Washington And Ohio

Linking to a piece by Jonathan Swan of Axios, Jim Vandehei of Axios tweets "A source familiar with Trump's thinking said the president has privately used the word 'courage.' "Clearly what he likes about him is he's holding his ground, not running for the tall grass, the source said." In response, Charlie Pierce recognizes "the essential worthlessness of an entire news operation in a single tweet."

Courage hardly seems to be the quality Trump most treasures in his selection of an Assistant Attorney General, who previously had concluded the Special Counsel's probe is a "witch hunt." It's highly unlikely when according to The Washington Post

Trump has spoken privately about his fears over risks to his own life, according to a former senior White House official, who has discussed the issue with the president and spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about Trump’s concerns.

 “He’s never been interested in going,” the official said of Trump visiting troops in a combat zone, citing conversations with the president. “He’s afraid of those situations. He’s afraid people want to kill him.”

The President reportedly also doesn't want to associate himself with wars he views as failures.. However, given that he is a weak leader who is afraid of nothing more than he is of appearing weak, it has the ring of truth.

Courage never has been Trump's strong point, and it's a character flaw that seems to run strongly throughout his adopted party.  Florida senator MarcoRubio tweets

I don’t know if Adm. William McRaven shares my political views or not.

But I do know that few Americans have sacrificed or risked more than he has to protect America & the freedoms we enjoy.

His military career exemplified honor & excellence.

I am grateful for his service.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 19, 2018

Max Boot responds "No political risk for supporting Adm McRaven as long as you don’t call out Trump by name for attacking another American hero." Rubio wasn't alone. Unsurprisingly, the Speaker of the House omits the name "Trump" in the statement "Speaker Ryan has traveled to Afghanistan multiple times, most recently in October, and has seen our military’s service and dedication firsthand. As the holidays approach, we are especially grateful for our troops’ sacrifice."

And then there is Ohio, in which media darling John Kasich, the United States Supreme Court be damned, in 2016 signed into law a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks. Now the GOP-controlled legislature, in its unrelenting effort to force birth upon unwilling participants, is hard at work trying to pass legislation further to abridge a woman's reproductive freedom.  The legislation would ban all abortions performed at any time unless, the Center for American Progress notes, they are "based on a surgical, chemical, or medical procedure to treat a disease”

CAP understandably is incensed because if the bill is enacted into law, the woman as well as the medical practitioner could be charged with a criminal offense up to and including murder.  Nonetheless, CAP notes

The bill includes a provision that says the pregnant person can avoid these consequences in criminal or civil court if they are willing to be part of a hearing, provide information to investigators, or make a report. But this does not apply to health care providers performing abortions.

Of course she can, and it doesn't. If the (formerly) pregnant individual were held as culpable as the practitioner for aborting a fetus (defined as an "unborn person") what the legislature classifies as murder, it would risk alienating the 50-55% of the voting public which is female, or at least the not-insignificant portion which is of child-bearing age. Their boyfriends or husbands might also be perturbed.

It is aimed by its proponents to force the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade, as is the slightly less draconian HB 258.  (Although he has remained agnostic on 565, incoming governor Mike DeWine has pledged to sign 258.)

Restriction of abortion rights is fertile ground for cowardice. Trump himself once told CNN’s Jake Tapper “I am pro-choice,” then on follow-up “I’m pro-life. I’m sorry.” He’s less forthright than when he admitted to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that a prohibition on abortion should require punishment for the woman as well as the practitioner. Still, the lack of courage puts him in the same league as GOP legislators in Columbus and in Washington, D.C., whatever Axios wants us to believe.

Share |

Tepid Response(s)

"'Bizarre' and 'shameful'" Republicans lead responses to Trump news conference with Putin," reads the ABC News headline.

The article was posted at 2:53 p.m. Eastern time and in the age of cable news, Facebook, and Twitter, the reporters were able to identify all of seven (7) GOP members of Congress who had anything negative to say. They included senators Ben Sasse, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and Orrin Hatch, the latter three of whom are retiring and thus have little to fear from the big guy in the White House.

They included also Lindsey Graham and the ailing John McCain who- unlike the others- had the courage to mention the name "Trump." (President Trump proved not only unable, but also unwilling, to stand up to Trump," remarked the Arizona senator.)  Also criticizing the President without mentioning "Trump" was House Speaker Paul Ryan, who wrote

There is no question that Russia interfered in our election and continues attempts to undermine democracy here and around the world. That is not just the finding of the American intelligence community but also the House Committee on Intelligence. The president must appreciate that Russia is not our ally. There is no moral equivalence between the United States and Russia, which remains hostile to our most basic values and ideals. The United States must be focused on holding Russia accountable and putting an end to its vile attacks on democracy.

The President cannot "appreciate that Russia is not our ally" when, as Ryan should realize today (if not before), Russia is an ally of the President.

There are several reasons coming out of the Treason Summit to recognize that. Included is the false statement of the purported President of the USA

Even during the tensions of the Cold War, when the world looked much different than it does today, the United States and Russia were able to maintain a strong dialogue. Our relationship has never been worse than it is now. However, that changed as of about four hours ago.

Our relationship has never been worse than it is now. The President claimed the same yesterday, although we had Charlie Pierce to remind us of the Cuban Missile Crisis: 

In October of 1962, I spent a lot of time under my desk and drilling on how to file calmly down to the basement.
Read a book, Biff. https://t.co/FgIrXbL6iM

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) July 16, 2018

Additionally, Donald Trump has been ostensibly in charge the last 17 months of that relationship, though he would claim (and already has) that he has dramatically improved relations.

But the response shouldn't come only from a great blogger/journalist and other analysts. We need also to wake up a former President. The night before meeting with Putin, we heard from Trump

President Obama thought that Crooked Hillary was going to win the election, so when he was informed by the FBI about Russian Meddling, he said it couldn’t happen, was no big deal, & did NOTHING about it. When I won it became a big deal and the Rigged Witch Hunt headed by Strzok!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2018

The muted response from the Republican Party to the captain of Team Russia is the most damaging to the country. But when President Trump demonstrates little interest in his own country and slams a political enemy (video below from late June), said target needs to speak up. Ask John McCain.

Share |

Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out.

In "The Tragedy of Paul Ryan," published on April 11 in Politico Magazine, Tim Alberta notes "Paul Ryan came to Congress as a Jack Kemp conservative and will depart as a Donald Trump Republican."

Once Donald Trump won the presidency, Alberta maintains, Ryan wanted to return as Speaker so he could

have a chance to pursue the legislation of his dreams: repealing Obamacare, rewriting the tax code, reforming entitlement programs and rebuilding the military. But it would be possible only if he partnered with the very man whose offenses were so manifest that Ryan disinvited him from his own Wisconsin congressional district a month before the election.

The Affordable Care Act, although weakened, will not be repealed during this Congress. (Alternatively, though it will not be repealed, Obamacare is a shell of its former self.) Congress has passed a bill which President Trump pushed for "rebuilding" the military, because spending more on the military than the next seven or eight nations combined was, Ryan seems to have believed, dangerously insufficient.

The corporate tax scam passed by the GOP Congress in the last few days of 2017, whose specifics baffled accountants and the public alike, likely will result in significant cuts to Medicare, will explode the debt beyond Ronald Reagan's wildest wet dream, and will shove money upward at a furious rate. Further, as an economist who worked under President Obama noted, "it leaves low- and middle-income workers with even fewer resources to invest in their children, and increases the number of Americans without health insurance.”

Paul Ryan has done his job- as he planned it- very well, and almost all Americans insufficiently financially advantaged to be a major donor to Paul Ryan will be the worst off for it.

The day before Alberta's article was published, Mieke Eoyang argued that Ryan, now that he is free from any concern about backlash from the ultra-right among his colleagues and in the GOP base, has a chance to redeem himself. She explains

Under House rules, the speaker may, at any time, remove any member of a select committee at his or her discretion. In the past, members have been stripped of their committee assignments for causing problems for the leadership. Thus, unlike other committees, where the caucus or a steering committee has a say in the committee leadership, HPSCI is effectively under Ryan’s thumb. So he owns Nunes’ shameful handling of the Russia probe, and his hijinks on behalf of the White House.

One year ago, chairperson of the House Select Committee on Intelligence Devin

Nunes dashed off to the White House in the middle the night and the next day, called two bizarre news conferences during which he accused President Barack Obama’s team of improperly “unmasking” the identities of Trump associates. 

Having debased himself in this shameless display of obeisance to Donald Trump, Nunes announced that he was recusing himself from the committee's oversight of the Russia investigation. However, he did no such thing, and in January demanded the Justice Department give, Eeyong reminds us, "highly sensitive documents related to ongoing criminal investigations to congressional investigators."

Ryan backed Nunes, as he did when the committee the following month recklessly- against the objection of the FBI and the DOJ- released (on a party-line vote) its partisan memorandum accusing the FBI of misconduct in its handling of the application for a warrant for Carter Page.

Shortly thereafter, Nunes leaked text messages of vice-chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner. This past week

he threatened to hold in contempt and begin impeachment proceedings (against) Rosenstein and Wray if they did not provide other documents that are part of the government’s case against people charged in the Mueller investigation. This isn’t oversight—it’s a bald-faced attack on America’s law enforcement institutions that runs contrary to the GOP’s long-standing respect for the rule of law.

If it wasn't yet obvious what Nunes was up to, later that day he told Laura Ingraham "We're not going to just hold in contempt, we will have a plan to hold in contempt and to impeach." He was not referring to Donald Trump.

Eoyang wants Speaker Ryan to replace Nunes with Representative Conaway (next-senior Republican on the committee) or someone else credible, encourage the committee head to appoint respected career professionals as staff, and significantly tone down the rhetoric.

But of course he won't do that. He won't do that because Paul Ryan has been as interested in containing President Trump as he has had in the issue of poverty, a short-lived, boutique cause for him. He remains, as Charlie Pierce has periodically called him, "the biggest fake in American politics."

Share |

No Red Line There

Mark Warner, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, means well.  He has tweeted "any attempt to remove the Special Counsel, pardon key witnesses, or otherwise interfere in the investigation, would be a gross abuse of power" and "all members of Congress, from both parties, have a responsibility to our Constitution and to our country to make that clear immediately."

Nonetheless, the Virginia senator also tweeted "I've said it before, and I am saying it again: firing the Special Counsel is a red line that the President cannot cross." 

Saying it repeatedly, unfortunately, won't make it magically happen, though perhaps Warner meant that this President cannot cross a red line with Mueller any more than the previous one did with Syria, which meant nothing, notwithstanding helping defeat Hillary Clinton.

As Natasha Bertrand has noted, "Trump asked Comey for loyalty; asked him to drop the Flynn probe; fired Comey; pressured Sessions not to recuse; pressured Sessions to fire McCabe; pressured Coats, Rogers, Pompeo & multiple congresmen to say he wasn't under FBI investigation; and tried to fire Mueller."(He also fired Sally Yates.)

Trump calls the investigation a "witch hunt" and has such members of Congress  as Senators Cornyn and Johnson criticizing the FBI and Representative Trey Gowdy undermining the FBI. Devin Nunes has beeen such a toady for Dear Leader that if he isn't being paid a salary as a member of the President's communications team, he should sue. (Meanwhile, Martin Luther King's birthday came and went without a hint of criticism from them over FBI surveillance of the Reverend Dr.; can't imagine why.)






But the best evidence that firing Mueller is no "red line" that cannot be crossed ironically comes from the Senator who at one time seemed exorcised by the possibility. The Daily Beast's Betsy Woodruff reports

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican in his first term, made headlines over the summer when he signed on to legislation with Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) that would have shielded Mueller from being fired. But Tillis has largely abandoned the push to move that legislation forward while conceding that the bill doesn’t have the support to get through Congress. His office says he still supports the bill, but that the matter isn’t urgent since Trump says he doesn’t plan to fire Mueller....

On Thursday night, The New York Times reported that Trump tried to fire the special counsel last summer. (Tillis spokesperson Daniel) Keylin told The Daily Beast that despite the revelation, Tillis continues to trust that the president isn’t planning to fire Mueller, who is leading an investigation into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 election.

The Senator is blowing smoke up our posterior or, as the commercial puts it, our kiester (Wisconsin).  Woodruff further explains

the dialing back of the Senator's support is significant. Unlike Graham, who veers between bashing Trump and golfing with him, and Coons and Booker—both Democrats—Tillis could bring the legislation to shield Mueller serious bipartisan bona fides. When he introduced his bill, Tillis similarly didn’t believe that a firing of Mueller was near, but he pitched the legislation as a precautionary measure.

“I don’t have any evidence to suggest the White House had any intention of doing it [firing Mueller], but it’s a helpful way for us to take it off the table,” he explained.

Now the proposal has been all but taken off the table- not because firing Mueller is a longshot but because it would put congressional Republicans into a bind.  They would have to choose between giving to Trump a pass on an act which would instantly incite massive demonstrations nationally or angering the President's base, much of which is unyielding. Republicans who would vote in favor of Tillis-Coons also would be subject to Trump's angry and derisive tweets, and Republicans don't like to get their feelings hurt.

And then there is the matter of taxes for the wealthy, which Sarah Ellison described in August as it pertained to Paul Ryan, who had condemned Donald Trump for his 7/15 charge that Mexico was sending "their rapists" to the USA; allegation that Judge Curiel was biased because his descendants were from Mexico;  travel ban; and comments on the Access Hollywood tape. Nevertheless the House Speaker has made a

bargain (which) is clear—it’s the one spelled out by Grover Norquist back in 2012, when Norquist defended the choice of Mitt Romney by saying he’d also have endorsed a monkey, a plate of lasagna, or a potted plant. All Norquist wanted was “a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen” to sign legislation. Ryan wants to gut the safety net for the poor and cut taxes for the wealthy, and believes that with Trump he can do that. He said recently that he had dreamed of cutting Medicaid since his keg-drinking days. Having Trump’s digits on the Resolute Desk—whatever the existential risk to the principles of the country as a whole—is a small price to pay.

Of legislation protecting Robert Mueller, Maine Republican senator Susan Collins in December remarked "I haven't seen the need for that because I really don't think the President is going to fire Mr. Mueller.  But certainly the introduction of the bill sends a strong signal." It certainly did. And its virtual withdrawal has sent an even stronger one.




Share |

Sorry. The Money Is All Gone.

In floor debate in late November, Senate Finance Committee chairperson Orrin Hatch, who worked with the late Senator Edward Kennedy to create the Children's Health Insurance Program, assured Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown "We're going to get CHIP throught. There's no question about that. I'm going to see that it gets through."

Politico's Haberkorn reported Friday that the Utah Republican stated “We’re going to take good care of CHIP. I can’t tell you exactly when, but we’ll get it done.”

With Republicans in favor of the program and Democrats completely committeed to it, CHIP will sometime in the near future be reauthorized.

Still, Haberkorn added

House Republicans on Wednesday released a spending bill that would fund CHIP for five years but pay for it with cuts to Obamacare and other programs that Senate Democrats would not support. The bill would need Democrats' help to get through the Senate.

Nice little program you got there- it would be a shame if something happened to it.  The GOP is quite willing to fund children's health care- provided that it can chip away at the social safety net elsewhere.

The hostage may be released, but the GOP is bound and determined that a heavy price is paid. It is, after all, the secondary motive for a disastrous tax bill, the primary motive being to please the Party's donors.  Hatch himself gave it away when in the largely empty chamber with Brown, he contended

We're going to do CHIP. There's no question about it in my mind. And it's gotta be done the right way. But- the reason CHIP's having trouble is that we don't have any money anymore. We just add more and more spending and more and more spending and you can look at the  rest of the bill for more and more spending.





"It has to be done the right way... we don't have any money anymore," remarked the Senator who unreservedly voted for the GOP tax plan, targeted to increase the debt by something north of $1 trillion. Excited at the pospect of slashing Medicaid, Speaker Paul Ryan at a conservative event in March bragged to the editor of the National Review "Sending it back to the states, capping its growth rate. We have been dreaming of this since I have been around, since you and I were drinking at a keg.”

Shortly before triumphantly pushing through his chamber the Corporate Tax Cut Sham of 2017, Ryan maintained at a town hall meeting "You cannot get the national debt under control, you cannot get that deficit under control, if you don’t do both — grow the economy, cut spending."  Ryan had commented in a radio interview . "Frankly, it's the health care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health care entitlements — because that's really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking."

Frankly, the Speaker dares not utter the words "Medicaid" or "Medicare," and while more detached than Hatch, he's a little more subtle, or at least wonkier. So carrying water for Ryan, Politico's Alberta and Bade characterize the Speaker's goal as "entitlement reform," in which he "tackles what he sees as the systemic problems with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid." Charlie Pierce recognizes “'what he sees as being systemic problems' with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are that those programs exist at all."

Senator Marco Rubio echoes Ryan's call that Congress "structurally reform" earned benefits. More candid than the Speaker or Hatch, the Florida Republican stated

The only way you are going to deal with the debt is you have to do two things. ... You have got to generate economic growth because growth generates revenue. But you also have to bring spending under control. And not discretionary spending. That isn’t the driver of our debt... The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries.

The good news is that individuals currently elderly probably will be left somewhat, relatively, unharmed. Perhaps Hatch and his merry band of oligarchs with a daddy complex will "take care" of people now in retirement age or close to it because elderly people vote. Health care for children also- to whatever extent- will be provided. But all those people in between better hold onto their wallets. The Republican Senate and Republican Senate are coming for you- unless, of course, your parents leave their $11 million estate to you when they die.




Share |

No Problem With Guns

Media critic and Fox News host Howard Kurtz at 11:08 a.m. Monday tweeted "Gun control is a legitimate issue, but for the Dems already raising it after Las Vegas massacre, could we just have a day before plunging in." Responding to a barrage of criticism, Kurtz responded in three tweets, the first almost reasonably,: "Getting strong pushback from gun control advocates. Just saying it can appear insensitive to do this instantly & we don't have all facts." The third, however, read in part I said one day is decent interval... Let’s just wait till passions cool & people forget about it, right?"

Kurtz should have claimed that his Twitter account had been hacked, given that he had implied that passion is off-base upon the murder of 59 people and that legislation cannot be discussed until the victimes have been erased from memory.

Candidate Donald Trump had a different perspective. Less than eleven hours after a gunman on June 12, 2016 shot and killed 49 individuals at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, he tweeted "Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!"

A few days after 14 persons had been shot and killed in San Bernardino, California the previous December, Trump advocated a "total and complete shutdown" of the entry of Muslims to the United States "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."  After Orlando, San Bernardino, candidate Trump characteristically leapt to conclusions before passions had cooled and all the facts were known.  He waited less than a day before tweeting about these horrific events, as well as about Charleston, the Paris attacks, and the EgyptAir crash.

After the Las Vegas disaster, President Trump says "we'll be talking about gun laws as time goes by," meaning never if it increases safety but soon, if it does not. Without evidence he called Stephen Paddock a “sick man, a demented man.” Granted Trump is impulsive, bigoted, and ignorant.

But what is Paul Ryan's excuse? At a news conference Tuesday, the House Speaker

also said proposed legislation to make it easier to buy gun silencers is not scheduled for a vote this week, but he did not indicate when it would come for a floor vote.

“We cannot let the actions of a single person define us as a country,” Ryan said. “It is not who we are. Instead what truly defines us are the act of heroism we witness after the tragedy.”

Many things define us, including the mass shooting- three dead, two injured- which took place earlier Sunday in Kansas.

But the Speaker did tell us what his excuse is. Ryan stated

“one of the things we have learned from these shootings is often underneath this is a diagnosis of mental illness.”

He cited legislation passed last year aimed at expanding access to mental health services.

“That law is now being implemented,” Ryan said. “So I think it is important that as see the dust settles, and we see what is behind some of these tragedies, that mental health reform is a critical ingredient to making sure that we can try and prevent some of these things from happening in the past.”

But Ryan did not address moves made by the GOP and President Donald Trump earlier this year that reversed an Obama administration regulation to make it more difficult for those who are on Social Security for mental illness to be able to purchase guns.

So that is his excuse- the mental health dodge, from a guy who as Speaker spearheaded the effort to make it easier for mentally ill individuals to buy firearms.





Representative Joe Kennedy- from the famous Massachusetts Kennedy family-responded "All due respect Mr. Speaker, you and your party celebrated taking mental health care from millions just months ago at the White House."

No respect necessary or deserved.  It may be a well-meaning Howard Kurtz wanting to talk about guns after we've forgotten the carnage they've wrought or Donald Trump and Paul Ryan taking refuge in the safe, largely irrelevant shelter of mental health. Either way, there is a powerful constituency for averting the eyes and pretending it is an aberration, not an essential trait of our national character.





Share |

No Way To Run A Government

Mitt Romney was right.

This isn't about Russia, which during the 2012 presidential campaign he maintained "is without question our number one geopolitical foe,they fight for every cause for the world's worst actors."

Romney was right in, and only in, spirit. As President Obama recognized at the time (and is still the case) the nation's number one geopolitical foe is terrorism. However, Russia may be our number one foe among state actors, and the former governor's emphasis upon the evil of the Kremlin was needed in a country still giddy over the end of the Cold War.

President Obama might (and certainly should) want to forget that he rebuked Romney with "And, the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because, the Cold War's been over for 20 years."

Romney was right about one other matter on which he differed from Obama.  Though with few details, fifty-nine (59) months ago

Mitt Romney would not continue the new program that grants work permits and suspends deportation for two years for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as minors, his campaign says, according to the Boston Globe.

Romney would not revoke work permits for people who obtain them by the time he would take office, on Jan. 20, but he would not grant any after that, the campaign says, according to the Boston Globe report.

President Todd Schulte of FWD.us, a liberal/progressive immigration reform organization, notes "the federal government has the cellphone and home address of every DACA recipient."

That's valuable information in the hands of one Donald J.Trump and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.  By contrast, if Mitt Romney had been elected and ended the program, the information would be in the hands of a President Romney and whatever Attorney General he would have nominated. At the time of the GOP candidate's remark in October, 2012, 29 individuals would have been affected; now, close to 790,000.

(Nevertheless, if Romney-Ryan had won, the prayers of every disadvantaged person and most of the middle class would have had to be said every night for the continued health of the President.)

Nonetheless, Schulte accurately notes of the "Dreamers"

They grew up here, they work at nearly every major company in America, serve in the military and many are working on recovery efforts in TexasIf DACA is repealed and no permanent legislation passed, they will all be fired and our government will begin the large-scale deportation of people raised in the United States, using information they volunteered to the government with the promise it would never be used against them or their families.

The President has put off a final decision for six months, during which time he hopes congressional Republicans will con Democrats into a deal in which the "Dreamers" are allowed to stay while Trump gets funding for a wall.

Assuming the dreamer at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue does not get his wish, Barack Obama may have won his bet, that whomever becomes #45 wouldn't revoke the Dreamers' privilege of remaining in this country.  In that case, the President of the United States, enacted on an anti-immigration platform, will have reneged on a major campaign promise.

That would be the right way to go because, as Mitt Romney understood in 2012, sometimes principle has to go out the window and you just have to leave well enough alone.  However, if President Trump decides otherwise, those cellphone numbers and home addresses, courtesy of President Barack Obama, will come in quite handy for Trump-Sessions.




Share |

Elsewhere

All snark and joking aside: there may be no better measure of the tragedy of the mass shooting at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park in Alexandria, Virginia on Wednesday than that Speaker Ryan, in delivering an eloquent statement, was able to cast aside for the moment his obsession with tax cuts for the wealthy, a/k/a "tax reform."

That story is being covered heavily and will continue to be, with a dose here and there of And so let us check out with our ally "across the pond" to find out what might be going on there, including one event which was initially reported but is now ignored.  We learn

Grief and sorrow at the Grenfell Tower inferno on Thursday gave way to anger as residents of the gutted block demanded answers over the litany of failings which led to the disaster.

As fears mounted that the death toll could rise above 100, senior politicians who visited the scene were asked to explain why a series of loopholes had left the inhabitants vulnerable, despite repeated warnings over the last 30 years.

And in an eerie similarity to events on September 11, 2001 in New York City

Two separate sources have told The Telegraph that not all the front doors in the tower block were fire-proofed. This is hugely significant because official fire brigade advice to stay put in the event of a fire is based on fire doors offering protection to residents told not to leave the building.

Sidani Atmani, 41, said his neighbour on the 15th floor, a man he knew as Stephen, died because he had followed fire brigade instructions to stay in his flat.


“A lot of people died because of what they were told to do,” he said. “It was horrible.”

Following the horrible attack on GOP baseball players outside of the nation's capital, President Trump issued a professional, tasteful, and perhaps even inspiring statement which included

We can all agree that we are blessed to be Americans, that our children deserve to grow up in a nation of safety and peace, and that we are strongest when we are unified and when we work together for the common good.

The number of deaths in a tragedy which should remind us of  the worst day in our nation's history may have reached triple figures. Little attention is paid by the media (an exception, below) and none by our President.

Most of us are fortunate to be Americans. But a "blessing" comes only from God, and there is in the response to London's disaster nothing to suggest that such favor has been bestowed upon our nation, formerly the leader of the free world.











Share |

Ryan For The Defense

Amid reports which indicate that the President of the United States of America and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces probably is selling out his country,* Fox News has one simple message: it's the leakers, stupid. And it's quite clear they don't mean any appointees of President Trump, nor even holdovers from 44 sympathetic to 45.

Probably not coincidentally- especially given the love affair between the network and the President- the Speaker of the House is going that way, too.  Politico reports

House Speaker Paul Ryan urged lawmakers to be “sober” about swirling allegations that President Donald Trump asked FBI Director James Comey to call off an investigation into his national security adviser Mike Flynn.

“That is our job, to be sober, to be passionate … and to follow the facts wherever they may lead,” he said.






Being sober is inarguably a good thing, although some of the most passionate people I've known are quite clearly not sober. The article continues

“It is obvious – there are some people out there who want to harm the president,” he said. “We have an obligation to carry out our oversight, regardless of which party is in the White House. That means before rushing to judgment we get all the pertinent information.”

Here for Ryan is some pertinent information, albeit unconfirmed, about "some people."  Conservative blogger Erick Erickson, critical of Trump the candidate and President, evidently has a source(s) within the Administration who is skeptical of the boss' leadership style. Though fastidiously negative toward the left, Erickson on Tuesday morning wrote  "of these stories about the President"

What sets this story apart for me, at least, is that I know one of the sources. And the source is solidly supportive of President Trump, or at least has been and was during Campaign 2016. But the President will not take any internal criticism, no matter how politely it is given. He does not want advice, cannot be corrected, and is too insecure to see any constructive feedback as anything other than an attack.

So some of the sources are left with no other option but to go to the media, leak the story, and hope that the intense blowback gives the President a swift kick in the butt. Perhaps then he will recognize he screwed up. The President cares vastly more about what the press says than what his advisers say. That is a real problem and one his advisers are having to recognize and use, even if it causes messy stories to get outside the White House perimeter.

I am told that what the President did is actually far worse than what is being reported. The President does not seem to realize or appreciate that his bragging can undermine relationships with our allies and with human intelligence sources. He also does not seem to appreciate that his loose lips can get valuable assets in the field killed.

We read also in Politico that the Speaker "wants to know why the director 'didn’t take action at the time' Trump reportedly pressured him to halt the Flynn investigation."  When he's not battling the elderly and the middle class, the Speaker is an apologist for President Trump. When the story of these times is written, few people will be recognized as more villainous than Paul Davis Ryan Jr.

*in this case, not Russia.


Share |

If Only I Could Have Posted This On St. Patrick's Day

He talks! He has a squeaky clean image! He leads!

Meat Loaf was wrong when he sang "two out of three ain't bad" because two out of three can be very bad.

Lawrence O'Donnell appears to have been the first person (and confident he was) to have noticed that Devin Nunes dropped the name of Paul Ryan when he gave an impromptu news conference on the White House lawn after the committee chairperson dropped by to give to the President, a possible target of the investigation his committeee was to hold, intelligence he would offer no one else. On March 22 O'Donnell explained (best to start at approximately 4:48 of video below)

Donald Trump is the second person that Devin Nunes gave that information to 
today. The first was Paul Ryan, his boss in the House of Representatives.
And Paul Ryan then told Chairman Nunes to bring it to the president. To 
completely bypass his committee, to completely ignore the tradition and 
practice of sharing that with the Ranking Member of his committee, Adam 
Schiff.

Just run it right down to the White House. And so Paul Ryan left Devin 
Nunes wide open to accusations that he was running down to the White House 
to offer some political protection for the damage his committee did to the 
president on Monday.







O'Donnell returned to the topic Monday, observing "And as more inexplicable than him running first to the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, which is the single most under reported stop on Devin Nunes` tour that day on his way to the White House." Doggedly, he wouldn't let go of Ryan, on Tuesday remarking

He is afraid to talk about Devin Nunes. Afraid. He would 
rather talk about the most colossal legislative failure any speaker of the 
House has ever had, his first big bill as speaker.

The Trump-Ryan healthcare bill. That healthcare bill is the single, 
biggest, public professional embarrassment in Paul Ryan`s life.

And he would rather talk about that now and has said more publicly about 
that than he has said about Devin Nunes and that scandal.

And the reason Paul Ryan is afraid of talking about Devin Nunes is because 
the way-over-his-head chairman put Paul Ryan dead center in this scandal on 
the first day when he told reporters something none of them have noticed 
that first stop that he made before going to see the president at the White 
House, was Paul Ryan`s office.

The MSNBC anchorperson added "And I don`t know what I have to do to get any reporters to notice this, including the ones who were standing there in the White House driveway and
heard him saying that."

Finally, someone else did, and it took another O'Donnell for it  to happen. In an interview conducted with Ryan Wednesday but telecast Thursday on "CBS This Morning,"  Norah (unrelated) O'Donnell

 asked him what he knew about Nunes’ source and what other evidence he’s seen.
“You were among the first that [Nunes] briefed. What did he tell you?” O’Donnell asked.

“He had told me that — like, a whistleblower-type person had given him some information that was new that spoke to the last administration and part of this investigation,” Ryan said. “He briefs me about it, didn’t know the content of it, only knew the nature of it and that he was going to brief others.”

“Did you ask to see the documents yourself?” O’Donnell asked.

“He didn’t have the documents, so I didn’t,” Ryan responded.

“Did you encourage him to then go tell the president about it?”

“No, but I told him to just add it to his investigation,” Ryan said.

“So you at no time said, ‘Whatever you find out, you should probably go tell President Trump about it?’” 

“Oh — he was gonna brief everybody. He — I already knew he was going to go and brief. So the — what Chairman Nunes said is he just came into possession of new information that he thought was valuable to this investigation, and that he was going to go and inform people about it,” Ryan said.

“But he hasn’t. I mean, he hasn’t even informed the Republican committee,” O’Donnell said.

“Yeah, I have seen the actual documents. I don’t know that he’s been in possession of them yet. Let me say this: It’s very important that we allow and encourage whistleblowers to talk to Congress,” Ryan said.

You probably caught Nunes was going to go inform people about it. .  Reliable sources have confirmed that Representative Nunes did not cathch the plate number of that bus Speaker Ryan sent to run over him.

Norah, evidently in some sort of "O'Donnell tradition," wouldn't let it drop:

“Can you just help me understand that, though? Because if it’s a whistleblower, why wouldn’t that information then be shared with the Democrats on the committee, and even the other Republicans who haven’t seen it?” O’Donnell asked.

“I don’t know the answer to that question, you’d have to ask that person. I don’t even know who this is,” Ryan said.

“I mean, you’re a member of the Gang of Eight. You can see the most classified intelligence that our government has, right? You could request this information,” O’Donnell said.

“Yeah, we want this information to be provided to Congress and we’re waiting for it to be provided to Congress,” Ryan said.

The speaker also said he has no knowledge of whether President Trump is under investigation for ties to Russia.

"We're waiting for it to be provided to Congress", saith the guy who was allegedly assured that Nunes "was going to go and inform people about it."  If up to him, he'd wait forever. The Speaker made Nunes and can break him because he appoints committee chairpersons and can replace them.If he wasn't informed, he chose not to be informed.

Therefore,  notwithstanding (Lawrence) O'Donnell harping on an issue when no one cared about it and (Norah) O'Donnell interrogating Ryan about it, we still don't know what the Speaker was told by chairperson Nunes. He may have been selling him out or buying time for both of them.  Either way, however, as Lawrence O. noted on Tuesday

That`s why Paul Ryan is not ordering Devin Nunes to recuse himself because
Paul Ryan is in this thing as deep as Devin Nunes is. And if Devin Nunes
can lose his chairmanship over it, then Paul Ryan can lose his speakership
over it.

While precious little is known, two things are clear: Paul Ryan is Speaker of the House, but no leader. And there is something about an O'Donnell.







Share |

The Greatest Dealmaker Ever

When you are bankrolled by Robert Mercer and daughter Rebekah and your former chairman is a close presidential adviser, the pieces you publish are significant.  And when the report pertains to Donald Trump's favorite female talk-show host, we should take notice that

During her opening statement on Fox News Channel’s “Justice,” host Jeanine Pirro ripped House Speaker Paul Ryan, calling for him to step down after his healthcare bill to replace Obamacare failed miserably.

“Paul Ryan needs to step down as speaker of the house,” Pirro began. “The reason? He failed to deliver the votes on his healthcare bill, the one trumpeted to repeal and replace Obamacare, the one that he had seven years to work on, the one he had under lock and key in the basement of Congress, the one that had to be pulled to prevent the embarrassment of not having enough votes to pass.”

Later, Pirro said, “I want to be clear, this is not on President Trump. No one expected a business man to completely understand the nuances, the complicated ins and outs of Washington and its legislative process. How would he know which individuals upon which he would be able to rely?”

Paul Ryan will not be replaced any time soon, in part because he owns with the President the failure to overturn the Affordable Care Act.  Fortunately for people who rely on such frivolities as hospitalization, maternity care, and laboratory services, Trump hasn't learned how to steer legislation.

Trump, who has told us "I comprehend.... better, I think, than almost  anybody," works alone. Rim Alberta of Politico writes 

For starters, Trump kept the GOP health care bill at arm's length for more than a week, offering a smattering of favorable remarks but failing to embrace it in convincing fashion. Ryan's rivals on Capitol Hill got the message: The president was lukewarm about the legislation. According to interviews with officials in all three camps—the White House, the Republican leadership and the Freedom Caucus—conservatives saw a schism between Trump and Ryan, and seized on the perceived opening.

Someone should have told Trump that the good-cop, bad-cop routine works only if both teammates know the game is being played. Instead

Early last week, during a budgetary meeting at the White House, the two leaders of the Freedom Caucus—chairman Mark Meadows and former chairman Jim Jordan—kept diverting the discussion to health care, much to the annoyance of Budget Committee chairwoman Diane Black. When the meeting broke, Meadows and Jordan swiftly sought an audience with the president to discuss Ryan's bill. Trump granted them the meeting, during which the conservatives complained that Ryan was presenting them with a "binary choice"—either vote for the bill that had been introduced, or vote to preserve Obamacare—that was doing the president a disservice. Trump replied that he was open to negotiation and new ideas, and Meadows and Jordan left the White House thinking they had a powerful ally. Ryan’s team was less than thrilled at the narrative of a good cop, bad cop routine.

If the other team believes it is getting played, it's not likely to end well for you.  Compounding the error by publicly embarrassing a potential ally- especially someone with clout- is a classic mistake of the haughty, so it's not surprising that

After singling out Meadows and asking him to stand up in front of his colleagues, Trump joked that he might "come after" the Freedom Caucus boss if he didn't vote yes, and then added, with a more serious tone: "I think Mark Meadows will get on board."

He may have thought a humiliated Meadows would "get on board," but he almost asked him not to, given that Meadows

has been determined to please both the White House and his conservatives colleagues on the Hill. Upon assuming the chairmanship of the Freedom Caucus earlier this year, Meadows was viewed suspiciously by some of his members who worried that the North Carolina congressman is too cozy with Trump and would hesitate to defy him. Meadows campaigned extensively with Trump last fall and struck up a relationship with White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who communicates with him almost daily by text. Meadows knew the health care fight would be viewed as a test of his independence from Trump, and the moment the president called him out, he was boxed in.

Trump may not sincerely be displeased with Ryan. If he is, and somehow is able to effect his removal from the position of Speaker, it will be both a loss to the GOP and (not coincidentally) a boon to the country.  It probably is a more patriotic move than we have any right to expect Donald Trump to make.








Share |

With All Due Apologies, He Must Be Rebuked

These guys can't be let off the hook.

Politico claims

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes apologized to members of his panel Thursday for not informing Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat, before going public with allegations that Trump transition messages were inadvertently intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies.

A committee aide said Nunes (R-Calif.) apologized "for not sharing information about the documents he saw with the minority before going public” and that “he pledged to work with them on this issue.”

Reuters believes

The Republican head of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee apologized on Thursday for the way he handled sensitive allegations about U.S. spy agency surveillance of President Donald Trump's team.

Representative Devin Nunes was criticized by colleagues on Wednesday for calling a news conference to announce that the communications of members of the team that ran Trump's transition to the presidency were swept up in incidental surveillance targeting foreigners...

A Republican intelligence committee aide said on Thursday that Nunes had apologized to Democrats on the panel.

"Yes, he apologized to the minority on the committee today for going public and to the (White House) with his announcement yesterday before sharing the information with the minority. He pledged to work with them on this issue and share information with them about it," the aide told Reuters.

CBS News maintains

The chairman of the House Intelligence committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), apologized to committee Democrats in a meeting on Thursday morning according to Congressional Democrat on the panel. 

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) told reporters waiting outside of the meeting that Nunes apologized to the ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), during the meeting. A senior Republican committee staffer confirmed that account and said that Nunes pledged to work more with committee Democrats.

And while referring to Politico, News Corp's New York Post claimed

The House Intelligence chairman has apologized to his members for not informing them of new information about government surveillance of President Trump and his campaign team before sharing it with the press and the president.

Specifically, Devin Nunes apologized for going public before telling the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

"Specifically,"  he did not. Yet even Mother Jones' David Corn comments "On Thursday morning, at a private committee meeting, he apologized to his colleagues." However, the sentient, Corn adds "but, according to a committee source, Nunes would not say what he thought he had done wrong or explain his actions."

Nunes would not say what he thought he had done wrong or explain his actions.  Here, I must interject with my own "apology": I'm sorry if anyone has taken offense at anything I may have written here.

Similarly sentient, two Washington Post reporters wrote Nunes "made his apology" but added

Nunes’s apology was “generic,” Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said on CNN, adding that it was “not clear” precisely which actions his apology covered.

Not surprisingly, the broadcast media was worse, in most instances lazily accepting the meme that committee chairman Nunes had "apologized" or issued "an apology."

Not at all.  Representative Speier not only referred to Nunes' remarks as "generic" but realizes "he just apologized- he didn't specify what his apology was about."





That, as the gentle and diplomatic lady from California seems to understand, is no apology at all. This failure to understand that an apology must include an actual statement of regret for having erred extended even to Lawrence O'Donnell, who stated Thursday night "Chairman Devin Nunes apologized to the committee for delivering intelligence information directly to the President in the White House."

And that is remarkable, O'Donnell recognizing- as seen in the video below- that the biggest villain in the drama occasioned by Devin Nunes' reprehensible behavior is the Speaker of the House, the big fake, Paul Davis Ryan, who approved the congressman's action.  "You got to stick by the judgements you make," Nunes says, in defense of his action.    His decision cannot be tolerated and he can be removed only by the Speaker from the chairmanship, and demanding no less of Paul Ryan is an act of capitulation.











Share |

Party Politics

Ohio's Mike Turner enunciated clearly the Republican attitude toward the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election cycle when he said (transcript here)

And Mr. Comey, by your announcement today, I mean, there is now a cloud that undermines our system. There is a cloud that where we're sitting with Mr. Clapper who was obviously in a very important position to know, who stated to us that there is no evidence of conclusion, and you will not give us evidence or -- or -- or give us any -- any substantive evaluation of it. We now sit with this cloud...

If that wasn't clear enough, committee chairperson Devin Nunes wrapped up the hearing by urging the FBI director to give whatever evidence he has to "myself and  (ranking committee member) Mr. Schiff because you know, there is a big gray cloud that you have put over people who have very important work to do to lead this country."

Simple translation: Stop doing whatever you're doing, unless it's to tip an election from the Democrat to the Republican. "If Nunes would consider country before party," Dana Milbank realizes, "he’d recognize that the cloud isn’t over Trump’s White House; it’s over all of us."

But this is an affliction common in the Nunes-Turner party.  It was only nine or ten months ago that Donald Trump, in the view of Speaker Paul Ryan, had made "the textbook definition of a racist comment."  He went on to endorse Trump and now "came here (to Capitol Hill) and knocked the ball out of the park, he knocked the cover off the ball."

That is peanuts, though, compared to congressional Republicans denying a hearing to Judge Merrick Garland and Monday forming a human chain of bodies across a "human red carpet" for Neil Gorsuch to glide upon in the House Intelligence Committee hearing room.

Additionally, there is an international flavor to the choice of Republicans to put party over country. Politico Magazine reports that, led by Republican Chris Smith of New Jersey (co-chairperson of the Bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus) and Utah Senator Mike Lee,  several

conservative lawmakers have signed on to a volley of letters accusing (George) Soros of using his philanthropic spending to project his liberal sensibilities onto European politics. As Lee and other senators put it in a March 14 letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Soros’s Open Society Foundations are trying “to push a progressive agenda and invigorate the political left”....

The particular focus of the letters from Lee, Smith and their cohort is spending by Soros’s foundations in Macedonia, a former socialist republic in the throes of a two-year political crisis, and to a lesser extent in its neighbor to the west Albania. In the former Communist country, which has struggled with allegations of corruption, one letter expressed concerns that “Soros-backed organizations” are pushing reforms “ultimately aimed to give the Prime Minister and left-of-center government full control over judiciary power.”


The letters, which ask the State Department and the Government Accountability Office for information about U.S. foreign aid funding for Soros groups in the Balkans, came after lobbying from the right-wing party clinging to power in Macedonia, VMRO-DPMNE.

A career foreign service officer pushed back against the accusation and

said his role in the country, which has involved helping to mediate Macedonia’s political crisis, was neither unusual nor biased.

“We were invited and welcomed by the parties to [mediate],” Baily said in an interview with POLITICO. “Political crises have usually been resolved with a fairly significant involvement from Europe and the United States.”

According to the State Department, USAID provided just three grants to Foundation Open Society-Macedonia over the past 15 years, primarily for education initiatives involving the country’s ethnic Roma population. “Funding for Foundation Open Society-Macedonia for the Civil Society Project represents just 8 percent of our total assistance over the past five years,” said USAID Mission Director for Macedonia Jim Stein. “There’s a lot of exaggeration and distortion in that document.”

Nineteen-term congressman Smith is no useful idiot but is fully aware of the implications of his actions, and very likely that

Soros, who survived the Nazi occupation of his native Hungary and fled after World War II when it was under Soviet control, has been long a bête noir of the Kremlin, which sees his funding for civil society groups in former Soviet satellite states as part of a plot to install pro-Western governments.

For years, those complaints had generally fallen on deaf ears in Washington.

While Republicans have long regarded Soros as a mortal enemy when it comes to domestic politics (where he has spent tens of millions of dollars backing Democratic candidates and liberal causes), their politics were more aligned on the international stage. Soros’s efforts to boost democracy and root out corruption in former Eastern Bloc countries dovetailed with traditional Republican foreign policy objectives.

But things may have started changing after Donald Trump’s stunning victory in a presidential campaign during which he emphasized nationalist themes. Politicians with nationalist constituencies in several former Eastern Bloc states have become increasingly aggressive in seeking international support for their crusade against Soros, and they seem to have found at least some takers in the GOP.

Politico adds

Russia is trying to exploit the crisis in Macedonia to sow distrust of the U.S. and pull the right-wing party into its orbit, regional analysts say. And the Republican lawmakers’ concern — that the U.S. is, in the words of Lee’s letter to Tillerson, “fomenting political unrest, disrespecting national sovereignty and civil society” — handed Moscow a major propaganda coup, they warn.

It may be that these Republicans are not pandering to Kremlin, but are interested only in obstructing boogeyman George Soros and whatever he sets out to do.   Still, when coupled with the GOP approach to the FBI/Russian investigation and the Garland/Gorsuch power play, a very ugly picture emerges.

Share |

An Odd View Of Mercy

Strategically substituting "patient-centered" for "insurance company-controlled," House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday claimed "we are doing an act of mercy by repealing this law and replacing it with patient-centered health care reform..." This did not go down well with a member of the House delegation from Massachusetts:

“I was struck last night by a comment that I heard made by Speaker Ryan, where he called this repeal bill ‘an act of mercy.’ With all due respect to our speaker, he and I must have read different Scripture Kennedy said as the House Energy and Commerce Committee dove into the details of the GOP effort.

“The one I read calls on us to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, and to comfort the sick.

“It reminds us that we are judged not by how we treat the powerful, but by how we care for the least among us,” said the Brookline Democrat and scion of the most famous Massachusetts political dynasty.

“There is no mercy in a system that makes health care a luxury. There is no mercy in a country that turns their back on those most in need of protection: the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the suffering. There is no mercy in a cold shoulder to the mentally ill,” he said, appearing to read from notes.

“This is not an act of mercy. It is an act of malice,” he said.







To the  contrary, congressman. It is an act of mercy for some well-placed people as

Wealthy Americans — especially those households with incomes above $200,000 — would be better off under the bill primarily because they would no longer pay two major taxes levied as part of the Affordable Care Act.

One is 0.9 percent on taxpayers earning more than $200,000 in wages and salaries a year, or $250,000 for married couples. Those households must also pay a surcharge of 3.8 percent on income from several kinds of investments. Together, these taxes are projected to raise $346 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

It may not qualify as an act of mercy for the hungry, homeless, and the sick, but it promises to be a boon for the pale, or the color-deprived. Unintimdated by the risk of melanoma reportedly increasing by 75% for individuals who begin tanning before the age of 35.

The replacement health care plan proposed by Republicans would eliminate a 10% tax on indoor tanning services. The tax was introduced in 2010 as part of the Affordable Care Act. If the Republican plan becomes law, the tax will be phased out at the end of this year.

If "mercy" is the act of God in "not punishing us as our sins deserve," there will be no act of mercy bestowed by Speaker Ryan, reportedly an observant Catholic, and his fellow Republicans upon those 6 to 10 million undeserving Americans who will lose their health insurance.  Citizens of those 32 other countries with universal health care, most of them with single-payer, face no such threat from the biggest. fake. ever.

Poet Wendell Berry once wrote "Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy."  Not if Paul Ryan has his way.

Please return for scintillating commentary, following my brief hiatus, on March 13.


Share |