buzz had to live for 13 years with a broken leg from #AnimalAbuse restore the #AnimalWelfare reports @USDA pic.twitter.com/EtOmP39tDY

— Liz Ball (@LizBall14) February 8, 2017

@altusda @RepMullin @Bridenstine4OK @RepFrankLucas My sweet Paisley says, #noUSDAblackout pic.twitter.com/bcTIlC6Z3E

— Donna Shope (@ShopeDonna) February 8, 2017

My sweet Gracie was rescued from a puppy mill where she was bred nearly to death. @usda @altusda #NoBlackout pic.twitter.com/cnkilWiBFm

— Dale Rutz (@DaleRutz) February 8, 2017

@altusda #NoUSDAblackout Shadow was rescued from an animal hoarder, he is a happy one person cat pic.twitter.com/bJedEYGr2u

— Shannon (@Shamerjen) February 8, 2017

My pile of pups now have an abuse free life. Tell @USDA to restore #AnimalWelfare reports! @altusda #NoUSDAblackout pic.twitter.com/NzSLpdkdjq

— Amber McFarland (@Amber3Mc) February 8, 2017

Meanwhile, as concerned citizens are speaking out, animal welfare organizations are making plans to take legal action against the USDA to make the information freely available again.

"This appears to be a situation of agency capture with the USDA cowering to special interests to the detriment of transparency and animal welfare," Nancy Perry, senior vice president of government relations for the ASPCA, told The Dodo. "This is public information and subject to FOIA, so it's dumbfounding that the USDA would take action to make this information more difficult to access. We are deeply concerned this is an effort to protect those who are doing harm to animals."

My beautiful cat Liberty, rescued before she was drowned. @USDA @altusda #noblackout pic.twitter.com/tVJSMbAYgD

— BlahBlahBlah (@NoSymp4theDevil) February 8, 2017

More here.

Do we have to fight these people on absolutely everything? 

I mean, even Hitler liked animals.

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digby 2/09/2017 05:30:00 PM

 
Making America Great Again, one pointlessly cruel act at a time

by digby

Real Americans protecting our way of life

And so it begins:

For eight years, Guadalupe García de Rayos had checked in at the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement office here, a requirement since she was caught using a fake Social Security number during a raid in 2008 at a water park where she worked.

Every year since then, she has walked in and out of the meetings after a brief review of her case and some questions.

But not this year.

On Wednesday, immigration agents arrested Ms. Rayos, 35, and began procedures to send her back to Mexico, a country she has not seen since she left it 21 years ago.

As a van carrying Ms. Rayos left the ICE building, protesters were waiting. They surrounded it, chanting, “Liberation, not deportation.” Her daughter, Jacqueline, joined in, holding a sign that read, “Not one more deportation.” One man, Manuel Saldana, tied himself to one of the van’s front wheels and said, “I’m going to stay here as long as it takes.”

Soon, police officers in helmets had surrounded Mr. Saldana. They cut off the ties holding him to the tire and rounded up at least six others who were blocking the front and back of the van, arresting them all. The driver quickly put the van in reverse and rolled back into the building.

Ms. Rayos was one of several detainees inside the van. It was unclear whether officials planned to take them to Mexico or to detention.

By midnight on Thursday, her husband said he was not sure where she was. A vehicle had just left the building under police escort, and he said he suspected she may have been inside.

Ms. Rayos was arrested just days after the Trump administration broadened the definition of “criminal alien,” a move that immigrants’ rights advocates say could easily apply to a majority of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

“We’re living in a new era now, an era of war on immigrants,” Ms. Rayos’s lawyer, Ray A. Ybarra Maldonado, said Wednesday after leaving the building here that houses the federal immigration agency, known by its acronym, ICE.

The Obama administration made a priority of deporting people who were deemed a threat to public or national safety, had ties to criminal gangs, or had committed serious felony offenses or a series of misdemeanor crimes. Ms. Rayos did not fit any of these criteria, which is why she was allowed to stay in the United States even after a judge issued a deportation order against her in 2013.

That all changed under Mr. Trump. Among the 18 executive orders that he has issued since taking office on Jan. 20 is one stipulating that undocumented immigrants convicted of any criminal offense — and even those who have not been charged but are believed to have committed “acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense” — have become a priority for deportation.

[...]

Lawyers from two of the nation’s leading civil rights’ groups said Ms. Rayos might be the first undocumented immigrant to be arrested during a scheduled meeting with immigration officials since Mr. Trump took office. Thousands of others run a similar risk when they report for their regular immigration checks, in large part because federal agents are now free to decide who is and is not a threat to public safety, those advocates said.

“That is precisely what the alarming problem is with Trump’s internal enforcement order,” Cecillia Wang, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview on Wednesday. Mr. Trump, she said, “took the gloves off agents and has permitted these agents to go after immigrants regardless of their ties and contributions to the United States.”

Ms. Rayos was 14 when she left Acambaro, a city in an impoverished corner of the Mexican state of Guanajuato, and sneaked across the border into Nogales, Ariz., a three-hour drive from Phoenix. She married — her husband is also undocumented — and gave birth to a boy and a girl, who are now in their teens.

Before showing up for her appointment with the immigration officials on Wednesday morning, Ms. Rayos and her family attended Mass. Later, as she entered the gates into the ICE building, she stopped for a moment, clasped her hands and bowed her head, as if she was reciting a silent prayer.

“The only crime my mother committed was to go to work to give a better life for her children,” said her daughter, Jacqueline, as Ms. Rayos stood by her side before entering the ICE building with her lawyer.

Ms. Rayos was working at Golfland Sunsplash in Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix, when Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies swooped in on Dec. 16, 2008, arresting her and several other employees on charges of suspicion of identity theft and using forged documents to obtain employment. The raid was one of the first ordered by Joe Arpaio, who was sheriff at the time, under an Arizona law authorizing sanctions against employers who knowingly hired undocumented immigrants.

She spent three months in a county jail, followed by three months in immigration detention, she told a reporter. In 2013, an immigration court ordered that she be sent back to Mexico, but her case had been on hold since the federal authorities — under the Obama administration — decided not to act on the deportation order.

Her son, Angel, still remembers the evening of her arrest — the knock on the door, the flashlight on the darkened living room, the sight of handcuffs on his mother’s wrists.

“I was in second grade,” he said. “I never forgot that night, and I’ve lived in fear of losing my mother every night since then.”

I hope all those fine Real Americans are proud of themselves. I hope they feel good about what they've done. Maybe they can go to church this Sunday and thank their God for giving them Donald Trump to Make America Great Again. If their beliefs are true, they will go to hell, but apparently they're just happy for the opportunity to treat someone cruelly and be praised for it, so it's a consequence they'll live with.


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digby 2/09/2017 04:00:00 PM

 
Believe him or believe your lying eyes

by digby

It's actually working:

“Better to get your news directly from the president,” Republican congressman Lamar Smith said last month. “In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.”

You may call that sentiment Orwellian, but nine out of ten Republicans would call it common sense: A new poll from Emerson College finds 90 percent of Republicans believe that the Trump administration is “truthful” — while less than 10 percent say the same about the news media.

By contrast, 77 percent of Democrats believe the Trump White House is “untruthful,” while 69 percent think the news media generally tells the truth. Independents tend to think they’re all a bunch of liars, with 52 percent calling the administration untruthful and 47 percent calling the media the same.

Republicans’ nearly unanimous trust in the Trump White House — and contempt for the Fourth Estate — means that, on the whole, voters have more faith in the president: Forty-nine percent call the Trump administration truthful, 48 percent say the opposite; for the media, those numbers are 39 and 53, respectively.

Well, there goes my sleep tonight. I don't know how we survive if 90% of Republicans believe this lying piece of work is honest.

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digby 2/09/2017 02:30:00 PM

 
Shameless hucksters

by digby




I get the feeling the Trump people have all just said "fuck it say whatever you want, there's nothing we can't get away with." It is not normal for white house personnel to go on TV and do what amounts to an infomercial for the First family's personal profit.




“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff, is what I would tell you. I hate shopping, but I am going to go get some myself today. This is just — it’s a wonderful line, I own some of it, I’m just gonna give a free commercial here, go buy it today, you can buy it online.”

Think Progress explains:

In using her official capacity to bolster Ivanka Trump’s business, Conway has plenty of company in the White House — all in reaction to retailers’ announcements that they are are dropping Ivanka Trump’s eponymous clothing line due to poor performance.

President Trump himself lashed out in response — tweeting from his @realdonaldtrump account and retweeting from the official @Potus account, which is passed from president to president.

My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person -- always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017

Since then, Trump’s top advisers — who are all also federal employees working on the taxpayer dime — have been backing up his attack on the company and blurring the already nonexistent line between the Trump administration and the Trump businesses.

“This is a direct attack on [the President’s] policies and her name,” Spicer said.

While touting Ivanka Trump’s business, Conway also talked about Ivanka’s close relationship with the White House, stressing that a role remains open for her whenever she decides she wants it. 

The overarching message from the Trump organization is that messing with a Trump company and messing with the White House are one and the same.

This seems to be fine with the American people.  It's email server management that really gets them upset.


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digby 2/09/2017 12:30:00 PM

 
Emboldening the enemy

by digby

Our president thinks he's the only one who's allowed to talk about military matters to the press. Even US Senators are supposed to stifle it.

Sen. McCain should not be talking about the success or failure of a mission to the media. Only emboldens the enemy! He's been losing so....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

...long he doesn't know how to win anymore, just look at the mess our country is in - bogged down in conflict all over the place. Our hero..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

..Ryan died on a winning mission ( according to General Mattis), not a "failure." Time for the U.S. to get smart and start winning again!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

That's the president of the United States talking there.

If you haven't heard, the so-called successful attack he's talking about (and basically passing off on Mattis which is interesting) was an abject failure that not only missed its target and killed a Navy Seal but killed 9 little children as well.

And Trump might want to STFU about "emboldening the enemy." It's hard to calculate how many people have been radicalized by at attack like this in light of the new president's repeated public comments saying "we have to take out the families." Who could he ever convince that the US didn't do something like this on purpose?

In fact, he's crowing about how successful this botched raid was, so ...

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digby 2/09/2017 11:00:00 AM

 
Which terrorist attacks aren't being covered again?

by digby

I wrote about Trump's bizarre statement that the press doesn't cover terrorist attacks for Salon this morning:

The brouhaha between the Trump administration and the press has continued all week, with President Trump complaining publicly that the media is refusing to cover terrorist attacks for unspecified reasons:

You’ve seen what happened in Paris and Nice. All over Europe, it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that.

Why he thinks the press would hide these stories is completely mystifying. The media go to great lengths to milk every single bloody casualty and tragic death they can. Nothing is as good for ratings as terror porn, as Trump surely knows.

It was natural that the media suspected Trump was referring to the “Bowling Green massacre,” which Kellyanne Conway had been publicly insisting had not been covered by the media. (She was right. It wasn’t covered — because there was no Bowling Green massacre.) But when the White House released a list of 78 terrorist attacks the administration claimed had not be adequately covered, it included Paris, Nice, San Bernardino, Orlando and Brussels, among dozens of others that had received wall-to-wall coverage for weeks.

Then the White House explained that it was really referring to attacks overseas like the machete-wielding man who threatened people in Paris last week and was killed before he could hurt anyone. Such attacks aren’t being given the kind of hysterical reporting that Trump officials apparently believe is necessary for citizens to understand the threat. They want to ensure that Americans think they are in danger of being hacked to death by deranged Muslims at any moment.

Obviously, terrorism is a danger in this world. There isn’t anyone on the planet who is unaware of that. But this idea that foreign terrorists are the greatest threat to America has been repeatedly debunked in recent years, because the data simply does not back up that claim. Despite the minimal risk they present, after the Paris and San Bernardino attacks Donald Trump seized on the xenophobic paranoia that was setting the right wing aflame. He tied his existing Mexican-immigrant bashing to Muslim-immigrant bashing, and the issue took on a life of its own.

Before Trump burst on to the scene, FBI director James Comey and other top law enforcement officials were making it clear that the danger from ISIS-style attacks in the United States did not stem from foreign immigrants or refugees but rather homegrown “lone wolves,” usually young male misfits who became radicalized online. The authorities told us to keep calm and carry on because it was very difficult to catch such plots in advance, although they were working diligently to do so.

Most Americans accepted this with resigned equanimity. The reason we were all able to take this risk in stride (aside from basic common sense) is because we understand perfectly well that this country is chock-full of such lone wolves, many of them mentally ill, armed to the teeth by loose gun laws and driven by demons that generally have nothing to do with Islam. We have had to learn to live with unbalanced young men entering public places and mowing down innocent civilians for every reason and no reason under the sun. Why should we panic just because some of them are now doing it because they are in the grip of a specific extremist ideology? Whether a killer is motivated by hallucinations, racial hatred or religious extremism, the victims are no less dead.

But Trump showed throughout the campaign that the only violent extremism he finds threatening is Muslim extremism, and has gone to great lengths to gin up irrational fear of it among his followers. And that’s very telling since law enforcement officers have said they are even more concerned about a different ideology: right-wing, anti-government extremism, particularly the “sovereign citizen” movement that evolved out of white supremacist groups. Unfortunately, the Trump administration plans to stop tracking such groups in order to concentrate on the alleged hordes of Islamic jihadis in our midst. No wonder neo-Nazis cheered wildly when Trump was elected.

Donald Trump has still not said or tweeted one word about his fan who walked into a Quebec mosque and mowed down six people a week ago. Dylann Roof, the perpetrator of the Charleston massacre, was on trial during the presidential transition and Trump couldn’t too busy scolding the cast of “Hamilton” and critiquing Alec Baldwin’s performance on “Saturday Night Live” to spare a single tweet.

Of the 78 acts of terrorism which the White House accused the media of refusing to adequately cover, all were perpetrated by Muslims. It didn’t mention the right-wing fanatic currently on trial in New York for plotting to take an assault rifle, armor-piercing ammunition and other weapons, including a machete, to a small Muslim community and murder as many people as possible. They didn’t include this week’s guilty verdict in the trial of a Minnesota white supremacist who went to a Black Lives Matter march and shot five protesters.

They didn’t include Robert Dear, the man who used Republican talking points about “selling baby parts” while conducting a rampage at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, killing three people. The White House failed to note the story of the “white power” couple in Las Vegas who spent time at the Bundy ranch and assassinated two police officers, covering them with swastikas after the fact. The list also didn’t include the Ku Klux Klan member sentenced to 30 years to life last December for conspiring with another man to build a dirty bomb to “‘take his country back’ from government leaders by forcing them to change government conduct he perceived as favoring Muslims,” according to prosecutors.

That’s just a short list, chosen at random, of terrorist attacks planned by right-wing extremists in the last couple of years, none of which the Trump administration has mentioned even in passing amid its nonstop fear-mongering and demagoguery about Islamic terrorism. Needless to say, they also have nothing to say about the massive death toll from gun violence perpetrated by average Americans every single day.

Donald Trump sees an America that is terrified of foreigners of all stripes, and wants the media to help him stoke that fear for his own purposes. One cannot help but wonder what President Trump would do if a modern-day Timothy McVeigh managed to pull off one of these horrifying terror plots he doesn’t seem to notice or care about. We will have to hope the American people will understand where to lay the blame.
digby 2/09/2017 09:30:00 AM

 
What will Trump's shiny new police state do about this?

by Gaius Publius


Recently you read here about Trump's shiny new police state.

Wonder what he'll do when this starts back up. Brad Johnson at Hill Heat:

Army Corps Grants Expedited Dakota Access Pipeline Easement

Cancelling an ongoing environmental review, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has given Congress 24 hours notice of its decision to grant an easement for the construction of the final leg of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The action was directed by one of President Donald Trump’s first presidential memoranda.

In the waning days of the Obama administration, after global pressure built from sustained opposition by Native American tribes to the Bakken shale pipeline in North Dakota, the Army announced it would begin a new environmental impact statement review of the project. Trump’s presidential memorandum of January 24th directed the Army Corps to expedite the approval process for the pipeline by any legal means necessary. In memos issued by Douglas W. Lamont, acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, the corps terminated the environmental impact statement process and foreshortened the Congressional notification period from two weeks to one day.

Final construction on the pipeline could thus begin as early as tomorrow.

In other news, Arctic temperatures are nearing 50 degrees above normal, a massive crack is spreading across one of the major Antarctic ice shelves, and a massive tornado hit New Orleans.

Here's what that confrontation looked like before Trump got his hands on the wheel:

"Undeterred by the recent violent police crackdown that descended upon camps supporting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe- the #NoDAPL supporters plan to storm a private ranch where the Tribe lays claim to artifacts and a burial ground" (source).

I've said it many times — Trump will start a "rolling civil war." Count on it.

Also, count it as opportunity, as he starts to collapse in on himself. Fortress White House? Could happen very soon.

P.S. If you want to up the ante against Trump and DAPL, CalPERS is voting on DAPL divestment on Monday. You could help them decide what to do by clicking here. Just a thought...

GP


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Gaius Publius 2/09/2017 07:30:00 AM

 

You don't have to spell it out

by Tom Sullivan

Camp X-ray, Guantanamo Bay base, now abandoned. David Welna/NPR.

Chris Edelson wonders aloud in the Baltimore Sun what kind of people might carry out President Trump's detentions and deportations. What kind of people would detain elderly travelers in wheelchairs, handcuff a 5-year old child, and detain others for nearly 20 hours without food? Ordinary ones:

The men and women who work for the federal government completed these and other tasks and then returned to their families, where perhaps they had dinner and read stories to their children before bedtime.

He doesn't have to spell out what he's driving at.

The men and women who reportedly handcuffed small children and the elderly, separated a child from his mother and held others without food for 20 hours, are undoubtedly "ordinary" people. What I mean by that, is that these are, in normal circumstances, people who likely treat their neighbors and co-workers with kindness and do not intentionally seek to harm others. That is chilling, as it is a reminder that authoritarians have no trouble finding the people they need to carry out their acts of cruelty. They do not need special monsters; they can issue orders to otherwise unexceptional people who will carry them out dutifully.

The Milgram experiment, the Stanford prison experiment, and others show many quite ordinary people placed in extraordinary situations will follow instructions from an authority figure even if it means harming another, even cruelly. Ask Pfc. Lynndie England. Her experience was no experiment. She went to prison for what Rush Limbaugh brushed off as no worse than fraternity hazing. Others who were as guilty and higher up the chain of command went free. Federal employees as well as state and local ones should take a lesson.

As President Donald Trump prepares to begin re-filling the military detention centers at Guantanamo Bay and "black sites," and to detain and deport Muslims and Mexicans and any others he deems undesirable, it is not an academic question. We should all ponder in advance just what we might do when placed in situations to carry out instructions from Trump or his underlings. Edelson continues:

The question we need to ask ourselves is: What will we do? This is not a hypothetical question. Most of us will not face the stark choice employees at airports faced over the weekend. But we are all democratic citizens. Ultimately, our government can only act if we allow it to act. Under our Constitution, the people rule. Our elected officials, including the president, are accountable to us. We possess the power to reject actions we see as out of bounds. We are used to doing this in elections, but democratic tools go further. Even once an election is over, we can exercise our First Amendment rights to contact elected officials, speak, write and protest.

Silence is complicity. You don't have to spell that out either.


Undercover Blue 2/09/2017 06:00:00 AM

Wednesday, February 08, 2017

 
Some helpful advice for protesters

by digby

Spicer says nationwide protests of Trump are not like Tea Party was: This is “a very paid AstroTurf-type movement” pic.twitter.com/WEeGpoP2sK

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 6, 2017

If you, like me, are among the millions of protesters being paid by George Soros, you undoubtedly could use some investment advice. In these turbulent times it's tough to know what to do with your protest pay.



Harold Pollack has some advice for you:

Finally someone has called attention to this important alternative issue. Paying millions of protesters was bound to be a challenge. Even so, this whole protester pay thing has got to be the most poorly-planned shambolic logistical mess of the Trump era.

As you might imagine, my own inbox is flooded with calls and emails from liberals wondering how to most prudently invest their Women’s March pay, whether they should wait for the 1099 before filing their taxes, whether parking and cardboard signs are tax-deductible, and so on. Apologies to the many RBC readers waiting for my responses.

Everyone’s personal situation is different. Generally speaking, I’d recommend that every protester open an SEP-IRA account for these earnings. You can contribute up to 25% of compensation. But regular protesters should be mindful of the maximum contribution limits: $53,000 for the 2016 tax year, and $54,000 for 2017. Something like the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Admiral fund seems appropriate if your protest pay exceeds $10,000.

I believe the Vanguard site is back online after being crushed with Women’s Marchers opening new accounts with their January 21 paychecks. You might still want to login after midnight when the traffic is a bit slower.

So much of the operational chaos might have been avoided had the Soros people simply allowed direct deposit. Live and learn.

Words to the wise. I have a call in to find out if I can deduct my pink yarn and sharpee expenses. I'll keep you posted.

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digby 2/08/2017 04:31:00 PM

 

Don't fall for this

by digby

People for the American Way alerts us to the fact that some people are passing around a little tid-bit about Judge Gorsuch saying he's demoralized by Trump's attacks on the judiciary and using it as evidence that Gorsuch will be "independent."

Not bloody likely:

Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch were atwitter today about reports that in a meeting with Senator Richard Blumenthal, Gorsuch had called President Donald Trump’s attacks on the federal judiciary “disheartening” and ‘”demoralizing.” Is Gorsuch distancing himself from Trump? As we say on the internet: LOL. 

To be clear: Donald Trump’s pattern of attacks on federal judges is more than demoralizing—it’s a threat to the separation of powers and our constitutional system, and it’s hard to imagine a more tepid response than to call them “disheartening.” 

Given Trump’s disregard for the Constitution, we need a Supreme Court willing to take a strong stand in support of the rule of law. Faint disapproval doesn’t cut it. 

Nor should Gorsuch’s vague disagreement paper over the very real concerns about how independent he’d be on the Courts. Just yesterday, Gorsuch “avoided answers like the plague” when Senator Chuck Schumer pressed him on important issues like the Emoluments Clause. In his current position on the 10th circuit, Gorsuch tried to greenlight the governor of Utah’s clear abuse of executive authority in an attack on Planned Parenthood. And, of course, we can’t forget that Gorsuch was hand-picked by far-right organizations that have long supported the agenda being pushed by the Trump administration—and the excessive executive authority he’s counting on to implement it. 

Americans don’t need a rubber stamp for Donald Trump on the Supreme Court. They need someone who will vigorously defend the rule of law. 

Judge Gorsuch’s comments about Trump’s attacks on the judiciary are not even the slightest indication that he’s the independent judge we need.

I'm sure Gorsuch said what was reported. Knowing full-well it would be shared ...

The Republicans are past masters at getting extremist wingnuts on the court. It's all they've done for the past 25 years.

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digby 2/08/2017 04:00:00 PM

 
Resist. Persist.

by digby

You have no doubt heard by now that Mitch McConnell shut down Elizabeth Warren from reading Coretta Scott King's letter from 1986 criticising Jeff Sessions' racist history on the floor of the Senate last night. His comment about it was:

"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless she persisted."

When men speak about women as if they are 5 year olds refusing to obey their daddies, women get very ... angry.

There are many layers of odiousness about what he did, but this was certainly part of it.

While Republican senators would, naturally, try to diminish any attempt, by either a male or female Democrat, to re-examine Sessions’s unsavory history on matters of race, I have my doubts whether they would have chosen the blunt-force method of silencing used against Warren had she been a man. I also wonder over the lengths to which they would go to erase Coretta Scott King’s letter had it been written by one of the eminent male civil rights leaders of the day. They know they’d have a much harder time getting away with such displays of contempt were their targets of the male persuasion. Institutional misogyny is so ingrained in the fiber of American culture that people of every stripe often fail to see in such attacks on women leaders the particular markers of that disease. But in our hearts, women know. Elizabeth Warren was effectively told, in the words of Politico’s Seung Min Kim, to “sit down—and shut up.” Any domestic violence expert will tell you that those are the sort of words that often precede the connection of a male fist to a female face...

Make no mistake: McConnell’s bullying of Elizabeth Warren for reading the words of Coretta Scott King was intended to convey to women—white, black, and of every other color and identity—just who’s boss.

That's from a longer, must-read piece by Adele Stan in The American Prospect. It will make your blood oil.

"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted."

So must we all.https://t.co/JXROGHPNkH

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 8, 2017

Resist. Persist.



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digby 2/08/2017 02:30:00 PM

 
Are we positive Trump doesn't drink?

by digby

Because this pattern suggests drunk dialing to me:

President Donald Trump spent much of a recent phone call with French President Francois Hollande veering off into rants about the U.S. getting shaken down by other countries, according to a senior official with knowledge of the call, creating an awkward interaction with a critical U.S. ally.

While the Hollande call on Jan. 28 did touch on pressing matters between the two countries — namely the fight against the Islamic State — Trump also used the exchange to vent about his personal fixations, including his belief that the United States is being taken advantage of by China and by international bodies like NATO, the official said.

At one point, Trump declared that the French can continue protecting NATO, but that the U.S. “wants our money back,” the official said, adding that Trump seemed to be “obsessing over money."

“It was a difficult conversation, because he talks like he’s speaking publicly,” the official said. “It's not the usual way heads of state speak to each other. He speaks with slogans and the conversation was not completely organized.”

Well,  his mind is not organized and he thinks in slogans. He said it himself many times: "I am what I am."

What you see is what you get,  world. A cretin.

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digby 2/08/2017 12:30:00 PM

 
QOTD: Our beautiful president

by digby

Trump at law enforcement conference: "People say I was kidding. I don't kid."

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) February 8, 2017

I believe this may be the one true thing Trump has said all week. He doesn't kid. He has no sense of humor at all --- well unless you call his glee at bullying people "humor." He never laughs.

I think it's a mistake not to take him seriously AND literally. He lies constantly, pathologically, but he means what he says when he says it. He's not a kidder.

Update: Oh lord, there's more :

"And I was a good student. I understand things. I comprehend very well, better than I think almost anybody."

Yes, he said that.

And the police chiefs and cops still applaud him wildly. Think about that.

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digby 2/08/2017 11:00:00 AM

 
Trump's beautiful new police state

by digby

So, the moron in chief gave speech to police chiefs today and sounded as stupid and angry as always. He's really wound up:

President Donald Trump is promising “zero tolerance” for violence against law enforcement officers.

He told a group of police chiefs Wednesday morning that his administration will give their departments the resources to recruit and retain officers.
[...]
When it comes to people who may be living illegally in the United States and involved in criminal activity, the president wants law enforcement and the public to report them to the Department of Homeland Security.

In his words — “I want you to turn in the bad ones.”

Trump also asserted that had the right to enact his travel ban.

He told the group of police chiefs that his immigration order was “done for the security of our nation.” He said the provision supporting the order was written “beautifully” and was within his executive authority.

Trump said “a bad high school student would understand this.”

He has the worldview of a bad high school student so he would probably know. He ent on to claim that if the courts rule against him it will be because they're political and biased. If they rule for him, of course, they will be because they're fair. This tracks with what he said about the election --- it's rigged and he wouln't accept the outcome  --- unless he won.

As it happens I wrote about this subject before he gave his speech for Salon earlier:

It would appear that some of the folks who were hoping that Donald Trump was actually an isolationist “jobs” president, rather than the authoritarian white nationalist with imperial ambitions he clearly showed himself to be on the stump, are now being forced to face reality. Everything he has done since he was inaugurated proves him to be dead serious about unleashing the military and the police to enact his agenda, and he wants the other branches of government to understand that if they obstruct him he’s going to make sure his rabid followers know who to blame.

According to Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, legal scholars of all stripes, even the torture advocate John Yoo, whom I wrote about on Tuesday, are disturbed by Trump’s executive actions and what he’s saying about them. Pretty much across the board, they anticipate that Trump will blame the courts , the media and the political opposition in the event of an attack. They believe he is anxious to use an attack as an excuse to “take the gloves off” in whatever way he deems necessary.

That could mean everything from registering and deporting Muslims to enhanced surveillance to an attack on a foreign country and the reinstatement of torture and “black site” prisons. (A draft executive order on the black sites has made the rounds already.) All we know at this point is that Trump is looking for an excuse, and odds are there will be one at some point.

But as much as the prospect of these civil-liberties violations are chilling, they aren’t the only area where Trump is getting ready to pounce. He has made no secret of the fact that he generally wants law enforcement to get tougher and more repressive. This is one of his bedrock beliefs going back to the late 1980s when he took out that newspaper ad in response to the Central Park Five case, headlined “Bring Back the Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police.” He ostentatiously dubbed himself “the law and order candidate” during his presidential campaign, and actively courted police unions. In his “New Deal for Black America” the second item on his list says that his administration “will invest in training and funding both local and federal law enforcement operations to remove the gang members, drug dealers, and criminal cartels from our neighborhoods.”

Trump has been vague about his policy on marijuana, generally saying that legalization should be left to the states. But he has made many comments about the need to stop drug trafficking at the border, going all the way back to his announcement in which he famously declared that undocumented workers were flooding over the border, “bringing drugs” and “bringing crime.” He has made it clear that he is determined to jump start the drug war, and the man he has chosen to lead up the Department of Justice, Sen. Jeff Sessions, is a hardcore drug warrior.

Sessions is famous for quipping that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was all right until he found out that some of its members smoked pot, an odious comment on many levels. But his record goes far beyond that. He is hostile to all bipartisan congressional efforts to roll back the federal authority on marijuana laws, such as the CARERS Act, which would fix federal banking laws that prevent legal pot businesses from using the banking system and paying taxes. He opposed the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, which protected states with medical marijuana laws from federal interference, and the McClintock-Polis amendment, which would have done the same for states that have legalized pot for recreational use. The principal sponsors of those bills, Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Tom McClintock, are both conservative Republicans.


Sessions is also an enemy of sentencing reform, one of the few bright bipartisan efforts of recent years. Most observers believe the issue is probably dead under a Trump administration. Nobody wants to put people in jail and throw away the key more that Donald Trump. It’s a terrible setback because the cost in both dollars and human misery of our current sentencing practices is a national disgrace.

Another criminal justice issue that has generally had bipartisan support was the issue of asset forfeiture, a corrupt practice in which police agencies seize the property of suspected criminals and keep the booty. You can imagine that the incentives are very skewed, and there has been a concerted effort in recent years to address the unfairness of stealing someone’s property without any due process. Even those who are not convicted of any crime are almost always out of luck when the whole thing is over. It’s a bonanza for law enforcement agencies, but one that makes a mockery of our commitment to the idea of a presumption of innocence.

I cannot say I’m surprised that Trump is a big fan of that practice as well. After all, he believes “to the victor belongs the spoils” and is perhaps the only Republican in the country to defend “eminent domain,” which is the right of the government to force people to sell their property at fair market value in order to build necessary public infrastructure. Opposition to eminent domain has been a central element of the right-wing agenda for decades, but rank-and-file Republicans proved it was more of a talking point than an article of faith when they didn’t bat an eye at Trump’s defense of the practice to line his own pockets.

Yesterday the president invited a group of sheriffs who endorsed him to the White House and allowed cameras in the room as they chewed the fat about border security, “law and order” and other issues they felt had been ignored under the previous administration. One Texas sheriff brought up asset forfeiture, explaining that a state senator had produced a bill which would require a conviction before law enforcement could seize a person’s property.

Trump was aghast that anyone would suggest such a thing, replying, “Can you believe that? Who is the state senator? Do you want to give his name? We’ll destroy his career.”

All the sheriffs laughed heartily, but other people in the room visibly winced. We know that Trump likes to threaten people and if his early executive orders are any example, he’s serious about carrying through on his promises.

As former GOP congressman David Jolly said on MSNBC:


The president of the United States could destroy a member of Congress with a single tweet. And that’s why no member of Congress wants to speak out too much.

If that doesn’t work he has the whole Department of Justice and half the police in the country at his disposal. People may think he’s just joking, but Trump isn’t really a funny guy. His threats are real, and people should be careful about what they say to him.

That sheriff wisely refused to name names. Whether to do that is a question many people will have to ask themselves in the coming days. When it comes to bringing the strong arm of the law down hard, Donald Trump isn’t kidding.
digby 2/08/2017 09:32:00 AM

 
Climate Change in the Age of Trump — A "Profit-First Energy Plan"

by Gaius Publius

Getting rich on "black gold" and moving into the mansion. It really is just about the money, isn't it? Plus the expectation of dying before the consequences show up. Unlike these fictional folks, most in Big Oil will see those consequences themselves.

As you've noticed, we've turned our attention back to climate here at La Maison, and to the wreckage of the planet we may see manifest in the coming decade (singular).

The climate fight in the U.S. has entered a new phase. It's moved from dealing with a political party that tried to seem to care about the climate, and with which a certain amount of small cold-comfort progress could be made — to dealing with a political party intent on causing the most climate damage it can manage at the fastest rate it can muster ... before it's booted out of office or loses the consent of the governed. (Ponder that last; it's one of the items on offer.)

By now we're all aware that all pipelines will be built, or attempted to be built. But that doesn't encompass the full sweep of America's new climate plan. The party now in power intends to dig all the carbon it can, give all the profits to the already-rich oil and gas industry, which will then sell it at the fastest rate possible to be burned into the air. U.S. carbon emission rates should shoot through the roof.

They're calling that "An America First Energy Plan." Not that Americans will see a dime of profit or wealth from this black-gold rush. It should be renamed "A Profit-First Energy Plan (and the species be damned)."

From the White House website (my emphasis):

An America First Energy Plan

Energy is an essential part of American life and a staple of the world economy. The Trump Administration is committed to energy policies that lower costs for hardworking Americans and maximize the use of American resources, freeing us from dependence on foreign oil.

For too long, we’ve been held back by burdensome regulations on our energy industry. President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule. Lifting these restrictions will greatly help American workers, increasing wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years.

Sound energy policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves right here in America. The Trump Administration will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own. We will use the revenues from energy production to rebuild our roads, schools, bridges and public infrastructure. Less expensive energy will be a big boost to American agriculture, as well.

The Trump Administration is also committed to clean coal technology, and to reviving America’s coal industry, which has been hurting for too long.

In addition to being good for our economy, boosting domestic energy production is in America’s national security interest. President Trump is committed to achieving energy independence from the OPEC cartel and any nations hostile to our interests. At the same time, we will work with our Gulf allies to develop a positive energy relationship as part of our anti-terrorism strategy.

Lastly, our need for energy must go hand-in-hand with responsible stewardship of the environment. Protecting clean air and clean water, conserving our natural habitats, and preserving our natural reserves and resources will remain a high priority. President Trump will refocus the EPA on its essential mission of protecting our air and water.

A brighter future depends on energy policies that stimulate our economy, ensure our security, and protect our health. Under the Trump Administration’s energy policies, that future can become a reality.

Just a few notes; I'll have more to say on this at a later time:

• Wherever this plan says "jobs," substitute "profits." Wherever it says "wages," substitute "revenue."

• "Reviving the coal industry" means just that. Dig it fast, burn it fast, and sell it as widely as possible everywhere in the world. 

• "Energy independence" is a meaningless phrase unless the U.S. nationalizes its oil. All fossil fuel, wherever extracted, is sold at market prices on a small number of exchanges, and only the sellers reap profit. Because the U.S. government is not a seller, it sees not one dime. Because of these markets, oil is fungible. The price of Saudi-dug oil is the same as the price of Exxon-dug oil, all other things being equal. All sellers will charge as much money as they can get; all will hold you hostage to get it.

• "Refocus the EPA on ... protecting our air and water" means spending even more tax dollars on all the additional toxic waste cleanup effort this added drilling, fracking and mountaintop blasting will cause. The EPA will have only one role — the nation's janitor, sweeping up after the energy industry's mess-making.

And finally:

• This will roil the oil market, which is already glutted with supply at unsustainably low prices. Look for energy market crises — and business bankruptcies — to increase, perhaps exponentially. Many smaller fracked-oil companies will go bankrupt, and the banks that financed them may need another bailout.

How to address this? It's still an emergency, just a different kind.

At the Wheelhouse of the Titanic

A metaphor: During the Sanders campaign there was an opportunity to put a new captain in the wheelhouse of the Titanic, one who would actually try to turn the ship instead of just seeming to. Today, however, we're back on the deck, outside looking in. The effort to turn the wheel — mobilize the economy for a fast and radical change of energy source — now has a preliminary step, a preliminary act of mobilization.

To turn the wheel we first have to take command of the wheelhouse, and yes, there are many non-violent ways to do it. It's that or we have to give up, to relax and enjoy whatever days are left of this voyage. (I hear for many first-class passengers — many of those in first-world countries, in other words — the food and accommodations will be comfortable almost to the end, right before the fight for lifeboats begins.)

I mentioned "the coming decade (singular)" above as the window of time left to us. I don't think this is the moment yet to give up, to go dancing, according to our metaphor, one last time on the chilly moonlit deck, the icy mass looming before us.

There really are ways to proceed, and with the change of enemy, new opportunities, avenues of approach we didn't have before. More on that later. This is where we stand now.

GP
 

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Gaius Publius 2/08/2017 07:30:00 AM

 

The little ladies will sit down and shut up

by Tom Sullivan

Break out the pink pussyhats. It seems the voices of both Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the late Coretta Scott King are unwelcome in the Senate old boys' club. The Senate last night voted to silence Warren for reading a 1986 letter from King criticizing Jeff Sessions' civil rights record. CNN:

The rebuke of Warren came after the Massachusetts Democrat read a letter written 30 years ago by Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., opposing the nomination of Jeff Sessions for a federal judgeship.

Warren cited the letter during a debate on the nomination of Sessions -- now an Alabama senator -- as Donald Trump's attorney general. Reading from King's letter to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986, Warren said: "Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge."

Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell raised an objection, saying, "The senator has impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama, as warned by the chair.” A violation, he asserted, of Rule XIX:

2. No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.

The New York Times account continues:

When Mr. McConnell concluded, Ms. Warren said she was “surprised that the words of Coretta Scott King are not suitable for debate in the United States Senate.” She asked to continue her remarks.

Mr. McConnell objected.

“Objection is heard,” said Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, who was presiding in the chamber at the time. “The senator will take her seat.”

Warren was forbidden on a party line vote from further participation in the floor debate ahead of the Sessions confirmation vote expected today. Warren did not, but an appropriate rejoinder might have been, "Go ahead. Make my day."

CNN notes how the move may backfire on the GOP:

"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said on the Senate floor.

The line was an instant classic -- the kind liberals imagine being replayed ad nauseum in TV ads in a future presidential campaign.

Warren stepped outside to record the letter for a Facebook video:



McConnell's objection meant millions more will hear the reading of the King letter. As of this moment, it has over 3.6 million views, 275k shares, and 54k comments.

I note, in particular, King's several references to Sessions' participation in 1984 voter fraud prosecutions of the use of absentee voting by blacks:

The actions taken by Mr. Sessions in regard to the 1984 voting fraud prosecutions represent just one more technique used to intimidate black voters and thus deny them this most precious franchise. The investigations into the absentee voting process were conducted only in the black belt counties where blacks had finally achieved political power in local government. Whites had been using the absentee process to their advantage for years, without incident. Then, when blacks, realizing its strength, began to use it with success, criminal investigations were begun.

In these investigations, Mr. Sessions, a US Attorney, exhibited an eagerness to bring to trial and convict three leaders of the Perry County Civic League including Albert Turner, despite evidence clearly demonstrating their innocence of any wrongdoing. Furthermore, in initiating the case, Mr. Sessions ignored allegations of similar behavior by whites, choosing instead to chill the exercise of the franchise by blacks in his misguided investigation. In fact, Mr. Sessions sought to punish older black civil rights activists, advisers and colleagues of my husband, who had been key figures in the civil rights movement in the 1960's. These were persons who, realizing the potential of the absentee vote among blacks, had learned to use the process within the bounds of legality and had taught others to do the same. The only sin they committed was being too successful in gaining votes.

Republicans were crying voter fraud before Fox News, Drudge, and Breitbart made crying voter fraud "cool." If you need some amusing reading to take the edge off this morning, check out these excerpts from the 2012 decision against the RNC by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The RNC's voter fraud arguments were bogus in 2012. They are bogus now. And they were bogus when Jeff Sessions was pursuing black people for voting in 1984.

UPDATE: Then Oregon’s Sen. Jeff Merkley reads the King letter "uninterrupted" by the “old boys.” #ShePersisted


Undercover Blue 2/08/2017 06:00:00 AM

Tuesday, February 07, 2017

 
A picture worth a thousand words

by digby

Just, wow:

That is a picture of rabbis, handcuffed, being led down the street by New York City police officers. They were protesting the Muslim ban.

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digby 2/07/2017 06:00:00 PM

 
Look at all the good white supremacist terrorists do for our country

by digby

I give you Congressman Sean Duffy:

Duffy said Trump was justified in stopping Syrian refugees from entering the United States “until in Syria they figure out this conflict in the civil war and this hotbed for terrorism.” Presumably, however, once the conflict is over, women and children, for example, won’t feel it is as necessary to escape their country to find a safe haven.

Host Alisyn Camerota pressed Duffy on Trump claiming that the media were intentionally covering up terrorist attacks and either not reporting or underreporting them. The White House later Monday released a list of 78 attacks it said backed up Trump’s claim.

The list notably did not include a recent attack on Muslims inside a Quebec City mosque that killed six people. Trump, who frequently tweets about terrorist attacks, also has not mentioned this one.

Duffy argued in his CNN interview that attacks by white people ― such as the one in Quebec City ― aren’t as big of a problem.

“You don’t have a group like ISIS or al Qaeda that is inspiring people around the world to take up arms and kill innocents. That was a one-off. That was a one-off, Alisyn,” Duffy said.

Camerota then pointed to the massacre of black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, as acts carried out by white terrorists. Duffy tried to make lemonade out of the Charleston attack, in which a white supremacist killed nine people:

CAMEROTA: How about Charleston, congressman? He was an extremist. He was a white extremist?

DUFFY: Yes, he was. OK?

CAMEROTA: How about that? That doesn’t matter?

DUFFY: No, it does matter. It does matter. Look at the good things that came from it. [Then-South Carolina Gov.] Nikki Haley took down the Confederate flag, that was great.

But you want to say I can give you a couple of examples. There’s no constant threat that goes through these attacks. And you have radical Islamic terrorists and ISIS that are driving the attacks, and if you want to compare those two, maybe you can throw another one ―

CAMEROTA: You can.
Duffy claimed that people on the left were manufacturing outrage, saying there was plenty of blame to go around.

“Look at Gabby Giffords. The Marxist, who took her life, a leftist guy, and now you see violence and terror in the streets all across America, burning and beating people with Donald Trump hats. The violence you have to look in, you’re trying to use examples on the right,” he said.

Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) is not dead. As a congresswoman in 2011, she survived an assassination attempt, and she remains an outspoken proponent of gun safety reform.

Duffy said he’d be happy to help do something about white supremacy but he just didn’t know what to do: “Can we vet that? How should we vet that to keep ourselves safe? I will join you in that effort, what do you do?”

It's hard to believe these people are even able to obtain driver's licenses and graduate from high school but they are running the country now. Just plain straight-up stupidity there. Apparently, he really believes you can "vet" Muslim extremism from foreign countries but not white supremacy in the US.

By the way, there was a huge lie in his statement as well. Jared Loughner, who tried but did not succeed in killing Gabrielle Giffords, was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed in conspiracy theories. He was not a Marxist:

The director of research on hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Loughner's political positions were a "hallmark of the far right and the militia movement. In the aftermath of the shooting, the Anti-Defamation League reviewed messages by Loughner, and concluded that there was a "disjointed theme that runs through Loughner's writings", which was a "distrust for and dislike of the government." It "manifested itself in various ways" – for instance, in the belief that the government used the control of language and grammar to brainwash people, the notion that the government was creating "infinite currency" without the backing of gold and silver, or the assertion that NASA was faking spaceflights.
Dislike for Gabrielle Giffords[edit]

According to a former friend, Bryce Tierney, Loughner had expressed a longstanding dislike for Gabrielle Giffords. Tierney recalled that Loughner had often said that women should not hold positions of power. He repeatedly derided Giffords as a "fake". This belief intensified after he attended her August 25, 2007 event when she did not, in his view, sufficiently answer his question: "What is government if words have no meaning?" Loughner kept Giffords' form letter, which thanked him for attending the 2007 event, in the same box as an envelope which was scrawled with phrases like "die bitch" and "assassination plans have been made". Zane Gutierrez, a friend, later told the New York Times that Loughner's anger would also "well up at the sight of President George W. Bush, or in discussing what he considered to be the nefarious designs of government."

He was a mentally ill, anti-government misogynist who was armed to the teeth. Yes, what in the world can we do about that? This country is full of them.

So let's ban Syrian babies. That' will definitely make us much safer.

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digby 2/07/2017 04:00:00 PM