Oliver North takes on the Stoneman Douglas kids

Christian Dem in NC  

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Sunday May 13, 2018 · 6:25 AM PDT

 

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Knowing what we know about the NRA and about Oliver North, we knew it wasn’t going to take long for North to make a fool of himself after being elected NRA president. He didn’t disappoint. In a bizarre interview with the Moonie Times, North claimed the Stoneman Douglas kids were engaging in terrorism.

They call them activists. That’s what they’re calling themselves. They’re not activists — this is civil terrorism. This is the kind of thing that’s never been seen against a civil rights organization in America. You go back to the terrible days of Jim Crow and those kinds of things — even there you didn’t have this kind of thing. We didn’t have the cyberwar kind of thing that we’ve got today.

Oh noes! We can’t call out an organization that has the power to strike fear into the hearts of legislators with one phone call, and has derailed every common-sense attempt at gun reform. If we do so, we’re no different from al-Qaeda and ISIS!

As I note at RDTDaily, it didn’t take long for the kids to say, “Bring. It. On.” David Hogg commenced hostilities with a reminder that he and his friends know who North is—using the hashtag “#OnTheContra.”

David Hogg ✔ @davidhogg111

#OnTheContra you would know about terrorism, wouldn't you? https://twitter.com/salon/status/994671010736721924 …

4:23 PM - May 10, 2018

David Hogg ✔ @davidhogg111

#OnTheContra only 1 in 10 gun owners is a member of the NRA.

2:25 AM - May 11, 2018

 

Cameron Kasky joined in as well.

Cameron Kasky ✔ @cameron_kasky

Go ahead, North.

It speaks so beautifully for the NRA’s true colors that they put this crook in charge. https://twitter.com/salon/status/994671010736721924 …

6:12 PM - May 10, 2018

 

Cameron Kasky ✔ @cameron_kasky

Oliver North, president of the “non-profit” NRA, was involved with the illegal sale of weapons and the diversion of proceeds from the arms sales to support the Contra rebel groups in Nicaragua.

And he just called a bunch of shooting survivors ‘terrorists’

Meet the NRA, folks.

7:13 AM - May 11, 2018

Apparently North wasn’t paying attention when these kids dunked on the NRA too many times to count this spring. Or when Laura Ingraham was forced to cry uncle for slagging Hogg.

So it looks like another right-winger is on the verge of being pwned by these brave kids. Pass the popcorn.

The media outrage over Michelle Wolf's speech only proved her right

Laurence Lewis  

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Sunday May 13, 2018 · 8:40 AM PDT

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It's an annual gathering of the nation's most elite political reporters, attended by elite national political figures, business leaders, and celebrities, and they like to call it "nerd prom.” Self-awareness is not their strong suit.

White House correspondents are by nature sycophants. It's how they got there. They have no shame. And more than anything else, what freaks them out is the possibility that they really aren't actually good at what they do, that they not only aren't necessary but they are easily replaceable, and that access journalism is the lowest common denominator, a career path that was open to them not because no one else could do it but because so few actual journalists would want to degrade themselves to that level. There are, of course, exceptions, but this is about the rule. And woe to anyone who would dare transgress the rule.

The reporters and pundits who feigned outrage over Michelle Wolf's evisceration of the eminently evisceratable Sarah Huckabee Sanders don't actually care about her or about some farcical standard of comity, but they do care about themselves. They care about preserving the access without which they might be confronted with the bleak reality that they never learned how to be journalists, but even more they desperately care about their delusions of significance. They cling to it with raw and bloodied fingernails, as if shipwreck survivors on the cliffs of a ragged stone promontory in a perpetually shrieking tempest. It wasn't about Sanders, it was about them. It wasn't about eye shadow, it was this:

You guys are obsessed with Trump. Did you used to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him. If you’re going to profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money, because he doesn’t have any.

The media created Trump. Many independent and mutually exclusive factors put Trump in the Oval Office, but the media were one of the largest. And they point fingers at everyone and everything except themselves. And they don't want to hear it. And their supposed outrage at Wolf’s evisceration of Sanders only proved Wolf right about them.

Sanders, after all, said all the women who have accused Trump of sexual assault "are lying." Where was the media outrage about that? Sanders has defended Trump's sick racist attacks on Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Where is the media outrage about that?  Sanders repeatedly berates or derides White House correspondents themselves. Where is the media outrage over that? Sanders simply lies for a living.

To them. Where is the media outrage over that? Meanwhile, her boss is openly undermining the media's very role as potential public servant, thus undermining the existence of democracy itself. And where is the media outrage about that?

Where is the outrage over Trump's bigotry and misogyny and other abominations and depredations that now are so taken for granted that the media barely notice them?

And the outrage and criticism of Wolf didn't come just from already established hypocritical morons, it came from the president of the White House Correspondents' Association, who so embarrassed herself that journalists around the country criticized or derided her.

People wonder how a disaster like Trump could befall this nation, and whether the republic will survive as a republic. Well, the reaction to Michelle Wolf’s speech provided an answer to the former and leaves open the answer to the latter. It is yet to be seen whether the Constitution, conscientious public servants, and the American people themselves are capable of defending the republic at such a moment of crisis, but we do know who aren’t. And every single critic of Wolf’s speech can be counted among them.

Republicans can't do away with Social Security, so they're cutting its offices

Joan McCarter  

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Monday May 07, 2018 · 1:01 PM PDT

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Since 2000, the Social Security Administration has been forced to close one out of 10 of its field offices—125 offices out of 1,250—because of budget cuts. Since Republicans have been unable to cut the benefits themselves, they've gone after the SSA.

In addition, all 533 Social Security Administration "contact sites"—locations that serve remote, rural populations on a weekly or monthly basis—have closed, said leaders of the union that represents Social Security employees.

The most recent closures, which have not been publicly announced, come on the heels of the shutdown of offices in Milwaukee and Chicago in the past year, which elected officials also protested to no avail. An SSA spokeswoman attributed the Arlington closure to an expiring lease and an inability to find space nearby—an explanation that elected officials in Virginia dispute. […]

In a letter they sent last week to Nancy A. Berryhill, the SSA's deputy commissioner of operations, six Democratic state lawmakers who represent Arlington said the Edsall Road office "is much less accessible to Arlington residents, and already serves large constituencies in Alexandria and Fairfax."

 "Those with the most complicated cases and greatest need often benefit from in-person services," said the letter, signed by Dels. Alfonso Lopez, Mark Levine and Patrick Hope and Sens. Adam Ebbin, Barbara Favola and Janet Howell. "Many of these individuals are also among the least mobile and the most dependent on public transportation."

Since 2010, the SSA has also lost 3,500 staff, and the Trump administration wants to cut another 1,000. This means horrible wait time for the people who manage to get to a field office, or even those trying to access help through the phone. This isn't a population that's well-connected to the internet, the supposed solution to these cutbacks. Seniors still lag well behind other age groups in internet use and access.

This is no accident. Destroying popular, effective government agencies is the GOP’s thing. Destroying this one, making people unhappy and distrustful of Social Security, is how they are slow but surely chipping away at it.

George Will writes a worthwhile column, takes Mike Pence down

blue aardvark  

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Thursday May 10, 2018 · 7:37 AM PDT

 

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He must have loosened the tie and improved blood flow

Washington Post
He opens with:

Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.

And closes with:

There will be negligible legislating by the next Congress, so ballots cast this November will be most important as validations or repudiations of the harmonizing voices of Trump, Pence, Arpaio and the like. Trump is what he is, a floundering, inarticulate jumble of gnawing insecurities and not-at-all compensating vanities, which is pathetic. Pence is what he has chosen to be, which is horrifying.

The rest is along the same lines, without a single moment of whataboutism or lo, pity the poor working class whites to alloy his utter contempt for the Trump administration.

The insiders of Washington D.C. — the Villagers, if you will — know Trump is horrible. Many of them have decided to pretend he isn’t. George Will deserves a little credit for being honest, at least this once.

Donald Trump gave a huge gift to Vladimir Putin, and may have saved the Russian government

Mark Sumner  

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Wednesday May 09, 2018 · 7:38 PM PDT

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A report on Russian state media shows that Donald Trump has already delivered not just a gift to Vladimir Putin, but possibly the gift that Putin has wanted all along. In a conversation on RT, the two hosts note that to implement all the domestic programs Putin has promised for Russia, the cost will be 8 trillion rubles ($127 billion). But, where, the host questions, is Russia to get such a huge amount when the government has long been strapped for cash?

Female host says: "Looks like we found it. Trump is withdrawing US from the Iran nuclear deal. Oil prices should go up, which is good for us."

Crude oil futures have leapt from $26 at the time of Trump’s election to $77 today. Back in January, Trump actually certified that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear agreement. However, Trump threatened to end the agreement if it wasn’t expanded to include items unrelated to Iran’s nuclear program and “strengthened” in unspecified ways.

Trump increased his warnings that he would end the deal in February, and by March was engaged in talks with European allies—talks at which allies consistently urged Trump to remain in the deal and Trump consistently announced his intention to walk away. As the talks wore on, and Trump’s intransigence became clear, fears of a destabilized Middle East began to shore up oil prices.

Russian oil production hovers around 10 million barrels a day. That means the increase that has already happened in oil prices is providing Putin with an extra $520 million a day. If the prices were to continue at the level generated by Trump’s actions for a year, Putin could meet all his promises to Russia—and have $60 billion to spare—just out of the net increase.

Everything else that Trump has or hasn’t done about Russia, any sanctions, any tariffs, any expelled diplomats, absolutely pales in comparison to the huge boost he provided to the Russian economy by backing away from the Iran nuclear deal. In fact, short of actually starting a shooting war in the region, it’s difficult to find anything else that Trump might have done of more benefit to Putin. It’s certainly difficult to think of anything Trump might have done to generate a more certain boost for Russia.

Which raises the question: Was this the deal all along?

Since oil prices began falling from record highs a decade ago, Russia has been facing steep deficits. This has led to a significant level of privation. Russia has reduced its gaping debt over the last year, but only by slashing vital programs. It has also affected Russia’s ability to deploy it’s military power.

In 2014, as oil prices declined again, the value of the ruble tumbled, making it more difficult for Russia to borrow or import goods. At the start of 2015, the purchasing power index for Russia—the actual value of the country’s money when it comes to buying a standard “basket of goods”—was the lowest in the world.

The falling ruble triggered waves of inflation across Russia, putting prices up by double digits across the board, raising the interest rates to near 20 percent, and leading to widespread calls for wage and price controls. In 2016, Russia’s faced growing debt and declining GDP. Retail sales and personal wealth were both sharply down. Predictions were for a sustained period of oil prices below $20.

Despite the apparent ease with which Putin retained office, the prolonged pinch was beginning to hurt. Mass anti-Putin protests broke out in multiple cities on several occasions since 2011. Increasing emigration threatened to rob the country of it’s best and brightest. Putin ran for re-election on a platform of returning Russia to Soviet-era glory, with radical boosts to infrastructure and technology. But the prospect for meeting those goals seemed slim.

Officially, Russia had been planning for moderating markets in 2018, with small production cuts from OPEC setting the oil price around $45. Only that number seemed optimistic. Even six months ago, increased US production and flat global demand looked to hold prices down for an extended period.

Only one thing could stabilize the Russian currency, safeguard the government against a fresh wave of protests, and allow Putin to deliver on his fat stack of promises—a steep increase in oil prices. But oil was cheap, and there was no reason for it to stop being cheap.

So, if Donald Trump was tasked with solving that problem, what could he do?

Trump could hardly order a cut in US production. He might increase US strategic reserves, but not only would that generate a temporary effect, the current reserve is  only 30 million barrels below the maximum capacity. Hardly enough to disrupt the market. He might also take steps to increase US consumption, such as raising CAFE standards. Which he has. But that effect will be felt more over the long term.

The only way to drive prices up significantly was to threaten the production of a nation that made a significant contribution to the world market. A contributor like Iran, which exports 2.5—3.8 million barrels a day, making it the third largest player in OPEC.

Iran has several advantages as a target. It’s not a US ally. It’s already wracked by internal instability that has world markets eyeing it warily. And best of all, Trump had a direct connection to Iran through the nuclear agreement. He could pull that cord, and watch the market go nuts.

Breaking the agreement didn’t really cost Trump much. Just the faith of every other nation on the planet, who now see that the US is willing to violate a treaty over the objections of allies and the evidence that the other party is living up to the deal. In other words, nothing that will concern his supporters.

But for Putin, Trump’s actions are mana from heaven; an undeserved bounty. Putin literally had to do nothing to see the Russian economy lifted out of the ditch where it has languished for years and restored to a position that empowers both domestic and military goals.

Putin had to do nothing … unless, of course, this is exactly why he did everything.

For Trump’s part, there seems to be no evidence that he left the Iran agreement with the goal of restoring Putin’s power. But it’s completely evident that’s what he achieved.

Trump's Treacherous Team Snooped on Obama Officials. That's Gutter Politics

Donald Trump and Steve Bannon in the Oval Office. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

By Jill Abramson, Guardian UK

08 May 18

readersupportednews.org

The president resorting to the dark arts to dig dirt on his predecessor over the Iran deal recalls the worst excesses of Johnson and Nixon

he history of presidents who obsess and dig up dirt on the administrations that preceded them isn’t pretty. Think Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. These two former presidents, who unleashed the FBI and others to dig up dirt on the Kennedys, fulminated to the end about their perceived enemies.

Trump has actually exceeded them in paranoia and low political tactics. The Observer’s scoop about Trump aides practicing the black art of opposition research against the Obama administration officials who led the negotiations on the Iran deal reveals an outrage of immense scope. The Trump team hired a notorious Israeli spy outfit, Black Cube, to snoop into the personal lives of two former Obama officials, Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl, hoping to dig up evidence that they had revealed classified information to reporters, among other things.

When contacted, Rhodes properly observed that this was a “chillingly authoritarian thing to do”. Indeed, it recalls the worst of Nixonian tactics, including treating principled political adversaries as dangerous enemies to be destroyed. Nixon had his famous Enemies List, filled with the names of some of the most revered journalists Washington ever produced, including the late columnist and Pulitzer prize winner Mary McGrory. Nixon was also behind the attempt to steal the psychiatric files of Daniel Ellsberg, who served in Johnson’s Pentagon and leaked the Pentagon Papers.

Black Cube is the worthy inheritor of these kinds of heinous reputational hit jobs.

Coming off the Observer story, the New Yorker revealed that Black Cube may have sent emails to the wives of Rhodes and Kahl via the same shell companies it used on behalf of disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein in an effort to discredit his accusers. You can tell a lot about a president by the company he keeps, although Black Cube has denied any connection to Trump. 

Trump has labeled the Iran deal the “worst deal ever”. If it’s really so bad, why do the president’s aides have to sink this low to torpedo it? That’s the key question.

The only leader who has tried harder than Trump to kill the Iran deal is Benjamin Netanyahu, which is why, no doubt, the Israeli firm was hired shortly after Trump visited Tel Aviv and met with the Israeli prime minister to discuss it.

This kind of gutter politics is also signature Netanyahu, who, like Trump, is facing an epic corruption investigation that could cost him his job.

No one wants to see Iran dropping nuclear weapons on its neighbors or the rest of the world. The whole point of the nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama’s team was to prevent this from ever happening. The deal may not be perfect. But its intent was to make the world safer. Scrapping the deal in the face of a 12 May deadline will only return the world to its very dangerous nuclear status quo.

No one should be surprised that Trump’s allies would stoop to dirt-digging. During the campaign, after all, his son, Donald Jr, responded with glee when he learned that a Russian lawyer might have a nice pile of dirt on Hillary Clinton. “Love it,” he exclaimed after learning of the potential trove. The subsequent Trump Tower meeting that took place with the lawyer, also involving Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, is of keen interest to Robert Mueller.

More broadly, Trump’s mad desire to denigrate Obama shows his fundamental insecurity. It calls to mind his ridiculous, early lie that his inaugural crowd was bigger than his predecessor.

Insecurity is also partly what drove Johnson and Nixon crazy about the Kennedys and their need to tarnish the halo of the assassinated JFK. They couldn’t stand the country’s love affair with its slain leader, just as Trump can’t stand attention being focused on the legacy of Obama, which looks better and better every day that Trump is in office.

It’s impossible to write about Trump and the political dark arts without conjuring the name Roger Stone. Interestingly, Stone wrote a wild book in 2013 resurfacing the long-discredited conspiracy theory that LBJ killed JFK.

Presidents and presidential aides who obsess on the past are dangerous and beg for history’s punishment.

Water War Will Decide the Fate of 1 in 8 Americans

The dried lakebed of Lake Mead. (photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

By Eric Holthaus, Grist

05 May 18
readersupportednews.org

 
ake Mead is the country’s biggest reservoir of water. Think of it as the savings account for the entire Southwest. Right now, that savings account is nearly overdrawn.

For generations, we’ve been using too much of the Colorado River, the 300-foot-wide ribbon of water that carved the Grand Canyon, supplies Lake Mead, and serves as the main water source for much of the American West.

The river sustains one in eight Americans — about 40 million people — and millions of acres of farmland. In the next 40 years, the region is expected to add at least 10 million more people, as the region’s rainfall becomes more erratic.

An especially dismal snowpack this past winter has forced a long-simmering dispute over water rights to the fore, one that splits people living above and below Lake Mead.

It’s a messy, confusing situation, so here’s an overview of who’s involved and what’s at stake:

Users of Colorado River water below Lake Mead — including the cities of Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas (collectively referred to as the “lower basin”) — rely on the reservoir as a lifeline. The people in the lower basin exist partly at the mercy of what happens in the upper basin, an area encompassing the snowcapped peaks of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and northern New Mexico, the source region of the river.

Big water users in the upper basin — Salt Lake City, Denver, Albuquerque, among others — are also getting nervous because snowpack in the Rockies has been dwindling, and there’s no physical way for them to store the water they depend on.

There are no big reservoirs in the Rockies.

In recent weeks, tensions are rising after states in the upper basin sent a strongly worded letter to one of the river’s biggest users, the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, or CAWCD, which supplies water to Tucson and Phoenix. The upper basin states accused the utility of manipulating the complex system that governs Lake Mead in order to get more water. The Arizona utility denied the charges.

An upper basin city — Pueblo, Colorado — then pulled out of a regional conservation program, further threatening the spirit of long-term cooperation throughout the Colorado River basin. Denver has threatened to do the same. The quick escalation shows just how fragile the system really is.

In an email to Grist, Kathryn Sorensen, director of Phoenix’s Water Services Department, says the city “does not and has never supported CAWCD’s attempt to draw additional water” from the Colorado River. She said that the only way forward “is through collaboration among all stakeholders in the basin.”

The whole thing feels like the beginnings of a water war fought with cryptic, wonky tweets. As longtime Western water journalists Luke Runyon and Bret Jaspers recently wrote, “public shaming is how water managers police themselves.”

What’s happening could be seen as the slow death of an era of easy living, the unwinding of a nearly 100-year-old series of multi-state compacts (collectively called “The Law of the River”) that’s been widely viewed as too permissive. Over-reliance on the Colorado River has helped pave the way for rapid population growth across the region, from Southern California to Denver, which may now, ironically, begin to pose a threat to those same cities.

For many reasons, Arizona is last in line for the Colorado River’s water, and the state is already preparing for the mandatory restrictions that could be less than two years away. The latest official projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages the Colorado River system, shows that Lake Mead is likely to dip below the critical threshold of 1,075 feet above sea level late next year. That could trigger the first official “call on the river” — a legally-mandated cutback for certain users aimed at avoiding an all-out free-for-all.

In Phoenix, a worst-case scenario is now looking more and more likely. In just a few years from now, if (or, when) Lake Mead dips below 1,075 feet, the city may find itself in a position where it stops building new subdivisions, the state’s agricultural economy comes crashing to a permanent halt, and a fit of well-drilling begins to deplete the local groundwater.

And then there’s always climate change. On the world’s current emissions trajectory, sharply warming temperatures boost the odds of a megadrought in the Southwest sometime later this century to more than 99 percent. Such a drought would last a generation. Nearly all trees in the Southwest could die. The scale of the disaster would have the power to reshape the course of U.S. history.

For now, the spat over the Colorado River offers a glimpse into water politics in an era of permanent scarcity. The low snowpack in the upper basin states means that inflows into Lake Mead will be just 43 percent of normal this year, raising the stakes for conservation programs throughout the West. In the midst of long-running drought, 2017 was the most successful year for water conservation in decades — which is evidence that when there’s less water around, people can make things work.

“We must all find a way to collectively use less water while respecting the Law of the River,”Sorensen says. “That’s of course a tricky proposition because the Law of the River is basically the most complex governance structure ever created by human beings.”