QOTD -- The "Accelerator Of American Political Decay" In China

 

"... The Times highlighted a recent report from a Beijing think tank affiliated with Renmin University, which sardonically thanked the American president for having done so much to weaken his own country.

"The report called Trump an 'accelerator of American political decay,' with the U.S. sliding toward polarization, institutional dysfunction and even 'Latin American-style instability.'

"And consider the evidence: The Republican arrives in China not just as an erratic figure doing lasting harm to the United States’ global stature, but as a weakened leader at home. It is not lost on officials in Beijing that Trump is an unpopular president, struggling to deal with domestic economic tumult, a failed tariff agenda and an unnecessary war that hasn’t gone according to plan, and whose political party is likely to suffer significant losses in the fall.

"It’s not exactly a position of strength..." -- Steve Benen, MaddowBlog, on why the Chinese (and other rival nations) are quite happy that the easily manipulated moron Malignant Fascist is President.  The election of the MF twice has often been described as national suicide, and the Chinese and others are only too happy to watch and smile.

Stop Seeing Debt Ceiling Crisis As Normal

 

Across a variety of national media, we've seen the debt ceiling hostage taking by Republican extremists described as a normal way of doing business. In fact, it's used when those extremists control the Congress and Dems control the White House to bypass the budget and appropriations process to make radical cuts in popular, Dem-backed programs. Here's an excerpt from Steve Benen's take on the problem:

"There were debt ceiling talks in 2011 — though at the time, Barack Obama saw this as an opportunity to engage in budget negotiations, not ransom payments — which participants, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, soon recognized as a messy mistake not to be repeated.

Throughout the remainder of Obama’s presidency, he refused to engage in such discussions. Republicans grudgingly acquiesced and Congress received no treats for agreeing to pay the nation’s bills. During the Trump era, there was no need for debt ceiling negotiations — because Democrats didn’t ask for any. The same was true during George W. Bush’s two terms. [snip]

Let’s not miss the forest for the trees: The Republicans’ 2011 fight was the first time a major American political party used the debt ceiling to threaten to deliberately crash the economy. This year, GOP officials are doing it again. But in 'modern times,' at least in this country, policymakers have steered clear of such extortion tactics.

It’s imperative that observers stop seeing the Republicans’ debt ceiling crises as normal and start seeing them as scandalous.

GOP leaders are threatening to harm Americans on purpose, and to shrug one’s shoulders and see this as routine is to miss not only how U.S. politics has traditionally worked, but also how honorable elected officials are supposed to conduct the people’s business."  (our emphasis)

Benen cites a couple of examples, one from the New York Times and another from CNBC, of the media playing this extortion off as a routine function of Government, and not an illegitimate attempt by the far right to get budget concessions through extortion because their arguments can't win in the court of public opinion.

 

QOTD -- Gaslighting

 

"...To briefly summarize, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, pointing to research on public safety, indoor pollution, and childhood asthma, raised the prospect of new safeguards related to gas stoves. No one would be forced to replace their existing stoves, but a political backlash soon followed anyway — with far too many Republicans effectively telling the public that President Joe Biden was on his way to American kitchens to take their ovens away.

Among the things to remember about this is a simple truth: Republicans know how dumb this is. They know Biden, wrench in hand, will not confiscate any household appliances.

But the party can’t shake its reliance on juvenile antics. The focus on Dr. Seuss, Potato Head dolls, and inefficient lightbulbs has given way to pointless rhetoric about gas ovens and executive orders about critical race theory in states in which no schools teach critical race theory.

Republicans do this for a variety of reasons, none of which is especially compelling: The party enjoys scoring cheap points, keeping activists they see as fools fully engaged, providing fodder for conservative media, and creating the basis for new fundraising gimmicks..." --  Steve Benen, Maddowblog, on the latest "juvenile antic" of the rotted- out Republican Party.  (Whatever happened to "they're comin' to git yer guns!"?)  We suppose this is what they think of as a wedge issue for suburban women, but there may be, um, other issues more at the forefront:

(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

QOTD -- It's A Big F*cking Deal!!

 

"The package has been hailed as the biggest climate bill in American history, and the description is more than fair. At the heart of the reconciliation package is roughly $369 billion in investments in climate and energy programs. This includes everything from tax credits for electric vehicles to methane reductions, energy-efficient home improvements to the launch of a National Climate Bank.

"It’s also a health care bill, empowering Medicare for the first time to negotiate the cost of some prescription medications with the pharmaceutical industry. It doesn’t apply to all medications, and the benefits won’t begin right away, but nevertheless, Democrats have spent years trying to get a breakthrough victory on this issue, and yesterday, they succeeded.

"What’s more, the bill includes a three-year extension on the Affordable Care Act subsidies that helped push the nation’s uninsured rate to an all-time low.

"Taken together, this represents the biggest legislative accomplishment of either party since the Affordable Care Act passed more than a decade ago..." -- Steve Benen at Maddowblog on the historic nature of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, just passed by Senate Democrats.  As Benen notes, this wouldn't have been possible if not for Republican "missteps" that handed the Senate over to Democrats in 2021.  Nevertheless, it's a huge win for the country and for efforts to stem global climate change.  Pass it on!

BONUS:

 

Dark Brandon is crushing it pic.twitter.com/w0L8xCzIW8

— Andrew Bates (@AndrewJBates46) August 7, 2022

 

 

QOTD -- Unpunished Is Rewarded

"The Trump campaign will do whatever it takes to win. That, in a nutshell, is why the scandal can’t wait. One of the key pillars of the whole controversy has been a simple fact: Trump intended to cheat in the election by way of an extortion scheme. The president, rightly or wrongly, saw Joe Biden as a credible electoral threat, which led him to push a vulnerable foreign ally to cook up some dirt Republicans could use before Election Day.

"To let this go unpunished is to effectively encourage the president who knows no limits, and believes there can be no checks on his misconduct, to keep exploring other cheating options. [snip]

"To ask “the American people” to decide the proper resolution is to assume the president intends to play fair over the next 12 months. Trump has already made it painfully obvious that he has a very different plan in mind."  --Steve Benen on why Republicans' "let the voters decide" deflection is so obviously flawed.  The voters, not the electoral college, decided in 2016, and how did that work out for us?  More importantly, Republicans don't act in good faith, and they're not into fair elections.  They lie, they cheat, and they steal to hold onto power, including getting help from foreign adversaries -- that's why nitwit crime family boss Donald "The Dumb Don" Trump is the perfect representative of their party's ethos, and why they support him.  Let that be their epitaph.

Monday Reading

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

Vox's Dara Lind writes about the very specific, odd reference demagogue racist Donald "Rump" Trump has been making about women being smuggled into the US:

Donald Trump’s rhetoric about the border is built on a lie: the idea that the US-Mexico border is a lawless place where American citizens are constantly in grave danger, and where criminals are able to smuggle drugs and people without any risk of apprehension. That big picture — as Vox and the rest of the media has made clear again and again — bears very little resemblance to the truth. 

But the claim about women gagged with tape and packed into vans has attracted particular attention because it’s quickly become a centerpiece of Trump’s rhetoric — according to the Post, as of Friday he’d made 10 references to it in 22 days — without anyone knowing exactly where Trump got it from. 

Border experts have told the Post and other reporters that they’ve never heard anything like what Trump’s talking about.

The Border Patrol has now been on a mission to find out what Rump is talking about, hustling to find "evidence" to back up the moron's fever dream.

(Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog has a plausible explanation as to how this particular bug entered the big brain of the Very Stable Genius:  "I wonder if someone at the White House is showing Trump stock footage and insisting to Trump that it's real."  Steve provides a clip that could've been used to fool the fool.)

Michael Tomasky writes about the prospect of "Nancy and Chuck" owning Rump for the duration, and looks back briefly on the Rump manhood wall debacle:

It’s worth chortling again for a few paragraphs over how ridiculous and weak they made Trump look. Remember, this is a man who spent years, going way back before he started campaigning in 2015, saying over and over and over how easy being president would be. Bring the Chinese to heel? Very easy. Make Middle East peace? Please. Get Mexico to pay for the wall? Piece of cake. He’s been saying these things in books and television appearances for years. 

I can’t imagine who believed him—and if anyone out there was a big enough idiot to do so, that’s their problem. But the point is that he believed it. He actually thought being president would be easy (and the way he does it, watching TV for hours a day and calling Sean Hannity and ignoring 95 percent of what the government under him does, it sort of is, but that’s another matter). 

For two years, it was kind of easy. But in January, he met reality.

And as we all know, reality bites (if you're Rump).

Steve Benen wonders if Republicans have learned anything about Rump as a result of the Trump shutdown fiasco:

[W]hat’s of interest at this point is what, if anything, Republicans have learned from their recent experience. Both Senate Republicans offered specific and unambiguous predictions based on what they assumed to be true about the president, his plans, and his capacity for following through. 

Do they now know better? Shouldn’t they?

With that in mind, consider some of what Trump’s GOP should understand now, even if they were unclear before the president’s surrender on Friday afternoon.

Benen goes on to list 5 things about Rump that they should realize by now. "Should."

Meanwhile, on the keeping- Putin- happy front:

The U.S. Treasury Department on Sunday officially lifted sanctions on businesses tied to the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. 

The department said in a news release that the Office of Foreign Assets Control lifted sanctions on EN+ Group Plc and EuroSibEnergo JSC, noting that each company has reduced Deripaska's "direct and indirect shareholding stake in these companies and severed his control." [snip]

Democrats in Congress attempted to block the move. But Senate Republicans were able to defeat the measure and prevent it from advancing to a floor vote earlier this month.  

The agreement the Treasury Department reached with Deripaska included having him cut his direct and indirect share ownership for each company below 50 percent.  

But The New York Times reported last week that Deripaska and his allies are set to retain majority ownership the energy company EN+. 

There is no way -- none -- that this is not a cave to Putin, fully supported by the rotted out Republican Party.

Finally, please do yourselves a favor and check out Infidel 753's link round- up for much more than we have the energy to dig up here.  It's the best round up of "interesting stuff" on the planet.

Mittens' Mendacity, Part 16

Rethuglican presidential nominee-to-be, the weird Willard "Pinocchio" Romney has a well deserved reputation for lying his ass off playing fast and loose with the truth. Most recently, his opponents for the Rethug nomination were happy to point out his lies and blatant dishonesty about his record. It's difficult to keep up with the falsehoods, but luckily the MaddowBlog's Steve Benen performs a public service by his weekly compilation of weird Willard's tall tales. Read it and remember that Pinocchio would say anything to get elected. Anything.

Mr. Mendacity, Cont'd.

Steve Benen at the Maddowblog continues his public service of documenting the falsehoods and misleading statements made each week by Willard "Mendacious Mittens" Romney in his quest to purchase the Presidency. You'll see little if any of this in our broken mainstream media, which prefers to play scorekeeper rather than actually practice journalism.

Among our favorite whoppers: 1) that President Obama doubled the budget deficit, when it's been reduced from $1.3 trillion when he took office to $1.1 trillion, and 2) that the President didn't put crippling sanctions in place against Iran, when in fact he did and Iran is being hammered by them.