TomCADem
TomCADem's JournalVox - The campaign to oust Rod Rosenstein is heating up after the Nunes memos release
It does not matter that Nunes little list of talking points is bullshit. You do not matter. The point of the memo is to give Fox News and other RW media outlets a plausible story line to justify Trump firing Rosenstein and Mueller.
Looking ahead, once Trump has his cronies in the DOJ and FBI, he can use them to attack his political adversaries Putin style. If you were curious about how a Democratic country can slip into dictatorship, this is how it goes.
https://www.vox.com/2018/2/2/16966208/nunes-memo-rod-rosenstein-tea-party-patriots-ad
The Nunes memo has been released — and the conservative drumbeat demanding the firing of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is getting louder.
The Tea Party Patriots, a conservative activist group, put out an ad Friday that bluntly states: “It’s time for Rod Rosenstein to do his job or resign.”
The ad claims that Rosenstein’s “incompetence and abuse of power” have “undermined congressional investigations” and tarnished the reputation of the Justice Department.
It also calls him “a weak careerist at the Justice Department, protecting liberal Obama holdovers and the deep state, instead of following the rule of law.” (Trump appointed Rosenstein to his position in the Justice Department; he had previously served as the longtime US attorney in Maryland. He was appointed to that position by George W. Bush, in 2005.)
Vox - The truth about the Trump economy, explained
Excellent article that points out that the real change in the Trump economy, which largely continues if not lags the rate of growth under President Obama, is that conservative media is now celebrating the same fundamentals as signs of a great economy when just a few years ago the RW media was saying that the economy was failing under President Obama.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/30/16945146/trump-economic-record
Hillary Clinton struggled to articulate a boosterish case for the American economy during the 2016 campaign in part because of lingering patches of labor market weakness but largely because progressives have a more fundamental critique of the US economic situation.
The United States is the only high-income country to have millions of citizens who lack health insurance, has a relative child poverty rate that’s off the charts by the standards of other developed countries, has no guaranteed paid parental leave or paid vacation, and remains one of the world’s highest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases even as the world hurtles toward an environmental crisis. Under those circumstances, efforts to pitch the notion that “America is already great” end up falling flat not just — or even especially — with skeptical swing voters but with Democrats’ own base that yearns for transformative change to aspects of the American welfare state and of American political economy.
Republicans have no such qualms. The Republican Party donor class is very, very excited about high stock market valuations (which lead directly to huge payouts for top executives) and about corporate income tax cuts (which lead to high stock market valuations, and thus huge payouts for top executives) and thus are very glad to embrace the narrative that all is now well with the American economy. That gives an incumbent Republican presiding over decent growth an easy, uncomplicated pitch to make — things are good now, and they are good thanks to me.
It’s largely forgotten now, but back during the mid-aughts (a time of more rapid wage growth than what we saw in 2017, incidentally), it was commonplace in conservative circles to proclaim that we were living through a “Bush Boom” touched off by his game-changing tax cuts and deregulation. That story, obviously, eventually ended in tears, as a poorly supervised financial system channeled inequitably shared growth into an unsustainable pyramid of debt that eventually collapsed. But they were good times while they lasted.
Politico - Trump cuts to CDC worry health experts in NY - Smallest Budget in 20 Years
As the U.S. confronts the worst flu season in a decade, remember that Trump proposed a 17 percent cut to the CDC that would leave it its smallest budget in more than 20 years. But hey, we have to give the rich their tax cuts.
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2017/05/23/trump-cuts-to-cdc-worry-health-experts-in-ny-112282
It's this kind of coordination that often goes unnoticed by the public even as it likely saves lives. The CDC is typically in the news during major outbreaks but it’s the day-to-day warnings, the data gathering and information sharing that have public and private health officials so concerned about Trump’s budget, which proposes to cut $1.2 billion from the CDC. The 17 percent cut would leave the CDC with its smallest budget in more than 20 years.
A president’s budget isn’t meant to pass as-is. It’s usually described as a set of guiding principles for Congress. This budget is no exception and while it won’t pass as it is currently written, Republicans in Congress can’t entirely ignore it either.
The budget includes a 17 percent cut to CDC’s global health programs, which track and respond to global outbreaks such as Candida auris. It also cuts roughly 10 percent from CDC’s office of public health preparedness and response. There is an $82 million cut for the center that works on vaccine-preventable illnesses such as influenza, and a $186 million cut from programs at CDC’s center on HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections and tuberculosis prevention.
Tom Frieden, CDC director under former President Barack Obama and health commissioner under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said on Twitter that the proposal was “unsafe at any level of enactment. Would increase illness, death, risks to Americans, and health care costs.”
Vox - This is the first real government shutdown under one-party government, ever
Trump and Republicans are making history again. While the media tries to paint a false equivalency between Republicans and Democrats, the fact of the matter is that Republicans control all three branches of government and Trump himself blew up the latest effort at bipartisanship.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/19/16911148/government-shutdown-unified-control
The government shutdown this weekend is the first time a true, honest-to-God shutdown has happened with a single party controlling the White House and Congress.
It’s true that Jimmy Carter and Democrats in Congress butted heads five separate times in 1977, 1978, and 1979, and couldn’t get their act together to fund the government (Carter was a bad president!). But that was before Carter’s attorney general issued guidance saying that when a funding gap like that exists, government functions must shut down.
Carter’s “shutdowns” didn’t lead to any federal employees being sent home and denied pay. Donald Trump’s will.
Republicans are already trying to blame the Democratic minority in the Senate for threatening to filibuster a spending bill that doesn’t include relief for DACA recipients — unauthorized immigrants who arrived as children and who had been protected by an Obama administration executive action that Trump has since revoked. The White House has even started calling it the #SchumerShutdown, after the Democratic Minority Leader.
Slate - Oprahs Real Message: It wasnt about her. It was about us. (Even Dems)
The amazing thing is how Oprah's speech has not only drawn criticism for the right, but also among some members of the "left" concerned that the speech was too good and might create momentum for Oprah to run for President. The speech recognized the need for individual citizens to become engaged. Nonetheless, rather than listen to the substance of the speech regarding an empowered citizenry, people continued to either look for a messiah or protect the political messiahs who they felt were threatened by the great speech that Oprah gave.
The folks who seek to annoint Oprah a messiah or seek to bring her down to defend their chosen political messiahs missed the entire point of her speech as noted by Dahlia Lithwik.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/people-are-completely-missing-the-point-of-oprahs-amazing-golden-globes-speech.html
I loved Oprah’s Golden Globes speech on Sunday. It was mesmerizing, pitch perfect, and gave voice to many lifetimes of frustration and vindication with eloquence and a full authority she has earned. But I found the strange Facebook response of “Oprah 2020” weirdly discordant and disorienting. Oprah’s speech—in my hearing—wasn’t about why she needs to run for office. It was about why the rest of us need to do so, immediately.
The dominant theme I heard was about giving voice to invisible people. It was the arc of the entire speech. It’s also what the very best journalism is about, and it’s worth remembering that’s how Oprah began her career. The speech began with her goosebump-y tale of first seeing Sidney Poitier win an Academy Award in 1964 and how much of a revelation it was at the time to see a black man celebrated in America. Then it ran through to her chilling invocation of Recy Taylor, a young black woman who was raped in Alabama in 1944 by six white men who were never brought to justice. She deftly linked Taylor to Rosa Parks, who investigated the rape for the NAACP and then 11 years later refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery with Taylor “somewhere in her heart.” This was a speech about how seeing someone else model the fight against racism, sexism, and injustice activates us to fight alongside.
It was a testament to the greatest gifts she has as a journalist, actor, and media personality: the ability to shed light on the faceless and speak of justice and morality in ways that are urgent and original. That’s why the speech honored not just the women in sleek black dresses who were on their feet cheering her. The true message was about someone else:Women whose names we’ll never know. They are domestic workers and farmworkers. They are working in factories and they work in restaurants and they’re in academia, engineering, medicine, and science. They’re part of the world of tech and politics and business. They’re our athletes in the Olympics and they’re our soldiers in the military.
Vox - Cornel Wests attacks on Ta-Nehisi Coates, explained - Cornel West attacking Dems Again
If you guessed that Cornel West filled in his standard ad libs more leftist than thou essay by professing that he loved, "Brother or Sister So-and-so," then proceeding to use the word "neo-liberal" in every sentence and "racist" and "globalist" in every other sentence, then you guessed right.
Yes, the so-called leftist is once again attacking members of the left while giving the right a free pass. Indeed, his anti-globalist rhetoric would not sound out of place in a Donald Trump speech. It is all the nativism with the white supremacy replaced by black nationalism. Yet, Bernie Sanders chose to put Cornel West on the DNC platform committee, which West then dumped on by endorsing Jill Stein.
Sadly, Cornel West is just an opportunist who cannot resist the attention he gets when attacks members of the left from the left. So, expect him to be featured widely in the upcoming 2018 election cycle. It should be a clue that you are on the wrong side of the argument when Richard Spencer is on your side.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/arts/ta-nehisi-coates-deletes-twitter-account-cornel-west.html?_r=0
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/12/20/16795746/ta-nehisi-coates-cornel-west-twitter
ut West’s criticisms resurfaced in the past month when he brought up Coates in an interview with the New York Times Magazine. In discussing the “black elite leadership” that has tried to fit into “a neoliberal world,” West cited “[d]ear brother Ta-Nehisi Coates” as an example. Commenting on Coates’s book, We Were Eight Years in Power, West remarked, “Who’s the ‘we’? When’s the last time he’s been through the ghetto, in the hoods, to the schools and indecent housing and mass unemployment? We were in power for eight years? My God. Maybe he and some of his friends might have been in power, but not poor working people.”
West further elaborated on this point in his op-ed in the Guardian on Sunday, arguing that Coates’s analysis of white supremacy neglects some of its worst crimes.
“He represents the neoliberal wing that sounds militant about white supremacy but renders black fightback invisible,” West wrote. “This wing reaps the benefits of the neoliberal establishment that rewards silences on issues such as Wall Street greed or Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people.”
He added, “The disagreement between Coates and me is clear: any analysis or vision of our world that omits the centrality of Wall Street power, US military policies, and the complex dynamics of class, gender, and sexuality in black America is too narrow and dangerously misleading. So it is with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ worldview.”
Vox - The past year of research has made it very clear: Trump won because of racial resentment
This illustrates the problem with progressives like Bernie who try to blame Democratic losses on Democrats playing "identity politics" as he did right after the election.
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/307014-sanders-dems-must-move-beyond-identity-politics
This ignores that Trump and Republicans have been playing the white resentment card with increasing impunity. The basic quid pro quo is that the white working class gets a scapegoat in the form of blaming minorities, immigrants and working women. In return, the rich get huge tax cuts and cuts in benefits that benefit the working class. This is modern populism. It is not about providing benefits to the working class. It is about stoking and reinforcing racism and sexism.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/12/15/16781222/trump-racism-economic-anxiety-study
More than a year after President Donald Trump won the election, there are still some questions about what drove him to victory: Was it genuine anxiety about the state of the economy? Or was it racism and racial resentment?
Over at the Washington Post, researchers Matthew Fowler, Vladimir Medenica, and Cathy Cohen have published the results of a new survey on these questions, with a focus on the 41 percent of white millennials who voted for Trump and the sense of “white vulnerability” that motivated them. The conclusion is very clear:Contrary to what some have suggested, white millennial Trump voters were not in more economically precarious situations than non-Trump voters. Fully 86 percent of them reported being employed, a rate similar to non-Trump voters; and they were 14 percent less likely to be low income than white voters who did not support Trump. Employment and income were not significantly related to that sense of white vulnerability.
So what was? Racial resentment.
USA Today - How white nationalists tapped into decades of pent-up racism to spark a movement
Even progressives are sometimes tempted to tap into this racism by catering to anti-immigrant, anti-trade and isolationist rhetoric. How many times have folks on this Board bought into the anti-Globalist chants? Not surprisingly, Russian trolls try to reinforce this here and throughout Europe to promote isolationism.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/12/17/how-white-nationalists-tapped-into-decades-pent-up-racism-spark-movement/859455001/
This summer's seemingly overnight arrival of the self-described "alt-right" and white nationalist groups — marked most prominently by a deadly car attack at the August "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Va. — drew worldwide headlines, but the movement simmered for decades before it burst into public view.
Underlying that shift from society's fringes to center stage is a new strategy that taps into the frustrations of white people angry at a society they say has marginalized them and a new political landscape that appears to give voice to their cause.
President Trump’s election last year became a major rallying point for white nationalists, who watched as the Republican repeatedly amplified some of their views in campaign rallies and tweets.
“It just absolutely electrified this community,” Keegan Hankes, an analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hates groups, including the KKK. “They really felt like they had someone to rally behind.”
CBS: Trump says Democrats like his tax plan "a lot" - Sounds Like His Encounters With Women
So, Trump is claiming that Democrats secretly like his tax plan a lot, but are not saying so, because of political reasons. You can just hear Trump's voice, "Bernie Sanders, you know you like my tax plan. You do. C'mon say it. Say it. I look in your eyes and you know want it."
At the same time, doesn't this sound like his encounters with women: "You know you enjoyed it when I as touching you. It was the greatest thrill of your life. Don't lie. Don't lie. Your welcome. You just let me know when you'd like another visit with little Donnie."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-says-democrats-like-his-tax-plan-a-lot/
President Trump made his closing argument for his tax plan Wednesday, saying Democrats like the legislation "a lot" but can't talk about it or vote for it for purely political reasons.
"We will have very little Democratic support, probably none, and that is purely for political reasons," Mr. Trump said in a speech at the White House Wednesday, surrounded by Christmas trees and families the White House invited to promote his tax plan. "They like it a lot. And they cannot say it."
The president offered his remarks just as House and Senate negotiators reached a compromise agreement in principle on the differences between their two versions of legislation. The conferees officially met for the first time on Wednesday, although members have been discussing the details of the bill, CBS News' Nancy Cordes has reported.
Republicans in the House and Senate hope to vote on -- and pass -- the legislation early next week. Senate Republicans are under additional pressure to pass the bill before Democrat Doug Jones -- Alabama's senator-elect after he defeated Republican Roy Moore in a special election Tuesday night -- is seated in the Senate, though the election results are not likely to be certified until after lawmakers have voted on the bill. Jones' election will give the GOP only a 51-49 edge in the Senate, a slim majority as the Trump administration looks to its agenda in 2018 and beyond.
Fox News guest: Seducing 14-year-olds may not have been that unusual 40 years ago
And in a parallel universe, Republicans are defending Moore by arguing that it was once okay for older men to go after 14 year old girls. I know some Democrats on this Board argue that Democrats should be just as rabid and partisan in defending their own, but I am not so sure I want to go down that road.
https://www.salon.com/2017/12/07/fox-news-guest-seducing-14-year-olds-may-not-have-been-that-unusual-40-years-ago/
On Wednesday night's Fox News broadcast of "Your World With Neil Cavuto," guest and CEO of the conservative advocacy group Independent Women's Voice, Heather Higgins, posited that, hey, maybe making sexual advances to a 14-year-old in the late 1970s wasn't all that out of the mainstream.
Speaking about the allegations against Republication Alabama senatorial candidate Roy Moore who, among other things, has been accused of initiating sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl in 1979, Higgins was asked by host Cavuto about the statute of limitations concerning statutory rape.
"You would think that that has expired for something that was 40 years ago," she said, "and I suspect that that’s part of why if you look at the polling in Alabama, a lot of the Alabamians don’t believe it."
She continued. "[Moore's] been in public life for a very, very long time. Dating somebody who was much younger may be something that we find repugnant, but 40 years ago in Alabama it may not have been that unusual."
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