QOTD -- The Tide Is Turned

 

"... Trump ends the year weak and unpopular, his coalition dispirited and riven by infighting. Democrats dominated in the November elections. During Joe Biden’s administration, far-right victories in school board races were an early indication of the cultural backlash that would carry Trump to office. Now, however, Democrats are flipping school board seats nationwide.

"Much of the credit for the reinvigoration of the resistance belongs to Trump himself. Had he focused his deportation campaign on criminals or refrained from injuring the economy with haphazard tariffs while mocking concerns about affordability, he would probably have remained a more formidable figure. He’s still a supremely dangerous one, especially as he comes to feel increasingly cornered and aggrieved. After all, by the time you read this, we could well be at war with Venezuela, though no one in the administration has bothered to articulate a plausible rationale for the escalating conflict.

"But it’s become, over the past year, easier to imagine the moment when his mystique finally evaporates, when few want to defend him anymore or admit that they ever did. 'I think it’s going to be a rocky period, but I no longer think that Trump is going to pull an Orban and fundamentally consolidate authoritarian control of this country the way that it looked like he was going to do in March or April, said [Protect Democracy Executive Director Ian] Bassin, referring to Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary. If Bassin is right, it will be because a critical mass of Americans refused to be either cowed or complicit." -- Michelle Goldberg, NYT, in "Resistance Is Getting Stronger" (gift link).  We've seen the movement in the electorate in less than a year, delivering victories across the country and at all levels of government, thanks to over- performing Democratic and anti- Trump turnout.  We saw the two "No Kings" demonstrations, the second growing even bigger than the first.  We saw some of the Malignant Fascist's maleficent agenda and projects shot down or delayed by courts.  It's becoming clearer to us every day that he sees his time coming to an end (the speed at which he's attempting to burnish his "legacy" via slapping his name everywhere).  His increasingly manic, desperate attempts to divert the public's attention from his scandals are failing.  The tide is turned.

QOTD -- The Real "Trump Derangement Syndrome"

 

"...In some ways, it’s understandable that Republicans would impute secret virtues to Trump given both his historic political successes and his rapidly increasing wealth. Trump’s opponents have repeatedly underestimated his connection with a large segment of the American electorate, and his improbable victories have made him seem, at least to his allies, like an almost mystical figure. And if you truly believe that America’s capitalist system rewards merit rather than audacity and grift, the riches Trump has extracted from his office imply a measure of genius. He keeps winning. Surely he must know what he’s doing?

"It should be obvious, however, that extraordinary skill as a demagogue does not necessarily translate to wisdom as a ruler. If Trump’s lickspittles refuse to see that, it could be because facing up to reality — that they are party to the deconstruction of a once-great superpower — is at once shameful and frightening. Far easier to invent a Trump who isn’t there, a canny savant whose policy lurches are driven by some unseen strategic logic..." -- Michelle Goldberg, NYT (gift link), writing today on the "Trump Derangement Syndrome" endemic on the right.  While MAGAts use the term to describe honest and accurate criticism of their cult leader, the point Goldberg makes is that the real derangement about the Malignant Fascist is on his side of the political spectrum.  A good read, as always.

QOTD: Hostile Territory

Michelle Goldberg, in her column today, writing about the eerie similarities between the young, unqualified zealots that the U.S. sent to reshape Iraq after Saddam's fall to the young software sociopaths whom co-President Musk has sent rampaging through Federal agencies:

"Many are describing Musk’s assault on the federal bureaucracy as a coup, which isn’t quite right. Trump was, alas, elected, and delegated outsize power to Musk voluntarily. But the reason it feels like a coup is that we have no precedent for an administration treating its own government like a hostile territory to be conquered and exploited. In his memoir of America’s war on Iraq and its aftermath, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad described being ruled by 'young, naïve zealots who held unchallenged powers to reshape Iraq the way their masters wanted. They represented the worst combination of colonial hubris, racist arrogance and criminal incompetence.' We’re now getting a taste of that experience."  (our emphasis)

You can bet that Musk (a.k.a. Kekius Maximus, Maximus Anus) won't set his zealous budget-cutting weenies on any programs that he has a financial stake in. He's already stepped on the Malignant Fascist's toes, but not enough to get him sidelined, despite the MF suggesting that his co-President has limits.

(photo: Our new overlords. Shutterstock)

 

QOTD: The Insufferable Ramaswamy

The estimable Michelle Goldberg, writing in the op-ed page of the New York Times, about right-wing tech bro and GQP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's appeal to the right:

"The question is what Ramaswamy’s supporters see in this irksome figure. Some Republicans, clearly, appreciate the way he sucks up to Donald Trump, whom Ramaswamy has called “the best president of the 21st century.” But that doesn’t explain the roughly 10 percent of Republicans who tell pollsters they’re planning to vote for Ramaswamy instead of Trump. It can’t only be his shtick as Fox News’s “woke and cancel-culture guru,” as one anchor called him, since at this point even the Florida governor Ron DeSantis has learned that railing against wokeness is a losing message. Nor is Ramaswamy’s appeal tailored to the downwardly mobile Trump voters who appreciated the former president’s pledges to protect their entitlements, since Ramaswamy’s promise to “dismantle Lyndon Johnson’s failed ‘Great Society’” makes Paul Ryan look like a social democrat.

Instead, I suspect that Ramaswamy’s fans are drawn to him for all the reasons his critics find him insufferable. Conservatives love being championed by representatives of groups that they think disdain them."  (our emphasis)

Think of past candidates for their presidential nomination like Herman "999" Cain, Dr. Ben Carson, and Alan Keyes and you'll see Goldberg's point. It's the political variation of "some of my best friends are black / Jewish / etc." to shield bigots from criticism, especially when the "friends" mimic your views and philosophy. Read her whole column to see how Ramaswamy fits the mold with his obnoxious and opportunistic style.

BONUS: Rapper Eminem tells Rama-smarmy to stop performing his songs at campaign events (as he's pictured above) or face legal action.

 

QOTD: The Taliban's American Fans

 

There's always been a similarity in approach and world view between the fundamentalist Christofascist crowd in America (the "American Taliban") and the actual radical Taliban in Afghanistan. Religious zealotry, nativism,viewing women as inferior to men and allowing men to dictate over them, etc., are commonalities. 

With the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan after the corrupt Afghan government and its paper military collapsed, they gained a cohort of fans among the authoritarian far-right crowd here, as the excellent Michelle Goldberg notes in her op-ed piece ($$) in the New York Times:

"As the Taliban swept through Afghanistan in August, a Gen Z alt-right group ran a Twitter account devoted to celebrating their progress. Tweets in Pashto juxtaposed two laughing Taliban fighters with pictures meant to represent American effeminacy. Another said, the words auto-translated into English, “Liberalism did not fail in Afghanistan because it was Afghanistan, it failed because it was not true. It failed America, Europe and the world see it.”

The account, now suspended, was just one example of the open admiration for the Taliban that’s developed within parts of the American right. The influential young white supremacist Nick Fuentes — an ally of the Arizona Republican congressman Paul Gosar and the anti-immigrant pundit Michelle Malkin — wrote on the encrypted app Telegram: “The Taliban is a conservative, religious force, the U.S. is godless and liberal. The defeat of the U.S. government in Afghanistan is unequivocally a positive development.” An account linked to the Proud Boys expressed respect for the way the Taliban “took back their national religion as law, and executed dissenters.'”  (our emphasis)

Goldberg's entire column is well worth a read. If anything distinguishes the far-right, it's their advocacy of armed insurrection and imposing themselves on the majority by force. Their longing for a military coup to upend elections is emblematic of the threat to our democratic republic. To applaud the Taliban, which has killed thousands of our servicemen and women as well as their own Afghan countrymen, exposes their violent, unpatriotic, nativist, authoritarian disease, which must be defeated as one would a deadly virus.

 

Op-Ed: Insurrection Could Succeed Next Time

 

A cautionary note from an op-ed by Michelle Goldberg:

"Today’s Republican Party has no political philosophy in the normal sense; it is, rather, organized around fealty to Trump and the stab-in-the-back myth that the election was stolen from him. Cheney had to go because she rejects that lie, recognizing it as inimical to democracy, which she continues to value. Her defenestration is one more indication that the party is preparing to do in the next election what it could not do in the last one.

Absent an overwhelming mobilization by Democrats, Republicans have a good chance of winning the House in 2022. Redistricting alone will probably give them several new seats. They could win the Senate as well. If Biden or another Democrat prevails in 2024, a House run by Kevin McCarthy, the craven minority leader who helped push Cheney out, seems likely to collaborate in right-wing schemes to change the result."  (our emphasis)

Look at the Big Lie and the January 6 right-wing insurrection as a dress rehearsal for future elections. Trumpists will never accept an election won by Democrats, and they will use whatever means at their disposal -- election fraud, intimidation and suppressing the vote, post-election disenfranchisement, etc. -- to overturn the majority's will (a majority that includes Independents and never-Trump Republicans).

As Dems and their allies strongly mobilized in 2018 and 2020 to defeat the Trump Party / Cult, we have to do the same in every future election until the anti-democratic, neo-fascist threat posed by that cult is consistently and overwhelmingly defeated. Even then, we have to maintain vigilance that it never gains power again.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

In a news item entitled, "On weekend dedicated to war dead, Trump tweets insults, promotes baseless claims and plays golf,"  Washington Post writer Anne Gearan fills in what the headline refers to:

As the death toll in the coronavirus pandemic neared 100,000 Americans this Memorial Day weekend, President Trump derided and insulted perceived enemies and promoted a baseless conspiracy theory, in between rounds of golf.

In a flurry of tweets and retweets Saturday and Sunday, Trump mocked former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’s weight, ridiculed the looks of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and called former Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton a “skank.

He revived long-debunked speculation that a television host with whom Trump has feuded may have killed a woman and asserted without evidence that mail-in voting routinely produces ballot stuffing.

He made little mention of the sacrifice Americans honor on Memorial Day or the grim toll of the virus.

In fact, Trump’s barrage of social media attacks stood in sharp contrast to a sober reality on a weekend for mourning military dead — the number of Americans whose lives have been claimed by the novel coronavirus has eclipsed the combined total of U.S. deaths from wars in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan.

What an utterly worthless p.o.s.

Meanwhile, deep in the dystopia otherwise known as Trump Country, you have this unstable loon:

The husband of the woman who leads the Reopen NC movement says people should be willing to kill, if necessary, to resist the “New World Order” and emergency orders imposed by state government to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

Adam Smith posted a string of Facebook Live videos on Facebook on Friday, May 22, 2020 that culminated with a chilling threat.

“But are we willing to kill people? Are we willing to lay down our lives?” he asked. “We have to say, ‘Yes.’ We have to say, ‘Yes.’ Is that violence? Is that terrorism? No, it’s not terrorism. I’m not trying to strike fear in people by saying, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ I’m gonna say, ‘If you bring guns, I’m gonna bring guns. If you’re armed with this, we’re going to be armed with this.’” [snip]

“This is a test,” he continued. “This is seeing if we are ready to accept the mark of the beast, if we are ready to accept this New World Order system they want to implement over humanity.”

As the article goes on to point out, Smith also belongs to the neo- Nazi "boogaloo" movement, whose main goal is to start a racial civil war.  Look for these neo- Nazi seditionists to continue to ally themselves with the various "open" movements, which by any other nomenclature is "Trump's base."

Michelle Goldberg writes about the revelation earlier this week (part of an FX movie, "AKA Jane Roe," that debuted Friday) that Norma McCorvey (the "Roe" of "Roe v Wade") lied about her conversion from pro- choice icon to pro- life shill, for money, respect and attention.  It's a complicated story:

It was a cultural coup for the right when McCorvey publicly turned against legal abortion. Jane Roe rejecting Roe v. Wade was something abortion opponents could throw in the faces of pro-choice activists. So it is a bombshell that McCorvey has revealed, in the posthumous new documentary “AKA Jane Roe,” that it was, at least in some sense, an act. “I am a good actress,” she said. [snip]

In the documentary’s final 20 minutes, McCorvey, who died of heart failure in 2017, gives what she calls her “deathbed confession.” She and the pro-life movement, she said, were using each other: “I took their money, and they put me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say, and that’s what I’d say.” [snip]

Contemplating McCorvey’s deeply sad trajectory, I find it hard to hold her betrayals against her. The author of the Vanity Fair article, Joshua Prager, nailed it when he wrote, “McCorvey has long been less pro-choice or pro-life than pro-Norma.” But given all her disadvantages, someone had to be. She may have been a con artist for much of her life, but at one crucial moment she was a heroine. Some issues aren’t just black and white.

What isn't so complicated is the moral bankruptcy of the "pro - life" movement, which was eager to use a damaged woman for their grubby, sham religiosity.  That's the real message in this story.

We posted a Fox "News" poll earlier this week showing Joe Biden kicking the orange shitgibbon's ass.  As many of us are dubious of polling this far out, we thought an explainer by Harry Enten as to why 2020 looks very different than 2016 would be good:

Almost any time I explain that Biden's leading Trump, someone will inevitably bring up "but what about 2016." That's why this week marks an important milestone for the Biden campaign.

It's one of the first times during the election year that Biden was clearly running ahead of Hillary Clinton's 2016 pace in the matchup against Trump. [snip]

Biden notably hasn't trailed in a single live interview poll this entire year.

Although Clinton would regain some of her advantage in June 2016, the fact that the race became so close at this point four years ago was an indication that the electorate was somewhat unsettled. It showed that under the right circumstances, Clinton could lose nationally, or, at the very least, that Trump could come close enough nationally to win in the electoral college. 

Biden's lead, of course, is the steadiest of all time. His lead has never fallen to just a point or anywhere close. It's been consistently at or right around 6 points, as it was this week. If you were to create a 95% confidence interval around the individual 2016 and 2020 polls, the 2016 race was about 1.5 times as volatile up to this point. 

But it's not just the margin that is important to examine. Look at the vote percentages.

The reason Biden's lead is so wide compared to Clinton's is that he's running a little more than 5 points ahead of where Clinton was in terms of vote percentage. Biden is at slightly greater than 48%, while Clinton was a little less than 43%.

Even when Clinton's lead widened in June, she never got to 48% in the polls. She had to pick up a lot more late-deciding voters for her lead to feel secure than Biden will likely need to.

Democrats are united, pissed off, and eager to reclaim the White House and Senate.  They won't have any enthusiasm problem come November 3.  But we must work our asses off between now and then for victory.

As always, we highly recommend you visit Infidel 753's link round-up for the best collection of links to interesting posts from around the internet.

QOTD -- The Russo-Republican Party

"Had public life in America not been completely deformed by blizzards of official lies, right-wing propaganda and the immovable wall of Republican bad faith, the Mueller report would have ended Trump’s minoritarian presidency. Instead, something utterly perverse happened. Democrats, deflated by the Mueller report’s anticlimactic rollout, decided to move on rather than keep the focus on Trump’s world-historic treachery. Republicans, meanwhile, started screaming about a 'Russia hoax' ostensibly perpetrated on their dear leader. Among them was the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who in 2016 was surreptitiously recorded telling his congressional colleagues that he thinks President Vladimir Putin of Russia pays Trump. 'Swear to God,' he said at the time. [snip]

"Rather, it’s Republicans, with their heroic capacity for shamelessness, who want to talk about Russia. They’ve set out to investigate the investigators, trying to make efforts to uncover the truth about Trump’s Russia connections, rather than the connections themselves, into a scandal. And now they’re trying to expand their big lie about Russia to cover Ukraine as well. The president, McCarthy said last month, 'was trying to get to the bottom, just as every American would want to know, why did we have this Russia hoax that actually started within Ukraine.'”  -- Michelle Goldberg, writing about "Republicans' Big Lie About Trump and Russia."   People like McCarthy and Republican Sen. John "Cornpone" Kennedy (see below) are but a few of the reasons why the corrupt, rotted- out Russo- Republican Party needs to be utterly defeated at every level at every election, and the ground salted over their political grave.

Tweet Of The Day

All the biggest Trump scandals are concentrated into this week. His administration is torturing children. He's credibly accused of rape. He's joking with Putin about murdering journalists. And our political system has lost the capacity to respond.

— Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn) June 28, 2019

"Charting Awful New Frontiers" In The Republican War On Women

Michelle Goldberg has a must- read on why a post- Roe world would be even worse than the conditions that existed before Roe.  Here are a few of her top line arguments (our emphasis):

While doctors were prosecuted for abortions before Roe, patients rarely were. Today, in states that have legislated fetal personhood, women are already arrested on suspicion of harming or endangering their fetuses, including by using drugs, attempting suicide or, in a case in Utah, delaying a cesarean section. There’s no reason to believe that, in states where abortion is considered homicide, prosecutors will be less punitive when investigating it.

Further, the abortion bans in the new wave are harsher than most of those that existed before Roe. At that time, most states prohibited abortion in most circumstances, but according to historian Leslie Reagan, the author of the book “When Abortion Was a Crime,” there was little legal conception of fetal personhood.

Overturning or weakening Roe also shifts the Overton window:

Republican politicians in other states are clearly interested in locking women up; last month Texas legislators held a hearing on a bill that would allow women who have abortions to be charged with homicide and potentially subject to the death penalty. In a post-Roe future, the political fight, at least in red states, could shift from whether women can have abortions to whether they can be imprisoned for them.

Should there be any more talk of a Republican "fever" breaking upon the election of a Democratic president in 2020, the troglodyte extremism exhibited by these State and local (largely white male) Republicans demonstrates this isn't a bug of that rotted out party -- it's a feature. 

As we watch Donald Trump remake this country in ways that once seemed unimaginable, it’s tempting to reach for historical analogies to grapple with what’s happening. It’s why, as people struggle to understand how his abuses of power might be constrained, there’s been renewed interest in Watergate. Yet, as in the comparison between Richard Nixon and Trump, the past can prove inadequate to understanding the depredations of the present. Rather than moving backward, we’re charting awful new frontiers.

These are not people with whom you can have a civil dialogue, much less reason with.  They are yahoos who will use their power to impose their dangerous, antediluvian views on everyone else.  At every level in American politics, as we keep saying, they need to be voted out of office once and for all.  The vast majority of Americans disagree with these absolutist crackpots and have ever since Roe;  they need to act on that at the polls from now on.

Javanka's "Reality Distortion Field"

Michelle Goldberg has a great op-ed in the New York Times, looking at the corrupt duo Jared "Mr. Ivanka Trump" Kushner and Ivanka "Complicit" Trump through the lens of Vicky Ward's new book "Kushner, Inc."  These two children of wealth and privilege breezed into Washington on the coattails of daddy Donald "Rump" Trump, and thought government business would be a breeze, like branding shoes or screwing up real estate deals. As Goldberg notes, the book reveals that the much-detested couple thinks they're destined for greatness:

"According to 'Kushner, Inc.,' Gary Cohn, former director of the National Economic Council, has told people that Ivanka Trump thinks she could someday be president. 'Her father’s reign in Washington, D.C., is, she believes, the beginning of a great American dynasty,' writes Ward. Kushner, whose pre-White House experience included owning a boutique newspaper and helming a catastrophically ill-timed real estate deal, has arrogated to himself substantial parts of American foreign policy." (our emphasis)

Her delusions of grandeur are likely why she asked to sit in on meetings with the likes of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and occupied the ambassador's chair at the U.N. one time. Her head of delegation presence at the embassy dedication ceremony in Jerusalem after Rump moved it there was another annoying reminder of her sense of entitlement. Goldberg continues:

"Partly, the Jared and Ivanka story is about the 'reality distortion field' — a term one of Ward’s sources uses about Kushner — created by great family wealth. She quotes a member of Trump’s legal team saying that the two 'have no idea how normal people perceive, understand, intuit.' Privilege, in them, has been raised to the level of near sociopathy. [snip]

[Ward] knocks down the idea that either he or his wife is a stabilizing force or moral compass in the Trump administration. Multiple White House sources told her they think it was Kushner who ordered the closing of White House visitor logs in April 2017, because he 'didn’t want his frenetic networking exposed.' Ward reports that Cohn was stunned by their blasé reaction to Trump’s defense of the white-nationalist marchers in Charlottesville, Va.: 'He was upset that they were not sufficiently upset.'” (our emphasis)

Of all of the creatures in and around the Rump regime, these two amoral climbers may be the most deceptive as far as their groomed public image. They also may be among the most dangerous to national security, as our intelligence community realized when their top secret clearances were denied.

QOTD: Religious Cult And Crime Family

“You have to think of the Trump phenomenon as a religious cult surrounding an organized crime family. But at the outer perimeters people are starting to melt away. And Michael Cohen’s departure is a signal moment in the evolution of the Trump phenomenon. He is the innermost sycophant to break ranks.” (our emphasis) -- the terrific Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), as quoted in Michelle Goldberg's latest excellent op-ed in today's New York Times.

That's why the letters from the House Judiciary Committee requesting documents from 81 Trump associates is so monumental, and should cause more melting of the layers surrounding the most corrupt, unbalanced and unfit person ever to serve in the Oval Office.

QOTD -- Government By Clueless Sociopaths

"Ordinarily, one might expect a presidential administration’s leading economic figures to understand something of these financial realities. But if they cared about people who aren’t rich, they wouldn’t be working for Trump in the first place. The shocking thing isn’t their indifference to the misery they’re causing. It’s that they can barely be bothered to hide it."-- Michelle Goldberg in "Who Needs a Paycheck Anyway?", following comments by the owner and namesake of the Trump Shutdown that grocery stores would "work along" with furloughed Federal workers who can't pay for food; comments by economic adviser Larry "Wrong Way" Kudlow that furloughed employees were "volunteering" for unpaid work out of "love of country" and "allegiance" to Trump; and comments by desiccated grifter and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that those workers should just go out and get a bank loan to tide them over. 

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op- eds.

We're starting off with E.J. Dionne, Jr., on who Putin puppet and world- class dolt Donald "Rump" Trump was from the get- go, but who many refused to see what was right in front of them:

In 2016 and for much of 2017, those warning that Trump was exactly the dangerous scoundrel he appeared to be were accused of missing his fundamental genius and his deep connection with discounted Americans. Trump’s detractors were said to be “out of touch” and “elitist,” as if only those with exquisitely elevated tastes in society’s upper reaches could possibly worry about his indifference to truth, his contempt for women and immigrants, his disdain for a free press and his flouting of the expectations we have of those on whom we confer power. 

Was it only an elite thing to be concerned that Trump might be hiding something in those tax returns that he refuses to release? Was it out of touch to wonder why he praised Putin again and again, at one point saying that Putin was far more of “a leader” than President Barack Obama?

Michelle Goldberg writes about the implications of the National Rifle Rampage Association being used as a Russian money launderer for the Republican Party. The recent arrest of accused Russian spy Maria Butina, who was living with her patsy Republican operative Paul Erickson, must have shaken the rotted out party to it's core:

If the N.R.A. as an organization turns out to be compromised, it would shake conservative politics to its  foundation. And this is no longer a far-fetched possibility. “I serve on both the Intelligence Committee and the Finance Committee,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, told me. “So I have a chance to really look at this through the periscope of both committees. And what I have wondered about for some time is this whole issue of whether the N.R.A. is getting subverted as a Russian asset.” 

This is not a question that Republicans are eager to answer. Before Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee abruptly closed their investigation into Russian election interference, committee Democrats wanted to interview both Butina and Erickson. Their Republican colleagues refused. “If there were efforts towards a back channel towards the N.R.A., they didn’t want to know,” Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who is the  ranking member on the  committee, told me. “It was too hot to handle.”

As you might expect, the desperate cover- up continues, with help from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue:

On Monday, a few hours after news broke of Butina’s arrest, the Treasury Department announced a new rule sparing some tax-exempt groups, including  the N.R.A.,  from having to report their large donors to the I.R.S. Wyden called the move “truly grotesque,” saying it would “make it easier for Russian dark money” to flow into American politics. You might ask who benefits. The answer is: not just Trump.  

These are criminals and traitors (but you already knew that).

As if more evidence were needed for the imperative of removing Republicans from power, Emily Stewart writes about yet another craven act by Congressional Republicans in service to Rump's "odd" affinity for doing the bidding of a foreign autocrat:

Republicans are siding with President Donald Trump in easing penalties on Chinese telecom company ZTE. Negotiators in the Senate and the House of Representatives removed language from a must-pass defense bill that would have banned United States companies from selling parts or providing services to ZTE, which the Commerce Department says made illegal sales to Iran and North Korea in defiance of US sanctions. 

Here's a pot, meet kettle tweet from the Very Stable Genius himself, up way past his bedtime last night:

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2018

Well, Rump knows all about DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE AND DEATH.  "FIRE AND FURY!"

Finally, you're encouraged to go over to Infidel 753's link round- up for a much broader offering of items of interest.  If you haven't partaken, you should.

QOTD -- Let Them Eat At Trump Grill

The wonderful Michelle Goldberg, yesterday in The New York Times:

...The civility police might point out that many conservatives hated Obama just as much, but that only demonstrates the limits of content-neutral analysis. The right’s revulsion against a black president targeted by birther conspiracy theories is not the same as the left’s revulsion against a racist president who spread birther conspiracy theories. [snip] 

... [T]here’s an abusive sort of victim-blaming in demanding that progressives single-handedly uphold civility, lest the right become even more uncivil in response. As long as our rulers wage war on cosmopolitan culture, they shouldn’t feel entitled to its fruits. If they don’t want to hear from the angry citizens they’re supposed to serve, let them eat at Trump Grill.

Enough about "civility;"  now we need to continue to focus on those issues and actions that make progressives want to be heard.

Morning Reading - What Do We Do Now?

We have several worthy reads this morning concerning what to do about a clearly dangerous, unfit person occupying the Oval Office.

The Washington Post editorial board asks, "What To Do With An Unfit President," then raises, and rejects for now, impeachment and invoking the 25th Amendment, then looks to the Republican- controlled Congress to change its behavior of the last decade or more. To which we say, good luck with that (and please grow some balls)!

Eugene Robinson discusses several strategies, then directs us to the most immediate solution:

Republicans need to stop talking and begin acting to constrain an out-of-control president. They probably won’t, however — which makes it imperative that Democrats win one or both chambers of Congress in 2018. 

Massive “people power” displays of resistance are stirring. But if you really want to make a difference, go out and work to turn the House and Senate into bodies that will ferociously protect our democracy — from a president who grievously threatens it.

Michelle Goldberg suggests that Republicans should tie Rump's hands on use of nuclear weapons, then adds:

Of course, “should” is the key word here. There are plenty of things that Republicans should do about Trump, including impeaching him for violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. We’ve grown so inured to Republican politicians’ persistent refusal to put the welfare of the country above their re-election prospects and lust for tax cuts that complaining about it feels banal and naïve.

Infidel 753 looks at the most recent efforts in an on- going campaign by the Trump regime to destroy the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), now via Executive Order, and also points to 2018:

But the underlying reality is that it's inherently difficult to keep a system running smoothly when Congress and the White House are held by people grimly opposed to that system's very existence.  The ACA will not be safely re-stabilized until we vote them out.

We can talk all we want about impeachment and the 25th Amendment and wishing Republicans in Congress would put country over party.  The chances of any of those things happening before 2018 are slim and none (actually, none).  Democrats have to get control of one or both houses of Congress in 2018 to stop the constant assault by the Rump regime on the well- being, if not the survival, of our nation and the Earth.

Give Up Your Seat Tweet of the Day

Newsweek's Michelle Goldberg points out a classic example of Rethug behavior at their "pro-life" event:

You might think that someone at the RNC For Life event would offer a pregnant lady a seat, but you'd be wrong. #GOP2012

— Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn) August 28, 2012