President-elect Donald Trump will name Andy Puzder, CEO of a major fast-food chain, to serve as Labor secretary, according to Bloomberg.
Puzder, who’s the CEO of CKE Restaurants, met with Trump for the second time on Wednesday. CKE Restaurants is the parent company of burger chains Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.
During Thursday morning’s transition call, Trump aides wouldn’t confirm or deny that Puzder would be tapped for the position, but said there will “additional Cabinet information” announced later in the day.
Puzder served as an economic adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and has been a vocal opponent of President Obama’s controversial rule expanding overtime pay.
Obama’s rule, which would require overtime pay for most salaried workers who make less than $47,476 annually, is temporarily on hold due to a Texas court’s order.
In an op-ed published in May, Puzder argued that the rule adds to the “extensive regulatory maze the Obama Administration has imposed on employers.
International Franchise Association’s President and CEO Robert Cresanti applauded Trump’s expected nomination, calling Puzder “an exceptional choice” to helm the Labor Department.
Gloomy and Doomy Friday Reads
Posted: March 11, 2022 Filed under: inflation, the villagers, Trump 25 Comments
Viktor Zaretsky, Easter still life, 1989. Ukrainian
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
I’m starting with the two hopeful headlines today since the rest are just depressing. I’m feeling blue and seeing red. Who isn’t down with putting Orange Caligula in jail? Today, in The Guardian the headline reads “Likelihood of criminal charges against Trump rising, experts say. Some ex-prosecutors call on DoJ to accelerate investigation after House panel’s allegations Trump broke laws to overturn election.”
The likelihood of a criminal investigation and charges against Donald Trump are rising due to allegations by a House panel of a “criminal conspiracy” involving his aggressive drive to overturn the 2020 election results, coupled with a justice department (DoJ) inquiry of a “false electors” scheme Trump loyalists devised to block Joe Biden’s election.
Former federal prosecutors say evidence is mounting of criminal conduct by Trump that may yield charges against the ex- president for obstructing an official proceeding of Congress on 6 January or defrauding the US government, stemming from his weeks-long drive with top allies to thwart Biden’s election by pushing false claims of fraud.
A 2 March court filing by the House January 6 panel implicated Trump in a “criminal conspiracy” to block Congress from certifying Biden’s win, and Trump faces legal threats from justice department investigations under way into a “false electors” ploy, and seditious conspiracy charges filed against Oath Keepers who attacked the Capitol, say department veterans.
The filing by the House panel investigating the 6 January assault on the Capitol by a mob of pro-Trump supporters stated that it has “a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States”.
The panel’s hard-hitting findings about Trump’s criminal schemes were contained in a federal court filing involving top Trump lawyer John Eastman, who has fought on attorney client privilege grounds turning over a large cache of documents including emails sought by the committee.
Back in January, the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, also revealed a criminal investigation was being launched into a far reaching scheme in seven states that Biden won which was reportedly overseen by Trump’s ex-lawyer Rudy Giuliani to replace legitimate electors with false ones pledged to Trump.
But the House panel’s blockbuster allegations that Trump broke laws to overturn the election have prompted some ex-prosecutors to call on the justice department to quickly accelerate its investigations to focus on the multiple avenues that Trump used to nullify the election results in tandem with top allies like Giuliani.
“The compelling evidence of criminal activity by Trump revealed by the committee in its recent 61-page court filing should spur DoJ to act expeditiously,” Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of DoJ’s fraud section, told the Guardian.
“Given the gravity of the revelations, the department should consider a strike force or even a special counsel to coalesce sufficient resources to focus on these criminal attacks that strike at the heart of our democracy,” Pelletier added. “There is no time to waste now that the House committee has provided the clearest view yet into how Trump and his campaign apparently schemed to upend our democracy.”
‘Young guard’ VIKTOR IVANOVICH ZARETSKY
Additionally, NPR is reporting this: “New clues emerge about the money that might have helped fund the Jan. 6 insurrection”. This is reported by Claudia Grisales.
The latest peek into questions around the money that might have helped fuel the attack arrived with the Republican National Committee suing to thwart a subpoena from the committee.
The filing reveals that the Democratic-led panel quietly subpoenaed an RNC vendor, San Francisco-based Salesforce, last month.
After the suit became public, the committee quickly defended the effort, saying it was looking into a new push led by former President Trump asking for donations after he lost his 2020 bid for re-election.
“Ever since Watergate, one of the central adages in… congressional investigations of presidential wrongdoing has been follow the money,” said Norm Eisen, a former House lawyer in Trump’s first impeachment case. “The 1/6 committee investigation has been sweeping in all of its dimensions, and this is no exception.”
The committee’s Feb. 23 subpoena of Salesforce emphasized its interest in the company’s hosting of Trump emails asking for new donations that included false claims of election fraud.
It’s part of a central question the panel hopes to answer: Did Trump find new ways to keep the money coming in after his loss by shifting from a presidential campaign to a “Stop the Steal” effort?
“I think the level of grift that was involved with the Trump campaign and people close to the former president, how the January Six efforts were for many of them, this is what they were doing to make money,” said California Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar, a member of the Jan. 6 panel. “We are looking into that.”
The committee’s investigators are broken down into highly skilled teams with core areas of focus, including one that’s on the money.
Aguilar says each team has been making “significant progress,” with regular presentations to the full committee on its findings. Each has been charged with devising a strategy for depositions and hearings.
“The committee has not tipped its hand of everything they have,” Eisen said. “They dedicated significant resources to the money trails. And I’m certain that in the hearings and in the final report, there’s going to be much more evidence revealed.”
This spring, the committee hopes to hold its first hearings illustrating the findings so far and issue an interim report by the summer with a final report this fall.
Spring Has Come, Victor Zaretsky, 1988
Let’s hope the arms of justice are getting ready to throttle the Trump Family Crime Syndicate. Lock him up!
What’s really making me see red these days is the relentless media chatter about inflation and how it will blow back on the Democratic Party come November. There really are a bunch of clueless people reporting on the economy. Every time I read one of these articles I scream. I usually admire Catherine Rampell but this headline is just clickbait: “Opinion: Americans are unhappy with the economy. Many on the left don’t want to hear it.” It’s on the Op-Ed page of The Washington Post.
I’ve spent hours this week being mansplained and dogmasplained things that are just are not true and the media is not helping by actually elucidating the situation. We had a demand shock, now the economy is growing gangbusters and that and a few other things that are market-oriented have created inflation. It’s not really anything you can nail on to the folks on the fiscal side of economic policy. This is the Fed’s bailiwick. It should cool down within 6 months but the Russian Invasion of Ukraine has created a lot of uncertainty. All bets are off on predictions of economic factors when they are based on history and theory and can’t predict the number of black swans we’ve had recently which include the invasion, Covid-19, and 4 years of an insane, criminal US President.
Inflation is spiking, and Democrats — who, rightly or wrongly, are poised to take the blame this November — appear to be in denial about it.
Consumer prices rose 7.9 percent in February from a year earlier, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. This was, yet again, the fastest pace of price growth in four decades. The increases were broad-based, affecting food, fuel, airfares, shelter, and more. Meanwhile, worker paychecks fell further behind, as overall inflation outpaced average wage growth.
These data were collected largely before the Russia-related run-up in global energy prices. Which suggests that next month’s overall inflation reading could be worse.
Given these trends, Americans are unhappy with the economy. But many on the left don’t want to hear it.
In recent months, many Democrats and their allies have approached the (political) problem of inflation by either denying any serious issue exists; or acknowledging it exists but demagoguing about its cause.
Some lefty politicians and commentators have argued that inflation is not that big of a deal. Americans have been tricked into thinking things are bad mostly because the media (and/or Republicans) keep telling them things are bad, this argument goes. Articles such as this one, drawing attention to inflation, are to blame.
I actually agree that much of the economic coverage has fallen short. For example: Contrary to recent headlines, gas prices aren’t really at all-time highs, at least not when adjusted for the changing value of the dollar. And there has been much more emphasis on soaring prices (bad news, boo) than on dwindling unemployment (good news, yay!).
Yet, it’s delusional to think that ordinary people wouldn’t care much about inflation if only the media stopped discussing it. People notice when they pay more for groceries, rent, gasoline, pet food, diapers. It is painful. It is unsettling. And inflation affects a broader swath of people than does a change in the unemployment rate, so more people are going to complain.
Viktor Zaretsky: By the Lake (1978)
Rampell wrote this last December “Every time I think the inflation discourse can’t get dumber, I’m proven wrong.” I completely agree with that assertion.
Corporate greed. The cancellation of an oil pipeline that didn’t yet exist. A secret plot to cancel Halloween.
Every time I think the inflation discourse can’t get dumber, I’m proven wrong.
To be fair: The forces behind inflation, like many economic problems, are complicated. Economists can’t fully explain what determines current pricing behavior and inflation expectations in the real world, much less precisely predict where prices will land in a few months. New waves in the pandemic aren’t helping, either.
Most inflation predictions that top forecasters made in the spring turned out to be much too low. Elite academic economists, when surveyed about the risks of prolonged inflation, candidly acknowledge a lot of uncertainty.
All of which means there’s a lot of room for reasonable error on this issue, even among experts. But lately partisan factions have concocted new, unreasonable sources of error, too. Some of this rhetoric has been impressively creative; it’s basically like inflation fan fiction.
We economists really don’t assign pejorative terms to the actions of economic agents but I can tell you, huge oligopolies are going to take advantage of the situation and get whatever they can out of it. Let’s look at this.
There are three factors driving oil prices right now. None can be controlled by a President. First, the bounceback in demand due to increased driving now that Covid-19 shutdowns have slowed down and people are going back to work and school. Second, the uncertainty around the Russian invasion of Ukraine since Russia is an OPEC member. Third, Oil companies are using the run-up to do what profit and bonus loving companies always can do when there are few producers (oligopoly) and no real ability for a government to regulate a world market.
There are lots of leases and permits out there for any US oil company to Drill Baby Drill. Biden has even increased their availability. They are not exercising them. They’re happy with the high prices coming back. Or, as Jen eloquently put it to Dumbo Doucy:
I suppose I shouldn’t mention here that I think he’s just a sub looking for the right Dom but he asks these stupid questions over and over.
And look to my tweet for what they are doing which is exactly what the Trump tax cuts and the Bush tax cuts incented them to do. You make more money doing Wall Street tricks than you do when you actually do your business. Nowhere is this more true than any extraction business.
Girls Victor Ivanovich Zaretsky, 1962
From the Financial Times: “Big Oil on course for near-record $38bn in share buybacks. Seven majors set for supercharged stock purchasing on top of estimated $50bn of dividends” This is all going on while Biden is scrambling to find any OPEC member that will release the gushers and opening the country’s reserves. Read on and pay particular attention to what I highlighted.
Western energy majors are on course to buy back shares at near-record levels this year as soaring oil and gas prices enable them to deliver bumper profits and boost returns for investors. The seven supermajors — including BP, Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron — are poised to return $38bn to shareholders through buyback programmes this year, according to data from Bernstein Research. Investment bank RBC Capital Markets put the total figure higher, at $41bn. That would be almost double the $21bn in buybacks completed in 2014 — when oil last traded above $100 a barrel — and the biggest total since 2008. The plans underscored the strength of companies that are reaping the rewards of a resurgence in energy demand as pandemic lockdown restrictions are rolled back. Gas prices are at record levels and oil is trading at a seven-year high of more than $90 a barrel, resulting in big profits for the supermajor group rounded out by TotalEnergies, Eni and Equinor.
Banks including Goldman Sachs expect Brent crude to trade at more than $100 this year, with some predicting that if Russia invades Ukraine it will trigger a sharper spike in energy costs.
Biraj Borkhataria at RBC Capital Markets said: “The sector is in the best shape it’s been in for a long time. Now the question is the duration of the cycle.” The underperformance of the companies’ shares during the pandemic meant that management teams felt their shares were undervalued and that buybacks were cheap, he added
Shell is set to lead the pack in 2022, buying back more than $12bn of its own shares, according to RBC and Bernstein. At least $8.5bn of those buybacks will be completed in the first half of the year, Shell said this month, including $5.5bn from the sale of its assets in the US Permian basin.
Chevron bought back shares worth $1.4bn in 2021 and has said it will spend $3bn to $5bn on buybacks this year.
If you were a CEO sitting on top of stock bonuses, etc what on earth would you do given “The sector is in the best shape it’s been in for a long time.” They’re rational actors after all. And wtf can President Biden do about any of this? The entire energy sector is in great shape. What incentives do they have to change?
So, that’s an explanation you can tell folks if you need to. The biggest thing that would bring prices down would be for Putin to stop his madness in Ukraine and the entire free world is working on that.
But, for some reason, Americans think they’re entitled to low gas prices and need large vehicles. They forget the last cycles that have been recurrent since the 70s which basically all point back to OPEC which is a cartel that colludes to keep prices high until someone cheats and it falls apart and prices go down. That’s economics 101 stuff. I know this because I was in Economics 101 when the first Opec oil embargo hit. I even had a chance to listen to a panel of top Economists talk about it and got brave enough to ask a question.
Anyway, the Twitter round-up on Ukraine shows the world is trying to get to Putin.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday that Ukraine is “part of the European family” and that a fourth package of sanctions for Russia is coming along with a plan to wean the EU off Russian fuel sources by 2027. US President Joe Biden also announced plans to revoke Russia’s “most favored nation” trade status and ban key Russian goods like seafood, vodka and diamonds. Meanwhile, explosions were reported on Friday in Lutsk, near the Polish border, in Dnipro, a major stronghold in central-eastern Ukraine, and in Ivano-Frankivsk, in the south-west, Ukrainian authorities say.
So long Beluga caviar and Stolichnaya Vodka rich Americans! Suck it up for Ukraine while the rest of us worry about gas and energy prices. And then there’s this piece of good news that sends me back to the research role in monetary and trade unions.
Okay, I hope I wasn’t too gloomy or doomy for you. I generously sprinkled the work of Ukrainian artist Viktor Zaretsky to break up the rest.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Anyway, move over Trudeau and Macron, there’s a new guy in town!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKHGp1XPv48
Monday Reads: #MeToo v Brett Kavanaugh #Be Silent No More!
Posted: September 17, 2018 Filed under: morning reads, SCOTUS, social justice, Trump | Tags: Brett Kavanaugh, misogyny, rape, Sexual harassment, white male privilege and justice and crime 43 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
When preppy smug Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser unmasked herself in WAPO yesterday I knew exactly what this Monday Post would explore. There were inklings of all kinds of moral lapses and weirdness in Kavanaugh’s binders full of boys will be boys.
He had a lascivious obsession with the details of the Lewinsky/Clinton affair. He worked for predator Judge Alexis Kozinski but managed to see or hear nothing. He belonged to an all boy social club known informally as “Tit and Clit” because that was evidently all it was about. He was an infamous heavy drinker and rumors swirled about possible gambling addictions and odd debt and financial transactions. Additionally, it’s pretty clear he’s lied before several senate committees under oath.
We were supposed to be distracted by the cute kids he coaches and his indefatigable list of 65 high school women that magically appeared to vouch for his activities. But, women every where are beginning to learn the Truth will set you Free. Listen, I knew the Jesuit prep school culture in Omaha during my high school years. Those guys had some of the girls schools labelled the source of Madonnas and potential wives and other ones the girls were whores and prey. I was repeatedly warned by Catholic school girl friends to make sure you were never alone with a group of them. I can’t imagine it was anything but the same situation on steroids in those exclusive DC suburbs. This could be stuff I witnessed ten years earlier. I’m tempted to ask my daughters if those same prep schoolers still behave like this. I have a feeling they do.
Judge, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at the all-male Georgetown Prep the time of the alleged assault, tells stories in his 1997 memoir, Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk, of binge drinking at teen parties and trying to “hook up” with girls.
It was at one such gathering, Ford told the Post, that Kavanaugh and Judge, both drunk, shoved her into a bedroom. She said that Kavanaugh locked the door, pushed her onto a bed, fumbled with her clothing, held her down and attempted to force himself on her. Ford said she managed to escape when Judge jumped on top of both of them. Kavanaugh has “categorically” denied the accusations.
Judge recalls in his book how his life changed when he first got drunk at the age of 14 and later battled alcoholism.
His “immersion” into alcohol began the end of his sophomore year during a typical annual “beach week,” when Catholic high school students headed to the shore after school was out. “Now I had an opportunity to make some headway [with girls]. Most of the time everyone, including the girls, was drunk. If you could breathe and walk at the same time, you could hook up,” he wrote.
His drinking became so extreme that he had blackout episodes, and woke up on the floor of a restaurant bathroom with no memory of how he got there. Once “I had the first beer, I found it impossible to stop until I was completely annihilated,” he wrote.
And that’st the deal, I wonder if we can ever get rid of this culture of raising young men to be predators. But back to the cad at hand. I put this up on the thread yesterday but I’m giving it my full attention now because, well, THIS!!! Garrett Epps,Professor of constitutional law at the University of Baltimore and writer for the Atlantic wrote this yesterday: “The Subtext of Kavanaugh’s Nomination Bursts Into the Open. A sexual-assault allegation against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee brings the fight over gender and power to the fore.”
The gendered subtext of this moment is, not to put too fine a point on it, war—war to the knife—over the future of women’s autonomy in American society. Shall women control their own reproduction, their health care, their contraception, their legal protection at work against discrimination and harassment, or shall we move backward to the chimera of past American greatness, when the role of women was—supposedly for biological reasons—subordinate to that of men?
That theme became became apparent even before the 2016 election, when candidate Donald Trump promised to pick judges who would “automatically” overturn Roe v. Wade. The candidate was by his own admission a serial sexual harasser. On live national television, he then stalked, insulted, and physically menaced his female opponent—and he said, in an unguarded moment, that in his post-Roe future, women who choose abortion will face “some form of punishment.”
In context, Trump promised to restore the old system of dominion—by lawmakers, husbands, pastors, institutions, and judges—over women’s reproduction. Arguably that platform propelled Trump into the White House: Many evangelical Christian voters chose to overlook Trump’s flagrant sexual immorality, his overt contempt for the basics of faith, because they believed he would end abortion forever.
It’s also why Trump is going all in on the nominee. Kavanaugh’s got the same MOs as Trump. They’re freaking soul mates. Both are entitle dicks who hate women and feel they have the right to take and do whatever they want and to say whatever they want, and to freaking make decisions over “lesser beings” like people from shithole countries and women. Trump sees conspiracies when people actually try to hold any of them all to account for immoral, terrible behavior. They’re alllowed in their mind’s eye.
In the hours after a 51-year-old California professor came forward to publicly allege that Judge Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while they were in high school, the White House signaled no interest in slowing Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.
Instead, the president’s team and his allies on and off the Hill began to mount a vigorous defense against the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, questioning why she had identified herself only now, and framing Kavanaugh’s alleged behavior as almost commonplace in nature.
A senior White House official told The Daily Beast that, as of Sunday evening, things are still “full steam ahead” for Kavanaugh. On Friday afternoon, a different White House official confirmed that President Trump had been made aware of the earlier reports involving the Kavanaugh sexual-misconduct allegation—reports that did not name the accuser.
The president has told those close to him in recent days that he believes there is a “conspiracy” or organized effort by Democrats to smear Kavanaugh and try to derail the nomination of a “good man.” One Trump confidant said Sunday that they “can’t imagine that” Ford coming forward will change the president’s position, and that it will far more likely cause Trump to dig in and attack those going after Kavanaugh.
The response from Team Trump rang all too familiar for women who have come forward in the past to allege that they had been targeted by prominent male officials. And for veterans of Clarence Thomas’ nomination for the Supreme Court seat some three decades ago, the echoes were even more profound. The extent to which lessons have been learned from that episode —and what specific lessons they are—could very well determine Kavanaugh’s fate in the coming days.
I’ve been mad about stuff like this for a very long time and I’ve never cooled down over it. I will never, EVER vote for Joe Biden because ANITA HILL. And you want a story? I was assaulted in the choir room in my high school by 2 hyperchristians. I felt fortunate I didn’t get raped. I just finally started talking about it 3 years ago. I’m finally talking about what my exhusband did to me when I was 36 and both my kids’ godparents saw the bruises as did my parents and his mother. My oldest daughter’s godparents even asked me if it was okay they talk to him at her wedding because they knew what he did to me. Just about every victim of abuse has to think long and hard about coming forward. My friend in college was raped in the University of Nebraska Library Stacks. She thought she had no options because she had smoked a joint prior to going to study. At the time, the laws let her sexual history and all kinds of crap come forward. It was and still is a torturous process for victims no matter how long SVU has been on TV.
And she was 15 and he was 17.
And his behavior was not the normal high school boy stupidity. Read the details. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has a posse and it includes me because I know what it’s like. I know it includes most of his here including many men.
A group of women who went to Christine Blasey Ford’s high school are circulating a letter to show support for the woman who has alleged that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to sexually assault her while they were in high school.
“We believe Dr. Blasey Ford and are grateful that she came forward to tell her story,” says a draft letter from alumnae of Holton-Arms, a private girls school in Bethesda, Maryland. “It demands a thorough and independent investigation before the Senate can reasonably vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to a lifetime seat on the nation’s highest court.”
The women also say that what Ford is alleging “is all too consistent with stories we heard and lived while attending Holton. Many of us are survivors ourselves.”
The letter is a boost of support for Ford, who has been thrust into the political spotlight and had her credibility questioned by going up against Kavanaugh and the White House. The signatories span decades at the school, both before, during and after Ford attended.
More than 200 women had signed the letter as of late Monday morning, said Sarah Burgess, a member of the class of 2005. Burgess said she and some of her schoolmates wrote the letter because hearing Ford’s story felt “personal.”
“I know that in the coming days, her story will be scrutinized, and she will be accused of lying,” Burgess said in an email. “However, I grew up hearing stories like hers, and believe her completely.”
Politico had this to say this morning: “Why God Is Laughing at Brett Kavanaugh”.
It is on this point that the cosmos may be having a laugh not just at Kavanaugh’s expense but at many other people’s. After decades of competitive moralizing and situational ethics—in which every accuser in due course becomes the accused, and anyone riding a high horse can expect to be bucked off—even the concept of fairness in American politics seemingly is defunct.
Three decades of remorseless ideological and cultural combat—over Robert Bork, over Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, over Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, over Bush v. Gore, and, at last and above all, over Donald Trump—have made the question virtually irrelevant.
Fairness is rooted in the idea of principles, precedent, proportionality. Few people in American life witnessed at closer range than Kavanaugh the modern reality that when things really matter—in the way that the balance of the Supreme Court matters—all these fine notions matter less than the cold, hard exercise of power.
So here was Kavanaugh—who spent his early 30s as a Ken Starr warrior pursuing Bill Clinton for the political and legal implications of his most intimate moral failings—now in his early 50s facing a political crisis over disturbingly vivid, passionately contested, decades-old allegations about Kavanaugh’s own possible moral failings.
Few prosecutors, it seems likely, would ever open an assault case—36 years later—on the basis of Christine Blasey Ford’s account of being pinned down on a bed by a drunken Kavanaugh, then 17, and being aggressively groped until a friend of his physically jumped in.
But few prosecutors in the 1990s would have pursued an extensive criminal investigation over perjury into a middle-aged man’s lies about adultery if that person had not been President Bill Clinton. In his zeal at the time, Kavanaugh, like Starr, may have worked himself into a belief that this was about sacred principles of law, but to many others—and ultimately to a clear majority of the country—it was obvious that the case was fundamentally about political power.
Kavanaugh’s fate, too, now depends on precisely the same thing: Do the allegations change the calculation for the perhaps half-a-dozen senators—including Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—whose minds were not already made up by earlier political calculations?
With the benefit of hindsight, Kavanaugh later concluded presidents should be shielded from criminal investigations of the sort he helped wage against Clinton. At the time, however, he was filled with righteous indignation. “It is our job,” he wrote colleagues in Starr’s office in an email, “to make his pattern of revolting behavior clear—piece by painful piece.”
Can Kavanaugh and his supporters really be surprised that opponents of his nomination will feel similarly righteous in wanting to examine allegations against him piece by piece?
https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/status/1041464322701049856
Both Judge* Kavanaugh and Professor Ford are willing to testify.
Democrats say the vote should be delayed so that the committee can hear Dr. Blasey — a move Republicans have said is a stalling tactic. Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings have drawn raucous protests and partisan fights, even before Dr. Blasey’s allegations became public.
Dr. Blasey was willing to testify before Congress, Debra Katz, a lawyer, said on Monday about her client, who has been referred to in news accounts as Ms. Ford but goes by Dr. Blasey professionally.
“We hope that this hearing is fair and not another weaponized attack on a woman who has come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against a powerful man,” Ms. Katz told The New York Times.
There was no indication early Monday that the Judiciary Committee had requested such testimony or that the panel planned to delay the vote.
A key Republican on the committee, however, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, told Politico that he was “not comfortable voting yes” on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination until he learned more about Dr. Blasey’s account. Mr. Flake’s objection could force a delay for the committee, which has 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats.
Senate Republicans have also expected they could win the support of some Democrats who face tough re-election campaigns in states Mr. Trump won in 2016. One such Democrat, Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana, said on Monday that the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh were “serious and merit further review.”
This week is going to be a wild and bumpy ride. We’re about to see if the recent women’s marches and the incredible removals of powerful men in charge of media and entertainment interests as well as holding political positions has sunk in enough to to make Anita Hill proud of us all.
This was the one thing I always wanted to protect my daughters from and it pains me to think the girls and women today are still not believed and the men are still waved off with the “boys will be boys” mentality.
He was 17 and she was 15. She was afraid her parents would find out where she’d been. She was afraid of all kinds of things that would happen and are happening now that she spoke out.
We should be on her posse just as I will always be on Anita Hill’s posse. I believe them both.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today? This is still an open thread so share everything!
Friday Reads: Animal Farm
Posted: June 30, 2017 Filed under: Climate Change, Environmental Protection, Environmentalists, Health care reform, morning reads, religious extremists, Republican Tax Fetishists, Trump, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics 44 Comments
It’s difficult not to think about what the current state of affairs means in terms of the celebration of Independence Day as we head into Fourth of July Festivities. Our country was born of the Age of Reason. Thomas Jefferson–who wrote the document proclaiming US Independence–was an amateur scientist and philosopher. He might be considered the ideal Renaissance man if he had also found a way to support his causes and lifestyle with employees instead of slaves.
There’s always been this dark side to the American Dream and there have been many people throughout history who have fought those inclinations. It’s been a slow climb from the idea that we all are created equal to getting to a society that actually lives that value. The climb continues.
Why is it so difficult to treat one another with the respect and dignity we each deserve?
The Republican leadership and Administration is based on the most vulgar, salacious, and base motivations we’ve witnessed since Andrew Jackson was committing mass genocide on human beings he considered “savages” and since a group of people considered the nation’s black Americans to be not wholly human. They deemed all folks with African descent to be precisely 3/5ths human. All of this was done in the name of the same religion that tortures our better angels today.
The cognitive dissonance is simply mind boggling. Today, Ahvaz Iran has reached an almost unheard of temperature of 129. It’s one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded on the planet.
Another weather source, the Weather Underground, said Ahvaz hit 129.2 degrees Thursday afternoon. The heat index, which also takes humidity into account, hit an incredible 142 degrees.
Fortunately, the weather forecast for Ahvaz on Friday is for “cooler” weather, with a high of only 119 degrees, according to AccuWeather.
The official all-time world record temperature remains the 134-degree temperature measured at Death Valley, Calif, on July 10, 1913. However, some experts say that temperature isn’t reliable. Weather Underground weather historian Christopher Burt said in 2016 that such an extreme temperature was “not possible from a meteorological perspective.”
Scorching heat is one of the most expected outcomes of man-made climate change, according to a 2016 report from the National Academy of Sciences and a 2015 study in Nature Climate Change.
The prestigious magazine Science published a study estimating the economic cost of climate change to the US economy. It’s not pretty. You can read the fully study at the link. This is its Abstract.
Estimates of climate change damage are central to the design of climate policies. Here, we develop a flexible architecture for computing damages that integrates climate science, econometric analyses, and process models. We use this approach to construct spatially explicit, probabilistic, and empirically derived estimates of economic damage in the United States from climate change. The combined value of market and nonmarket damage across analyzed sectors—agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy, human mortality, and labor—increases quadratically in global mean temperature, costing roughly 1.2% of gross domestic product per +1°C on average. Importantly, risk is distributed unequally across locations, generating a large transfer of value northward and westward that increases economic inequality. By the late 21st century, the poorest third of counties are projected to experience damages between 2 and 20% of county income (90% chance) under business-as-usual emissions (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5).
Meanwhile, the man responsible for the EPA–professional whackadoodle Scott Pruitt–launches program to ‘critique’ climate science.
“We are in fact very excited about this initiative,” the official added. “Climate science, like other fields of science, is constantly changing. A new, fresh and transparent evaluation is something everyone should support doing.”
The disclosure follows the administration’s suggestions over several days that it supports reviewing climate science outside the normal peer-review process used by scientists. This is the first time agency officials acknowledged that Pruitt has begun that process. The source said Energy Secretary Rick Perry also favors the review.
Executives in the coal industry interpret the move as a step toward challenging the endangerment finding, the agency’s legal foundation for regulating greenhouse gases from cars, power plants and other sources. Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp., said Pruitt assured him yesterday that he plans to begin reviewing the endangerment finding within months.
“We talked about that, and they’re going to start addressing it later this year,” Murray said in an interview. “They’re going to start getting a lot of scientific people in to give both sides of the issue.”
But another person attending the meeting said Pruitt resisted committing to a full-scale challenge of the 2009 finding. The administration source also said Pruitt “did not promise to try to rescind the endangerment finding.”
Climate scientists express concern that the “red team, blue team” concept could politicize scientific research and disproportionately elevate the views of a relatively small number of experts who disagree with mainstream scientists (Climatewire, June 29).
Pruitt told about 30 people attending a board meeting of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity yesterday morning that he’s establishing a “specific process” to review climate science, the administration official said. Murray and two other people in the room interpreted Pruitt as saying he would challenge the endangerment finding.
Challenging the endangerment finding would be enormously difficult, according to many lawyers. The finding is built on an array of scientific material establishing that human health and welfare is endangered by a handful of greenhouse gases emitted by industry, power plants and cars. It stems from a Supreme Court ruling in 2007.
If Pruitt somehow succeeded in rolling back the finding — an outcome that many Republicans say is far-fetched — the federal government would no longer be required to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.
Other evidence that there is no sign of intelligent life in the majority of Republicans are these doozies:
Trump Administration Appoints Anti-Transgender Activist To Gender Equality Post
“To put it simply, a boy claiming gender confusion must now be allowed in the same shower, bathroom, or locker room with my daughter,” wrote the new senior adviser for women’s empowerment at USAID.
White House council for women and girls goes dark under Trump
The administration is evaluating whether to keep the office, created under President Barack Obama to focus on gender equality
I agree with Ezra Klein on this: “It turns out the liberal caricature of conservatism is correct. It’s depressing. But it’s true.” These people are motivated by greed and feeding a group of religious zealots who think Eve is the root of all evil and any one not pristine white carries the stain of sin.
Marc Thiessen, the George W. Bush speechwriter who now writes a column for the Washington Post op-ed page, is aghast at the Senate GOP’s health care bill. “Paying for a massive tax cut for the wealthy with cuts to health care for the most vulnerable Americans is morally reprehensible,” he says.
“If Republicans want to confirm every liberal caricature of conservatism in a single piece of legislation, they could do no better than vote on the GOP bill in its current form.”
But at what point do we admit that this isn’t the liberal caricature of conservatism? It’s just … conservatism.
Though Republicans had long promised the country a repeal-and-replace plan that offered better coverage at lower cost, the House GOP’s health care bill cut hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes for the rich and paid for it by gutting health care spending on the poor. It was widely criticized and polled terribly.
Senate Republicans responded by releasing a revised health care bill that also cut hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes for the rich and paid for it by gutting health care spending on the poor. It has also been widely criticized, and it also is polling terribly.
Donald Trump, who ran on a platform of covering everyone with better health insurance than they get now, has endorsed both bills.
Republicans, in other words, have repeatedly broken their promises and defied public opinion in order to release health care bills that cut spending on the poorest Americans to fund massive tax cuts for the richest Americans. (The Tax Policy Center estimates that 44.6 percent of the Senate bill’s tax cuts go to households making more than $875,000.)
Fundamentalism of all sorts has always been the basis of the evil done by this country. Republicans are feeding it.
How do you make climate change personal to someone who believes only God can alter the weather? How do you make racial equality personal to someone who believes whites are naturally superior to non-whites? How do you make gender equality personal to someone who believes women are supposed to be subservient to men by God’s command? How do you get someone to view minorities as not threatening personal to people who don’t live around and never interact with them? How do you make personal the fact massive tax cuts and cutting back government hurts their economic situation when they’ve voted for these for decades? I don’t think you can without some catastrophic events. And maybe not even then. The Civil War was pretty damn catastrophic yet a large swath of the South believed and still believes they were right, had the moral high ground. They were/are also mostly Christian fundamentalists who believe they are superior because of the color of their skin and the religion they profess to follow. There is a pattern here for anyone willing to connect the dots.
“Rural, white America needs to be better understood,” is not one of the dots. “Rural, white America needs to be better understood,” is a dodge, meant to avoid the real problems because talking about the real problems is viewed as “too upsetting,” “too mean,” “too arrogant,” “too elite,” “too snobbish.” Pointing out Aunt Bee’s views of Mexicans, blacks, gays…is bigoted isn’t the thing one does in polite society. Too bad more people don’t think the same about the views Aunt Bee has. It’s the classic, “You’re a racist for calling me a racist,” ploy. Or, as it is more commonly known, “I know you are but what am I?”
I do think rational arguments are needed, even if they go mostly ignored and ridiculed. I believe in treating people with the respect they’ve earned but the key point here is “earned.” I’ll gladly sit down with Aunt Bee and have a nice, polite conversation about her beliefs about “the gays,” “the blacks,” “illegals,”…and do so without calling her a bigot or a racist. But, this doesn’t mean she isn’t a bigot and a racist and if I’m asked to describe her beliefs these are the only words that honestly fit. No one with cancer wants to be told they have cancer, but just because no one uses the word, “cancer,” it doesn’t mean they don’t have it. Just because the media, pundits on all sides, some Democratic leaders don’t want to call the actions of many rural, Christian, white Americans, “racist/bigoted” doesn’t make them not so.
Paul Krugman is more succinct. He calls it Republican ‘cruelty’. It is exactly that.
The puzzle — and it is a puzzle, even for those who have long since concluded that something is terribly wrong with the modern G.O.P. — is why the party is pushing this harsh, morally indefensible agenda.
Think about it. Losing health coverage is a nightmare, especially if you’re older, have health problems and/or lack the financial resources to cope if illness strikes. And since Americans with those characteristics are precisely the people this legislation effectively targets, tens of millions would soon find themselves living this nightmare.
Meanwhile, taxes that fall mainly on a tiny, wealthy minority would be reduced or eliminated. These cuts would be big in dollar terms, but because the rich are already so rich, the savings would make very little difference to their lives.
More than 40 percent of the Senate bill’s tax cuts would go to people with annual incomes over $1 million — but even these lucky few would see their after-tax income rise only by a barely noticeable 2 percent.
So it’s vast suffering — including, according to the best estimates, around 200,000 preventable deaths — imposed on many of our fellow citizens in order to give a handful of wealthy people what amounts to some extra pocket change. And the public hates the idea: Polling shows overwhelming popular opposition, even though many voters don’t realize just how cruel the bill really is. For example, only a minority of voters are aware of the plan to make savage cuts to Medicaid.
In fact, my guess is that the bill has low approval even among those who would get a significant tax cut. Warren Buffett has denounced the Senate bill as the “Relief for the Rich Act,” and he’s surely not the only billionaire who feels that way.
Which brings me back to my question: Why would anyone want to do this?
Because they can and because they love power and money. Their mega-rich donors will shower them in both.
I think we can forever ask ourselves the big question of why do these uneducated white people continually fall for it? The answer is that their life basically sucks and they’re doing what ever they can to feel better about it. Religion and Republicans give them a feeling of superiority based on the only thing they have: the identity birth gave them. Every one is paying an awful price for that.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today? Tuesday is Independence Day if we can keep it.
Defiance Friday
Posted: January 20, 2017 Filed under: Psychopaths in charge, social justice, Trump | Tags: Welcome to the 2017 Hell Realm 97 Commentshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z1Q1GqZbaA
So, I’m writing this on Thursday night because I’m joining in the protest events here in New Orleans in the morning. It all starts with a mock jazz funeral for Lady Liberty.
The Next Right Thing
10:30 a.m., Congo Square
The Next Right Thing — a march of “satire and dissent” — meets at Congo Square in Armstrong Park at 9 a.m., assembles at 10:30 a.m., marches at 11 a.m. toward the Mississippi River Moonwalk and marches toward Frenchmen Street at 1 p.m. There, an “inaugural ball” will be held at clubs along Frenchmen Street. A children’s parade starts at 3 p.m. The event ends at Check Point Charlie at 6 p.m. The children’s parade encourages costumes, signs, decorated wagons and floats. Families can meet at Washington Square Park for a picnic before the children’s parade.
There are many major protests planned for the next few days as I sadly watch the best of our country fade into whatever Orwellian dystopia awaits. This week’s cabinet hearings have been a major dumpsterfire. I can’t imagine something better to do with the next few days other than to protest or wash your hair and read a good book. Just don’t watch the TV unless it’s to watch the Women’s March on Washington or one of the Sister Marches planned for Saturday.
Event: The Women’s March on Washington
Date and time: Saturday, Jan. 21. Rally begins at 10 a.m.; march begins at 1:15 pm
About: In what is billed to be the largest event countering the president-elect’s inauguration, the Women’s March is bringing together a spectrum of advocates representing diverse communities. More than 213,000 people have said on the event’s main Facebook page that they plan to attend. The rally will feature a star-studded lineup of celebrities, including Cher, Katy Perry, America Ferrera, Scarlett Johansson, Chelsea Handler, and many more.
Event: ‘Sister Marches‘ around the world
Date and time: Details are listed here
About: Organizers are boasting that as many as 1.3 million people plan to participate in “sister marches” around the world in solidarity with the headlining Women’s March on Washington. More than 600 different demonstrations are planned in every major city in the United States and as far away as Australia, South Africa, Japan, Argentina and throughout Europe.
NYC saw a major protest event on Thursday night with celebs the Hair Furor can only dream about. It’s probably why he was grousing all evening and not looking very happy during his little–emphasis on LITTLE–gathering. Oh, look where Robert DeNiro was and wasn’t.
De Niro was the first celebrity speaker to take the stage at the rally, which included thousands of attendees stretching across at least five blocks. The actor read mean tweets about the president-elect, adding that he thinks Donald Trump is “a bad example of this country and this city.”
Baldwin appeared to speak and insert a few Trump impressions along the way, commenting on Trump and his cabinet picks. “These people are a disgrace, but there is hope,” said the actor. “Trump and Pence think you’re going to lay down. That’s one thing about New Yorkers: You don’t lay down.”
Sharpton hyped the crowd after Baldwin’s speech. “This is Donald Trump’s hometown, but the hometown folk do not behave like Donald Trump,” he said. “America is already great, and we will make it even greater!”
Moore had somber words for the event: “We’re at a very dangerous moment in history,” said the filmmaker. “As bad as you think it’s going to be, it’s going to be worse. The good news is there are more of us than there are of them.”
Sally Field, talking about the labor movement, told the crowd: “I am a proud union member and have been for 52 years.” On the union fight for minimum wage, she said, “If we all stick together like we are now — if we all fight for dignity … we will find paths to victory over the next four years. Please, dear God!”
Ruffalo offered a hopeful note: “Man, I needed this. Did you need this?” he said to big cheers from the rally. “We’re coming here tonight to protect something precious to us, and that’s each other.”
Cynthia Nixon offered a message to the LGBTQ community: “We are not going back … we are here, we are queer and we have no fear!” She added to the Muslims, Mexicans and “straight while males” in the audience: “The LGBT community has got your back.”
Kremlin Caligula is not very well liked in his home town. Even Boston’s ducklings are in on the protests wearing bright pink pussy hats!
We have to protest. They’re about to give our country away to their cronies.
In the midst of highly publicized steps to dismantle insurance coverage for 32 million people and defund women’s healthcare facilities, Republican lawmakers have quietly laid the foundation to give away Americans’ birthright: 640m acres of national land. In a single line of changes to the rules for the House of Representatives, Republicans have overwritten the value of federal lands, easing the path to disposing of federal property even if doing so loses money for the government and provides no demonstrable compensation to American citizens.
At stake are areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), National Forests and Federal Wildlife Refuges, which contribute to an estimated $646bn each year in economic stimulus from recreation on public lands and 6.1m jobs. Transferring these lands to the states, critics fear, could decimate those numbers by eliminating mixed-use requirements, limiting public access and turning over large portions for energy or property development.
Well, the Republicans are getting ready to have an easy signature for whatever they want in the Oval Office, the connections between the Trump campaign and Moscow get clearer and murkier simultaneously. It certainly appears that we were sold out to a foreign hostile state.
The New York Times is reporting that American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are investigating “intercepted communications” that potentially show ties between longtime Donald Trump ally Roger Stone and Russian officials.
The report confirming the ongoing investigation comes after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government meddled in the 2016 election by hacking the Democratic National Committee, as well as reports that the FBI and five other intelligence agencies have been investigating whether money from the Kremlin covertly aided Trump’s presidential run.
In July, reports surfaced that Trump’s foreign policy advisor on Russia and Europe, Carter Page, made almost his entire fortune off of investments in Russia. Soon after, NBC News reported on alleged payments to Donald Trump’s then-campaign manager Paul Manafort from former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from 2007-2012. Roger Stone, a racist, sexist conspiracy theorist — who has previously claimed that there’s “greater freedom of the press” and expression in Russia than in the U.S. — has now also been implicated as another one of Trump’s associates currently under investigation. Media Matters first exposed Stone in August 2016, after he claimed to be in contact with Julian Assange regarding an “October Surprise.” In early October, Stone reassured anxious Alex Jones listeners that the “motherload” was coming.
The report, which will appear in the January 20 edition of The New York Times, confirms that intelligence agencies are investigating “intercepted communications and financial transactions” between Russian officials and Trump allies Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Carter Page. The report notes that the “continuing counterintelligence means that Mr. Trump will take the oath of office on Friday with his associates under investigation and after the intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government had worked to help elect him.”
The White House is empty tonight. The man about to get the nuclear codes is under active investigation by US Intelligence Agencies for ties with Russia.
And DC police have just lobbed tear gas at Protesters there.
Police in Washington, D.C. deployed tear gas as hundreds of protesters gathered outside a pro-Trump gala Thursday night. Local media reports that some attendees of the “DeploraBall” were hit by objects and clashed with anti-Trump protesters as they left the National Press Club. Some protesters, blocking the street, called gala attendees “racists” and “Nazis.” Other protesters set fires in trash cans and in the middle of the street. There was also a 15-foot-tall white elephant with a banner labeled “racism” on its side. Police arrested several people.
I don’t know how much more of this these old bones can take, frankly. But, I will be there with signs … regardless.
Does my sassiness upset you?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Me on the Mighty Mississippi for the mock Jazz funeral of Lady Liberty. You can actually see me around 2:48 for a sec on the video at WDSU so I can prove that I actually walked!!
Update with video:
Ladies of the NOLA Abortion Fund. 
So these photos were taken in Congo Square prior to the march. Th photo of the with the blue umbrella is of downtown New Orleans on Canal Street.
Thursday Reads: Trump’s Inferno
Posted: December 8, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Afternoon Reads, Trump, We are so F'd 63 Comments
Well, the year 2016 continues to be a challenging one. I seriously can’t look at any type of media without wanting a script for a happy pill along with a huge bottle of Jamison. It’s just really like living through the Divine Comedy. We’re getting closer and closer to the lower levels as we’re approaching the first season of the Mad King of Hell.
Today’s circle is the one where the Greedy push boulders against the boulders of the Wasteful. It’s a sin against sin extravaganza. Maybe the WWE executive Linda McMahon can arrange for something compelling? I’m sure it’s more up her alley than her pending appointment to lead the SBA into oblivion.
The WSJ has a great article behind it’s awesome paywall illustrating exactly how much of a spider’s web Trump Enterprises represents with the news that it would take an army of forensic scientists and hackers to figure out all the combinations of potential conflicts the Mad King of Hell has with enemy states and other states and his portfolio. Here’s a brief description from WAPO’s Plum Line. The oligarchy of kleptocrats is nearing perfect completion. This continues to be the perfect storm for the End Days of OUR Republic.
If you want to understand why the conflicts-of-interest involving Donald Trump’s business holdings and presidency could matter enormously in the months and years to come, read this single sentence buried in today’s big Wall Street Journal piece about those holdings:
It’s not clear how much Mr. Trump’s businesses would benefit from his proposal to cut business tax rates.
The key part of that sentence is the phrase, “it’s not clear.” The Journal piece reports that Trump has employed a “web” of limited liability companies to house assets accounting for over $300 million of the revenues he reported in disclosure forms last year. The crucial revelation in the piece is that these entities are a key reason why many of the specific details of Trump’s holdings remain shrouded in “opacity.”
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports this morning: “Trump is considering formally turning over the operational responsibility for his real estate company to his two adult sons, but he intends to keep a stake in the business and resist calls to divest, according to several people briefed on the discussions.”
As I’ve reported, if Trump merely turns his businesses over to family members (never mind whether he keeps a stake), it will not remove the potential for conflicts or even corruption. His family could stand to benefit from his policy decisions, or alternatively, other entities could seek to curry favor with the new president through deals that benefit his businesses, and by extension, his family (or himself, if he keeps a stake). Ethics experts believe only putting his interests into a genuine blind trust, via the liquidation of his assets, would truly remove the possibility of conflicts.
But, now that this looks unlikely to happen, what needs to be emphasized is not simply that such conflicts are very real possibilities, though that’s important. It also matters greatly that our lack of knowledge of the full range and scope of his interests makes it hard to evaluate whetherthese conflicts are taking place in any given situation, and if so, what they truly mean. And that’s where the new Journal story comes in. Here is the rub of the matter:
None of the 96 LLCs examined by the Journal appear to regularly release audited financial statements. That opacity — compounded by Mr. Trump’s decision to break with decades of precedent by declining to release his tax returns — makes it impossible to gauge the full extent of potential conflicts between his business interests and presidential role.
The scope and complexity of Mr. Trump’s private business holdings is unprecedented for incoming presidents, said Norman Eisen, President Barack Obama’s former White House ethics lawyer. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.
It’s not clear how much Mr. Trump’s businesses would benefit from his proposal to cut business tax rates.…
Mr. Trump’s wealth is impossible to measure with precision. His financial disclosure form isn’t externally audited and — following government rules — often uses bands, such as more than $50 million, rather than exact amounts to report assets and revenue or income. Only a handful of the hundreds of entities listed in Mr. Trump’s financial disclosure publish audited financial statements — and those figures don’t necessarily illuminate Mr. Trump’s financial situation.
Trump has called for huge tax cuts, including for top earners and businesses, and Congressional Republicans are all but certain to go forward with the same. But, as the Journal points out, we cannot know what impact these policies will have on Trump’s own businesses — or his family’s.
Trump has no intention of giving up his stake in the family kleptocracy. Hey, why should he? No one can even get him to release his taxes. It’s going to take a full on court battle to get him do do anything remotely constitutional or legal. It’s his MO.
Meanwhile, the appointments to the Cabinets continue to be Orwellian. The meetings will likely resemble those infamous scenes from the “Wolf Of Wall Street”. Trump is naming a fast food CEO to be Labor Secretary that will make you ill.
And now, if President-elect Donald Trump has his way, an enemy of the Fight for $15 movement will lead the U.S. Labor Department.
On Thursday, Trump revealed that he had nominated Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, to be Labor Secretary. CKE Restaurants is the parent company of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., two fast food companies that have been targeted by Fight for 15. Puzder himself is on record as an opponent of raising the minimum wage, and has said that he would like to try automating service more service jobs in response to wage hikes.
Then, there is further evidence that Trump has no idea what he’s doing in terms of US diplomacy. To make matters worse, his latest possible appointment as Secretary of State is so bad that he makes Rudy G look tame by comparison. Remember disgraced shill Rep. Dana Rohrabacher? He’s out there defending Russia’s Human Rights Record. Again, Trump’s new mantra for the American people is let them all rot and die while we get rich. As long as Trump et al become rich as Russian Oligarchs, we can just suffer.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who has emerged as a dark-horse pick for Donald Trump’s secretary of state, tangled with a Yahoo News host Wednesday over whether Russia is a major human rights abuser. Rohrabacher’s verdict: It’s “baloney.”
The exchange is pretty remarkable — in part because he was debating a Yahoo host who just happens to be from the former Soviet Union, but mostly because Rohrabacher seemed to dismiss long-standing and documented evidence of abuses in Russia. Rohrabacher seemed to take exception to Russia being mentioned in the same breath as China when it comes to human rights abuses.
I doubt seriously the Republic will withstand all of this. In his farewell to the Senate, outgoing Senate Majority Leader and future retiree Harry Reid believes the filibuster will soon be dead.
To hear Reid tell it, the party’s electoral collapse wasn’t a result of poor messaging or even a bad candidate. It stemmed from looser campaign finance rules, FBI Director James Comey and the influence of a few powerful individuals — namely the Koch brothers, his long-running nemeses. The outgoing Senate minority leader is unapologetic on behalf of his party, and remains resolute that Democrats don’t need to chart a new political course after their 2016 debacle.
“They have Trump, I understand that. But I don’t think the Democratic Party is in that big of trouble,” Reid said in a half-hour interview with Politico on Wednesday, one day before he’ll deliver his farewell address. “I mean, if Comey kept his mouth shut, we would have picked up a couple more Senate seats and we probably would have elected Hillary.”
And Reid not only refused to admit any misgivings about invoking the “nuclear option” for most nominations — a move that’s backfiring now by empowering Republicans — he predicted it’s just a matter of time before the filibuster is done away with altogether.
Though the filibuster is Democrats’ best weapon against Trump, Reid said it would be a “mistake” for his party to reflexively oppose whatever Trump proposes. But the outgoing minority leader also wants Democrats to stand firm for their core principles, urging lawmakers to do “everything in their power” to block “wacky” Supreme Court nominees and to not be “complicit” in supporting GOP priorities like tax cuts for the rich and repealing Obamacare.
Frankly, any Democrat should OPPOSE everything the Republicans try to do at this point. It’s our only hope.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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