Top 6 Reasons Dems Shouldn't Allocate a Single Cent for Trump's Idiotic Wall

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment

23 December 18
readersupportednews.org

 
rump’s televised badgering of Sen. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi was made for cable television, which predictably looped it over and over again on Tuesday and assembled “panels” of “experts” solemnly to parse Trump’s insane meanderings, Schumer’s hamming it up for the cameras, and Pelosi’s pitifully forlorn call for a “fact-based” discussion.

Less was said by cable news about the substance of the main point of debate, which is that Trump, having bankrupted the government with massive tax cuts for his billionaire cronies last February, now wants to increase government spending by spending $5 bn for a border wall. Although they initially thought they might throw Trump a bone (a mere $1.6 bn?), the wave of anger and indignation this mealy-mouthed approach provoked among the Democratic faithful appears to have put some iron in their spines. Pelosi told Trump to his face that he wouldn’t be able to find a majority in the House for such spending.

Now in the midst of the Trump Holiday Government Shutdown, here are the top 6 reasons the Democrats shouldn’t spend a cent on Trump’s vanity project of a border wall:

1. Trump’s conviction that there is a crisis of illegal border crossings in the Southwest shows that he is stuck in the 1980s and 1990s. The problem has plummeted in significance in the past decade and a half, according to The Center for Migration Studies. The Border Patrol is only arresting about 1/4 the number of those attempting to come in without paperwork as was true in the 1990s. And, in 2014 only one tenth as many people even tried to come in illegally as in 2005. (Taken together, these two statistics show that Border Patrol’s efficiency in apprehending undocumented entrants has increased substantially).

2. Politifact certified former California governor Jerry Brown’s argument that southwest border arrests of undocumented entrants are as low as they have been in 50 years. The trend lines all show a sharp drop-off in this problem, so why enact heroic measures now?

3. Even if you were worried about undocumented immigrants, which most Americans are not, putting billions into wall-building is useless. In 2014, DHS figures show that two-thirds of undocumented immigrants into the US that year came in through airports and simply overstayed their visas. In general, it estimated that among the some 11 million undocumented residents in the US, 42% were visa overstays who came in legally by air or sea, and that proportion is certainly much higher today.

4. The number of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the US has fallen from 6.9 million in 2007 to only 5.4 million today, declining by 1 million persons. The problem is going away, since more are leaving than coming in. . Politifact notes that U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, (D-La Crosse) said, “We’re experiencing a net outflow of illegal, undocumented workers from America back to Mexico. To build a wall now would be locking them in this country.”

5. There is no reason to think that a wall, which would harm the environment and migrating animals, would even be effective. In 2010-2015, nearly 10,000 people came in through areas where there is already a border fence (about 654 miles). People dig tunnels, e.g.

6. A scientific study of 200 urban areas over the past several decades shows that those with high numbers of immigrants for the most part actually saw falling or stable levels of crime. Trump’s conviction that immigrants = crime is empirically untrue. Undocumented immigrants for the most part are especially law-abiding, since they don’t want to be apprehended and deported. Obviously, there are immigrant criminals, but they are a tiny percentage of the whole, and there is substantial evidence that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born.

Beyond the problem that Trump repeatedly asserts things that are patently untrue on the immigration issue, the fact of the matter is that Democrats need to stand up to him if they are to vindicate themselves. They ran on a more progressive America, not on an America that is a giant prison surrounded by walls.

Last-minute surge stabilizes Obamacare enrollments for 2019

It's still a big fucking deal. And a successful one.

Joan McCarter  

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday December 22, 2018 · 1:59 PM MST

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Against all odds and projections, enrollment in the Affordable Care Act for the 2019 plan year remains steady, and that's according to the Trump administration's Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

As of Dec. 15 at midnight, 8.5 million people enrolled in coverage, compared to 8.8 million last year. So instead of the 11 percent drop off that appeared to be taking shape, it's down about 4 percent. That's in part because of a huge surge in the last week of open enrollment, with 4 million people signing up. Despite everything thrown at it by Individual 1 and Republicans, the program remains resilient.

The strength is coming from existing participants re-enrolling, with a total of more than 6.4 million re-upping. That's where there's also some bad news, as new enrollments dropped off by 15.4 percent. And that's where the administration's sabotage in reducing outreach to almost nil undoubtedly had a role. Other factors include more people working; the repeal of the individual mandate; and the new and cheaper short-term plans Trump has expanded, which probably pulled healthy people away from the ACA exchanges.

These are preliminary numbers, and don't include the states that are keeping enrollment open through January. That includes California, which will have big numbers. So as the state-run exchanges report in, the number will grow.

So take that, federal Judge Reed O’Connor. Your ridiculous decision, handed down just in time to derail the final hours of open enrollment, didn't work.

Bernie Sanders Tops the List of 2020 Democratic Contenders in New Poll

Sanders at a rally on Capitol Hill for economic and social justice. (photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

By Andy Kroll, Rolling Stone

22 December 18
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Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke round out the top three in the Democracy for America survey

en. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) holds a commanding lead in a new poll of liberal grassroots activists conducted by Democracy for America, the lefty activist group founded by former Vermont governor and 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean.

In a field of 23 candidates, Sanders claimed 36 percent of the first-place votes by DFA activists, more than double the percentage of former Vice President Joe Biden, who finished in second with 15 percent. Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), who narrowly lost his Senate race against Republican Ted Cruz last month, took third place with 12 percent.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) grabbed fourth with 8 percent and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) rounded out the top five with seven percent.

It’s far too early, of course, to make definitive statements about the state of the 2020 race and which Democrats are best positioned to win their party’s nomination. But the DFA poll largely aligns with a recent straw poll by another stalwart progressive group, MoveOn.org, whose members ranked O’Rourke, Biden and Sanders as their top three picks.

What makes the DFA poll interesting is that the results allow you to remove candidates from the field and see how the poll’s results change accordingly. For instance, take Biden out of the mix and O’Rourke surges into second place, with Warren, Harris and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) behind him. Pull O’Rourke out, however, and Harris leapfrogs Warren into third place behind Sanders and Biden.

And what if Sanders chooses not to run? In the unlikely scenario that happens, the Democratic field becomes wide open, according to DFA’s numbers. Biden, O’Rourke and Warren are neck and neck for first place, while Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), who endorsed Sanders for president and has cultivated an outsider persona akin to Sanders, makes a big leap from ninth place to fourth. Gabbard only last week said in an MSNBC interview that she was seriously considering a run for president. That she performs so well in DFA’s poll isn’t terribly surprising given the pro-Bernie bent of DFA’s membership.

Charles Chamberlain, DFA’s executive director and incoming chair, says in a statement that the poll’s results show that the 2020 Democratic primary “is up for grabs and so is Democracy for America’s endorsement.” Chamberlain adds, “Unlike 2016, no candidate has support strong enough for the Democratic Party establishment to clear the field, which means progressives will have an excellent opportunity over the next year to kick the tires on a wide range of different candidates and find the best one to take on Trump.”

Jim Mattis Was the Only Thing Keeping Trump's Insane Clown Posse in Check

General James Mattis. (photo: Getty)

By Rick Wilson, The Daily Beast

21 December 18
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Steady, thoughtful, and respected, Mattis was America’s insurance policy against Trump’s idiocy. If you’re not nervous, you’re not paying attention.

hursday's decision by Jim Mattis to leave the stifling, rapidly collapsing confines of Donald Trump’s insane clown posse administration was always inevitable, but that hardly makes the psychological impact of his departure any less traumatic.

In a week with an endless series of body blows to Trump, this one is going to leave a mark. Even with a crashing stock market, the Mueller investigation closing in on Trump’s allies with brutal, inexorable efficiency, his family “charity” exposed as a particularly slimy slush fund, a looming government shutdown, and his failure to deliver his infamous wall to his marks, the Mattis resignation is the Quivering Palm Death Touch. 

His extraordinary departure in protest of Trump’s policies and personality is absolutely unprecedented. Mattis naturally objects to the reckless Syria pullout plan, but also to the president’s wholesale abandonment of our traditional allies who have made not only the U.S. but the world safer. As I write this, Washington and the world are reeling, and in deep shock. Even usually Trump-compliant Stockholm Syndrome Republicans in the House and Senate are issuing statements bordering on panic, all while the Trump noise machine warms up to attack Mattis as a Soros shill, a closeted liberal, and a traitor to the Maximum Leader.

Jim Mattis was a talisman for the Washington and international foreign-policy communities, a point of smarts and stability, a ground-wire to short out Trump’s capricious impulses before they could damage America’s interests and values. While never straying from the chain of command, Mattis knew how to work the process, fight back behind closed doors, and maintain relationships with allies and friends around the world.

Even the Trump White House, a hive of the most morally vacant and cowardly bootlicks ever assembled, found themselves relying on Mattis, even if they never trusted him. If Trump ever realizes how much his own White House staff counted on the Marine general turned SECDEF to control his impulsive defense and foreign-policy decisions, he’ll have a Twitter stroke.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had Republican representatives and senators whisper, nearly sotto voce, “Well, at least Mattis won’t let things get too crazy.” “At least Mattis knows what he’s doing.” Mattis was utterly real in an administration of phony tough guys, faux patriots, fantasy-based economic trade-war fetishists, and Trump’s broad array of lying shitbirds.

“Mattis was and is a man of honor who did his best to steer Donald Trump away from disaster, and found himself hated for it.”

He was all substance and no flash. He was Mad Dog, the warrior monk, deeply read and supremely tough, and a man so clearly imbued with the core values that have made our military both fearsome and deeply respected at home and abroad. Unlike Trump’s low-rent “but muh troops” rah-rah, Jim Mattis truly loves the men and women in the armed services. He understands what orders to send American men and women into harm’s way imply. He knows how to precisely apply the war-fighting discipline and strategic vision that had made him one of the eminent military leaders of our generation.

Many members who serve on the foreign policy, defense, and intelligence committees still kept a channel open to the Mattis Pentagon; it was an island of stability and staff quality. Mattis resisted staffing the DOD with the usual Trumpian flotsam of used-car salesmen, mouth-breathing racist trash, hustlers, grifters, serial liars, hobo-organ harvesters, and alt-right kooks. Mattis ran a normal Republican DOD as hermetically as he could.

Just on the edge of Trump’s constant bleating about “his generals” was the sour odor of jealousy. It’s not hard to understand why.

Low, weak men like Donald Trump may pretend to praise people like Mattis, but always secretly revile those who possess virtues and values they lack. Trump resented Mattis for his accomplishments, his judgment, and his knowledge. Donald Trump, a man of the most shallow intellect and indifferent ability, faced a man who has forgotten more about war, diplomacy, and strategy that Trump has ever learned.

Mattis raised young Marines from every ethnic background into warriors fighting for a bigger idea than race or ethnicity; Trump is the most overt racist to hold the American presidency since Woodrow Wilson. Trump believes the troops exist for performance-art-like border-wall creation and parades to honor the Maximum Donald; Mattis knows they’re putting their lives on the line for the nation and the Constitution, and he honors them with missions that make America safer, not his ego bigger.

Trump knows on some deep, basal level that he’s a figure of mockery and cordial (at best) dislike by leaders of America’s traditional allies, and is seen as an easy mark by our adversaries. Trump saw how often Mattis had to clean up messes President Best Brain made in China, North Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and across Europe.

Worse, he saw that the leaders of those nations respected Mattis in a way he couldn’t beg, borrow, or steal.

One supreme irony of Jim Mattis working for Donald Trump was apparent to me from the beginning.  Mattis wasn’t just a better man on every axis; Trump was the kind of man Jim Mattis spent his career training to defeat; the authoritarians and oppressors of this world, the big-bore despots and the small-bore warlords. The type of people Trump either admires or lets himself be manipulated by—Putin, Erdogan, Duterte, Kim Jong Un, and others—are the kind of men Mattis sees as obvious adversaries of the United States. Mattis sees the risks of failed states, while Trump seems determined to create one. Mattis understands American institutions; Trump monomaniacally craves royalty, a literal Imperial Presidency.

Mattis was and is a man of honor who did his best to steer Donald Trump away from disaster, and found himself hated for it. Mattis understood the importance and power of the U.S. military as an institution under civilian control, and as a repository of core American values. It must have been galling to him to serve this cowardly, venal, weak, and capricious man, but it was one more mission in a lifetime of service.

The departure of Jim Mattis from his role as secretary of defense is one more dangerous moment in a constellation of dangerous moments for this country, and this presidency. If you’re not nervous yet, you’re not paying attention.

How Long Till Trump Is Done?

Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort. (photo: Zuma Press, Inc./Alamy)

By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News

17 December 18
readersupportednews.org

 
ike Nixon in the last days of Watergate, Trumputin has begun to twist in the wind.

Let’s count some ways:

• The mighty GOP stone wall is starting to crack.

• Its only black senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, helped kill a major Trump court nomination and says he’ll oppose any more avowed racists, pretty much wiping out Donald’s gene pool.

• As Trumputin and the Saudis feast on Jamal Khashoggi, even some Republicans have been sickened by this brazen mafia hit on an established American journalist.

• Enough GOP senators voted to derail funding for the Trumputin/Saudi holocaust in Yemen … a vote that may mark a major turn against the global empire (with special thanks to CodePink!).

• That vote shades the assumption that not enough Republican senators could ever vote to convict in an impeachment trial.

• They all face a tsunami of felony indictments spewing from upcoming House hearings, a Hallelujah chorus of fleeing Trumputin associates, endless self-incriminating tweets, a mentally deranged who-knows-what-he’ll-say-next “Individual 1,” and so much more.

• The “cancer on the presidency” has spread, with major investigations into every cavity of the Trumputin corpus, from Cohen to Flynn to Maria Butina to Roger Stone to Paul Manafort to the Party machine to the NRA to the Inauguration, the transition team, the administration itself, Mar-a-Lago, 666 Fifth Avenue, Trump Tower, and so much more.

• The likelihood of “espionage” as outlined by RSN founder Marc Ash will likely escalate to treason as the alleged president of the United States continually puts his own interests and those of his mob boss ahead of those of the country he was hired (though not really elected) to serve.

• New York’s incoming attorney general, Letitia James, says she’ll pursue an entangled web of state-based felonies where White House pardons have no weight.

• Starting to rumble is the sleeping volcano of Trumputin’s 1300 shady real estate transactions with Russian oligarchs since the 1980s, through which Donald illegally laundered the billions he needed to escape gargantuan debt and numerous bankruptcies. (Hear author Craig Unger and attorney Ted Vaill discuss this on my Green Power & Wellness Show at prn.fm).

• Reader Supported News has published a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed from Representative Jackie Speier (D-SF) at last detailing some of the underworld dealings that have left Trump in Putin’s debt and offering hope for a deep Congressional dive into Putin’s death grip on Trump’s personal finances.

• Outright fascist attacks by lame duck legislatures in Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and elsewhere have branded the GOP as a hate-democracy junta with zero concern for Constitutional guarantees or the electorate that did not vote for them.

• Heartbreaking, shameful, inexcusable reports of the de facto torture and institutional murder of innocent children at our southern border have taken global disgust and horror over this administration’s utter contempt for human compassion to a whole new level.

• The wobbling stock market has signaled that our multi-trillion-dollar student-corporate-medical-housing house of debt may be poised to crater in ways making 1929/2008 look like minor tremors, especially in light of Trump’s insane global trade spasms.

• The intense hate-nature hostility of the Trumputin fossil/nuke dinosaur against all things ecological is hurtling the human race toward planetary extinction at a pace that makes the disintegration of our life-support systems ever more tangible. The departure of the utterly corrupt Ryan Zinke will do nothing to change that. His replacement will be equally crooked.

But Nature does, after all, bat last.

The Trumputin madness will get worse. Donald will do anything to stay out of prison, no matter what the cost to the planet or the rest of us.

But the survival instincts of our species are strong, and the pushback mounts by the moment.

This endgame will be a WILD ride.

Stay tuned …

All indications are that Michael Flynn covered up something VERY BIG

Kerry Eleveld  

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday December 19, 2018 · 7:23 AM MST

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A series of events punctuated most recently by a sentencing hearing gone awry suggest that whatever former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn was covering up when he lied about his Russia contacts, it was a whopper. During Tuesday's sentencing hearing for Flynn, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan worked himself into a lather, noting his "disgust" and "disdain" for Flynn's criminal conduct.

“Arguably, that undermines everything this flag over here stands for," Sullivan charged, pointing to the American flag behind him. "Arguably, you sold your country out!”

In that instance Sullivan was referencing Flynn’s undisclosed work for Turkey during the campaign, but the judge’s pointed assertion was part of a lengthy scolding session he leveled at Flynn. Sullivan has a reputation for despising abuse of power and some Flynn allies, including Fox News, hyped the idea that the judge would take the FBI to task for its handling of Flynn’s case. Instead, Sullivan focused his ire squarely on Flynn. That's notable because while the judge doesn't know everything Special Counsel Robert Mueller knows, he is privy to more information about Flynn's case than the public. So what exactly did Sullivan find so agitating?

Perhaps it’s related to the fact that Donald Trump has never spoken ill of Flynn—not once—even though he has now sat for 19 interviews with Mueller and proven so useful that the special counsel recommended he receive zero jail time. Trump's kid-gloves treatment of Flynn extends all the way back to the earliest days of his administration when he encouraged then-FBI Director James Comey to end the investigation into Flynn. In fact, Trump has torched nearly everyone who has contributed to the ongoing investigations into him, his campaign, and his family business. Yet as Flynn was preparing for his sentencing hearing Tuesday morning, Trump issued him a decidedly sunny "good luck" tweet. So why the special treatment for Flynn? 

The official 302 form summarizing the FBI's original interview with Flynn on January 24, 2017, is full of intriguing redactions. But as intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance pointed out, one thing comes through loud and clear—the nature of the questioning from FBI agents should have tipped off Flynn that the agency had listened to his calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. And yet, Flynn lied to them anyway.

This is a point former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi also marveled over on MSNBC Tuesday. As a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn clearly would have known the FBI was surveilling those calls. 

"I'm just thinking about the equation that had to go through his head," Figliuzzi said, reflecting back on the January day when FBI agents questioned Flynn. "He's a DIA director—he knows what they're listening to, and yet he decides it's worth getting caught lying to the FBI as long as I cover up my relationship with Russia. [...] So what's going on?" 

In other words, what could possibly be so damning that, in the moment, Flynn calculated the lesser of two evils was to lie to the FBI full well knowing that he would ultimately be caught? Figliuzzi speculated there a may be "a flow of money" that the public doesn't know about yet that compromised him and potentially Trump. 

The indicators all point to something big: an aggravated judge, a tamed Trump, two baffled intelligence professionals, and a former intelligence chief who sold himself out to the FBI. 

As former Clinton Solicitor General Walter Dellinger told MSNBC's Chris Matthews later on Tuesday: "We have to ask ourselves, why is it that Mike Flynn was willing to take the risk of lying? What is behind this Russian involvement? It's always possible that there's less here than we think; and it's also possible this is the greatest crime in the history of America if Americans were working with Russians to determine the outcome of a presidential election."

Senate report on Russia's social media effort shows how racism drove results on both right and left

Mark Sumner  

Daily Kos Staff

Monday December 17, 2018 · 7:38 AM MST

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When publicist Rob Goldstone emailed Donald Trump Jr. during the lead up to the infamous Trump Tower meeting, he wrote that the information he had to share was just “part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump.” A new report prepared for the Senate brings together knowledge about the social media efforts of that Russian government support for Donald Trump, and putting it all in one place drives home just how enormous, how comprehensive, and how all-in Russia was in their effort to push “our boy” over the line. 

As the Washington Post reported on Sunday, the report includes analysis of posts provided by Facebook, Google, and Twitter. What those posts show is concerted messaging—running into millions of posts—that “clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party—and specifically Donald Trump.”

To maximize support for Trump, Russia prepared false stories and propaganda focused on guns and immigration. But that wasn’t the end of it. Russia also had a two-pronged attack focused on racism, one that sought to stir up anger on the right, while deflating efforts to organize African American voters by Democrats. That effort included not just ads on social media, but ads on local black radio stations intended to depress turnout and raise suspicions about Hillary Clinton. Some Russian ads even did double duty, being targeted at Republicans in a way that was intended to make Black Lives Matter seem much more militant and frightening, and being targeted at African American voters to make Democratic support seem weak.

How racism was at the center of the effort was also the focus of reporting at the New York Times, including how Russians planted traps for users who were looking for material on historical figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X or the Black Panther Party. These efforts were not a sideline of the Russian effort. They were the largest part of that effort. 

“The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets.”

Russia understood that they didn’t have to turn African American voters into “blacks for Trumps,” they just had to persuade them that Democrats were “only interested in them at election time,” a theme that the social media effort hit over and over.

African American voters aren’t a part of the Democratic Party. They’re the Democratic Party. The core voting block that defines and energizes progressive action. Russia went straight on at the most important section of the party, using a factor that they have always understood.

The story that Russia tells about America—including the way America is discussed within Russia—is that the United States is a land of unequal justice and vast racial disparity. In their Facebook ads, they turned that theory into a weapon.

The stories that have collected the most attention in other media are the pieces that Russia ran to build support for Trump, but the bigger part of Russia’s vast effort—and it was vast—was aimed at “walk away” and other efforts meant to make African American voters believe that the Democratic Party is not their party, but an entity of white “elites” who only drop in to visit every four years.

The social media effort was a huge part of “Russia and it’s government’s support for Mr. Trump” mentioned by Rob Goldstone. And a huge part of that was playing on themes of racism. On both sides. Russia used racism in its messages to drive Republicans to the polls in support of Trump. It used racism again in its efforts to keep Democratic voters away from the polls.

It was successful in these efforts because it didn’t have to invent the racism. The racism already exists. And it gave Russia a lever by which it could move the nation.