The Fine Red Line

 

I think it was an act of moral courage for Senator Schumer to express criticism of Israel PM Netanyahu and concern for the lives of innocent Palestinians. Leaving aside whether he was the best person to make this message because of his own Jewishness and long-standing support of Israel, that there needed to be daylight between what the United States supports and what Netanyahu's government is carrying out was a necessity, because OUR US government must be accountable. The ongoing suffering of people who had no choice in the horrific and malicious actions of 10/7 is inhumane. The idea of so much suffering on both sides without a clear path to reconciliation, and ultimately peace, feels unthinkable. 

There have been protests in Israel that suggest that many people do not feel like Netanyahu has done everything he can to get the hostages home and end the current war. Although Schumer called for elections what he did not do is imply who should win them--rather, he indicated that a referendum on the desires of the people in our democratic ally would settle what their vision is for the future of the Israeli state--without leaving it in the hands of someone who had done everything he could to prevent a two-state solution. 

Not One Republican

 

Yesterday, the Senate Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act. It's accurate to say Senate Democrats, because not one Republican helped pass it. Not one.  This bill brings significant benefits for health care costs and fighting climate change, and could have been even better, but Republicans spitefully blocked a provision that would have capped insulin costs to $35 a month. 

Why do I say they spitefully did that? Well, they could have just left in in the bill. But just as with their snit fit over the PACT Act, I really suspect they didn't want to be remotely helpful and were mad that this significant legislation would be passed at all. It's not like they seem to especially care about the environment, anyway, and they complain about prescription medicine costs--but doing something about them smacks too much of making government do stuff.

I could be disappointed, but not surprised. Remember, it was at this point in Barack Obama's presidency that Senator Mitch McConnell made clear that obstruction in order to hopefully deny Obama a second term was the actual goal of congressional Republicans. It didn't work for them, but here they are, looking for all the world like they have the same obstructionist strategy. 

The bill is expected to reduce the deficit and moderately curb inflation. To hear Republicans tell it, you would think inflation (a global phenomenon brought on by digging out of the COVID-19 recession and supply chain issues) was a purely local phenomenon and all Joe Biden's fault. You think if they wanted to demonstrate the genius of fiscal conservatism, they would offer suggestions?

Uh, no. They are just going to complain. This is why I am fed up with people who blow smoke about bipartisanship and unity and so on. Instead of being a part of the solution by passing meaningful legislation, they seem happy to gesture in the direction of progress and say "See, I tried to black that. You're welcome."

Not one Republican voted for this bill. As far as I'm concerned, not one Republican should stay in office.

Take the Uzi from the Babies

 

"I write to inform you that I will not provide such assistance again if your all-Democrat government drifts into another avoidable crisis," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in a letter to President Biden. https://t.co/gqHCTeHiGq

— CNN (@CNN) October 9, 2021

While I don't think Democrats should need to be reminded that this is what the Republican Party is now, a shameless band of terrorists who definitely would throw the country into economic turmoil for petty political reasons, McConnell is doing just that. The entire tone is ridiculous. Of course we're going to hit the debt ceiling again and it will need to be raised again. It isn't something the Democrats did, it's the nature of paying for government to continue. McConnell is taking a page from the Trump book and acting as if the mildest criticism of his tactics is a deep and terrible breach of some imaginary comity that--

Holy fricking Jiminy Crickets, he has done as much as anyone else to erode. I don't know know what Manchin and Sinema need or what sweet nothings are being drizzled into their shell-like aural protuberances, but enough is enough. This is a threat: give up on your whole Democratic agenda or we sink the country. 

You can't negotiate with these folks. You shouldn't. There's no political upside. It leaves you nothing to run on. Take the UZI from the babies. McConnell as good as said "Don't trust us."  So don't. 

Kill the filibuster. Deliver the goods. And let McConnell know it was his own fault that it had to be this way. 

Trump's Shutdown is Off the Wall

George Conway shared a very special message he received from Trump (well, the Trump 2020 campaign, right?) that is very informatively fundraising off of the wall promise. Trump informs his pigeons that this is not a political game. We are more generally informed that it is, nonetheless, very political. Because he expects his campaign to make bank on it.

So, just based on the shutdown of last three weeks, and the speech Trump gave which did not declare an emergency, and the fundraising, what should we gather about Trump's strategy, here? He's made pains to describe his wall as a "barrier" and seems to think that building it from steel rather than concrete makes a serious difference, but that sort of sounds to me like a real estate developer trying to win over investors in a project. And that's weird, because his campaign was practically built around "Build the wall!" Yet, it began as just a gimmick.

Shouldn't he have had some ideas about what kind of wall he wanted before now? For that matter, during the first two years of his presidency, shouldn't he have built more of the wall than zero (0) additional miles by now?

Despite some handwringing about the net effect of Trump being able to broadcast more lies to the American people, I'm not sure that anything very effective was accomplished by his Oval Office speech. Unlike at his campaign rallies, this setting has him stiff and scripted, more prone to sniffing and seeming uninterested in the content. The result actually is that even Fox News is fact-checking him. What he has said is basically misinformation that has been repeatedly debunked before, but more to the point, he appealed to Congress to end the shutdown because he feels he politically can't (and other members of his party understand this as well.)

Still, despite all that his been personally invested by Trump in this shutdown over wall funding, it seems like he's handed his political future to Democrats just after having a very rough midterm election. And he privately, per NYT, acknowledges that the speech and visiting the border are unlikely to change anything. He left it to Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi to contrast his untruthful statements about border security with the real problems caused by the shutdown.

If he had given himself any room on this, he could have magnanimously agreed to end the shutdown, and promised to work out the wall/barrier/fence funding later, talking up how he was ending the "real" crisis of badly divided government. But he hasn't given himself that room, almost entirely casting it as a loss if he doesn't get his way. He continues to own this shutdown, and sill has not gotten a wall.

UPDATE:

TWBG: No One Promised You a Rose Garden

This has been a pretty crappy week for President Trump so far, what with the ongoing search for a replacement for outgoing CoS John Kelly (who Trump blabbed was leaving without giving Kelly himself a chance to so announce, and who will presumably now stay on until the end of the year) going poorly enough that regular CNN commentator and former US Senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum pled out of the job, citing that he has a family, and sort-of front-runner Mark Meadows was let off the hook because Trump needs somebody in the House, and with setting his ownself up to basically own a government shutdown because being Mr. Art of the Deal, Chuck and Nancy got him flustered in front of a camera. And he stayed flustered, got his manhood questioned, and spent Wednesday morning up in his residence, watching cable and presumably still out of sorts.

The night before, Michael Flynn, Trump's top foreign policy advisor and hand-picked NSA until that totally blew up, offered a sentencing memo requesting no time to be served because of his timely cooperation once he understood his situation, and grousing that he sort of thought the FBI done set him up by not telling him to shut up and get a lawyer. This is very much in line with the sort of thing TrumpWorld seems to believe, with peripheral Trumpists sort of saying this one-sided statement from the Flynn defense should let him (and Trump) off the hook.

Let me get this out of the way--I do not know what is worse, assuming that one is so poor of reading comprehension to misunderstand the situation to the effect that a statement that there is a process to call on the White House Counsel actually equals a consultation not to engage an attorney, because then it would be some kind of thing and that a grown man who is not new to this rodeo somehow is receiving compensation from foreign governments (plural, Turkey and Russia) without filing the correct FARA paperwork, knows this to be true, and faces the line of questioning he should certainly expect without for a quick minute thinking of getting either an attorney consult or, maybe, and I'm standing out on a ledge over here--not lying; or being so disingenuous to have grasped these things and then presented them, however dim and unworthy of supposition, as one's best defense for a person who is already in a cooperating agreement and whose best defense in reality is coughing up information that sort of invalidates all pretense at innocence. I am unfamiliar with Byron York's compensation arrangement, but I personally would skip a paycheck before presenting anything this fucking stupid. Or demand a "walk-away" amount. 

But I digress, because the star of the day was clearly Michael Cohen, who was sentenced to 36 months and some fines and restitution. This is less than the 51 to 63 months that was recommended by the sentencing guidelines. Part of his sentencing included the plea regarding campaign finance violations, and before the claim that the Edwards defense might pertain to Trump (even though Edwards was indicted) escaped the lips of Trump defenders, AMI, the parent company of National Enquirer which helped facilitate the McDougal payoff, entirely agreed: this was all about the 2016 presidential campaign of--some guy. 

Now, Trump has a reason to be seething as Cohen maintains he was directed to do much of what he did by Trump (not the tax evasion stuff, and nothing to do with the taxi medallions, but hot damn the bribery things!) And really, who takes out a loan on their house to pay off a person who is only claiming to have had sex with a potential presidential candidate because that certainly sounds like a really great use of your credit rating, unless specifically told to by someone you anticipate will make good on the ask? Only Trump's direction makes sense. And the direction is because the claim is probably good (they did it) and Trump would for some reason, prefer not to have another credible claim against him (among already so many?) during a campaign that he now has to win because?

Not winning queers his deal.

My best guess is Trump is indebted to do the White House thing until he is somehow removed from office, and I think he hates it, and I sort of like the prospect that this makes him suffer a little. As with the Trump Tower Moscow project, maybe doing this POTUS thing was a dream too far, with a serious price. 

But there definitely was a Moscow Trump Tower thing going, and Trump also may have met with people he thought might help him make it happen. Or for sure his son did, more than once. And we now understand that Mueller is looking more closely at these Russia/NRA contacts, especially now that Maria Butina is cooperating. Her boyfriend seems to have already produced interesting leads. 

Now, if his bind is what I think it is, Trump always has resigning and coming correct as a possible out (although being as crooked as a corkscrew and having to wind his pants on each morning makes this a remote possibility). But I really feel like the evidence here indicates that he's up to his orange peel ass in fuckery, and the other alternatives are not going to be pretty. 

Trump Chose This

Sure, there is a stunt-like quality to the image of Trump sitting at a table with his Democratic friends "Chuck and Nancy" conspicuously absent which highlights his side of the argument that they aren't trying to reach out to him over issues such as the looming government shutdown or tax reform, but I can't help but direct attention back to what Trump did to basically disinvite them:

Leaving aside that this meeting wasn't even supposed to really be about crime or immigration--he does know that the GOP plan right now is actually going to raise taxes on millions of people, right? Or does he once again have no idea what's supposed to be in the policies he allegedly wants passed? The CBO has said this plan is liable to increase the deficit and will hurt the poor, and frankly, the only fixes proposed for the deficit issue is Sen' Corker's "trigger" to freeze the tax cuts if (when) the deficit is negatively impacted, and, well, there really isn't a solution to do squat for the poor that I can see. And despite Trump's describing his meeting with GOP leaders as a "lovefest" , it still genuinely sounds to me like Republicans have some serious ground to cover before they are all in the same place on this bill. 

What Trump did today was a failure to get Democrats to the table. He could have made it seem like negotiation was possible, but he was the one who insulted Democrats' position and even said "I don't see a deal!"

Wait a minute--wasn't he supposed to be the master of the "art of the deal"?  That was supposed to mean some kind of genius at seeing opportunities? And, well, right here he didn't. So. "Chuck and Nancy" didn't have to waste their time. And if the party that controls both houses of Congress and the White House has to shut down the government to sort their own self-made problems, Democrats do not exist to save Republicans from themselves. It would be great not to have a government shutdown, but, shit. Republicans. What are you gonna do?

Trump had a choice. Act like a leader and an adult and try to get something done. He instead Tweeted something dumb and ended up talking between empty chairs--and maybe some of his fanclub see that as a success. 

But that kind of "success" is just as empty as those chairs. 

Trump Made a Good Call

You probably won't hear this from me very often, but President Trump made the right call in making a deal with Democrats on the Hill to raise the debt ceiling and ensure Hurricane Harvey relief. I won't exactly be gleeful at the disarray this puts the GOP in, but if Trump was thinking of "sending a message" to McConnell and Ryan that he only has so much patience with them--I can entirely understand. Their lack of interest in governance has had me right out of patience for some time. I also don't think it's as strategic as one might expect of a politician, because I don't view Trump as a politician (or really a long-term strategic thinker). 

What I do think is that, in the wake of the devastation from Harvey and the threat of Irma, with his political agenda not nearly cleared to his satisfaction, with whatever is going on with North Korea, it would be appalling to be bogged down in a debt ceiling row right now. Anyone thinking of a government shutdown or political horseplay right now would have to be off their rocker. 

And here's the thing: Ryan and McConnell might have been "blindsided" or "shell-shocked" by Trump's decision, but they set themselves up for this because of previous debt ceiling gamesmanship. I hate, hate, hate the idea of debt ceilings having to be congressionally approved but even more so now that they've become politically-charged, so I entirely appreciate wanting a longer period between government-funding battles. I hate, hate, hate shut-down nonsense, too. But at the same time, remember how they set their agenda to tell Trump what he wanted to hear?  And he got nothing? 

He wants McConnell and Ryan to deliver him something. Here's a few months of funding the government and helping our fellow Americans out of a disaster. Now McConnell and Ryan can figure out how to make the most of the time they have until the next row. 

Hint--it might involve bipartisanship. He made it harder for them, unless they figure out how deals get made. Do I know that's what Trump is thinking? Hell no. But it makes sense that Trump is used to getting his way and will look for a way to get it.