United States of Authoritarianism: June 24-July 1
- Wonder who else was there. PAY ATTENTION. The lack of forthcomingness on this is not good.
Pence, in town to headline a banquet celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Christian conservative group Focus on the Family, sat down with the chairman and chief executive of Koch Industries, along with key members of the Koch team.
The meeting was not on the vice president’s schedule released by the White House late Thursday.
A spokesman for the vice president’s office denied to The Hill earlier Friday that Pence would be meeting with the Koch brothers’ network. The spokesman did not respond to requests for comments late Friday.
Ooh, found this list
2. Traitor in the WH.
3. Well that’s… Huh. That’s weird.
4. Not good.
5. Good lord, the unexpected moments that pop up in today’s political climate…
6. The current state of U.S. security…
7. Bigly list.
8. I for one welcome our Canadian overlords. Though I could have told Trudeau that trying to use Ivanka Antoinette was a waste of time as she’s just a vacuous foil for her father.
9. The gift that just keeps on growing…
10. I agree with this one. It’s worrying to see the escalation in numbers sent to Afghanistan. WTF??
11. Older news yes, but if the IC is taping Prince’s convos, there’s a mountain of info here. (Jan)
I don’t know if Mueller has his hands on this, but remember the money laundering experts he’s pulled onto his team? (Mar 2016)
April…
12. Well yes. People will die in order for rich folks to get the tax breaks in TrumpCare. It really is that simple.
13. Moderate GOP are resisting TrumpCare. Now there are two questions here. How many are providing cover for their eventual yes vote (“Ah yes, my concerns were addressed so I voted for it”) and how many will be forced to toe the line (Koch brothers finance attack ads & threaten to primary them)?
14. Interesting read. It also doesn’t hurt that his mind is clearly completely VACUOUS.
With Trump, though, secret operations are not necessary to understand what’s on his mind: The president’s unfiltered thoughts are available night and day, broadcast to his 32.7 million Twitter followers immediately and without much obvious mediation by diplomats, strategists or handlers.
15. One wonders about the money trail.
16. Because of course he doesn’t.
17. <sigh> This is why half the time I go off and write urban fantasy stories.
Hannah Arendt in her famous study of totalitarianism stated that, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between true and false no longer exists.”
For Arendt the mark of totalitarianism was the pervasive nature of ideological thinking. Under that scheme the mind is simply closed to correcting information and it holds to an ideologically consistent view of the world — one that is understood as true despite an absence of supporting evidence.
Many have wondered whether the election of Trump suggests that the United States has moved from a democracy to a totalitarian, possibly even fascist, regime, but it may well be that the Trump era attacks on truth exceed Arendt’s theories of totalitarianism and truth.
18. Not that it matters when truthiness is up for grabs. Fuckwit in Chief will continue to be silent when it’s domestic/white terrorism (like in Portland) and immediately trumpet his self serving lies in order to cynically exploit religious feelings for political aims.
A joint project by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, a nonprofit media centre, and news outlet Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting took a look at the 201 designated terrorism incidents within the US from 2008 to 2016.
The results: “right-wing extremists were behind nearly twice as many incidents” as terror acts associated with those identified as “Islamist domestic terrorism”.
19. What’ sinteresting is that the immediate speculation is that Kislyak will be dead inside of 3–4 months.
20. HAH HA HAHA HA HA HA HA AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH
Oh FFS, make up your fucking minds, fucking stupid “First Family”… SHE IS A FUCKING WHITE HOUSE ADVISOR, NEPOTISM AND ALL.
21. Ah, Conway never fails to deliver on mean.
As Jonathan Cohn points out in the Huffington Post, however, Conway’s reasoning is faulty: “The majority of able-bodied adults on Medicaid already have jobs. The problem is that they work as parking lot attendants and child care workers, manicurists and dishwashers ― in other words, low-paying jobs that typically don’t offer insurance. Take away their Medicaid and they won’t be covered.”
22. Oh SCOTUS. Gorsuch-fucked SCOTUS. Still 3–5 is something, I suppose. And by far the majority of the stay on the ban is held in place. (In fact some news outlets are reporting this with a more positive spin b/c of that. In the end, it will depend on what the final SCOTUS ruling is when it comes up later on the docket (this was only a ruling on the stay, not on the ban itself.)
23. This.
24. Christ.
25. I mean… just look at how no one’s coordinating with anyone. What the everlasting fuck is going on? Spicer yaps about being ready to hit Syria over more chem weapons use, but the military is scratching its head.
Five US defense officials reached by BuzzFeed News said they did not know where the potential chemical attack would come from, and were unaware the White House was planning to release its statement. Usually such statements are coordinated across the national security agencies and departments before they are released.
And Nikki Haley seems to be off and running on her very own tangent, too.
26. I am torn between being hopeful over this and being wary this is theater to lull us into a sense of security. (Which itself speaks to how fucked up U.S. politics are now.)
27. Burn.
“I have to start off by, I guess, congratulating all the millionaires on the incredible gift they are about to get,” said Dr. Ben Danielson, senior medical director at another low-income clinic, Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in Seattle, at a news conference Friday.
“I always wondered what you get for the person who has everything, and now I know; it’s cutting benefits to young children, poor families, the infirm, the elderly.”
28. I have also wondered about this.
According to Forbes’ estimate, Chuck and Dave have a net worth of $96.6 billion. The question that most interests me is why two men whose combined wealth is greater than the annual gross domestic product of two-thirds of the world’s sovereign nations (note: not hyperbole) are so obsessed with protecting and expanding the wealth and power of a national and global plutocracy that has already achieved obscene levels of both.
Obviously (?) their motivations can’t be material in the usual sense of the word, as they’ve acquired fortunes that would be impossible for not only themselves, but all of their even distantly foreseeable descendants, to spend. (They could spend ten million dollars per day, every day of the year, and they would still see their present wealth increase in real terms, in perpetuity). Even in purely prudential terms, you would think people in such a position would be far more concerned about avoiding the sort of social instability that could lead to the expropriation of their fortunes, and/or their being lined up against a wall and shot.
29. Whoa.
Even more than that:
30. More senators bailing on TrumpCarePocalypse:
The opposition from Lee, Susan Collins (R-ME), Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Dean Heller (R-NV) effectively halts the bill’s progress, and with several other Republicans voicing doubts and concerns, the Senate’s multi-month effort to roll back Obamacare appears to be in jeopardy if changes are not made.
What’s really interesting is that this is a mix of moderates (Collins, Heller) and batshit-right (Johnson and Lee) with the somewhat unpredictable libertarian but generally rightwing Paul. So fixing the bill for one set will make it even worse for another set.
31. Loose lips…blow everything up.
If it turns out that Trump aides knew absolutely nothing about Russian meddling, then Spicer’s suggestion that the Obama administration was “complicit” won’t hurt the White House at all. But if someone on Trump’s team was even vaguely aware of Russian disruption, Spicer will have hamstrung the White House’s defense.
Although if there is a specific legal definition of collusion, that’s what will be prosecuted under the law. But this is interesting, nevertheless.
32. These numbers are just unbelievable.
33. Looks to me like the Moscow Muppet has figured out how to punish CA and other healthcare positive states (mostly liberal)…
34. Jesus fucking christ on pogo stick…how petty, mean, grasping, vaingloriously narcissistic is this? (And warning, the Hill likes to autoplay video on LOUD.)
35. Not entirely sure the various bits and pieces are talking to each other… WH & military? WH and, uh, GOP senators? And it sounds like eager beaver fuckwit Трамп supporters kicked off the nasty ad backlash to Heller without consulting with GOP Senate, who had to call in and tell them to knock it off (good cop/bad cop? utter lack of communication)…
A senator who supports the bill left the meeting at the White House with a sense that the president did not have a grasp of some basic elements of the Senate plan — and seemed especially confused when a moderate Republican complained that opponents of the bill would cast it as a massive tax break for the wealthy, according to an aide who received a detailed readout of the exchange.
Mr. Trump said he planned to tackle tax reform later, ignoring the repeal’s tax implications, the staff member added.
36. Admit it… you read PlayBoy for the…
Wait, PlayBoy has a WH correspondent?
37. Good points and some background.
38. This is what I’m afraid of. Still, we need to flood them with calls and make it very much unambiguous that we DO NOT WANT.
The House process demonstrated that the desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act is strong and motivating to Republican legislators. Nobody wanted to be the one member of Congress standing in the way of delivering on a campaign promise the party has made for the better part of a decade.
…
Case in point: Republicans have lamented the Affordable Care Act’s too-high deductibles as unaffordable. They passed a bill that would raise deductibles. The key thing seemed to be passing something called Obamacare repeal even if it didn’t address the specific problems legislators had raised about the law.
39. That said,
40. Not reaching past his base…this means trouble in terms of votes unless they rig the whole thing.
41. Ain’t nobody happy.
42. The “Трамп Bump”… *dies*
43. No, not good.
44. It’s sooooo difficult.
Trump’s campaign rhetoric repeatedly centered on the idea that America was being laughed at internationally. His evidence for this claim was lacking, but it was a point he raised repeatedly.
Self fulfilling prophecy, I suppose. Still, love the shade.
45. I am genuinely speechless. For someone who worries about the world laughing at the U.S., this is really because deep down you know everyone’s laughing at you, right? Especially when you tweet out utterly pathetic bullshit like this.
Okay, maybe I wasn’t quite speechless…
My entire timeline is lit.
Bingo.
46. Ooh, rough honeymoon.
47. The GOP has no way around this formula:
Here is the basic math: If you are going to cut Obamacare’s taxes on rich people by hundreds of billions of dollars, you are going to have to roll back an enormous chunk of the law’s massive coverage expansion.
Doesn’t seem like that will stop McConnell, who will go down in U.S. history as its most morally corrupt Senate Majority Leader who actively worked to kill millions so that a few rich could have more money.
48. This is the White House… in 2017.
“We got a call that, ‘Hey, the National Enquirer is going to run a negative story against you guys.’ And it was, you know, ‘Donald is friends with … the guy that runs the National Enquirer.’ And they said, ‘If you call the president up and you apologize for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone and basically spike this story,’” Scarborough said.
“Start saying nice things about us or we’ll smear you!”
Seriously? You GOP fuckers elected this? Why? Even Bush made more sense.
49. Nice little coda on his rampant misogyny and sexism:
50. Yup.
Here is a reminder: All of these people are members of a political party presently working out how to strip reasonable access to healthcare from tens of millions of vulnerable people — the poor, the sick, the elderly — so that they can kick back some tax money to the richest sliver of America’s upper class without imperiling the job prospects of those of them who won elections by branding themselves as “moderates.” Imagine thinking literally anything else “represents what is wrong with American politics.” Imagine fretting over what does or does not empower women while your own party conspires to strip prenatal care from mothers. Imagine wringing your hands over civility while plotting to bankrupt and ruin the families of sick children so that a few billionaires can bleed just a little more cash out of the society they’re destroying.
Nothing Donald Trump puts in a fucking tweet could ever equal the least portion of the cruelty the Republican party presently is working to enshrine into law.
50. I’ve been watching this and I have been both encouraged and troubled by this. However amusing it is to see the shoe on the other foot, to see liberal factions making use of states rights in a fashion that conservatives screeched about a mere few months ago, this kind of thing has lots of potential implications down the road, whether for good or ill. We might see a separate California nation in years to come, not from civil war, but from plain disintegration of the federal government. We’ll see. Might not even be in my lifetime.
But every action has an equal and opposite reaction; his announcement on Paris has sparked an extraordinary amount of counter-organizing. In recoiling from Trump, states, cities, and institutions are entering into closer cooperation. A coalition is forming, a Blue America, and at least on climate change, it is going beyond mere resistance to a more proactive role, negotiating with the international community on its own behalf, like a separate nation.
It is, in foreign policy terms, a remarkable development — and while it seems to offer some near-term hope on climate change, it carries troubling implications for the ongoing stability of the country.
51. Yup.
