Lying Liars

WaPo calls 'em out (from 5-24-17)

The Congressional Budget Office will release its score of the GOP health-care bill today, and whatever the details, it will confirm once again that the Republican plan would cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid, leaving many millions uncovered. This, plus continued discussion of President Trump’s budget — which would heap a whole array of other cuts on top of that — will demonstrate that Trump is fully committed to a truly transformative downsizing of social programs that help lower-income people, packaged with an enormous tax cut for the rich.

But the evidence is mounting that Trump’s economic blueprint — whatever considerable harm it would do to people who didn’t vote for Trump — is also likely to hurt untold numbers of people who did vote for him.

Trump’s budget would transform the structure of Medicaid and cut spending on the program by hundreds of billions of dollars on top ofthe GOP health-care plan’s hundreds of billions in cuts to the Medicaid expansion over 10 years. This would chop down the program by nearly half. It’s hard to know how many Trump voters would be hit by these cuts, but judging by Kaiser’s polling, we’re talking about a lot of them.

--and--

The White House has an explanation for Trump’s reversal on Medicaid. Asked by John Harwood to explain the flip, budget director Mick Mulvaney claimed the promise was supplanted by Trump’s promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. This is nonsense: As Brian Beutler explains, Mulvaney “layered a lie of his own on top of Trump’s,” because Trump’s budget cuts to Medicaid “go hundreds of billions of dollars beyond phasing out Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.”

I’d go further still: There are numerous Trump lies being forced out into the open right now. Trump claimed he would not touch Medicaid and simultaneously that he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something better for all. It was a lie for Trump to claim he wouldn’t touch Medicaid; it was a lie to suggest preserving Medicaid and repealing Obamacare were compatible; it was a lie to claim that his repeal-and-replace plan would result in better coverage for everybody. If anything, the White House’s justifications only throw the scale and audacity of these intertwined scams, lies and betrayals into even sharper relief.

Classic John Cleese

Today's Tweet

alt-right weeps https://t.co/a2rD0lr09G

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) June 4, 2017

It'll Happen

Like a big earthquake or a bad hurricane, a terrorist attack inside USAmerica Inc is a matter of when not if.

When it happens, it's likely we'll see a big push towards the Daddy State - a massive transference of power to the Executive.

And keep in mind these few tidbits from Andrew Restuccia at Politico:

Top ranks at the State Department remain largely unfilled, as are some key ambassadorships. Trump has not named anyone to lead the Transportation Security Administration, which screens people at airports, or to run the Homeland Security office charged with protecting the country's physical and cyber infrastructure. His choice to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency is awaiting Senate confirmation, but Trump has not named a deputy.

At the Justice Department, Trump has not nominated an assistant attorney general for the national security division. And he has not nominated a deputy at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence or a director of the office's National Counterterrorism Center.

And, perhaps most crucially, Trump has not yet named a permanent leader of the FBI, which plays a central role in combating domestic terrorism. The president has continued to interview candidates for the job nearly a month after he fired James Comey.

It's possible the Press Poodles are right, and working for 45* has become such a Career-Killer that it's a simple matter of nobody worth hiring is willing to work for the guy.

It's just as possible he's using that as an excuse for not filling the positions necessary for us to have a better chance to prevent the attack or at least minimize the damage.

And hey - I may be paranoid, but that don't mean the guy ain't out to fuck us over.

Yeesh

There can be nothing more representative than this picture of the totality of fucked-up-edness this "president" is causing - on purpose, btw.

Yes, he's an incompetent mushbrain when it comes to governance. And he has no clue about history or language or science or anything else that makes for a decent human being, let alone a good POTUS. 

But he knows exactly what to do to advance an agenda that benefits nobody but himself - and his little band of thieves (for as long as they prove useful to him).

So the point of the exercise is to cause as much confusion and uncertainty as possible in order to exploit whatever opportunity presents itself because of it, or to cover whatever heist is in progress at any given time, and to have some plausible-sounding way to leave everybody else holding the bag when it all blows up.

The "saving grace" here may lie in the way 45* feels compelled to operate. To wit: his fucked up worldview makes it impossible for him to think he can win unless he can make everybody else lose - and eventually, it'll come down to everybody having to decide between themselves and him. Which is when the supremely venal Repubs in congress will suddenly remember swearing an oath not to do exactly everything they've been doing.

Because that's how this kinda shit always ends.

Let's keep hoping this one ends before the shooting starts.

Some Hard Truth

The fight for what's right continues apace.

Adam Serwer in The Atlantic:

The strangest part about the continued personality cult of Robert E. Lee is how few of the qualities his admirers profess to see in him he actually possessed.

Memorial Day has the tendency to conjure up old arguments about the Civil War. That’s understandable; it was created to mourn the dead of a war in which the Union was nearly destroyed, when half the country rose up in rebellion in defense of slavery. This year, the removal of Lee’s statue in New Orleans has inspired a new round of commentary about Lee, not to mention protests on his behalf by white supremacists.

The myth of Lee goes something like this: He was a brilliant strategist and devoted Christian man who abhorred slavery and labored tirelessly after the war to bring the country back together.
--and--

There is little truth in this. Lee was a devout Christian, and historians regard him as an accomplished tactician. But despite his ability to win individual battles, his decision to fight a conventional war against the more densely populated and industrialized North is considered by many historians to have been a fatal strategic error.

To describe this man as American hero requires ignoring the immense suffering for which he was personally responsible, both on and off the battlefield. It requires ignoring his participation in the industry of human bondage, his betrayal of his country in defense of that institution, the battlefields scattered with the lifeless bodies of men who followed his orders and those they killed, his hostility towards the rights of the freedmen and his indifference to his own students waging a campaign of terror against the newly emancipated. It requires reducing the sum of human virtue to a sense of decorum and the ability to convey gravitas in a gray uniform.

There are former Confederates who sought to redeem themselves—one thinks of James Longstreet, wrongly blamed by Lost Causers for Lee’s disastrous defeat at Gettysburg, who went from fighting the Union army to leading New Orleans’ integrated police force in battle against white supremacist paramilitaries. But there are no statues of Longstreet in New Orleans; there are no statues of Longstreet anywhere in the American South. Lee was devoted to defending the principle of white supremacy; Longstreet was not. This, perhaps, is why Lee was placed atop the largest Confederate monument at Gettysburg in 1917, but the 6’2” Longstreet had to wait until 1998 to receive a smaller-scale statue hidden in the woods that makes him look like a hobbit riding a donkey. It’s why Lee is remembered as a hero, and Longstreet is remembered as a disgrace.

The white supremacists who have protested on Lee’s behalf are not betraying his legacy. In fact, they have every reason to admire him. Lee, whose devotion to white supremacy outshone his loyalty to his country, is the embodiment of everything they stand for. Tribe and race over country is the core of white nationalism, and racists can embrace Lee in good conscience.

The question is why anyone else would.

Today's Short Reminder

There're 4 individual dudes on this planet who have amassed a combined fortune greater than the combined fortunes of 4 BILLION other people on this planet.

But yeah - the world's problems are all about the lady in front of you at the grocery store buying ramen noodles and peanut butter with her SNAP card.

Today's driftglass

driftglass:

Hey, Matt. I have an idea!

You're from Texas. And the Dixie Chicks are from Texas. So why don't you hop in your spiffy "Country Over Party" pickup truck, hie your tender sensibilities over to their place and have them share with you what life was like for them -- and for Liberals generally -- during the glorious reign of your former boss.

Keith

The GOP has to be held to account on this.  They don't get to pretend they had nothing to do with what many of us knew would happen eventually.

Trump became all but inevitable by 1992 with Pat Buchanan's scary prime time tirade at the GOP convention in Houston.

Just a friendly reminder:

This didn't get all fucked up yesterday, and we won't be able to un-fuck it by tomorrow.

Stay focused

Work together

Get shit done

One For The Chickenhawks

45*, Ted Nugent, et al