1. Devin Nunes (R-Ca). We are still struggling to understand why, specifically, California-based Rep. Devin Nunes has wagered his entire career and future place in the history books on a collaborative effort with the White House to shut down the investigation of Russia's espionage and intelligence efforts against the United States during the 2016 presidential elections.
It cannot seemingly be explained as an attempt to get Trump off the hook for, for example, the Trump Tower meeting we now know about between his top campaign staff and/or family and agents who represented themselves as being "part of" the Russian government's support for Trump's campaign. There would be no reason for Nunes to insert himself in that, at least not to the extent of himself inviting obstruction of justice charges. But he persists, and persists some more, and doubles down.
Listen to him sputter on the Sean Hannity Screaming-Shouty Hour, spouting things about his latest "memo" that even Glenn Beck's chalkboard would find too humiliating to put up with. The man isn't just chewing the scenery, he's dousing it in an expensive vinaigrette first.
“There's clear evidence of collusion—that the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign colluded with the Russians,” Nunes said, using his appearance on prime time’s top-rated cable-news show to decry the supposed “crickets from the media” about the biggest political story of the past week.
What planet is Nunes living on? Somehow Nunes conveniently forgot that law enforcement had been alerted about possible Russian interference well before the Stele revelations. This is what landed Trump's new (and old) campaign buddies on the counterintelligence radar. The Democratic Party (in addition to, lest we forget, a passel of Trump's fellow Republicans) hired a firm to do opposition research on Trump. The opposition research included the efforts of a well-regarded British ex-spy with the sort of worldwide contacts you would expect a British ex-spy to have; it turned up such a trove of information about shady Trump ties that the researchers felt obliged to contact the FBI about what they had learned, for fear that Trump was, at the least, a potential blackmail target.
Perhaps the Hannity audience enjoys watching the Nunes circus, but to the rest of us it looks like a clown lighting himself on fire and daring us all to watch. Nunes repeatedly told Hannity that his memo had turned the tables on Democrats, saying “the counterintelligence investigation should have been opened up against the Hillary campaign when they got ahold of the dossier.” He added: “I just go by the old rule: Whatever they accuse you of doing, they’re actually doing,” Nunes said.
Nunes is quite wedded to this concept that the real crime here is not that anyone on the Trump campaign team, or transition team, or within the White House did anything wrong, but that Democrats found out. He is all-in on the notion that, after going to law enforcement with the information they had learned about Trump's potential Russian ties, not just the investigators, but the Hillary Clinton campaign itself, ought to have been treated as enemies of the state.
This is, lest we forget, batshit. It's utterly insane. It is beyond the realm of rational speech as we know it, and then some. And there's no way to interpret a sitting congressman saying these things other than as an attempt to throw a flash-bang grenade into the discourse and duck out the back before anyone notices.
There is no rational reason for Devin Nunes to be climbing so far out on this limb for the likes of bragging, bleating nobody Carter Page. There is no rational reason for Nunes to go to these rhetorical lengths to shutter an investigation into money laundering by people Trump claims to have barely known. Congress critters are deeply selfish and self-absorbed people, and do not readily torpedo their own careers for the sake of random consultants and advisers. Nunes is a piece of work.
First, though, Tenney tried to dismiss the whole issue: “We’re also getting into the minutiae of what’s going on with White House,” Tenney said of allowing someone to remain in a job controlling the flow of papers to the president of the United States for months after the FBI found serious problems in the background check for his security clearance. This is not minutiae; it is precisely about character.
Informed of the fact that the FBI was looking into the allegations as part of its background check of Porter, and that there was potential concern over the possibility of the staffer being blackmailed, Tenney shot down that possibility:
“Right, except blackmail and domestic situations don’t really line up, they’re not crimes of character,” she said. “They’re [crimes of] character but they’re not dishonesty—know this. To me... just because somebody has been accused of these things and even if they’re true that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to be dishonest and commit blackmail. I don’t think it was a great hire if these are true, but again, are these true?”
Aside from the fact that the concern is that Porter would be vulnerable to blackmail because he wanted to hide his wife-beating ways from the world, not that domestic abusers have a heightened propensity for committing blackmail, NOT CRIMES OF CHARACTER? Or, “character but they’re not dishonesty,” although given that Porter was actively trying to hide his history with ridiculous excuses like that he didn’t punch through his second wife’s window, he just tapped on it with a finger until his knuckle went through it, there are some freaking honesty issues here, too.
And, the silver-tongued Tenney was not through with her absurdities. Her latest salvo: When asked to comment on the Florida school shooting, the ignominious Congresswoman responded:
“obviously there’s a lot of politics in it. And it’s interesting that so many of these people end up being Democrats. But the media doesn’t talk ab out that either.”
When later asked to elaborate, she said, “I am fed up with the media and liberals attempting to politicize tragedies and demonize law-abiding gun owners and conservative Americans every time there is a horrible tragedy.”
Is Tenney a hypocrite or just dumb as a stone? Who’s inserting politics into a national tragedy? I haven’t seen data on the political affiliations of mass shooters, but it seems to me they tend to come from the far right. The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report this month that counted 100 people killed or injured by “alleged perpetrators influenced by the so-called ‘alt-right’” between 2014 and 2018. White supremacist Nikolas Cruz’ mass murder in Parkland, Florida tragically adds to this number.
Tenney, who represents New York’s 22nd Congressional District, has a serious Democratic opponent this year in state Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi. Let’s hope she pays an electoral price for her sick ignorance and toxic rhetoric.
3. Unnamed Trump White House Source. The Trump White House has been faced with one scandal after another from the minute he took office. Last week was a particularly bad one. The adult film star he allegedly had an affair with said her $130,000 hush money agreement was null and void and she was ready to talk. A former Playboy model stepped forward to detail her 9-month-long affair with a recently married Donald Trump in 2006. The White House backed, and then backed away from, Rob Porter, Trump’s staff secretary who reportedly physically abused his former wives and inexplicably got hired by the Trump White House, despite an FBI background check finding credible evidence he was abusive and open to blackmail. And then, of course, came the tragedy in Florida, where a former student used an assault weapon to commit mass murder at his former high school.
Leave it to Trumpists to see opportunity in tragedy. At least one White House official said the tragedy gave the White House staff just the break they needed. From the Washington Post:
“For everyone, it was a distraction or a reprieve,” said one White House official, speaking anonymously to reflect internal conversations. “A lot of people here felt like it was a reprieve from seven or eight days of just getting pummeled.”
The official likened the brief political calm to the aftermath of the October 2017 gun massacre in Las Vegas that left 58 dead and hundreds more injured. That tragedy united White House aides and the country in their shared mourning for the victims and their families.
“But as we all know, sadly, when the coverage dies down a little bit, we’ll be back through the chaos,” the official said.
Absolutely sickening.
4. Former Republican Rep. Jack Kingston (and fellow travelers). The gun-hugging far right has been rocked back by the powerful moral voice of the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, so it’s falling back on what it knows best: vicious attacks. On the teenage survivors of a mass shooting. Right-wing pundits have gotten an assist from Donald Trump Jr., and now CNN has put former Republican Rep. Jack Kingston on the air to be just as vile:
Kingston attacked the students as mere stooges for “left-wing groups who have an agenda” during an appearance on CNN Tuesday morning. Kingston added he believed George Soros was actually orchestrating the students’ activism.
Kingston’s claims were met with disbelief by Alisyn Camerota. “Jack, I’m sorry. I have to correct you. I was down there. I talked to these kids. These kids were wildly motivated,” Camerota said.
Kingston’s attack on the protesting Marjory Stoneman Douglas High students as merely pawns of evil left-wing adults has become a conservative rallying cry. The conservative National Review chimed in that the teenage survivors should simply shut up:
“Leftists are parading traumatized teens to make an emotional plea about gun control. But we shouldn’t let young people make policy. . . . Children and teenagers are not fully rational actors. They’re not capable of exercising supreme responsibilities. And we shouldn’t be treating innocence as a political asset used to push the agenda of more sophisticated players.”
The generic conservative columnist who penned this column chastising America for listening to teen shooting survivors because "teenagers are not fully rational actors," and who says "we shouldn't be treating innocence as a political asset," is none other than Ben Shapiro, child star of the conservative movement, who in 2004, at age 17, published Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth.
Yes, that Ben Shapiro, the one who was given his very own teen political column that same year, and who was zipped around the country as political child genius by a conservative movement desperate to demonstrate that they were indeed super-very-attuned to These Kids Today. Before he hit drinking age he had published another book, one which required the self-proclaimed "proud virgin" Ben to watch untold hours of pornography as "research" for his then well-researched proclamation that Pornography Was Bad, which was considered by many, many, many "leftist" wags to be among the more hilarious excuses for a professionally uptight teenager to watch porn ever trotted out.
The Parkland students spoke out immediately after the shooting on social media and in interviews, and they have been steadfast with their message since. Even George Soros does not have the superpower of getting them all media and message training (and, presumably, brainwashing them) that quickly. And even if they end up getting some logistical help on permits and crowd control from established organizations as they plan large-scale events, you know what? It’s pretty clear they have the wherewithal to push back if they feel the message is being “hijacked,” as Kingston would have it.
Few politicians with decades of experience can offer the clarity and eloquence these teenagers have displayed—and there can be no doubt it’s coming from the heart. No wonder the right is so desperate to smear them, even if that means trying to spread some smears that are as improbable as they are vicious.
6. Republican Tax Scam Liars. The GOP tax cut may be the biggest scam in American history. Outright lies about who will benefit from the “reform” represent a new low, even in today’s fact-adverse America. Let us look at a small sampling of the more prominent liars.
Donald Trump: “the new tax is going to cost me a fortune.” In fact, he and his fellow super-rich will save a fortune. The plan cuts income taxes for top earners, slashes the rate for corporations like his, and includes a generous cut for owners of so-called pass-through companies—of which he has about 500.
Donald Trump: “Tax reform will protect low-income and middle-income households, not the wealthy and well-connected.” In fact, the tax plan’s $1.2 trillion in income tax cuts are heavily weighted toward the wealthy. In 2027, 70 percent of middle-income taxpayers will get a tax hike—but just 8 percent of those making more than $5 million will.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin: “There will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class.” In fact, the top 5 percent of taxpayers get more than 40 percent of the benefits. And the tax law slashes the rate for corporations by 40%--a gift for the top 1 percent, who pay about one-third of all corporate taxes. And, for “not too rich“ heirs, they won’t have to pay taxes on inheritances under $11.3 million.
Mnuchin: The Treasury Secretary declared that the tax cuts by spurring the economy would pay for themselves. Trump claimed the cuts would increase the GDP growth rate by as much as “even six percent.” Among 38 major economists surveyed, only one thought the tax cut would substantially boost GDP. Even Goldman Sachs, Mnuchin’s former employer, predicts GDP growth will increase by .3 percent as a result.
Housing Secretary Ben Carson. Carson, who offered a prayer at a cabinet meeting thanking God for the tax bill’s passing, denied the cuts will raise deficits causing spending cuts. In fact, the plan undercuts tax credits for building affordable housing—which could mean more than 200,000 fewer units over the next decade.
Paul Ryan (R-Wis). At least Ryan was honest about the GOP’s hidden agenda, noting the urgent need for “entitlement reform, which is how you handle the debt and deficit.”
Some Americans, perhaps swayed by the grandiose rhetoric and corporate bonus checks (which were accompanied by layoffs), may think the Trump tax cut will have a positive effect, but according to a survey 66 percent of Americans believe the plan will benefit the wealthy more than the middle class. The severe harm to the public interest, not to mention personal American lives, will unfold over time. Bring on 2020.
_______________________
And the winner is:
Although Claudia Tenney deserves ignominious recognition for her Sarah Palin impression, Kingston for his shameful red-baiting, and Nunes for his mindless partisanship—and hopefully self-destruction—I have to give the February award to Republican Tax Cut Liars who have pulled off a monstrous fraud on the American people. Their ignominious consequences will stretch far beyond those of the other IGGY candidates.
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