The Party Of Treason-- All Of Them

A few hours ago, Pelosi asked the House to begin drafting impeachment articles against Señor Trumpanzee, pushing ahead with a rapid timetable that's going to set the stage for an uber-partisan vote before Christmas charging the pig with high crimes and misdemeanors. Pelosi: "The facts are uncontested: the President abused his power for his own personal, political benefit at the expense of our national security, by withholding military aid and a crucial Oval Office meeting in exchange for an announcement of an investigation into his political rival... Our Democracy is what is at stake. The President leaves us no choice but to act, because he is trying to corrupt, once again, the election for his own benefit. The President has engaged in abuse of power undermining our national security and jeopardizing the integrity of our elections. His actions are in defiance of the vision of our Founders and the oath of office that he takes 'to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.' Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our Founders and our hearts full of love for America, today, I am asking our Chairmen to proceed with articles of impeachment." Trump though had already issued a prebuttal-tweet in line with his own personal sense of dignity:

A few hours earlier, on Morning Joe former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough (FL) indicated what a circus the GOP will attempt, having no real defense, to make the impeachment into. He referred to Trumpists like Nunes (CA), Gym Jordan (OH), Doug Collins (GA), Elise Stefanik (NY), John Ratcliffe (TX), Mike Turner (OH), Louie Gohmert (TX), Matt Gaetz (FL) as "clowns" who spent their time "quoting Vladimir Putin propaganda talking points. This is the most desperate defense. And it's literally just throw whatever you want at the wall."

Another former Republican-- I think former, who knows?-- Rick Wilson wrote an OpEd, The Traitors Among Us for Rolling Stone which gives us an idea of GOP intentions about how they intend to deal with Trump's impeachment. "Trump," he wrote, "likes to call his opponents traitors-- but if he’s looking for treasonous behavior, he should look within his own party." Wilson noted that "hearing an insult too many times drains it of its potency [and that] Trump has diluted the power of that approbation. He has labeled loyal, dedicated Americans who served this country in the military and law enforcement as traitors, so much so that we could almost give in to the temptation to excuse it as 'Trump being Trump' and let it slide like any of the other insults he vomits forth on the daily." Wilson isn't happy about that since he, like many of us, are certain that Trump and many of his cronies "richly and actually deserve the title of traitor."

Traitors from Benedict Arnold to Klaus Fuchs to Aldrich Ames to Robert Hanssen sold out this country for a host of reasons, all explicable and unforgivable. The intelligence community even has a handy acronym for the motivations of traitors, and one that applies readily to known cases. The acronym is MICE: Money, Ideology, Compromise, and Ego. Pick a traitor and one of those reasons will underpin their betrayal.

Add a new one to the acronym. Call it, MICE-T, with the “T” naturally standing for Trump.

Their treason isn’t executed in the old ways of secret meetings, furtive brush passes, or encrypted messages. No, the traitors of today show us their cards on cable TV, laughing and giggling over their betrayal of the oath they swore, and the security of this country, all for the political service of Donald Trump.

As the impeachment hearings have worn on and as evidence of the complete moral collapse of the Republican Party has become more and more evident, it has become quite obvious there really are traitors among us. There are elected officials who have made the decision to protect a corrupt president by embracing conspiracy theories, refusing to acknowledge sworn testimony of career foreign-service officials, and piling on to Trump’s attack of democratic institutions.

The traitors deliberately ignore the reporting, counsel, and warnings of the intelligence community when it comes to Russia’s attacks and Vladimir Putin’s vast, continuing intelligence and propaganda warfare against the United States.

The traitors-- be they United States senators like John Kennedy and Lindsey Graham or columnists from the Federalist, Breitbart, and a slurry of other formally conservative media outlets-- repeat the Kremlin-approved propaganda messages and tropes of that warfare, word for word.

It’s not simply treason by making common cause with a murderous autocrat in Russia, or merrily wrecking the alliances around the world that kept America relatively secure for seven decades.

Their betrayal is also to our system of government, which as imperfect-- and often downright fucked up-- as it is, has been remarkably capable of surviving.

The traitors talk a good game, hands over their withered hearts, about supporting the Constitution, but they’re happy to ignore it when it suits their purposes.

The traitors believe the executive branch is superior to all others and unaccountable under the law. Traitors believe the “fuck you, pay me” ethos of this president and this White House isn’t an open door to a pay-to-play political culture in Washington where everyone and everything in our government is for sale.

They defend the White House’s indefensible position of stonewalling, silencing witnesses, and refusing to testify before Congress.

Traitors keep racial arsonists like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon in their orbit and employment. They pretend these men are selling populism and nationalism when in fact it’s just the same weaponized racism that worked so well for them in 2016.

The traitors will sit in Congressional hearings on impeachment knowing the truth about Trump’s extortion racket and of the grubby, sleazy plan Trump sent Gordon Sondland, Rudy Giuliani, et al to carry out, and tell lie after lie, the bigger the better.

The traitors cheer when Trump rides roughshod over the military chain of command and the Universal Code of Military Justice, freeing men who killed civilians, abused and violated the warrior ethos, and broke the very laws of war they swore to uphold. They’ve gone from respecting hard men carrying out tough missions to fetishizing the outliers, edge cases, and the war criminals.

You can spot the traitors simply by watching their television shows, as they look you in the eye and tell you to your face they side with Russia. Tucker Carlson wasn’t winking and nodding to the camera; it was where he’s landed politically-- a pro-Putin schill on a network that looks away from their pet president’s grotesque subservience to the Russian leader who helped elect him.

The traitors are ass-deep in oligarchs, eagerly selling access to the president, the secretary of state, the attorney general, and of course, the president’s venal pack of lucky-sperm-club spawn.

And if you can’t spot the treason yet, you will soon enough. That’s the thing about spies, traitors, and those who betray their country-- they rarely stay hidden forever.

The traitors are the ones who, when this is all done and dusted, will sit in the dock at some new Nuremberg trial and claim their innocence of the worst charges and penalties not by claiming their actions were “just following orders” but that they were “just following Trump.”

Omaha progressive congressional candidate Kara Eastman's statement, just released a few moments ago, is typical of how serious Democratic candidates are dealing with this. She wrote that she supports Pelosi's address this morning but warns that "This is a solemn day. There should be no celebration for the need to impeach the President. I have always said that I respect the office of the President. The problem America faces now is that Donald Trump does not respect the office. His actions involving Ukraine were bribery and extortion, pure and simple. As the evidence demonstrates, and as several legal scholars stated in public hearings yesterday, if this is not impeachable conduct, what is? As a candidate who intends to serve in Congress, my oath will be to uphold the Constitution. It is not to allow my oath to be clouded by partisan politics. That’s why I call upon my opponent, Representative Don Bacon, to rise above his partisan games and support Impeachment as well. He should recognize that now is the time to put country above party and defend the U.S. Constitution, as he is sworn to do."

Paul Ryan Needs More Media Exposure

Republican thinkers seem to find it Ok to heap all kinds of deprecations on Trump's head without hesitation. Even when their dissatisfaction and criticism are actually aimed towards Paul Ryan, it appears to be more comfortable for them to just use Trump's name instead. This week Joe Scarborough had no problem at all using a Washington Post OpEd, Trump's Mental Meltdown, to point out that Trump is mentally unstable, suffering from dementia and that there is some kind of consensus among people dealing with Trump that he's off his rocker and dangerous to the country. "That is a verdict," wrote Scarborough, "that was reached long ago by many of the president’s own staff. More than a few politicians and reporters across Washington have shared similar fears... Any Fortune 500 company would have fired a chief executive exhibiting similarly erratic behavior long ago. Unfortunately, the Washington leaders most strategically positioned to limit the damage seem to be frozen by fear." That's a clear reference to Paul Ryan, without even using his initials. "If Republicans don’t find their bearings soon, it may be America’s safety and security that are next to go," concluded the former Republican congressman from Florida.

Yesterday, David Brooks was even more brutal-- both to Señor Trumpanzee and to the unnamed speaker of the house from Janesville, Wisconsin, in his NY Times column, The GOP Is Rotting. Instead of going after Ryan, he picks a much sillier target to pair up with Trumpanzee: Roy Moore. Trump, he wrote, makes it impossible for Republican officeholders to just keep their heads down "until this whole Trump thing" passes "because Donald Trump never stops asking. First, he asked the party to swallow the idea of a narcissistic sexual harasser and a routine liar as its party leader. Then he asked the party to accept his comprehensive ignorance and his politics of racial division. Now he asks the party to give up its reputation for fiscal conservatism. At the same time he asks the party to become the party of Roy Moore, the party of bigotry, alleged sexual harassment and child assault. There is no end to what Trump will ask of his party. He is defined by shamelessness, and so there is no bottom. And apparently there is no end to what regular Republicans are willing to give him. Trump may soon ask them to accept his firing of Robert Mueller, and yes, after some sighing, they will accept that, too."

The Republican Party is doing harm to every cause it purports to serve. If Republicans accept Roy Moore as a United States senator, they may, for a couple years, have one more vote for a justice or a tax cut, but they will have made their party loathsome for an entire generation. The pro-life cause will be forever associated with moral hypocrisy on an epic scale. The word “evangelical” is already being discredited for an entire generation. Young people and people of color look at the Trump-Moore G.O.P. and they are repulsed, maybe forever.

...It’s amazing that there haven’t been more Republicans like Mitt Romney who have said: “Enough is enough! I can go no further!”

The reason, I guess, is that the rot that has brought us to the brink of Senator Roy Moore began long ago. Starting with Sarah Palin and the spread of Fox News, the G.O.P. traded an ethos of excellence for an ethos of hucksterism... The rot afflicting the G.O.P. is comprehensive-- moral, intellectual, political and reputational. More and more former Republicans wake up every day and realize: “I’m homeless. I’m politically homeless.”

I counted a dozen places in his column just calling out for Paul Ryan. It amazes me that David Brooks didn't invoke it even once. I guess voters will just have to refer to PolitiFact to find out about Ryan. He's been repeating a lot of the same lies Trump does about the Tax Scam, for example. A few weeks ago PolitiFact found is claim that the Tax Scam was "aimed at giving breaks to the middle class, not high-income earners" was "mostly false."

The statement of Ryan's they were referencing was made on Sean Hannity's show, where only lies are permitted: "People who are low- and middle-income, they’re the ones who are literally living paycheck to paycheck, who are worried about losing their job or they haven’t gotten a raise in years. This is about them and not about people who are really high-income earners getting a break."

The Tax Policy Center analysis found:

The framework would collapse the seven individual income tax rates-- which range from 10 percent to 39.6 percent-- to three: 12, 25 and 35 percent. The higher percentages are applied to those who make more money. Ryan says the current 10 percent rate is reduced to 0 percent.

The framework would also, among other things, increase the standard deduction, eliminate personal exemptions, increase the child tax credit and eliminate most itemized deductions.

So, depending on the details, the provisions could all increase or decrease an individual’s federal income tax bill.

One bottom line, according to the analysis: The top 1 percent of earners would receive about 80 percent of the tax benefit. This income group would see its after-tax income increase 8.5 percent, whereas the bottom 95 percent of earners would see an average 1.2 percent increase in their after-tax income.

Other details from the analysis:

• In 2018, all income groups would see their average taxes fall, but some taxpayers in each group would face tax increases. Those with the very highest incomes would  receive the biggest tax cuts. In 2027, taxpayers in the 80th to 95th income percentiles   would, on average, experience a tax increase.
• Looking ahead, in 2027, some higher-income taxpayers would pay more in taxes, but the richest would still get breaks. Taxpayer groups in the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution-- those making less than about $150,000-- would receive average tax cuts of 0.5 percent or less of after-tax income. Taxpayers making between about $150,000 and $300,000 would on average pay about $800 more in taxes than under current law. About 80 percent of the total benefit would accrue to taxpayers in the top 1 percent, whose after-tax income would increase 8.7 percent.

The analysis also included this important caveat: The framework does not specify the income brackets to which the individual tax rates would apply, nor the maximum size and phase-out parameters of the increased child tax credit. So, to some extent, projections are hard to make.

But while some in the middle class are projected to see tax cuts, the better-off do even better, according to the Tax Policy Center analysis.

...[I]t’s worth noting that some provisions in the framework specifically benefit the well-to-do, as PolitiFact National found in rating False a claim by Trump that the plan has "very little benefit for people of wealth." The plan would:

• Eliminate the alternative minimum tax. This is a calculation that guarantees that certain higher-income taxpayers with large deductions pay at least a minimum amount of tax.
• Eliminate the estate tax. Currently, for estates worth more than $5.49 million, the estate is generally 40 percent.
• Reduce from 39.6 percent to 25 percent the tax rate for "small and family-owned businesses conducted as sole proprietorships, partnerships and S corporations"-- collectively, these are referred to as "passthrough" income. (Ryan argues that most small-business owners in Wisconsin, after business expenses are considered, are middle-class.)

Our Rating

Ryan says the Republican tax reform proposal is focused on tax breaks for the middle class "and not about people who are really high-income earners getting a tax break."

Missing details in the framework for the tax reform make it difficult to tease out exactly how various taxpayers would fare, so it’s possible there will be more for middle-class taxpayers. But based on the framework, while there are some benefits for the middle class, what’s more clear is there are specific provisions benefiting the wealthy.

For a statement that contains only an element of truth, our rating is Mostly False.

Bernie And Morning Joe-- A Meeting Of The Minds?

On Thursday morning, Bernie was a guest of the newly not-Republican-anymore Joe Scarborough on MSNBC. "It's not just his temperament and it's not just his stupid tweets," he told Joe and Mika. "Do not forget for a second that the policies that the policies that he is proposing are the most destructive policies being proposed in our lifetimes. This legislation that he is urging Congress to pass would throw 23 million Americans off of health insurance. How many of those people will die, we don't know-- but thousands of them will."

Scarborough was an ultra-conservative congressman from a backward, red district around Ft. Meyers in southwest Florida before he resigned in the midst of the very suspicious 2001 death of a 28 year staffer in his office, Lori Klausutis. On Wednesday he went public with his decision to leave the Republican Party and re-register as an independent. At an event sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics at the National Archives in DC, Scarborough told the crowd that "the last straw for me actually wasn’t Russia, it was the healthcare bill. That kicks 25 million people off of their health insurance, and then they turn around and give tax cuts to the richest one percent of America. I think the healthcare bill is heartless, I think the way they did it is shameful, and they did it without any transparency, and at the end of the day I just couldn’t defend them anymore, after 20, 25 years."

And that wasn't all Joe wanted to get off his chest: "What bothered me the most was that the Republican Party and its leaders came up with so many reasons why they didn’t support Donald Trump, but I never heard that it was because he was a racist. That he was basically a political bottom-feeder, that he was trying to appeal to the worst instincts in the Republican Party... I’m a small government-- uh, I guess conservative. I’m afraid to even use that word now. There is nothing conservative about this party. I think the Republican Party is in for some very, very tough years ahead. I don’t know if they survive Donald Trump. I think George W. Bush, when he privately told people that he might be the last Republican president elected, I think he may have been right. Donald Trump is a lifelong Democrat who became a Republican when he discovered birtherism."

Who's more toxic to Republicans, Trump, McConnell or Ryan?

What a shame he wasn't as clear about that before last November. But, despite what you hear from the White House and from the pundits, more and more Trump voters are starting to wise to the disaster they were misled into voting for. Thursday, Gallup released some very interesting new polling showing Trump slipping significantly among some of his core backer demographics.

As you can see from the chart above, Trump's approval rating is down pretty strongly in every single democraphic they measured, including even evangelicals. Now, as we saw yesterday, some evangelicals are no longer even Americans-- just traitors and Putin ass-lickers-- but while Trump had a very strong +32 approval for his first 100 days among evangelicals, that has now sunk precipitously to +20, still strong, but a far cry from +32. Senior have actually turned against him, having gone from a +10 for his first 100 days to a -2 now. Gallup's analysis makes it clear that Señor Trumpanzee's "base of support is currently centered in the evangelical South and rural counties scattered throughout Appalachia and the Midwest."

In most other types of counties across the U.S., Trump's job approval is net negative, with the strongest pockets of disapproval coming from the nation's biggest cities and the dense urban suburbs around them.

While poll data consistently show the president earning well-short of majority job approval nationally, the community-level picture is more nuanced. Trump faces stiff opposition in some places, but in others he continues to be evaluated more positively than negatively.

The list has a fairly clear demographic underpinning.

The counties that support Trump are numerically extensive, but tend to be much more rural. Taken together, the 1,349 counties that make up his strongest base of support-- Rural Middle America, Evangelical Hubs, Working Class Country and LDS Enclaves-- are home to about 35 million potential voters. By themselves, the 47 Big Cities counties hold about 59 million.

Trump's base counties also tend to have median household incomes below the national figure of about $56,000.

The counties in which Trump faces his strongest opposition are generally the most densely populated places in the country, including the Big Cities and Urban Suburbs. These counties, along with the College Towns, also have proportionately more college graduates.

Overall, Trump has seen support slide slightly since the 100-day mark, with his national approval rating falling from an average 41% in the first 100 days to 38% in the month of June. However that data from the first 100 days of his presidency-- from Jan. 20 through April 23-- showed him earning net-positive reviews in eight county types in the ACP: the four types in the June poll, plus the Exurbs, Middle Suburbs, Military Posts and Graying America.

Trump's slip in those four county types may prove to be significant. They hold distinct parts of the Republican base.

• The Exurbs have higher incomes and more college degrees than the national average and than other GOP communities. They are somewhat representative of the Republicans' establishment core.
• The Middle Suburbs are a set of blue-collar counties based primarily in the Industrial Midwest that swung heavily to Trump in November. The president won them by more than 13 percentage points after Republican Mitt Romney won them by two points in 2012.
• The Military Posts, based primarily near armed forces installations, are reliably Republican and tend to be home to "national security" voters.
• Graying America, counties with lower incomes and large 50-years-or-older populations, consistently vote Republican and are scattered in rural areas across the country.

Trump won the vote in all those county types in November by double digits and, because they are home to 58 million adults, they would likely be key to his re-election hopes.

Gallup's June numbers filtered through the ACP county types also suggest that Trump has lost at least some ground in nearly every type of community since May. Most of these changes were small, however, given the two-point decline in his approval rating among all Americans between May (40%) and June (38%).

Bottom Line: The June numbers indicate that the negative turn in Trump's monthly job approval averages since his inauguration are broad-based, affecting all ACP county types. As a result, he has now fallen below majority approval in some areas that were key to his election. This could affect his viability in 2020 as well as his ability to govern, particularly if it intensifies.

Yes it can... and one other thing, beautifully illustrated in this graphic about the 2018 midterms:

Bannon Threw Kushner-in-Law Into The Shark Tank... And Laughed

Anyone who doesn't understand that the hand behind troubles Kushner-in-law is suffering lately is Steve Bannon's probably has an attention span as short as Señor Trumpanzee's. The two have been in a vicious turf war from day one and Bannon's allies made it clear the last time The Kush scored a point against Darth Bannon that he was about to see his world cave in on him. Joe Scarborough remembers-- and his remembrances have been further reinforced by some inside info since then. This weekend the Daily Mail even published a piece about it-- a piece disseminated here by Kushner-in-law crony Matt Drudge.

Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough claimed Friday morning that presidential strategist Steve Bannon is now effectively running the country-- uttering the phrase "President Bannon" seven times in 35 seconds for dramatic effect.

And he said Bannon, not U.S. intelligence agencies, is behind a series of embarrassing leaks about Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner's alleged Russia ties.

"Steve Bannon has been leaking-- I believe, based on everything that I've heard-- has been leaking these stories," Scarborough said.

"People very close to Steve Bannon were telling me before the stories were leaked that he was going to be leaking these stories."

"Two days after I heard this-- two days!-- [there was a] front-page New York Times story about the links between Kushner and Russia," he added. "A coincidence? Absolutely not."

Two White House correspondents confirmed on Friday that Bannon has fed them negative information about Kushner in the past-- but wouldn't say when, or whether they had used the dirt in their published reporting.

Bannon did not respond to a request for comment about Scarborough's accusation.

Palace-intrigue stories about tensions among Bannon, Kushner and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus have been plentiful since President Donald Trump took office in late January.

Some accounts describe a zero-sum-game atmosphere inside the West Wing, with the three top aides undercutting each other in the hope of creating power vacuums ripe for filling.

"He has a job and wants to keep it," MSNBC panelist Mark Halperin said Friday of a scheming Bannon, "and will do what's necessary to do that."

Most recently, Kushner has faced tough questions about a meeting last year with the KGB-trained CEO of a Russian bank under U.S. government sanctions.

The Kremlin has framed the meeting as "ordinary business," saying the two were discussing a real estate venture and nothing more.

..."What we saw yesterday is Time magazine was right. Steve Bannon is president of the United States," he said, referring to a February cover story that branded Bannon "the great manipulator."

"Donald Trump doesn't know anything about policy. Donald Trump doesn't know anything about politics. Donald Trump doesn't know anything about anything," Scarborough alleged.

"He can get up and give a good speech. You listen to him talk about any topic and he wanders from sentence to sentence to sentence. So Steve Bannon is now the President of the United States. And that was more clear yesterday than ever before."

Later, Scarborough vented that by siding with Bannon on the Paris pullout, Trump was shooting himself in the foot politically.

By then, however, Trump's name was nowhere to be found in the host's rhetoric.

"President Bannon is on the wrong side of the majority," he declared.

"President Bannon may be right when President Bannon is looking at President Bannon's primary base. But when President Bannon is looking at the overall scope of American voters-- you can talk about the past three decades-- President Bannon's not even reading the polls right for today."

Scarborough said Trump's decision would ultimately be seen as a sop to "a small subset of the population that President Bannon's obsessing on" in order to secure re-election.

Who knew that if you turn Donald Duck upside down... you get Don the Con?

This is the management style of a weak and foolish man. The history of Donald J. Trumpanzee predicts this is exactly how he'd run a dysfunctional, chaotic presidency. It's just that Kushner-in-law and Ivanka probably never imagined they could be the victims of it just like everyone else who's decided to debase themselves by serving Trump's venomous and primitive psychosis.

Salome's Last Dance

Virtually Nothing In The Trumpanzee Climate Speech Was True

The NY Times' Jonathan Martin tweeted after the Trumpanzee climate speech that he should have said he represents "Punxsutawney not Paris," rather than "Pittsburgh not Paris." Michael Grunwald, writing for Politico went one better, postulating that Señor Trumpanzee didn't pull out of the Paris Climate Accord because of the climate, or to help American business. He needed to troll the world-- and this was his best shot so far. And that's pure Bannon (which led to the Morning Joe video up top in which Republican Joe Scarborough said that "Bannon is the president of the United States... Trump doesn't know anything about policy; Donald Trump doesn't know anything about politics; Donald Trump doesn't know anything about anything... So Steve Bannon is now the president of the United States, and that was more clear yesterday than ever before." (Watch it.)

[D]espite his overheated rhetoric about the “tremendous” and “draconian” burdens the deal would impose on the U.S. economy, Trump’s decision wasn’t really about that, either. America’s commitments under the Paris deal, like those of the other 194 cooperating nations, were voluntary. So those burdens were imaginary.

No, Trump’s abrupt withdrawal from this carefully crafted multilateral compromise was a diplomatic and political slap: It was about extending a middle finger to the world, while reminding his base that he shares its resentments of fancy-pants elites and smarty-pants scientists and tree-hugging squishes who look down on real Americans who drill for oil and dig for coal. He was thrusting the United States into the role of global renegade, rejecting not only the scientific consensus about climate but the international consensus for action, joining only Syria and Nicaragua (which wanted an even greener deal) in refusing to help the community of nations address a planetary problem. Congress doesn’t seem willing to pay for Trump’s border wall-- and Mexico certainly isn’t-- so rejecting the Paris deal was an easier way to express his Fortress America themes without having to pass legislation.

...His claims that the Paris agreement would force businesses to lay off workers and consumers to pay higher energy prices were transparently bogus, because a nonbinding agreement wouldn’t force anything. But Trump’s move to abandon it will have a huge impact on the global community’s view of America, and of a president who would rather troll the free world than lead it.

Of course, trolling the world is the essence of Trump’s America First political brand, and Thursday’s announcement reinforced his persona as an unapologetic rebel who won’t let foreigners try to tell America what to do, even when major corporations, his secretary of state, and his daughter Ivanka want him to do it. He was also leaning into his political identity as Barack Obama’s photographic negative, dismantling Obama’s progressive legacy, kicking sand in the wimpy cosmopolitan faces of Obama’s froufrou citizen-of-the-world pals.

Painter Nancy Ohanian depicts Trumpanzee in the driver's seat

The most important take-away from the speech though is how much utter bullshit was at its core. It was a manipulative and largely false pile of crap carefully crafted by Bannon and his cronies for their pet baboon to stumble through, what the Post's fact checkers called "dubious facts and unbalanced claims to make his case that the accord would hurt the U.S. economy... ignor[ing] the benefits that could come from tackling climate change, including potential green jobs."

"We're getting out, but we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that's fair."

Each country set its own commitments under the Paris agreement, so Trump's comment is puzzling. He could unilaterally change the commitments offered by President Barack Obama, which is technically allowed under the accord. But there is no appetite to renegotiate the entire agreement, as made clear by statements from world leaders after his announcement.

"China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can't build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020."

This is false. The agreement is nonbinding, and each nation sets its own targets. There is nothing in the agreement that stops the United States from building coal plants or gives permission to China or India to build coal plants. In fact, market forces, primarily reduced costs for natural gas, have forced the closure of coal plants. China announced this year that it would cancel plans to build more than 100 coal-fired plants.

Gary Cohn, director of Trump's National Economic Council, recently told reporters that "coal doesn't even make that much sense anymore as a feedstock. "Natural gas, which we have become an abundant producer, which we're going to become a major exporter is, is such a cleaner fuel."

"Compliance with the terms of the Paris accord and the onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025, according to the National Economic Research Associates. This includes 440,000 fewer manufacturing jobs-- not what we need."

Trump cited a slew of statistics from a study that was funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Council for Capital Formation, foes of the Paris accord. So the figures must be viewed with a jaundiced eye.

Moreover, the study assumed a scenario that no policy analyst expects-- that the United States will take drastic steps to meet the Obama pledge of a 26 to 28 percent reduction in emissions by 2025.

Trump also cited the impact by 2040, including a "cost to the economy" of nearly $3 trillion in lost gross domestic product. But in addition to an unrealistic scenario, that number must be viewed in context over more than two decades, so "$3 trillion" amounts to a reduction of 6 percent. The study concludes that coal usage would almost disappear, but innovation in clean energy sources would slow considerably, which also raises the cost of complying with the commitments.

Environmentalists say greater investment in clean energy will lower costs and spur innovation. That may not be correct, either, but it demonstrates how the outcomes in models of economic activity decades from now depends on the assumptions.

"Even if the Paris agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree-- think of that, this much-- Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount."

Trump is referring to research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a 2015 report. Researchers found that proposed emissions cuts in the Paris plan would result in about 0.2 degrees (Celsius) less warming by 2100, if the cuts were not extended further.

John Reilly, lead author of the report, said he "disagrees completely" with Trump's characterization that the 0.2 degree cut is a "tiny, tiny" amount that is not worth pursuing. As a part of the deal, countries reexamine their commitments and can exceed or extend their pledges beyond 2030. The intent of the research was to say that the Paris deal was a small step and that more incremental steps need to be taken in the long run.

"The logic that 'This isn't making much progress on a serious problem, therefore we're going to do nothing,' just doesn't make sense to me. The conclusion should be-- and our intended implication for people was-- not to overly celebrate Paris, because you still have a long journey in front of you. So carb up for the rest of the trip," Reilly said.

"The green fund would likely obligate the United States to commit potentially tens of billions of dollars of which the United States has already handed over $1 billion. Nobody else is even close. Most of them haven't even paid anything-- including funds raided out of America's budget for the war against terrorism. That's where they came [from]."

It is incorrect that other countries have not contributed to the United Nations' Green Climate Fund. In fact, 43 governments have pledged money to the fund, including nine developing countries. The countries have pledged to pay $10.13 billion collectively, and the U.S. share is $3 billion. As of May, the United States contributed $1 billion of the $3 billion it pledged.

Trump implies that the money was taken out of the U.S. defense fund. But the U.S. contributions were paid out of the State Department's Economic Support Fund, one of the foreign assistance programs to promote economic or political stability based on U.S. strategic interests. Republican lawmakers have criticized the use of this fund, saying Congress designated the money to prioritize security, human rights and other efforts unrelated to climate change.

"Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we stay in. As president, I have one obligation, and that obligation is to the American people. The Paris accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risk and put us at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world."

Trump is referring to concerns raised by White House Counsel Donald McGahn that staying in the Paris agreement would bolster legal arguments of climate advocates challenging Trump's decision to roll back the Clean Power Plan.

The Clean Power Plan is a flagship environmental regulatory rule of the Obama administration and proposes to cut carbon emissions from existing power plants 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. It is crucial to the U.S. meeting its carbon emissions reductions pledge in the Paris agreement. But it has been placed on hold while under litigation.

According to Politico, McGahn raised concerns that the Paris agreement "could be cited in court challenges to Trump's efforts to kill Obama's climate rules. McGahn's comments shocked State Department lawyers, who strongly reject both of those contentions, the sources said."

A Republican Who Used To Be In The House: "You Republicans In The House Have Been Lying Non-Stop About What You're Not Going To Cut"

I don't watch Morning Joe but Bernie tweeted some of this rant Friday and it really is awesome. Before he became a Morning Zoo host on MSNBC Joe Scarborough was a Republican congressman from Florida's Panhandle (basically Alabama)-- 1995 'til 2001 when he was forced to resign after being implicated in the death of a 28 year old staffer, Lori Klausutis, a case that was dropped after the resignation.

Yesterday Scarborough lit into his old party repeatedly calling them liars and saying they are "going straight to hell politically." He seemed overwrought, complaining that the "lie through their teeth every day... My party is going straight to hell politically. They really are. They're going straight to hell. They have embraced the coarsening of culture where the truth means absolutely nothing, conservative values mean absolutely nothing... Did [Mick Mulvaney] say we don't cut Medicaid? That is just a lie. That is a certifiable lie... If you want to do it, embrace it. Don't lie about it. Stop lying about it. We know you're lying about it. We're not stupid, and you Republicans in the House have been lying non-stop about what you're not going to cut."

It sounds better than it reads. Watch that clip up top. And backing up Scarborough's assertion that the House Republicans are all mimicking compulsive, congenital liars Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Tom Price, Mick Mulvaney and, worst of all, Paul Ryan is the CBO score that came out this week showing just how devastating TrumpCare would be for millions of Americans-- and all so the people least in need of tax breaks, get massive ones. Thursday the Center for America Progress posted what those numbers are like in every congressional district, based on the CBO’s projections. By 2026, on average, about 53,000 fewer people will have coverage in each congressional district but people in some districts are hurt far more than others. The South Florida districts, for example are hit especially hard. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, one of the last hold-outs among Democrats refusing to co-sponsor John Conyers' Medicare-For-All Act, is in a Broward/Miami-Dade district where 88,700 people will lose coverage.

Worse yet is how badly folks in western North Carolina fare under this plan-- not just twice as badly as the average congressional district-- but under the very provisions forced on Congress by the congressman from western North Carolina: Freedom Caucus headman Mark Meadows. We spoke to the progressive Democrat running for his seat this cycle, Matt Coffay. "My opponent, Mark Meadows, crafted and pushed the AHCA 2.0 bill through the House," he told us. "He specifically inserted the state waiver loopholes that, according to CBO, are going to result in 23 million Americans losing their health coverage.

"Now, the Center for American Progress has released a report detailing coverage losses state-by-state. They've also run the numbers on how many people will lose health coverage in each Congressional district nationwide. This isn't just how many people will lose their private insurance--this is how many people will flat out lose healthcare, including Medicaid and employer-provided insurance plans.

"The national average across all 435 Congressional districts is 53,000. But here in Western North Carolina, in NC-11, that number is 102,600. That's right: Mark Meadows crafted AHCA 2.0, and it's going to result in more than one hundred thousand people in his district losing health coverage. That's twice the national average.

"Nearly half of those people are on private insurance; another 47,500 are on Medicaid, and will lose their benefits. This law impacts everyone: whether you're low income and receiving Medicaid, or running a small business and buying your own insurance, or receiving benefits through your employer, you stand to lose your coverage.

"When I'm in the House, one of the first bills I intend to sign onto as a co-sponsor is H.R. 676: Medicare for All. It's time we passed a bill that ensures healthcare for every American, and not a bill that takes coverage away from working people."

The other western North Carolina district that gets devastated-- 102,000 citizens of NC-05 will be without health insurance-- by this is radical right Republican's Virginia Foxx. And like Meadows, Foxx has a dedicated progressive activist holding her accountable this cycle, Jenny Marshall. Earlier today Jenny told us that "1 out of every 7 citizens in the 5th district will lose their healthcare within the next 9 years. For years Virginia Foxx has voted against the best interests of fellow North Carolinian's. She refuses to invest in their future with good paying jobs, their education, and their health. 57% of the households earn less than $49,000 and 75% earn less than $75,000 annually. They cannot afford to choose between putting food on their table and the rising cost of healthcare. Since North Carolina refused to expand Medicaid, people bought their new healthcare plans using subsidies from the government. Under Trump's budget those subsidies are eliminated then couple that with the CBO report on the AHCA, we are going to have a catastrophic loss of access to healthcare in the 5th district. In contrast to Foxx's opinion, I view healthcare as a basic right and therefor advocate for a single payer plan that provides people with the security of knowing their healthcare needs are covered."

 

Turning The Presidential Race Into An Open-Pit Sewer... That's The Donald

The other day, anti-Trump Republican David Brooks wrote, of the debate, that Hillary "behaved in the normal manner on Sunday night. But Donald Trump did not. Trump treated his questioners as unrelatable automatons and delivered his answers to the void, even when he had the chance to seem sympathetic to an appealing young Islamic woman. That underlines the essential loneliness of Donald Trump. Trump seems to him to be a man incapable of making human connection. "He is essentially adviser-less, friendless. His campaign team is made up of cold mercenaries at best and Roger Ailes at worst. His party treats him as a stench it can’t yet remove." Brooks has come to pity him.

Imagine if you had to go through a single day without sharing kind little moments with strangers and friends.

Imagine if you had to endure a single week in a hate-filled world, crowded with enemies of your own making, the object of disgust and derision.

You would be a twisted, tortured shrivel, too, and maybe you’d lash out and try to take cruel revenge on the universe. For Trump this is his whole life.

Trump's excuse for human connection is the adrenalin-pumping adulation at his monstrous hate rallies. Like him, the deplorables-- what I've been calling, sadly, "life's losers" all cycle-- also want to "lash out and try to take cruel revenge on the universe."

Imagine you are Trump. You are trying to bluff your way through a debate. You’re running for an office you’re completely unqualified for. You are chasing some glimmer of validation that recedes ever further from view.

Your only rest comes when you are insulting somebody, when you are threatening to throw your opponent in jail, when you are looming over her menacingly like a mafioso thug on the precipice of a hit, when you are bellowing that she has “tremendous hate in her heart” when it is clear to everyone you are only projecting what is in your own.

Trump’s emotional makeup means he can hit only a few notes: fury and aggression. In some ways, his debate performances look like primate dominance displays-- filled with chest beating and looming growls. But at least primates have bands to connect with, whereas Trump is so alone, if a tree fell in his emotional forest, it would not make a sound.

It’s all so pathetic.

Another anti-Trump Republican operative, Stuart Stevens, tweeted last night that "the only thing between Trump and a van by the river with Free Candy on the side is his inherited wealth." A day earlier, Chuck Todd noted that the Republican civil war is shaking the party to its foundations, and less than a month before the election.

According to the poll, two-thirds of GOP voters-- 67%-- say that Republican congressional candidates should continue to support Donald Trump after his lewd 2005 comments about women. Another 9% of Republican voters say these GOP candidates should no longer support Trump, and an additional 14% believe they should call on him to drop out of the presidential race. While that overall 67%-23% margin seems like good news for Trump, you can't win a national election when nearly a quarter of your party thinks its candidates should dump Trump. Maybe more importantly, if you're a Republican candidate who DOES want to discard Trump, you have two-thirds of your party's voters disagreeing with you. It's an unsustainable position for the Republican Party - and it explains why Republican members of Congress up for re-election are so conflicted about how to thread this needle.

Trump has given up on winning. It's now all about destruction-- dragging Hillary into the open sewer he lives in, wrecking the Republican Party that never really embraced him, and getting revenge against anyone who he perceived to be his enemies. Yesterday, Monica Langley, reporting for the Wall Street Journal wrote that Trump is doubling down on the far right-populism that Bannon is feeding him, a strategy aimed directly at the deplorables that will further alienate women, minorities, independents and mainstream conservatives. They're hoping to turn the last 3 weeks into something so ugly that turnout will be depressed and only the deplorables will both voting. He's turning his campaign into even more of a full-time attack machine with a total scorched-earth strategy. "The decision," wrote Langley, "means that a campaign already marked by intensely personal attacks is primed to grow even uglier in the remaining four weeks. Mr. Trump plans to keep up a relentless assault on Mrs. Clinton... [Trump's] core supporters don’t make up a majority of the electorate, and most analysts see no path to victory unless he adds to them, even if Mrs. Clinton’s vote total is driven down. And a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows him trailing the Democratic nominee by nine percentage points among likely voters."

Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and George W. Bush, said Mr. Trump’s approach would drive turnout among his base, “but alienating his own party and swing voters won’t grow his vote. His remarks and tactics can have the adverse effect of energizing the Democratic base.”

Last night the NY Times reported that Jessica Leeds, now 74, was assaulted by Trump on a plane was she was much younger.

About 45 minutes after takeoff, she recalled, Mr. Trump lifted the armrest and began to touch her.

According to Ms. Leeds, Mr. Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.

“He was like an octopus,” she said. “His hands were everywhere.”

She fled to the back of the plane. “It was an assault,” she said.

She was hardly the only one. Rachel Crooks was a 22 year old receptionist working in Trump Tower when Trump attacked her in front of an elevator. Other women have spoken to other media outlets about Trump's inappropriate behavior towards women.

In a phone interview on Tuesday night, a highly agitated Mr. Trump denied every one of the women’s claims.

“None of this ever took place,” said Mr. Trump, who began shouting at The Times reporter who was questioning him. He said that The Times was making up the allegations to hurt him and that he would sue the news organization if it reported them.

“You are a disgusting human being,” he told the reporter as she questioned him about the women’s claims.

Trump is threatening to sue the NY Times again. A Trump flack, Jason Miller, released this statement from Trump Tower:

This entire article is fiction, and for the New York Times to launch a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump on a topic like this is dangerous. To reach back decades in an attempt to smear Mr. Trump trivializes sexual assault, and it sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election.

It is absurd to think that one of the most recognizable business leaders on the planet with a strong record of empowering women in his companies would do the things alleged in this story, and for this to only become public decades later in the final month of a campaign for president should say it all.

How creepy is this? Especially if you have a young daughter? I wonder if craven Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte wants to go on TV again and look into the camera and tell New Hampshire voters without blinking that she thinks Donald J. Trump would make a good role model for their children.

On an April 11, 2005, Howard Stern show, Donald Trump bragged about some of the special perks he enjoyed while owner of the Miss USA pageant. They came not in a locker room but a dressing room.

"I'll go backstage before a show and everyone's getting dressed and ready and everything else," he said. "And you know, no men are anywhere. And I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant. And therefore I'm inspecting it."

Said Stern: "You're like a doctor."

Responded Trump: "Is everyone OK? You know they're standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that."

...According to Tasha Dixon, Miss Arizona of 2001, there was more inspecting than doctoring.

In an interview with the station, she described her experience with Trump as a contestant that year in a dressing room where she and others were changing into bikinis:

"He just came strolling right in. There was no second to put a robe on or any sort of clothing or anything. Some girls were topless. Others girls were naked.

"Our first introduction to him was when we were at the dress rehearsal and half naked changing into our bikinis.

"To have the owner come waltzing in, when we're naked, or half naked, in a very physically vulnerable position and then to have the pressure of the people that worked for him telling us to go fawn all over him, go walk up to him, talk to him, get his attention."

She suggested that such opportunities were among the reasons Trump owned beauty pageants.

"I'm telling you Donald Trump owned the pageant for the reasons to utilize his power to get around beautiful women. Who do you complain to? He owns the pageant. There's no one to complain to. Everyone there works for him."

Maybe Monday she'll be on MSNBC so Joe Scarborough can savage her. (You're aware he slithered away from a murder investigation by resigning from Congress, right?) Oh... and the Greek Nazi Party, Golden Dawn, endorsed Trump today.

Trump's ascendency within his party drove George Will to such despondency that he not only refused to back Trump, it resigned from the GOP and re-registered as an independent. A couple of days ago he told his Washington Post readers, once again, that Trump is too disgusting for any self-respecting human being to support. "His sexual loutishness is a sufficient reason for defeating him," wrote Will, "but it is far down a long list of sufficient reasons. But if it-- rather than, say, his enthusiasm for torture even “if it doesn’t work,” or his ignorance of the nuclear triad-- is required to prompt some Republicans to have second thoughts about him, so be it."

For example, Sen. Richard Burr, a North Carolinian seeking a third term, represents a kind of Republican judiciousness regarding Trump. Having heard the tape and seen Trump’s “apology” (Trump said, essentially: My naughty locker-room banter is better than Bill Clinton’s behavior), Burr solemnly said: “I am going to watch his level of contrition over the next few days to determine my level of support.” North Carolinians will watch with bated breath as Burr, measuring with a moral micrometer, carefully calibrates how to adjust his support to Trump’s unfolding repentance. Burr, who is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not received this nugget of intelligence: Contrition is not in Trump’s repertoire. Why should it be? His appetites, like his factoids, are self-legitimizing.

Trump is a marvelously efficient acid bath, stripping away his supporters’ surfaces, exposing their skeletal essences. Consider Mike Pence, a favorite of what Republicans devoutly praise as America’s “faith community.” Some of its representatives, their crucifixes glittering in the television lights, are still earnestly explaining the urgency of giving to Trump, who agreed that his daughter is “a piece of ass,” the task of improving America’s coarsened culture.

...Trump should stay atop the ticket, for four reasons. First, he will give the nation the pleasure of seeing him join the one cohort, of the many cohorts he disdains, that he most despises-- “losers.” Second, by continuing to campaign in the spirit of St. Louis, he can remind the nation of the useful axiom that there is no such thing as rock bottom. Third, by persevering through Nov. 8 he can simplify the GOP’s quadrennial exercise of writing its post-campaign autopsy, which this year can be published Nov. 9 in one sentence: “Perhaps it is imprudent to nominate a venomous charlatan.” Fourth, Trump is the GOP’s chemotherapy, a nauseating but, if carried through to completion, perhaps a curative experience.