Incomplete Portrayal

It's never too early to warn viewers and voters of the danger of Mike Pence, who may very well become President of the United States sometime in the next 32 months. .Sunday night on "Last Week Tonight," John Oliver did so for nearly fourteen-and-a-half- minutes of his nearly twenty-and-a-half minute commentary.   And at the end, he promoted his new book, "A Day in the Life of (rabbit) Marlon Bundo," which instantly rose to #1 on Amazon, and all of whose proceeds will be donated to the Trevor Project and AIDS United.





Oliver is disappointed that Pence's rabbit Marlon Bundo is likeable and "an objectively good name for a bunny."  Melissa Locker of Time summarized

Marlon Bundo has been at official press conferences, has an Instagram account documenting his life with the vice president, and now stars in a new children’s book written by the Pence family — and one by Oliver. “In a complete coincidence, we have also published a book about Mike Pence’s rabbit,” announced Oliver.

There are a few differences between the books, though. In Oliver’s version, from illustrator EG Keller and Last Week Tonight staffer Jill Twiss, Marlon Bundo wears a bow tie, is gay and wants to get married to another boy rabbit...

Oliver had earlier pointed out Pence's "impecable credentials as a social conservative" who holds "extreme positions- like opposition to abortion and gay rights" and is "exceptionally good at dodging questions," noted Oliver. He showed a clip of Pence (and Trump) critic Omarosa Manigault stating "Jesus didn't say that," which should be a warning to Christian conservatives, but isn't and won't be.

As he himself would agree, Pence should be assessed (in part) by his belief that religious faith informs his personal and professional life. Nonetheless, his word cannot be trusted. Admittedly, the returns aren't in yet as to whether he was telling the truth when he claimed that, apart from a whole lot of people around him, he wasn't aware that National Security advisor-designee Mike Flynn had talked to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in December about U.S. sanctions on Russia.

Not so, though, was the Vice-President's remark in February "Irrespective of efforts that were made in 2016 by foreign powers, it is the universal conclusion of our intelligence communities that none of those efforts had any impact on the outcome of the 2016 election."  Chris Hayes commented "This is simply untrue. It's not a determination anyone in the IC has made." Pence's statement was a lie worthy of Donald Trump.

That is no small thing. Still, it pales in comparison to the primary threat to the American republic posed by the Vice-President, which was ignored also by Oliver.  In "The Danger of President Pence," Jane Mayer lays out a damning case against the Indianan, in which she ignores neither his cultural,  nor economic, conservatism. She explains

Pence’s close relationship with dozens of conservative groups, including Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs’ top political organization, was crucial to his rise....

In June, 2009, (Trump White House legislative affairs director Marc) Short brokered Pence’s first invitation to address a Koch “seminar,” as the brothers call their secretive semi-annual fund-raising sessions for top conservative donors. The theme of the gathering, in Aspen, Colorado, was “Understanding and Addressing Threats to American Free Enterprise and Prosperity.” Pence’s speech was a hit. ...

The Kochs, who are not religious, may have been focussed more on pocketbook issues than on Pence’s faith. According to Scott Peterson, the executive director of the Checks & Balances Project, a watchdog group that monitors attempts to influence environmental policy, Pence was invited to the Koch seminar only after he did the brothers a major political favor. By the spring of 2009, Koch Industries, like other fossil-fuel companies, felt threatened by growing support in Congress for curbing carbon emissions, the primary cause of climate change. Americans for Prosperity devised a “No Climate Tax” pledge for candidates to sign, promising not to spend any government funds on limiting carbon pollution. At first, the campaign languished, attracting only fourteen signatures. The House, meanwhile, was moving toward passage of a “cap and trade” bill, which would charge companies for carbon pollution. If the bill were enacted, the costs could be catastrophic to Koch Industries, which releases some twenty-four million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a year, and owns millions of acres of untapped oil reserves in Canada, plus coal-fired power plants and oil refineries.

Pence, who had called global warming “a myth” created by environmentalists in their “latest Chicken Little attempt to raise taxes,” took up the Kochs’ cause. He not only signed their pledge but urged others to do so as well. He gave speeches denouncing the cap-and-trade bill—which passed the House but got held up in the Senate—as a “declaration of war on the Midwest.” His language echoed that of the Koch groups. Americans for Prosperity called the bill “the largest excise tax in history,” and Pence called it “the largest tax increase in American history.” (Neither statement was true.) He used a map created by the Heritage Foundation, which the Kochs supported, to make his case, and he urged House Republicans to hold “energy summits” opposing the legislation in their districts, sending them home over the summer recess with kits to bolster their presentations.

According to the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, after Pence began promoting the Kochs’ pledge the number of signatories in the House soared, reaching a hundred and fifty-six. James Valvo, the policy director for Americans for Prosperity, who spearheaded the pledge, told the Reporting Workshop that support from Pence and other Republicans helped “a scrappy outlier” become “the established position.” The cap-and-trade bill died in the Senate.

Short said that he “didn’t recall the Kochs ever asking for help on the issue,” adding, “The Republican Conference believed it was a winning issue because of the impact that the bill would have had on jobs.” In any event, the pledge marked a pivotal turn in the climate-change debate, cementing Republican opposition to addressing the environmental crisis.

Peterson said that the Checks & Balances Project hadn’t detected “much money going from the Kochs to Pence before he promoted the ‘No Climate Tax’ pledge.” Afterward, “he was the Kochs’ guy, and they’ve been showering him with money ever since.” Peterson went on, “He could see a pathway to the Presidency with them behind him.”

Indeed, by 2011 Pence had reportedly become Charles Koch’s favorite potential candidate for President in 2012. 

Yet, no one gets to be a Koch favorite only by denying, the delicious phrase of the late novelist Albert Camus, "the wholly human origin of all that is human." There are lots of Republicans who have done that. In 2014 Democratic Party official and activist Brad Woodhouse wrote

AFP has repeatedly championed tax breaks for big oil companies, such as the Koch brothers' piggy bank -- Koch Industries -- and railed against standards to keep our air safe to breathe and our water safe to drink.

They've played cheerleader for Rep. Paul Ryan's extreme budget plans that would turn Medicare into a voucher program and cut taxes for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.

They've poured money into statewide elections in Wisconsin and North Carolina to remake the statehouses in their mold -- then lauded their politicians as they gutted education and attacked women's rights.

They worked to end a celebrated school integration program in Wake County, North Carolina, and fought to stop a fix aimed at helping Louisiana homeowners in high-risk flood zones avoid paying more for flood insurance.

John Oliver spent over 20 minutes alerting people to Mike Pence, raised lots of money for gay-oriented charities, and raised his own profile. That is a good thing.

At the same time, Oliver spent over 20 minutes and failed to utter the word Koch.  Those are twenty minutes failing to notice that Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse observed “If Pence were to become President for any reason, the government would be run by the Koch brothers—period. He’s been their tool for years.”   And if was 20 minutes neglecting to mention that Seve Bannon understands “I’m concerned he’d be a President that the Kochs would own.”




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Mike Huckabee Checks In From Another Planet

Jim Carrey is a better pundit than comedic actor, but that's setting the bar fairly low. On St. Patrick's Day,  Carrey tweeted the exceedingly unflattering portrait he drew of Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders with the caption "This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous!"

This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous! pic.twitter.com/MeYLTy1pqb

— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) March 17, 2018

If conservatives were honest- if, say, cows could fly- they would have slammed Carrey by noting that Mrs. Sanders is more attractive than he gave her credit for. Instead, we got such thoughts as

Jim Carrey is the poster boy for the modern liberal man.
Failed, broken, and mentally unstable.
His movie career has disintegrated! Carrey now spends his days insulting conservative women like .@PressSec
Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Mental illness is a common trait among leftists!

— Jake Highwell (@JakeHighwell) March 19, 2018

Meanwhile, it's taboo to ask whether the man bragging he has "a bigger and better button" than "rocket man" might not have all his snaps fastened.  With less generalization but more sensitivity, one woman tweeted "In the last week Jim Carrey and Hillary Clinton have both attacked women.Hate and intolerance has taken over the left. I’m so disgusted daily by the constant hypocrisy. Call these people out!"

They are so easily offended. Jim Carrey criticizes an individual who is proud of her Christian faith while lying effortlesssly- and he has "attacked women." And it will be a long wait until a Republican argues that Hillary Clinton, who maintained some women are overly influenced in their vote by a husband ora  male boss, is wrong.  They probably figure that's the way it should be.

The most substantive criticism came from Sanders' father, former Arkansas governor, Fox News host, GOP presidential candidate, and pastor Mike Huckabee, who tweeted

Pathetic BULLY, sexist, hater, bigot & "Christaphobe" @jimcarrey attacks @PressSec for her faith; what would be hypocritical Hollywood reaction if he called someone a "so-called Muslim" or "so-called Jew?" #classlessCarrey https://t.co/HCqHoER0Ru

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) March 19, 2018

Pathetic BULLY, sexist, hater, bigot & "Christaphobe" @jimcarrey attacks @PressSec for her faith; what would be hypocritical Hollywood reaction if he called someone a "so-called Muslim" or "so-called Jew?" #classlessCarrey https://twitter.com/foxandfriends/status/975698398069243904 …

8:07 AM - Mar 19, 2018

He probably didn't notice that we didn't notice that it is precisely, probably solely, the Christian right demanding the privilege to ignore societal norms and the law in opposing same-sex marriage, gay rights, and reproductive freedom on the basis of its interpretation of God's will.  Evidence that Christianity,the Bible, or God is opposed to equal rights for women, gay individuals,or whatever group is today's target of discrimination is unnecessary; one merely has to claim that a higher power demands favor of one group over another.

Except in exceedingly rare instances, this right to discriminate is not being claimed by Jews, atheists, or Muslims, but by self-identified Christians. However, the extraordinary discretion claimed need not be limited to these groups because as Ian Millhiser wrote in 2014

while LGBT Americans are the current target of this effort to repackage prejudice as “religious liberty,” they are hardly the first. To the contrary, as Wake Forest law Professor Michael Kent Curtis explained in a 2012 law review article, many segregationists justified racial bigotry on the very same grounds that religious conservatives now hope to justify anti-gay animus. In the words of one professor at a prominent Mississippi Baptist institution, “our Southern segregation way is the Christian way . . . . [God] was the original segregationist.”

Mike Huckabee can defend his daughter and even, against all logic and reality, imply a parallel between calling someone a "so-called Christian" and calling her a "so-called Muslim" or "so-called Jew." Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State has explained

Ironically, the single greatest threat to religious freedom comes from a radical redefinition of the idea itself...I think the Framers of the Constitution would be appalled at the radical revisionism of the First Amendment being advocated by some. More importantly, I think the America of the future will look askance at efforts to elevate majority faiths or subject not so traditional believers to the status of an orphan class to be denied genuinely equal treatment in this diverse country.”It might. I was never convinced Trump would (successfully) lean on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Assistant Attorney General Andrew McCabe, but I've never been slick enough to be elected President of the United States of America. Donald Trump has.

Jim Carrey could apologize, something along the lines of "I apologize if anything I am construed as having implied might have hurt your delicate feelings. I will learn to be more politically correct."

Or maybe he can lean on irony, as did comedian John Fugelsang, who remarked succinctly "Jim Carrey under fire from Trump loyalists who really don't like it when famous people say rude things about others."




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Not Certain, But Likely

On Sunday, CNN reported

Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, a chief GOP critic of President Donald Trump, said Sunday he expects pushback from his colleagues over Trump's increased attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller.

"We can't in Congress accept that," Flake said on CNN's "State of the Union," adding, "I would expect to see considerable pushback in the next couple of days."

Jeff Flake seems to have a modicum of integrity, which is a modicum more than most GOP members of Congress, so I hope he doesn't hold his breath or make book on it.

Generously (though pointedly), The Week early this morning offered the headline "John McCain joins a thin chorus of Republicans defending Mueller after Trump's weekend tweetstorm."  Given that the chorus includes only  the aformentioned Flake and McCain, plus Senator Lindsey Graham and House Intelligence Committee member Trey Gowdy, that chorus is less "thin" than "emaciated."

Additionally, it probably has escaped the attention of few observers that Flake and Gowdy have announced their retirement, McCain is very unlikely to run for re-election, and that Graham is, well, Graham, prone to criticizing Trump and defending him on alternate weeks.

It's not comforting that

“I’m not sure the House can do a lot,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) on “Fox News Sunday.” Gowdy urged the president to give Mueller the space and resources to finish his probe unimpeded, but he noted that the Senate has more leverage over Trump on this issue because it has a say in his senior administration appointments.

It's not my job, Gowdy seems to be saying, which is significant coming from a Republican who does not have to fear the wrath at primary time from Trump and his acolytes. However, it can remind us that Republicans have put up very little resistance to the President on appointments and even less on legislation. (Twelve House Republicans voted against the tax bill, eleven of them from New York or New Jersey, whose residents will be slammed by the provision on property tax deduction; no Senate Republican voted against it.)

While there are four GOP members of Congress- out of a total caucus of 290- who have questioned Trump's attack on Republican Mueller, that is four more than have spoken out in favor of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (also a Republican).  With Attorney General Sessions having recused himself, the Special Counsel serves at the pleasure of the Deputy Attorney General.

If Rosenstein is fired, he presumably would be replaced by an individual more sympathetic to the President and less sympathetic to the inquiry than Rosenstein is assumed to be.  Even if Mueller survives, the scope of his investigation could be curtailed or his budget cut, which might give Republicans cover to claim their President allowed the respected Special Counsel to remain while the effort to get the truth out would be aborted.

Nate Silver has tweeted "we don't know as much as we think we do about how Republicans would react if Mueller were fired, in the same way that a building surviving a magnitude 6 earthquake doesn't tell you that much about how it would respond to a magnitude 8." We don't know for sure, much as we don't know if the New Orleans Pelicans will make the NBA playoffs. But we can speculate, and 286-4 gives us a fairly good idea.

 .

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Think Before Speaking, Senator

Democratic senator Dick Durbin of Illinois is a nice man who said something very stupid in response to a speech made on March 10 in Mumbai, India by Hillary Clinton. The latter stated in part

If you look at the map of the United States, there’s all that red in the middle where Trump won. I win the coasts, I win Illinois and Minnesota, places like that. But what the map doesn’t show you, is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product.

So, I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving-forward, and his whole campaign, "Make America Great Again," was looking backwards. You know, you didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women getting jobs, you don’t want to see that Indian-American succeeding more than you are. "Whatever your problem is, I’m going to solve it."

This is not good. It is not good because it blames not only people who voted for Donald J. Trump but states, such as Ohio, Wisconsin, Idaho, South Dakota, and 26 others. In those states, sensible individuals were surrounded by friends, neighbors, co-workers and others who opted for Trump. They should be celebrated, not denigrated.

(It would have been easy for Clinton to have made a similar but less offensive and more salient point, stressing that the states which have adopted her perspective have soared while those which have adopted the right-wing perspective are reeling. Think California and Kansas, respectively.)

But that wasn't the gist of the Durbin's response to Clinton. Instead, he commented 

My friend Hillary Clinton is wrong. Thirty percent of the people that voted for Donald Trump had voted for President Obama. Why? The same people who looked for change with President Obama thought there wasn't enough, as far as their personal lives were concerned, and they supported Donald Trump. That is a reality the Democrats acknowledge.





One can only speculate what part of Durbin's body the Senator pulled the 30% figure from, because the "reality" is there were far, far fewer. (On a closely-related issue, very few voters went from Obama to Trump.)

Additionally, a great many of the Trump to Clinton voters did not switch sides because they believed that Trump would give them more of the change which Obama had begun.  In his autopsy of Clinton's defeat, Democratic pollster and strategist Stanley R. Greenberg wrote

Hillary Clinton fully identified with President Obama’s vision on identity, opportunity, honest government, inequality, the economy, and America’s upward direction, viewing his campaign and governance as successful. She stocked her campaign with his consultants and those who had worked in his White House.

She believed, and still believes, that America is dynamic, growing, and progressing, and now needs an economy that truly leaves no one behind. Inequality has worsened, but the answer is “building ladders of opportunity,” as Obama described in his State of the Union before his re-election, in his campaign speeches for Clinton, and in his private handwritten letter to President Trump.

Obama’s America was not a country in pain, but one where those left behind were looking for a seasoned leader to make progress. And Clinton only reluctantly decided to pull off this narrative. Obama and Clinton lived in a cosmopolitan and professional America that wasn’t very angry about the state of the country, even if many of the groups in the Clinton coalition were struggling and angry. 

Obama’s refrain was severely out of touch with what was happening to most Americans and the working class more broadly. In our research, “ladders of opportunity” fell far short of what real people were looking for. Incomes sagged after the financial crisis, pensions lost value, and many lost their housing wealth, while people faced dramatically rising costs for things that mattered—health care, education, housing, and child care. People faced vanishing geographic, economic, and social mobility, as Edward Luce writes so forcefully. At the same time, billionaires spent massively to influence politicians and parked their money in the big cities whose dynamism drew in the best talent from the smaller towns and rural areas.

Clinton’s default position was Obama’s refrain about America, but she did invite real discussion of these issues and got close to embracing a change posture during some economic speeches and her convention address, and in the debates. But when the campaign got rocked, she reverted to the Obama narrative.

The Obama narrative. After eight years of the Obama presidency, many of the goods and services enjoyed by people in the cosmopolitan and professional America that Obama and Clinton inhabit had improved while elsewhere incomes lagged, pensions declined, some housing values declined dramatically, and the cost of necessities kept increasing. With most families outside of the Obama/Clinton bubble understanding this, the Democratic nominee pled for a  third Obama term.

Hillary Clinton should not have painted with such a broad stroke.  She should not roundly and generally criticized Americans, but instead noted that most rejected voters Donald Trump's message, and she was the preferred candidate of the two.

Nonetheless, Senator Durbin should realize that Clinton's criticism could have been more direct and biting. The music and lyrics, tone and substance could have been more in keeping with that of Charlie Pierce, who (even before Durbin spoke) remarked

Anybody who attended a Trump rally knows how right HRC was in saying what she did. I’m not entirely a fan; I voted the other way in the Massachusetts primary for all the reasons that anyone did. But there is no question that what she said in India was an accurate summary of the forces that propelled our current president* to the job he now holds. Racism and belligerent, weaponized nostalgia were the accelerants that fueled the fire. It might have been economic insecurity that made people Trump-curious, but it was the xenophobia that got them into the halls....

It really is time to stop buying every voter in certain states a cookie. You people saddled the nation with a corrupt, incompetent oligarch who turns everything and everyone he touches into hazardous waste. You did it because he stroked your cultural and social yearnings until you trilled like a chorus of locusts. You are done no good service by politicians who keep telling you that you’re the salt of the earth, or by reporters on expedition who demand that the rest of us be careful of your tender fee-fees. If you want the country to stop being moronic, stop voting for morons.




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McCabe Move Part Of Strategy

Chris Hayes tweets "My prediction is that the McCabe firing, like the Comey firing, will end up backfiring."

It might. I was never convinced Trump would (successfully) lean on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, but I've never been slick enough to be elected President of the United States of America. Donald Trump has.

Donald Trump has made several moves, let alone issued numerous tweets, which probably are tactically bizarre. When he recently announced steel and aluminum tariffs, several GOP members of Congress were very skeptical, even Senate Finance Commmittee chairperson Orrin Hatch, who argued "Tariffs on steel and aluminum are a tax hike the American people don’t need and can’t afford." That should count as impassioned condemnation from a guy who has said Trump is "the best President I've served 'under' (including) Lincoln, Reagan, and James K. Polk." (Orrin Hatch is quite old.)

The President already has walked back a portion of that plan. Similarly, he has suggested capital punishment for drug dealers, not ony an excessively punitive but borderline bizarre idea that will not come to fruition.

But the push for a protectionist trade policy and killing criminals is part of a larger Trumpian strategy for 2020.  The popularity of tariffs nationwide is questionable, but it is likely the idea has gained him net support in Wisonsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Like the death penalty, it sends the message that Donald Trump is a no-nonsense, authentic guy who will stand up for the average person, whether beleagured manufacturing workers or voters he has convinced street crime has exploded out of control in cities.

Fun fact: The "Don't Mess with Texas" slogan was created by an ad agency, working under contract from state government in Austin, to mobilize support of the public to change its habits to reverse the epidemic of litter spiraling out of control in the state. Nonetheless, it quickly became a go-to line for pundits, politicians, and others, unaware of its origin, to demonstrate their swagger.

Tariffs and drug crime are not at the top of President Trump's consciousness. Neither is Andrew McCabe, no matter how vindictive Grump is.  But they are part of an overall strategy. And now we have a dismissal which may in and of itself- as Hayes expects- be a bad tactic, but part of a clever strategy.  Politico reports

But McCabe sees bigger forces at work in the Justice Department inspector general’s inquiry — which he views as part of a broader campaign to impugn him for his role in handling the FBI’s Russia investigation and his ties to special counsel Robert Mueller.

“Look, it’s personally devastating. It’s so tough on my family,” he told POLITICO during a wide-ranging interview conducted earlier this month, before his firing.

“But at some point, this has to be seen in the larger context,” said McCabe, 49, who says he has voted for every Republican presidential nominee until he sat out the 2016 contest entirely. “And I firmly believe that this is an ongoing effort to undermine my credibility because of the work that I did on the Russia case, because of the investigations that I oversaw and impacted that target this administration.”

“They have every reason to believe that I could end up being a significant witness in whatever the special counsel comes up with, and so they are trying to create this counter-narrative that I am not someone who can be believed or trusted,” McCabe added. “And as someone who has been believed and trusted by really good people for 21 years, it’s just infuriating to me.”





"Trying to create this counter-narrative that I am not someone who can be believed or trusted” is the primary purpose- but only part of the President's motivation.

In getting rid (he hopes) of McCabe, Trump once again has said "you're fired." Typically, he has had others, usually the Chief of Staff (his bodyguard in the case of James Comey) do the actual dirty deed.

But Donald J. Trump rose to national prominence in large measure because of his willingness- even delight- in firing people on "The Apprentice." Many people confused the program with real life, and many people, prone to live their lives vicariously through other people, envy and admire individuals able to snap their fingers and magically get rid of undesirables.

The McCabe move was part of the the Trump strategy- for defeating Mueller and for currying favor with voters. It's Donald Trump, Tough Guy, an image as divorced from reality as Donald Trump, Patriot.

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Cannot Ignore The Culture War

Steve M. demolishes the major points of David Brooks' op-ed in The New York Times, in which the veteran columnist warns that progressives may drive the Democratic Party to "become the mirror image of your opponent,"   Donald J. Trump. Brooks celebrates the victory of House Democratic candidate Conor Lamb because he is, in Brooks' view, centrist and highly moral.  He also argues

There’ll be a tendency this year to nationalize each of the congressional races, to focus on Trump and not the country’s actual problems, to push the tribal hot buttons that excite the passionate Resistance in the great culture war.

Oddly, Brooks differentiates between focusing on Trump and focusing on "the country's actual problems."

But President Trump is exacerbating those actual problems, in some case having little to do with his personal immorality, prompting resistance without pushing those tribal hot buttons Brooks denigrates. One method is through packing the federal judiciary with judges who threaten what Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice notes is the "legal and social progress of decades" gained over decades for women, ethnic minorities, sexual minorities. Further, they are likely to erode "critical protections' won in the courts "for the health and safety of the public and the environment."

Among the "woefully unfit appointees," Aron recognizes, of President Trump are

John Bush, confirmed this year to a seat on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, who blogged anonymously for years, spreading racist birther theories about President Obama and mean-spirited attacks against Obama, LGBTQ rights, and an assortment of people and positions he disliked.

A nominee in North Carolina, Thomas Farr, appears to have misled the Senate Judiciary Committee about his role as a lawyer for Jesse Helms’s Senate campaign, in one of the sleaziest voter-suppression scams ever perpetrated: a mass mailing of postcards to African-American voters warning that they might not be legally registered to vote and could be prosecuted for voter fraud. His nomination remains on track.

In a climate in which harassment of women in the workplace is in the national spotlight, Don Willett, just confirmed to the 5th Circuit, harbors attitudes that cause deep concern.

While working in Texas state government, he aggressively belittled problems faced by working women, ridiculing “talk of ‘glass ceilings’” and dismissing concerns regarding “sexual discrimination/harassment.”

Willett carried his hostility to the Texas Supreme Court, where, as a justice, he ruled to weaken laws that protect women against discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual assault.

It’s not just the quality of nominees that has suffered. This administration and GOP-led Senate have taken a wrecking ball to norms that governed the nomination process for decades.

Bipartisan consultation with nominees’ home-state senators is dead. The hundred-year-old “blue-slip” tradition, giving home-state senators the go-ahead for nominations to proceed, was just junked.

Likewise, the ratings produced by the American Bar Association no longer count: this administration pushed four nominees rated “Not Qualified” by ABA evaluators. In past administrations, such ratings would typically force a candidate out of the running; not today, when the administration and its allies exclusively seek party loyalists, preferably in early middle age, who will sit on the bench for decades.





The man who became President is one to whom Brooks believes Democrats should turn- if not a blind eye- a sight-impaired eye- launched his dramatically successful campaign with

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems.…They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.

Arguably, his campaign became even more hateful and bigoted, less truthful, and more focused on generating fear and anger. It is Trump, first as candidate, then as President, who has brought the cultural war to the fore, not the least by nominating only those judges approved by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society. Elizabeth Warren understands

the importnace of having a Democratic Party that stands for something- a Democratic Party that isn't just willing to take on a fight when it comes to- a Democratic Party that picks fights, a Democratic Party that makes people across the country say "I want to get out there and vote."

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Bipartisan Approval For Financial Disaster

In a brilliant, July 2016 article, Alex Nichols wrote about a celebrated musical "The most obvious historical aberration is the portrayal of Washington and Jefferson as black men, a somewhat audacious choice given that both men are strongly associated with owning, and in the case of the latter, raping and impregnating slaves."

The New York Times observed "Conservatives were particularly smitten" over Hamilton, and Rupert Murdoch labeled it "historically accurate," somehow appropriate for the guy who ultimately presides over the fanciful editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.

Naturally, then-President Obama also gushed, remarking "I'm pretty sure this is the only thing that Dick Cheney and I have agreed on-during my entire political career." Nichols added  "That is, of course, false. Other points of agreement include drone strikes, Guantanamo, the NSA, and mass deportation."

Fortunately, President Obama was a little less favorably disposed than Bush-Cheney toward the financial institutions which disrupted, and nearly destroyed, the world economy in the latter stage of the previous administration. Though only one Wall Street executive went to prison, Obama did sign into law in July 2010 Dodd-Frank, which, the New York Times explained at the time

subjects more financial companies to federal oversight and regulates many derivatives contracts while creating a consumer protection regulator and a panel to detect risks to the financial system.

A number of the details have been left for regulators to work out, inevitably setting off complicated tangles down the road that could last for years.

But “because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes,” Mr. Obama said before signing the legislation. “There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period.”

Not so fast, big guy. There may be more "taxpayer-funded bailouts" In part for the same reason there was widespread acclaim for Hamilton:  the spirit of bipartisanship.

On Wednesday, the Senate passed by  67-31 the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, presumably named because it will reduce government oversight on banks with assets of up to $250 billion and provide comfort and relief to billionaire bank executives, referred to here as "consumers."

Earlier this month, the Boston Globe had pointed out that critics of  the legislation- the opening salvo of the Masters of  the Universe in overturning Dodd-Frank- "say that threshold is too  high, since the  failure of two or three of those mid-sized banks would be the equivalent of one big bank failing."
The Globe writes that one change "would empower big banks to secure more favorable treatment fromthe government" because it would require "the Federal Reserve to tailor regulations on the biggest banks individually for  each firm rather than aplying the same rules across the board."  Warren maintains it "may be the single most dangerous provision in the entire bill" and would result in "systematic weakening of  the  rules for all the big banks"





But as with Hamilton, there was bipartisan comity, with16 Democrats joining all 50 Republicans in voting for passage.  Senate Banking committee member and Democrat Joe Donnelly of Indiana commented "This legislative package is an example of what we can achieve by working together and shows Democrats and Republicans can break the gridlock. I’m proud my bill passed the Senate" and "look forward to the passage of my bill in the House, so that it can head to the president’s desk.” But Charlie Pierce recalls

All of those “compromises” of the early- and mid-19th century did nothing but delay the inevitable cataclysm over slavery. Support for Jim Crow often was “bipartisan,” as was the foreign adventurism that overthrew governments in places like Iran and Guatemala and that reached its bloody apex in Vietnam. The panic that produced the Patriot Act after the 9/11 attacks was bipartisan, as was the support for the war in Iraq for which that panic was exploited by a bunch of think-tank cowboys. More to the point, a lot of the measures that led to the financial collapse that led to the regulations now under assault were quite bipartisan. To say something is to be praised simply because it is something that “got done” in our “polarized age” is a simpleton’s view of politics.

Once the bill is approved by the House, President Trump will take a break from assailing members of Congress as "a low-IQ individual" or "a total phony" and sign the bill, citing it as an example of how he can get everyone to work together. And as one, the "liberal media" will join other opinion-makers in standing and applauding.

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