Category: Politics

‘I have a bone to pick with your President Trump’ said my friend from South Africa on the phone today. (She is an enthusiastic outdoors person).  Yes, I said: I think I know what you mean.

From the New York Times: Trump sharply reduced the size of two national monuments* in Utah on Monday by some two million acres, the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history.  The administration shrank Bears Ears National Monument, a sprawling region of red rock canyons, by 85 percent, and cut another monument, Grand Staircase-Escalante, to about half its current size.

*National monuments are lands that are protected from development by law. They are roughly analogous to national parks, but while national parks are created by Congress, national monuments are created by presidents through the Antiquities Act. 

Observers say this order by Trump will precipitate a legal battle that could have far-reaching implications for the course of American land conservation, and for national monuments.

Today, Michael Flynn* pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in January (about meeting with the Russians). Doesn’t sound like a big deal? It’s a very big deal: a felony, a serious crime that can send the offender to jail for 5 years. Flynn will be a convicted felon, after all is said and done. Harry Litman writes in an opinion piece in the New York Times that Flynn will testify as a witness for special investigator Mueller, and that this ‘portends the likelihood of impeachable charges being brought against the president of the United States’.

*Former Director of the Defence Intelligence Agency (2012-2014), former National Security Advisor to President Trump, resigned after just 26 days in this role on February 13.

Here we are again, watching the Senate Republicans doing their best to press into law, as quick as they can, without proper debate and hearings, an immoral law that will touch every American.   (The Republican House had done their part already). The monstrous tax-cut bill that takes money away from students, teachers, hard-working middle-class people – and healthcare from sick people – is about to get voted into law.  At the 11th hour on Thursday night, a few Republicans balked at the $1 trillion (at least) that it will add to the budget deficit, but it will probably pass on Friday.

As Republican strategist Steve Schmidt says in his tweets (below): if you are a generation X-er, you should be aghast at what the Republican septuagenarians and octogenarians in Congress are doing in the name of politics.  They are beggars for donations from corporations and billionaires, and they are making all of us pay for it.

 

Never mind the myriad scandals of the Trump Administration. This one is at the top of the list, in my opinion : the mythical tax bill that Republicans are working on. (Boost the economy to 4% growth, raise wages, pay for the deficit .. the delusions are many). The House of Representatives will vote on their proposition of a massive tax-cut bill tomorrow.  The losses in revenue will add some $1.5 trillion to the national debt, and slash taxes for corporations and the rich, with little benefit to middle-class working people. In fact, it will raise taxes for many.  But that’s not all: to pay for part of it, the law will take health-care benefits away from an estimated 13 million Americans. 

In other news today, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin showed off the first dollar bills with his signature on.  Yay.

The results of Australia’s postal survey vote regarding marriage equality are in, and it’s a ‘Yes’ (61.6% yes, 38.4 no%). Yes!  Good news. All states and territories recorded a majority ‘Yes’ response.   (It still has to make it into law by Australia’s parliament.  12/7/2017: It’s official. Australian Parliament Approves Same-Sex Marriage).

As New York Times notes, the record of subjecting same-sex marriage to a public vote remains mixed, though.

‘.. In 2015, Ireland was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by referendum, but the same year, voters in Slovenia rejected a law legalizing such unions.
In the United States, numerous states outlawed same-sex marriage in referendums; in 2012, Maine, Maryland and Washington became the first states to legalize such unions by referendum. The United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the nation in 2015.
The survey in Australia was controversial, not only because it placed such a thorny issue at the whims of direct democracy but also because of its cost (about US$ 97 million).
As the deadline approached for citizens to mail in their ballots, passions were inflamed by heartfelt pleas and vitriolic attacks’.

Roy Moore (age 70) is a Republican candidate for Senator, in a special election on December 12 in Alabama.  He is facing allegations of sexual assault on young girls (one was 14) when he was 32.  The Washington Post today detailed the testimony of four women; the reporters obtained corroborating information from interviews with 30 people in total, for the four women.

Republican Senators, and President Trump (the pot calling the kettle black a little, but OK), called for him to quit today. It’s too late to lawfully remove Moore from the ballot. ‘He will absolutely not quit the race’, predicts a reporter that knows Alabama politics and has followed Moore’s tarnished career as Chief Justice* for 20 years.    So: time will tell what happens. Will even more women come forward? This is now post-Harvey Weinstein, post-Kevin Spacey, and several other public figures that are paying the price for their misconduct of decades ago.

*Moore was Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2001, but was removed from his position in November 2003 by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary for refusing to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments commissioned by him, from the Alabama Judicial Building, despite orders to do so by a federal court.  Again elected Chief Justice in 2013 (why, Alabama voters?), he was again suspended in May 2016, for directing probate judges to continue to enforce Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage despite the fact that this had been ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.

It’s been a year since the Trump cataclysm happened (how time flies). Today, voters in some states went to the polls to select new governors, and other state representatives. The race for governor of Virginia was especially closely watched, and the pre-election polls had the candidates neck-and-neck.  Republican Ed Gillespie tried some Trump tactics (anti-immigrant, support for Confederate statues), but Democrat Ralph Northam had won by 9% when all was said and done.

Democrats elsewhere did well, too.  Soo .. looks like there is hope for the 2018 House and Senate mid-term elections, for the Democrats to find some of their footing back. If Democrats will just get out and bother to go vote, it will make a huge difference. In the city of Charlottesville (site of the white supremacist march in August), votes cast were up 31 percent over the 2013 election. Northam the Democrat, took 84 percent of the vote there.

There’s something big going down in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saturday night saw the arrest of dozens of people, at least 11 of whom were princes, including the billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, as part of a ‘corruption crackdown’.

Observers see the crackdown as a consolidation of power by the country’s young crown prince (age 32), Mohammed bin Salman. And the New York Times notes that the six-year old Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh is used as a ‘gilded cage’ to confine former government ministers, prominent businessmen and members of the royal family. Surely it is the world’s most luxurious jail.  (Can I be locked up there for a week? .. and with room service and an internet connection, of course.  Right now the hotel’s website says all telephone lines and internet access are temporarily suspended).

Well: ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort and associate Rick Gates were indicted today, on conspiracy, money laundering, foreign agent and false statement charges.  They had to hand their passports in, and they are under house arrest.  Manafort’s bail money was set at $10 million.

A third name made even bigger news: that of campaign staffer George Papadopoulos that had already plead guilty to lying to the FBI, about a meeting in London with a Russian contact to obtain ‘dirt’ about Hillary Clinton (her hacked e-mails).  An ex-FBI agent said today the ‘significance of this evidence can almost not be overstated’.

News broke on Friday that special prosecutor Mueller’s first charges are to be made, as soon as Monday, in his investigation into the Trump campaign. The charges are still sealed, so the nature and the persons to be charged are not yet known. It would be a political earthquake if ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort or ex-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is indicted.  Some observers point out that these first indictments may very well be for crimes by lesser players, to start ratcheting up the pressure on the bigger fish. From what I learned from newspapers and cable TV, there seems to be a wide range of possible crimes to go after, from money laundering to running afoul of foreign agent laws, to election campaign collusion with the Russians and obstruction of justice.

It’s all a hoax! cries Trump and his supporters on Fox News. Fox News is a cable TV ‘news’ channel, that has hosted 19 fawning, sycophantic, soft-ball interviews with Trump so far this year. And ‘What about Hillary and her e-mails? And the uranium deal with the Russians? (This was in 2010!). And paying for the Steele dossier?’. Well, sorry.  Hillary is not under investigation, and she is not President of the United States.

 

Here a great analysis of the multiple lies from Trump and the damage control that the White House staff had to engage in since last Monday.   (Four American green berets were ambushed in Niger, Africa, on Oct 4, bringing to light that at least 800 American soldiers are there, something not even senior members of Congress were aware of.  Some lawmakers have called for the 9/11 authorization from Congress – now 16 years on – for the US armed forces to go after terrorists across the globe, to be redefined and reauthorized).

 

American political commentator, professor, and author Robert Reich posted a thesis on Facebook and Twitter that says America actually has six political parties, and not just two.  So to get any significant legislation done, the Senate and House leaders have to get a coalition of two or more of these ‘inside’ parties to agree.   (For the record, I am an anti-establishment Democrat).

President Trump has waged war with the media and the press since Day One of his presidency, and it just seems to get even worse.

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So many things wrong with these tweets. NBC and the networks hold themselves to the highest standards, while Trump tweets out blatant lies and distortions almost every day.  2/3 of Americans think they are bad for the country. And by the way: there is no ‘license’ that can be revoked for the national networks, only for local TV stations. Also, the Executive Branch cannot even do that – it’s up to the Federal Communications Commission.

NBC reported on Wednesday that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called President Trump a ‘moron’* in public. This was in July, at the Pentagon, after Trump had left a meeting. Shortly after that VP Mike Pence had to talk Tillerson into staying on and not quitting.     *It’s actually worse than that .. whispers are that it was ‘f-ing moron’.  The political publication The Hill tells NBC to come clean and report the exact phrase that was used.

Anyway, does it matter? Both Tillerson and Trump denied on Wednesday that anything was amiss.  (Tillerson: the President is a ‘smart man’; Trump: NBC is ‘fake news’, ‘totally made-up’). Right.  I will go with NBC’s version, to believe.

It does matter. It’s not good that there is such a rift between the President and his Secretary of State.  And Trump seems to routinely undermine his cabinet’s efforts by tweeting totally contradicting policy points of view.  Example: I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man .. Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!  

‘Drain the Swamp!’ was Donald Trump’s rallying cry during his campaign. Well, the swamp is alive and well. Trump’s Health & Human Services (HHS) secretary Tom Price, finally quit on Friday. He brought a scandal onto himself with his ultra-exorbitant travel expenses.  The feat he pulled off: pile up expenses to the tune of $1,000,000 of overseas trips and the more than two dozen trips he has taken on private planes domestically since May.  This is after he cut the HHS travel annual budget of $4.9 million by $663,000 (15%).  And for comparison, his predecessor Kathleen Sibelius, took one private plane flight in all of her 5-year tenure.

Even so, it appears Price’s ultimate sin was not being able to repeal Obamacare (that is: take away healthcare money for millions of Americans), and so he had to go.

‘When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front-row seat’. – said George Carlin, American stand-up comedian, actor, author and social critic, 1927-2008.

This is certainly not the craziest year in the American republic’s history (there was the Civil War, and there was 1968, after all) .. but some days sure feels pretty surreal.

1. On Friday, President Trump called NFL players that kneel during the anthem to protest racial inequality ‘sons of b****es’. Surely, a first for any US President in public. Is the F word next? The N word?
2. We all survived the latest apocalypse on Saturday. Some guy called David preached about a biblical doomsday of Sep 23, which came and went .. and hey! we’re still here. He simply issued a new doomsday date.
3. Today Republican Senators Graham & Cassidy (boo! boo! to you) still pushed their zombie healthcare bill that propose to drain tens of billions of dollars out of healthcare. They lied about its effects in the public hearing today. Again confirming Republican health policy: die if you’re sick, and make it quick; you’re costing us money. (The New York Times reports that Republican Senators’ billionaire donors are getting antsy and want their tax cuts). Before the hearing started, Capitol police carried out screaming (disabled) protesters in their wheelchairs.
4. I watch the Vietnam War documentary and think: history repeated itself with Iraq, and is repeating itself right now in Afghanistan. We sent thousands more troops there just a few weeks ago – with no exit strategy. Just last week, the Senate passed a $700 billion defense policy bill, far more than what Trump requested. Someone calculated that the increase in the defense budget can fund free education country-wide for a year.
5. Trump finally acknowledged the post-Maria hurricane crisis in Puerto Rico (tweets), but criticizes them for their poor infrastructure, instead of offering help or support. Houston and Florida is yesterday’s news by now, and I assume they are doing OK.
6. North Korea now threatens to shoot down American warplanes – even outside their airspace, saying Trump ‘declared war’ on them.  There are reports that commercial airlines have started to give the airspace there a wide berth.  Not a great feeling, this game of chicken between President Trump and Dear Leader Kim Jong-un.

The polls have closed and the projected results are in. Angela Merkel’s party won, but lost ground, as did her coalition partner Martin Schultz, from the left-center Social Democratic Party.  Schultz announced that the four-year coalition between the Social Democrats and Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is over.  The far right AfD gained a lot of ground and came in a solid third.  They will be seated in the Bundestag for the first time, something that does not sit well with many Germans.  But hey, this is not a Brexit outcome, and it is not a Trump-like victory: so, good.

Here’s my collage of Twitter pictures for Germany’s federal elections on Sunday. The consensus is that Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union) is safely in the lead for a fourth term as German chancellor, but since there are seven parties vying for votes, it’s all about the second, third and fourth percentages of votes.  This will determine the coalition that the CDU will have to form, to get to a governing majority.