Monday Reading - The Rot Runs Deep

It's so easy to find Republican rot, stinking from the head all the way to the tail. We didn't take long this morning.

Billy Bush, former "Access Hollywood" host, has a searing op/ ed in the New York Times that underscores what everyone, including serial sexual predator Donald "Rump" Trump, knows:

He said it. “Grab ’em by the pussy.” 

Of course he said it. And we laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America’s highest-rated bloviator. Along with Donald Trump and me, there were seven other guys present on the bus at the time, and every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass standup act. He was performing. Surely, we thought, none of this was real. 

We now know better. [snip]

This moment in American life is no doubt painful for many women. It is especially painful for the women who have come forward, at the risk of forever being linked to one event, this man, this president of the United States. (I still can’t believe I just wrote that.) 

To these women: I will never know the fear you felt or the frustration of being summarily dismissed and called a liar, but I do know a lot about the anguish of being inexorably linked to Donald Trump. You have my respect and admiration. You are culture warriors at the forefront of necessary change. 

The monster of whom he speaks came out this morning and tweeted (of course) his endorsement of fellow serial (underage) sexual predator Roy Moore for the Senate seat in Alabama because of course he would:

Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2017

While we're on Alabama, and as a sign of the pervasive Republican rot, look at this recent poll of Alabama Republicans:

A new CBS News poll finds 71 percent of Alabama Republicans say the allegations against Roy Moore are false, and those who believe this also overwhelmingly believe Democrats and the media are behind those allegations.

And we have to share this country with these pig people. Sic transit gloria, America. 

Desiccated Republican corn cob Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa has some contempt for his fellow Americans to share (spoiler alert: it's not the top 1 percent):

“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing — as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies,” Grassley told the Des Moines Register in an interview published Saturday. Grassley, who serves on the Finance Committee, made the remark when asked about the Senate tax reform measure which would double the exemption for estates to $11 million for an individual and $22 million for a couple. Heirs would inherit the estates tax-free.

Several days ago, we linked to a comment made by fellow desiccated Republican pluto-populist Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, but it's worth displaying again.  Here he's bloviating about funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), whose funding has lapsed thanks to his fellow scrotums:

"... I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions, trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves. Won’t lift a finger. Expect the federal government to do everything. [snip] 

In unfortunately the liberal philosophy, created millions of people that way [sic]. Believe everything they are or ever hope to be depend on the federal government rather than the opportunities that this great country grants them."

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein on the lack of truth, responsibility and respect for American institutions exhibited by Republicans, and how it has "broken" Congress:

Even today, many people like to imagine that the damage has all been President Trump’s doing — that he took the Republican Party hostage. But the problem goes much deeper. [snip] 

Mr. Trump’s election and behavior during his first 10 months in office represent not a break with the past but an extreme acceleration of a process that was long underway in conservative politics. The Republican Party is now rationalizing and enabling Mr. Trump’s autocratic, kleptocratic, dangerous and downright embarrassing behavior in hopes of salvaging key elements of its ideological agenda: cutting taxes for the wealthy (as part of possibly the worst tax bill in American history), hobbling the regulatory regime, gutting core government functions and repealing Obamacare without any reasonable plan to replace it. 

There has always been a core of roughly 25- 30 percent of the adult American population in this rotting tribe that has rationalized the Great Depression and the Great Recession, racism/ segregation, Watergate, police violence, Islamophobia, homophobia, blatant wealth redistribution-- you name the offense. They've been with us since the beginning of the Republic, in one form or another, and they'll continue to be with us in the future, in one form or another. Their rot is an ethical, moral, social and cultural rot, but it won't end their political drive. The challenge we must meet is to defeat them again and again and again.

Across The Universe, Cont. - The Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy

(click on image to enlarge)



From NASA/ ESA, November 27, 2014: This image (above) of the sky around the Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy was created from images from the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The galaxy appears as a small faint cloud, close to the centre of the image. 

The Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy is one of the Milky Way’s neighbouring dwarf galaxies. Like all large galaxies, the Milky Way is thought to have formed from smaller galaxies in the early Universe. This image (below) is composed from data from the Digitized Sky Survey 2.

Credit: ESA/Hubble, Digitized Sky Survey 2

Sunday Reflection - Hypocrisy

"What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is rotten to the core." -- Hannah Arendt, "On Revolution," Chapter 2 (1963), perhaps forecasting and diagnosing the condition we know as "Republicanism."

Sunday Reading -- "A Historic Tax Heist"

How maliciously bad is the Senate Republican "wealthfare" tax bill?

The New York Times

The bill is expected to add more than $1.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade, a debt that will be paid by the poor and middle class in future tax increases and spending cuts to Medicare, Social Security and other government programs. Its modest tax cuts for the middle class disappear after eight years. And up to 13 million people stand to lose their health insurance because the bill makes a big change to the Affordable Care Act. [snip] 

You can expect the lies to become even more brazen as Republicans seek to defend this terrible bill. But no amount of prevarication can change the fact that Congress and Mr. Trump are giving a giant gift to their donors and sticking the rest of the country with the tab.

The Washington Post 

The future they have mandated for the next generation is one in which the government has fewer resources to respond to a major economic crisis, let alone to invest in keeping the country competitive. The next time there is a recession, Congress will have to choose between pumping needed money into the economy and pushing the debt into ever more dangerous territory. Many more people could lose their jobs. [snip] 

Future generations will bear an enhanced debt burden so Republicans can cut taxes in the midst of an increasingly strong economic expansion that requires no intervention. The bill would exacerbate wealth inequality, perhaps the defining issue of the time. It is packed with gifts to the rich, including a totally unjustifiable cut in the estate tax, which would help only extremely wealthy heirs. Reform of the personal tax code would bring mild changes to ordinary people but massive benefits to wealthier people. Breaks for working folks would phase out in several years; those for corporations would not. The bill would limit states’ capacity to respond with policies of their own, and it harms Democratic states more than Republican ones. [snip] 

For those in the individual health-care market, the bill promises only to promote chaos by repealing the Affordable Care Act’s individual insurance mandate, a key element of the law, without a replacement. Senators such as Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who halted a sloppy repeal a few months ago, voted Friday to betray many of the people they once sought to protect. 

The Los Angeles Times

It’s worth remembering how congressional Republicans blocked all of the stimulus proposals Democrats made after the recession ended even though the economy was still stuck in low gear. Back then, they believed that budget deficits were a horrible, awful, no good thing. Now, not so much. 

Under federal budget law, however, Congress can’t just run a bigger deficit. If the tax cuts go into effect as proposed, they could trigger automatic, across-the-board cuts in a wide range of federal mandatory spending, including a 4% cut in Medicare. GOP leaders say they won’t let that happen; a more likely result is that Congress will agree to waive the across-the-board cuts and let the deficit grow. That would raise a different set of problems. More of the federal budget would be consumed by debt payments, and the ever-larger borrowing could push up interest rates for everyone. Ultimately, the next generation would be left to foot the bill for this Congress’ irresponsibility. That’s some victory for the GOP. 

The Miami Herald

The fiscal impact of the Senate bill would be even worse except for this perverse fact: It saves money by reducing Americans’ access to health care. Here’s how that works: A partial Obamacare repeal hidden in the GOP plan would result in 13 million fewer people carrying health-care coverage. With fewer people enrolled, the government would spend less money helping people pay for insurance. Under the GOP scheme, some people would choose not to get coverage, but the CBO is clear that many others would be priced out of the market. Republicans are proposing to sacrifice people’s access to health care in order to balance their numbers — and even then, their math does not add up. [snip] 

The Senate bill would, on paper, phase out tax breaks for individual filers after several years, which in theory reduces the bill’s cost over the 10-year period that the law requires Congress to take into account. But Republicans promise that future Congresses will not allow those breaks to sunset. In other words, the true increase in the debt they are proposing is much bigger than $1.4 trillion. They’re just not being honest about it.

Republicans at every level need to pay for this cynical abomination. None should be spared electoral defeat because all who call themselves "Republican" are complicit in this vicious wealth (and health) heist from low- and- moderate income Americans to corporations and the wealthiest. It's Class Warfare at it's most blatant and damaging, and they've chosen their side.

BONUS: Stephen Colbert on what Republicans pinched out --

Trump's "A Christmas Carol"

The cold open of "Saturday Night Live" gave us a take on "A Christmas Carol," with un- indicted co-conspirator Donald "Rump" Trump and his supporting cast:

Tweets Of The Day - Trump Cops To Obstruction Of Justice

Well, inadvertently. Proving once again that the legal team of deranged nitwit Donald "Rump" Trump has a fool for a client:

I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017

Oh my god, he just admitted to obstruction of justice. If Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI when he asked Comey to let it go, then there is your case. https://t.co/c6Wtd0TfzW

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) December 2, 2017

The President now admits that he knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when, as @Comey testified, Trump asked Comey to back off the Flynn investigation. https://t.co/3c0gDb2keR

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) December 2, 2017

(Wittes has a mini- tweetstorm on this that's worth a look.)

More reactions here.

Today's Cartoon Threefer

(click on images to enlarge)


(Joel Pett, Lexington Herald-Leader)


(Steve Breen, San Diego Union Leader)


(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

A Delicious Footnote In The Flynn Case

Disgraced felon and former National Security Advisor Michael "Lock Him Up" Flynn was nothing if not a stone-cold Islamaphobe, who last year called Islam a "cancer" and who peddled conspiracy theories (along with his wingnut son).  That's why it's a delicious fact that one of the two Federal prosecutors who handled Flynn's case yesterday before the U.S. District Court is Zainab Ahmad, a seasoned Federal prosecutor who successfully prosecuted multiple terrorism cases while Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, now assigned to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's "dream team." Ahmad is New York City-born of Pakistani ancestry.

This just keeps getting better.

(photo: Federal prosecutor Zainab Ahmad)

More Reactions To Republican "Wealthfare" Bill

Let's look around and see what people have to say about the travesty sociopathic Senate Republicans passed early this morning:

is there a word for the brazen corruption and dishonesty it takes to run on “drain the swamp” and then literally hand a pen to lobbyists to write a trillion dollar giveaway to plutocrats and their useless failsons?

— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) December 1, 2017

The CBO score of the revised Senate tax bill just landed. It raises 10-year deficits by $1.474 trillion.https://t.co/83q66zYfPT

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) December 2, 2017

Republicans have settled the debate on whether they give a damn about debt and deficits. They don’t. https://t.co/eDyilJOvFx

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) December 2, 2017

Just so we’re 100% clear:

The GOP is about to pass a tax bill they’ve consistently lied about, that has illegible handwriting for amendments, that is going to be signed by a president who increasingly looks like he was illegitimately elected with the help of a foreign adversary

— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) December 2, 2017

For the MAGA guys who don’t understand: the people handwriting the tax bill don’t give a damn about them or this country. They are $1,000 Gucci shoe-wearing lobbyists who get pols to sell us all out, again and again, because you LET THEM by falling for the GOP con.

— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) December 2, 2017

If you make less than $75,000, your federal tax bill will rise sharply over the long run - after a short-term cut. It's the short-term part of this bait & switch plan that @RealDonaldTrump has sold

— West Wing Reports (@WestWingReport) December 2, 2017

We (officially) became a class-based society tonight, and guess what? You are not a member of the ruling class.

— Tengrain (@Tengrain) December 2, 2017

Senate Republicans Pass Their "Wealthfare" Bill, Get Ready To Gut Entitlement Programs

They just couldn't help themselves.

Once un-principled weasels like Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake capitulated one by one to their tribal instincts to afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable, the Republican wealthfare tax bill was sure to pass.  And it did in the wee hours this morning by a 51-49 party line vote, with no "regular order" or time to review what was in the bill. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker was the only Republican who voted no, due to his "concerns" about blowing up the deficit.

Here's a very brief summary of the lowlights:

Senate Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion tax bill early Saturday morning that bestows massive benefits on corporate America and the wealthy while delivering mixed blessings to everybody else. [snip] 

The centerpiece of the GOP plan is a move to lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, starting in 2019. The Senate tax bill would also temporarily cut tax rates for families and individuals until 2025. 

But the bill would kill a number of tax benefits. It would subject fewer people to the estate tax, a levy charged on massive inheritances, but stop short of eliminating that tax altogether. 

The most recent review of the bill by the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s nonpartisan tax analysts, found that only 44 percent of taxpayers would see their burden reduced by more than $500 in 2019 but that high earners would fare much better than the poor under the bill. 

And the bill makes other changes that reach far beyond the tax code itself. It repeals the individual mandate from the Affordable Care Act, a major change that was added in recent weeks as part of a broader GOP effort to dismantle the Obama-era law. The individual mandate creates penalties for many Americans who don’t have health insurance, but the repeal would leave 13 million more people uninsured. It authorizes oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. And by curtailing deductions for state and local taxes, it will put pressure on some state and local spending on education, transportation and public health programs. (our emphasis)

But, as sweet as this pile of steaming sociopathy is to Republicans, it's just an appetizer for the main course:

High-ranking Republicans are hinting that, after their tax overhaul, the party intends to look at cutting spending on welfare, entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and other parts of the social safety net. [snip]

While whipping votes for a GOP tax bill on Thursday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) attacked “liberal programs” for the poor and said Congress needed to stop wasting Americans' money. 

“We're spending ourselves into bankruptcy,” Hatch said. “Now, let's just be honest about it: We're in trouble. This country is in deep debt. You don't help the poor by not solving the problems of debt, and you don't help the poor by continually pushing more and more liberal programs through.” (our emphasis)

Yes, those damn liberal programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Children's Health Insurance Program, the Affordable Care Act, etc.! Hatch* wouldn't want to waste more money on that stuff when it can be given to corporations and the wealthy as tax cuts. It's feed- the- fat- cats- and- hope- something- trickles- down- but- it- never- does  economics.  Or, as the wonderful John Dingell put it before the final vote:

Back in the 1800s, supply-side economics was called the “horse & sparrow” theory, the belief that if you fed the horse plenty of oats, enough would pass through onto the road to feed the sparrows.

A perfect descriptor for this horseshit idea.

— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) November 30, 2017

99% of you are in no way horses in this metaphor. You’re the damn birds. Call and yell at your Senator NOW. The number is 202-224-3121. #GOPTaxScam https://t.co/Ngdq3uWqji

— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) December 2, 2017

Make no mistake: this is Class Warfare at its most cruel.  This monstrous piece of reactionary wealth distribution needs to be hung around the necks of Republicans at every level, just as the Trump- Russia scandal and Roy Moore should be. It's another perfect example of their rotted- out core.

(Photo: You know where you can stick that thumb, right?)

*BONUS:  In case you don't know him, Hatch is this semi- mummified octogenarian millionaire --



Recent Hatch quote:  Rump is "one of the best I've served under."

BONUS II:  Here's a little more demonstrating Hatch's capacity for inhumanity.

BONUS III:  Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog looks at uber- hypocrite Jeff Flake in "a conservative and his conscience." 

Today's Cartoon Threefer

(click on images to enlarge)


(Ann Telnaes, Washington Post)


(Stuart Carlson, via gocomics.com)


(Dan Wasserman, Boston Globe)

Weekend Music

Had he not tragically died at the age of 35, groundbreaking jazz Hall of Fame bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius would have celebrated his 66th birthday today.  Here's his composition, "Teresa," recorded in 1986 as part of the "Stuttgart Aria." Hope you enjoy as we view the unfolding events of the day.

Ho Ho Ho! Wait, Where Is Everybody?

Last night was the lighting of the national Christmas tree on the Ellipse in Washington, DC. The weather was 50ish and dry, so there should have been a nice turnout, right?

The above photo (courtesy of Steve Rudin, WJLA) was snapped while sociopathic demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump was addressing the sparse "crowd." For comparison, the crowds that President Obama drew were much larger, as the photo below from 2016 shows.

Such a small audience for President Smallcup. Sad! It's the first big lump of coal in Rump's Christmas stocking, with more to come.

BREAKING: Flynn To Plead Guilty To Lying To FBI (UPDATED)

Arguably the biggest shoe yet in the Trump- Russia scandal has dropped. Perhaps this explains the frenzied flow of distractions from Donald "Rump" Trump in the past few days:

President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser has been charged with lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian government, an extraordinary development in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

Michael Flynn is scheduled to appear in federal court in D.C. at 10:30 a.m., where he’s expected to plead guilty to one count of making a false statement to FBI agents.

It's hard to avoid the assumption that Flynn has cut a deal to plead guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for the goods on one or more of the rats infesting the White (Supremacist) House.

This post will be updated.

Reactions are rolling in:

I told you from the very  beginning that Flynn would flip.

Oh my God this is going to be glorious as the MAGAs lose their minds and turn Flynn into History's Greatest Monster.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 1, 2017

Note that lying to the FBI, a 5-yr federal felony, is obviously just the tip of a YUUUGE Russian/Turkish iceberg over which Flynn is manifestly cooperating with Mueller. Those criminally implicated necessarily include Donald Jr., Jared, and Donald himself.

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) December 1, 2017

The fact hat it’s a one count “information” rather than “indictment” is a dead give away that he is cooperating and has a deal. https://t.co/T3SCvJ5BUw

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) December 1, 2017

And, from "father of cannons" Ben Wittes --

BOOM!!!https://t.co/1Ui5pYL1GK pic.twitter.com/s8c8NA6bdP

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) December 1, 2017

UPDATE:  Former FBI Director James Comey is feeling some righteous schadenfreude today:

“But justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” Amos 5:24 https://t.co/o89PSY1YBd

— James Comey (@Comey) December 1, 2017

Obstruction Much?

The New York Times is reporting that Putin loyalist and unhinged demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump pressured key Rethuglican Senators last summer to end their investigations of his campaign's involvement with Russia during the 2016 Presidential campaign. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr was one of the Rethuglican Senators importuned by Rump to end the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. Rump reportedly also approached Senate Majority Leader and human / turtle hybrid Mitch "Missy' McConnell and Intelligence Committee member Sen. Roy Blunt with demands that the investigations be wrapped up quickly.

Earlier this year, Rump infamously fired former FBI Director James Comey for pursuing the Russiagate scandal and for investigating disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael "Lock Him Up" Flynn, who he was trying to shield. He admitted in a televised interview with NBC's Lester Holt that he had fired Comey over the "Russia thing."  He later bragged to Russia's ambassador to the U.S. and to Russia's Foreign Minister in the Oval Office that firing Comey had "eased pressure" on the Russia investigation, to their obvious delight.

There are undoubtedly more occasions where Rump tried to obstruct the investigations into his campaign's treasonous involvement with Moscow in influencing the 2016 elections, and we await their exposure and Special Counsel Mueller's action on them.