Playing Both Ends

against the middle. And it starts to be more and more likely that the player is Putin.

A lot of people are taking it as a given that Trump is a Russian puppet; I don't know that I'd go that far, as to figure he's being actively manipulated from Moscow, but he's sensitive to where the money comes from, and a lot of it is coming from Russia. From Reuters, via Joe.My.God.:

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump downplayed his business ties with Russia. And since taking office as president, he has been even more emphatic. “I can tell you, speaking for myself, I own nothing in Russia,” President Trump said at a news conference last month. “I have no loans in Russia. I don’t have any deals in Russia.”

But in the United States, members of the Russian elite have invested in Trump buildings. A Reuters review has found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida, according to public documents, interviews and corporate records.

The buyers include politically connected businessmen, such as a former executive in a Moscow-based state-run construction firm that works on military and intelligence facilities, the founder of a St. Petersburg investment bank and the co-founder of a conglomerate with interests in banking, property and electronics.

As far as Trump having no deals in Russia, no loans in Russia -- let's see the tax returns, Hairpiece.

I'm not the only one to have noted that one of Putin's goals is to destabilize the West, hence Trump's jabs at NATO and the EU. (An aside: I think it might prove very interesting to investigate possible ties between Russian interests and Nigel Farage -- and maybe Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, among others.)

But now it seems that Putin may be playing both ends:

YEKATERINBURG, Russia — This provincial Russian city, about 1,000 miles east of Moscow, is about as unlikely a place as any to find the leader of one of the more unlikely political causes to arise in opposition to President Trump. But Louis J. Marinelli, the 30-year-old English teacher who is the president of the Yes California movement, which seeks independence for the state, has decided to call it home.

Word of “Calexit,” a quixotic idea that has floated around California for years, spread on social media after the election of Mr. Trump in November. Even though it has virtually no chance of succeeding — it would require an amendment to the Constitution — it has gained some traction in the state. Several technology industry leaders have voiced their support, and a ballot measure is in the works for the 2018 election.

Now with renewed attention on the movement, Mr. Marinelli is under scrutiny for living in a country that many in the United States see as an adversarial power.

Russians who meet Mr. Marinelli sometimes mistake him for a political refugee from the United States, assuming he would be repressed for his antigovernment positions at home.

And back in California, he is on the defensive for accepting travel expenses and office space from a Kremlin-linked nationalist group. That acceptance has raised the prospect that Russia, after meddling in the election to try to tip the vote to Mr. Trump, as United States intelligence agencies have said, is now gleefully stoking divisions in America by backing a radical liberal movement.

I think it would be a mistake to credit Putin - or Trump, for that matter -- with any particular ideology, aside from personal gain. (Yes, I think that can be an ideology -- just look at Wall Street and the banking industry. We call them "right wing", but that's really beside the point.) They're spouting nationalism in public, and Trump is on record as trashing globalism in the political sphere, and then sending Trump, Jr. off to cut deals around the world.

We live in interesting times.

Hypocrisy, or Chutzpah?

Not only have the GOP turned into a party of sociopaths, they've gotten quite brazen about it:

Mitch McConnell, who suffered no political penalty for his cynical block of a middle-of-the-road Supreme Court nominee spoke out today on Senator Schumer's promise to block any nominee extreme enough to pass Republican inspection.

"Apparently there's a new standard now which is to not confirm a Supreme Court nominee at all," McConnell groused. "I think that's something the American people simply will not tolerate and will be looking forward to receiving a Supreme Court nomination and moving forward on it."

This is where I remind everyone that just several days before the election, Senate Republicans were promising to block any nominee Hillary Clinton might put forward for consideration.

I'm of the opinion that the Democrats should stop playing nice -- use the Republicans' tactics against them until we get what we want ("we" in this case being people who are not Wall street billionaires or Russian dictators).

Especially considering the Hairpiece's list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

McConnell's invocation of the "Biden rule" is 99 and 44/100 percent bullshit. Maybe a little more. Here's what Biden actually said at the time and the context in which those remarks occurred.

Why Is This A Surprise?

I think the headline says it all:

Centrist Democrats: We can work with President Trump

By way of elaboration:

As Democrats portray Donald Trump as a dangerous leader for his party, most of them barely acknowledge he could be president. But some centrist Democrats say they’re ready and willing to work with the business mogul should he defeat their party’s nominee.

“The people will have a chance to vote. If Donald Trump is elected president there will be a great opportunity to sit down and have a conversation about what that agenda looks like,” explained Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who has long backed Hillary Clinton. “If he’s president, we’re going to have disagreement. But we’d better all figure out how to come up with an agenda for the American people.”

We used to call them "Blue Dogs" -- at this point, "centrist" translates as "Republicans lite." Anyone who thinks they can work with Donald Trump is dreaming -- yes, he's a deal-maker, but he's also dictatorial, a game-player, and shoots too much from the hip: they're not going to pin him down to anything, basically.

Still, centrist Democrats sound strong notes of skepticism about a President Trump's relationship with Congress: They think he’s got a bad habit of rewriting his policy platform on the fly from one day to the next. In the words of Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Trump’s policy portfolio seems “very schizophrenic.”

“I don’t know if he’d send one piece of legislation over in the morning, and then send the exact opposite legislation that afternoon,” McCaskill said. “You go down every single issue, he is all over the place. So I have no idea. I don’t think he knows. It’s clear to me he’s kind of making this up as he goes along.”

As for breaking up the gridlock in Congress, I found this statement quite humorous, considering the source:

“People are very angry. They’re angry at Republicans, they’re angry at Democrats, they’re angry at Washington for not solving the biggest problems. So what they’ve done is nominate a candidate who’s of neither camp to basically shake things up,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas. “And hopefully help us to address some of these long-standing issues that we know are a problem.”

Says one of the people who has steadfastly refused to address those issues.

Here's a big part of the problem:

[Sen. Joe] Manchin [D-WV], who represents a state in which Obama is very unpopular and that is poised to be a landslide for Trump, said his constituents are eager for someone that understands what’s become of manufacturing cities and coal country.

“My people are really hurting,” Manchin said. “They don’t believe this administration or Barack Obama really cares about them.”

In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, because you haven't been out there countering the bullshit coming from the Republicans.

Via Digby, who wonders:

None of these people are up for reelection this year. There is no good reason for them to even hint at some kind of common cause with the fascist demagogue Donald Trump when even Republicans are desperately trying to run away from him. To treat him as a normal politician is a betrayal.

They're taking the long view, which is about two years: they are up for re-election in 2018, and if the unthinkable happens, they want to be able to take advantage of it. Make no mistake: their primary interest is not the needs of their constituents or the country as a whole. It's their own political careers.

Today's Must-Read

This somewhat lengthy post by Digby, especially the commentary on the Washington press corps vis-a-vis Paul Ryan:

But this desire to turn right wingers into statesmen based upon very little evidence is a common phenomenon among media observers. Perhaps it's because they can't believe the ego-driven ineptitude and/or ideological extremism could possibly be as bad as it seems so they look for any small sign of competence and run with it in the vain hope that they'll awaken from this nightmare and the Republican party will be normal again. If so, no Washington figure has benefited from this phenomenon more than House Speaker Paul Ryan.

For years he has been the up and coming "it boy" of the Republican caucus, leader of the young guns, the captain of the "deep bench" of new leadership that was going to lead the Party to the promised land.

Ryan is, as far as I'm concerned, the type specimen of the empty suit. As for his accomplishments (aside from budgets that didn't add up -- literally):

Paul Krugman memorably tried to remind everyone that Ryan had always been less than meets the eye:

The fact is that Ryan is and always was a fraud. His plan never added up; it was never, contrary to what people who should know better asserted, “scored” by the CBO. What he actually offered was a plan to hurt the poor and reward the rich, actually increasing the deficit along the way, plus magic asterisks that supposedly reduced the debt by means unspecified.

His genius, if you can all it that, was in realizing that there was a role — as I said, that of Honest, Serious Conservative — that self-proclaimed centrists desperately wanted to see filled, so that they could demonstrate their bipartisanship by lavishing praise on the holder of that position. So Ryan did his best to impersonate a budget wonk. It wasn’t a very good impersonation — in fact, he’s pretty bad at budget math.

And now you know why the Eagles' "Hotel California" reminds me of Washington. (If you need a refresher, scroll down to yesterday's "Culture Break" post.)

The Chicago Side

Via Digby, I ran across this: it's a statement from Zephyr Teachout, who is running against Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for governor of New York. So why did I title it "The Chicago Side"? Well, there's this:

Andrew Cuomo is the Governor of New York, and he takes a lot of money from large powerful interests and then hands out tax credits to them. It's a Reaganomics model of financial monopoly capitalism. But the problem here isn't just Cuomo, it's that people like Cuomo dominate the Democratic establishment. Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, and so on and so forth, these people believe in a world where powerful economic interests control our lives and fate through monopoly power, and their partners in government help structure those monopolies. Political corruption and economic monopoly are two sides of the same coin-- too much concentrated power in too few hands.

Ah, yes, Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago. My joke used to be that Obama sent Emanuel back to Chicago to localize the damage. It's turned out not to be such a joke.

I see it in little things that on the surface look to be what we'd consider good. The City, for example, is pushing bicycles as an alternate form of transportation: there are now stations where you can rent a bike for the day all just about anywhere. (According to Wikipedia, at present there are stations from Berwyn Ave. [5300 North] to 59th Street in the south and Kedzie [3200 West].) Two things: this is being run by a commercial enterprise, Alta Bicycle Share, under contract to the City, and it's publicly funded -- we're paying Alta to do this. It's not all that cheap -- $7 per day, 30 minute limit on single rides, then you either have to walk or change bikes at a new station. If you're someone who wants to cycle, you're better off buying a second-hand bike. And I've noticed that the smaller, independent bike rental places are all gone.

And CTA ridership is way down -- whole bus routes are being cancelled.

And, although the Mayor ostensibly doesn't have a lot of clout in this area (and if you believe that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you), the CTA has instituted a new fare payment system, Ventra, which again, on the surface looks good: you have a card that you can load online or at an el station or at certain vendors (Walgreen's, some currency exchanges). Just tap your card on the reader and you're in. If the reader decides to read your card. And if you've remembered to add value -- the reader, by the way, doesn't tell you how much you have left. The web site can be a nightmare (I finally had to call the customer service line to get into it -- some know-it-all had pre-registered my card, but didn't give me the log on info). If you hit a peak period at the customer service number, the automated system will cheerfully inform you that the estimated waiting time is X minutes, and then hang up. Oh, and of course, this is being run by a commercial enterprise under contract to the CTA/Pace. Rumor has it that this company has been kicked out of three or four other cities because the system was such a disaster. It's not really very good.

I'm not even going to get into the disaster that is our school system -- the Mayor, it seems, is pushing privatization (wonder why), and not doing much to revamp what we've got.

And always, in Chicago, the first question you have to ask yourself is "Who's getting the kickbacks?" Maybe no one, but there's a lot of history that says otherwise.

At any rate, go read the article at Hullabaloo. It's a good analysis of what's wrong with the Democratic Party, at least the so-called "centrists" -- they're just as caught up in Reaganomics as the Republicans, just less honest about it.

One Bright Note

The Blue Dogs got creamed. At least the Democrats in the House are all Democrats now.

How do you feel about that, Rahm?

And he's running for mayor. That should be fun.

The Election

I'm sick of it. It's been the top story online for the past seventy-jillion years, and I'm over it.

I'm going to vote, and I'm going to vote a straight Democratic ticket because the Republicans are all crazy and pernicious. It's a habit I'd like to be able to break, but not until the Republican party is no longer the party of crazy perniciousness.

They're Starting to Get It

I like this article from WaPo:

After a week of attacking the proposals as paving the way for new taxpayer "bailouts," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the Senate floor that he was "heartened to hear that bipartisan talks have resumed in earnest." Later, after a meeting with fellow Republicans, he told reporters that while he believes that there are still serious flaws in the legislation, "I'm convinced now there is a new element of seriousness attached to this, rather than just trying to score political points. . . . I think that's a good sign." 

The change in tone came as the Security and Exchange Commission's lawsuit against Goldman Sachs for allegedly defrauding investors continued to dominate headlines, underscoring public anger at Wall Street and reminding lawmakers of the potential consequences of inaction.

Maybe McConnell got tired of trying to explain the link between his fundraising pitch to Wall Street bankers and Republican opposition to any substantive reform.  (And as far as just who was trying to score political points -- well, do I really need to say it?)

Y'know, thinking about the way some in this country worship the free market -- Alan Greenspan, one of the architects of the meltdown, comes to mind -- you have to ask yourself:  Doesn't the free market required a certain amount of honest and integrity on both sides to work at all?  And have we seen a lot of that on Wall Street in the last decade or two?

Totally Tubular (Updated)

Or perhaps I should say "completely circular." This alert from Publius at Obsidian Wings struck me. From The Hill:

The Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed healthcare bill, its top Republican member said Thursday.

The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after it was derided by conservatives as "death panels" to encourage euthanasia.

"On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. "We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly."

[. . .]

The veteran Iowa lawmaker said the end-of-life provision in those bills would pay physicians to "advise patients about end-of-life care and rate physician quality of care based on the creation of and adherence to orders for end-of-life care."

Can I call "bullshit" on Grassley? (Who himself has been one of the major obstacles to getting a bill out of that committee.) That last statement is pure crap.

And has anyone noticed how this Republican mantra -- the Sarah Palin "death panels" -- has influenced the "bipartisan" members of the Finance Committee (the Gang of Six -- three Republicans and three Republicans-lite) to drop this "controversial" provision.

As Publius points out, it's really a disaster for policy-making in this country:

A demonstrable falsehood was repeated and repeated, and it led the Committee to drop a very valuable provision that would help inform individuals -- particularly those with less resources -- about critical medical and legal issues. The falsity and fearmongering drove the policy here.

At the risk of repeating myself, from the Republican viewpoint it's not about healthcare reform. It's about torpedoing the Obama administration by any means necessary.

Y'know, I remember noting at one point that the Republicans were very good at winning elections and complete failures at governing. It appears that the Democrats are going them one better: they can win elections as long as they're not really Democrats, and they're even worse at governing.

Who said the Democrats were in control?

Update:

Let's see how the Gang of Six responds to this -- and how long it takes them.

Update II:

John Cole is just as fed up as I am.

Maddow On Lieberman

I'm not quite sure why Joe Lieberman is such a prime target for me. I mean, he's not my senator, after all. (That makes me happy.) Maybe it's just that he is the archetype of the power-hungry politician who doesn't even know what the word "integrity" means.

Here's Rachel Maddow, who has rapidly made herself my hero among commentators:



And from two of Lieberman's colleagues in New England, these comments.

'Nuff said?

Lieberman

I can't believe there's a debate about this. Well, OK -- yes I can. The Republicans, after all, never had such a good friend, at least not recently. Evan Bayh seems to be an idiot. I'm glad he's not my senator. From Hullabaloo:

BAYH: And I think if Joe came before the caucus and said look, if I said some things that came as offensive, I’m sorry, but they were, you know heartfelt in my support of John McCain. I think we had to just let bygones be bygones. We’re going to need him on healthcare and energy independence and education and a whole lot of other things.

Lieberman supported McCain, to the extent of echoing McCain's charges that Obama is a traitor and a terrorist, and Bayh thinks he should be welcomed with open arms because it was "heartfelt." WTF? If was that heartfelt, kick him over to the Republicans -- let him poison their wells.

All this crap about Lieberman being a man of principle is so much poodle-dip. He proved that in the last election: he likes power and doesn't want to give it up. That's the nut.

Frankly, I'm glad that neither Lieberman nor Bayh is my senator.

Update: Lindsay Beyerstein's reaction is similar to mine, but somewhat more forceful. Well, sort of.

Bipartisanship

What Digby said.

Rudy on Foreign Policy

This is hysterical:

These people came here and killed us because of our freedom of religion, because of our freedom for women, because they hate us...If you're confused about this, I think you put our country in much greater jeopardy. The reality is, these people are planning to kill us because -- and this is hard for people to recognize, I usually hear this on the Democratic side, don't usually hear it on the Republican side -- you've got to face reality. If you can't face reality, you can't lead.

You mean Democrats like Jerryy Falwell and Pat Robertson?

Clueless, Part . . .

which part are we on?

Dan Gerstein is not someone I pay much attention to. I know the name, but he doesn't seem to have much to say to me. Here's one reason why.

But the reality is, as I experienced over and over again in the Lamont-Lieberman race, this is the liberal blogosphere’s standard-less operating procedure. They have decided that the best way to fight the “right-wing smear machine” that they so despise is to create an even more venomous, boundary-less, and destructive counterpart and fight ire with more ire.

It also goes to show just how deeply most liberal bloggers believe that Republicans and conservative are morally illegitimate, and as such, any criticism or argument made by the other side is on its face corrupt and dismissible. If it is said by Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who has a history of controversial statements himself, it automatically becomes invalid, no matter the inherent integrity of the underlying proposition.

What these liberal bloggers fail to appreciate is that this petty, polarizing approach is not how you ultimately win in politics – especially in an era when most average voters outside the ideological extremes are fed up with the shrill, reflexive partisanship that dominates Washington, and when the fastest growing party in America is no party.

The blogger bomb-throwing may be good for inflaming the activist base, and, as they demonstrated in the 2006 Lieberman-Lamont Senate primary race in Connecticut, for occasionally blowing up the opposition. It’s not bad for bullying your friends, either, as the liberal blogosphere did last week in pressuring Edwards to not fire the two bloggers who penned the offensive anti-religious posts.

But the typical blog mix of insults and incitements is just not an effective strategy for persuading people outside of your circle of belief – be they moderate Democrats, moderate Republicans, or the swelling

Now remember that Gerstein was one of Lieberman's advisors in the last campaign. Yes, that Lieberman -- Karl Rove's favorite Democrat. Tell you anything? In case it doesn't, let me put it this way: Gerstein is to Democrats as Napoleon is to Russia. I can't think how anyone believes this man is anything other than a clown.

I'm trying to figure out which liberal blogs he's reading. If any. This sounds like something you could find on GayPatriot. Seriously -- it's one of those major reality disjunctions where I just scratch my head and sit there wondering what he's talking about. I think he must be angling for a job at The Corner. (Oh -- I just noticed that this appeared on Politico, the Drudge Report's little sister. That explains a lot.)

Now, this is a piece from mid-February, and if we look back a few months, we can see how badly liberal bloggers alienated the vast middle-of-the-road electorate. Oh, right. . . .

A lot of fuss was made about that survey that showed that liberal bloggers use more swear words than conservative bloggers. I wonder what the results would have been if there had been a survey on who uses more ethnic and gender slurs.

And then there's Tim O'Reilly, who wants bloggers to subscribe to a code of behavior. I know O'Reilly has a long history with the Internet and the blogosphere, which makes it all the more surprising that he's missed the point so badly:

It's not about being nice. If you want "nice," go to tea at Marshall Field's with the white-glove ladies. It's about full, unresrained dialogue (or simultaneous monologues, as often seems to be the case). It really is the free marketplace of ideas, which, although it may dismay pundits like Gerstein and O'Reilly, works. Ask Don Imus about how well it works.

I'm really starting to believe that bloggers like Digby and Atrios and Glenn Greenwald are right. The pundit class has even less idea of what's really going on in the country than the preznit does.

Clueless. Totally.

(Please note that Gerstein also thinks Imus is a liberal. ??? Oh, wait -- that's the latest buzz on the right. Got it.)

The US Attorney Purge

I haven't been writing about this one because a) I've been focusing on other things, and b) Josh Marshall and his crew are doing a bang-up job of covering it over at TPM.

But one thing that came up early on in the story that I don't recall seeing much about since: the provision of the Patriot Act that allows the appointment of US Attorneys without Senate confirmation was reportedly slipped in by a Senate staffer and none of our Senators knew about it. In fact, I seem to remember reading something about it being slipped in after the vote, but I won't vouch for that -- my memory does play tricks sometimes.

So, do you think we have a structural problem here? Staffers drafting and inserting clauses into legislation without legislators' knowledge seems to me to be a real problem. Legislators voting on bills they haven't read is a real problem.

Should be illegal.

HRC

No, the other HRC, the one that, as far as I'm concerned, has always been pretty much irrelevant. Which is why I don't normally join Chris Crain, GayPatriot, The Malcontent, Michael Petrelis, and a cast of thousands condemning them. I don't particularly trust national advocacy organizations to keep their eyes on the ball, and never did. I've scored them on the marriage issue and a few other things and let it go at that.

Nor am I a Democrat. Never have been. Registered Independent. (Although in Illinois, we're not required to register to a party.)

So, just to make it clear: as far as I'm concerned, by moving into the Democratic Party, HRC has made itself even less relevant as far as I'm concerned, if that's possible. As long as they're not dangerous, I'm not going to bother with them.

(Note: It should be clear, as well, from some of the brickbats thrown by John Aravosis and Pam Spaulding, in addition to those named above, that HRC does not have significant support in the blogosphere. It's not a partisan thing. It's a gay thing.)

A Note to Left-Wing Bloggers

I like Cheetos, dammit! And I am not a right wingnut!

Escalation

A very good post by Josh Marshall on Congress' control of the purse strings and why Congress must exercise it.

. . . we have a president who has a basic contempt for our system of government and the rule of law and that the normal rules of inter-branch comity simply aren't in effect.

Nancy Pelosi has taken exactly the right tack on this, with her declaration that Congress will not fund the president's escalation of the war in Iraq -- and please note that critical point: will not fund the escalation.

"If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it," said Pelosi, speaking to host Bob Schieffer. "And this is new for him because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions. And we’ve gone into this situation, which is a war without end, which the American people have rejected."

"If the president chooses to escalate the war, in his budget request we want to see a distinction between what is there to support the troops who are there now. The American people and the Congress support those troops. We will not abandon them."

Barack Obama, of whom the more I hear the less I like, seems to be coming down on both sides of the question. On the one hand, he's opposing the "surge." On the other hand, he's claining the Congress can't stop it. (I've seen him quoted on both sides of the question in the past couple of days -- I'll post the links if I can find them again.)

Joe Biden, whom I have never considered presidential material, screwed it up even worse:

MR. RUSSERT: ...there’s really little Democrats can do. Why not cut off funding for the war?

SEN. BIDEN: I’ve been there, Tim. You can’t do it.

MR. RUSSERT: Why?

SEN. BIDEN: You can’t do it. It’s—what—because it made sense in the Constitution when you said you could cut off funding when you had no standing army. We have a standing army with a budget of hundreds of billions of dollars. You can’t go in and, like a tinker toy, and play around and say, “You can’t spend the money on this piece and this piece and”—he—able—he’ll be able to keep those troops there forever constitutionally if he wants to.

It's unconstitutional to tell the president no? As John Murtha pointed out, that's bullshit.

UPDATE: Mary Lederman pretty much demolishes Biden's position"

Even if there were a prohibition in the Constitution against so-called congressional "micromanagement" of a war -- and there's not -- this wouldn't be that. There would be no congressional officials here overseeing the President's discretionary responsibilities; no requirement that the President get approval of one or both Houses before taking certain actions. There would, instead, simply be limitations on a war imposed by statutes passed with the President's signature or by supermajorities of both Houses of Congress over the President's veto.

Read the whole post.