United States Congress of Fail - Part 4

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

I saw some people on Twitter talking about it under a Fox News tweet about the train carrying the GOP members that got hit by a Trump dump truck. There wasn't a link to this Facebook page, and I didn't check their timelines, so I can't say for sure if they were trolls or just Fox News fans who got the message from the trolls.

 So, one of the young blondes on Fox News? Stephen Miller? 

Soon it won't matter if they've even gone to law school.

And honestly I'm so sorry for the family of the person in the truck who died. No one wants that or is prepared for it. It's a tragedy.

But, as @47of74 said, it's hard to get past the irony of the crazy train hitting a garbage truck. I was watching the "West Wing" episode last night, because somebody here on FJ pushed me down that rabbit hole and it was the one where the priest told Jed, with regard to capital punishment, about God sending people signs and people refusing to see them.  Kind of like how all these evangelicals are looking for the Cracker Barrel billboard and missing the speed limit signs.

[GreyhoundFan]

So, the question came up earlier today, Gowdy is the 34th sitting Repug to not seek re-election.

Spoiler

Rep. Trey Gowdy (S.C.) on Wednesday became the latest GOP member of the House to announce his decision not to run for reelection. He’s the 34th sitting Republican to do so, according to DailyKos’s tracker of open seats, and the 22nd whose decision to leave is not based on running for another office. (In Gowdy’s case, he’s aiming to enter the judiciary.)

As of writing — and this seems to be changing with regularity — 17 percent of the seats the Republicans began the 115th Congress with will have no incumbent in November. That’s the highest percentage since 2008, when 17.4 percent of GOP seats were abandoned before the election. But of course, the Republicans hold a lot more seats now than they did after the 2006 Democratic rout.

We were curious whether there was a pattern to the retirements. So we took data on the 2016 results in each House district (again via DailyKos) and overlaid partisanship data from VoteView. (This score, called NOMINATE, ranks Congress members’ votes on a scale running liberal to conservative. A minus-1 is very liberal; plus-1 is very conservative.)

This is the result.

... < chart >

Anyone in the top half of the chart represents a district that Donald Trump won in 2016. Anyone in the right half of the chart tends to vote conservatively.

Here’s where we find Gowdy.

... < another chart >

He is a conservative-voting representative who represents a district that backed Trump by a decent margin. He’s not, in other words, the sort of person you might assume was looking to head for the exit.

Whom do you expect to head for the exit? Well, people who represent districts that the other party’s presidential candidate won by a wide margin, for one.

Of 12 districts that are represented by Democrats and that Trump won, three members are retiring. On the Republican side, six of 23 districts won by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton are seeing retirements. That’s 25 percent and 26.1 percent of the seats, respectively.

... < chart >

Most of the retirees from both parties, though, represent districts won by their own party’s presidential candidates. (That’s in part because we included people backing out of House races to seek higher office.)

... < chart >

Seven percent of Democrats in districts Clinton won aren’t seeking reelection. Twelve percent of Republicans in districts Trump won aren’t. So Republicans in districts that voted for Clinton are twice as likely to be planning to retire — but Democrats in Trump districts are 3.5 times as likely to retire.

There’s a bigger gulf in the 2016 vote and partisanship of Democrats who are and are not retiring than between Republicans who are and aren’t retiring. In other words, the profile of a retiring Republican looks more like a nonretiring Republican than the profile of a retiring Democrat looks like a nonretiring one. Retirees in both parties are slightly more likely to be moderate, because they’re slightly more likely to represent districts that are less partisan in their favor. But those differences are smaller among members of the GOP.

... < chart >

There are a few possible ways to interpret this.

One is that Republicans are retiring for reasons unrelated to electoral politics. Gowdy, for instance, wants a different job.

Another is that 2016 results aren’t adequately capturing the threat to Republican candidates — meaning that maybe it isn’t only how Trump fared in a district that tells us how vulnerable an incumbent Republican is.

 

[Bethella]

11 hours ago, LeftCoastLurker said:

My oldest will be able to vote this November. She's as "blue" as they come, so no worries there! She has also been a news junkie since she was 10 so she'll be able to figure things out on her own. We live in a super-blue area/state, but she will be going to school in another state that is not so blue, so she has to make a decision about where she'll register (or is even legally able to register now that I think about it.) Anybody know offhand what the rules are?

It depends on the state http://campusvoteproject.org/studentguides/

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

And honestly I'm so sorry for the family of the person in the truck who died. No one wants that or is prepared for it. It's a tragedy.

Yes it is. Unfortunately, the various conspiracies surrounding this accident are rapidly spreading and anger is building toward the occupants of the truck and anyone associated with them. 

I have a bad feeling about where this is headed, and I don't think the family of the deceased will be left alone to grieve the loss of their loved one. 

 

 

[Cartmann99]

The plot, she thickens:

 

[LeftCoastLurker]

1 hour ago, Bethella said:

It depends on the state http://campusvoteproject.org/studentguides/

Thanks!  She’ll be able to choose: home (CA) or school (NV)

[fraurosena]

And they're touting this as if it's something to be proud of. Riiiiiight.

 

[GrumpyGran]

12 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Yes it is. Unfortunately, the various conspiracies surrounding this accident are rapidly spreading and anger is building toward the occupants of the truck and anyone associated with them. 

I have a bad feeling about where this is headed, and I don't think the family of the deceased will be left alone to grieve the loss of their loved one. 

 

 

Yeah, of course. I'd like to kill as many Republicans as I can so my great idea is to drive a garbage truck into the path of the speeding train in hopes that...what? I'll pick some trash up to make it look legit. I'm sure this will cause the train to de-rail and kill many of them but I'll be okay.

How many brain cells do you have to be missing to avoid the fact that this was a chartered train, not a regularly scheduled route? So how did this truck driver know when it would be at the crossing? Did Congress release a schedule? I think not. These idiots are, well, idiots

[Audrey2]

44 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

Yeah, of course. I'd like to kill as many Republicans as I can so my great idea is to drive a garbage truck into the path of the speeding train in hopes that...what? I'll pick some trash up to make it look legit. I'm sure this will cause the train to de-rail and kill many of them but I'll be okay.

How many brain cells do you have to be missing to avoid the fact that this was a chartered train, not a regularly scheduled route? So how did this truck driver know when it would be at the crossing? Did Congress release a schedule? I think not. These idiots are, well, idiots

Just remember, many of them get their news from the King of the Tinfoil Hat, Hannity, and his minions at Fox News. I'm sure he's going to produce "evidence" that the driver was a Muslim or Hispanic Democrat, who positively voted for Obama and Hillary (he's never heard of a secret ballot), and that it was a conspiracy, led by Hillary, to "derail" Congress.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GrumpyGran]

11 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

I agree with her but Lyin' won't do anything. Every day Nunes' nefarious dealings become more obvious. He's gotten a promise of something and he's working his ass off to get there. If the Dems can get back control of both side in November, he's at the top of my list to be investigated. If Mueller doesn't get him first.

[fraurosena]

I dont' get all the surprise about Lyin' Ryan. I seem to remember a certain discussion during the election campaign that was taped, where he with others were laughing about the Russian help or something of the sort. I'll try and see if I can find that reporting (it's certain to be in these threads somewhere) and I'll post/repost it.

Anyway, Ryan has been 'in like Flynn' from the very beginning.

And here it is. It's a WaPo article from May 17 last year.

House majority leader to colleagues in 2016: ‘I think Putin pays’ Trump

Quote

A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

[...]

[link to full transcript]

The conversation provides a glimpse at the internal views of GOP leaders who now find themselves under mounting pressure over the conduct of President Trump. The exchange shows that the Republican leadership in the House privately discussed Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election and Trump’s relationship to Putin, but wanted to keep their concerns secret. It is difficult to tell from the recording the extent to which the remarks were meant to be taken literally.

The House leadership has so far stood by the White House as it has lurched from one crisis to another, much of the turmoil fueled by contacts between Trump or his associates with Russia.

[NOTE from me: It's a long article, and old, so I'm not quoting everything here, but the most important part from the discussion follows]

That’s when McCarthy brought the conversation about Russian meddling around to the DNC hack, Trump and Rohrabacher.

“I’ll guarantee you that’s what it is. . . . The Russians hacked the DNC and got the opp [opposition] research that they had on Trump,” McCarthy said with a laugh.

Ryan asked who the Russians “delivered” the opposition research to.

“There’s . . . there’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy said, drawing some laughter. “Swear to God,” McCarthy added.

“This is an off the record,” Ryan said.

Some lawmakers laughed at that.

“No leaks, all right?,” Ryan said, adding: “This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

Reading that transcript now, it's blatantly evident they're all in on it, or at least had knowledge of it.

[GrumpyGran]

11 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

I dont' get all the surprise about Lyin' Ryan. I seem to remember a certain discussion during the election campaign that was taped, where he with others were laughing about the Russian help or something of the sort. I'll try and see if I can find that reporting (it's certain to be in these threads somewhere) and I'll post/repost it.

Anyway, Ryan has been 'in like Flynn' from the very beginning.

I do wonder what he's waiting for. Coy about whether he's running again or not.  Of course he's number 3. If Dump goes down he'd be the obvious choice for VP. If both Dump and Pencey go down, BOOM! He tries hard to walk the line and I wonder if he has any stink on him.

The biggest reason we need to take back the House. 

[fraurosena]

Rising White House fear: Nunes memo is a dud

Quote

Inside the Trump administration, sources who've been briefed on the Nunes memo expect it will be underwhelming and not the “slam dunk” document it's been hyped up to be.

What we're hearing: There is much more skepticism inside the administration than has been previously reported about the value of releasing the memo, according to sources familiar with the administration discussions.

Be smart: Trump still wants to release the memo. But there are a number of people in the White House who are fairly underwhelmed, and there's internal anxiety about whether it's worth angering the FBI director and intelligence community by releasing this information.

What’s next: Trump will almost certainly approve the memo’s release. The internal debate, now, is more around whether to make further changes to the memo — redactions to protect sources and methods — on the advice of the Intelligence Community.

 

[GrumpyGran]

22 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Rising White House fear: Nunes memo is a dud

 

Uh, if he indeed did fire McCabe, doesn't he need a good reason? Wasn't this suppose to be the reason?

[fraurosena]

5 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

Uh, if he indeed did fire McCabe, doesn't he need a good reason? Wasn't this suppose to be the reason?

I think you’re confusing McCabe and Rosenstein, @GrumpyGran 

This sounds wonderful. If only!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Since we all need a laugh, this guy did a "red carpet report" from the SOTU, asking members of congress about their clothes. Some of the answers are funny:

 

[Audrey2]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

I think you’re confusing McCabe and Rosenstein, @GrumpyGran 

This sounds wonderful. If only!

 

Re: the Ed Krassenstein tweet

As long as it isn't Ryan. I'd love to see him do the perp walk, especially since he knew about Trump and Russia, per the earlier posts.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is from the WaPo editorial board: "Paul Ryan is tarnishing the House"

Spoiler

“WHAT THIS is not is an indictment of our institutions, of our justice system,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday about the now infamous “Nunes memo.” “It does not impugn the Mueller investigation or the deputy attorney general,” the speaker insisted. Is this cynicism or naivete?

Discrediting law enforcement is the memo’s transparent purpose and why it has been embraced by President Trump. Written mainly by the staff of Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the loose-cannon chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the memo reportedly makes the case that the FBI abused spying authorities as it sought permission to surveil a former Trump adviser. The Justice Department called its potential release, which Mr. Trump reportedly intends to approve, “extraordinarily reckless.” The FBI released its own startling public statement citing “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” Adam Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, wrote in a Post op-ed that the Nunes memo “cherry-picks facts, ignores others and smears the FBI and the Justice Department.”

As we’ve said before, we are not in the business of opposing the release of information of potential public value. But if the Nunes memo were truly about fair congressional oversight of law enforcement, as Mr. Ryan claims, Republicans would allow the simultaneous release of a Democratic memo on the same subject. But they are not. That leaves only unsettling possibilities for why Mr. Nunes, a longtime Trump ally, is pushing to disseminate his version as the president’s ire about the Russia investigation crests and speculation swirls about his desire to fire senior law enforcement officials, including special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. CNN reported Thursday that Mr. Trump believes the Nunes memo “could discredit the agency” by exposing “bias within the FBI’s top ranks.”

Mr. Ryan bears full responsibility for the deterioration of congressional oversight of intelligence operations. Once a bipartisan responsibility that lawmakers treated soberly — as they still do in the Senate — oversight under Mr. Nunes has become another front in Mr. Trump’s assault on the law enforcement institutions investigating the president and his associates. House Republicans are poisoning the committee’s relationship with the intelligence community and distracting from real issues demanding attention.

In all the noise around the memo, it is easy to lose sight of the scary truth that a hostile foreign government attempted to influence the 2016 election and shows every intention of trying again this year. You’d think Mr. Nunes’s committee would be alarmed by this threat to American democracy. Instead, Mr. Nunes, with Mr. Ryan’s aid and comfort, is helping Mr. Trump impede an investigation into these very issues. It is sad to see the speaker allow the House to be tarnished in this way.

Lyan couldn't care less about threats to American democracy.

[GreyhoundFan]

More about us getting screwed over by the Repug tax plan: "Federal government will be unable to pay all bills sooner than expected, due to new tax law"

Spoiler

The U.S. government’s cash reserves are expected to run out faster than expected, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday, a result of lost revenue from last year’s tax cut law.

If the debt ceiling isn’t raised by the first half of March, CBO said, “the government would be unable to pay its obligations fully, and it would delay making payments for its activities, default on its debt obligations, or both.”

The White House and GOP leaders in Congress have repeatedly punted decisions on how to deal with the debt ceiling. This is in sharp contrast to the approach Republicans took during the Obama administration, when the GOP insisted on deep spending cuts in exchange for any vote to raise the debt ceiling.

The debt ceiling had been suspended until Dec. 8, 2017, and the Treasury Department has taken emergency steps since then to delay falling behind on payments. But it can only use those measures for a short period of time, and CBO said Wednesday that this window is narrower than it previously thought.

Lawmakers are already facing a government shutdown deadline Feb. 8 and are struggling to cut a deal on immigration before work permits for young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children begin to expire in early March.

The timelines for all these must-do tasks are beginning to converge, raising the possibility of one enormous deal in coming weeks wrapping all the issues up. For now, though, solutions look remote.

CBO said that the tax law is expected to lower tax receipts by $10 billion to $15 billion per month. Even though the tax cut law went into effect January 1, the large drop in tax receipts didn’t kick in yet because companies won’t start using new withholding tables until sometime in February.

“Withheld receipts are expected to be less than the amounts paid in the comparable period last year,” CBO said. “In addition, the government ran a deficit of $23 billion in December, and it normally runs a deficit in the second quarter of the fiscal year.”

In total, the tax law will lead to a drop in revenue of $136 billion in revenue in 2018, the Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated.

The White House and many Republicans have praised the tax law, pointing to announcements from numerous companies that they are raising wages and plan to invest more in the United States. But there had been less scrutiny of the tax law’s near-term impact on the government’s fiscal situation before CBO weighed in on Wednesday.

The Treasury Department had $272 billion in cash on hand as of Tuesday, a substantial amount. But that money can disappear quickly based on the government’s spending patterns. For example, the government typically spends $50 billion in just the first few days of each month on Social Security benefits and military pensions alone.

CBO, a budget watchdog arm of Congress, had previously estimated that the government would be able to fund operations until late March or early April, but it said its new projections on the impact of the tax law forced it to make adjustments.

Complicating factors for the U.S. government, the Treasury Department typically issues a large number of tax refunds in February and March, which could lead to a steeper than expected fall in cash reserves. CBO said last year Treasury paid $211 billion in tax refunds in February and March of last year.

The next opportunity to raise the debt ceiling would likely come in the next few days, as lawmakers have to vote by February 8 to authorize government spending or risk another government shutdown. But adding an increase in the debt ceiling could drive away support from GOP hardliners, and it’s unclear whether Democrats would support another spending bill if they don’t believe there has been any progress on a new immigration law.

Even though there is often drama, Congress always votes to raise or suspend the debt ceiling before a default. But they also often delay these votes until the last minute, and it’s unclear what political coalition will form this time to help raise the borrowing limit.

President Trump has called for Congress to raise the debt ceiling since taking office, but he had previously called for using the debt ceiling as a piece of leverage in political negotiations and mocked lawmakers who voted to increase it.

The U.S. government spends more money than it brings in through revenue. The Treasury Department covers the balance by borrowing money, and it does this by issuing debt. But it can only issue debt up to a certain limit set by Congress. The current limit, which CBO said must be raised soon, is more than $20 trillion.

The government ran a budget deficit of $666 billion in 2017, the largest level since 2013.

Republicans are gathered at a retreat in West Virginia and they have shown little appetite so far to discuss ways to curb spending or deal with the debt ceiling. In fact, one of their top agenda items this year is a $1.3 trillion infrastructure plan, though they have not disclosed how they plan to pay for even a portion of it.

 

[AmazonGrace]

I reckon it's a cunning plan.

"Hey, we're doing tax cuts..it's so cool!"

(...wait five minutes...)

"Look, we're in debt. Deficits! Oh noes? What shall we do?"

(...pretend you didn't dream of this since the keg parties at the frat house..)

"So sorry but we have to cut Medicare, Medicaid, Meals for Wheels, food stamps, welfare, kids' insurance...We can't keep on giving money to poor people, Republican donors haven't had a new tax cuts in WEEKS..."

 

[Rosalie]

This might be a little OT, but it’s quite interesting to try to follow US politics from the other side of the pond. It’s very clear to me that most of us have no basis to understand US politics, and that cultural differences are much bigger than one should think, since our countries are both first world countries and so-called western countries. 

I have a few american friends, who have been living in Norway or northern Europe, and the way they explain the differences in US vs Norwegian politics, is that our most concervative parties would be Democrats in the US, so our politics would generally be very left sided if fitted into the US model.

[GreyhoundFan]

From Joe Scarborough: "Trump’s enablers are misreading the stars"

Spoiler

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” Cassius counseled his friend and fellow republican Marcus Brutus. In Shakespeare’s telling of the tragedy of Julius Caesar, the triumphant general returns to Rome and is feared to be plotting to become an emperor capable of laying waste to the Roman republic. But Brutus takes to heart Cassius’s reminder that loyalties flow first to the republic and not to political friends. He acts on the warning, helps to kill Caesar and then dies a miserable death. Alas, no one lives happily ever after.

This week’s story line out of Washington is less grim but still of great concern. Despite daily reminders that President Trump holds democratic traditions in deep contempt, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and his Republican caucus are allowing themselves to become co-conspirators in the president’s push to compromise U.S. constitutional norms. While no one expects the GOP to take grisly cues from Shakespeare, is it too much to ask that Ryan place grave national security concerns from the Justice Department ahead of his political peonage to Trump?

Has Ryan noticed that the president is executing an erratic but effective plot to undermine the independence of America’s law enforcement agencies?

Do Capitol Hill Republicans even care that Trump has taken on the nasty habit of demanding loyalty oaths from FBI agents and Justice Department officials who happen to be investigating his White House?

Is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) even slightly concerned that former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, like former director James B. Comey before him, was driven from his job after being administered — and apparently failing — a loyalty test?

Whom did you vote for? That’s what the petulant president asked McCabe. The FBI officer told Trump he didn’t vote. But even asking the question was highly inappropriate. Retiring House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) told CNN that McCabe should not have even answered. “It’s nobody’s business,” Gowdy said.

This week we learned that the commander in chief’s loyalty demands even extended to the man overseeing Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation. At a White House meeting in December, Trump asked Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein whether he was on the president’s “team.” Rosenstein replied that “we’re all on your team, Mr. President” — instead of rightly telling the president that his only loyalty is to the U.S. Constitution. But there is no doubt Trump would have considered that the wrong answer. For this president, loyalty to Constitution and country is considered less important than loyalty to himself.

In November, Trump told a radio host that the most frustrating thing about being president was his inability to influence FBI and Justice Department investigations. This week, the president breezed past those constitutional boundaries and told aides that he was working to undermine Mueller’s Justice Department probe and damage the FBI’s reputation. He would compromise America’s premier law enforcement agencies by working with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) to release a misleading memo that both the Justice Department and FBI condemned as inaccurate. Doing so would be “extraordinarily reckless,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd. But Trump pressed for the memo’s release regardless of those dire warnings, and Ryan and his corrupted caucus cheered him on.

The president’s enablers must believe that it is their unfortunate fate to blindly follow him. But they are misreading the stars, and they are underestimating themselves. No one expects grand Shakespearean gestures from this Republican Party. All that is required is the courage to push back against this president’s most dangerous moves. Republicans took an oath to the Constitution and their country. They must be reminded that their most enduring loyalties lie there and not with Donald Trump.

The Repugs don't care, they'll take an oath to anyone who pushes the rich to get richer and drive ebil minorities down and/or out.

[Cartmann99]

17 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The government ran a budget deficit of $666 billion in 2017, the largest level since 2013

If this was still the Obama administration, there would already be videos out declaring this is proof of Obama being the Antichrist, and Jim Bakker would be crying and shilling a special doom bucket to mark the occasion. 

[AmazonGrace]