May 25, 2019

Friday Talking Points -- Trump Throws Another Tantrum

What do you do with a president who wants to be impeached? That's a surreal question, but then again we live in surreal times. Donald Trump seems more and more like a man begging the House Democrats to impeach him. It's like every political decision he makes is designed to be so outrageous that it'll surely goad Democrats into starting an impeachment committee.

Trump thinks -- and he may very well be right -- that getting impeached and then having the Republican Senate refuse to remove him from office would be a political winner for him. There's simply no way to tell how it would play out during an election year, but the last president impeached by what the public saw as a purely political exercise actually saw his own job approval go up during the process. So Trump is betting the same thing will happen to him, and he may not be wrong in that assumption.

But it certainly leaves Democrats in a quandary. Impeaching Trump might just help Trump politically. But not impeaching Trump leaves him free to run roughshod over all and sundry, in increasingly outrageous fashion. That's a tough choice. So far, Nancy Pelosi has chosen to push forward with investigations, but not pull the impeachment trigger quite yet. Bizarrely, right after she held a meeting with her caucus where she damped down calls for immediate impeachment, Trump's head exploded and he threw an epic hissy fit.

While we're going to save most of the story of Trump blowing his top for later in the program, there are a few side notes worth pointing out. The Washington Post ran a helpful review of all the other times when an announced "Infrastructure Week" crashed and burned for Trump (the most notable being the "very fine people on both sides" reaction to Charlottesville, which actually happened at an Infrastructure Week presentation).

Also, right after Trump swore he was taking his bat and ball and going home rather than getting anything done with Democrats in Congress, Trump caved completely on his demands for border wall money and to stiff Puerto Rico, which allowed a bipartisan disaster relief bill to pass the Senate on an 85-8 vote. Trump threw in the towel a day after he said he wouldn't even negotiate with Democrats, which will wind up being good news for all those affected.

Trump did announce a further $16 billion in aid to farmers to bail them out of the mess that his trade war with China has saddled them with. But even Republicans are getting nervous about the devastation Trump is personally causing in the heartland, as evidenced by a letter Senator Jerry Moran wrote, charging that Trump's trade war would "cause long term damage to U.S. agriculture." He went on to write about Trump's preferred method of using taxpayer money for such bailouts:

Meanwhile, House Republican Justin Amash outright called for the impeachment of the president. He read the whole Mueller Report and came to that conclusion, which he shared last weekend. So far, he's the only Republican in Congress to do so, but it's still a notable development.

Trump's stonewalling strategy continues, as he blocked Don McGahn from testifying before a House committee this week. But the courts are moving quickly to address the situation, as two separate federal judges this week ruled against Trump's legal argument that Congress doesn't have the right to issue subpoenas to Trump's banks and his accountant. Trump immediately appealed both decisions, and one of them is already scheduled to be heard by the appellate court on July 12.

New York state lawmakers are doing their part, passing two laws directed at Trump this week. The first will allow congressional committees to get Trump's state tax returns, and the second will allow people accused of criminal activity in New York to be prosecuted even after the president pardons them (presidential pardons only apply to federal lawbreaking, but New York had a law on the books stating that people couldn't be tried for crimes prosecuted at the federal level -- now the new law allows for this in the case of anyone pardoned by the president).

This isn't an abstract possibility, since Trump has shown his willingness to use the pardon power to let off the hook anyone Fox News thinks should be given a pass. In fact, Trump was astonishingly going to celebrate the Memorial Day weekend by pardoning war criminals. That's right -- soldiers and contractors either being prosecuted or already convicted of murdering innocent people and disobeying the rules of war would get presidential pardons, and somehow Trump thought that he'd be honoring the military by doing so. Mitt Romney reacted to this news with: "I think it's a terrible idea to pardon someone who is legitimately convicted of committing war crimes. It's unthinkable." Unthinkable by normal people, but not so for Trump. Hopefully, the pushback against this idea has been so strong that Trump is now reportedly having second thoughts, so we'll have to see what happens (if anything) over the holiday weekend.





Before we get to the main award, we have to give an Honorable Mention to both Representative Judy Chu and Senator Richard Blumenthal. They both introduced into their respective chambers the "Women's Health Protection Act," which would "bar states from imposing restrictions on abortion that are medically unnecessary and interfere with a woman's ability to access care."

For some needed context, it hasn't been just this week that abortion rights have been under attack. From 2010 to 2016, individual states enacted 338 laws restricting abortion access. As Blumenthal put it: "We face a five-alarm fire in the danger to women's reproductive rights."

This bill has been introduced in every Congress since 2013. It now has 42 Senate cosponsors and 171 cosponsors in the House. For far too long, Congress has punted on its responsibility to fight back against the state-level attacks on Roe versus Wade. This bill would fix the problem once and for all, on a national level. Which is why we have to applaud Blumenthal and Chu for once again introducing it.

We'd also like to award an Honorable Mention to all the Democrats in Connecticut who managed to pass a law hiking the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour. Well done!

But, obviously, the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week is none other than Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. She earns the award for being the most effective Democrat at getting under Trump's skin. Other Democrats should really be taking notes, because Pelosi seems to annoy Trump more than anyone else in Washington.

We wrote about the immolation of yet another "Infrastructure Week" earlier in the week, but in case you've been in a coma or something, here's the basic rundown. Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were scheduled to meet with President Trump this week, where Trump was supposed to present his plan to pay for the $2 trillion infrastructure proposal that both sides had agreed to last month. Trump, obviously, had not done his homework. He had nothing to propose, as Chuck Schumer later pointed out:



Trump was 15 minutes late to the meeting, probably because the White House was planning an impromptu Rose Garden address in the meantime. When Trump finally walked in to the meeting, he refused to shake hands or sit down, delivered a three-minute rant against Nancy Pelosi (who earlier that morning had stated that the president was obviously "engaged in a coverup" ), and then stormed out of the room. Trump later insisted that "I don't do coverups" -- which, of course, Stormy Daniels might just have something to say about.

Trump then strode to the Rose Garden podium, gripping notes that (in his own handwriting) listed his "achomlishments" (you just can't make this stuff up, folks), and appearing before a podium with a sign on it that read "No collusion. No obstruction." The internet had lots of fun pointing out Trump's idiocy afterwards, naturally. Trump ranted for a while, took two questions, and then exited. He seemed to draw a line in the sand: if Democrats in the House continued to investigate him for any reason, he would simply refuse to work with them on anything. He essentially wants to hold America's infrastructure hostage.

The back-and-forth between Trump and Pelosi got more intense all week long. Pelosi, after the "meeting" with Trump, said she prayed for both the president and the United States of America. She also said Trump "had a temper tantrum" instead of a meeting, writing in a letter to Democrats: "Sadly, the only job the president seems to be concerned with is his own. He threatened to stop working with Democrats on all legislation unless we end oversight of his administration and he had a temper tantrum for us all to see."

Trump then hijacked what was supposed to be an announcement of $16 billion more taxpayer money going to bail out the farmers hit hard by his trade war with China, and forced his toadies to stand up, one after the other, and insist that Trump was "calm" during his meeting with Pelosi. He called Pelosi "a mess" and said that she had "lost it." He also said, once again, that he was a "very stable genius." The internet also had a field day with this one, with the best response coming from Rob Reiner: "The only Stable Genius I know of is Mr. Ed."

Pelosi then shot back: "I wish that his family or his administration or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country. Maybe he wants to take a leave of absence." She also tweeted: "When the 'extremely stable genius' starts acting more presidential, I'll be happy to work with him on infrastructure, trade and other issues."

Once again -- nobody else seems to get under Trump's skin to such a degree. Which is why it's so amusing to watch when Nancy Pelosi does so. For standing up to Trump with a backbone made of steel, Nancy Pelosi is once again the winner of the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. And, as we said, Democratic presidential candidates should really be taking notes, because one of them will have to take Trump on directly next year.

{Congratulate Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on her official contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.}





This week, Roe versus Wade came under attack. Multiple states took direct aim at it, passing laws to make abortion almost impossible (and, in Alabama's case, completely impossible). All of these laws are designed to wind up in the Supreme Court, because now that Justice Fratboy is on the court, conservatives think the time is ripe to challenge Roe.

In all of these cases but one, a Republican governor signed (or will sign) the new anti-abortion bills. But in Louisiana, it was a Democratic governor who said he will sign the bill into law. John Bel Edwards is one of a very few anti-abortion Democrats left in the party.

We find this disappointing, which is why we're awarding him this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. Now, an argument can be made for making the party a "big tent," and it can also be argued that Louisiana is better off in general with an anti-abortion Democrat than with a Republican sitting in the governor's chair, but we still find the whole thing disappointing. There should be some things that the party as a whole stands for, and we believe that a woman's right to choose should be one of them for the Democratic Party. We're not alone in this belief, either.

Roe versus Wade is under attack. One court ruling could strip it of its power nationwide. America would return to it being up to the states whether abortion was legal or not. We think that's the wrong direction for the country to take. Which is why we feel we must give this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award to John Bel Edwards.

{Contact Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on his official contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.}




Volume 528 (5/24/19)

As we are sometimes wont to do, this week we are foregoing our usual discrete (but seldom discreet) seven talking points in favor of just letting fly with an extended rant. Well, it's not exactly a rant, but it does include a little ranting here and there.

We wrote about this subject yesterday, after hearing that the White House was trying a rather laughable bit of political spin. According to Trump (and his chorus of toadies), Democrats are simply not capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. Here is a tweet from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, pushing this false narrative: "Democrats are in a tailspin, and their 'leadership' is out to lunch. They have achieved practically NOTHING since taking over the House, and their obsession with impeaching this president is paralyzing any progress we could be making as the UNITED States."

This is utter hogwash, of course. But it strikes at the bedrock case that Democrats really need to be making in the 2020 election campaign. And when we say this, we aren't thinking so much of the presidential race but rather of all the down-ballot races for the House, for the Senate, and for statehouses across the country. So we decided it was time to provide a generic speech for Democratic candidates in all the other races. Here is the basic speech we would write for any of these candidates to deliver.



How Democrats Can Make The Case For 2020

In the upcoming election, American voters will have a clear choice to make between the two major political parties. One public service President Trump has done for the country {Pause for laughter}... no, really... one good thing he's done for us all is to rip the mask off the Republican Party and lay bare for everyone to see just how bankrupt they are of good ideas to improve people's lives. I mean, what does the Republican Party want to do for America? From where I stand, they really only seem to agree on three things. If you look at what little legislation they have proposed, it all boils down to one of the following three things: cut taxes for the wealthiest of the wealthy, build a gigantic wall on our southern border, and prevent as many people as possible from getting affordable healthcare. That's it. That's all they've got.

The Republicans held both houses of Congress for two years, and they want to win the House back and hold onto the Senate in this election. But what did they get done last time? A whole lot of nothing. One big tax cut that showered all its benefits on Wall Street and billionaires, and nothing else. They tried to kill Obamacare and replace it with absolutely nothing for tens of millions of Americans, but thankfully they weren't able to do so. And what else did they achieve? Nothing. What has the Senate achieved this year? As one Republican senator just put it -- and this is a direct quote: "Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada." This same senator summed up what his Republican colleagues have managed this year by saying: "the Senate hasn't done a damn thing except sit on its ice-cold lazy butt." That's a Republican senator, mind you, and I might add that I couldn't have said it better myself.

When I see Republican campaign ads, all I can see is fearmongering: "We should all be very afraid of this, that, and the other -- vote for us because we will slay the dragon!" But what positive agenda items do they have? They don't say. What do they want to do for the country? Their ads are silent on the subject. The only things Republicans now stand for are cutting your boss's taxes, building a pointless border wall, and denying healthcare to the poor, to women, and to anyone else they possibly can. They know full well that this stripped-down agenda is not really popular with the public, so they don't even try to run on it even though it is all they have left that they agree upon.

The contrast couldn't be clearer. Democrats want to get some good things done to move America boldly into the future. Republicans want to stop all of these ideas cold, but they have nothing to propose other than obstructionism. Oh, and a border wall.

Will building a wall on the Mexican border bring down prescription drug prices? No, it will not. Will building Trump's precious border wall bring a green new energy future to the country? Nope. Will a border wall raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour? I wouldn't hold your breath. Will that wall protect people with pre-existing conditions? I seriously doubt it. Will building a border wall give all Americans the choice to join Medicare? No, it won't. Will a border wall ensure equal pay for equal work? Not even close. Will building a border wall do anything for the Dreamers or solve our nation's real immigration problems? No way. Will spending a bazillion dollars building an ineffective wall mean teachers will be paid more? No, it will not. Will throwing money down this rathole make college more affordable for all? Not a chance.

That's their agenda stacked up against ours, in a nutshell. Democrats want to do all of these things to make people's lives better. Republicans don't want to do any of them, and the Republican Senate refuses to act on any of it.

This week, after the president of the United States threw a temper tantrum worthy of a two-year-old, he's been pushing some fake news in an effort to convince everyone that black is white and up is down. According to him, because the House of Representatives is once again performing its constitutional duty to provide oversight of the executive branch, somehow they aren't able to get anything else done. He tweeted this bizarre theory multiple times, in fact: "You can't investigate and legislate simultaneously -- it just doesn't work that way. You can't go down two tracks at the same time." And also: "Democrats are getting nothing done in Congress.... It is not possible for them to investigate and legislate at the same time."

Professional Trump apologist Sarah Huckabee Sanders also tried pushing this manure on the American public. She called Democrats: "incapable of doing anything other than investigating this president," and asked: "what significant pieces of legislation they have passed that are going to change the course of this country?" Sarah called the idea that Democrats can both investigate and pass bills "a complete lie." And then she stepped back, just in case a thunderbolt from Heaven struck her down for bearing such false witness. {Pause for laughter} OK, I made that last part up, I admit.

This lie is a monumentally stupid one because it is so easy to debunk. The House of Representatives has, in fact, been passing dozens of bills. Nancy Pelosi has been moving legislation like there's no tomorrow, in fact. All told, the House has sent over one hundred bills to the Senate, where Mitch McConnell refuses to act on any of them. We've sent them over a hundred bills and the year's not even half over. So yes, thank you very much, Democrats can indeed run investigations and pass legislation -- just look at their record! It's pretty obvious which party can pass bills and which party cannot, when you take even the most casual look at the facts.

In all this time, what has Mitch McConnell done? Nothing. Democrats aren't the ones who can't pass legislation, it is obviously the Republicans who can't do so -- and they don't even have the excuse of investigations to fall back on, because McConnell has become nothing but Trump's bootlicker. Republicans can't legislate, period.

The only way to end this gridlock is to elect more Democrats to the Senate, and take back the White House. The Republican agenda -- other than tax cuts, taking away your healthcare, and building the wall -- is empty. It is completely hollow. They've got absolutely nothing, which is why they're passing no bills. America gave them both houses of Congress and the White House and what got done?

However, if the American voters decide to give Democrats control, we've already got a strong agenda chock full of things that could make everyone's lives a whole lot better. You don't have to imagine what we'll do, just take a look at some of those bills the House has already passed: the For The People Act, the Paycheck Fairness Act, the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, the Save the Internet Act -- and that's just a handful of them.

Democrats want to reform our elections system to make it easier for everyone to vote. Republicans want to make it harder for you to cast your ballot. Democrats want to reform ethics laws for elected officials, while Republicans want to make the swamp deeper. Democrats -- and even some Republicans -- want to protect our elections system from hacking by foreigners, and Mitch McConnell refuses to act on it. Democrats want to make it illegal to deny someone housing or a job just because they are gay. Republicans are pro-discrimination. Democrats want to make college more affordable to all, and Republicans don't. Democrats want teachers in our children's schools to get paid more, and Republicans disagree. Democrats want to protect people's health insurance and people with pre-existing conditions, and Republicans want to take health insurance away and lock up doctors for providing women's healthcare. Democrats want the minimum wage raised to $15 an hour, and Republicans are fighting it. Democrats want to build infrastructure all across the country, and Republicans only want to build a border wall.

That is the contrast. That is what is on the ballot next November. Do we move forward together as a country, or do we refuse to even admit that problems exist? Do we want to make life better for people, or do we want to double-down on rigging the system for the few and against the many? Are we going to return America to being a shining example for the rest of the world to follow, or do we want to continue to be the world's laughingstock? Do we want to return to a time when we treated America's friends as friends, or do we want to continue to see our president coddle dictators because they say nice things about him? The choice is pretty plain. I know what I'm going to do next November -- I'm going to cast a vote for the future. I'm going to vote to move America forward once again. I'm going to reject the idea that there are simply no problems left for Congress to solve. I'm voting for Democrats, and I urge everyone who shares hope for the future to do the same, because it is the only way anything good will get done.

Thank you.




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
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May 18, 2019

Friday Talking Points -- Trump's Immigration Hypocrisy

{Program Note for DemocraticUnderground.com readers:
I've been posting this weekly wrapup column for over ten years here at DU, and always run into the same problem as we get closer to each election. The DU forum categories shift around, with strict rules about where to post. I normally post these under "General Discussion" since it's about as generic as you can get, but now there is a new "Democratic Primaries" forum as well. These weekly columns attempt to cover all of the political world, so the main focus is usually not just on the Democratic primary race. As little as 10 percent of any individual column may address the primary races, while the rest is just generic political news of the week. I've been informed by the moderators to post these in "Democratic Primaries" for now, which I am happy to do, but just wanted to warn folks ahead of time that my "Friday Talking Points" columns (begun years ago as an homage to the great DU "Top Ten Conservative Idiots" column series, I should mention) will not exclusively be about the Democratic Primaries. Just to be clear to everyone, up front, to avoid any objections that most of these posts are "off topic."}


It's been yet another week of life so bizarre it'd be hard to even imagine it as satirical art. Who would best be able to capture the lunacy and doublethink emanating from Trump's White House? Joseph Heller? George Orwell? Douglas Adams? Or perhaps Dr. Seuss? In other words, just another glorious week in Trumpland, folks.

The highlights (or lowlights, really) of this lunacy came during Trump's rollout of his brand-new immigration policy proposal. In the future, Trump announced, the United States should give much greater weight to skilled immigrants and much less weight to family ties in deciding who will be allowed in. Under a normal president -- even a normal Republican president -- this would be par for the course. With Trump, however, we have to consider not the par but the course itself.

Donald Trump owns a bunch of golf courses here in America. He runs these golf courses using various forms of labor. Up until very recently, he relied on workers who were undocumented (or, as Republicans so charmingly call them, "illegals" ). When this practice came to light in the media, all of these folks were hastily fired. But even beyond the illegal labor force, Trump also relies heavily on a visa used specifically for seasonal workers to hire foreigners as maids and other low-skilled labor to run his hotels and golf courses. His organization snaps up as many of these visas as they can each year, so that they can hire temporary summer help from other countries, rather than hire Americans to do the same jobs -- even though these are not high-skilled jobs. So much for all his talk about hiring Americans, eh?

That's a whole lot of hypocrisy, right there. But things got really surreal when he sent out (you can't make this stuff up, folks) his own son-in-law to make the case that people should be rated not on their family connections but rather on their actual skills. Seriously. His own son-in-law made the case that family connections should not be a consideration.

Maybe Jared Kushner is so skilled in his job that he was the best choice available? That would really be the only counterargument to make. Well, let's see how it all played out, shall we?

The article also made a tangential point as well:



So, nothing to worry about there! But let's get back to Donald Trump's flaming hypocrisy on immigration. Trump has long railed against using family ties as a basis for legal immigration, calling it "chain migration," where one family member makes it in and then sponsors all their other relatives to come in legally as well. But please remember, Trump's own wife is an immigrant. And he certainly didn't seem to object any when she used her new status as his wife to sponsor her own parents to get green cards. That's right -- Trump's own in-laws used the same "chain migration" to get in that Trump's new policy is attacking.

So, to review: Trump used to use undocumented immigrants as workers at his golf courses and hotels. Trump continues to use visas to give unskilled jobs to foreigners rather than hire Americans. Trump's own family has used "chain migration" to get in to America legally. And now he wants to change all that -- for everybody else, assumably. He wants only skilled immigrants not relying on family ties to be allowed in. This is why the whole scenario is worthy of Joseph Heller.

Thankfully, even Republicans are balking at doing anything towards achieving Trump's goals. Nancy Pelosi helpfully categorized his big new proposal as a "dead-on-arrival plan that is not remotely a serious proposal."

But getting back to Republican lunacy (and Joseph Heller), we have to preface this next item with the definitive excerpt from the novel Catch-22.



This is a necessary reminder, because this week the state of Alabama passed a law which (are you sitting down?) makes all abortion illegal except for an abortion performed on a woman who doesn't know she is pregnant. That is exactly how one of the bill's sponsors explained it:



Got that? When you ignore the "all those chromosomes" idiocy, it boils down to: if a woman doesn't know she is pregnant, she is free to have an abortion. If, however, she finds out she is pregnant, she cannot have an abortion.

Catch-22. Welcome to Alabama.

Alabama's new law is so extreme -- no exceptions for rape or incest at all -- that even people like Pat Robertson and the Republican leader in the House of Representatives are saying it goes too far. But that didn't deter the governor from signing the new law, which was quite obviously designed to entice the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. And with Justice Fratboy now on the court, anything is possible.

But let's move on to a more cheerful subject concerning the number 22. Or is it 23? Or maybe even 24?

This confusion is rampant in the media, as nobody's really sure what the total should be when discussing the Democratic 2020 presidential field. It all depends on who you count as a "serious" candidate, after all. There are really only three or four candidates who regularly get excluded from the totals, two for being non-politicians and one for running a vanity campaign.

Mike Gravel is running for president, kind of, but he's often the first guy people exclude when they're counting heads. But he may actually qualify for the first debates, which would pretty much argue for his inclusion in the list. The other two are not politicians currently, but then again neither was Donald Trump, right? Andrew Yang and Marianne Williamson are often omitted from the totals of all the Democrats running, even though both have either raised enough money from enough sources (Williamson) or done well enough in the national polls (Yang) to also be included in the first debates.

The last guy who sometimes doesn't make the cut is Wayne Messam, who is a mayor from Florida. His fundraising numbers are the lowest of anyone's, and he does not register at all in the polls. So he really should be the first to be dropped from the "serious candidates" list, even though he often is included anyway (probably because Pete Buttigieg, another mayor, is doing so well).

We personally include everyone. This week, we had (hopefully) the last two candidates throw their hats in the increasingly-crowded ring, Steve Bullock and Bill de Blasio. Counting everyone -- Gravel, Yang, Williamson, and Messam -- this gives us 24 candidates currently running. But we are even more inclusive than that, as we set the absolute total Democratic field at 25 candidates. The one everyone else always misses is Richard Ojeda, who was the first candidate to officially drop out. But he was running at one point, so in any total of the whole field, he really should be counted as well. As we wrote earlier in the week, the question that is going to loom the largest over the Democratic race over the next few weeks is who will wind up debating whom in the first round of debates? The draw is going to be crucial.

Let's see, what else is going on? Trump is now apparently going to ask for another $20 billion (on top of the $12 billion already spent) to bail out all the farmers hit hard by his new tariffs -- or, to speak plainly, taxes. So how is that playing with his fellow Republicans? Let's check in with Senator Pat Toomey:



Not exactly a rousing endorsement of the new plan, is it? Oh, and this program that is supposed to be helping American farmers apparently sent over $20 million in American taxpayer money to a pair of Brazilian brothers who have confessed their participation in a "massive corruption scandal." Nothing like putting America first!

This week, the first federal court case from Trump's stonewalling and obstructionism went before a judge, as Trump is suing to block the subpoena of his accounting firm. The official White House legal strategy (in this and multiple other court cases) is that because they have determined that Congress "has no legitimate legislative purpose" in investigating the president, then the president is free to ignore all their demands, requests, and subpoenas. The first judge to hear such a case was highly skeptical of such reasoning, and his decision is expected fairly soon, so we've got that to look forward to.

Something that we regularly look forward to is in the process of being completely ruined by Trump, however, as he's apparently now micromanaging what will happen in Washington D.C. on July Fourth, to (naturally) shoehorn himself into the arrangements. Back in February, Trump was roundly ridiculed for tweeting:



Hold the date? Really? Is Trump honestly that stupid? Well, it appears so -- he's now mucking with a celebration that has successfully used essentially the same format for a number of decades, in an attempt to turn it into a campaign rally. Trump was denied his big military parade, so this is apparently his revenge. Or something. One can only hope a whole bunch of protestors show up to his speech!

And we have to end on just as surreal a note as we began, because apparently -- for some unfathomable reason -- Gene Simmons appeared recently at the Pentagon briefing podium. Um, to explain what the Kiss Army is doing these days? We really are at a loss to even begin to explain this one. Maybe Joseph Heller or Douglas Adams could do so, but we find it beyond our humble abilities.





We've got two Honorable Mention awards to hand out this week, as well as two Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week statuettes to boot, so let's just dive right in, shall we?

First some recognition must be given to all the House Democrats who participated in a marathon reading of all 400-plus pages of the Mueller Report on the House floor this week. It was a political stunt, although it didn't draw much media attention, but it certainly took an impressive amount of stamina to produce.

Next, another Honorable Mention goes to Senator Elizabeth Warren, for her scathing takedown of Fox News, as she announced she would not appear for a town hall hosted by the channel. Her entire Twitter thread on the subject is well worth reading, but the one quote that really made a splash was when Warren called Fox News a "hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists." Tell us how you really feel, Liz!

Warren also deserves credit for goading Congress to act on abortion rights. She is entirely right -- Democrats in Congress could have fended off a whole lot of the current legal challenges to Roe if they had acted thirty years ago or so, when the right wing really began this legislative onslaught. But it's still not too late, as Warren points out:



These weren't the only specific things Warren proposed Congress fix, she had a whole laundry list of them. She concluded by throwing down a rather large gauntlet:



But we have two Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week awards, both for successfully moving good legislation. First up is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who has been busy passing important bills out of her chamber this week. The first addressed a problem that Democrats really should have taken care of a long time ago, say when they held both chambers of Congress and had Barack Obama in the White House. Just because gay people can now get married everywhere, they still face legal persecution in multiple states. The Equality Act would fix this by amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act that bars such discrimination on the basis of things like race and ethnicity.



Pelosi has also been on a roll on the subject of healthcare. A lot of Democrats in the House got elected on promises to improve healthcare rather than the continued push from Republicans to destroy Obamacare, and this week was the culmination of the legislative efforts to do so.



Both Pelosi and her Senate counterpart Minority Leader Chuck Schumer indicated strongly that Democrats would be using this issue against sitting Republican senators in next year's election:



While the media is obsessed with impeachment and the 2020 Democratic presidential horserace, Pelosi has very quietly been passing bill after bill, constructing the 2020 Democratic platform for all the party's candidates. Democrats everywhere will be able to run on: "Look at this list of good legislation the House has passed -- the only way these things are going to happen is with a Democratic Senate and a Democrat in the White House!"

Which brings us to our second Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who is also running for president. This week, in his day job, he signed into law the first-in-the-nation "public option" for health insurance. Right there on the Obamacare exchange with all the private insurance plans will soon be (in 2021) a public option plan to compare them all to. Since it is only state-level and not national, it will not be called "Medicare" but that's essentially how it will function -- as "Medicare For All Who Want It." We wrote about this earlier in the week, in case anyone's interested in our further thoughts on the subject, but we have to applaud Jay Inslee for his state's bold and pioneering action with his very own Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. In the very near future, we'll all have some solid data to analyze in this ongoing debate. No matter what the data winds up telling us, the fact that Inslee is making it happen is indeed impressive.

{Congratulate Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on her House contact page, and Washington Governor Jay Inslee on his official state contact page, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.}





Our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week isn't on the list because of anything in particular he did this week, it's more of a "just because we heard his name in the news again" award. Because we have to warn mothers and fathers to beware -- and lock up your daughters! -- now that Carlos Danger is on the loose once again.

That's right -- Anthony Weiner is now out of jail. Which means we were reminded once again of what a complete schmuck the guy is:



This wasn't some stupid scandal that had no real wider fallout, in other words. If Señor Danger had kept his (ahem) wiener in his pants, then Hillary Clinton might just have managed to surpass the whole F.B.I. emails scandal. But when Weiner was arrested, it blew up all over again -- right before the election. Meaning you could conceivably pin most of the blame for President Donald Trump directly on Weiner.

Which is why we're giving him yet another Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week, just because.

{We have no contact information for Anthony "Carlos Danger" Weiner, but if his past is any prelude, it'd be best if you don't start an email or texting thread with him anyway. We're just sayin'....}





Volume 527 (5/17/19)

The talking points are all over the map this week, since there was so much lunacy and idiocy emanating from Washington (and beyond). So without further ado, let's get right to them.



Alabama getaway

Democrats need to point out idiocy when they see it, as a general rule.

"The state of Alabama has just made pretty much all abortion illegal, with a jail sentence of up to 99 years for a doctor who performs one. This is just the worst example of the ongoing Republican war on women, as they try to roll back women's reproductive rights in state after state. For decades, voters have been fairly confident that Roe v. Wade was secure, but as we can all now see, that just isn't so any more. One Republican sponsor of the Alabama bill helpfully explained that women would be free to get abortions right up to the moment when they realize they are pregnant. Just stop for a moment and think about such idiocy. What is an Alabama woman supposed to do? Walk into an abortion clinic every few weeks and demand to have an abortion because she has no idea whether she's pregnant or not? That is absolute insanity! And yet that's exactly what Republicans think should happen, apparently. Doc Daneeka and Yossarian would be so proud...."



A merit-based son-in-law

Hypocrisy, thy name is Trump. Oh, and Kushner, too.

"Trump announced his new immigration policy proposal this week. Even though he personally profits from hiring undocumented immigrants on his golf courses, and even though he hires maids and other menial workers at his resorts from foreign countries rather than hiring Americans, he is now only for high-skilled immigrants being allowed in to the country. He wants a purely merit-based system, even though his wife is an immigrant who got her citizenship through their marriage. And even though her parents came in after Melania sponsored them, Trump is against what he calls 'chain migration.' And -- the most hilarious hypocrisy of them all -- he sent as his ambassador to Congress, to explain this merit-based system that would no longer take into account family ties, none other than his own son-in-law. Who couldn't even answer basic questions about the new policy from friendly Republican senators. I guess you've got to give Trump points for chutzpah, since he's obviously convinced everyone should just do as he says, not as he himself does."



A Trump-made disaster

They left themselves wide open to this one.

"Last year, Donald Trump had to shovel a whopping $12 billion in U.S. taxpayer money at farmers to bail them out from his disastrous trade war with China. His tariffs -- which are nothing short of one of the largest tax increases on the American public ever instituted -- continue to make life hard for farmers, it seems. Nobody else affected by his new taxes got such welfare from the government, though, and even the farmers weren't treated evenhandedly. Last week, Trump indicated that he would need $15 billion in taxpayer money to hand over for free to farmers desolated by his trade policy. This week, though, that figure had somehow climbed to a jaw-dropping $20 billion. The most ironic aspect of this spiral of idiocy, though, was when the White House tried to get the Republican Senate to add the farmers' bailout money to a disaster relief bill. Think about that for a second -- a bill designed to offer relief to those affected by natural disasters would also be used to offer relief to those affected by an economic disaster of the president's own making. It is nothing short of a Trump-made disaster, folks. By even suggesting that the funding be attached to this bill, Trump is essentially admitting that his China trade war is nothing short of a full-scale disaster. I can't really argue with that, myself."



Turning Michigan blue again

So let's see how it's playing in Peoria. Or, more to the point, Kalamazoo.

"Donald Trump is convinced that his trade war with China is going to somehow win him re-election. Well, let's see... in a state that Trump won by a bare 10,700 votes (out of 5 million cast), how are the new Trump taxes going over? Here is Michigan Agri-Business Association president Jim Byrum, on the new round of tit-for-tat tariffs between Trump and China: 'The noose is getting tighter. The new Chinese tariffs {are} going to hurt even more.' That's from a farm trade organization, representing a whole bunch of people who voted for Trump. Farmers are going bankrupt in record numbers as a direct result of Trump's trade war, so it's really not all that surprising to hear that some of them have had enough. Think Trump has a shot at winning Michigan again? If he's still in a trade war with China, I seriously doubt it...."



Walmart announces bad news for other Trump voters

This was inevitable, and it is now coming to pass.

"So, let's check the business pages to see how Trump's trade war is playing elsewhere, shall we? Reuters reported on two large retailers who just announced that they'll be hiking prices on their customers due to the new Trump tax:



They certainly won't be the only such stores forced to raise prices. No matter how many times Trump swears that China will be paying all the tariffs, his own economic advisor even had to admit last week that these taxes will instead be paid by you and me -- American consumers."



The Bible says so....

This one was pretty funny, in a "what's good for the goose" kind of way. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted this week in support of the bill that she and Bernie Sanders have introduced in Congress that would cap all credit card interest rates at 15 percent. This is a real winner of an idea, but Ocasio-Cortez took it to a new level by challenging one particular group to get behind the effort, in a pair of tweets:







Speaking of tweets

This is sort of a reverse-talking point. If I were a Democrat who wanted to speak out against the rising aggressive moves Trump (or Bolton) is taking against Iran, I'd print the following out and keep it handy, just in case the subject came up. All of these are tweets that Donald Trump let fly back in the midst of the 2012 presidential race. And, obviously, it's time to throw them back in his face.










Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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May 11, 2019

Friday Talking Points -- Trump Flails On World Stage

Most Fridays, we tend to focus on President Donald Trump's flailings and failings on domestic issues, but this week his buffoonery on the world stage was really what was front and center. Sure, there's an ongoing constitutional crisis between the White House and the House of Representatives, but this week in particular seemed to be "foreign policy mishap week" for Team Trump.

After absolutely no progress whatsoever in the two months since Trump's failed North Korea summit, Kim Jong Un reminded Trump he was still alive by playfully launching a bunch of missiles into the sea. On two separate occasions over the past week, the North Korean dictator oversaw test launches of short-range missiles. This doesn't end his self-declared moratorium on I.C.B.M. launches, but it is still pretty provocative behavior which is obviously designed to embarrass Trump.

Down in Venezuela, John Bolton seemed to think it'd be real easy to stage a "coup" and then see if a real one developed to match the propaganda effort. This failed pretty miserably, all around. What was kind of astonishing is that some big names in the mainstream American media went along for the ride. Both CNN and the New York Times credulously reported "facts" that were nothing short of falsehoods. Stories appeared stating that the opposition leader had taken over a military airbase and had given a speech to "thousands" of cheering defecting soldiers and officers. The reality was that he gave a speech on a highway overpass near the airbase (not actually on it), and the crowd was closer to two dozen people, well under the "thousands" reported. The rebels never took over the airbase, and soon afterwards most of them retreated to foreign embassies, where they claimed political asylum. That's not much of a coup, but you certainly wouldn't have known it by what was reported at the time. This was a rare instance of Bolton and the White House crew pushing "fake news" (in its original definition) and the "liberal media" not bothering to check the actual facts on the ground. At the end of the day, it looked like nothing short of a fiasco.

Meanwhile, Bolton has also been rattling the war sabers with Iran, and it was announced that an aircraft carrier group and a detachment of heavy bombers had been dispatched to the region, just in case. As Salon reported:

Remember the glory days of: "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction!"? Seems like déjà vu all over again....

But the biggest news of the week was how trade talks with China all but collapsed. There was supposed to be a round of final meetings at the end of the week and then a big trade agreement announcement, but instead that all crashed and burned and what we got was Trump upping the tariffs already in place from 10 percent to 25 percent, while threatening to also slap tariffs on every other product China sells us, while China darkly threatened unspecified retaliation.

Trump continues to insist on repeating a bald-faced lie, that "China pays" the tariffs, therefore it's actually a good thing and helping put money in American government coffers. In reality, the tariffs are paid by the company importing the goods right here in the U.S. of A., and then this tax is passed along 100 percent to American consumers. Nobody in China pays a dime -- not the exporting company or the Chinese government. Just another "Big Lie" from Trump's 2020 campaign, we suppose.

Speaking of Trump's war on the truth, Politico reported on an exodus of economists from the Agriculture Department, because they had dared to publish facts which put Trump's trade war in a bad light. From a summary of this story which ran in Salon:



They couldn't stop the bad news from coming in from outside the administration, though. The Washington Post reported that experts at the nonpartisan Peterson Institute concluded that for every job either created or saved by Trump's steel tariffs, American consumers paid a whopping $900,000:



But, please remember, Donald Trump is a genius businessman.

Or maybe not. The New York Times got its hands on hard data from Trump's income tax returns covering a decade from the mid-1980s to the mid-90s, and it showed that even during an economic boom, Trump lost more money than pretty much any other taxpayer in the entire country. All told, he lost almost $1.2 billion over a decade. He paid no income tax at all in eight out of these ten years.

Now, while the internet had a field day ridiculing Trump (the most popular suggestion was that his television show really should have been named "The Biggest Loser" ), what occurred to us personally was the possibility of other shoes dropping in the very near future. The Times very carefully stated that it hadn't seen Trump's actual physical tax returns (the pieces of paper he sent in, in other words) but instead printouts from the I.R.S. database which showed all the numbers Trump had entered on those forms. They obtained these printouts from someone who had "legal access" to them, according to the Times. But this begs the question -- if they've got a source who was able to pull all of these tax records out of the database, what would be stopping them from pulling all the other years of Trump's taxes? Maybe this article might just become "the first in a series" and we'll all get to see Trump's taxes one decade at a time, until we get caught up to the present day. Now there's an interesting thought!

We probably won't be seeing Trump's federal returns any time soon through House committees, because Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin just broke the law this week by refusing to turn over this information. But we might just get to see all of Trump's recent taxes anyway, courtesy of the state of New York. The legislature moved a bill this week which would create a law authorizing the release of New York state tax returns to three U.S. House of Representatives committees, should they ever ask for them. Since Trump had to fill out both federal and state returns, this would likely provide exactly the same information as his federal returns. So there's that to look forward to, as well.

Speaking of tax fraud, Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen reported to federal prison to serve his sentence, and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was officially disbarred. But please remember, Trump only hires the best people!

Let's see, what else is going on? The White House is now in full-on stonewall mode, and can be expected to ignore any and all subpoenas and demands from House committees from now on. As Nancy Pelosi pointed out, Trump himself seems to be begging to be impeached on a daily basis.

Pelosi's not letting the grass grow under her feet in the meantime, however. The House this week passed two notable bills, one a disaster relief bill which -- much to the anger of Trump -- contained more money for storm-ravaged Puerto Rico. Despite a last-ditch effort by Trump, 34 Republicans voted with the Democrats, for a final vote of 257 to 150. The other bill the House passed will protect people with pre-existing conditions from states that are being allowed "waivers" on this important Obamacare protection. This is an important step, because many House Democrats specifically ran on this issue. Trump says he also wants to protect people with pre-existing conditions, but it's doubtful even he can convince Mitch McConnell to move on the bill.

The overall picture this week was pretty clear: Democrats are getting things done and pushing forward in their investigations, while Trump is lying and flailing around on the world stage. Just another week in Trump's Washington, in other words.





Before we get to the main award, we've got a few Honorable Mention awards to hand out first. A bill was introduced in both houses of Congress this week to institute a ceiling of 15 percent on what banks are allowed to charge in credit card interest. This is a pretty bold idea (which we wrote about earlier in the week), and one we'd bet would be wildly popular with the general public. In the House, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sponsored the bill while Bernie Sanders introduced it in the Senate. Both deserve at least an Honorable Mention for championing this issue.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a bill he's sponsored before, which would completely "deschedule" marijuana, removing it from the list of dangerous controlled substances altogether, which would allow each individual state to set their own marijuana laws without running afoul of federal law. Also deserving of an Honorable Mention is House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, who sponsored the same bill in the House. That's some pretty impressive leadership on both sides of the Capitol.

But we're giving the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week to Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker, for his own commendable work on marijuana reform:



That is all very impressive indeed, especially the fact that the new law will come from the legislature (rather than, as with most such state efforts, through a voter referendum) and how focused it is on social equity. But to us, the really impressive line came later in the article:



We've been saying it for years, and we'll keep saying it until every Democrat gets on board -- not only is being pro-legalization now politically safe for prominent politicians, it is in fact a big campaign asset and should be treated as such. The people have long been way out in front of the politicians, and voters respond very positively to politicians who are brave enough to champion the issue wholeheartedly. This has been a radical sea-change over the past decade or so (Barack Obama never fully backed recreational legalization in either of his two elections, just to remind everyone), and it needs to be embraced by Democrats before Republicans wise up and steal the issue for themselves (footnote: former Senate Majority Leader John Boehner is now a marijuana industry lobbyist).

Which is why we'd like to honor Governor Pritzker with this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. Not only is he pro-legalization, he "made equity-centric marijuana legalization one of the most important aspects of his platform." And now he is following through on his promises. That's about as impressive as it gets.

{Congratulate Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.}





We are happy to announce that no prominent Democrat disappointed us this week at all. Now, as always, we might have missed someone in the maelstrom that is the political news world these days, so if you'd like to nominate someone, please feel free to do so down in the comments.




Volume 526 (5/10/19)

We're going to mostly engage in some Trump-bashing this week, just because. But then down at the end, we've got two rather amusing talking points, just because it's been that kind of week. Enjoy as always, and use responsibly.



Trump's puppetmaster

This one is always guaranteed to get under Trump's skin.

"It seems to me that John Bolton is now running America's foreign policy, while Trump impotently flails around. Bolton has been the lead on the Venezuela policy (such as it is) and on trying to get Iran to provoke a shooting war by overstating the intelligence (shades of Iraq's non-existent 'weapons of mass destruction'). And who knows how much influence he has over the collapse of the trade talks with China? It's pretty obvious that Donald Trump has no real clue what goes on in the rest of the world, which is why it is so easy for puppetmasters like Bolton to pull his strings and make him dance. Trump ran on pulling back militarily overseas, but if he's not careful, Bolton is going to get American involved in two separate new wars."



Loser!

Again, guaranteed to get under Trump's skin.

"With the release of Donald Trump's tax returns for the 1980s and 1990s, it's obvious that even in a booming economy, Trump is a complete failure at making money. When everyone else was making profits hand over fist, Trump was a big fat loser. There's just no other way to put it. He may have even won the crown for Most Money Lost By A Single Taxpayer, in fact, since his losses were so breathtakingly huge. How can anyone lose over one billion dollars in ten years? Well, it takes a special kind of failure to reach such astronomic proportions, which is why all the teasing on Twitter is entirely justified -- Trump's television show should really have been called 'The Biggest Loser,' since that is exactly and literally what he was, back in the 80s and 90s."



It's YOU who are paying this tax!

Democrats really should make this a much bigger deal than they currently are.

"Donald Trump stands up in front of adoring crowds and lies his face off. OK, well, that's nothing new, really, but this time the lie he's feeding them is just laughable. Trump tells the rubes that the tariff on Chinese goods is a great thing because it puts a bazillion dollars into the Treasury. As he tells it, he's really sticking it to the Chinese government, who has to pony up all this hard cash. But that's nothing short of a great big lie, because they don't pay a dime of it. Instead, the American public pays in higher prices on all kinds of goods. The tariff is paid by whatever company imports the Chinese goods -- like Walmart, for instance -- and then gets passed right along to the consumer in higher prices. So what all these people are cheering is the fact that they are paying the tariffs themselves, not China. I mean, you can fool some of the people some of the time, right?"



Hundreds of prosecutors agree Trump should have been indicted

This one is one of those stories that, in normal times, would have been the lead story for days. Nowadays, however, it was barely even noticed.

"This week, over six hundred federal prosecutors signed a letter which stated that what was revealed in the Mueller report should have led to indictments of Donald Trump. If he wasn't currently president, charges of obstruction of justice should clearly have been brought against him, in other words. This group was completely nonpartisan, consisting of hundreds of federal prosecutors who served and were hired by both Republican and Democratic administrations. The sheer number of signatories to this letter is just stunning. To hearken back to Nixonian language, hundreds of prosecutors have now agreed that the president is indeed a crook."



Hard to call this one partisan, too

Twist this particular knife for all it's worth.

"Yet another subpoena emerged from Congress this week demanding the testimony of one of Donald Trump's minions and partners in crime. The only surprising thing was that the subpoena for Trump's son Donnie Junior didn't come from a House committee led by a Democrat, but instead from a Senate committee chaired by Republican Richard Burr. That's right -- the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee just subpoenaed Trump's own son, to answer for his lies before the committee which the Mueller Report exposed. Reportedly, he's considering taking the Fifth Amendment, which is probably a good idea since he obviously perjured himself the last time he spoke with the committee. Republicans have been whining that all the investigations of Trump are nothing short of partisan witch hunts, but one of their own just proved that to be a lie."



Maybe you should get it ready for some inmates?

Too, too funny.

"When Nancy Pelosi was publicly interviewed by Washington Post reporter Bob Costas recently, he asked her what she would do about Steve Mnuchin clearly breaking federal law by refusing to allow the I.R.S. to furnish Trump's tax returns to a House committee. When he pointed out that some Democrats 'have even raised the prospect of arresting the Treasury Secretary,' Pelosi responded by pointing out that while possible, this might soon wind up being impractical. 'Well, let me just say that we do have a little jail down in the basement of the Capitol,' Pelosi responded, before pointing out, 'but if we were arresting all of the people in the administration' who deserved it, 'we would have an overcrowded jail situation, and I'm not for that.' The reaction to this quip was, quote, a roomful of laughter, unquote."



Holy idiocy, Batman!

Not that Trump was going to get very many votes in New England anyway....

"This week, in one day, the White House welcomed the Boston Red Sox to the White House to celebrate their championship victory. All but one of the players who is a minority refused to even attend the event, while all the white players did attend. But that wasn't even the most embarrassing thing for Trump. In the notice for the event, the Boston Red S-O-C-K-S were congratulated, and later on -- you just can't make this stuff up, folks -- the White House listed them as 'World Cup Series Champions.' How boneheaded do you have to be to make not just one but two such idiotic mistakes on the same day?"



Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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May 4, 2019

Friday Talking Points -- Male Chauvinist Pig Withdraws Bid For Fed Seat

{Program Note for DemocraticUnderground.com readers:
I've been posting this weekly wrapup column for over ten years here at DU, and always run into the same problem as we get closer to each election. The DU forum categories shift around, with strict rules about where to post. I normally post these under "General Discussion" since it's about as generic as you can get, but now there is a new "Democratic Primaries" forum as well. These weekly columns attempt to cover all of the political world, so the main focus is usually not just on the Democratic primary race. As little as 10 percent of any individual column may address the primary races, while the rest is just generic political news of the week. I've been informed by the moderators to post these in "Democratic Primaries" for now, which I am happy to do, but just wanted to warn folks ahead of time that my "Friday Talking Points" columns (begun years ago as an homage to the great DU "Top Ten Conservative Idiots" column series, I should mention) will not exclusively be about the Democratic Primaries. Just to be clear to everyone, up front, to avoid any objections that most of these posts are "off topic."}



Those are strong words to use in a subtitle, as well as so dated as to almost be anachronistic. But we feel this is the perfect phrase to sum up Stephen Moore's announcement that he's withdrawing from consideration for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Because apparently Moore has been in a coma since just before Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in a tennis match billed as the "Battle Of The Sexes."

Moore's attitudes on gender fit neatly in to this decades-ago era of rampant misogyny, nowhere more obvious than how he sees the sporting world. He has opined at length on women in sports, dismissing professional women tennis players as "inferior" to men -- who simply do not deserve to be paid anywhere near what they are (if they even should be paid at all). But the sport he gets most worked up about is basketball. Here is an extended rant from Moore from an article he wrote for the National Review back in 2002. It begins, naturally, with a healthy dose of testosterone:

Charming. Oh, and go fix me a sandwich while you're at it. But he really gets going on the subject of how even peripheral inclusion of women into the male bastion that is (or, according to Moore, should be) basketball is a sign of the impending apocalypse. Or something. Here are his first two manly suggestions for improving the situation:



Still think "male chauvinist pig" is somehow overstating the case? We don't.

(Oh, and by the way, it was Garth who uttered that line, not Wayne. Get your movie quotes right, dude!)

Think this is a man that should be determining fiscal policy for the entire American economy? Well, to be scrupulously fair, this was an article written a while back, and rampant sexism and misogyny isn't directly related to how Moore sees the economy. So let's check out something he said about the labor force in 2016, only three years ago:



No wonder his own kids are crying! Maybe they got their very own character-building start in life by working in sweatshops and linen mills? We shudder to even imagine it, but his own words force us to. This is the man that Donald Trump wanted to be seated on the Federal Reserve, folks. We were all saved from this international embarrassment by a handful of Republican senators (led by Joni Ernst), who torpedoed Moore's nomination this week by essentially saying to Trump: "He'll be confirmed when (male chauvinist) pigs fly...."

But let's shift to more positive news for a moment. Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado officially entered the Democratic presidential nomination race this week, bringing the total number of Democratic candidates up to either 20 or 22 candidates, depending on how you count (the difference is whether you count the two major non-politicians running or not). A total of seven senators are now running, which is 15 percent of the total number of Democrats currently in the Senate. But the field may still not be set quite yet, as Montana Governor Steve Bullock appears about to make some sort of announcement of his own. Two other prominent Democrats are still considering a run as well (Stacey Abrams and Bill de Blasio), so we're probably not quite done growing the field yet.

There was one poll out this week which was kind of interesting in a wonky way, because instead of reading the whole list of Democratic candidates, the pollsters just asked it as an open question: "Who do you support for the Democratic nomination?" and didn't prompt respondents with any names. When asked, a whopping 54 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents essentially chose "undecided" by not naming anyone. This figure hasn't changed much since January, when it was 56 percent. Because of the large "undecided" vote, the actual candidates got a lot lower numbers than we've seen in the other polls: Joe Biden got only 13 percent, followed by Bernie Sanders (9 percent), Pete Buttigieg (5 percent), Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren (4 percent), Beto O'Rourke (3 percent), Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker (1 percent), and all the others not even chalking up a single percent.

This could mean people are either (A) still making up their minds which candidate to support, (B) waiting for the debates to make a choice, (C) not paying any attention to the race at all yet, or (D) some combination of the above. But it certainly is something to keep in mind when considering the other polls (all of which prompt the respondent with a list of names). Support for all the candidates isn't running particularly deep this early in the game.

Speaking of individual candidacies, Kamala Harris had a good week, but we'll have more to say about that in a bit. Pete Buttigieg wins the honor of being the first recipient of a sleazy false attack from the right, as it was revealed that two GOP operatives tried to recruit young men to make false sexual assault allegations against Buttigieg. The Daily Beast uncovered this whole sordid story. While Buttigieg is the first to be targeted by lies and innuendo by right-wing whackadoodles, he certainly won't be the last.

And we've got the first Joe Biden gaffe, if it can even be called that (we'll see whether he tries to backtrack from it or not). Biden was in Iowa and made a rather tone-deaf argument about China. Here is what got Biden into hot water:



China is not an economic competitor to America? Um, well, that may have been true at one point in Joe Biden's personal history, but it certainly sounds pretty out of touch today. As many have pointed out, from both the left and the right. Biden's closest competitor in the polls is Bernie Sanders, who had this reaction: "Since the China trade deal I voted against, America has lost over three million manufacturing jobs. It's wrong to pretend that China isn't one of our major economic competitors. When we are in the White House we will win that competition by fixing our trade policies."

OK, as usual we have far too much to cover and far too little time, so we're just going to cover the rest of the week in lightning-round fashion.

Attorney General William Barr appeared before a Senate committee this week to answer questions, and then refused to appear before a House committee. This only adds to the growing perception that Barr may well go down in history as one of the most partisan and political attorneys general in modern times. He apparently sees his job as nothing short of protecting Trump against all the slings and arrows misfortune throws at him. Several Democratic senators did a fine job of grilling Barr on his lies, past and present, but the House Democrats have been denied calling him a liar to his face in the same room he uttered those lies a few weeks back. Next up may be holding Barr in contempt of Congress, so stay tuned!

In healthcare news, the Trump administration now officially has taken the position that Obamacare should be terminated by the courts in its entirety, which would throw over 20 million people off their health insurance, and take the rest of us back to the days when pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps and all the rest of it are once again allowed. As one Washington Post columnist reminded us:



So, once again, the Republicans will be running on destroying all the good things people love about Obamacare, and replacing it with absolutely nothing -- not even any smoke and mirrors. That should be a pretty easy political argument for Democrats to win (see: 2018 midterms). The House, meanwhile, held the first-ever hearing on the concept of "Medicare For All."

Trump tried to make some positive legislative news by appearing to agree with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi over a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, but of course with Trump you can never trust what he says about his support because he usually changes his mind on a whim later on. It's always Infrastructure Week somewhere, in other words.

The Senate failed to overturn Trump's veto of their resolution which attempted to end American involvement with the Saudi war on Yemen, even though a majority of senators voted against Trump.

A federal judge ruled that the second case challenging Trump's acceptance of emoluments from foreign governments can go forward, rejecting Trump's inane argument why it shouldn't.

Federal judges also ruled against the blatant gerrymandering of both Ohio and Michigan, and ordered new maps be drawn up (in Michigan) before the 2020 elections.

There was a power struggle over at the National Rifle Association, between Wayne LaPierre and Oliver North. Ollie lost. But the N.R.A.'s troubles aren't over, because now the House is going to examine all their shifty finances (and ties to Russia, for good measure).

And finally, to end on an amusing note, aging gameshow host Chuck Woolery tried to tweet in support of Trump emerging unscathed from the Mueller Report, but didn't exactly wind up solving the puzzle, when he tweeted the phrase: "NOT QUILTY." Several waggish commenters pointed out that he shouldn't be making such "blanket" statements. Heh.





We have two Honorable Mention awards to hand out before we get to the main award this week. The first is for sheer showmanship, and goes to Steve Cohen, a House member from Tennessee. Since everyone on the committee knew Attorney General Barr wouldn't be showing up for his scheduled hearing, Cohen brought some props just to make an amusing point -- that Barr was nothing short of chicken. Cohen brought a statuette of a chicken, which he placed in front of the empty chair Barr should have been sitting in, and if that weren't enough to drive his point home, he also brought in a bucket of KFC, which he proceeded to eat from. Not exactly subtle, but it certainly got his name in the news (and it was indeed pretty funny).

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi also had a pretty good week, on both style and substance. After Barr failed to show up for his House committee hearing, Pelosi minced no words in her reaction, where she flat-out called Barr a liar. Multiple times. In multiple ways. She also pointed out that this was "a crime." It certainly sounds like she's giving the green light to those who want to next hold Barr in contempt of Congress, so this fight is obviously far from over.

On substance, Pelosi's House passed another bill to further define the 2020 Democratic platform, a bill which would force the United States to stay in the Paris climate agreement that Donald Trump wants to exit from. This bill will, of course, go nowhere in the Senate, but it just adds to the list of things Democrats can be expected to do if they win back the White House next year. This bill got almost no media coverage, but it will likely be featured in Democratic ads soon enough. So Pelosi had a pretty good week all around.

But our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award goes to Senator Kamala Harris, who sits on the Senate committee that Barr did show up in front of. Harris is making a centerpiece of her presidential campaign her experience as a prosecutor, and her skills were once again on display during Barr's hearing.

Harris grilled Barr on multiple subjects, and exposed the fact that Barr hadn't bothered to dig into any of the details of Bob Mueller's investigation, and hadn't even read the full report Mueller put out. Harris also revealed the fact that Barr refused to say whether anyone in the White House had asked or suggested that he open any investigation into anyone. Barr tried to split the hair of what "suggested" meant, but in the end he essentially refused to answer the question. Now, there's really only one reason why he couldn't flat-out deny such a thing had ever happened, obviously, so this was a strong argument against Barr being anything more than a total Trump loyalist and toady. His job description does not include "being the president's personal attack dog," of course, and Harris helped expose this more than anyone else during the hearing.

Harris has largely failed so far in capitalizing on her impressive campaign launch, and hasn't really moved the polling in her favor much in the past few months. But the clips of her grilling Barr may help to give her a boost on the campaign trail. Whether they wind up doing so or not, though, Harris was clearly the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

{Congratulate Senator Kamala Harris on her Senate contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.}





Sadly, we have two Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week awards to hand out this week. The first goes to the disgraced ex-mayor of Baltimore, Catherine Pugh. You may remember hearing her name in the news about a week ago, when her houses and offices were raided by the F.B.I., which is investigating her for corruption and graft.

This week, she finally bowed to the inevitable and resigned. Here are the basic details:



If Democrats are going to take the high road on blatant grifting while in office to defeat Donald Trump, then they simply cannot condone fellow Democrats with their hands in the cookie jar. Pugh is now the second Baltimore mayor in a row to be forced from office due to scandal. And she's also now the first winner this week of the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

Our second MDDOTW winner hails from Alabama, where the state just passed an unbelievably restrictive anti-abortion law, to directly challenge Roe v. Wade. Speaking in opposition to the new law, one Democrat tried to make some sort of point about unwanted children, but missed by a mile with the language that he used. Here is the whole story:



Missteps like this only give the anti-abortion extremists a gift, because this has already become a rallying cry in conservative circles. Again, Rogers was apparently trying to make a point about unwanted children, but he failed badly in making any kind of political case by the language he chose to use. For doing so, and for handing the opposition a ready-made political bludgeon, John Rogers is our second winner of the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week.

{Catherine Pugh is now a private citizen and it is against our policy to give out contact information for such persons. We couldn't find an official contact page for Alabama Representative John Rogers, but you can contact him on his Facebook page, to let him know what you think of his actions.}




Volume 525 (5/3/19)

We have two main themes for the talking points this week: lies, and the economy. And then at the end, just for fun, we've got Katie Couric. Enjoy, and as always, use responsibly!



Liar, liar!

The more Democrats actually use the words "lie," "liar," "lied" (etc.), the more the media will begin to feel comfortable doing so. Hey, it's worth a shot, right?

"As Nancy Pelosi so bluntly put it, the attorney general of the United States has now been proven to have lied to Congress. This is likely why he didn't want to face the same committee he had earlier lied to this week, in fact. And as Pelosi also helpfully pointed out, lying under oath while testifying before Congress is a crime. Lying to Congress under oath is illegal. Barr lied to Congress under oath. At the very least, House Democrats should immediately move to hold Barr in contempt of Congress. Our top law enforcement officer in the country is now a proven liar, which is a pretty sad state of affairs."



Pants on fire!

And then there's the king of lies....

"In Trump's first 100 days in office, Trump, on average, told fewer than five lies per day. In the past seven months, his rate of lying has increased to a whopping 23 lies per day. This covers the period building up to the midterms, and it's only going to get worse as 2020 approaches. On April 25, Trump was interviewed by Sean Hannity for 45 minutes, and told 45 lies. He appeared before reporters for eight minutes the very next day, and told eight lies. Trump spoke before an N.R.A. meeting and lied 24 times during his speech. In a campaign rally on April 27, Trump managed a whopping 61 lies. When you add all of these up, as the Washington Post has been doing all along, Trump has now told over 10,000 lies in less than two and a half years. It took him 601 days to reach 5,000, but only 226 days to surpass 10,000. He must have all his pants made out of asbestos, or something."



Want to reduce suicides?

This is big news, and should instantly become a Democratic talking point.

"A recent scientific study showed that there is a rather easy way to combat the growing problem of suicide in America. Want to see less people killing themselves? Then raise the minimum wage. That's all it takes. The difference in suicide rates between states with higher minimum wages and those who haven't raised them is rather dramatic, in fact. Giving people more money for their hard work has all sorts of positive side effects, and it's now been proven that one of these is to reduce the number of suicides. Democrats want to see a nationwide minimum wage of $15 an hour, and we also want to see the minimum wage linked to economic indexes so that it gradually rises over time. Republicans apparently want to see people work for peanuts and don't care that this causes higher suicide rates, among other things."



Farmers hurting

Another economic argument that Democrats need to be making.

"The Commerce Department just came out with a statement with plenty of bad news in it for farmers. Farmers are getting hit the hardest in Trump's childish trade war with the world, and their income has shown a steep decline over the past few years. Farmers are hurting as a direct result of Trump's bumbling trade policies. Pork prices are down, soybean prices are down, and farmers are now planting crops in the second straight year of uncertainty about foreign markets in general. This has driven farm incomes dramatically down. Many farmers may not survive a second year of Trump's trade war, and a third year would take even more of them down. Trump tried to paper over this economic pain by giving farmers a bailout of $12 billion in taxpayer money, but even this free money hasn't stanched the bleeding. Since Trump has yet to see a single trade agreement become reality, no one knows when this bleeding is going to stop. Why do Trump and the Republican Party hate farmers so much?"



Gold Star families hit with huge tax hikes

This one is even more cruel than the last one.

"Trump has been bragging about the supposed wonderfulness of his signature tax cuts ever since Paul Ryan jammed them through Congress. But they certainly haven't been wonderful for Gold Star families, many of whom are getting hit with enormous tax hikes on their survivor benefits. They're having to pay thousands more in taxes just because the Trump tax cut changed one rule. It's almost like they were specifically targeted or something. Now, that would be a disgusting and disgraceful thing to do, but given Trump's own animosity towards Gold Star families, you have to wonder whether this isn't so much a bug of the Trump tax cuts as a feature."



No wonder people still think the system is rigged!

Obviously, the public is starting to see through all the lies and chicanery.

"All of this economic hardship the Trump administration has been causing is likely one big reason why the American public is still looking for authentic populism and turning away from Trump's fake populism. One recent poll showed that sixty percent of the public thinks the system is still rigged for the rich and powerful rather than being fair for all, across the board. Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy, Republican resistance to a minimum wage hike, Trump's war on farmers, and pretty much everything else the GOP does has all led us to the point where six-in-ten Americans think the system is rigged against them in favor of those who already have wealth and power. No wonder Bernie Sanders is doing so well in the Democratic polls. People are still looking for an authentic populist champion, rather than Trump's fakery."



Tell us how you really feel, Katie....

This one requires an introduction. Samantha Bee filmed her second "Not The White House Correspondents' Dinner" show, which ran opposite the real W.H.C.D. last weekend. It had many amusing bits, but the funniest was probably the initial video, shot as a spoof of the Alien films. Sigourney Weaver was featured prominently, but Katie Couric (as a spoof version of Newt) got the best line of all, which we had to end today's column with for sheer amusement value:






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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