Republicans Smear Obamacare, Whitewash Their Failed Attempt

Click here for an article at Daily Kos by progressive stalwart Joan McCarter, entitled "Republicans rewrite Trumpcare, Obamacare history and it's time the media starts calling them on it." It's the best putdown I've seen of Republicans lying about the Affordable Care Act and trying to present their 17-day clownfest as excellent procedure where the president worked his heart out.

It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's - Jared Kushner!

On her show tonight, Rachel Maddow says that 36-year-old New York real estate developer Jared Kushner has responsibility for:
- peace in the Middle East
- China
- Canada
- Mexico (including The Wall)
- international trade deals
- White House Office of American Innovation (SWAT team of business leaders)
- reimagining Veterans Affairs
- developing "transformative projects" under the $1 trillion infrastructure program
- modernizing the technology and data infrastructure of every federal department and agency
- national broadband policy
- handling the opioid crisis

Being a devout practicing Jew, Kushner takes Saturdays off. Maddow hopes preparing his testimony before Congress (concerning his contacts with Soviet Ambassador Kislyak and a shady Russian bank) won't cut too deeply into his time on those other little projects. If it becomes too onerous, of course, he can always take a break skiing at Aspen for a week.

UPDATE: Just learned from Stephen Colbert that Kushner has been appointed as head of the Bureau of Obvious Nepotism.

You know he has great business ideas like: Being born into a wealthy real estate family, or 'marrying' into a wealthy real estate family. Why hasn't the government tried that?

Simon Maloy says in Slate:

Innovation! What a concept. And who better to head up a team of business innovators and power brokers than Jared Kushner, a child of privilege who inherited his father’s real estate business and fell ass backward into a position of authority? Kushner will take the lessons he learned from being born rich and marrying the right person and use them to disrupt the American government.

Digby at Hullabaloo cites an anonymous State Department staffer:

They think Jared can do everything. It’s reminiscent of the developing countries where I’ve served. The family rules everything, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs knows nothing.

Climate Change: Good News!

Click here for an article by Adam Vaughan at The Guardian, entitled "Coal in 'freefall' as new power plants dive by two-thirds."

The amount of new coal power being built around the world fell by nearly two-thirds last year, prompting campaigners to claim the polluting fossil fuel was in freefall.

The dramatic decline in new coal-fired units was overwhelmingly due to policy shifts in China and India and subsequent declining investment prospects, according to a report by Greenpeace, the US-based Sierra Club and research network CoalSwarm.

Trump is promising a resurgence of the coal industry in the U.S., but it's not going to happen,

“Markets are demanding clean energy, and no amount of rhetoric from Donald Trump will be able to stop the fall of coal in the US and across the globe,” said Nicole Ghio, senior campaigner at the Sierra Club, a US-based NGO which has managed to force many US coal plants to close over the last decade.

Trump/Pirro v. Ryan

Interesting. Jeanine Pirro denounces Paul Ryan on Fox News and demands that he step down as speaker. Two hours before Pirro's show, Trump tweeted:

"Watch @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews tonight at 9:00 P.M."

Bannon wants Ryan gone, and despite his weasel words in Ryan's support, Trump is greasing the skids.

A Breitbart headline reads: "Pence Pushed To Label Paul Ryan's Failed Health Bill 'Ryancare' Not 'Trumpcare.'"

Breitbart predicted in the fall that Ryan would be gone by spring. Maybe.

Details: Trump "Didn't Know, Didn't Care, Or Both."

Pundits and politicos are trashing Trump and the Republican health care fiasco. Seven years of railing against Obamacare and this is the best they can do? A trillion-dollar tax cut disguised as a health care bill?

At CNN, "For Trump, no closing this deal":

The President's lobbying efforts sounded impressive: Face-to-face meetings with more than 120 members of Congress. For good measure, private phone calls with many of them. But in many of those meetings, details were an afterthought, according to multiple people present.

"Staff was for details, Trump was for closing," said one senior congressional aide. When it came to details, Trump "didn't know, didn't care, or both."

He didn't answer their specific questions about the bill, according to three members of Congress who attended the meetings. He didn't offer any arguments for why they should support the legislation other than to give him his first legislative victory.

Trump repeatedly focused instead on the politics of the broader situation, the people said. In the Oval Office, he quizzed the Republicans about the margin of victory in their districts last fall. His victory, not theirs.

"He did very little to say why we should vote 'yes,' " one Republican member of Congress said, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid alienating the White House. "He kept talking about his damn election."

Trump swept into office with soaring crowds and big rallies. But for the biggest legislative fight of his young presidency, he barely mentioned health care as he made only two trips outside Washington to sell the bill. Repealing Obamacare often came off more as a slogan rather than a driving policy proposition. And the legislation Trump was touting, which would've insured 24 million fewer Americans over the next decade, bore little resemblance to his campaign trail promises.

No Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkey He!

Groundskeeper Willie:

Sweet Molly Malone

Sinead O'Connor:



BONUS: A Pint Of Plain (The Dubliners):



Happy St. Paddy's!

Oxford Comma

Click here for an article at NPR describing how a lawsuit turns on the presence or absence of a comma.

Trump's "Cruel, Heartless" Budget

Click here for an article in The Boston Globe, by Michael A. Cohen, entitled "Trump’s dystopian budget is going nowhere." Here's the conclusion:

America has one of the highest rates of poverty in the developed world, sky-high levels of income inequality, and low levels of social mobility. And yet, the Trump budget is focused on “protecting” America from international terrorists, who kill fewer Americans every year than falling televisions.

In short, this a proposal that will make Americans sicker, poorer, more stressed, less educated, less financially secure, and decidedly unsafe. Thankfully, it’s a budget that will be going nowhere on Capitol Hill, even with Republican majorities in the House and Senate. But it tells us, unfortunately, everything we need to know about the cruel, heartless man sitting in the Oval Office.

Preet Bharara vs. Fox News? UPDATED

From "The Daily 202" at The Washington Post:

-- Rupert Murdoch is one of the biggest beneficiaries of Trump firing Preet Bharara. New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reports: "Since Election Day, Murdoch, now the executive chairman of Fox News, has personally nudged the network in a more pro-Trump direction. Trump seems to be returning the goodwill … [and] now Murdoch may be poised to reap a much bigger win from a Trump administration action. That’s because on Saturday, Trump oversaw the firing of Preet Bharara … whose office is in the middle of a high-profile federal investigation of Fox News. Which is why, for Murdoch, it must be a relief that Bharara’s replacement could be an ally. ... Trump’s shortlist to replace Bharara includes Marc Mukasey — who just happens to be former Fox News chief Roger Ailes’s personal lawyer … Considering Mukasey's close relationship with Ailes, he would surely come under pressure to recuse himself from the Fox probe if he was appointed by Trump to succeed Bharara[:] 'I have no comment,' Mukasey said when I reached him Sunday evening and asked if he planned to do so, should he get the job."

UPDATE: He was investigating Trump's Secretary for health and Human Services, too, noted Obamacare-hater Tom Price, for insider trading and stock fraud.

The Trouble With Sweden In The Age Of Trump

Click here for an excellent article at The Washington Post, by Anne Applebaum, entitled "Sweden, immigrants and Trump’s post-Enlightenment world."

A remarkable series of events was kicked off by Donald Trump ranting at a rally in Florida: “We've got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening last night, in Sweden! Sweden! Who would believe this, Sweden!”

That left the Swedes somewhat puzzled, since absolutely nothing of any significance had happened "last night, in Sweden." There were a number of humorous responses. Carl Bildt, former Swedish prime minister, tweeted: ""Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound."

Trump explained that what he had seen “last night” was not a terrorist attack — though that was certainly implied in his speech — but a filmmaker named Ami Horowitz who was interviewed by Tucker Carlson on Fox News. The interview was indeed terrifying: For those unfamiliar with the techniques of emotional manipulation — and they are the same, whether used by Fox News or Russia Today — it should be mandatory viewing. As the two were speaking, a clip of an aggressive, brown-skinned man hitting a policeman, presumably in Sweden, alternated in the background, over and over, with a clip of a burning car. The repetitive, frightening images were bolstered by more clips from Horowitz’s film, in which Swedish police officers appeared to be confirming a massive rise in crime linked to immigration. Carlson, meanwhile, marveled at the stupidity and naivete of the Swedish nation helpless to confront this menace. No wonder the president was upset.

Swedish police protested that Horowitz had never spoken with them about any immigration problem. Then came the next step, as our friends at Fox News tried to keep the pot boiling:

A few days later, searching for a way to justify the president’s language, another Fox News journalist, Bill O’Reilly, interviewed a “Swedish defense and national security advisor” called Nils Bildt, who again repeated the allegation that naive Swedes are overwhelmed by foreign crime. But Nils “Bildt” turned out to be Nils Tolling — he may have taken the name Bildt to sound like a relative of the Swedish former prime minister Carl Bildt — and he too was not quite what he seemed. Tolling does not live in Sweden, is not an “advisor” to anyone and is reportedly himself a criminal immigrant , having been convicted of a violent offense in the state of Virginia.

But there was more:

A few days later, a Danish news team visited a Swedish immigrant neighborhood to investigate the alleged crisis — the same neighborhood where an American journalist claimed he had been escorted out by police, a report which the police once again deny. The Danes met a group of young immigrants who said they had just been approached by yet another news team — that one from Russia — who asked if they would riot on camera, for money. Like Carlson and O’Reilly, the Russian team was apparently keen to make reality fit the president’s description of reality, even if it cost them a few Swedish krone.

So what is the truth? That's going to be increasingly tough to determine in the Age of Trump.

Garcetti Or Newsom For President?

Click here for an article in the LA Times, by Michael Finnegan and Dakota Smith, entitled "Garcetti wins reelection in landslide as City Council incumbents prevail." Here is Garcetti, pictured with his wife;

[Democratic] Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti won reelection Tuesday in what appeared to be one of the biggest landslides in the city’s history, crushing 10 little-known rivals and strengthening his standing for a potential run for higher office.

With nearly half the ballots counted, Garcetti was holding more than 80% of the vote. If his vote share remains in that range when the tally is done, it will likely surpass the record of nearly a century of Los Angeles mayors.

Also in California politics, Democrat Gavin Newsom, former mayor of San Francisco and current Lieutenant Governor, will run for governor in 2018:



Both Garcetti and Newsom are thought to be future presidential nominees for the Democrats.

Trump Tweets A Lie (Sigh)

Click here for an article by Philip Bump at The Washington Post entitled "You’ll never guess who tweeted something false that he saw on TV."

As everyone knows by now, Trump watches a lot of cable TV news; he's particularly enamored of Fox News (Fox & Friends, Hannity). Shortly after running a segment on an attack on AQ in Yemen, Fox tweeted: "Former Gitmo detainee killed by a U.S. airstrike in Yemen; at least 122 former Gitmo detainees have re-engaged in terrorism." Half an hour later, Trump tweeted:

122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!

Notice a significant difference? That's right: Trump blamed Obama for the release of the 122 Gitmo prisoners. Fox didn't. And the facts don't support Trump's tweet.

Bump provides graphs illustrating the numbers, data obtained from the office of the Director of National Intelligence: 693 prisoners have been released from Guantanamo Bay. Of that number, 485 have not returned to the battlefield; 86 may have returned; 122 have returned. Of the 86 who may have returned to the battlefield, 75 were released by Bush, 11 by Obama. of the 122 who have definitely returned, 113 were released by Bush, 9 by Obama.

So Trump, for the gazillionth time, lies by distortion, unjustifiably attributing blame to Obama. But a pattern has emerged in Trump's lying and/or misleading tweets. He sees something on TV, something which may be sensationalized and distorted for the purposes of entertainment, and something which he may not completely understand; he later tweets something on the subject, which he may not remember entirely correctly; his tweet is debunked; but rather than acknowledge his error -- Trump would rather pull out his own fingernails with pliers -- he simply drops the matter and moves on to his next distortion/lie.

The problem is that his tweet is avidly seized upon by his devotees and is spread throughout the fever swamp of the right wing and alt-right. Perhaps half of the Trump supporters who hear of and believe his tweet become aware of the fact that it has been debunked, and the other half don't (they don't frequent those media -- "fake news," don't you know). Perhaps half of the people who become aware of the debunking believe it; the other half choose not to. And since Trump never acknowledges a mistake, that's where the matter lies: Perhaps three-quarters of Trump's followers believe Trump's lie/distortion/partial truth and never question it again. It just becomes part of the political Internet lore forevermore: "Obama released 122 prisoners from Gitmo who returned to the battlefield! Sad!"

Conan On Trump Travel Ban, Part Deux; Trump Calls Barack

One minute, 47 seconds (You're going to love the way we hate you):



Two minutes, 27 seconds:

Shocking: Republican Opinions On Trump

Click here for an article at The Washington Post by Philip Bump, entitled "A majority of Americans are embarrassed by President Trump,"

Republicans, Democrats, and Independents respond to a number of questions, with the responses being shown on graphs. Democratic views of Trump are strongly negative, but what I find shocking is the depth of Republican support for Trump, in spite of his antics. Here are the questions asked, along with my estimates from the graphs of the responses.

Does Trump's conduct as president make you feel proud/embarrassed? Independents, 60% embarrassed. Republicans, 80% proud.

Would you say that Trump is honest? Independents, 55% no. Republicans, 85% yes.

Would you say that Trump has good leadership skills? Independents, 52% no. Republicans, 80% yes.

Would you say that Trump is level-headed? Independents, 65% no. Republicans, 70% yes.

Would you say that Trump is intelligent? Independents, 57% yes. Republicans, 92% yes.

Would you say that Trump shares your values? Independents, 60% no. Republicans, 80% yes.

Would you say that Trump is doing more to unite or to divide the country? Independents, 60% divide. Republicans, 80% unite.

Colbert v. Sessions

8 minutes:



Trump quote (addressing the crew on the deck of the Gerald R. Ford):

The Navy is great. The Navy is great. Our people are great.

Great.

Stephen Colbert On Trump's Speech

12.5 minutes: