United States of Authoritarianism: July 16-July 22

- The irony of the health care vote being delayed while McCain recovers from potentially serious complications or issues from his surgery this last Friday cannot be overstated.
2. Boom.
Of course, since the GOP has utterly rejected any semblance of law and order, this won’t get prosecuted or if it does, the GOP will shut it down. They have lost all claim to any kind of morality whatsoever.
Literally:

This is in response to Faux News’ complete insanity below. No wonder Fox news addicts are so completely and shockingly ignorant when they are constantly fed bald faced lies.
3. No! Really?!
For Trump, highlighting U.S.-made products is inconsistent with his practices as a businessman. For years, the Trump Organization has outsourced much of its product manufacturing, relying on a global network of factories in a dozen countries — including Bangladesh, China and Mexico — to make its clothing, home decor pieces and other items.
[Fact Checker: How many Trump products were made overseas? Here’s the complete list.]
Similarly, the clothing line of Ivanka Trump, the president’s older daughter and a senior White House adviser, relies exclusively on foreign factories employing low-wage workers in countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and China, according to a recent Washington Post investigation.
4. There is an ominous pattern developing here. Doesn’t this request remind you of a more recent one? Yep, the voting commision one sent out to all 50 state secretary of states…
The Department had been asking for job data up to 15 years old, and wanted far-ranging personal data that included addresses and contact info for over 25,000 employees. In theory, sharing that material could have exposed staff to identity theft in the event of a government data breach, which the judge saw as a realistic possibility.
5. Jeebus.
6. Betrayed by the U.S.

7. YOU DON’T SAY! Now, just don’t fucking pull a lame House stunt and pass it anyway. It does sound like a bonus that it distracted from other stuff they were supposed to do, too.
Republican leaders last fall planned a quick strike on the law in a series of meetings and phone calls, hoping to simply revive a 2015 repeal bill that Obama vetoed.
Few in the administration or Republican leadership expected the effort to stretch into the summer months, with another delay announced this weekend, eating into valuable time for lawmakers to tackle tax reform, nominations or spending bills.
As Trump himself infamously remarked, “nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated” — even though health care has reliably tripped up past administrations.
Now that the difficulty of getting 50 senators to rally around a bill has come into stark relief, Republicans are starting to acknowledge they misjudged the situation.
8. Well that’s interesting if Flake decides to run as independent. I’d watch this one closely.
9. Yep. When you axe ACA’s funding, then realize people want to keep it, and you raid Medicaid to make up the diff… you’re killing Medicaid. And STILL fucking up health-care-for-all!
So Republicans decided to get rid of some of their tax cuts for the rich, and use that money to … expand tax breaks for the rich?
Actually, yes. That, after all, is what health savings accounts are. They let people pay their out-of-pocket medical expenses with pre-tax dollars, which only helps them if they have enough money to be able to put some aside and are in a high enough tax bracket that it’s even worth doing so. It’s no wonder, then, that households making $100,000 or more make up 58 percent of all HSA accounts and 70 percent of the value of all HSA contributions. Which is to say that the Senate bill would take what’s already a tax shelter for the well-off — HSA money can be invested tax-free — and turn it into even more of one by allowing people to use HSAs to pay for their health-care premiums in addition to their health-care expenses. In other words, Republicans would take from the rich with their right hand and give it back with their left.
But there’s no legerdemain when it comes to Medicaid. There are just cuts, and more cuts. The Senate bill would start by undoing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion for poor adults, but then go much further than that. The important thing to understand is that right now Medicaid is an open-ended program that grows as need does. But, starting in 2020, the Senate bill would turn it into one that’s capped on a per person basis and only grows at a certain rate of inflation; at first that would be by medical inflation (which is actually lower than Medicaid’s projected growth), but then, in 2025, it’d be by the even lower overall rate of inflation. The result, according to the CBO, is that Medicaid spending would be 26 percent lower in 2026 than it would otherwise be, and 35 percent lower in 2036.
10. I’m still baffled by the Observer. Kushner may have stepped out of running it, but it’s run by family still AFAIK. Even so:
11. This is why we are fucked, really. This is why I have no patience whatsoever with the rich fuckwads who do not want to pay taxes. This is why I enthusiastically support much higher tax rates at the highest brackets and for corporations. Because these entities, the filthy rich and the huge corporations, are eating this country alive.
Decades later, the United States presents visitors from the north with a different impression. There hasn’t been a new major airport constructed in the United States since 1995. And the existing stock of terminals is badly in need of upgrades. Much of the surrounding road and rail infrastructure is in even worse shape (the trip from LaGuardia Airport to midtown Manhattan being particularly appalling). Washington, D.C.’s semi-functional subway system feels like a World’s Fair exhibit that someone forgot to close down. Detroit’s 90-year-old Ambassador Bridge — which carries close to $200 billion worth of goods across the Canada-U.S. border annually — has been operating beyond its engineering capacity for years. In 2015, the Canadian government announced it would be paying virtually the entire bill for a new bridge (including, amazingly, the U.S. customs plaza on the Detroit side), after Michigan’s government pled poverty. “We are unable to build bridges, we’re unable to build airports, our inner city school kids are not graduating,” is how JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon summarized the state of things during an earnings conference call last week. “It’s almost embarrassing being an American citizen.”
I am not linking to the article the way Medium will because it has a completely fucking asinine other headline (I do not understand this disconnect and it’s annoying.) Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/canada-america-taxes/533847/
Image from Actual Article:

12. Meanwhile don’t forget to fucking FIGHT for the right to vote. OVERTURN these things. STOP THEM in your state. SPEAK UP. ESPECIALLY if you have the privilege to challenge these things.
13. Of course it is. We’ll be dependent on Canada and Mexico when the Трамп era is done.
One of the biggest, as detailed in a New York Times report, is the Trump administration’s effort to deregulate American business, which in the hands of his aides and appointees, has become an unabashed attempt to let corporations rewrite the rules of the game for their own benefit.
“The appointees,” notes the Times, “include lawyers who have represented businesses in cases against government regulators, staff members of political dark money groups, employees of industry-funded organizations opposed to environmental rules and at least three people who were registered to lobby the agencies they now work for.” It’s not one fox guarding the henhouse; it’s an entire skulk.
14. “Close”? I would say we drove off that edge a few months back.

15. And another campaign promise by the wayside.
The increase represents a 45 percent bump from the number of H-2B visas normally issued for the second half of the fiscal year, said senior Homeland Security officials in a call with reporters Monday.
16. Wow, the GOP senate is rebelling.
Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Jerry Moran (Kan.) issued statements declaring that they would not vote for the revamped measure. The sudden breaks by Lee, a staunch conservative, and Moran, an ally of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), rocked the GOP leadership and effectively closed what already had been an increasingly narrow path to passage for the bill.

and:
and let me note, what a fucking asshole:
Among the complicating factors is Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Johnson originally came out against the BCRA for not being conservative enough, but he said he was on board after the release of an updated version. Over the weekend, however, Johnson told the Green Bay Press-Gazette in Wisconsin that he was back to being undecided on the bill because of reports that McConnell told moderate Senate members that the bill’s deep cuts to Medicaid would never take effect.
And McConnell is all kinds of special asshole. Guess he’s really all in for all whatever bribery he accepted to fuck the U.S. over completely.


17. And AGUS Sessions wants the gov’t to outright steal even more from the rest of us. Civil forfeiture is something that needs to be utterly repudiated as the corrupt and illegal practice that it is.
18. “review”? More like “REVOCATION”…
19. As I have mentioned, for all the loathing I have for the pig in office, he’s a creation of the GOP.
On Monday, the Republicans’ tortured health-care effort hit a seemingly permanent snag. But that was only the latest blow; after half a year of consolidated GOP control, not a single major piece of legislation has been enacted. With other priorities similarly stalled, legislators’ frustration is mounting.
What’s amusing is when things are happening so fast news are already out of date when published. By Monday night, of course, two more senators defected, and McConnell cut bait with the declared intent to repeal ACA entirely.
If the human race survives & keeps its history, I’d love to read the history books 500 years from now for all the details.
20. This is… jeeze. Is the GOP intent on dismantling every federal program that might have any ability to deal with computer & internet security on the national level? The ignorance or malice (or both) being displayed by Tillerson and whoever his puppet master actually is is shocking.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is considering closing the cyber office or merging it with another office and downgrading the cyber coordinator’s rank, according to a source familiar with internal planning. “It’s a step back from everything done over the last ten years,” said the source, who added that Tillerson was also considering “limiting the number of people who work on cybersecurity” at State. “They basically gave [Painter] two weeks notice,” the source told MC. “It’s clear they’re thinking about reorganizing it. … Clearly they don’t think it’s that important.” A State Department spokesman did not provide a comment on the fate of the cyber office. Painter’s deputy, Michele Markoff, is also an experienced cyber diplomat. When MC reached her by phone, she declined to comment on her status. “If she leaves as well,” Healey said, “it might take State years to rebuild.”
21. My smallest violin has just shrunk in size so much I think it’s a black hole now.
22. News doesn’t usually whip by so fast that I can feel the breeze.
23. I think (hope) politicians are about to be massively reminded about the voters who vote for (or against) them.
24. Since about 1980, although I’ll admit GHWB wasn’t too bad. (But more a foreign policy wonk than otherwise).
25. Watch for them to pin this as much as they can on the Dems. However, with the Fuckwit In Chief loudly calling for ACA’s defunding and crippling, it may be harder to do that than one might think.
26. Must make sure the Ceti Eels are still in place.

27. Actually the numbers on gerrymandering are encouraging. Seems like most people realize it’s not a good thing, no matter which party is doing it. Also interesting health care is a deadlier issue than RussiaGate, which is why I do think it’s best to let Mueller work his way through all the bits and bobs while we block health care and work on keeping the right to vote & 2018,
28. More good news — the GOP suicide budget bill cannot pass as is, so they’re chopping it up in smaller pieces.
House GOP leaders are resorting to Plan B on their spending strategy after falling woefully short of the support needed to pass a massive government funding package without Democratic votes.
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced Tuesday night that the House will vote next week on a measure that includes just four of the 12 bills needed to fund the federal government. That decision comes after GOP leaders failed to get enough Republican support to pass the full dozen without the help of their minority-party counterparts.
29. Oh, Texas.
30. Pay attention.
31. It’s gonna be a football stadium full’s worth when this is done…

32. I don’t get it. He flat out said I LOVE IT but people don’t believe Junior? We deserve President Fuckwith /facepalm
33. Ah, good old Dana Rohrabacher…look at these propaganda techniques.
34. Post-mortem. Don’t fuck with the women.
However, the threat that remains to the ACA is still quite real. The WH can elect to sabotage it.
35. So Трамп actually threatens Mueller if the investigation gets “personal” by which apparently he means Трамп Family Finances. Except…
Yah. Speaking of which…
Banking regulators are reviewing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans made to Mr. Trump’s businesses through Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management unit, which caters to an ultrarich clientele, according to three people briefed on the review who were not authorized to speak publicly. The regulators want to know if the loans might expose the bank to heightened risks.
Separately, Deutsche Bank has been in contact with federal investigators about the Trump accounts, according to two people briefed on the matter. And the bank is expecting to eventually have to provide information to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the federal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
It was not clear what information the bank might ultimately provide. Generally, the bank is seen as central to understanding Mr. Trump’s finances since it is the only major financial institution that continues to conduct sizable business with him.
Foreign bank. And … GERMAN. They might be answerable in ways that FuckТрамп can’t touch.
36. Fucks sake, it’s the Terminator/Zombie health care that Will. Not. Stop. Ever. Until you are DEAD.
The math don’t add up anyway. They’ve stripped out 772 billion and propose tossing in 200 billion to appease moderate GOP? That’s fucking chump change. And that hopefully outrages the diehard conservatives and tightwads like Rand Paul so that they defect… But keep an eye out here.
37. Indeed.
This is worse because Trump has, in fact, undermined the health exchanges, and he has threatened to do so further; indeed, one estimate says that the bulk of projected 2018 premium increases are the result of Trump and other Republican actions, not a deterioration in the markets — in part because insurers are directly saying that’s why their rates are going up.
I certainly can’t think of any president who directly promised to harm the American people unless his political opponents let him have his way.
38. Bus throwing, etc.
In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Mr. Trump said.
whine whine whine whine whine…
Consider what’s really being said here.
Dead man walking?
And on a wider scale, that interview is really… I mean complete wordsalad. Utterly. This man has no oars left in his canoe.

39. And yes, this. I mean, ERHMAGERD POT IS EEBIL… expansion of civil asset forfeiture…return to punitive sentencing… so many things are all so 80's…and SHOWN TO NOT WORK, FFS!!
40. :-/
41. PAY ATTENTION.
We need to push back. Local election registrars are really in control of the rolls and have the final say on most purges. We need to organize in our communities and ensure they hear our concerns. Voting experts must debunk the administration’s false claims of fraud. Civil rights law firms should continue to do battle in courtrooms. Local politicians from both parties ought to stand firm against pressure from Washington. Rest assured that the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights coalition, and our allies, will be in the thick of this fight.
42. Oh HELL no.
43. Yes.
The resolution was filed by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) Wednesday, who told reporters he knows it has little chance of passing through the House of Representatives and will probably have little impact on the President himself, but said it provides a catalog of the President’s controversies since he took office.
44. “Mean.”
Mr. McConnell’s motivation for holding a vote on the deeply unpopular bill is to foster fear. Many of the nays, including Mr. Moran, want the issue to disappear; Mr. McConnell wants to put them on the record supporting the perpetuation of the Affordable Care Act.
And then there’s being on the record as having voted against the ACA when the voters come to the polls in 2018. It’s tough being a gooper these days.
45. Assuming the U.S. survives that long, this will be a looming & protracted disaster.
46. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?? Russia says joint cybersecurity unit under way? Russia??
47. Quelle shock, I know.
48. Hmmm
Mark Corallo, the spokesman, had grown frustrated with the operation and the warring factions and lawyers, these people said. Corallo also was concerned about whether he was being told the truth about various matters, one of these people said.
Pretty sure the answer is/was NO.
Really, now?
/steeples fingers
Pressure’s on again:
Interesting point. Remember also, prez can only pardon FEDERAL. I’m sure the NY AG is laying in wait at this point.

49. I am additionally amused by this snippet
That uncertainty is blunting the GOP’s momentum as it heads into a weekend back home. So is President Donald Trump’s Wednesday interview with the New York Times, which allies of GOP leaders said had stomped all over a productive Wednesday meeting on health care with Republican senators by criticizing Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“They had their first productive day on health care in two weeks, and by 6 o’clock, Trump had screwed it up with his AG story,” said a Republican close to GOP leaders.
50. I wonder if the GOP is finally bestirring itself?
51. Well, fuck. There’s a lot more of these coming.
52. Of course she did.
53. Wouldn’t be surprised if Mueller is looking into this, considering his team.
54. 100% agreed here.
55. Implications are horrifying. Even odds as to whether GOP turns on T or continues to protect him b/c at some point they are protecting themselves.
The stakes are as high as they can get: The fate not only of the U.S. but of the world rests on their ability to put country over party, to rein in Mr. Trump’s violent ambitions and to investigate Mr. Trump as the public demands.
Unfortunately, the GOP shows few signs of wising up. There are three main reasons for this: careerism, opportunism and contamination.
…
The road to impeachment is the road to self-immolation, which is why Republicans at Russian interference hearings behave as if intelligence officials — like former CIA chief John Brennan — are hostile witnesses instead of patriots providing valuable testimony, and treat leaks as greater affronts than the horrifying revelations the leaks contain.
56. Not scary at all…
CALL YOUR GODDAMNED MOC AND TELL THEM NO PARDONS, NO FIRINGS, NO TRUMP. Do not let the GOP wreck the entire country any further!
57. Lay down with dogs… no never mind that one. Dogs are wonderful! I’d lay down with them any time. Lay down with fucking traitors, though…
58. Dem MoC putting in the effort. C’mon you batshit GOP! Work on this now, or be slaughtered in the votes a year from now.
59.
60. As god is my witness, I totally thought this was a Bohemian Rhapsody mash-up by a clever pundist when this first trickled out. But it’s perfect, you know? Press conferences and lie-tning, Very Very Frightening…
Note the amount of abuse Spicer took over the last six months. But what turned out to be the last straw? Hiring Scaramucci. So keep an eye on him. If Spicer thinks he’s bad… (There is also apparently the split whereby Ivanka/Kushner supported Scaramucci and Bannon totally opposed it.)
This should be interesting, though, b/c now Трамп will have to justify himself by thoroughly trashing Spicer. Makes me wonder how Spicer will react?
And, we’re back to 1) contamination and 2) T’s bus-throwing penchant. You waking up yet, you fuckwad GOP politicians? T has NO ONE’s back but his own. NO ONE is safe around him. Sessions and Spicer provide ample proof, though a cursory check of T’s history over, oh the last 40 years should make that abundantly clear already.
61. Finally. Props to Ksenija Pavlovic.
62. Eesh, the fire-hose torrent of news continues today.
63. This is a pretty good summary. CONGRESS, TAKE NOTES.
64. I have…questions.
U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted a conversation in which Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak claimed he had discussed President Donald Trump’s campaign and policy positions with then-Sen. Jeff Sessions during the 2016 election campaign, The Washington Post reported Friday.
When was this conversation intercepted? Is this an IC report, or a leak to the WP? Is the leak from within IC or WH?
U.S. officials told the Post they had no way to verify if Kislyak was accurately recounting his conversations with Sessions.
I would not put it past Russia to troll us at this point, which is why I’m curious about the timeline of this.
The report comes just two days after Trump lambasted Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe.
Report? Not leak? Where is this report? Why is there no link to it?
OK, here is the WaPo report.
This doesn’t seem to be a leak, though there’s not a lot of detail. Interesting…
65. Another take on the Scaramucci move.
Spicer’s brief tenure as press secretary will probably be remembered for his most spectacular, high-profile humiliations — the inaugural lie about the Inauguration crowd size; the “holocaust centers” meltdown — and for Melissa McCarthy’s withering impression of him. But the core failures of the Spicer-era communications shop were shaped by Trump himself.
Because the president demanded North Korean levels of message discipline, Spicer was frequently forced to make easily debunked, sky-is-green statements during White House press briefings, and then fiercely defend them against a barrage of Are you serious? pushback from reporters.
This, though.
Spicer will be replaced by deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, but it seems likely that Scaramucci — a fast-talking, telegenic figure who’s known as “Mooch” in certain New York circles — will be the one running the show. A similar shakeup recently took place on Trump’s legal team, with veteran spokesman Mark Corallo resigning, and attorney-cum-pundit Jay Sekulow becoming more visible. Rather than turning to old Washington hands to steady the ship, as many presidents before him have done, Trump is elevating outspoken on-air surrogates and leading them into battle.
Who are the president’s enemy? The people of the United States? I mean, technically, that shouldn’t be the case.
66. This.
The fact is that, for a powerless Congress, the only power possible comes from having their own President in office; anything which jeopardizes that jeopardizes their own ability to pass their favorite legislation. And there is no incentive left to counterbalance that.
…and this
What does this mean for our country? It means that we are now firmly in a place where the Constitution no longer offers any meaningful solutions. We have run into a basic bug in the system which the Founders didn’t anticipate: that Congress would become subservient to the President, effectively eradicating the only surefire check on that power.
67. Translation: Junior is under criminal investigation.
68. But it will be okay if a Republican does it…
