Monday
Jul292019
The Commentariat -- July 30, 2019
Afternoon Update:
Peter Baker & Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "President Trump resumed his attacks on Baltimore and its congressman on Tuesday as African-American state lawmakers from Virginia planned to boycott his scheduled speech commemorating the 400th anniversary of representative democracy in the Western Hemisphere. Mr. Trump again disparaged Representative Elijah E. Cummings.... 'Baltimore is an example of what corrupt government leads to,' Mr. Trump told reporters as he left the White House for the event in Virginia. 'I feel so sorry for the people of Baltimore, and if they ask me, we will get involved.' Mr. Trump offered no evidence of corruption nor did he explain on what he based such an accusation.... Facing questions about his apparent willingness to divide his supporters and opponents along racial lines in recent days, Mr. Trump insisted that he was the 'the least racist person there is anywhere in the world.' Then he called the Rev. Al Sharpton, another recent adversary, 'a racist.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Describing oneself (or someone else) as "the least racist person there is anywhere in the world" is, simply by the construction of the boast, a lie.
Sylvan Lane of the Hill: "President Trump on Tuesday boosted pressure on the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates this week, calling for a 'large cut' to counter a series of hikes in 2018. Trump continued his assault ahead of the independent central bank's policymaking meeting in Washington, which will start Tuesday. The Fed is expected to announce at least a modest reduction of interest rates Wednesday amid slowing global growth and fading U.S. business investment. Trump again accused the Fed and its chairman, Jerome Powell, [Mrs. McC: whom Trump appointed,] of hindering his economic agenda by raising rates seven times under his watch. 'The Fed moved, in my opinion, far too early and for too severely. It puts me at a somewhat of a disadvantage,' Trump said. 'Fortunately I've made the economy so strong that nothing's going to stop us. But the Fed could have made it much easier.' Trump has been quick to blame a recent slowdown in U.S. growth on the Fed while calling on the bank to cut rates. Even so, some of the Fed's rationale for cutting rates is based in economic threats exacerbated by Trump's trade agenda."
Ted Hesson & Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A decision issued Monday by Attorney General William Barr will restrict the ability of migrants to claim asylum based on their family relations. In a precedent-setting immigration court opinion, Barr said that simply being part of a nuclear family targeted for persecution doesn't qualify as a 'particular social group' eligible for asylum in the United States. 'The fact that a criminal group -- such as a drug cartel, gang, or guerrilla force -- targets a group of people does not, standing alone, transform those people into a particular social group,' the attorney general wrote.... To receive asylum in the U.S., applicants must prove they faced persecution in their home countries based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Barr's decision Monday will limit the ability of a familial relationship to qualify as 'membership in a particular social group.'" --s
Alexander Mallin, et al., of ABC News: "... Donald Trump's pick for the next director of national intelligence, Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, has misrepresented his role in an anti-terrorism case that he's repeatedly cited among his credentials related to national security issues. The apparent embellishment is related to two anti-terrorism financing trials in a case known as the U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, the second of which resulted in convictions for several individuals found to have illegally funneled charity money to the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas. In a 2015 press release, Ratcliffe's House website stated, 'When serving by special appointment in U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, he convicted individuals who were funneling money to Hamas behind the front of a charitable organization.' His official campaign website, in a February 2016 post, also touted his 'special appointment as the prosecutor in U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, one of the nation's largest terrorism financing cases.' But ABC News could find no public court records that connect Ratcliffe to either of the two trials for the case. Former officials directly involved in the decade-long Holy Land Foundation investigation could not recall Ratcliffe having any role, and four former defense attorneys who served on the cases told ABC News on Monday they had no recollection of Ratcliffe being involved with any of the proceedings that resulted in the convictions of their clients." ...
... Will Sommer of the Daily Beast: John Ratcliffe "played a role last year in popularizing what briefly became one of the right's most easily debunked conspiracy theories about the investigation into the president and Russia, offering what he presented as evidence of an anti-Trump 'secret society' operating within the FBI.... One of Ratcliffe's biggest contributions to the Republican pushback on the investigation came in January 2018, when he claimed he had seen text messages between [FBI officials Lisa] Page and [Peter] Strzok that suggested the existence of a 'secret society' working against Trump. But Ratcliffe's claims, which were subsequently amplified by pro-Trump media outlets, fell apart when the fuller text exchanges became public.... ABC News published the full text message two days after Ratcliffe made his viral Fox appearance, revealing that the 'secret society' text referenced calendars of a 'beefcake' Vladimir Putin that Strzok was giving out as gifts to people who worked on the Russia investigation." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: So if you were wondering if Ratcliffe really would cherry-pick intelligence information to skew the facts, there's you're answer. This lie alone renders him unfit to serve as White House intelligence chief.
Sarah Fitzpatrick, et al., of NBC News: "The organizations that should have protected young female gymnasts from sexual abuse by former Olympic gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, including the U.S. Olympic Committee and the FBI, 'fundamentally failed' to do so for years, according to a new congressional report. In an interview with NBC News, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the ranking member of the Senate subcommittee overseeing the Olympics, described the actions of the organizations as a 'cover-up.'"
Congressional Elections 2020. Al Weaver & Julia Manchester of the Hill: "The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) saw a mass departure of senior staff late Monday amid outcry over the lack of diversity within the committee's top ranks under Chairwoman Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.).... The exits come on the heels of the resignation of the committee's executive director, Allison Jaslow, which she announced at an all-staff meeting earlier on Monday."
Jonathan Oosting of the Detroit News: "Republicans are suing to stop Michigan's new citizen redistricting commission before it begins, alleging the voter-approved amendment is 'blatantly unconstitutional' and discriminates against participants based on political service or family ties. The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday morning with the U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, seeks to invalidate Proposal 2, block implementation and prevent the independent commission from drawing new legislative and congressional district maps for the 2022 election cycle. Instead, whichever political party wins control of the state Legislature next year would lead that process in 2021. Republicans drew existing lines in 2011 and currently hold majorities in the Michigan House and Senate."
Michael Braga, et al. of GateHouse Media: "More than half of all rural hospitals in Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia and Oklahoma lost money from 2011 through 2017.... What these states also have in common is that legislators voted against expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which would have provided coverage for hundreds of thousands of uninsured residents and bolstered rural hospital bottom lines.... In the meantime, residents of deep red rural America -- farmers and farm workers, small business owners and their employees, the old and infirm -- are seeing their hospitals founder and close." --s
Emily Flitter & Karen Weise of the New York Times: "A software engineer in Seattle hacked into a server holding customer information for Capital One and obtained the personal data of over 100 million people, federal prosecutors said on Monday, in one of the largest thefts of data from a bank. The suspect, Paige Thompson, 33, left a trail online for investigators to follow as she boasted about the hacking, according to court documents in Seattle, where she was arrested and charged with one count of computer fraud and abuse."
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CNN will host the first of two Democratic presidential debates tonight. New York: "Airing from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., [the debates tonight & Wednesday] will be available to stream online at CNN.com for free, no cable login required." Candidates debating tonight are Bullock, Buttigieg, Delaney, Hickenlooper, Klobuchar, O'Rourke, Ryan, Sanders, Warren & Williamson.
Cummings' Oversight Committee Nails Corrupt Trump & Friends. Benjamin Siegel & Matthew Mosk of ABC News: Thomas Barrack, "a longtime Trump insider, has been pushing a proposal to build dozens of nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia while seeking to avoid restrictions on the transfer of U.S. nuclear technology and has at times stood to profit from the effort, according to an investigative report by the House Oversight Committee. Today's report reveals new and extensive evidence that corroborates Committee whistle-blowers and exposes how corporate and foreign interests are using their unique access to advocate for the transfer of U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia,' said Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Democrat who chairs the committee. The 50-page report, which relied on 60,000 documents and statements from whistle-blowers inside the administration, was made public Monday. It focuses on the actions of Thomas Barrack, a wealthy Los Angeles businessman who oversaw ... Donald Trump's inaugural committee, as well as earlier efforts by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to push a Saudi nuclear energy plan. Investigators said they found evidence that 'private parties with close ties to the President wield[ed] outsized influence over U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia.'... The White House did not cooperate with the investigation, providing none of the documents requested.... The report alleges that Flynn and later Barrack helped push the proposal during the 2016 campaign, in the White House and later during briefings with senior White House officials including Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner[, Cabinet members] and ultimately President Trump." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: President* Obvious clearly knew this damning report would be released this week when he began his racist Twitterstorm against Rep. Cummings. ...
... Benjamin Siegel of ABC News: "When candidate Donald Trump prepared to give a major energy speech during the 2016 campaign, one of his closest advisers [Thomas Barrack] provided a pre-speech review to senior United Arab Emirates officials, an unorthodox move that caught the attention of federal investigators, according to emails and text messages uncovered by a House Oversight Committee investigation.... [A UAE business] associate [of Barrack's] then told Barrack he shared [the draft speech] with UAE and Saudi government officials, after which Barrack arranged for language requested by the UAE officials to be added to the speech with the help of Trump's campaign manager at the time, Paul Manafort. [Manafort told Barrack he had inserted the UAE language into the speech, but in fact the final version was considerably watered-down.]... 'The Trump Administration has virtually obliterated the lines normally separating government policy making from corporate and foreign interests,' according to a report overseen by House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, who commissioned the investigation into back channel business dealings between certain Trump aides and Middle Eastern countries." ...
... Erin Banco of the Daily Beast: Nuclear energy "executives have built an underground coalition along with academics, technology experts and well-connected politicos, including some lobbyists, to get the president and his administration to support -- even promote -- an American nuclear energy comeback.... But the coalition had a plan for a big return by way of exporting U.S. nuclear technology overseas. The comeback, as the coalition saw it, would come via Saudi Arabia and would rely on using President Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner's cozy relationship with the country's de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.... The coalition's campaign is still being carried out, predominantly behind closed doors.... The ... secret campaign ... is concerning officials and Capitol Hill who are fearful that the plans for Saudi Arabia will move forward despite the fact that they raise legal concerns and could potentially threaten U.S. national security...." ...
... See too related New York Times report, also linked yesterday.
Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump, after a weekend spent assailing a leading African-American congressman from Baltimore, widened his war on critics of color on Monday morning as he denounced the Rev. Al Sharpton as 'a con man' who 'Hates Whites & Cops!'... Mr. Sharpton fired back not much later. 'Trump says I'm a troublemaker & con man,' he wrote on Twitter. 'I do make trouble for bigots. If he really thought I was a con man he would want me in his cabinet.'... [Trump] went after [Rep. Elijah] Cummings again as well. 'Baltimore, under the leadership of Elijah Cummings, has the worst Crime Statistics in the Nation,' Mr. Trump wrote. '25 years of all talk, no action! So tired of listening to the same old Bull...Next, Reverend Al will show up to complain & protest. Nothing will get done for the people in need. Sad!'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Cummings is not a local official, so he has no control over city & county leaders' actions, though one would think he might have some influence on them. Also, Balto does not have "the worst Crime Statistics in the Nation." ...
... Jonathan Lemire & Zeke Miller of the AP: "The president has rid himself of many of the aides who once challenged him, either by attrition or replacement, and in doing so illustrated his preference for loyalty over know-how. He's inflamed racial tensions, betting that such divisions will help ease his path to victory in 2020. And he's replaced gut instinct and tweets for the sober analysis of professionals on matters of war and peace.... Like so many of Trump's political impulses, the president's attacks this weekend on Cummings, the powerful chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and the racist tweets he sent two weeks earlier were born not of strategy meetings with aides, but of cable television." ...
... As PD Pepe wrote yesterday, "If you had been told years ago that one day a President of the U.S. would get his marching orders from a T.V. network you'd have laughed, said how ridiculous, that could never happen here." The joke's on us.
... Paul Krugman: "... Trump's racism rests on a vision of America that is decades out of date.... Trump doesn't seem to be aware that times have changed. His vision of 'American carnage' is one of a nation whose principal social problem is inner-city violence, perpetrated by nonwhites.... Violent crime has fallen drastically since the early 1990s, especially in big cities.... On the other hand, the social state of rural America -- white rural America -- is deteriorating.... Less-educated whites, especially in rural areas..., are suffering from a surge in 'deaths of despair' from opioids, suicide and alcohol that has pushed their mortality rates above those of African-Americans.... The real irony [of Trump's attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings & Baltimore] is that if you ask which congressional districts really are 'messes' in the sense of suffering from severe social problems, many -- probably most -- strongly supported Trump in 2016. And Trump is, of course, doing nothing to help those districts. All he has to offer is hate." ...
... Jamelle Bouie compares Trump to South Carolina Gov. & Sen. Bill "Pitchfork" Tillman, a 19th/early 20th-century plantation owner & extreme segregationist. Tillman "would use the language of populism and agrarian rebellion to build a constituency among white men who felt ignored and disadvantaged, angered, anxious and alienated." But at the same time he was oppressing blacks, he was an elitist, "skeptical that ordinary white men actually had the full capacity to govern." ...
... Kate Sullivan of CNN: "The House Republican retreat is scheduled to take place in Baltimore -- the same city in Maryland that ... Donald Trump denigrated over the weekend as a 'disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess....' House Republican leadership announced in April that their annual retreat would take place September 12-14 in Baltimore.... It is common for the President to speak at their party's annual congressional retreat." ...
... Philip Bailey of the Louisville Courier Journal: "Republican Sen. Rand Paul is offering to buy Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar a plane ticket to visit her home country of Somalia to learn to be more grateful for living in the United States.... 'I'm not saying we forcibly send her anywhere,' Paul said in an interview last week with Breitbart News, a conservative-leaning outlet. 'I'm willing to contribute to buy her a ticket to go visit Somalia. I think she can look and maybe learn a little bit about the disaster that is Somalia.'" Mrs. McC: This would be the same Rand Paul who had on his staff & co-authored a book with Jack Hunter, "the Southern Avenger," who is a white supremacist & advocate for secession. The suggestion that a refugee would have no idea what things were like in the country she fled but that an American would know better shows both profound ignorance & stunning hubris. (Also linked yesterday.)
Chris Cillizza of CNN: "... on Monday morning, in a speech to first responders and others impacted by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, [Donald Trump] took his fantastical memory of himself to new and not-at-all-appropriate heights .'I was down there also, but I'm not considering myself a first responder,' Trump said. 'But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.'... It's also not the first time he's done it. 'Everyone who helped clear the rubble -- and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit...,' Trump said in a speech in Buffalo in 2016. 'Clearing the rubble. Trying to find additional lives. You didn't know what was going to come down on all of us -- and they handled it.' He has also claimed that he helped pay for several hundred workers to help clean up the wreckage in the aftermath of 9/11. Independent fact-check sites have been unable to verify that claim." What Trump was really doing on 9/11, according to Cillizza, was watching from Trump Tower (Mrs. McC: which is about 4 miles from the World Trade Center) & bragging on the radio that now that the towers had fallen he owned the tallest building in Manhattan (40 Wall Street). He didn't. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump also was at the Alamo with Davy Crockett, led Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill, & raised the flag at Iwo Jima. ...
... Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "The president repeated claims about his presence at ground zero during the signing ceremony for legislation to ensure health care funding for emergency workers who rushed to help.... According to Richard Alles, a retired deputy chief with the New York Fire Department, Mr. Trump was not a presence at ground zero. 'I spent many months there myself, and I never witnessed him,' Mr. Alles, who was at the Rose Garden event on Monday, said in an interview. 'He was a private citizen at the time. I don't know what kind of role he could have possibly played.'" Read the whole report. Trump has used a great American catastrophe for self-aggrandizement, & all of his claims to acts of heroim & generosity are fake, fake, fake. (Mrs. McC: Rudy Giuliani claimed at a Trump rally in 2016 that he'd never seen Hillary Clinton at Ground Zero, only to have to apologize when photos of her walking beside Giuliani at the site on September 12, the first moment she could get from D.C. to New York. Giuliani also claimed she lied about being there on September 11, but she never claimed to be there that day.)
[John Ratcliffe’s chief qualification is] his record of promoting Donald Trump's conspiracy theories. Congressman Ratcliffe is the most partisan and least qualified individual ever nominated to serve as director of national intelligence. -- Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) ...
... Julian Barnes, et al., of the New York Times: "Republicans hesitated on Monday to embrace President Trump's choice for the director of national intelligence, and some privately expressed doubts about his potential confirmation, echoing concerns of experts and Democrats that he was too inexperienced and too partisan. Mr. Trump's pick, Representative John Ratcliffe of Texas, could face an uphill battle, Senate Republicans said in private conversations. Several said they wanted to keep the intelligence post apolitical, and Mr. Ratcliffe will need to show he can move beyond the die-hard conservative persona that has made him a star in the House and on Fox News.... Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, including its chairman, Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, said they were unfamiliar with the congressman.... Democrats also said they had concerns that Mr. Ratcliffe would not stand up to Mr. Trump when his views on Iran or North Korea were at odds with the assessment of intelligence analysts." ...
... Ted Barrett, et al., of CNN: "... Donald Trump's choice of Rep. John Ratcliffe to replace respected former Sen. Dan Coats as Director of National Intelligence in one of the most powerful and sensitive jobs in government, has gotten a tepid response to this point from Republican senators, signaling the Texas Republican, a Trump loyalist who lacks intelligence experience, could face a fight to be confirmed. The handful of GOP senators who initially put out public statements about the change mostly praised the professionalism and integrity of the departing Coats." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... No Expertise. Mrs. McCrabbie: As Akhilleus pointed out in yesterday's Comments, the National Security Act requires that the DNI "shall have extensive national security expertise." Dubya appointed Ratcliffe "Chief of Anti-Terrorism and National Security for the Eastern District of Texas," & Ratcliffe has been on the House Intelligence Committee for a few months. Doesn't sound like "extensive expertise" to me. (Also linked yesterday.)
... Update. Liar: According to MSNBC, Ratcliffe has been playing up his Bush II-era experience as a bold prosecutor of terrorists, claiming he had "put terrorists in jail." BUT there is no evidence Ratcliffe ever prosecuted a terrorism case." ...
... ** Nutty Conspiracy Theorist. David Rohde of the New Yorker: "Ratcliffe is a full-throated backer of Trump's practice of trafficking in conspiracy theories for political gain; he has joined the President's effort to claim that it wasn't the myriad contacts between Trump campaign aides and Russian officials that led to Mueller investigation but, rather, that the inquiry was part of a 'deep state' conspiracy. Ratcliffe has repeatedly claimed that Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, colluded with Russia and that a cabal of C.I.A. and F.B.I. officials, working with foreign intelligence services, carried out a global conspiracy to entrap Trump aides.... The bitter partisanship that Trump intentionally fuels is eroding a forty-year consensus in Washington regarding the need for apolitical intelligence."
... Toady. Fred Kaplan of Slate: "Among other things, the DNI gives the president his daily intelligence briefing, and in those reports, as well as in his testimony to Congress, Coats has concluded that Iran no longer had a nuclear weapons program, that North Korea was unlikely to get rid of its nuclear arsenal, that ISIS was still an active terrorist organization, and that top Russian officials interfered in the 2016 election -- all of which contradicted Trump's views. By contrast, Ratcliffe has been a hangdog defender of Trump during the various inquiries into Trump's collusion with Russia. In last week's hearing, he grilled Mueller on his legal theories and asserted that the real colluders were Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, claiming that the Steele dossier -- which Ratcliffe incorrectly said had triggered the Mueller probe -- was filled with misinformation planted by the Russians, with the intent of harming Trump's bid for the White House.... Ratcliffe's spirited criticism of special counsel Robert Mueller in last week's hearing -- including the recital of one of the more preposterous conspiracy theories ever unreeled on the subject -- demonstrated that he would embody everything this president wants in a Cabinet secretary: total loyalty to Trump." ...
... Kaplan also writes, "Attorney General William Barr will soon begin his 'investigation of the investigators' -- a probe to assess the political biases of the Mueller investigation -- and Trump has given him authority to declassify documents as he sees fit. Ratcliffe would be a natural enabler in a pursuit to cherry-pick material -- or, more to the point, to find material worth cherry-picking -- whereas Coats might have sided with the intel professionals in resisting such a blatantly political maneuver." David Rohde -- column linked above -- writes, "A senior intelligence official recently told me that Barr is personally convinced that there was something nefarious in how the F.B.I. started its investigation in 2016.... In a Sunday-morning interview on Fox News..., Ratcliffe ... praised an unprecedented review that ... Barr is conducting of the work of the F.B.I. and key intelligence agencies in the launch of the 2016 Trump-Russia investigation.... He said that Trump deserved a presumption of innocence, then added, 'What I do know, as a former federal prosecutor, is that it does appear that there were crimes committed during the Obama Administration.'" So there's that. ...
... AND, as Patrick wrote in yesterday's Comments, "Having Rep. Ratcliffe as ODNI will be bad bad bad, but not as bad as if he had a real intel agency like CIA, NSA etc. ODNI actually owns no assets and the intel agencies do not take orders from ODNI. The problem will be that he can have a public forum to speak for the intel community, even if no one else in any of the intel agencies agrees with what he has to say. So he can cause a lot of public confidence damage, but not really control what the agencies do." ...
... Otherwise, a great choice. All the best people, etc.
Jordain Carney of the Hill: "The Senate on Monday failed to override President Trump's vetoes of resolutions blocking his arms deal with Saudi Arabia, marking the latest setback for critics of Riyadh. Senators voted 45-40, 45-39 and 46-41 on the override attempts, falling well short of the two-thirds majority needed to nix Trump's veto."
#MoscowMitch. Cristina Cabrera of TPM: "Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) complained on Monday that he's a victim of 'modern-day McCarthyism' because he's being criticized for repeatedly killing election security bills. Before formally kicking off the week's Senate session, McConnell spent about a half hour on the Senate floor expressing his indignation over 'unhinged smears' against him.... McConnell then claimed the 'partisan' bill he blocked on Friday was a result of 'theatrical requests' by the Democrats.... However, even bipartisan election security bills haven't been spared: McConnell's refused to hold votes on those too." --s
Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "Imagine the utter contempt that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) must hold for the American people. 'Again and again, Democrats have refused to join Republicans in guaranteeing coverage for pre-existing conditions,' Cornyn tweeted Monday morning.... In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.... Every single Senate Democrat voted for these protections for people with preexisting conditions. Every single Senate Republican opposed these protections.... There is no way to '#bothsides' this history: The Democratic Party spent the last decade enacting protections for people with preexisting conditions and then defending it against a multi-front partisan onslaught. The Republican Party led that onslaught. Remember Cornyn's tweet next time you hear a Republican politician rail against liberal elites who are supposedly condescending to salt-of-the-earth Americans in the heartland. Cornyn sent that tweet because he thinks you are stupid." --s
Presidential Race 2020. Danielle McLean of ThinkProgress: "Native American issues are rarely discussed on the presidential campaign trail, but for the first this year, a candidates' forum entirely on Native concerns will be held next month in Sioux City, Iowa. So far, five Democratic candidates have confirmed they will attend the August 19 and 20 discussion about the sovereign rights of tribes, housing, and the protection of Native land, among other issues. So far, the candidates who have confirmed that they plan to attend the forum are Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D-MT), author Marianne Williamson, U.S. Rep. John Delaney (D-MD), and President Barack Obama's former Housing Secretary Julian Castro." --s
Jeanna Smialek of the New York Times: "The Federal Reserve this week will most likely cut interest rates for the first time since 2008, when the economy was mired in a deep recession, as the central bank tries to keep a record economic expansion from petering out. The expected change, while likely to be small, will end an era of gradual rate increases intended to return the economy to a more 'normal' state in the wake of the Great Recession, when the Fed slashed rates to near zero as it tried to rescue the economy.... In cutting now, the Fed is effectively ending its campaign to put economic policy back to normal. The shift confirms that interest rates will be much lower from now on, leaving the economy in a much more fragile state." (Also linked yesterday.)
The GOP's Favorite State Budget Slasher. Matt Shuham of TPM: "The budget consultant [Donna Arduin] has served in several Republican-led governor's offices, slashing state expenses while cutting or resisting efforts to increase tax revenue. She's also one of three leaders of the right-wing consulting firm Arduin Laffer & Moore Econometrics. Her partners are 'Trumponomics' co-authors Arthur Laffer, the trickle-down economics evangelist, and Stephen Moore, who in May ruefully wished there was a 'statute of limitations on saying stupid things' so he could've had a shot at joining the Federal Reserve Board.... Arduin has crisscrossed the country slashing state budgets left and right. 'I have no sympathy for people who want handouts from the government,' Arduin told Duke Magazine for a 2006 profile. It shows." --s
Mark Lawson of the Guardian interviews Ken Burns on the complexities of America. --s
Kelly Weill & Audry McNamara of the Daily Beast. "The gunman who murdered three people at a food festival in Northern California on Sunday posted about a far-right book on Instagram moments before the attack.... Santino William Legan, 19..., posted a picture with a caption that told followers to read a 19th-century, proto-fascist book. The book, which is repeatedly recommended alongside works by Hitler and other fasicsts on forums like 8chan, is full of anti-Semitic, sexist and white supremacist ideology. The book glorifies 'Aryan' men, condemns inter-marriage between races and defends violence based on bogus eugenicist tropes.... Police said Legan legally purchased his assault-style rifle in Nevada this month." (Also linked yesterday.)
AP: "Federal officials say they've found a missile launcher in a man's luggage at the airport in Baltimore. The Transportation Security Administration said in a statement that the military grade weapon was located in the man's checked luggage at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.... The unidentified traveler said he was in the military and coming home from Kuwait. He said he wanted to keep the weapon as a souvenir." Mrs. McC: In fairness to the soldier, there may be nothing in TSA guidelines that specifically prohibits packing a missile launcher in your duffle bag.
Way Beyond the Beltway
China. Jamie Ross of The Daily Beast: "China claims it has released most detainees held in the government's mass internment program for ethnic minority Muslims, but provided no evidence for the announcement. According to The New York Times, Alken Tuniaz, vice government chairman in the region of Xinjiang, said 90 percent of people held in the camps have been returned to society." --s
El Salvador. Nina Lakhani of the Guardian: "[The country of El Salvador] is one of the most murderous in the world, plagued by warring gang factions and security forces who shoot to kill. Relentless bloodshed and chronic unemployment have driven wave after wave of migration as Salvadorans seek a better life. But in recent years, widespread water shortages are increasingly helping fuel unrest and forced displacement.... El Salvador...also has the region's lowest water reserves, which are depleting fast thanks to the climate crisis, pollution and unchecked commercial exploitation. According to one study, El Salvador will run out of water within 80 years unless radical action is taken to improve the way the country manages its dwindling water supplies. As in just about every aspect of life in El Salvador, the water problem is only exacerbated by corporate interests, corruption and the country's vicious street gangs." --s
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Reader Comments (12)
"Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "Imagine the utter contempt that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) must hold for the American people. 'Again and again, Democrats have refused to join Republicans in guaranteeing coverage for pre-existing conditions,' Cornyn tweeted Monday morning."
Millhiser then adds that Cornyn tweeted thusly because he thinks you are stupid.
Well––I say Chiodo Sella testa! Attention all you candidates out on the trail––use this–-put that nail directly on the head of Cornyn and the head of his party whose lies ––spell out the biggies ––and say:
They think you are stupid, they think you will believe anything they tell you because you have shown such devotion but I don't think you are stupid––I think you deserve to hear the truth and I'm here to tell it to you.
Worth a try.
`
Don't know if the ploy will expand his base, but I think it likely attacking Congresspeople of color will motivate many black voters who stood on the sidelines in 2016, which could make a difference in some southeastern states the Pretender won.
Another day in Racist Paradise.
More hate and division spewed by the Orange Menace.
A so-called “intelligence” director who is light on intelligence but heavy on obsequiousness, crackpot conspiracy theorizing, lying, and an astonishing lack of qualifications. The perfect Trump candidate!
Also, out in California, another white supremacist Friend of Trump murders brown people, including children. How proud Republicans must be! Keep those thoughts and prayers coming. Oh, wait. Thoughts and prayers are only for white people. Never mind.
Moscow Mitch tells Trump boss Putin that the coast is clear for election tampering. Hack away!
Fox “News” dunderheads prepare today’s national and international agenda for the Glorious Leader. There’s plenty of pictures, not too many words, and zero objectivity and thinking. Perfect!
Another wonderful day.
Poor Mr. Powell.
Must be tough enough to oversee an incredibly large and complex economy without a borrow, spend and make me look good Pretender breathing down your neck.
Wonder where all those traditional Republicans are now hiding--or how they will vote in 2020. The supine politicians I understand. They have to fear their Leader's wrath. And just write the ignorant, racist base off as hopeless.
But the average Republican businessmen of the old school, not the billionaires who would trade anything for the big the tax breaks, but those in the middle, the committed small time capitalists who pore over the business page each day.
I do wonder how they're processing the Madman in the Oval Office?
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/30/powell-trump-trade-interest-rates-1625961
This morning Joe went on line to our credit union to pay some bills and was told his credit card was blocked; Blocked! he cried, why on earth for? Turns out his card had been hacked–-and Visa being alert to strange large amounts immediately blocked the card. We will now be issued new cards which means notifying the many entities of the change. My mother was right:
"This little card will be the downfall of many, I guarantee you." The old girl did a lot of "I guarantee you's" but on this she was spot on.
Well, here's a little good news during these dark times.
While perusing the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter this morning I saw an article stating that Greta Thunberg, the teen advocating that school kids around the world go on strike to protest climate change, will be travelling to NY to attend the UN Climate Action Summit on Sept 23. (I couldn't link because of the DN paywall.)
During this Guardian interview with AOC, Greta mentioned that she wasn't sure if you could attend because she doesn't fly due to the carbon footprint of air travel.
As the NYT wrote yesterday she'll be coming by boat, a speedy racing sailboat equipped with solar panels and underwater turbines but no kitchen, refrigeration or showers. Eating MREs for two weeks.
I give her a lot of credit for trying to live by her beliefs.
If I had been looking for distraction, I knew I'd be looking in the wrong place when I grabbed James Lee Burke's "Jolie Blon's Bounce" from the stack of unread books I planned to get to someday, but I read it anyway and was im(de?)pressed by the degree to which Burke's picture of the darker elements of his Louisiana seem to have seeped into the mainstrean of our body politic.
Burke has alway done a fine job with the atmospherics, mixing light and dark, good and evil, using the southern Louisiana landscape both as symbol and reflection of his point of view characters' inner turmoil.
For the bad guys, though, no turmoil. Just unrelieved evil. Men and women narcissists moved by only by their arrogance and greed, users and takers bred in the best American tradition.
Burke's narrative drive always gets me to the end quickly enough. It's only later that I bother to ask the hard questions and by now I know I won't find the ansswers. Why did this or that happen? Did that character really make any sense? When I try to answer those questions, I conclude as I always do that the only real-seeming people in his novels are the conflicted good guys, the ones whose interiors we are allowed to see as they try to find their way on the twisty paths of life.
Their evil counterparts remain an impenetrable mystery. They do evil things and that's that, their only fictional raison de etre it seems to give the good guys someone and something to struggle against. Even the good guys don't really understand them. They call them evil, stomp them into the ground, and often kill them, but have no more idea of why bad guys behave they way they do at the story's end than they do at its beginning.
Not real satisfying is it?
But more so than the current state of affairs in the so-called "real" world.
What is the matter with that guy in the White House? What is he after? Why are there so many willing to follow him on the sure path to perdition?
I just don't get it. And it's not a book whose covers I can close when I'm done.
Why the hell haven't the Democrats in the Senate just held a vote themselves on any of the election protection measures. Screw Mitch, even if the vote doesn't count they should make a show of it. Put it on the record that the Demcrats WOULD vote to protect our elections, or lower drug prices, or raise the minimum wage or any of the other Hundred bills that have passed the House. Take over the Senate for a day and give the media the spectacle that they can't help going crazy over. Show some fight. Civil disobediance isn't just for the masses. But the Democrats don't want to risk a stern scolding from the Republicans for not following the arbitrarily written congressional rules, that they could not care less about, so it will never happen.
What would happen if Democrats held a hearing out of the Capitol Building, inviting some press and real witnesses and experts? Let people tell what they have seen or experienced without the Republican grandstanding and conspiracy theories. Maybe on the border crisis and detention centers. No clocks, no random rules. Just questions and answers to try to illuminate the truth.
Gotta like this one:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-07-30/trump-tax-returns-california-ballot-gavin-newsom-law
Could CA be leading the nation again?
Or will Mississippi and its brethren block anyone from the ballot who does release his or her returns?
Another litmus test, a test which applied chemically handily shows red or blue?
On "Moscow Mitch."
Apparently Mitch doesn't like it. Probably because the sobriquet fits so well.
Too damn bad.
His allegiance has never changed. He and his party has always been about the money and little else.
When the money that supported him came primarily from American interests, he could pretend that he stood foursquare behind those interests and none other.
But now that the Pretender's party is so obviously pursing that money where ever it is, whether its source is our traditional enemies or not, Turtleman is stuck.
The Pretender's cut and paste nationalism is for the home audience only. Borders don't mean a thing for him unless you're brown.
American realpolitik in the Age of Trump is international in scope and intent, and if the Russians can help Mitch's party stay in power, there is no choice but to embrace them.
So this fake patriot is uncomfortable.
Good.
Ken—❤️ James Lee Burke—you can taste and smell LOUISIANA in his books. Not as fond of the western ones. And will Clint Purcell ever have good luck?? Dave doesn’t either—3 wives? And loved Tripod... Excellent escapist literature—boy, do we need it—
@Jeanne
But as I said, Burke's Louisiana miasma isn't much of an escape, since the evils in its swamps and bayous seem to have been exported. Think it's climate change and its associated floods? Not just the disease-bearing insects, but the base and shameless corruption Burke portrays marching north?
Glad you're doing well enough to keep in touch.