Trump 20: Sauron Doesn't Seem So Bad After All

[GreyhoundFan]

Good question: "Exactly what national security policies are we advancing?"

Spoiler

President Trump is looking to expand, or at least solidify, military operations in two key regions. Unfortunately, it’s far from clear what policy we are pursuing and whether there is even an overarching policy behind the military moves.

The Associated Press reported recently that a deployment of 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan is in the works in an effort “to break a stalemate in a war that has now passed to a third U.S. commander in chief. The deployment will be the largest of American manpower under Donald Trump’s young presidency.” The report explained:

The decision by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis could be announced as early as next week, the official said. It follows Trump’s move to give Mattis the authority to set troop levels and seeks to address assertions by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan that he doesn’t have enough forces to help Afghanistan’s army against a resurgent Taliban insurgency. The rising threat posed by Islamic State extremists, evidenced in a rash of deadly attacks in the capital city of Kabul, has only fueled calls for a stronger U.S. presence, as have several recent American combat deaths.

One can applaud the White House decision to avoid micromanaging the Pentagon, but in this instance the president has yet to make a case to the American people about the progress of the war, our end goals or how this additional deployment will meet those goals. Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution explains, “Pre-delegation to the military is not a strategy. Vague demands to ‘win’ is not a strategy. What we are seeing is an abdication of responsibility by the Commander in Chief.”

There is widespread agreement within the military and among outside experts that we are, if anything, losing ground in Afghanistan. Additional troops may, in fact, be the right strategy, but the president shows no sign he has recognized, let alone is willing to communicate to the country, that a decisive victory is likely out of reach. Michael O’Hanlon notes that a strategic review is underway. He concedes that whatever that produces “probably won’t be enough to produce a huge turnaround; we are seeking varying shades of grey in preserving a mediocre outcome, rather than realistically expecting a clear victory. But even imperfect outcomes can be superior to seeing the place fall back into extremist control.” Nevertheless, there has been virtually zero public discussion of this unfortunate state of events. Congress and the American people have not been prepared after 16 years of war to hear that “we really cannot win this thing.”

Meanwhile, our Syria policy is arguably more muddled than it was under President Barack Obama. The Post reports, “Russia on Monday angrily condemned the downing of a Syrian aircraft by a U.S. fighter as a ‘flagrant violation of international law,’ and said its forces will treat U.S.-led coalition aircraft and drones as targets if they are operating in Syrian airspace west of the Euphrates while Russian aviation is on combat missions.” This comes at a time when there is no consensus in the administration concerning our approach to Syria:

A pair of top White House officials is pushing to broaden the war in Syria, viewing it as an opportunity to confront Iran and its proxy forces on the ground there, according to two sources familiar with the debate inside the Donald Trump administration.

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council, and Derek Harvey, the NSC’s top Middle East advisor, want the United States to start going on the offensive in southern Syria, where, in recent weeks, the U.S. military has taken a handful of defensive actions against Iranian-backed forces fighting in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Their plans are making even traditional Iran hawks nervous, including Defense Secretary James Mattis, who has personally shot down their proposals more than once, the two sources said.

Cohen-Watnick, you may recall, is the NSC official involved in the scheme with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) to throw the investigation into Russian collusion off-stride by raising the bogus issue of unmasking.

For now, Mattis is swatting down suggestions to expand military action in southern Syria. (“Despite the more aggressive stance pushed by some White House officials, Mattis, military commanders and top U.S. diplomats all oppose opening up a broader front against Iran and its proxies in southeastern Syria, viewing it as a risky move that could draw the United States into a dangerous confrontation with Iran, defense officials said.”)

The problem in Syria, as it is in Afghanistan, is a lack of clarity about our intentions and objectives. “These are extremely difficult problems. No one expects the President to find a way forward overnight,” Wright says. “But he needs to demonstrate that he is aware of the various strategic options, with all of the trade-offs and costs involved in each. He then must decide which path to choose and lay out that thinking in a speech to the American people.” He is not optimistic this will happen anytime soon. “Instead we will see continued drift until a disaster or crisis brings matters to a head and forces big decisions,” he predicts.

In both Afghanistan and Syria, we see a top-tier military leader, Mattis, making reasoned decisions. However, military moves need to be made within an overall foreign policy strategy that sets forth goals and the means to meet them. We have no overall foreign policy strategy because we have a president totally incapable of performing his duties, a White House lurching from one disaster to the next and a State Department that lacks influence and hasn’t even bothered to staff below the deputy secretary level. This is no way to run a superpower.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The GOP’s hard, messy options for destroying Trumpism"

Spoiler

Nearly 150 days into the Trump era, no non-delusional conservative can be happy with the direction of events or pleased with the options going forward.

President Trump is remarkably unpopular, particularly with the young (among whom his approval is underwater by a remarkable 48 percentage points in one poll). And the reasons have little to do with elitism or media bias.

Trump has been ruled by compulsions, obsessions and vindictiveness, expressed nearly daily on Twitter. He has demonstrated an egotism that borders on solipsism. His political skills as president have been close to nonexistent. His White House is divided, incompetent and chaotic, and key administration jobs remain unfilled. His legislative agenda has gone nowhere. He has told constant, childish, refuted, uncorrected lies, and demanded and habituated deception among his underlings. He has humiliated and undercut his staff while requiring and rewarding flattery. He has promoted self-serving conspiracy theories. He has displayed pathetic, even frightening, ignorance on policy matters foreign and domestic. He has inflicted his ethically challenged associates on the nation. He is dead to the poetry of language and to the nobility of the political enterprise, viewing politics as conquest rather than as service.

Trump has made consistent appeals to prejudice based on religion and ethnicity, and associated the Republican Party with bias. He has stoked tribal hostilities. He has carelessly fractured our national unity. He has attempted to undermine respect for any institution that opposes or limits him — be it the responsible press, the courts or the intelligence community. He has invited criminal investigation through his secrecy and carelessness. He has publicly attempted to intimidate law enforcement. He has systematically alarmed our allies and given comfort to authoritarians. He promised to emancipate the world from American moral leadership — and has kept that pledge.

For many Republicans and conservatives, there is apparently no last straw, with offenses mounting bale by bale. The argument goes: Trump is still superior to Democratic rule — which would deliver apocalyptic harm — and thus anything that hurts Trump is bad for the republic. He is the general, so shut up and salute. What, after all, is the conservative endgame other than Trump’s success?

This is the recommendation of sycophancy based on hysteria. At some point, hope for a new and improved Trump deteriorates into unreason. The idea that an alliance with Trump will end anywhere but disaster is a delusion. Both individuals and parties have long-term interests that are served by integrity, honor and sanity. Both individuals and the Republican Party are being corrupted and stained by their embrace of Trump. The endgame of accommodation is to be morally and politically discredited. Those committed to this approach warn of national decline — and are practically assisting it. They warn of decadence — and provide refreshments at the orgy.

So what is the proper objective for Republicans and conservatives? It is the defeat of Trumpism, preferably without the destruction of the GOP itself. And how does that happen?

Creating a conservative third party — as some have proposed — would have the effect of delivering national victories to a uniformly liberal and unreformed Democratic Party. A bad idea.

A primary challenge to Trump in the 2020 presidential election is more attractive, but very much an outside shot. An unlikely idea.

It is possible — if Democrats take the House in 2018 — that impeachment will ripen into a serious movement, which thoughtful Republicans might join (as they eventually did against Richard Nixon). But this depends on matters of fact and law that are currently hidden from view. A theoretical idea.

A Democratic victory in the 2020 election would represent the defeat of Trumpism and might be a prelude to Republican reform. But Democrats seem to be viewing Trump’s troubles as an opportunity to plunge leftward with a more frankly socialistic and culturally liberal message. That is hardly attractive to Republican reformers. A heretical idea.

Or Republicans and conservatives could just try to outlast Trump — closing the shutters and waiting for the hurricane to pass — while rooting for the success of a strong bench of rising 40-something leaders (Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Nikki Haley, Tom Cotton, Ben Sasse). This may be the most practical approach but risks eight years of ideological entrenchment by Trumpism, along with massive damage to the Republican brand. A complacent idea.

Whatever option is chosen, it will not be easy or pretty. And any comfort for Republicans will be cold because they brought this fate on themselves and the country.

Michael Gerson, the author of this column, is far more conservative than I am, but he has some valid points here. Sadly, it seems that most Repugs are being complacent.

[sawasdee]

@GreyhoundFan Just came here to post this!

I think that is the most categorical condemnation of both tRump the man and tRump the politician I have read from either Dems or GOP. I disagree that a Dem defeat of the TT would lead to unbridled liberalism - I just don't think that is politically possible in the US - but almost everything else he said - Wow.

 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is interesting, and true: "In Trump’s Washington, public business increasingly handled behind closed doors"

Spoiler

The Senate bill to scale back the health-care law known as Obamacare is being written in secret by a single senator, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and a clutch of his senior aides.

Officials at numerous agencies of the Trump administration have stonewalled friendly Republicans in Congress — not to mention Democrats — by declining to share internal documents on sensitive matters or refusing to answer questions.

President Trump, meanwhile, is still forbidding the release of his tax returns, his aides have stopped releasing logs of visitors to the White House and his media aides have started banning cameras at otherwise routine news briefings, as happened Monday.

Trump even refuses to acknowledge to the public that he plays golf during his frequent weekend visits to his private golf courses.

More and more in the Trump era, business in Washington is happening behind closed doors. The federal government’s leaders are hiding from public scrutiny — and their penchant for secrecy represents a stark departure from the campaign promises of Trump and his fellow Republicans to usher in newfound transparency.

“I was very frustrated the Obama administration held things so close to the vest . . . but I quite frankly haven’t seen any change with the Trump administration. In some ways I find it worse,” said outgoing Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who chaired the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform before announcing his retirement this spring.

In an interview Monday, Chaffetz ticked through several controversies, including the transfer of whistleblowers at the Transportation Security Administration, about which he said Trump administration officials have declined to provide key documents to his committee.

“I see a bureaucracy that doesn’t want documents and the truth out the door . . . and just flipping the middle finger at Congress,” Chaffetz said.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats are furious with federal agencies and White House offices that have not answered their requests for information on a wide range of subjects — from the role of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, to specific policy changes being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department and other agencies.

By early June, House and Senate Democratic aides had compiled lists of more than 400 written requests that they said had been ignored by the White House or federal agencies.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) described “an overall pattern of fear of any level of transparency.”

“If they can’t control the message or have it come directly from the president via his Twitter account, I think they’re very fearful of any level of sharing basic facts and how they come to their conclusions and decisions what policy should be,” Heinrich said.

Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who worked in George W. Bush’s White House, said, “Secrecy is a human impulse.” He said government officials often assume that public accountability will lead to disruption, but argued that hiding from scrutiny can have even graver political consequences.

“There’s a tremendous temptation to conduct business in the shadows and that so often is a prescription for problems, even for disaster,” Wehner said.

White House officials strongly rejected the notion that they have been overly evasive during Trump’s first six months in office.

“I disagree, at least from a White House perspective, that things are happening in secrecy,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the principal deputy White House press secretary. She said reporters walk in and out of her office freely asking questions, noting that a reporter from The Washington Post was “the eighth one in the last 10 minutes” to visit her on Monday afternoon.

“We’ve advocated for transparency,” Sanders added. “One thing to point to is the obstruction by Democrats. There are over 100 nominees for positions in the departments that haven’t been approved, and without a full staff it makes it harder for agencies to communicate and respond to everything they’ve received.”

There are 94 Trump nominees awaiting confirmation, according to a Washington Post tracker. Only 27 of them are ready for an up-or-down vote, according to the Senate calendar.

Still, lawmakers from both parties have been angered by a Justice Department opinion issued in May that instructed agencies not to comply with requests for information from most members of Congress, including Democrats. The May 1 opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel said that individual lawmakers could not make requests of the executive branch unless they are committee chairmen or participating in a request by a full committee or subcommittee.

“This is nonsense,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote in seven-page letter excoriating the opinion. He said that the OLC demonstrated a “shocking lack of professionalism and objectivity.”

Frustrations with the ongoing Republican-led health-care debate have also spilled out into the open. The bill is being written largely by McConnell (Ky.) and his senior aides, with limited input from a working group of about a dozen Republican senators. Their work has largely been kept secret from rank-and-file Republicans in the Senate, as well as all Democrats.

During a Senate Finance Committee hearing this month with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) asked her Republican colleagues when they would be holding open hearings on health-care reform.

“We have no idea what’s being proposed,” McCaskill said. “There’s a group of guys in a back room somewhere that are making these decisions.”

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) said there should be “real, robust debate” in the Senate once the bill is drafted: “I do believe sunshine is a good disinfectant and that transparency would be helpful in this process that the Senate is going to employ.”

McConnell has defended his conference’s closed-door debate on health care, telling reporters last week that “we’ve been dealing with this issue for seven years. It’s not a new thing . . . Nobody’s hiding the ball here.”

White House press secretary Sean Spicer would not say whether Trump is comfortable with the secrecy of McConnell’s process. Asked Monday whether the president or members of his team had seen the bill’s text, Spicer said, “I don’t know,” although he said the White House legislative affairs team has been in “constant communication” with senators.

Spicer made his comments at a news briefing deemed an “off-camera gaggle,” meaning no video or audio footage was allowed to be broadcast. The White House has dictated such rules for briefings more and more in recent weeks, inspiring fierce resistance from some journalists.

“It just feels like we’re sort of slowly but surely being dragged into what is a new normal in this country where the president of the United States is allowed to insulate himself from answering hard questions,” Jim Acosta, a senior White House correspondent at CNN, said on the air following Monday’s gaggle.

The rules are in keeping with other steps taken by the Trump White House to limit transparency. The Obama administration regularly released logs of visitors to the White House complex, but the Trump administration ended that policy.

“I think there’s always been a tendency in politics to be as secretive as possible, but this administration has taken it to extremes the likes of which I have never seen,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist.

Ed Rogers, a Washington lobbyist and former aide in Ronald Reagan’s White House, defended the decisions by the Trump administration and GOP congressional leaders to conduct business in private.

“It makes it harder to govern if you can’t do things in quiet increments until you’re really ready to talk about a policy position,” Rogers said.

Still, congressional hearings this month grew testy as lawmakers sparred with Trump administration officials. At a June 7 Senate hearing, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and three other top intelligence officials refused to answer questions about their conversations with Trump about fired FBI director James B. Comey.

Heinrich told Coats, “your unwillingness to answer a very basic question speaks volumes.”

“It’s just — it’s not a matter of unwillingness, senator,” Coats said. “It’s a matter of . . .”

Heinrich cut off Coats: “It is a matter of unwillingness.”

“It’s a matter of how I share it and whom I share it to,” Coats responded.

“So,” Heinrich asked, “you don’t think the American people deserve to know the answer to that question?”

Coats declined to give an answer.

It's pretty bad when Chappass complains about the administration.

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is interesting, and true: "In Trump’s Washington, public business increasingly handled behind closed doors"

  Hide contents

The Senate bill to scale back the health-care law known as Obamacare is being written in secret by a single senator, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and a clutch of his senior aides.

Officials at numerous agencies of the Trump administration have stonewalled friendly Republicans in Congress — not to mention Democrats — by declining to share internal documents on sensitive matters or refusing to answer questions.

President Trump, meanwhile, is still forbidding the release of his tax returns, his aides have stopped releasing logs of visitors to the White House and his media aides have started banning cameras at otherwise routine news briefings, as happened Monday.

Trump even refuses to acknowledge to the public that he plays golf during his frequent weekend visits to his private golf courses.

More and more in the Trump era, business in Washington is happening behind closed doors. The federal government’s leaders are hiding from public scrutiny — and their penchant for secrecy represents a stark departure from the campaign promises of Trump and his fellow Republicans to usher in newfound transparency.

“I was very frustrated the Obama administration held things so close to the vest . . . but I quite frankly haven’t seen any change with the Trump administration. In some ways I find it worse,” said outgoing Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who chaired the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform before announcing his retirement this spring.

In an interview Monday, Chaffetz ticked through several controversies, including the transfer of whistleblowers at the Transportation Security Administration, about which he said Trump administration officials have declined to provide key documents to his committee.

“I see a bureaucracy that doesn’t want documents and the truth out the door . . . and just flipping the middle finger at Congress,” Chaffetz said.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats are furious with federal agencies and White House offices that have not answered their requests for information on a wide range of subjects — from the role of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, to specific policy changes being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department and other agencies.

By early June, House and Senate Democratic aides had compiled lists of more than 400 written requests that they said had been ignored by the White House or federal agencies.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) described “an overall pattern of fear of any level of transparency.”

“If they can’t control the message or have it come directly from the president via his Twitter account, I think they’re very fearful of any level of sharing basic facts and how they come to their conclusions and decisions what policy should be,” Heinrich said.

Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who worked in George W. Bush’s White House, said, “Secrecy is a human impulse.” He said government officials often assume that public accountability will lead to disruption, but argued that hiding from scrutiny can have even graver political consequences.

“There’s a tremendous temptation to conduct business in the shadows and that so often is a prescription for problems, even for disaster,” Wehner said.

White House officials strongly rejected the notion that they have been overly evasive during Trump’s first six months in office.

“I disagree, at least from a White House perspective, that things are happening in secrecy,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the principal deputy White House press secretary. She said reporters walk in and out of her office freely asking questions, noting that a reporter from The Washington Post was “the eighth one in the last 10 minutes” to visit her on Monday afternoon.

“We’ve advocated for transparency,” Sanders added. “One thing to point to is the obstruction by Democrats. There are over 100 nominees for positions in the departments that haven’t been approved, and without a full staff it makes it harder for agencies to communicate and respond to everything they’ve received.”

There are 94 Trump nominees awaiting confirmation, according to a Washington Post tracker. Only 27 of them are ready for an up-or-down vote, according to the Senate calendar.

Still, lawmakers from both parties have been angered by a Justice Department opinion issued in May that instructed agencies not to comply with requests for information from most members of Congress, including Democrats. The May 1 opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel said that individual lawmakers could not make requests of the executive branch unless they are committee chairmen or participating in a request by a full committee or subcommittee.

“This is nonsense,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote in seven-page letter excoriating the opinion. He said that the OLC demonstrated a “shocking lack of professionalism and objectivity.”

Frustrations with the ongoing Republican-led health-care debate have also spilled out into the open. The bill is being written largely by McConnell (Ky.) and his senior aides, with limited input from a working group of about a dozen Republican senators. Their work has largely been kept secret from rank-and-file Republicans in the Senate, as well as all Democrats.

During a Senate Finance Committee hearing this month with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) asked her Republican colleagues when they would be holding open hearings on health-care reform.

“We have no idea what’s being proposed,” McCaskill said. “There’s a group of guys in a back room somewhere that are making these decisions.”

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) said there should be “real, robust debate” in the Senate once the bill is drafted: “I do believe sunshine is a good disinfectant and that transparency would be helpful in this process that the Senate is going to employ.”

McConnell has defended his conference’s closed-door debate on health care, telling reporters last week that “we’ve been dealing with this issue for seven years. It’s not a new thing . . . Nobody’s hiding the ball here.”

White House press secretary Sean Spicer would not say whether Trump is comfortable with the secrecy of McConnell’s process. Asked Monday whether the president or members of his team had seen the bill’s text, Spicer said, “I don’t know,” although he said the White House legislative affairs team has been in “constant communication” with senators.

Spicer made his comments at a news briefing deemed an “off-camera gaggle,” meaning no video or audio footage was allowed to be broadcast. The White House has dictated such rules for briefings more and more in recent weeks, inspiring fierce resistance from some journalists.

“It just feels like we’re sort of slowly but surely being dragged into what is a new normal in this country where the president of the United States is allowed to insulate himself from answering hard questions,” Jim Acosta, a senior White House correspondent at CNN, said on the air following Monday’s gaggle.

The rules are in keeping with other steps taken by the Trump White House to limit transparency. The Obama administration regularly released logs of visitors to the White House complex, but the Trump administration ended that policy.

“I think there’s always been a tendency in politics to be as secretive as possible, but this administration has taken it to extremes the likes of which I have never seen,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist.

Ed Rogers, a Washington lobbyist and former aide in Ronald Reagan’s White House, defended the decisions by the Trump administration and GOP congressional leaders to conduct business in private.

“It makes it harder to govern if you can’t do things in quiet increments until you’re really ready to talk about a policy position,” Rogers said.

Still, congressional hearings this month grew testy as lawmakers sparred with Trump administration officials. At a June 7 Senate hearing, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and three other top intelligence officials refused to answer questions about their conversations with Trump about fired FBI director James B. Comey.

Heinrich told Coats, “your unwillingness to answer a very basic question speaks volumes.”

“It’s just — it’s not a matter of unwillingness, senator,” Coats said. “It’s a matter of . . .”

Heinrich cut off Coats: “It is a matter of unwillingness.”

“It’s a matter of how I share it and whom I share it to,” Coats responded.

“So,” Heinrich asked, “you don’t think the American people deserve to know the answer to that question?”

Coats declined to give an answer.

It's pretty bad when Chappass complains about the administration.

This is definitely becoming more worrisome. I think at some point even his hard-core base is going to object. He can keep stroking them and feeding them and maybe for a while that will be enough for them but when the first hard hit comes(healthcare) they're going to start screaming for more transparency. And maybe realize that they were taken for a ride.

The problem is that there will be so much that is undocumented in the interim. And the republicans who haven't figured out how to jump ship by then will just blame Democrats. With no on-the-record video answers to questions, the crazies will just default to "libruls!"

[GreyhoundFan]

This is so true: "There’s no substitute for defeating Trump and his enablers"

Spoiler

Jonathan Rauch writes on Republicans’ continued devotion to President Trump:

Perhaps there are limits to Republicans’ tolerance, but if Trump hasn’t already triggered them, it is hard to imagine where they are. The firing of a special prosecutor? An indictment? Possibly, but one wonders if it might be literally true that Trump could, as he once boasted, shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and retain Republican support.

The numbers support no predictions, but they offer a hint. Even under a worst-case scenario of presidential malfeasance, removing Trump would be no easy or quick task. It would require a sea-change in Republican partisans’ attitude, a change of which there is no sign today. And it would require Republican leaders to take political risks that few have shown any appetite for.

GOP defeats in 2018 might give the Democrats the majority in the House, expediting impeachment, but removing Trump would require a vote of two-thirds of the Senate. Without substantial GOP defections, Trump will be there for the remainder of his four-year term.

Could Trump be forced to resign — if, for example, the choice was between resignation and being held in contempt of court for refusal to turn over financial records? Perhaps, but it’s far from clear that such a standoff would occur. If it did, Trump and his fleet of lawyers could certainly delay and appeal, in essence running out the clock on his presidency.

Whether in 2020 or before, the only surefire means to protect the country from Trump is to defeat his followers, and eventually him. A third-party candidate, as my colleague Michael Gerson recognizes, could throw the race to the Democrat. My reaction to that possibility is: So? We’ve made the case here — and been proved correct — that Trump’s flaws as a human being and president surpass matters of policy and put the republic at risk.

While it is true that a primary has never defeated a sitting president in more than 100 years  (Lyndon Johnson chose not to run in 1968, Jimmy Carter beat back Ted Kennedy and Gerald Ford held off Ronald Reagan), Trump is helping to rewrite the political playbook. An anti-Trump Republican unsullied by sycophancy and presenting a credible program for uniting the country and addressing policy problems that have befuddled Trump would have a historic opportunity.

In the short term, the most effective way of removing Trump is to defeat again and again lawmakers who refuse to remove him, thereby advancing the prospects for impeachment and putting optimum pressure on Republican senators. (Republicans pledging to vote for impeachment or removal in the Senate based on the facts available at the time might spare themselves.)

With Georgia’s special election today in the 6th Congressional District, we’ll get our first inkling of just how vulnerable Republicans might be in 2018. Between now and 2018, Democrats, independents and the small cadre of #NeverTrump Republicans need to pursue two tracks simultaneously — keeping the special counselor in place (and assisting in the fact-finding process with open hearings, when possible) and generating momentum to defeat the greatest possible number of Trump protectors. That might entail fielding third-party candidates and primary challenges. Democrats certainly will need to keep their base energized, field an all-star list of candidates and make the case against the extreme Trump agenda while presenting reasonable alternatives of their own.

The only real guarantee, you see, of reversing the debacle of 2016 is to defeat Trump and his minions at the polls. The solution to democracy gone astray is always more democracy.

The last line is so true.

[Flossie]

I can't spend all day breaking down how many lines Michael Gerson's post spoke to me, so I'll just talk about one.

He is dead to the poetry of language and to the nobility of the political enterprise, viewing politics as conquest rather than as service.

I love this line.  

He is dead to the poetry of language:  Trump used to be more articulate, but over time he's been reduced to buzzwords and soundbites.  When a new word or phrase enters his vocabulary, 

the nobility of the political enterprise:  as best as I can tell, is "the quality of being noble in character or mind to the practice of free enterprise in an economy, or the right to practice it with a minimum of governmental intervention and regulation."

viewing politics as conquest rather than as service:  Yeah.  He's trying to prove himself through conquest, because he can't understand the concept of service unless the service is being provided to him. 

[Howl]

2 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

I think at some point even his hard-core base is going to object. He can keep stroking them and feeding them and maybe for a while that will be enough for them but when the first hard hit comes(healthcare) they're going to start screaming for more transparency. And maybe realize that they were taken for a ride.

I can't think of anything that will change the mind of the truly  hardcore base, who believe that Trump's wonderful agenda is being blocked by all the negative press from the MSM and we need to just Give Him a Chance, which is not how democracy and legislation work.  It's not the press impeding his unrealistic promises that were never, ever viable.  Truly, they think that wonderful health care,  great jobs for everyone + Big Wall were just suppressed by that horrible Hussein Obama (Worst. President. Ever!) and Trump would wave some kind of magic want and it would all happen.  They are still thinking this.  They will not stop thinking this. Since it's not happening, they will blame MSM and Those Damned Liberals because they watch Fox 24/7 or InfoWars,and can't even wonder WTF is going wrong with a Republican president and a Republican majority in both houses who in reality are actively undermining them in every possible way and NOT delivering The Promises. 

[GreyhoundFan]

16 minutes ago, Howl said:

I can't think of anything that will change the mind of the truly  hardcore base, who believe that Trump's wonderful agenda is being blocked by all the negative press from the MSM and we need to just Give Him a Chance, which is not how democracy and legislation work.  It's not the press impeding his unrealistic promises that were never, ever viable.  Truly, they think that wonderful health care,  great jobs for everyone + Big Wall were just suppressed by that horrible Hussein Obama (Worst. President. Ever!) and Trump would wave some kind of magic want and it would all happen.  They are still thinking this.  They will not stop thinking this. Since it's not happening, they will blame MSM and Those Damned Liberals because they watch Fox 24/7 or InfoWars,and can't even wonder WTF is going wrong with a Republican president and a Republican majority in both houses who in reality are actively undermining them in every possible way and NOT delivering The Promises. 

There was actually an excellent article in the WaPo this morning that made several similar points: "The Daily 202: Most Republicans in the Georgia special election are willing to give Trumpcare a chance"

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA:

CHAMBLEE, Ga.—Obamacare has been front and center in Republican campaign commercials for the past four election cycles, but it’s been absent from the airwaves ahead of today’s special election in Georgia’s Sixth District.

Most of the GOP spots have focused on national security. A relentless barrage of attacks ads sought to define Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff, 30, as an inexperienced and liberal carpet bagger who will be a puppet of Nancy Pelosi.

This is ironic because the neck-and-neck race to replace Tom Price, who resigned to become secretary of health and human services, has played out against the backdrop of Congress finally considering a repeal of the 2010 law. Senate Republicans are forging ahead with plans to hold a vote next week, and Democrats are now using every procedural trick available to slow the chamber to a crawl so they can draw attention to the secretive process being used to advance the legislation.

Politically, it is sensible for GOP outside groups to steer clear of this issue in their paid media. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll found that just one-quarter of likely voters in the costliest House race in U.S. history approve of the American Health Care Act.

But the polling does not capture the full story. In dozens of interviews on the ground over three days, most Republicans and many independents who have concerns about the House bill stressed that they still detest Obamacare. Their expectations might seem unreasonable to anyone who is closely following the debate or is steeped in the complexities of public policy, but they believe Donald Trump can and should enact a replacement plan that will both reduce their costs and improve their quality of care.

No matter where people fall in the debate, virtually everyone cares deeply about the outcome. The Journal-Constitution survey, conducted the week before last, found that 81 percent of likely voters describe health care as an “extremely” or “very” important “priority” to them, larger than any other issue by far.

-- One reason a lot of Republicans in the suburbs north of Atlanta are willing to give Trump leeway is Price. After representing the district for 12 years, he is still highly respected by the grassroots. He won reelection by 23 points last November, even as Trump edged out Hillary Clinton by just one point.

Lynda Chapman, a trained pharmacist who has a master’s degree in health-care policy, expressed confidence that any repeal bill will be good so long as Price signs off on it. “I’ve known Tom Price for over 20 years,” she said. “He’s a good man and has a good heart. You have to trust him because he knows what he’s doing.”

She said this after watching Price speak at a rally for Republican candidate Karen Handel. The HHS secretary began his speech in an airplane hangar here on Saturday by noting that he had come in his “personal capacity.” He made just one passing reference to the health debate in his remarks. Even then, it was part of a laundry list. Between calls for lower taxes and stronger national security, he said: “And you all want patient-centered health care.” That was it.

In a six-minute speech peppered with y’all’s, Handel also never mentioned Trump or health care. “We’re going to show up on Tuesday, and we’re going to rock Nancy Pelosi’s world,” she said.

-- When asked, Handel says she would have voted for the House bill because it’s better than the status quo. “It is by no means a perfect bill, but it was important to get the process started,” she told me before she held a meet-and-greet at a restaurant. “And the process couldn’t begin until we had a bill that was passed, right? So there’s some good things in it: Being able to keep people on their parents’ plan until they’re 26, I think most people are A-OK with that. A lot of people ask me: Why can’t we fix it? Well, we can’t fix something that had the largest tax increase embedded in it in my lifetime [a reference to the individual mandate]. The only way to fix a tax increase is to repeal it.”

“One thing I trust the Senate will deal with is making sure that states that didn’t expand Medicaid shouldn’t be at a disadvantage versus other states,” Handel added. “So fix that. Make sure that the language on preexisting conditions is exactly right. As I read it, there are richer protections for people with preexisting conditions in the House bill than there were previously. From a practical standpoint, there are things they can do to give it a good solid foundation to keep moving forward.”

-- The bill was a flashpoint in the debates, as Ossoff argued that the legislation “guts protections for preexisting conditions.” He told the story of a 7-year-old boy who has a heart condition and might struggle to get insurance if the bill became law. “We need to fix Obamacare, not repeal it,” the former House staffer says in one of his ads.

-- The legislation has certainly helped galvanize Democratic energy. Melissa Holloway, 32, is a registered nurse who works with Medicaid recipients. The Democrat wore a “Not My President” T-shirt as she joined two dozen friends for an impromptu protest outside Price’s rally for Handel. “I believe health care is a human right,” she said. “Most of the people who are going to be hurt by Trumpcare are already disadvantaged. … That’s what real terrorism looks like.”

-- Republican activist Angie Caswell, 42, wandered outside to engage with these protestors. She earnestly wanted to understand how they could possibly think Obamacare was working. Her deductibles have skyrocketed in recent years, she said, and she’s heard horror stories about doctors going out of business. “I only know one person who has benefited from Obamacare,” she said.

The mental health counselor, a native of Sweden who became a U.S. citizen in 2004, calls herself “ultra-conservative” and strongly supports the president. “Trump wants to put something together that’s actually going to last and work for everybody,” Caswell explained. “To do that, you have to start over. That’s what they’re doing.”

She said the protestors’ concerns about people with preexisting conditions losing coverage are unfounded because, surely, Trump would never allow such a terrible thing to happen to people who need help. “That’s definitely one of the things he’s going to make sure they fix,” she said, referring to the Senate bill. “I’m sure Trump has scratched his head on that one a lot.”

-- The Congressional Leadership Fund has spent $7 million to keep this seat in GOP hands, including a field program that has 135 paid door-knockers. For the past two months, the super PAC aligned with Paul Ryan has focused its efforts on mobilizing a universe of about 38,000 Republicans who voted in the 2016 presidential primary but not in the crowded April primary for this election. If these lower-propensity voters show up, the district is red enough that Handel will win.

I joined Chase McGrath, 18, on one of his door-knocking shifts. He just graduated from high school and will attend Georgetown this fall. Walking down streets lined with pine cones and red dirt in Roswell, he urged these targeted voters to take the time to turn out for Handel. Canvassers for CLF had previously knocked on many of these doors twice. This was the final push to drive them to the polls. “There’s a lot of people who are just ready for the election to happen,” McGrath said.

One of the Republicans he connected with was Karen Shandor, a registered nurse, who decided to vote for Handel after watching her promise to cut taxes during one of the televised debates. She thinks having another Republican in Congress will help Trump advance his agenda. “I’m having a really hard time. My money doesn’t go as far as it used to,” she said. “We may not see changes right away with what Trump is doing, but I feel like in the long run it will benefit us.”

Shandor used to work in an emergency room and complained that undocumented immigrants from Mexico would always get medical care with no questions asked. She said she resents freeloaders and explained that she supports the House bill because her understanding is that it will make Mexicans pay more for their health care. “I didn’t have a child because I didn’t know if I could afford it,” the 58-year-old said as she took a break from tending to her vegetable garden. “But Mexican kids in the country illegally are automatically covered. Hopefully that changes.”

-- L.B. Jamieson, 49, sells cement trucks and hates Obamacare. She considers herself an independent, backs Handel and suggests she will be deeply disillusioned if congressional Republicans do nothing to get rid of the law. “I have to pay a $40 co-pay just to see a doctor,” the Republican said. “It’s not affordable. … I’d rather pay the fine.”

“Donald Trump was not my first choice, but I went with him because he knows what he’s doing, and he’s a successful businessman,” Jamieson explained as she dipped a pita chip into hummus at Marlow’s Tavern in Johns Creek during a date with her boyfriend. “I don’t think he’s always making the best choices, but at the same time he’s done more in his first 100 days than any president ever before.”

I asked what specifically Jamieson was thinking of when she said that. “Just research it,” she said. “I’m not going to get into it, but it’s the truth. It’s factual. Just look it up.”

-- Trump tweeted support for the GOP nominee last night, but he spelled her name wrong: “Karen Handle's opponent in #GA06 can't even vote in the district he wants to represent....” He deleted that and reposted it with the right spelling. He also acknowledged the wider implications of the race: “The Dems want to stop tax cuts, good healthcare and Border Security. Their ObamaCare is dead with 100% increases in P’s. Vote now for Karen H.” He posted again this morning:

...

-- The bottom line: If Handel loses tonight, it will be almost entirely because of moderate unease with Trump and his agenda. The Journal-Constitution poll found that only about one-third of voters in the district approve of the president. Even one in four Republicans give him an unfavorable review.

Demographics are key: While Trump pulled just 48 percent in the district last November, Mitt Romney got 61 percent in 2012. That swing, one of the biggest in the country, is why Democrats aggressively targeted the race early on.

Republicans only represent two of the 15 House districts with the highest percentage of adults who have a college degree. Georgia’s Sixth is one of them. (The other is Virginia’s 10th, which includes tony D.C. suburbs like McLean and is held by Barbara Comstock.)

Obviously, Trump would never acknowledge that his unpopularity is why his party lost an election. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the White House is already telegraphing plans to blame others if Handel goes down. “Inside the West Wing, Trump and his advisers have paid increasing attention to the race and have been briefed regularly on Handel’s standing in private polls, GOP ground efforts and early-vote totals,” Bob Costa reports. “Associates of Trump — who have said he is already furious over the focus on his handling of investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election — warned that an Ossoff win could spark new rage toward Handel’s campaign and the way the GOP handled the race.”

The ability of the BTs to look beyond facts is stunning. They don't care, they just think he cares about them and will do right by them.

[GreyhoundFan]

"What is it that the Trump administration doesn’t want us to see?"

Spoiler

Yesterday, Sean Spicer walked out to the press briefing podium at the White House, smiled and then gleefully extended his middle finger in the general direction of democratic transparency. Not literally, of course. But the message was unmistakable. President Trump’s administration blocked journalists from recording audio or video of yesterday’s briefing.

When a reporter asked Stephen K. Bannon why the briefings were now off camera, he quipped: “Sean got fatter.”

Such pathetic, undemocratic cowardice is part of a disturbing trend. Increasingly, politicians are weaponizing public anger at the media to justify operating in the shadows. Democracy is dying in that darkness. We cannot and must not accept it becoming the new normal.

Even if yesterday’s briefing had been on camera, this is just the seventh press briefing in June. That’s a sharp drop not just in comparison with Trump’s early days but also from the frequency of press briefings under Barack Obama (there were 23 briefings in June 2016; Obama averaged more than 19 per month).

Trump himself is also avoiding on-camera press conferences. Obama held 65 solo press conferences, an average of more than eight per year. George H.W. Bush averaged 22 per year. After five months, Trump has held just one — and none since February. This is a deliberate and undemocratic attempt to shield the president from direct public scrutiny.

And the White House is merely part of an ominous trend. In today’s Georgia special election, both candidates reportedly barred reporters from unfriendly press outlets from attending their final campaign events last night. Last week, Republican leadership in the Senate attempted to outlaw the long-standing practice of journalists interviewing members of Congress in hallways (unless they had specific permission from the Senate Rules Committee). In Montana, Greg Gianforte’s decision to body-slam a journalist earned him a ticket not to jail but a chance to serve out his probation in the hallowed halls of Congress, welcomed by Republicans with open arms.

The White House has also ended the practice of releasing visitor logs, so we don’t know who is meeting with the president or his senior staff. Maybe Trump is meeting with people who have leverage over him with major business debts? We’d never know even if the visitor logs were released, because we’ve been kept in the dark on Trump’s tax returns — the first time that has happened since President Richard Nixon.

In the Senate health-care saga, reporters can’t even be barred from hearings because there are none. Instead, 13 white Republican men from 10  states, representing fewer than 1 in 4 Americans, are bypassing normal public hearings as they secretly craft a health-care bill that will affect every American and one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

These are all commonly used tactics in the shadows of authoritarian societies: If people don’t know what’s happening, it’s a lot harder to criticize it. After all, we all know that Vladimir Putin is corrupt, but we can’t prove it because the Russian government deliberately shrouds itself in darkness. We cannot allow such authoritarian practices to become part of our open, transparent and free society. Democracy rests on a simple foundation — the informed consent of the governed. That principle is now under attack.

Pictures, video and audio are powerful. Think back to Sean Spicer’s tall tales about the inauguration crowd size: Without side-by-side images, we may have never known that he was lying. On bigger issues, such as Trump telling Lester Holt that he fired James B. Comey because of “the Russia thing,” it would be a lot harder to prove he said that if there were no recordings, so that it was just Lester Holt’s word vs. Trump’s. There is no justification for off-camera briefings aside from the fact that it makes it easier for the White House to deceive the public and avoid public accountability.

If off-camera press briefings become the new normal, what’s next? A lack of public outcry will validate the White House calculation that nobody will really care if they just stop holding press briefings altogether (something Trump previously suggested).

That’s unacceptable. In democracies, elected officials are employees of the citizenry. They are accountable to us. We cannot accept government in the shadows as the new normal of American politics. Transparency in government is worth fighting for; it separates us from the despots who close their palace’s gilded curtains while the press tries, in vain, to peer within.

Trump hasn’t gone that far yet, but he’s starting to draw the curtains. If we don’t speak out now, this could be just the beginning. In the meantime, we need innovative journalists who can shame the White House for its undemocratic practices while exploring fresh methods of shining light into Trump’s shadowy swamp.

I called both of my senators and my rep to complain and ask them to be even more vocal about all the secrecy. They have all spoken out, but I want them to keep fighting.

[47of74]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The ability of the BTs to look beyond facts is stunning. They don't care, they just think he cares about them and will do right by them.

Also I think Branch Trumpvidians look upon the ACA as "those people" getting free health care and figure even if it hurts them as long as it hurts "those  people" then they're OK with it.   

If the BTs get hurt by Trumpcare or anything else Trump or his groupies in Congress do, as far as I'm concerned fuck 'em.   They voted for this so they have no room to complain as far as I'm concerned.  I was done being nice to BTs back in November of 2015 and I sure as fuck am not changing my mind now.

[GrumpyGran]

15 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Also I think Branch Trumpvidians look upon the ACA as "those people" getting free health care and figure even if it hurts them as long as it hurts "those  people" then they're OK with it.   

If the BTs get hurt by Trumpcare or anything else Trump or his groupies in Congress do, as far as I'm concerned fuck 'em.   They voted for this so they have no room to complain as far as I'm concerned.  I was done being nice to BTs back in November of 2015 and I sure as fuck am not changing my mind now.

Yes, @47of74, I agree but I think they also believe that there will be an exception for them and they won't suffer because they're "good, deserving" people. Better than those cheaters who are taking things they don't deserve.

And, yeah, I have no more fucks to give where these fools are concerned. They've had plenty of time to see the truth. I'm fine with them getting the payoff they voted for.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s pick for the No. 2 Pentagon job faces tough questions during confirmation hearing"

Spoiler

President Trump’s choice to take the No. 2 job at the Pentagon had a rocky confirmation hearing Tuesday, with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) at one point threatening to withhold his nomination from a vote and other lawmakers questioning how he will overcome his lack of experience in the Defense Department.

Patrick M. Shanahan, a vice president at the aerospace company and defense contractor Boeing, who was nominated in March to be deputy defense secretary, also faced questions about how he will manage day-to-day operations in the Pentagon while recusing himself from all decisions with a tie to Boeing. Shanahan has worked for the defense behemoth since 1986, with stints overseeing civilian airliner programs and military equipment.

McCain needled Shanahan early in the hearing about his prepared answer to a question about the U.S. potentially supplying weapons to Ukraine to face Russian-backed separatists. Shanahan wrote that he would have to look at the issue.

“In your questions that were submitted to you, one of the questions was providing the Ukrainians with legal, lethal defense weaponry with which to defend themselves,” McCain said. “Inexplicably, you responded by saying you have to look at the issue. It’s not satisfactory, Mr. Shanahan.”

The nominee, asked whether he wanted to amend his answer, quickly responded that he supported the idea. But McCain continued his line of questioning, saying he found Shanahan’s answer “very disappointing to me,” especially considering his years of work on weapons programs with Boeing.

“That’s not good enough, Mr. Shanahan,” McCain said. “I’m glad to hear you changed your opinion from what was submitted, but it’s still disturbing to me. It’s still disturbing to me after all these years that you would say that you would have to look at the issue. Have you not been aware of the issue? Have you not been aware of the actions of the Senate Armed Services Committee? Have you not been aware of the thousands of people that have been killed by [Russian President] Vladimir Putin?”

McCain said that if Shanahan chose not to respond directly to a question again, he would not bring his nomination to the committee for a vote. Shanahan responded that he was “very clear” about that.

“I think the Russians are adversarial,” Shanahan said. “I think through the whole of government, we need to deal with their [actions] — whether we call it aggression or their disruption to our interests. I, at this point, don’t have any specific recommendations. If confirmed, I will spend a significant amount of time dealing with Russia.”

On his lack of experience in the Defense Department, Shanahan said he has worked in a variety of organizations and thinks his technical and management experience “will prepare me to be able to quickly assimilate the knowledge and expertise to properly interface.”

Shanahan answered questions in greater detail about weapons acquisition and procurement, saying that “this is an area where I’ve had some fairly good success” and that rather than try to overhaul the entire system, he would focus on specific problem areas. By scrutinizing how technology prototypes perform in testing, “we could demonstrate what works” and then replicate the process, he said.

“It’s in doing those prototypes that you can get a quick win,” he said. “And then you also find out where the real limitations in the system are.

Shanahan was introduced by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), whose state is home to numerous Boeing facilities. She lauded his past efforts to drive change at Boeing and said his attention to detail will prove invaluable in the Pentagon.

“He is also fearless,” she said. “He understands what our country is up against when it comes to the Russians and the Chinese and the North Koreans, and it won’t faze him. He focuses on big, game-changing innovation in science and technology and won’t be deterred by the bureaucracy of DOD.”

Shanahan said his experience in industry and innovation has prepared him to contribute as deputy defense secretary and will help him complement Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, whom he called a “master strategist with deep military and foreign policy experience.”

Added Shanahan: “I bring with me a formula for leadership that has a record of delivering affordable high-performing business systems and operations under adverse conditions. Leadership casts a long shadow, and strong leadership can create teams that achieve ambitious change of scale.”

If confirmed, Shanahan will replace Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work, a retired Marine colonel who held the position under former president Barack Obama and was asked by Mattis to stay on for several months in the new administration.

So, yet another nominee with no direct experience. Good grief.

 

 

5 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

Yes, @47of74, I agree but I think they also believe that there will be an exception for them and they won't suffer because they're "good, deserving" people. Better than those cheaters who are taking things they don't deserve.

And, yeah, I have no more fucks to give where these fools are concerned. They've had plenty of time to see the truth. I'm fine with them getting the payoff they voted for.

I remember right before the election, CNN had a special about BTs. They were talking with this scruffy dude in rural Ohio, who was railing about foreigners and minorities who "take" from the government. The interviewer pointed out that they were standing in front of the dude's apartment, which was federally subsidized. He said, "that's different." The cognitive dissonance with so many BTs is stunning.

[GrumpyGran]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump’s pick for the No. 2 Pentagon job faces tough questions during confirmation hearing"

  Reveal hidden contents

President Trump’s choice to take the No. 2 job at the Pentagon had a rocky confirmation hearing Tuesday, with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) at one point threatening to withhold his nomination from a vote and other lawmakers questioning how he will overcome his lack of experience in the Defense Department.

Patrick M. Shanahan, a vice president at the aerospace company and defense contractor Boeing, who was nominated in March to be deputy defense secretary, also faced questions about how he will manage day-to-day operations in the Pentagon while recusing himself from all decisions with a tie to Boeing. Shanahan has worked for the defense behemoth since 1986, with stints overseeing civilian airliner programs and military equipment.

McCain needled Shanahan early in the hearing about his prepared answer to a question about the U.S. potentially supplying weapons to Ukraine to face Russian-backed separatists. Shanahan wrote that he would have to look at the issue.

“In your questions that were submitted to you, one of the questions was providing the Ukrainians with legal, lethal defense weaponry with which to defend themselves,” McCain said. “Inexplicably, you responded by saying you have to look at the issue. It’s not satisfactory, Mr. Shanahan.”

The nominee, asked whether he wanted to amend his answer, quickly responded that he supported the idea. But McCain continued his line of questioning, saying he found Shanahan’s answer “very disappointing to me,” especially considering his years of work on weapons programs with Boeing.

“That’s not good enough, Mr. Shanahan,” McCain said. “I’m glad to hear you changed your opinion from what was submitted, but it’s still disturbing to me. It’s still disturbing to me after all these years that you would say that you would have to look at the issue. Have you not been aware of the issue? Have you not been aware of the actions of the Senate Armed Services Committee? Have you not been aware of the thousands of people that have been killed by [Russian President] Vladimir Putin?”

McCain said that if Shanahan chose not to respond directly to a question again, he would not bring his nomination to the committee for a vote. Shanahan responded that he was “very clear” about that.

“I think the Russians are adversarial,” Shanahan said. “I think through the whole of government, we need to deal with their [actions] — whether we call it aggression or their disruption to our interests. I, at this point, don’t have any specific recommendations. If confirmed, I will spend a significant amount of time dealing with Russia.”

On his lack of experience in the Defense Department, Shanahan said he has worked in a variety of organizations and thinks his technical and management experience “will prepare me to be able to quickly assimilate the knowledge and expertise to properly interface.”

Shanahan answered questions in greater detail about weapons acquisition and procurement, saying that “this is an area where I’ve had some fairly good success” and that rather than try to overhaul the entire system, he would focus on specific problem areas. By scrutinizing how technology prototypes perform in testing, “we could demonstrate what works” and then replicate the process, he said.

“It’s in doing those prototypes that you can get a quick win,” he said. “And then you also find out where the real limitations in the system are.

Shanahan was introduced by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), whose state is home to numerous Boeing facilities. She lauded his past efforts to drive change at Boeing and said his attention to detail will prove invaluable in the Pentagon.

“He is also fearless,” she said. “He understands what our country is up against when it comes to the Russians and the Chinese and the North Koreans, and it won’t faze him. He focuses on big, game-changing innovation in science and technology and won’t be deterred by the bureaucracy of DOD.”

Shanahan said his experience in industry and innovation has prepared him to contribute as deputy defense secretary and will help him complement Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, whom he called a “master strategist with deep military and foreign policy experience.”

Added Shanahan: “I bring with me a formula for leadership that has a record of delivering affordable high-performing business systems and operations under adverse conditions. Leadership casts a long shadow, and strong leadership can create teams that achieve ambitious change of scale.”

If confirmed, Shanahan will replace Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work, a retired Marine colonel who held the position under former president Barack Obama and was asked by Mattis to stay on for several months in the new administration.

So, yet another nominee with no direct experience. Good grief.

Hmm, another fox in the hen house! Yeah, Boeing exec deciding who gets contracts for military aircraft. I'll take Boeing for 18 million, Alex!

Not since, oh well, Dick Cheney, have we seen this kind of direct, go-straight-to-the-bank influence with regard to contract awards.

And I swear, McCain's about to go off. Not sure what he'll do but he's making it interesting.

[GreyhoundFan]

Color me unsurprised: "Trump seeks sharp cuts to housing aid, except for program that brings him millions"

Spoiler

President Trump’s budget calls for sharply reducing funding for programs that shelter the poor and combat homelessness — with a notable exception: It leaves intact a type of federal housing subsidy that is paid directly to private landlords.

One of those landlords is Trump himself, who earns millions of dollars each year as a part-owner of Starrett City, the nation’s largest subsidized housing complex. Trump’s 4 percent stake in the Brooklyn complex earned him at least $5 million between January of last year and April 15, according to his recent financial disclosure.

Trump’s business empire intersects with government in countless ways, from taxation to permitting to the issuing of patents, but the housing subsidy is one of the clearest examples of the conflicts experts have predicted. While there is no indication that Trump himself was involved in the decision, it is nonetheless a stark illustration of how his financial interests can directly rise or fall on the policies of his administration.

The federal government has paid the partnership that owns Starrett City more than $490 million in rent subsidies since May 2013, according to figures provided by a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Nearly $38 million of that has come since Trump took office in January.

That subsidy generates steady income for Trump and his siblings, each of whom inherited an interest in the property when their father died. Although it represents a small portion of his overall wealth, it is one of the few examples of money the president derives directly from the federal government he oversees.

HUD, meanwhile, has come under fire in recent days after news of the expected nominee to lead the department in the New York region: Lynne Patton, an event planner who has no professional experience in housing but who is a former vice president of Eric Trump’s foundation and who helped plan his wedding.

The administration’s decisions on housing programs were not influenced by Trump’s interest in Starrett City, HUD spokesman Jereon Brown said Tuesday. Several experts said cutting the subsidy paid directly to landlords can be politically difficult, in part because many beneficiaries of that type of subsidized housing are elderly and in part because landlords are more likely to be politically organized.

Starrett City is a complex of 46 brick towers that stretches across 150 acres just to the west of New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. It was built in the mid-1970s and houses nearly 15,000 people.

Trump once called Starrett City “one of the best investments I ever made,” but it was his father who was an investor in its construction, according to a representative of Starrett City.

“Upon Fred Trump’s death, his four children inherited his interests,” Bob Liff, a spokesman for Starrett City Associates, the partnership that owns the complex, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “There’s been no change, except that Donald Trump’s holding was placed in a revocable trust upon becoming president.”

Placing his stake in a revocable trust allows it to be managed by others. Trump has not divested himself of his assets but has said he has turned over management to his sons.

Liff declined to say how large a stake Trump’s three surviving siblings own today.

The more than $5 million the president reported earning from Starrett City was part of nearly $600 million in gross revenue he claimed from January 2016 through mid-April, records show.

“It’s a conflict, and it’s why everyone has pushed Trump to not only step away from his business interests but to divest them,” said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog organization.

A White House spokeswoman declined to respond to detailed questions from The Post and directed inquiries to the Trump Organization, which did not respond to messages Monday and Tuesday.

Starrett City provides more than 3,500 subsidized housing units to low-income residents under a program that makes payments directly to landlords. Under the “project-based rental assistance program,” residents contribute 30 percent of their income toward rent, and the federal government pays the rest.

The project-based rental assistance program is one of only a few HUD programs that would be spared steep cuts under Trump’s proposed budget, which housing advocates have said would carry devastating consequences for the poor and the homeless.

The administration has proposed reducing HUD’s overall budget by $7 billion, or about 15 percent. That includes cuts to two of the other programs that, together with the program that pays landlords directly, serve the vast majority of people who get federal housing assistance.

The budget calls for a nearly 29 percent cut, or $1.8 billion, to public housing and a 5 percent drop, or nearly $1 billion, in vouchers that allow tenants to use the aid on the housing of their choice, according to Douglas Rice, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In contrast, the program that directs money to Starrett City and other privately owned housing would see a reduction of about half a percent, or $65 million, from its $10.8 billion allocation.

“It certainly raises questions as to why that remained relatively flat while there were other cuts,” Amey said.

But Amey and others cautioned against assuming that Trump’s holdings were a factor in the decision, noting that Starrett City represents a relatively small portion of the president’s income.

Ben Carson, the HUD secretary, has said that “no one is going to be thrown out on the street” if the proposed cuts take effect. Congress has ultimate say on the budget, but the Trump spending plan lays out the president’s priorities.

Compounding the questions swirling around HUD this week were reports that Carson was poised to name Patton, who spoke at the Republican National Convention, to the position of regional administrator overseeing the New York area. No formal announcement has been made, but Armstrong Williams, a longtime friend and adviser to Carson, defended Patton in an interview Monday evening.

Williams, a conservative commentator, said Patton earned Carson’s trust in just a few months while serving as his $160,000-a-year senior adviser. “She has shown a capacity not only to learn but to regurgitate, to put together tours where she shows she has a knowledge of HUD,” Williams said. “She has done a great job of briefing the secretary.”

Patton previously worked as an event planner for the Trump Organization and “a senior aide to the Trump family.” She organized “upscale events and celebrity golf tournaments at multiple Trump properties” and handled “celebrity talent acquisition for various marketing projects,” according to an online résumé on the website LinkedIn.

She told the Daily Mail earlier this year that she was entrusted by Eric and Lara Trump to help plan their wedding in Palm Beach, Fla. She also served as an unpaid vice president for the Eric Trump Foundation, a charity that raised money for children with leukemia.

The New York Daily News first reported her expected appointment late last week and raised questions about claims she made on her LinkedIn profile. Under “education” she lists a law degree from the Quinnipiac University School of Law, along with the notation “N/A.” After the controversy erupted, she explained that “N/A,” short for “not applicable,” was meant to signify that she did not finish law school.

Williams said that she dropped out before earning a degree but that she had been truthful with Carson about her background, including a history of substance abuse.

Patton has “been a lot of dark places” but has overcome them, Williams said. “She has a keen insight into people who overcome mental illness and addiction,” he said, adding that this will help her relate to people HUD serves.

As one of 10 regional administrators, Patton would serve as a liaison to local and state officials in the New York area and oversee HUD programs there. She did not respond to requests for comment through a person who answered her cellphone Monday.

Some New York City officials scoffed at her prospective appointment.

“Folks in that role historically have had substantial background in government or in housing,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, who served in that position previously, said during a radio program this week.

Michael Bodaken, president of the National Housing Trust, said the regional administrator would not have authority to make budget decisions or issue waivers that could benefit Starrett City. He added, “We would have been happier with someone with substantial housing experience because it’s such an important job.”

Williams dismissed criticism about Patton’s lack of experience.

“Whatever Lynne Patton was in the past doesn’t matter,” he said. “What she is today matters, and Dr. Carson has tremendous trust in her.”

He said that neither the president nor anyone in the Trump family had urged Carson to recommend her for the position and that her closeness to the family was not a factor.

“It did not help her with Dr. Carson,” Williams said. “He was skeptical, too, just like anyone else. He didn’t realize she had the intellect and the knowledge and work ethic she has.”

 

[Cartmann99]

On 6/19/2017 at 10:47 AM, Destiny said:

 I knew of Mister Sekulow from growing up fundie - he was practically a hero in my circles. I thought he had perhaps gotten some new and different experience in the 15+ years since I left. Alas, it appears no.

When I first heard that Trump had hired Jay Sekulow, I thought for half a second that maybe this wasn't the ACLJ guy, that maybe Trump's lawyer was just unfortunate enough to share a name with him. Nope, it's the same guy.

Spoiler

Religious Right attorney Jay Sekulow, founder of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), is in the national spotlight after he made the rounds of Sunday political talk shows, including a not-very-successful appearance on Fox News Sunday. Sekulow recently joined President Donald Trump’s growing legal team; he had already taken part in right-wing efforts to smear former FBI Director James Comey and spin his testimony in Trump’s favor.

Salon’s Heather Digby Parton surmised that Trump may have hired Sekulow after seeing him on Fox, where he has frequently appeared as a guest commentator. It’s also possible that Sekulow came to join the team through Trump’s extensive ties with Religious Right leaders. In January, Sekulow and his son Jordan—also an ACLJ official—celebrated Trump’s nomination of Jeff Sessions to be U.S. attorney general. Jordan said it was the “most exciting” of Trump’s nominations and complained that during the Obama administration, the Department of Justice had “gotten obsessed with this civil rights issue.”

Sekulow may have also proven his Trump-worthy chops by urging Republicans not to consider an Obama nominee to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Or maybe Trump admired Sekulow’s long history of promoting right-wing conspiracy theories, most recently the Sean Hannity-promoted argument that former DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered over his supposed links to WikiLeaks. During the presidential campaign, when Trump made his infamous remark about women who have abortions needing to face “some sort of punishment” if the procedure is outlawed, Sekulow went to great lengths on his radio program to argue that Trump was not “legally wrong.”

Early in the Obama administration, Sekulow manufactured an alarmist right-wing campaign against a stimulus bill for supposedly including language to institutionalize anti-religious discrimination on college campuses. Over the years, Sekulow and/or the ACLJ have also promoted a number of other bogus right-wing charges, including:

Sekulow launched the ACLJ at the behest of Pat Robertson with a goal to “stop the ACLU in court.” Sekulow has said the United States is a “Christian nation, founded in Christian principles.” The ACLJ portrays itself as a champion of the First Amendment, but it helped lead opposition to the Islamic community center that right-wing activists dubbed the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

Sekulow and the  ACLJ have been active in the U.S. and overseas in opposing legal equality for LGBTQ people. Sekulow has said that the state has a “compelling interest to ban the act of homosexuality” and the ACLJ argued on behalf of state laws criminalizing gay sex that were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2003. Sekulow said the Supreme Court overturning the Defense of Marriage Act meant that “we’re now living in a monarchy.”

The ACLJ and its international affiliates engage in anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice culture wars in the U.S., Africa, Europe and Russia. In Africa, it worked to shape constitutional language in Zimbabwe, where it has fought to maintain criminalization of homosexuality, and Kenya, where it lobbied to eliminate an exemption to an abortion ban to save a woman’s life. Both the European Center for Jaw and Justice and the Slavic Center for Law and Justice supported Russia’s notorious anti-gay “propaganda” law, which has been used against journalists and gay rights activists.

The SCLJ responded to the 2012 Pussy Riot protest by calling for a Russian law toughening penalties for religious blasphemy. The ECLJ, in contrast, has energetically opposed blasphemy laws in Islamist countries. But Sekulow has bemoaned the fact that blasphemy is no longer criminalized in the United States.

There’s one more thing Trump might admire about Sekulow: The ACLJ is quite the family affair, and an extremely lucrative one at that. A 2011 investigation by Bob Smietana at The Tennessean reported, “Since 1998, the two charities [ACLJ and the Sekulow-founded Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism] have paid out more than $33 million to members of Sekulow’s family and businesses they own or co-own, according to the charities’ federal tax returns.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/what-made-trump-hire-religious-right-lawyer-jay-sekulow/

[Destiny]

Yikes. I had forgotten how fucking terrible he is. :/

[GreyhoundFan]

NPR published a great analysis of Agent Orange's business empire. There are many graphics, so it's worth a look. This part was especially interesting:

Quote

...

"What the 278 is designed to do is detect conflicts of interest," said Stuart Gilman, former special assistant to the OGE director. So it discloses revenue, and estimates value, for each of Trump's hundreds of business entities. But it is silent on their expenses. And there's nothing on taxes, which Trump has refused to release elsewhere. The form requires disclosure of transactions that exceed $1,000, and gifts worth more than $375, but Trump reported nothing in either category.

As Gilman said, "An accountant would go crazy with this."

Three things are worth noting about the numbers released on Friday:

First, Trump didn't have to do this; his next disclosure isn't required until May 2018.

Second, his lawyers wanted to file the report without his signature, which certifies the information is "true, complete and correct to the best of your knowledge." The Office of Government Ethics insisted on the signature.

And third, Trump's reports are unlike those of any other president. Since disclosure was mandated in 1978, all other chief executives have put their wealth into blind trusts or taken other steps to avoid conflicts of interest. Trump moved most of his companies into a trust, but he made himself the sole beneficiary of the trust, and the businesses in the trust are managed by his two oldest sons and a longtime business associate.

Finding trends across Trump's 2016 and 2017 reports is impossible because they cover different lengths of time. The latest report shows assets and revenues from January 2016 through April 15, 2017. The previous one covered the period from January 2015 through May 15, 2016.

...

I find it interesting that his lawyers tried to file without his signature.

[JMarie]

Breaking News On Tonight's Hannity*:  A special guest has uncovered a decade-old document that states why the president cannot be indicted for obstruction of justice.  Mark Levin** claims that because the executive branch is only one person (because the VP doesn't count??), the executive branch cannot be charged.  Also, there's no possibility of a jury of twelve "peers" of the president, unlike Average Joe, who can get a jury of twelve Average Joes and Janes, so the president couldn't get a fair trial.

 

*supposedly "information that the mainstream media won't tell you, but we will" -- but really just another paranoid theory

** Levin has a new book being released next Tuesday (surprise!)

[GreyhoundFan]

8 minutes ago, JMarie said:

Breaking News On Tonight's Hannity*:  A special guest has uncovered a decade-old document that states why the president cannot be indicted for obstruction of justice.  Mark Levin** claims that because the executive branch is only one person (because the VP doesn't count??), the executive branch cannot be charged.  Also, there's no possibility of a jury of twelve "peers" of the president, unlike Average Joe, who can get a jury of twelve Average Joes and Janes, so the president couldn't get a fair trial.

We all know that if Hillary had won the electoral college, Levin, Hannity, and the rest of the right-wing nutjobs, would have been screeching 24/7  to indict her for every single thing she said or did. I swear, they probably would have brought her up on charges of using too much toilet paper. But, Agent Orange can thumb his nose at every law and standard of ethics, and they look the other way.

[Cartmann99]

3 hours ago, JMarie said:

Breaking News On Tonight's Hannity*:  A special guest has uncovered a decade-old document that states why the president cannot be indicted for obstruction of justice.

I don't know how you can watch Hannity without pulling an Elvis on your television, but I do appreciate your reports! 

[Howl]

From the article posted above by @GreyhoundFan referencing Republicans who believe that Trumpcare "will both reduce their costs and improve their quality of care."

This just emphasizes to me the extent to which they are gullible and the extent to which Obama (and be extension, Obamacare) was effectively villified for 8 years.  

They is simply NO WAY that health care can be reduced in cost while improved in quality without hardcore regulation.  It's a health care system driven by profit; patients are  the profit generators and shareholders are the beneficiaries, not patients. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Team Trump crows as Republicans win in Georgia, South Carolina". The article is full of tweets from various twits in Agent Orange's circle, so I'm not going to quote anything. I would like to say that someone needs to take away donnie junior's phone. He irks me more every day.

[Childless]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Team Trump crows as Republicans win in Georgia, South Carolina". The article is full of tweets from various twits in Agent Orange's circle, so I'm not going to quote anything. I would like to say that someone needs to take away donnie junior's phone. He irks me more every day.

It's fucking Georgia and South Carolina.  The fact that Dems came so close to winning in both elections is proof that people don't like Trump or his GOP minions.  These are elections the Repubs would have normally taken by double digits.  This doesn't bode well in places where Repubs have less of a grip.

[apple1]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2017/06/21/oscar-health-will-expand-obamacare-footprint-in-five-states/#365758e6445b

Oscar Health is Kushner owned. Going into exchanges that have been destabilized and have holes left as existing insurance providers withdraw from the exchanges.

Hmmmmmmm...