Monday Reading

 

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

As the death toll mounts from the historic tornadoes that ravaged several states late Friday, we're being warned that this is going to be "our new normal," due to global climate change:

The rising sun illuminated entire cities in ruin as morning broke Saturday in western Kentucky. Piles of bricks appeared where buildings had stood. Roofs torn open revealed mangled furnishings inside. Bicycles and refrigerators dangled from trees like ornaments.

The deadly tornadoes that caused devastation in Kentucky and five other states came just a few months after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti and Category 4 Hurricane Ida tore through the Eastern United States and Atlantic Canada. In an interview Sunday morning on CNN’s “State of the Union,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said the agency is preparing for severe weather events of similar magnitude.

“This is going to be our new normal, and the effects that we’re seeing from climate change are the crisis of our generation,” she said. “We’ll continue to work on helping to reduce the impacts, but we’re also prepared to respond to any community that gets impacted by one of these severe events.”

Severe tornadoes are uncommon this late in the year, with December usually considered a quiet month.

The people in the states affected are overwhelmingly represented by Republican denialists and fossil fuel shills in Congress.  Tragically, the vast majority likely won't connect the dots.

Press Watch's Dan Froomkin asks "What Does the Republican Party Stand For:"

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has decided that the best way for Republicans to win back Congress in the 2022 midterms is to not tell voters what they stand for.

He has made no secret of his plan to make the elections a referendum on President Biden and the Democrats — and not to complicate things with anything remotely like a Republican legislative agenda.

It’s a brilliant strategy, if he can get away with it. And so far, all the signs are good. Pretty much every prognosticator inside the Beltway is predicting significant GOP advances, certainly enough to take back the House, if not the Senate.

But I’m old-fashioned. I think voters should know what they’re voting for, not just what they’re voting against. And if Republicans themselves won’t tell the voters about their agenda, then it’s incumbent on political journalists to do it for them.  [snip]

The debate that’s currently raging about whether corporate media coverage of Biden is overly negative takes on even greater significance when you consider how the entire Republican strategy in the coming years will be to throw brickbats at him from behind a tree.

Biden’s shortcomings are certainly newsworthy. But paying a little more attention to who’s behind the tree, and what their intentions really are, is essential journalism.

Voting Republican, in this day and age, is not a simple protest vote. It’s a vote that carries unprecedented consequences. Political reporters should be telling voters about those consequences, and then asking if that’s what they really want.

Froomkin lays out several scenarios/ agendas that you'll have to go to the link for.  It's worth it.

Fox "News'" Chris Wallace is leaving "Bullshit Mountain" for the new streaming service CNN+.  Eric Wemple comments on Wallace's farewell to the network:

Omitted from the sayonara was any celebration of the broader Fox News product. Perhaps that’s because there’s not much to celebrate: In the last year of Chris Wallace’s tenure at Fox News, he’s had to watch as his colleagues on the opinion side of the network buttressed and amplified the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from former president Donald Trump. That strain of programming culminated in the recent three-part Fox Nation series from host Tucker Carlson titled “Patriot Purge,” which pushed the idea that the Jan. 6 rioters are victims, not perpetrators. “The domestic war on terror is here. It’s coming after half the country,” argues the documentary.

NPR reported last month that Wallace, along with news anchor Bret Baier, had expressed concerns to top Fox officials about “Patriot Purge.” It’s unclear what impact, if any, the feedback effected. What is clear is that the network has found its voice in Carlson, a longtime pundit who for years bounced around the margins of cable news. He was serving as a weekend host at Fox News in late 2016 when a prime-time slot opened up. Ever since then, his extremism — telling viewers that Democrats “hate” America; espousing the racist “replacement theory”; subverting science on the coronavirus — has emerged as the network’s defining ideology, a point of reckoning for colleagues wishing to practice anything approximating journalism.

The reward for Carlson was an elevated presence on Fox’s streaming service, Fox Nation.

He was at Fox for 18 years, watching the mountain of lies, divisiveness and hate grow.  Let's not give him too much credit for bailing once the ascension of Carlson reached its apogee.  Over those many years, he can't claim he "did Nazi that coming."

We're approaching a grim milestone, fueled by the unvaccinated.  We have the tools to end the COVID pandemic, even as the new Omicron variant spreads:

The US government’s leading infectious diseases official, Anthony Fauci, on Sunday stepped up calls for Americans to get a Covid-19 booster shot, as the US is approaching 800,000 lives lost to coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.

Fauci warned that the Omicron variant appeared to be able to “evade” the protection of two initial doses of the mRNA-type Covid vaccines – Pfizer/BioNTech’s and Moderna’s – as well as post-infection therapies such as monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma.

Omicron is spurring new fears as US infections begin to surge again, with infections currently still led by the highly-transmissable Delta variant that has dominated since the summer.

Fauci said an extra vaccine shot provides “optimal” protection against Omicron, even though the government’s official designation of “fully vaccinated” remained at two doses of Pfizer or Moderna, or one of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which was developed by another method.

Finally, check out Infidel 753's link round-up, which has to be the most comprehensive, wide- ranging collection of links to posts from around the Internet.  It's a remarkable curation every week.  

The Contrast

 

“One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.” -- Sen. Moscow Mitch McConnell (R-Russian Federation) yesterday in Georgetown, KY.

“I guess the contrast for people to consider is 100% of our focus is on delivering relief for the American people, and getting the pandemic under control, and putting people back to work.” -- White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki at yesterday's White House press conference when asked to respond to Moscow Mitch's comment.

As with Moscow Mitch's infamous comment in 2010 that his "top priority" to make Barack Obama a one- term president, his "100% focus" on stopping the Biden administration reveals the continuing nihilism, obstructionism, and party- before- country approach that drives his rotted out, anti- democracy party.

It's also Exhibit A why Democrats must hold the Senate in 2022 and beyond by passing their agenda, screw "bipartisanship!"

 

How Trump's Gutting Clean Water Rules May Affect You

You may be among the 30 percent of Americans whose water quality will be negatively impacted by the Trump regime's scrapping of a 2015 update to the 1972 Clean Water Act.  Here's what you need to know (from Popular Science):

The Trump Administration just announced yet another blow to the country's environmental protections. On Thursday, officials from the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers repealed an Obama administration update to the 1972 Clean Water Act, which had expanded protection to wetlands and streams that are disconnected from navigable rivers. "They're effectively sending us back 30 years in our protections of U.S. waters," says Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute and a MacArthur "genius" Fellowship winner for his work as a climate and water scientist.  [snip]

The original definition of "waters of the United States" mainly covered large rivers, their tributaries, and adjacent wetlands. The Clean Water Act requires industrial and municipal polluters discharging to these rivers to obtain permits from the EPA and the 2015 update expanded those regulations to include smaller streams and wetlands. Thursday's repeal will soon be followed by a rule change, and the replacement text would basically revert to the '70s-level protections.  [snip]

... [T]he 2015 update was enacted for a reason: the streams and wetlands that aren't flowing into or right next to major rivers are still crucial for wildlife and humans. Drinking water for one in three people in the lower 48 comes from same waters that just lost their federal protection in the repeal, as PopSci has reported previously. "The weakening that we're seeing today is really serious—It's really cutting protection for drinking water for a lot of Americans," says Gleick. "A lot of our groundwater resources and a lot of our surface water resources are now going to be vulnerable to far more pollution." 

The 2015 rule also regulated pesticides and nutrients leaching from many farmers’ fields—a diffuse but cumulatively significant source of pollution. In the Mississippi basin, for example, the pollutants from numerous farms that trickle into small streams and wetlands eventually flow into the river and then into the Gulf of Mexico, says Gleick. This impacts water quality and leads to the growth of massive algal blooms and fish die offs. “Some farmers would have had to get permits to discharge pollutants into the streams and wetlands,” says Gleick. But now that requirement has been lifted, and our waters will suffer for it.

Overall, says Gleick, “We can expect more pollution in our waterways, more threats to drinking water supplies, more court cases, and more confusion about where this country ought to go on environmental protection.”  (our emphasis)

Due to a provision in the Clean Water Act, suits that will be brought against this rulemaking will have to be heard in state- level Federal District Courts rather than Federal Appeals Courts, meaning there will be a plethora of legal challenges at the state level and, inevitably, chaos.

Chaos.  That's a hallmark of the Trump regime, as are ignorance, greed and corruption, all of which have played roles in putting millions of Americans lives at risk through this action.  And it's only the latest in a long list of environmental protections scaled back or ended by this dystopian regime. Even if you're not personally affected by this specific action, millions of your fellow Americans are.  So, please keep in mind the damage that's being done to our country and the world by these evil nihilists as we ramp up to the 2020 election.  Just another reason they have to be stopped.

(Photo: via Natural Resources Defense Council)

Quote Of The Day

Digby writes:

The simple truth is that the Republicans welcomed a foreign government interfering in the election on their behalf. They knew and they were happy about it and they are now doing everything in their power to cover it up. There is no other way to look at it. 

Republican leaders were so hungry to kill people on Medicaid, bankrupt the middle class and give tax cuts to their millionaire friends that they knowingly allowed a foreign government to help that corrupt, incompetent imbecile into the White House. Think about that.

I feel sick. 

 Us, too.

Quote Of The Day

“It’s worse than the dog who caught the car. It’s the dog who somehow is now driving the car.” -- health care strategist Jesse Ferguson on clueless Republicans trapped by their own Obamacare repeal and replace rhetoric and by neo- fascist nitwit Donald "Rump" Trump's destabilizing executive order intended to begin the law's "unraveling."

The instability being generated by these buffoons is causing insurers to consider pulling out of the health care exchanges, which would collapse today's health insurance market. Regardless of any attempt to blame the previous administration for any failure, Republicans will "own that, lock, stock and barrel," as fleet- footed California Republican Tim McClintock put it.

Why You Should Vote Straight Ticket Democrat, Cont.

We're seeing more and more reasons why voting a straight Democratic ticket is the only option to restore some measure of sanity to our federal government.  This remains a good reason. And this. Here's another:

Jason Chaffetz, the Utah congressman wrapping up his first term atop the powerful House Oversight Committee, unendorsed Donald Trump weeks ago. That freed him up to prepare for something else: spending years, come January, probing the record of a President Hillary Clinton. 

“It’s a target-rich environment,” the Republican said in an interview in Salt Lake City’s suburbs. “Even before we get to Day One, we’ve got two years’ worth of material already lined up. She has four years of history at the State Department, and it ain’t good.” 

In a tweet Wednesday night, Chaffetz reaffirmed his distaste for Clinton and his refusal to endorse Trump — but reversed his plans not to vote for the Republican nominee. 

If Republicans retain control of the House, something that GOP-friendly maps make possible even in the event of a Trump loss, Clinton will become the first president since George H.W. Bush to immediately face a House Oversight Committee controlled by the opposition party. (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama lost Congress later in their presidencies.) 

And other Republican leaders say they support Chaffetz’s efforts — raising the specter of more partisan acrimony between them and the White House for the next four years.

That would be the same publicity hound Rep. Jason "Clouseau" Chaffetz who made a fool of himself this past summer in his quest to kneecap Secretary Clinton with FBI Director (and lifelong Republican) James Comey playing the uncooperative witness.  He also likes to bully women who testify before his committee, again with disastrous results. So, planning more witch hunts seems like a recipe for further humiliation for young Jason.

Of course, Chaffetz and his fellow nihilistic troglodytes are only concerned with doing their part to obstruct and delegitimatize yet another Democratic president. (He's too much of a spineless coward to stand up to neo- fascist nitwit Donald "Rump" Trump, but he's ruff and tuff when it comes to his plans to hamstring a future President Clinton!) Since he and many of his colleagues are in deep red states or are gerrymandered into safe seats by Republican state legislatures, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by once again refusing to be part of a functioning government. Does that sound like something you want for another 4 to 8 years?

But, while it's unlikely Democrats will pick up enough seats to win back the House (the average predicted is 8 - 12 seats, not the 30 needed), it's still within the realm of possibility.  What matters is turnout, the margin of Clinton's victory (over 8% could flip the House), and whether those Clinton voters vote straight Democratic ticket.  We hope enough people are tired of the games being played that undercut democratic governance and harm us as a nation to vote Republicans out. The problem goes way beyond Rump and needs to be rooted out, one election at a time.

BONUS: Jamelle Bouie's smart take on this: "The Republican Party has decided to react to Trump by recreating the conditions for another Trump."

More Rethuglican Show Trials

Just as the Benghazi Benghazi BENGHAZI!! show was an attempt by cynical Rethuglicans to, as their leader in the House put it, bring down Hillary Clinton's poll numbers, now they're at it again, this time over the puffed up e-mail story.  Today, the Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will put on a show trial of FBI Director James Comey, apparently because his bureau didn't play their game and recommend charges against Secretary Clinton. On Tuesday, Comey (who happens to be a Republican) patiently explained that the facts in the e-mail matter wouldn't lead any prosecutor to file charges. That's clearly not good enough for Congressional Rethugs, who are stuck with a bigoted buffoon as their candidate, and who are desperate to damage Clinton's election prospects by fanning the dying embers of their bogus "scandal."

Next week, Attorney General Loretta Lynch has her turn at a show trial before the House Judiciary Committee, where no doubt the Rethug members will have a whole conspiracy scenario concocted for her to refute. Did President Clinton bribe you when he met with you on your plane last week? Were you really born in Kenya? Nothing is beyond the bounds of sanity when you're dealing with lunatics.

For both show trials, we earnestly hope that the House Rethugs succeed in humiliating themselves thoroughly as they did previously with Secretary Clinton over Benghazi Benghazi BENGHAZI!!

Republican Nihilism And The Rise Of Trump

Paul Waldman:

...[T]he Republican willingness — indeed, eagerness — to abandon traditional norms of governing has crippled our political system.

While others might locate a different starting point, I'd argue that the seminal moment of this trend was the "Brooks Brothers riot" that occurred on November 19, 2000, during the counting of the disputed votes in Florida. Worried that election officials recounting votes in Miami-Dade county might produce a result favorable to Al Gore, Republicans sent congressional staffers posing as ordinary Floridians to the offices where the counting was taking place. They proceeded to shout, pound on doors, and generally intimidate the election officials, who eventually became so frightened for their safety that they stopped the counting.

That was just one particularly vivid incident in a remarkable story, in which the election came down to a state governed by the Republican candidate's brother, where the Republican candidate's state co-chair was also the state's chief election official, where the two of them had engineered a "purge" of voter rolls that had disenfranchised thousands of legitimate voters, and where the counting was eventually stopped by five Republican members of the Supreme Court, in what was one of the most absurd and shameful decisions in its history.  [snip]

...[T]he people who have come to dominate the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate arrived in Washington not to make laws, but to tear the institutions of government down. So it's quite alright with them if nothing in Washington works — after all, that only validates their argument to voters that government can't do anything right, and what we should do is continue to undermine it and strip away its protections wherever we can. [snip]

Where does this all lead? To Donald Trump.

When your party proves again and again that it treats governing like a joke, you wind up picking a joke of a candidate to be your nominee for president.

We've left plenty of meat out.  The entire article deserves a read.

Today's Cartoon -- A Perfect Storm of Mindless Political Nihilism

(click to enlarge)

(Tom Tomorrow, via Daily Kos)