January 22nd, - January 23rd, 2017. 434-435 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no.45, and 364-365 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
A Republican senator totally dismissed Fox News' latest smear campaign against the FBI, hours after the rich asshole hyped it.
Just hours after some rich asshole hyped the latest in a never-ending string of GOP-concocted conspiracies designed to malign and undercut the FBI, the Republican chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence totally dismissed it in two simple sentences.
In doing so, he not only dinged the rich asshole’s latest talking point, but he also dented the hysterical Fox News coverage that has been dominating the channel as it continues to scramble in its endless attempts to protect him from law enforcement.
After the FBI notified congressional leaders that five months’ worth of text messages between FBI staffers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — who both worked previously as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team — were missing, House Republicans teamed up with Fox to try to turn that minor news into the seeds of a massive, anti-the rich asshole cover-up within the FBI.
Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs demanded to know why the Department of Justice leadership hadn’t been arrested for the supposed mishandling of the texts. And of course, the kerfuffle is being hyped as “worse than Watergate.”
And on Tuesday morning, the rich asshole began waving his arms around about the story, while botching the facts.
But Tuesday afternoon, North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr, the top Republican on the Senate’s Russia investigation, told a CNN reporter that the missing FBI texts are of no great concern, and the FBI is working to resolve the problem:
Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team last summer after it was discovered that the FBI agent had mocked the rich asshole in text messages.
But rather than applaud Mueller for removing any possibly biased players from his team, the GOP and Fox News have tried to crucify Mueller, and the agents, for it.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this month, the rich asshole even preposterously claimed that the exchanges between Strzok and Page amounted to “treason.”
Several House Democrats blasted the latest attacks in a statement: Jerrold Nadler, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee; Elijah E. Cummings, ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee; and Adam Schiff, ranking member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
“Republicans are now attacking the FBI in order to undermine Special Counsel Mueller and protect President the rich asshole, but their claims are directly at odds with the facts,” the statement said. “These Republican attacks show their desperation at the fact that Mueller already has obtained two guilty pleas, two indictments, and at least two cooperating witnesses.”
And yet Republicans and Fox News are already busy assembling their next FBI conspiracy: Both teams are hyperventilating over the possibility that a rogue “secret society” exists within the agency, designed to plot against the rich asshole during the 2016 campaign.
It just never ends. Even when their own colleague completely dismisses their latest unhinged fantasy.
Today 9:07am 01-23-18
Less than 24 hours after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rolled Democrats into voting to reopen the government in exchange for his promise to revisit legislation on DACA, his fellow congressional Republicans are already pumping the brakes on any potential immigration fix.
Deportation protections for around 800,000 DACA recipients are set to expire in March, thanks to President some rich asshole’s September decision to cancel the Obama-era program. McConnell vowed to bring a DACA fix to a vote before the next impending shutdown on Feb. 8, but top House Republicans don’t seem to care.
“March is really the timeline,” Republican House Whip Steve Scalise told Politico on Tuesday morning. “The House wasn’t part of that deal.” The site said Scalise did “not feel at all bound” by McConnell’s promise. Nor, it seemed, was he alone.
“It’s been crystal clear,” Oklahoma Representative Tom Cole told The Hill. “Just because [the Senate] accept[s] something, doesn’t mean we will.
“And,” he added, “it certainly doesn’t mean the administration will.”
The Senate Democrats’ decision to trust Mitch McConnell’s word on a future DACA fix had already been intensely criticized. McConnell, in particular, has a well-documented track record of not following through on his own promises—to say nothing of promises that also need the sign-off of an entirely different group of people he has no control over.
“I don’t think [House Speaker Paul Ryan] should commit to a single thing,” Cole said to The Daily Beast. “We didn’t shut down the government; they did. We’re not in the business of negotiating with terrorists, whether they’re political or otherwise.”
In other words, even if McConnell actually delivers and allows for some serious DACA debate in the coming weeks, any potential compromise might be D.O.A. the moment it hits the other side of the Capitol—and that’s all before it lands on the rich asshole’s desk.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients remain in legislative limbo, and the clock is ticking. On Monday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pointedly refused to deny that administration would begin actively deporting DACA recipients after the rich asshole’s self-imposed March deadline.
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 01/23/18 06:00 AM EST
Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) is coming under criticism from his own party in the aftermath of a fight that shut down the government for three days and left Democrats with little to show for it.
Some of Schumer’s Democratic colleagues are questioning the wisdom of getting into a three-day standoff with Republicans over a stopgap spending bill and then backing down after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) offered a modest concession.
“We went in with a very weak set of cards, with [25] people up for reelection,” said one Democratic senator, one of several lawmakers who requested anonymity to assess Schumer’s performance frankly.
All but five Senate Democrats on Friday voted against a monthlong spending bill passed last week by the House that did nothing to protect from deportation undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children.
The vote led to this week’s three-day government shutdown, which ended Monday after McConnell said he would allow a vote on replacing the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program protecting so-called Dreamers from being deported.
Liberal groups were enraged by that decision, arguing Schumer didn’t get enough to back down.
“It’s official: Chuck Schumer is the worst negotiator in Washington — even worse than the rich asshole,” said Murshed Zaheed, political director at Credo, a progressive advocacy group.
Republicans said the concession wasn’t anything that McConnell wasn’t already planning to do.
Another Democratic senator said almost every local news channel he spoke to over the weekend began its interview with the same question: “Why did Democrats shut down the government?”
A third Democratic senator said it was an unwinnable battle from the start because the GOP funding measures included a six-year extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a top Democratic priority.
“You can't win. McConnell used craven politics by pitting one group of children versus another,” the third lawmaker said.
The first lawmaker noted that Democrats up for reelection next year in states won by President the rich asshole, including North Dakota, West Virginia and Indiana, are coming under attack from an ad launched by the rich asshole’s reelection campaign.
It warned that “Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.”
“We had people take a very tough stand in states that don't have a lot of Dreamers and have a lot of kids on CHIP,” the senator said. “They were already being attacked with this very vicious set of ads that reminds me of the Willie Horton ads of yesteryear.”
Schumer never appeared to be itching for a fight over government funding and immigration that could risk a shutdown. In fact, the Democratic leader appeared more aligned with Democrats facing tough reelections who said they wanted to keep the government open.
The shutdown battle became portrayed in the media as Democrats taking a stand for Dreamers facing deportation, but Democratic senators say that was only a small part of it.
They felt they had to object to the monthlong spending bill House Republicans unveiled early last week because it had no input from Democrats.
Democrats felt the lack of consultation — and the failure to address their non-immigration priorities — was so insulting that they had to take a stand. Even Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who earlier dismissed threats of a shutdown as “stupid talk,” felt he had to vote against the monthlong stopgap because it ignored community health centers and hospitals that participate in the 340B Drug Pricing Program, one of his pet priorities.
But things didn’t play out as Democrats planned.
For one thing, they thought Republicans would agree to a very short-term continuing resolution, perhaps for a couple of days, to allow the negotiations to continue without shutting the government.
After all, McConnell had said on ABC’s “This Week” in December, “There’s not going to be a government shutdown. It’s just not going to happen.”
As a result, Democrats were surprised when McConnell refused to move up the timing of a vote on the House-passed, monthlong stopgap.
Schumer and his fellow Democrats also thought they could force the rich asshole to the negotiating table with the threat of a shutdown.
the rich asshole seemed amenable to negotiating when he invited a group of Republicans and Democrats to the White House on Jan. 9 and when he invited Schumer alone to the Oval Office Friday.
But surprisingly to Schumer and his Democratic colleagues, his demand for a meeting with the rich asshole after the shutdown started was met with silence.
Schumer acknowledged on the Senate floor Monday morning that he had not spoken to the rich asshole since Friday and the White House had refused to negotiate.
With McConnell and congressional Republicans hunkered down to weather a longer-than-expected shutdown and the rich asshole refusing to negotiate, Senate Democrats felt they had no other choice but to strike a deal — even though it fell short of what they wanted.
Instead of getting the rich asshole to agree to the rough outlines of a deal on immigration and spending caps or getting GOP leaders to commit to attaching an immigration deal to a must-pass bill, they settled for a promise from McConnell to debate an immigration bill next month.
Republicans reveled in what they saw as a definite political win.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) called the shutdown a “massive political blunder” for Democrats, adding that McConnell had not changed his position on bringing an immigration bill to the floor “at the right time.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a moderate, called it a “no-win” situation for the other side.
Several Senate Democrats felt the same way.
A fourth Democratic senator, who requested anonymity, said his colleagues didn’t want to prolong the standoff because they saw it as getting worse and worse.
“There was inexorable trajectory toward, ‘Now my anxiety is officially high, it’s a week later and what are we doing here?’” the lawmaker said.
Other Senate Democrats defended their leader from the internal criticism.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) hailed the concessions Schumer won from McConnell as significant.
He said Democrats now have a commitment to debate what he called “a neutral vehicle” for immigration reform at a “date certain.”
“This was a really public commitment, it was specific and it was not just to one member but to the whole body,” Schatz said after voting for the measure Monday.
“He played his hand as well as he could have,” said another Democratic senator.
“We have a commitment to put a bill on the floor, which we didn’t have Friday. That’s important,” the lawmaker added, referring to a promise from McConnell to allow an open immigration debate on the Senate floor after Feb. 8 if leaders failed to reach a deal before then.
In the House, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) made his criticism public.
He said Schumer and the Senate Democrats “are about to cave” shortly before they took a procedural vote Monday to advance a short-term funding deal.
“I think that’s unfortunate,” he said. “I thought they were going to stand tall and firm.”
Asked why he thinks Schumer had a change of heart, Gutiérrez said, “Because they blink. They just do.”
Several prominent Democrats publicly pronounced themselves disappointed with the deal Schumer accepted to end the shutdown.
“It’s a great disappointment to me and it’s a great disappointment to the more than 300,000 DACA young people in the state of California,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
“The strategy was to keep it fixed to a must-pass vehicle because there was great worry that the House was not going to pass it,” she said of any immigration legislation that might pass the Senate.
“I’m just very disappointed,” she said.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), who had been in lockstep with Schumer throughout the shutdown, panned the deal.
“I don’t see that there’s any reason — I’m speaking personally and hearing from my members — to support what was put forth,” she told reporters.
Schumer and 32 Democratic colleagues, as well as Sen. Angus King (Vt.), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, voted for the three-week GOP funding measure based on McConnell’s assurances.
But those who didn’t, a group that included most of the Democratic senators seen as stoking presidential bids, said they felt McConnell hadn’t offered enough.
“The Majority Leader’s comments last night fell far short of the ironclad guarantee I needed to support a stopgap spending bill. I refuse to put the lives of nearly 700,000 young people in the hands of someone who has repeatedly gone back on his word,” said Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a possible candidate for the White House in 2020.
Mike Lillis and Jordain Carney contributed.
The Republicans’ #ReleaseTheMemo ploy is the latest laughable scheme in the plot against Mueller
Robert Mueller in the Oval Office on July 20, 2012. (Photo by Pete Souza.)
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The accumulating facts are damning.
President the rich asshole is under investigation. Special prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted four of his former aides, including his campaign manager, for making false statements related to the FBI’s ongoing investigation of possible collusion between the rich asshole campaign and the Russian government. Two of the defendants have pleaded guilty.
Former adviser Steve Bannon has devastated the White House claim that the Russia investigation is fake news, by saying a meeting between the the rich asshole campaign and Russian agents in June 2016 was “unpatriotic” and “treasonous.”
What’s a good Republican to do? Once upon a time, conservatives might have said conservative things like, “Let’s wait for all the facts.” Or, “Let law enforcement do its job.” Or, “The president is a good man.”
No more. Pro-the rich asshole Republicans prefer “alternative facts” to real ones. They know showing respect for law enforcement will only endanger the rich asshole and his entourage. And no one seeking to be credible dares to say the porn-star loving president is a decent human being, at least not to the 63 percent of Americans who disapprove of how he’s doing his job.
The Bogus Memo
Instead, the Republican response to the rich asshole’s deepening legal predicament is #ReleaseTheMemo, a disingenuous social media campaign that falsely insinuates the government is suppressing a memo that supposedly exposes a “Deep State” plot against the president.
The claims of the memo, written by House Republicans, are narrow: They allege that Christopher Steele, a senior British intelligence official, lied to FBI agents who interviewed him as part of an investigation into the 2016 election, telling them he had not spoken to reporters about collusion between Russia and the the rich asshole campaign, before revealing in a separate lawsuit that he had in fact spoken to them prior to the election.
The memo reportedly claims Steele’s information was then used in the FBI’s application to surveil the rich asshole associate Carter Page through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
So the allegation is that the investigation of one lower-ranking the rich asshole aide—Page—who has not been indicted, somehow discredits the investigation and indictment of more senior aides. And even this narrow charge is unfounded.
The testimony of Glenn Simpson, the private investigator who hired Steele to investigate the rich asshole’s Russia connections, refutes the claims in the memo, which is why Republicans opposed its release.
In fact, the investigation of Page had begun in July 2015 and the FISA surveillance followed shortly thereafter, before Steele spoke to the FBI. Steele’s information did not launch the government’s case; it strengthened it.
Steele went to the Bureau because he had accumulated a great deal of evidence about possible illegal activities involving a dozen members of the rich asshole entourage, not just Page (who has not been indicted). And as a retired senior British intelligence official, Steele was (and is) regarded by the FBI as a credible source.
The implication that the bogus memo is being kept secret is also bogus. President the rich asshole could order declassification of the memo at any time. But sharing new information about the investigation of the rich asshole’s dealings with the Russians is not the goal here. The aim is to create the conditions in which the rich asshole can fire Mueller.
The Real Plot
The plot to undermine the special prosecutor got underway last fall with the hyping of the Uranium One story. This Benghazi-style smear claimed Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, “gave away” 20 percent of America’s uranium by approving the sale of a Canadian mining company to Russia’s atomic energy commission in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation.
The story, as framed, is essentially misleading, if not false, as Politifact notes. Clinton wasn’t involved in the decision, which was approved by 12 U.S. government agencies. In any case, no uranium left the United States.
Without any factual basis for its allegations of wrongdoing, the story has been ignored by law enforcement and forgotten by pro-the rich asshole media.
#ReleaseTheMemo, now trending on Twitter, is the same sort of gambit: a collection of factoids framed with partisan intent to distract attention from the investigation of the rich asshole.
Even Tiffany Cross, a talking head on Fox News, pointed out the obvious: “This is a memo drafted by the Republican Party.”
“I think that it is a shadow investigation to undermine the actual investigation into the collusion… the good patriots that watch this network, we can agree, this is something that is drafted with a slant, with an opinion. Imagine how the rest of the country sees this. All of a sudden, people who champion Blue Lives Matters and law enforcement [now champion] a memo that undermines… law enforcement….”
While the memo accuses the FBI of politicizing law enforcement, House Republicans did not even give the Bureau the opportunity to comment on its charges, according to the Daily Beast.
“The FBI has requested to receive a copy of the memo in order to evaluate the information and take appropriate steps if necessary. To date, the request has been declined,” said Andrew Ames, a spokesperson for the FBI.
Which is actually good news. The House Republicans’ refusal to share the information with the FBI indicates they are well aware that the memo will not be credible with law enforcement or with the non-Fox media.
So by all means, #ReleaseTheMemo. So everybody can see that this is a set of partisan talking points to smear the prosecutors closing in on the lawbreakers in the the rich asshole entourage.
There is going to be another racist the rich asshole shutdown in the coming weeks
President some rich asshole delivers remarks to the press Jan. 18, 2018, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. (DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Dominique A. Pineiro)
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Time, on its own, doesn’t assuage racism. White power concedes nothing without a vigorous fight, and the fantasy that racism is a problem that can just be waited out is an absolute delusion. That’s part of America’s problem: it continually asks black and brown people to sit tight, stand down, never gripe or protest, and naively hope that a country that has repeatedly betrayed and abused them will miraculously do the right thing. That’s what’s happening with DACA right now, and the frustration of watching this familiar scene play out is maddening.
The DACA fight, including the 60-hour recent government shutdown, has been about racism from day one. some rich asshole’s well-documented white supremacist bonafides dating back to his discriminatory real estate practices in the 1970s are legion, and the evidence has come fast and furious over the last two years. There was the launch of his presidential bid with a speech that cast all Mexicans as criminals, the judge he insulted based solely on his Mexican heritage, his promise to his supporters to enact policies specifically designed to hurt people of color, and his sympathizing with the “very fine [group of] people” who murdered an anti-racism protester. By the time word leaked that the rich asshole had moaned about immigrants from “shithole countries,” the statement only confirmed what was obvious. the rich asshole believes DACA allows shithole-caliber black and brown people to live in this country at a moment he is desperately trying to Make America Aryan Again, apparently with a huge influx of Norwegians.
the rich asshole isn’t alone in this effort, he’s backed by a White House full of racist xenophobes. Senior the rich asshole staffer Stephen Miller has a record of anti-immigrant racism that dates back to junior high school, when he reportedly unfriended a schoolmate for being Latino, and his undergrad days at Duke University, where he railed against “multiculturalism” and hung out with notoriously punchable Nazi Richard Spencer. The first hint that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly might be a racist was his willingness work for the rich asshole. Since taking the job, he has solidified his stance by singing Robert E. Lee‘s praises, defending monuments to the Confederacy, and promoting the idea that slavery wasn’t such a bad institution if you just get into the mindset of white slaveowners (and John Kelly, apparently). He has also been relentless in advancing this administration’s xenophobic goals. “In just six months, Kelly turned [the Department of Homeland Security] into a deportation machine” notes the Nation’s Julianne Hing, “translat[ing] much of the rich asshole’s brazen anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric into actual policy.”
Jemele Hill rightfully said that “the rich asshole is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself with other white supremacists,” and it’s important to note that circle extends to the wider GOP. The Republican political party, with far greater transparency than in any other modern period, is a white supremacist safe space. There are too many open racists to highlight them all: from Tom Cotton, who blocked a black woman’s ambassadorship until she died of cancer to “inflict special pain” on Obama; to Steve King, who once claimed that for every immigrant “who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that—they weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” Even those who don’t shout their racism swaddle it well-worn dog whistles such as “Chicago,” “law and order” and, per Paul Ryan, allusions to “inner city…culture problems.” It’s impossible to consider the rest, who are all complicit in aiding Trumpism, anything other than extremist.
That extremism was highly visible during this shutdown, as the president and GOP jointly exploited white fears and resentments around immigration, cynically portraying Dreamers’ very existence as a creeping problem and potential criminal threat. Department of Justice head Jeff Sessions, an O.G. among racists, bothered to put together a report of intentionally misleading information to jerry-rig a connection between immigration and terrorism. The rich asshole reelection campaign also created an ad that attempted to link Dreamers with murder and lawlessness, and suggested Democrats’ efforts to protect them made the party potential accessories to murder. Fox News, essentially the media arm of this administration, helped out by prominently featuring an article about the MS-13 gang as the shutdown entered its third day. “MS-13 wants to send ‘younger, more violent offenders’ to the US, officials say,” the headline read, ticking off a bunch of boxes intended to bring Dreamers to mind.
Greg Sargent of the Washington Post noticed a pattern:
the rich asshole and Republicans have pivoted to falsifying the real cause of the shutdown by bashing Democrats for closing down the government to protect ‘illegal immigrants.’ This is a dramatic swing toward portraying dreamers as nothing more than lawbreakers — toward lumping in the dreamers with the broader undocumented population, which the rich asshole has tarred with all kinds of lies about immigrants committing crime, harming low-skilled U.S. workers and perpetrating terrorism. Is this the real GOP view? As Brian Beutler points out, the legislative history here does betray sustained GOP treatment of the Dreamers in precisely these terms. Or, as David Bier puts it, House Republicans cannot ‘accept Dreamers as Americans’ and view them only as ‘criminals on parole.’
Republicans’ insistence on labeling human beings “illegal” is obviously dehumanizing: people aren’t illegal, actions are. But beyond the gross language, there’s a sleight of hand at work. The rich asshole adminstration announced plans to end DACA in September, affecting the status of more than 800,000 Dreamers and is now attempting to weaponize that status against those same young immigrants. The same is true of 200,000 Salvadorans and 60,000 Haitians whose Temporary Protected Status the rich asshole administration is ending. (There’s been no discussion of the 50,000 undocumented Irish immigrants currently living in this country, and we can all guess why.) Numerous Republicans have claimed for months that they hoped to protect Dreamers from deportion, but instead used them as a bargaining chip and fear-stoking tool when given the opportunity. The willingness to throw out every stereotype and see what sticks, to risk a tally of $1.5 billion a day in shutdown costs, points to just how intense the GOP’s anti-DACA and overall anti-immigrant campaign is. the rich asshole’s dumb wall, calls to end the diversity visa lottery, vast increase in deportations and plans to rip immigrant families apart—these are the policies of an administration trying to roll back time. Specifically to before1965, when the Immigration and Nationality Act overturned some of America’s racist immigration prohibitions.
As all this political theater and racist politicking plays out, Dreamers and other immigrants remain in anxiety-inducing limbo. The Senate Democrats who agreed to the deal that ended the shutdown and funds the government through early February must recognize what they’re up against. While Chuck Schumer et al managed to get a six-year CHIP extension, they gained no ground on behalf of Dreamers, even after giving in on billions in funding for that ridiculous border wall. McConnell has promised to take up the issue again, but he is not, by a stretch, a politician known for his superior honesty. Too, there’s pretty much no reason to believe the GOP will get sufficiently less bigoted in the next 16 days to produce a decent immigration bill. That basically guarantees we’ll be facing another shutdown in roughly two weeks. The same racism will be the unspoken subtext, but the fight is likely to be longer and more vicious. That is, if Democrats manage to keep their spines in working order.
In other words, hope for the best and protest to stop the worst.
the rich asshole says Democrats ‘CAVED’ over government shutdown
Chantal Da Silva
Posted with permission from Newsweek
The president celebrated a "big win for Republicans" after ending the government shutdown as a Trump campaign fundraising email sent out an email to supporters saying Democrats "CAVED" under pressure.
"Ever since the Schumer Shutdown, we received 48 petitions per second from Americans like you, demanding Democrats stop holding our military hostage to give amnesty to illegal immigrants," the message read.
The email, sent out Monday, claimed that Democrats in red states saw how "ANGRY" voters were with their "disgusting tactics" and "couldn't go on any longer."
The White House branded the government freeze the "Schumer shutdown" after Minority Leader Chuck Schumer emerged as a leader in the Democrats' bid to force a deal protecting Dreamers, the undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, from deportation.
Democrats refused to support a budget bill to continue funding government operations unless an agreement shielding Dreamers could be struck, forcing the government to shut down as of Friday evening.
By Monday night, however, Republicans and Democrats ended the shutdown, voting for a temporary funding bill to keep the government running until February 8. As the president celebrated what he called a "big win" over Twitter, however, his campaign team warned that it will "never forget" the names of "EVERY single liberal obstructionist responsible for this disgusting shut down."
The Trump team also suggested that Democrats up for re-election later in the year would pay a price for the federal government shutdown, vowing to "work to FIRE them come November."
The Democrats, meanwhile, have faced criticism from their own base, with many agreeing with the Trump campaign and accusing lawmakers of bowing to Republicans' demands and failing to fight for Dreamers.
Erika Andiola, a Dreamer and former Bernie Sanders staffer, tweeted:
For a minute it felt like they were standing for us. Like Democrats were finally listening to our pain and doing something about it. Standing up for us. Man, this hurts so much. It's been 17 years! 17 years of inaction, deportations, waiting, hope, disappointment. I am so tired
"Ever since the Schumer Shutdown, we received 48 petitions per second from Americans like you, demanding Democrats stop holding our military hostage to give amnesty to illegal immigrants," the message read.
The email, sent out Monday, claimed that Democrats in red states saw how "ANGRY" voters were with their "disgusting tactics" and "couldn't go on any longer."
The White House branded the government freeze the "Schumer shutdown" after Minority Leader Chuck Schumer emerged as a leader in the Democrats' bid to force a deal protecting Dreamers, the undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, from deportation.
Democrats refused to support a budget bill to continue funding government operations unless an agreement shielding Dreamers could be struck, forcing the government to shut down as of Friday evening.
By Monday night, however, Republicans and Democrats ended the shutdown, voting for a temporary funding bill to keep the government running until February 8. As the president celebrated what he called a "big win" over Twitter, however, his campaign team warned that it will "never forget" the names of "EVERY single liberal obstructionist responsible for this disgusting shut down."
The Trump team also suggested that Democrats up for re-election later in the year would pay a price for the federal government shutdown, vowing to "work to FIRE them come November."
The Democrats, meanwhile, have faced criticism from their own base, with many agreeing with the Trump campaign and accusing lawmakers of bowing to Republicans' demands and failing to fight for Dreamers.
Erika Andiola, a Dreamer and former Bernie Sanders staffer, tweeted:
For a minute it felt like they were standing for us. Like Democrats were finally listening to our pain and doing something about it. Standing up for us. Man, this hurts so much. It's been 17 years! 17 years of inaction, deportations, waiting, hope, disappointment. I am so tired
January 23, 2018
Zachary Fryer-Biggs
Posted with permission from Newsweek
Vladimir Putin tried to help Donald Trump get elected, U.S. intelligence officials have long stated. But the Trump presidency has become a case of "be careful what you wish for" for the Russian strongman.
Putin clearly believed that President Donald Trump would change U.S.-Russia relations and help Putin check off all the boxes on his wish list—there were Champagne corks literally popping in Moscow when Trump won. But most of Putin's boxes remain unfilled.
Candidate Trump refused to criticize Putin, but President Trump hasn't done the would-be czar's bidding.
“The climate is so toxic for the Russians, it has led to the exact opposite of what they would have wanted to see,” Alina Polyakova, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution, told Newsweek.
Or, as Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov put it late last year, “Washington’s position towards our country cannot fail to give rise to disappointment.”
So a year after Trump was sworn in, it's worth asking what Putin actually got:
Sanctions Relief
Russia is running out of money, struggling to make its economy work with low oil prices and export limits tied to its annexation of Crimea in 2014. That's why the elimination of sanctions is so critical to Russia.
The issue injected itself early into the Trump campaign, with the infamous Trump Tower meeting organized by Donald Trump Jr. focused on sanctions. The issue also came up after Trump's election, when incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, discussed easing sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Flynn's calls and the Trump Tower meeting remain a focus of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation—just as getting rid of sanctions remains a key point for Russia’s oligarchs, who give Putin most of his political power.
“The personal sanctions that targeted people in Putin’s inner circle were of most concern to members of the Russian elite,” said Jeffrey Mankoff, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There was some hope that with a Trump administration there’d be a willingness to find some kind of a deal that would allow for a walking back of some of those sanctions.”
Under Trump, sanctions have only gotten worse. Congress virtually unanimously passed new barriers—98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House—an overwhelming majority that forced Trump to grudgingly signed the legislation in August.
Those votes came after mounting evidence that Russia interfered in U.S. elections—a possibility that so enraged lawmakers from both parties that there was little chance sanctions would be lifted.
“This dashed any hopes in the Kremlin of getting back to business as usual with the United States,” said Jeffrey Edmonds, former director of Russia policy on the National Security Council under Obama. “It fortified the belief among Russia's elite, and its population for that matter, that there is a large contingent within the U.S. government that is anti-Russian, and Trump doesn't have the power to overcome it.”
Weapons to Ukraine
Trump has made one shift that went directly against Russian wishes, moving forward with providing weapons to Ukraine’s military in December—a change from President Barack Obama’s concern that about arming Ukraine’s military against Russian-backed rebels could start a direct conflict with Russia.
“There were all these fears in the Obama administration, you can’t provoke the Russians because if we give lethal weapons to Ukraine that means war with Russia,” said Polyakova, who is also the author of The Dark Side of European Integration. “That was the logic, and the logic has been proven now to be false.”
Hillary Clinton had signaled she would arm Ukraine if elected president. Trump did not support such a move, and his team helped strip mention of sending weapons from the GOP platform. That decision has been of particular interest to congressional investigators, though Trump reversed it once he took office,
Weakening NATO
Another critical goal for Putin is the breaking apart of the NATO alliance, a combined force that Trump seemed to serious question during the campaign.
“NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money,” Trump told The Washington Post during the campaign. “We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore.”
Trump has also been hesitant, while in office, to back the collective defense pledge built into the NATO charter that declares an attack on one member an attack on all. He even pulled it from a speech during a NATO meeting.
Yet eventually he had to reaffirm the U.S. commitment, and his wavering helped continue pressure from past administrations to increase military spending by allies. The net effect is that the NATO militaries are actually stronger than they were, with the U.S. still committed to helping allies and a number of countries in a better position to defend themselves.
Sowing Chaos
Putin’s meddling did give him a different power: fear. His moves have meant that Russia has become a virtual bogeyman, viewed as the unseen mover behind almost anything.
“All of a sudden, they’ve become the people who decide elections in the United States, and throughout the Western world and are stirring the pot and making decisions everywhere,” said Thomas Graham, former Russia director on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. “I think they’re bemused by it more than anything else because historically, Putin is well aware of what their vulnerabilities are.”
That strength has returned Russia to the world stage after being sidelined for years after the Cold War.
It has also created enormous political unrest in the United States, with Trump being viewed as an illegitimate president on the left because of the help he got from Putin, even as GOP members of Congress play it out from the other side by ordering up probes of whether the FBI was biased in favor of Clinton.
"The reason to interfere in our election is to sow a little bit of chaos, to undermine confidence in our election, and to create some doubts, and in that regard there has probably been a fair amount of success," Pifer said.
It may have started because Putin wanted to hand Clinton a chaotic presidency, as he harbors a personal hatred for Clinton tied to his belief that she spurred unrest in Russia in 2011. He also didn't think Trump could win.
"They were shocked, and still don’t really know what to do with it," Polyakova said.
Even if Clinton did win, the concern about the integrity of the election, spurred on by Trump's statements about the vote being "rigged" before election day, would have unsettled Americans.
"The ultimate goal, is to destabilize politics from within, to make countries incapable of reaching consensus and decisions, which of course makes them less of a threat to Russia’s interests in Russia’s view," Polyakova added.
The continued partisan divide over the Russia investigations might prove that while Putin may not have gotten everything on his wish list, he didn't come out empty-handed.
Jerusalem expert slams Pence for treating his city like an ‘end-of-days Biblical theme park’
Mike Pence (Photo: Screen capture)
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Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli attorney who founded the Jerusalem-based NGO Terrestrial Jerusalem, is slamming Vice President Mike Pence for treating his city like an “end-of-days Biblical theme park.”
Writing on Twitter, Seidemann points out that Pence did not visit with any members of Jerusalem’s Christian community during his trip to the Middle East this week — and it’s primarily because those leaders are Palestinians. This is especially ironic, Seidemann writes, because Pence is widely known for being a devout Christian.
“The most uber-Christian national leader the US has ever known can’t get meetings with Holy Land Christians of ANY denomination,” he says. “He did not visit…
one Christian site [or] one Muslim site. He saw nothing of Palestinian Jerusalem.”
one Christian site [or] one Muslim site. He saw nothing of Palestinian Jerusalem.”
Seidemann — whose NGO tracks property transactions and developments in Jerusalem to assess their impacts on a future peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians —
then went on to tie Pence’s avoidance of meeting Palestinian Christians with the evangelical Christian belief that it is necessary for Israelis to completely retake the city of Jerusalem before Jesus Christ returns to herald the end of the world.
then went on to tie Pence’s avoidance of meeting Palestinian Christians with the evangelical Christian belief that it is necessary for Israelis to completely retake the city of Jerusalem before Jesus Christ returns to herald the end of the world.
“The Jerusalem that Pence visited does not exist, but rather an ‘end-of-days’ Biblical theme park version of the city,” he explains. “The pageant Jerusalem and the world witnessed during the Pence visit was a meeting between a prominent leader of the ‘end-of-days’ evangelical cult and its Israeli sister settler cult — cults that now dominate the governance of their respective countries. That’s not Jerusalem.”
Read the whole tweet storm below.
Thread on the Pence visit.
The most uber-Christian national leader the US has ever known can't get meetings with Holy Land Christians of ANY denomination.
He did not visit:
one Christian site.
one Muslim site.
Hw saw nothing of Palestinian Jerusalem.
Pence met with:
not one Palestinian leader
not one Palestinian resident from East Jerusalem or the West Bank
not one Israeli Arab citizen
not one member of Israel opposition
not one member of civil society
But he did invite the leaders of the West Bank settlers to his speech.
the rich asshole attacks CNN and ‘crazy Jim Acosta’ after Michigan man arrested for gun threats against ‘fake news’ network
some rich asshole speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at Fountain Park in Fountain Hills, Arizona (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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President some rich asshole slurred CNN as “fake news” and attacked one of its reporters by name as news broke about a Michigan man who was arrested for threatening a mass shooting at the network’s headquarters.
The president gloated over the end of the brief government shutdown by citing a tweet by CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, who said Senate Democrats had “gambled and lost.”
the rich asshole has complained about Acosta’s coverage in the past, and deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley last week loudly confronted the reporter during a press event in the Roosevelt Room.
Acosta said the deputy press secretary shouted so loudly the president was unable to hear reporters’ questions.
the rich asshole has bashed CNN as “fake news” since the election campaign, and reports broke late Monday that a Detroit man had been arrested for making threats against the network and its employees.
Brandon Griesemer allegedly made 22 calls to CNN on Jan. 9 and 10, and some included violent threats and anti-Semitic and racist slurs, police said.
“Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down,” the caller said. “I am on my way right now to gun the fucking CNN cast down …. I am coming to kill you.”
BY AVERY ANAPOL - 01/23/18 09:51 AM EST
Attorney General Jeff Sessions was interviewed last week by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as part of the Justice Department's investigation into Russian election meddling.
The Justice Department confirmed a report in The New York Times that Sessions was questioned for several hours. It is the first time that Mueller’s team has interviewed a member of President the rich asshole’s Cabinet.
Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation in March, despite criticism from the rich asshole. It was reported earlier this month that the rich asshole ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to block Sessions from recusing himself, but the attorney general refused.
It is likely that Mueller questioned Sessions about the rich asshole's firing of former FBI Director James Comey and whether the president obstructed justice.
Sessions recommended that the rich asshole fire Comey over the handling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server, but Comey has said he thinks the president fired him for refusing to drop the FBI's investigation into Michael Flynn.
Mueller's team announced in December that Flynn, the rich asshole's first national security adviser, had pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI and was cooperating with their investigation.
Sessions has also been under scrutiny for statements he made during his confirmation hearing, when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath that he had no knowledge of communications between the rich asshole campaign and Russia and that he had not communicated with Russians himself.
It was later reported that Sessions had met three times with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before the election, which he said was done in his capacity as a senator from Alabama.
Sessions later testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee in November that his previous statements were truthful.
He acknowledged that he participated in a meeting with former the rich asshole campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians and attempts to set up a meeting between the rich asshole campaign and Russians, according to documents unsealed in Mueller’s probe.
Sessions testified that he did not have any “clear recollection” of what Papadopoulos said at the meeting.
“After reading his account, and to the best of my recollection, I believe that I wanted to make clear to him that he was not authorized to represent the campaign with the Russian government,” Sessions said during his November testimony.
“Out of respect for the special and his process, and because of the privacy obligations we owe to potential or actual witnesses, the White House does not comment on witness appearances before the special counsel,” White House lawyer Ty Cobb said in a statement on Tuesday.
--Jordan Fabian contributed to this report, which was updated at 11:49 a.m.
the rich asshole slams ‘Crazy Jim Acosta’ in tweet claiming shutdown win
BY BRETT SAMUELS - 01/23/18 07:41 AM EST
President the rich asshole in an early morning tweet on Tuesday mocked "Crazy Jim Acosta," saying even the correspondent from "Fake News CNN" agrees that Democrats "gambled and lost" over the government shutdown.
“Thank you for your honesty Jim!” the rich asshole tweeted, while apparently misquoting Acosta’s report on the fallout from the shutdown.
Even Crazy Jim Acosta of Fake News CNN agrees: “Trump World and WH sources dancing in end zone: Trump wins again...Schumer and Dems caved...gambled and lost.” Thank you for your honesty Jim!
The president was apparently referring to a CNN report by Acosta late Monday on the government reopening after a three-day shutdown.
“Now, there’s no denying the rich asshole and his allies are spiking the football after the shutdown,” Acosta said.
An administration aide told him that “Democrats caved,” Acosta added.
Congress voted Monday to fund the government through early February, ending a shutdown that lasted three days.
Senate Democrats, who opposed a similar measure late last week, largely voted in favor of Tuesday’s funding bill after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised to bring an immigration bill to the floor in the coming weeks.
the rich asshole praised the vote as a “big win for Republicans and Democrats,” and teased negotiations on immigration reform.
The president has frequently attacked CNN, calling the network’s coverage of him “fake news.”
Acosta in a tweet on Monday said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was avoiding his questions.
The latest developments also come after a Michigan man was arrested for allegedly threatening to kill CNN employees.
Tony Perkins gives the rich asshole a ‘do-over’ on moral failings: ‘Glad somebody willing to punch’ bullies like Obama
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (Fox News)
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Anti-LGBT activist Tony Perkins explained how conservative Christians like himself are able to overlook President some rich asshole’s moral failings.
The Family Research Council president knows porn actress Stormy Daniels claims the president paid her $130,000 in hush money weeks before the 2016 election, and he’s aware of the rich asshole’s long public track record of lewd and crude behavior, reported Politico Magazine.
But Perkins told the magazine’s “Off Message” podcast that he’s found a way to justify his support for a president who has spent 70 years violating the moral standards he espouses.
“We kind of gave him — ‘All right, you get a mulligan. You get a do-over here,’” Perkins said.
Perkins is able to overlook the rich asshole’s personal depravity because the president has signaled support for anti-LGBT and anti-abortion policies promoted by the Family Research Council and other right-wing Christian groups.
Evangelical Christians “were tired of being kicked around by Barack Obama and his leftists,” Perkins said, “and I think they are finally glad that there’s somebody on the playground that is willing to punch the bully.”
Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere asked whether that was consistent with Christ’s teachings about turning the other cheek, and Perkins justified that, as well.
“You know, you only have two cheeks,” Perkins says. “Look, Christianity is not all about being a welcome mat which people can just stomp their feet on.”
Perkins said evangelical leaders believe the rich asshole will enact their policy goals, even if he doesn’t share their religious views, in exchange for their political loyalty.
“I don’t think this president is using evangelicals,” Perkins said. “I think he genuinely enjoys the relationship that had developed. He has found, I think — and he’s a very transactional president. Trust is important to him. Loyalty is important to him, and I think in this transaction, he realizes, ‘Hey, these are people I can count on, because they don’t blow with the political winds.'”
He said the rich asshole had “delivered” more than any other president of his lifetime, but Perkins singled out Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as a disappointment because he hadn’t worked to halt liberal activism in other countries.
“We’re seeing Soros dollars being connected with USAID funds and they’re creating these pro-abortion, pro-communist groups in some cases, working to take down conservative governments,” Perkins said.
Perkins recognizes that the rich asshole challenges the morals he tries to teach his five children, including a 10-year-old son, but he’s found a way to explain away those concerns to his family.
“These things that are said about (the rich asshole) bother him, and he is one of those people, like most people, looking for acceptance, not rejection,” Perkins said. “That’s why his reference to the polls and stuff like that, and so when someone on TV, a talking head is saying things about him, his natural reaction is to respond, and I think that’s what he’s done with Twitter, and so, in terms of my family, my kids growing up in a Christian home, and as we talk about these things, there’s an understanding that he has a need, and he wants to be accepted, and these things that are said are hurtful.”
BY JORDAIN CARNEY AND MELANIE ZANONA - 01/23/18 06:00 AM EST
As the partisan blame game on the government shutdown intensified over the weekend, a growing number of senators from both parties began meeting in “little Switzerland."
That was the term used for the neutral ground of Sen. Susan Collins’s (R-Maine) office, which became the stage for a crucial stretch of bipartisan negotiations that were widely credited with breaking the three-day impasse over government funding.
"It’s the one place where we can all go and feel good," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters, referring to the fourth floor Dirksen office as "Switzerland."
That was the term used for the neutral ground of Sen. Susan Collins’s (R-Maine) office, which became the stage for a crucial stretch of bipartisan negotiations that were widely credited with breaking the three-day impasse over government funding.
"It’s the one place where we can all go and feel good," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters, referring to the fourth floor Dirksen office as "Switzerland."
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) added that, amid the public bickering, Collins’s office became a place where senators could negotiate, not talk “at each other.”
To help prevent cross talking, senators in the meeting used a stick, and later a ball, to help determine who had the floor. Manchin drew laughter from his colleagues as they tried to figure out speaking order during an impromptu press conference, saying they could “pass the ball around.”
When the group first met on Friday, there were 17 senators trying to come up with a way to prevent the closure. That number swelled to 25 on Sunday afternoon as the shutdown ground through the weekend.
“That is a powerful voting bloc in the Senate and it includes Republican members as well as Democrats,” Collins said.
The group makes up a fourth of the Senate, bringing together a cross-section of the “governing wing” of the GOP caucus and Democrats from red and purple states — including several senators up for reelection next year.
It includes GOP moderates Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), chairmen like Tennessee Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, and Sens. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) — an immigration duo who began pitching their own plan last week.
Democrats who were involved in the talks included Manchin and Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Tim Kaine (Va.) — who are all up for reelection this fall — as well as Sens. Doug Jones (Ala.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), who has been floated as a potential 2020
presidential candidate.
“I’ve been to [bipartisan] meetings with pieces and smaller groups, but this was the first one that I’ve attended that was of this scope. We had 19 or 20 in the first meeting, 25 or so in the second meeting,” said Corker, who is retiring at the end of the Congress. “I think it was necessary to build the trust for Democrats to be willing to go along with what has occurred.”
Collins started the “Common Sense Coalition” back during the 2013 government shutdown. She, Manchin and other members were also part of a bipartisan group talking around last year’s GOP effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare, which ultimately failed.
They got the gang back together again on Friday, along with some new members, as a government shutdown seemed imminent. Senate Democrats ultimately rejected a four-week funding bill that did not include a fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
the rich asshole rescinded the Obama-era program, which allows certain immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children to work and go to school here, and gave Congress until March 5 to come up with a solution.
But as the government shutdown went into effect over the weekend, congressional leaders were trading barbs and casting blame, even as a resolution remained nowhere in sight.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) didn’t speak to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) or Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on the first full day of the shutdown. And the rich asshole kept a low profile in the White House, with Schumer noting on Monday that the two hadn’t spoken since Friday.
That’s when the bipartisan working group took matters into their own hands.
“The attitude was just that we’ve got to roll up our sleeves and get this done,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). The feeling was that “we’re going to talk to leadership and make this happen.”
The coalition huddled Saturday and then again Sunday to hash out a bipartisan plan to reopen the government. The group also remained in constant contact over the phone throughout the weekend.
Senators weren’t crafting their own legislation, but instead focused on how to get 60 votes to reopen the government paired with enough of a promise on immigration for Democrats to feel comfortable moving forward.
“The 20 of us who spent much of the day together — I mean hours literally together — are trying to bridge that gap and trying to rebuild that confidence. A fair amount of my day was spent on one-one-one meetings with senators who are not sitting at that [bipartisan group] table,” said Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.).
But the negotiations weren’t over yet. Both parties pitched a proposal to their respective party leaders on Sunday afternoon, in what would be a critical first test for their efforts.
Democrats and Republicans remained tight-lipped as they left Schumer and McConnell’s offices on Sunday afternoon, but there were some glimmers of hope.
“It was one of the best meetings I’ve ever been to,” Nelson said of Sunday’s bipartisan gathering.
McConnell and Schumer then met around 5 p.m., according to Flake, who tweeted that “Senate leaders are meeting and talking!”
But as the night — and shutdown — wore on, there were still no signs that leadership would accept the deal. Lawmakers trickled in and out of McConnell’s office, where a large-screen TV screen was wheeled in during the NFL playoff games.
Finally, just after 9 p.m., McConnell came to the Senate floor and promised that, if they weren’t able to work out a larger deal, he intended to bring up legislation to address DACA, border security and related issues.
Graham and Flake, who voted no on the last continuing resolution, announced they would support the three-week funding bill.
But Schumer said Democrats weren’t quite ready to accept the deal. So McConnell teed up a procedural vote on the three-week funding bill for Monday at noon.
That gave the bipartisan working group nearly 12 hours to make a final sales pitch to their colleagues. The coalition met one more time in Collins’s office on Monday morning over bagels, muffins and coffee before each party caucused ahead of the noon Senate vote.
Then, just as lawmakers were getting ready to vote, Schumer announced that Democrats would take the deal and support the Feb. 8 continuing resolution, pointing to the DACA commitments made by McConnell. The majority leader promised earlier in the day that he would ensure a level playing field for offering amendments to a DACA bill.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who took part in the talks, called McConnell’s language on Monday morning crucial to helping soothe the nerves of wary Democrats.
The Senate then voted to reopen the government in the late afternoon on Monday, which the House agreed to do shortly after.
Democrats have taken heat from liberals for giving in so quickly.
Critics question what they got in the deal, pointing out that McConnell has long said he would put a DACA bill on the floor, while the House is under no obligation to take up whatever the other chamber passes.
Still, leaders and lawmakers believe that the bipartisan working group was a prominent force behind breaking the Senate stalemate and getting the government up and running.
“The bipartisan group in a very fine way filled the glaring absence of the president in these talks,” Schumer said on Monday.
The coalition says they have a blueprint for how to reach constructive compromises and are vowing to use similar tactics in future battles over DACA, the budget and other issues.
“Now the real work begins, and I think the role of this group, a bipartisan group of senators, is to come together and say, ‘OK, now what will the bill be? What can we put together as a bipartisan group?” Murkowski said.
As they wrapped up a press scrum off the Senate floor, Manchin hugged Collins and kissed the side of her head.
Jones, of Alabama, exclaimed, “We’re open. We’re open for business!
To help prevent cross talking, senators in the meeting used a stick, and later a ball, to help determine who had the floor. Manchin drew laughter from his colleagues as they tried to figure out speaking order during an impromptu press conference, saying they could “pass the ball around.”
When the group first met on Friday, there were 17 senators trying to come up with a way to prevent the closure. That number swelled to 25 on Sunday afternoon as the shutdown ground through the weekend.
“That is a powerful voting bloc in the Senate and it includes Republican members as well as Democrats,” Collins said.
The group makes up a fourth of the Senate, bringing together a cross-section of the “governing wing” of the GOP caucus and Democrats from red and purple states — including several senators up for reelection next year.
It includes GOP moderates Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), chairmen like Tennessee Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, and Sens. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) — an immigration duo who began pitching their own plan last week.
Democrats who were involved in the talks included Manchin and Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Tim Kaine (Va.) — who are all up for reelection this fall — as well as Sens. Doug Jones (Ala.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), who has been floated as a potential 2020
presidential candidate.
“I’ve been to [bipartisan] meetings with pieces and smaller groups, but this was the first one that I’ve attended that was of this scope. We had 19 or 20 in the first meeting, 25 or so in the second meeting,” said Corker, who is retiring at the end of the Congress. “I think it was necessary to build the trust for Democrats to be willing to go along with what has occurred.”
Collins started the “Common Sense Coalition” back during the 2013 government shutdown. She, Manchin and other members were also part of a bipartisan group talking around last year’s GOP effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare, which ultimately failed.
They got the gang back together again on Friday, along with some new members, as a government shutdown seemed imminent. Senate Democrats ultimately rejected a four-week funding bill that did not include a fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
the rich asshole rescinded the Obama-era program, which allows certain immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children to work and go to school here, and gave Congress until March 5 to come up with a solution.
But as the government shutdown went into effect over the weekend, congressional leaders were trading barbs and casting blame, even as a resolution remained nowhere in sight.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) didn’t speak to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) or Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on the first full day of the shutdown. And the rich asshole kept a low profile in the White House, with Schumer noting on Monday that the two hadn’t spoken since Friday.
That’s when the bipartisan working group took matters into their own hands.
“The attitude was just that we’ve got to roll up our sleeves and get this done,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). The feeling was that “we’re going to talk to leadership and make this happen.”
The coalition huddled Saturday and then again Sunday to hash out a bipartisan plan to reopen the government. The group also remained in constant contact over the phone throughout the weekend.
Senators weren’t crafting their own legislation, but instead focused on how to get 60 votes to reopen the government paired with enough of a promise on immigration for Democrats to feel comfortable moving forward.
“The 20 of us who spent much of the day together — I mean hours literally together — are trying to bridge that gap and trying to rebuild that confidence. A fair amount of my day was spent on one-one-one meetings with senators who are not sitting at that [bipartisan group] table,” said Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.).
But the negotiations weren’t over yet. Both parties pitched a proposal to their respective party leaders on Sunday afternoon, in what would be a critical first test for their efforts.
Democrats and Republicans remained tight-lipped as they left Schumer and McConnell’s offices on Sunday afternoon, but there were some glimmers of hope.
“It was one of the best meetings I’ve ever been to,” Nelson said of Sunday’s bipartisan gathering.
McConnell and Schumer then met around 5 p.m., according to Flake, who tweeted that “Senate leaders are meeting and talking!”
But as the night — and shutdown — wore on, there were still no signs that leadership would accept the deal. Lawmakers trickled in and out of McConnell’s office, where a large-screen TV screen was wheeled in during the NFL playoff games.
Finally, just after 9 p.m., McConnell came to the Senate floor and promised that, if they weren’t able to work out a larger deal, he intended to bring up legislation to address DACA, border security and related issues.
Graham and Flake, who voted no on the last continuing resolution, announced they would support the three-week funding bill.
But Schumer said Democrats weren’t quite ready to accept the deal. So McConnell teed up a procedural vote on the three-week funding bill for Monday at noon.
That gave the bipartisan working group nearly 12 hours to make a final sales pitch to their colleagues. The coalition met one more time in Collins’s office on Monday morning over bagels, muffins and coffee before each party caucused ahead of the noon Senate vote.
Then, just as lawmakers were getting ready to vote, Schumer announced that Democrats would take the deal and support the Feb. 8 continuing resolution, pointing to the DACA commitments made by McConnell. The majority leader promised earlier in the day that he would ensure a level playing field for offering amendments to a DACA bill.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who took part in the talks, called McConnell’s language on Monday morning crucial to helping soothe the nerves of wary Democrats.
The Senate then voted to reopen the government in the late afternoon on Monday, which the House agreed to do shortly after.
Democrats have taken heat from liberals for giving in so quickly.
Critics question what they got in the deal, pointing out that McConnell has long said he would put a DACA bill on the floor, while the House is under no obligation to take up whatever the other chamber passes.
Still, leaders and lawmakers believe that the bipartisan working group was a prominent force behind breaking the Senate stalemate and getting the government up and running.
“The bipartisan group in a very fine way filled the glaring absence of the president in these talks,” Schumer said on Monday.
The coalition says they have a blueprint for how to reach constructive compromises and are vowing to use similar tactics in future battles over DACA, the budget and other issues.
“Now the real work begins, and I think the role of this group, a bipartisan group of senators, is to come together and say, ‘OK, now what will the bill be? What can we put together as a bipartisan group?” Murkowski said.
As they wrapped up a press scrum off the Senate floor, Manchin hugged Collins and kissed the side of her head.
Jones, of Alabama, exclaimed, “We’re open. We’re open for business!
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 01/23/18 09:31 AM EST
President the rich asshole on Tuesday gave a vote of confidence to White House chief of staff John Kelly, who has come under fire for his handling of government shutdown talks.
“Thank you to General John Kelly, who is doing a fantastic job, and all of the Staff and others in the White House, for a job well done,” the rich asshole tweeted.
“Long hours and Fake reporting makes your job more difficult, but it is always great to WIN, and few have won more than us!” he added.
the rich asshole’s comments one day after Vanity Fair published a piece stating that his relationship with Kelly “may finally have gone past the point of no return” and that the president’s daughter, Ivanka, is helping search for a replacement.
The president endorsed Kelly while taking a victory lap after signing a stopgap spending bill to reopen the government.
The retired Marine Corps general has faced mounting criticism from members of Congress for his role in the contentious talks.
Democrats, and some Republicans, say he shares blame for scuttling a bipartisan deal that would have offered legal protections for young immigrants living illegally in the U.S. in exchange for billions of dollars in border-security measures.
Kelly also angered the president when he reportedly told a group of Hispanic lawmakers that the rich asshole’s campaign promise to build a wall the entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border was “uninformed.”
The chief of staff repeated his remarks during an interview last week on Fox News, in which he took credit for helping the rich asshole evolve on the issue of immigration.
“Campaigning and governing are two different things and this president has been very, very flexible in terms of what is within the realm of the possible,” Kelly said.
Mike Pence and the rich asshole’s lawyer haven’t answered important follow-up questions about Stormy Daniels
Mike Pence and Michael Cohen
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Vice President Mike Pence and the rich asshole Organization attorney Michael Cohen have denied a porn actress’ claims about her sexual relationship with the president — but they haven’t answered some important questions.
Stormy Daniels claims that she and some rich asshole, whose wife had just given birth to their son, conducted a nearly yearlong relationship about a decade ago, and the president’s attorney reportedly paid her $130,000 in hush money just before the election.
Pence said Monday while visiting Jerusalem that he was “not going to comment on the latest baseless allegations against the president,” and Cohen has previously said the rich asshole “vehemently denies” rumors about his involvement with Daniels.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Cohen set up an LLC in Delaware to pay off Daniels in October 2016, just ahead of the election, and Cohen provided a statement from the actress denying the report.
But Cohen himself has not denied making the payment, which may have violated campaign finance laws — and Pence did not address the reported payout.
The payment, if it was made, raises important questions that haven’t been answered.
Did the president’s longtime personal attorney and business associate set up a private company to pay the porn actress as controversy swirled around the “Access Hollywood” recording?
Why did the rich asshole pay a six-figure amount to a porn actress who’d described their relationship at length if her claims were untrue?
And, perhaps most importantly, has the president made similar payoffs in the past — and do those payments represent a blackmail risk?
CNN’s Cuomo relentlessly grills the rich asshole’s budget chief for refusing to explain his position on Dreamers
Chris Cuomo, Mick Mulvaney -- CNN screenshot
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A combative and obfuscating budget director Mick Mulvaney spent an entire interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo ducking questions on what President some rich asshole will do about Dreamers facing deportation and appeared to have no idea what the president thinks.
With only seventeen days left for Congress to hammer out a deal on the children of immigrants staying in the only country they have known, the New Day host peppered the evasive Mulvaney about what the rich asshole will do, with the OMB director finally admitting White House policy is contingent on “What we get in exchange.”
Cuomo got right to the point on the rich asshole and the Dreamers, asking, “What is his position?”
“The position is as it has been from the very beginning,” Mulvaney attempted. “We are interested in border security.”
“That’s not a DACA position,” Cuomo shot back. “What’s his position on dreamers?”
“If you let me finish –” the OMB replied.
“I want you to answer this question,” Cuomo pressed.
“You don’t get a chance to pick and choose,” Mulvaney argued. “We want a large agreement. We want a big deal that solves the reason that we have a DACA problem in the first place. If you simply gave amnesty or whatever you want to call it to the folks who are here, but don’t solve border security, then you are simply delaying another DACA problem 10 or 15 years.”
“What are his terms and conditions?” Cuomo persisted. “Who does get to stay? ”
“Chris, I know you won’t be offended by this, but I’m not negotiating with you on national television,” Mulvaney warned.
“I just want you to hear it. I won’t say anything,” Cuomo said, not giving up. “Just say what his position is on it. How do they get to stay, who gets to stay?”
“Again, depends on what we get in exchange,” Mulvaney shot back. “What do we get for border security. What do we get for the wall.”
Watch the video below via CNN:
Sessions interviewed for Russia probe as Mueller draws closer to President the rich asshole
Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC. Photo (https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/6236367366)
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, making him the first member of President some rich asshole’s cabinet known to be interviewed as part of the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The New York Times reports that Sessions was questioned by Mueller’s team recently both as part of the Russia probe and as part of a probe to determine if the rich asshole obstructed justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey last year. According to the Times, Sessions was questioned for “several hours.”
Sessions last year recused himself from getting involved in the probe into Russian electoral interference, which in turn paved the way for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel to investigate the matter.
Sessions decided to recuse himself after he falsely told the Senate during his confirmation hearing that he had never met with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign. In fact, Sessions had met at least twice with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2016, although Sessions insisted that he never discussed campaign matters with him.
the rich asshole has regularly lashed out at Sessions over his decision to recuse himself, and he told the New York Times last year that he would never have appointed Sessions as his attorney general if he’d known beforehand that he would not be involved in the Russia probe.
Sarah Sanders denies Ivanka replacing John Kelly: ‘I wouldn’t use Vanity Fair for much else than a coaster’
Ivanka the rich asshole and Sarah Sanders (screen grab compilation)
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White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders shot down a report on Tuesday that said President some rich asshole’s daughter Ivanka had been put in charge of finding a replacement for Chief of Staff John Kelly.
Vanity Fair‘s Gabriel Sherman reported on Monday that Ivanka the rich asshole had been tasked with replacing Kelly after the chief of staff allegedly accused the president of being uninformed about border security.
“Ivanka is the most worried about it. She’s trying to figure who replaces Kelly,” a source told Sherman.
On Tuesday, Sanders insisted that the report was not worth reading.
“I would not use Vanity Fair for much other than a coaster,” Sanders told this hosts of Fox & Friends. “I expect General Kelly to be here not just the next 3 years but the next 7 years.”
.@PressSec on Vanity Fair/Kelly report: "I would not use @VanityFair for much other than a coaster" and that Kelly is planning on staying for "the long haul"
.@PressSec: "I expect General Kelly to be here not just the next 3 years but the next 7 years"
’Conservatives don’t care anymore?’: CNN’s Alisyn Camerota corners the rich asshole supporter over porn star payouts
CNN's Alisyn Camerota interviews Matt Schlapp (Screen cap).
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CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on Tuesday hammered the rich asshole supporter Matt Schlapp for trying to brush off President some rich asshole’s alleged payouts to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence over their past affair.
During a CNN panel, Camerota brought up a lawsuit recently filed by progressive nonprofit Common Cause that claimed payouts to Daniels were illegal because they were an unreported campaign expense that should have shown up in an FEC report.
Schlapp tried to wave away the entire story, however, by claiming that the entire episode is nothing more than tabloid fodder — despite the fact that the payments to Daniels were meticulously documented by the Wall Street Journal.
Eventually, Camerota got tired of Schlapp’s evasions and cornered him about how differently conservatives in the past have treated Democrats who have been accused of covering up extramarital affairs.
“Conservatives don’t care anymore about extramarital affairs?” she asked.
Schlapp then responded by bringing up former President Bill Clinton.
“Absolutely, we especially care about it when people use the government, which the Clintons did, to use their government power to try to silence women,” he said.
Camerota then noted that conservatives had no problem with the Department of Justice going after former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards for allegedly using campaign funds to help hide his own extramarital affair.
“But he did use campaign funds, Alisyn!” Schlapp complained.
“And aren’t we trying to find out if some rich asshole did the same?” she asked in response.
Watch the video below.
Forget his rhetoric about "love" — the rich asshole doesn't care about the fate of young, undocumented immigrants in America.
some rich asshole’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, accidentally told the truth on CNN Tuesday morning, conceding that the White House doesn’t really care about the nearly one million young, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.
Instead, the White House sees those at-risk people as disposable bargaining chips, who might be deported this year to countries they don’t know if the rich asshole doesn’t get all he wants from Democrats during upcoming negotiations.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo started by asking the Mulvaney a simple question: What is the rich asshole’s position on DREAMers, and who gets to stay? When Mulvaney insisted the White House’s DREAMer position revolved around “border security,” Cuomo jumped in and pointed out that that’s not a DREAMer issue.
Cuomo pressed: “What are his terms and conditions? Who gets to stay?”
Mulvaney then tipped the White House’s hand. “Again, depends on what we get in exchange. What do we get for border security? What do we get for a wall?”
Cuomo repeatedly pressed Mulvaney over the White House’s strategy with regards to those affected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, implemented by President Barack Obama and what it would take to make sure the undocumented immigrants are allowed to stay in the U.S., as a vast majority Americans think they should be.
“Here’s what’s unusual: Compassion is usually not calibrated, OK?” noted the host. “If you care about a group of people, if you think there’s a humanitarian, or suffering, issue, you usually address that. And yes, you can want other things. But ordinarily your compassion for something is not calibrated to how much you get in return for helping them.”
Mulvaney’s comments seem to confirm that the reason the rich asshole last September suddenly stripped 800,000 DREAMers of their protected status was he because he simply wanted to use them as a bargaining tool to get money from Congress to pay for a border wall that candidate the rich asshole spent 2016 promising Mexico was going to pay for. (That’s not happening.)
This month, the rich asshole made a public point of stressing how he wanted to pass a bill of “love” to protect the DREAMers. But since then, anti-immigration zealots inside the White House have blocked any and all attempts to reach a bipartisan compromise, and the White House is now openly admitting it has taken DREAMers hostage.
“A wall is an inanimate object, you can dicker about it,” Cuomo later noted to Mulvaney. “DREAMers are human beings and the idea that he will only be as generous — or as loving, right? Because he said he wants a bill of love — as warranted by what he gets in return does not seem like love.”
The man the rich asshole chose to lead the FBI was willing to risk his job to defend FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe from a rich asshole-led effort to fire him.
Christopher Wray, the man some rich asshole chose to lead the FBI, put his own job on the line after Attorney General Jeff Sessions acted on behalf of the rich asshole and pressured him to remove Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Axios reported Monday night
After months of pressure, Wray told Sessions he would step down if McCabe was removed from his post at the agency, according to the new report. Had he resigned, Wray would be the second FBI director to exit during the first year of the rich asshole’s presidency. Historically, nearly all FBI directors have stayed on for multiple presidential terms.
Sessions reportedly discussed Wray’s response with the White House, according to Axios. Not wanting to deal with the fallout from another FBI director’s exit, they decided that McCabe should stay for the time being. He also relayed the situation to White House counsel Don McGahn, who told Sessions that getting rid of McCabe wasn’t worth losing Wray, Axios reported.
McCabe is considered a key witness in the ongoing Russia probe, as one of just a handful of people who can reportedly corroborate the “Comey memo” claiming that the rich asshole demanded former FBI Director James Comey to show his “loyalty” by shutting down the Russia probe. This allegedly resulted in the firing of Comey when he refused the rich asshole’s request.
This series of events could prove crucial in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the rich asshole — and those around him — engaged in a cover-up. This investigation is separate from the probe into potential coordination between the rich asshole campaign and Russia — so even if no wrongdoing is found in the Russia investigation, the rich asshole and others close to him could still face charges including obstruction of justice.
McCabe has faced weeks of attacks by the rich asshole and his Republican allies, who are trying to sabotage his damning testimony on this matter by impugning his integrity and portraying him as politically biased.
Several GOP lawmakers have called for McCabe to be removed from the agency, and it was reported on Sunday that Sessions, acting on orders from the rich asshole, had started pressuring FBI Director Wray to remove McCabe months ago.
But according to the new report, Wray not only refused to fire McCabe — he actually put his own job on the line, in defiance of the rich asshole, to defend McCabe.
This is highly significant for a number of reasons. For one thing, it means that Wray knew what was being asked of him was wrong — so wrong that he was willing to resign rather than agree to the request.
Even more significant is the fact that Wray was chosen by the rich asshole to lead the FBI, but when forced to choose between McCabe and the rich asshole, he split with the rich asshole in a very meaningful way. the rich asshole’s smear campaign against McCabe is going to be a lot harder to defend now that we know the man he picked as his FBI chief so strongly believes in McCabe’s integrity that he was willing to lose his job to defend it.
Just today, White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah told Axios that the rich asshole appointed Wray “because he is a man of true character and integrity and the right choice to clean up the misconduct at the highest levels of the FBI and give the rank and file confidence in their leadership.”
Wray — described by the rich asshole himself as a man of “true character and integrity” — just put his own job on the line to vouch for the integrity of a man who can corroborate a potential act of obstruction of justice by the president. And now, if the rich asshole wants to attack McCabe’s character again, he’ll have to explain why he doesn’t even trust his own FBI director — the one who he described as “the right choice.”
the rich asshole’s smear campaign couldn’t have backfired more spectacularly. Instead of discrediting McCabe, the rich asshole’s actions just boosted his integrity in an irreversible way.
Everybody seems to know what President the rich asshole wants except President the rich asshole.
He was foolish enough to believe he wanted a deal that would allow nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants brought here as children to stay. An arrogant 32-year-old White House aide, Stephen Miller, had to set the president straight: No, the rich asshole learned, apparently he does not seek a fair and compassionate agreement on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program after all.
the rich asshole thought he wanted a “big, beautiful wall” along the southern border, with Mexico paying the cost. Chief of Staff John F. Kelly had to explain to members of Congress that the rich asshole never really meant a wall per se, but rather something more like a sketchy, intermittent fence. In a tweet attempting to rein in Kelly, the rich asshole nonetheless asked American taxpayers to ante up $20 billion to build it.
The president still believes he wants Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to invoke the “nuclear option,” which would change the rules to allow legislation to pass with just 51 votes. The president’s aides and allies have tried mightily to point out that McConnell doesn’t have 51 GOP votes he can rely on — which means going nuclear would only force Republicans to stop blaming their own dysfunction on the Democrats.
the rich asshole, bless his cold little cinder of a heart, remains under the impression that he calls the shots on administration policy. Is he so engrossed in what he obviously views as his most urgent task — watching hours and hours of cable news — that he doesn’t see how he has become marginalized? Is he so dense that he doesn’t realize he’s not being served by friends and supporters, but rather is being used?
Those are rhetorical questions. the rich asshole has always wanted to preside, not actually lead; and whenever he strays into the weeds of policy, he gets hopelessly lost.
It must have been humiliating for the president to make a DACA deal with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and then be countermanded by a callow subordinate. the rich asshole has repeatedly pledged to extend legal status for the “dreamers” affected by DACA, at one point calling them “these incredible kids.” But now, his aides won’t let him fulfill that promise.
Whatever the rich asshole thinks his views on DACA might be at a given moment, actual administration policy is being guided by Miller, Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, with help from lawmakers such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) — all hard-liners who want tough new restrictions on legal as well as illegal immigration.
There is no reason to question or minimize the rich asshole’s fundamental bigotry — he opened his presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists,” and this month ranted against newcomers from “shithole countries” in Africa and elsewhere. But everything is personal with him, and he seems to waver when he thinks of the actual individuals involved. He appears to seek a solution that allows him to continue to use the immigration issue for purposes of demagoguery, but that does not ruin the life of, say, a young woman who was brought here illegally as an infant and went on to graduate from college with honors.
Words and elections have consequences, however. the rich asshole’s rhetoric implies a race-based, religion-based immigration policy that prioritizes white Christians over people of color and Muslims. Whenever the rich asshole wanders from that path, the hard-liners are quick to guide him back on course.
Congress’s deal on Monday to end the brief weekend-long government shutdown did nothing, really, to resolve the DACA issue. The government will be open until Feb. 8 — yes, the richest, most powerful nation in the world is functioning on a week-to-week basis. McConnell agreed that if there is no DACA deal by that date, he will allow a free and open debate on immigration.
The stage is thus set for a repeat performance: Facing a deadline when the government must be funded or shutter its doors, Congress will struggle to find a way to let the dreamers stay — a position supported by 87 percent of Americans, according to a recent CBS News poll — while also shifting immigration policy toward “merit,” which has become code for “white people and maybe a few Asians, instead of black people and brown people.”
The irony is that coalitions of Democrats and moderate Republicans in both chambers would probably pass stand-alone legislation giving legal status to the dreamers, if McConnell and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) would allow such a vote.
Would the rich asshole sign that bill into law? Nobody really knows — least of all the president himself. He’ll have to wait for Miller, Kelly, Sessions and Cotton to give him his marching orders.
Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.
Democrats didn’t cave on the shutdown
Democrats are funding CHIP for six years and reopening the government without losing their shutdown leverage.
By
Here are some thoughts on today’s three-week deal in Congress to reopen the government, take a vote on an unspecified immigration bill, and fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years:
1) There’s a rollicking debate on Twitter over whether Democrats “caved.” I’ll confess that I’m mystified by this argument. For the moment, this seems like a good deal — but it’s impossible to say anything definitive without knowing what happens over the next three weeks.
2) Consider what we don’t know about what comes next. We don’t know which immigration bill, or bills, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will bring to the Senate floor. We don’t know if any immigration compromise passes the Senate. We don’t know if an immigration bill that passes the Senate will get a vote in the House. Even if it does get a vote in the House, we don’t know if it’ll pass. And if it does pass, we don’t know if the rich asshole will sign it.
3) We also don’t know what the implicit Democratic position is here. If Democrats get a fair vote in the House and Senate on an immigration deal and it doesn’t pass, will they shut down the government again in three weeks? Put differently, is this a deal about a fair process or about a particular outcome? If Democrats don’t get a deal and they shut the government back down in three weeks, it’s hard to see what was lost here.
4) Democratic opponents of the deal believe that an extended shutdown increases the likelihood of a DREAMer compromise. But does it? That is to say that an extended shutdown will cause the rich asshole so much political or personal pain that he will accept one of the immigration compromises he has thus far rejected. Neither dynamic is obvious to me.
5) Politically, the rich asshole’s entire brand is anti-immigration politics, and if there is round-the-clock news coverage of a shutdown over immigration, he’ll think it’s good for his base. Personally, the rich asshole’s goal in life is to be seen as a winner, and to double down when attacked or under pressure, and so it’s hard to see how a high-stakes battle over a shutdown — which would make a deal on immigration look like a cave to reopen the government by the rich asshole — helps.
6) Beyond that, shutting down the government should be a last resort in the most extreme situations (if that). And historically, shutting down the government usually doesn’t end with the party that forced the shutdown getting the policy concessions it wants — it often strengthens the president’s party. To the extent there’s an open path in which an immigration deal can be negotiated and brought to a vote with the government still open, that’s a good thing.
7) One counterargument: McConnell’s word hasn’t been worth much this year. Just ask Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Jeff Flake (AZ), fellow Republicans who were promised health and immigration policies in return for their tax votes. In this case, though, if McConnell reneges on the deal, Democrats simply shut down the government in three weeks. They haven’t lost that leverage.
8) And if Democrats do need to shut down the government in three weeks, they’ll do so with the Children’s Health Insurance Program funded for six years, rather than seeing it weaponized against them. That’s a big deal, both substantively and politically.
9) There’s a broader political dynamic worth considering here too. Republicans pioneered a brand of politics in which creating crises in government operations became proof of sincerity, regardless of whether it led to good outcomes or who got hurt along the way. If you didn’t employ every tactic in service of your promises to the base, you were a liar — it wasn’t acceptable to say, “We don’t have the votes; we need to win more elections.”
10) At the time, Democrats angrily criticized that approach, arguing that all-out tactical war would be terrible for the country, that some boundaries and norms were worth preserving, that elections were the proper method of resolution. Now I’m hearing a lot of the same arguments from Democrats: If they don’t shut the government down, or keep it shut down, it will be a betrayal of their base.
11) Democrats also feel, understandably, that they can’t unilaterally disarm. If Republicans are going to use the basic functioning of the government as leverage, then Democrats have to do so too.
12) The logic of that is inarguable, and the consequences disastrous. If hostage-taking becomes normalized in American politics, then there’s really no end to the cycle of escalation, and it’s going to finish with a global economic crisis because we breached the debt ceiling, or worse.
13) The central political problem in American life, for years now, has been that the Republican Party is a dysfunctional institution that has abandoned principles of decent governance in order to please an ever more extreme base. I don’t have an answer for fixing that. But it would be doubly bad if their outrageous behavior drives Democrats to use the same tactics in response. American politics is, hopefully, an infinite game, not a finite game, and that means doing everything possible to steer away from retaliatory loops that clearly lead to the system crumbling.
By Sky Palma
Posted on January 22, 2018
the rich asshole’s attacks on the free press don’t undermine democracy and help the spread of misinformation; they can also potentially be deadly. According to a local CBS affiliate, a Michigan man was arrested after making numerous threats to shoot and kill CNN employees, saying they worked for a “fake news” organization.
An investigation was launched by the FBI after the unidentified man made threatening phone calls to CNN about a week ago.
“Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down,” the man told a CNN employee, according to WGCL-TV.
“I’m smarter than you. More powerful than you,” the man reportedly said in another call. “I have more guns than you. More manpower. Your cast is about to get gunned down in a matter of hours.”
“I am coming to Georgia right now to go to the CNN headquarters to f*cking gun every single last one of you,” he said.
The FBI was able to trace the calls and ultimately made an arrest.
For the most part, slandering CNN with the term “fake news” was made popular by President the rich asshole and later became popular with his supporters. CNN has led the way in much of the adversarial reporting on the rich asshole White House. The network was among the winners in the rich asshole’s “Fake News Awards” gimmick from last week.
the rich asshole also made headlines when he tweeted an edited GIF of him wrestling a man with the CNN logo superimposed on his face. Another meme tweeted out by the rich asshole showed an image of him with what appeared to the CNN logo in a splatter of blood on the sole of his shoe.
President therich asshole Slaps Tariffs on Solar Panels in Major Blow to Renewable Energy
As The Hill points out, many have warned that the rich asshole’s characterizations of the media could lead to actual acts of violence against journalists and news figures. No kidding.
In the biggest blow he’s dealt to the renewable energy industry yet, President some rich asshole decided on Monday to slap tariffs on imported solar panels.
The U.S. will impose duties of as much as 30 percent on solar equipment made abroad, a move that threatens to handicap a $28 billion industry that relies on parts made abroad for 80 percent of its supply. Just the mere threat of tariffs has shaken solar developers in recent months, with some hoarding panels and others stalling projects in anticipation of higher costs. The Solar Energy Industries Association has projected tens of thousands of job losses in a sector that employed 260,000.
The tariffs are just the latest action the rich asshole has taken that undermine the economics of renewable energy. The administration has already decided to pull the U.S. out of the international Paris climate agreement, rolled back Obama-era regulations on power plant-emissions and passed sweeping tax reforms that constrained financing for solar and wind. The import taxes, however, will prove to be the most targeted strike on the industry yet.
“Developers may have to walk away from their projects,” Hugh Bromley, a New York-based analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said in an interview before the rich asshole’s decision. “Some rooftop solar companies may have to pull out” of some states.
U.S. panel maker First Solar Inc. jumped 9 percent to $75.20 in after-hours trading in New York. The Tempe, Arizona-based manufacturer stands to gain as costs for competing, foreign panels rise. First Solar didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Solar Energy Industries Association also didn’t immediately respond.
The first 2.5 gigawatts of imported solar cells will be exempt from the tariffs, the rich asshole said in a statement Monday. The president approved four years of tariffs that start at 30 percent in the first year and gradually drop to 15 percent.
The duties are lower than the 35 percent rate the U.S. International Trade Commission recommended in October after finding that imported panels were harming American manufacturers. The idea behind the tariffs is to raise the costs of cheap imports, particularly from Asia, and level the playing field for those who manufacture the parts domestically.
For the rich asshole, they may represent a step toward making good on a campaign promise to get tough on the country that produces the most panels — China. the rich asshole’s trade issues took a backseat in 2017 while the White House focused on tax reform, but it’s now coming back into the fore: The solar dispute is among several potential trade decisions that also involve washing machines, consumer electronics and steel.
“It’s the first opportunity the president has had to impose tariffs or any sort of trade restriction,” Clark Packard, a trade policy expert at the R Street Institute in Washington, said ahead of the decision. “He’s kind of pining for an opportunity.”
the rich asshole’s solar decision comes almost nine months after Suniva Inc., a bankrupt U.S. module manufacturer with a Chinese majority owner, sought import duties on solar cells and panels. It asserted that it had suffered “ serious injury” from a flood of cheap panels produced in Asia. A month later, the U.S. unit of German manufacturer SolarWorld AG signed on as a co-petitioner, adding heft to Suniva’s cause.
An attorney for Solarworld didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Suniva had sought import duties of 32 cents a watt for solar panels produced outside the U.S. and a floor price of 74 cents a watt.
While the rich asshole has broad authority on the size, scope and duration of duties, the dispute may shift to a different venue. China and neighbors including South Korea may opt to challenge the decision at the World Trade Organization — which has rebuffed prior U.S.-imposed tariffs that appeared before it.
Lewis Leibowitz, a Washington-based trade lawyer, expects the matter will wind up with the WTO. “Nothing is very likely to stop the relief in its tracks,” he said before the decision. “It’s going to take a while.”
The solar industry may also attempt a long-shot appeal to Congress.
“the rich asshole wants to show he’s tough on trade, so whatever duties or quotas he imposes will stick, whatever individual senators or congressmen might say,” Gary Hufbauer, a Washington-based senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said by email before the decision.
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