Red Rover, Send James Comey On Over

Here are some of the takes on The Tall One's testimony today.

From NBC

At the outset of a pivotal week in Washington, FBI director James Comey delivered a political gut-punch to President Donald Trump Monday - and the news possibly could get worse for the president in the days and weeks ahead. 

In sworn testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Comey said there was no evidence to Trump's claims that Barack Obama wiretapped him and Trump Tower, as the current president alleged in a series of tweets earlier this month. And he conformed that his agency was investigating the 2016 Trump campaign's links with Russia's effort to intervene in the presidential election bid.  

From CNN

FBI Director James Comey said for the first time Monday that the bureau is investigating whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow while Russia was interfering in the presidential election.

Comey also delivered an implicit rebuke to President Donald Trump, saying that he had "no information" to support claims by the President that he was wiretapped on the orders of predecessor Barack Obama.

From the Associated Press

President Donald Trump produced a running commentary Monday on FBI Director James Comey's testimony to Congress. Thanks to the length of the hearing an the immediacy of Twitter, Comey was able to comment on the president's commentary without leaving his seat. It was a nearly real-time exchange that circled back on itself, like a cat chasing its tail

Trump tweet: The NSA and FBI tell Congress that Russia did not influence electoral process.

The Facts: No such assurance was offered by Comey or his fellow witness at the hearing, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers. They did not offer any conclusions about whether Russia succeeded in influencing the election.

Comey asked about the tweet while he was stilt testifying: I'm sorry, I haven't been following anybody on Twitter while I've been sitting here.

From Newsday

FBI Director James Comey on Monday confirmed publicly for the first time that his bureau is probing Russian meddling into last year's election -- searching also for any links or possible coordination between the Kremlin and the campaign of President Donald Trump. 

The reveal came at the start of a five-hour congressional hearing at which Comey also disputed Trump's claim via Twitter that his predecessor had wiretapped Trump Tower.

I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the FBI, Comey said.

From ABC

During the five-hour hearing, Comey also confirmed an investigation of possible links between Trump associates and Russia, a story line that the president has decried alternately as a "ruse" and "fake news." Comey also indicated that Vladimir Putin hated Hillary Clinton "so much" that he had a "clear preference" for her opponent.

With respect to the president's tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets, Comey told the House Intelligence Committee today at his much-anticipated hearing -- the US law enforcement community's first public response to wiretapping allegations that the White House has promoted for more than two weeks.

And we have looked carefully inside the FBI. The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that they answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components. The department has no information to support those tweets.

And finally, from the president himself

Grains of Salt (v21): Challenges for Syracuse's Next Mayor

Grains of Salt

Republican Laura Lavine, the unanimous choice of her party's committee members.

Democrats Alfonso Davis, Marty Masterpole, Andrew Maxwell, Joe Nicoletti, Juanita Perez Williams, all of whom might stick around for a primary. (Maxwell was first to my door with information, which was the impetus for this post.)

Party-less Ben Walsh, the first in the ring, but without a party choice.

It's likely that one of these folks will be the next mayor of Syracuse, since Stephanie Miner is term-limited and done at the end of the year,

Syracuse faces a number of challenges, some of which have been our challenges for a long time:

• Roughly half of the property in the city is owned by educational institutions and non-profits; these entities are not obligated to pay property taxes, but fully use city services. Over time, the city has negotiated service agreements with some, but not all, of these property owners.

• The city has somewhere in the neighborhood of 1800 vacant properties of all types - single family homes, multiple family homes, apartment buildings, commercial properties -- it runs the gamut. Some of them are 'tax current', but many are not. The Greater Syracuse Land Bank, through purchasing and reselling homes, helps generate almost $750K in property taxes annually. (I've written about the Land Bank previously, including our very positive experience with their efforts on the house next door.) Not all buildings can be saved; way up the street from me, three or four houses in a row were recently taken down, as was one a block or so up the road. I prefer the empty lots to what was there before, even as it pains me to say that; I'd much rather have a lived-in city, rather than one full of large stretches of driveway ends, going from the road to the sidewalk, showing us what once was. 

• That's another one of Syracuse's challenges: people leaving the city, stretching our population further and further, eating up more and more green space, leaving the city a shadow of her former self, and doing the same to the rolling hills and farmland that surround us. I get that people have the choice to live where they want, to build where they want, to sell their land when and toom who they want, even if it's to someone who's going to put up a development of half-million-dollar houses. I do get that. I just have long wished that people would make the investment in the city, live in the city, would stake their claim in the city, and help it thrive.

• And without people, without families, it's that much harder for our Syracuse City School District (SCSD) to thrive. We have made progress, it seems: we now have a Superintendent, Jaime Alicea, who knows the city, knows the students, knows the lay of the land, and who seems to have support from all constituencies.  Graduation rates for the SCSD  as a whole are the highest in a decade, although still lower than anyone would like. With a higher percentage of  English as a New Language (ENL) learners and special needs students than most of its area counterparts, the city has different challenges than suburban schools, even as its students are required to meet the same standards for gradation.  Another big challenge the schools face is poverty.

• We've all seen statistics and more statistics: Syracuse ranks 29th out of the 30 highest poverty major cities, and we had the highest concentration of black and Hispanic poverty in the nation. The poverty is undeniable, and it's probably higher than that. Similar to the 'real feel temperature' the 'real unemployment rate' we hear - numbers designed to make us feel worse than we do, there's 'official poverty' and 'real-feel poverty' the kind that kids and families feel every day, even if they don't meet an official threshold. And the fact that we actually maintain statistics for people going up to 400% of the Federal Poverty Level, well that says something in and of itself, doesn't it?  

• Poverty impacts everything - absolutely everything. For the individuals living in poverty, it can negatively impact their physical and mental health, educational outcomes, employment opportunities, future income, and, for many, the ability to break the poverty cycle for future generations. For the rest of us, it impacts our property values, the services our city can offer, and it impacts our 'social psyche', our pride of place, our sense of our home.  It impacts everything. 

Our next mayor, regardless of party, will have his or her hands full with these and other issues, including our aging infrastructure (a victim of all of the above) and the potential for/threat of consolidation via the Consensus plan or our Sonofa Governor's 'convoluted' plan to allow county executives to run roughshod over their constituents by unilaterally bringing consolidation plans to the ballot. 

Syracuse deserves a leader who is up to all of these challenges. It will be interesting to see who our choices are, and how they plan on rising to the occasion.

 

Babies! We Need More Babies!

Representative Steve King of Iowa posted his support for the Dutch Donald Trump, Geert Wilders (Make the Netherlands Great Again is his slogan). Wilders was in the race to become the prime minister

King tweeted

Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with someone else's babies. 

Someone else's babies?  Egads! Whatever could he have meant?

In a follow up interview with CNN, he clarified things for us. He's been to Europe, he said, and he's been telling anyone who will listen this same message. Take Germany - or any country with a shrinking population.

You cannot rebuild your civilization with somebody else's babies. You've got to keep your birth rate up and that you need to teach your children your values and in doing so, then you can grow your population and you can strengthen your culture, you can strengthen your way of life.

Chris Cuomo was, understandably, incredulous while he wondered who are somebody else's babies. King answered

Chris, we're a country here you know if you take a picture of what America looks like, you can do it at a football stadium or at a basketball court, and you'll see all kinds of different Americans there. We're pretty proud of that, of the different looking Americans that are still Americans. And there's an American culture, an American civilization, it's raised within these children in these American homes and that's one of the reasons that we require that the president of the United States be raised with an American experience.

Cuomo then challenged King, that it seemed he was saying that "you're either white or you're not right" with his comment about someone else's babies and that thinking was anathema to what we believe in America.

King responded

If you go down the road a few generations, or maybe centuries, with the inter-marriage, I'd like to see an America that is just so homogeneous that we look a lot the same, from that perspective. I think there has been far too much focus on race, especially in the last eight years and I want to see that put behind us. I gave a speech on this on Saturday and half the liberals got up and left the room.

Again, Cuomo challenged him, that his statements seem "inherently divisive" language, and again pointed it out it seemed King was saying that white babies were better. King fought back, noting that his language was 'precise' and he never said white was better.

His point, if you would just stop projecting, is that he believes in Western Civilization, and that good things follow the English language, and that non-English speaking people or people who don't resemble Americans don't contribute equally to Western Civilization. Or something like that.

Cuomo fought valiantly, but it's really not worth fighting with someone like Representative King. As he noted, he's been selling this message for a while now (this article says as far back as 2003 when he first got elected), with consistency.

For example, speaking about Dreamers and other Mexican babies:

For every one who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.  

 Or, for example (from the same article):

This whole white people business, though, does get a little tired. I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about. Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?

Or, for example:

As much as I love and appreciate people from any place on the planet, this country has been made up of, is a center-right country, is Christian based, that is our morality, we believe in freedom of religion but if you brought in, say, all the Muslims in the world into the United States, you know it changes the culture. 

So if it turns into a few hundred thousand every year, how long is it before the culture of American is changed? And we're willingly, we're knowingly and willingly changing the culture of America by government policies driven out of the White House and we aren't even having a national debate about how that changes our country and is it good or is it bad. I have not seen either the level of assimilation of Muslims into the broader American society, or any place in the world, for that matter. So I'd like to see that model, point to that, tell me how you want America to look, because America's being transformed because of immigration policy and I'm like Ann Coulter, I like the America we had.

Or, for example, speaking about members of the Congressional Black Caucus expressing a concern about a history of racial profiling in Ferguson, Mo:

This idea of no racial profiling. I've seen the video (of protesters after the Michael Brown shooting). It looks to me like you don't need to bother with that particular factor because they all appear to be of a single origin, I should say, a continental origin might be the way to phrase that.  I just reject race-based politics, identity politics. I think we're all God's children. We should all be held to the same standards and the same level of behavior.

Or, for example, speaking about Blacks and Hispanics becoming the majority, putting whites in the minority:

When you start accentuating the differences, then you start ending up with people that are at each other's throats. And he's adding up Hispanics and blacks into what he predicts will be in greater number than whites in America. I predict that Hispanics and the blacks will be fighting each other before that happens.

No; you can neither reason with nor fight with someone like King; it's un-winnable. You'd be better off going out and making more babies, and raising them with your values, so that eventually he and others of his ilk might be outnumbered.

And the Winner is...The Deficit

Some politicians have said that the nonpartisan congressional Budget Office and their numbers a bunch of hooey, that the numbers can't be trusted, that these folks are always wrong. First, there’s Sean Spicer.

If you're looking at the CBO for accuracy, you're looking at the wrong place. Look at what the CBO's record is on Obamacare. It's vastly off. They're way off in terms of the millions.  

And then there’s  HHS Secretary Tom Price:

We believe that the plan that we're putting in place will ensure more individuals than are currently ensured SO we think that the CBO simply has it wrong. It's just not believable, is what we would suggest.  

Unless of course they like the numbers, as Speaker Paul Ryan seems to, in which case the CBO folks are rocket scientists who know this stuff (whatever this stuff is) like the back of their hand.

This report confirms that the American Health Care Act will lower premiums and improve access to quality, affordable care. CBO also finds that this legislation will provide massive tax relief, dramatically reduce the deficit, and make the most fundamental entitlement reform in more than a generation...

So, rather than listening to them, let's just read what  the report says: (emphasis added)

CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the legislation would reduce federal deficits by $337 billion over the 2017-2026 period. That total consists of $323 billion in on-budget savings and $13 billion in off-budget savings. Outlays would be reduced by $1.2 trillion over the period, and revenues would be reduced by $0.9 trillion.

The largest savings would come from reductions in outlays for Medicaid and from the elimination of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) subsidies for nongroup health insurance. The largest costs would come from repealing many of the changes the ACA made to the Internal Revenue Code—including an increase in the Hospital Insurance payroll tax rate for high-income taxpayers, a surtax on those taxpayers’ net investment income, and annual fees imposed on health insurers—and from the establishment of a new tax credit for health insurance.

CBO and JCT estimate that, in 2018, 14 million more people would be uninsured under the legislation than under current law. Most of that increase would stem from repealing the penalties associated with the individual mandate. Some of those people would choose not to have insurance because they chose to be covered by insurance under current law only to avoid paying the penalties, and some people would forgo insurance in response to higher premiums.

Later, following additional changes to subsidies for insurance purchased in the nongroup market and to the Medicaid program, the increase in the number of uninsured people relative to the number under current law would rise to 21 million in 2020 and then to 24 million in 2026. The reductions in insurance coverage between 2018 and 2026 would stem in large part from changes in Medicaid enrollment—because some states would discontinue their expansion of eligibility, some states that would have expanded eligibility in the future would choose not to do so, and per-enrollee spending in the program would be capped.

In 2026, an estimated 52 million people would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.

The report further notes the following “uncertainty surrounding the estimates” saying that CBO and JCT considered the potential responses of many parties that would be affected by the legislation, including these:

• Federal agencies—which would need to implement major changes in the regulation of the health care system and administration of new subsidy structures and eligibility verification systems in a short time frame;
• States—which would need to decide how to use Patient and State Stability Fund grants, whether to pass new laws affecting the nongroup market, how to respond to the reduction in the federal matching rate for certain Medicaid enrollees, how to respond to constraints from the cap on Medicaid payments, and how to provide information to the federal government about insurers and enrollees;
• Insurers—who would need to decide about the extent of their participation in the insurance market and what types of plans to sell in the face of different market rules and federal subsidies; 
• Employers—who would need to decide whether to offer insurance given the different federal subsidies and insurance products available to their employees;
• Individuals—who would make decisions about health insurance in the context of different premiums, subsidies, and penalties than those under current law; and
• Doctors and hospitals—who would need to negotiate contracts with insurers in a new regulatory environment. 

Each of those responses is difficult to predict. Moreover, the responses would depend upon how the provisions in the legislation were implemented, such as whether advance payments of the new tax credits were made reliably. And flaws in the determination of eligibility, for instance, could keep subsidies from people who were eligible or provide them to people who were not.

So, in the end, all things being equal, the deficit goes down by $337B over ten years, so the plan is a winner. In the process, the big government mandate is lifted; taxes go down; spending goes down; and if in the process a few million more people lose their health insurance, that's a small price to pay for a Republican lawmaker.

We'll see what happens once people have a chance to read the report and see how they think they can sell it to their constituents, particularly in the Senate where there has been, at least so far, less love for the plan. 

Wondering on Wednesday (v81)

Well, what's going on out there tonight that give us pause?

We've got your RNR -- Replace, Not Repeal -- meandering through a couple of House Committees.  I tried to read the bill last night, like Speaker Paul Ryan told me to, but when it looks like what you see below, it's a little hard to figure out what they're really talking about:

The Social Security Act is amended— (1) in section 1902 (42 U.S.C. 1396a)—

(A) in subsection (a)(47)(B), by inserting ‘‘and provided that any such election shall cease to be effective on January 1, 2020, and no such election shall be made after that date’’ before the semicolon at the end; and

(B) in subsection (l)(2)(C), by inserting ‘‘and ending December 31, 2019,’’ after ‘‘January 1, 2014,’’; (2) in section 1915(k)(2) (42 U.S.C. 1396n(k)(2)), by striking ‘‘during the period described in paragraph (1)’’ and inserting ‘‘on or after the date referred to in paragraph (1) and before January 1, 2020’’; and  (3) in section 1920(e) (42 U.S.C. 1396r–1(e)),  by striking ‘‘under clause (i)(VIII), clause (i)(IX), or clause (ii)(XX) of subsection (a)(10)(A)’’ and inserting ‘‘under clause (i)(VIII) or clause (ii)(XX) of section 1902(a)(10)(A) before January 1, 2020, section  902(a)(10)(A)(i)(IX),’’. 

If I were cynical (hey - I heard that!) I'd think that they are relying on folks like me to look at that gobbledygook and instead just read the propaganda.  I did look at that, and I'm still a little confused.

I'm wondering which part of it says that I can go back to the doctor I had before that failed disastrous sad horrible Obamacare took my doctor away from me in the first place?

Oh wait that's right. There wasn't anything in the Affordable Care Act that said companies had to change products, drop insurance, change carriers, or change networks. I don't know what I was thinking.

I'm also wondering about Ryan's ability to truly champion the America Health Care Act the way our old friend Nancy Pelosi did, back in 2010. While this passage is not as famous as her widely out-of-context remark about "having to pass the bill before we can read it", this one's pretty special.

We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn't work, we will parachute in, But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people for their own personal health and economic security and for the important role that it will pay in reducing the deficit. 

Seriously, I didn't make that up - you can read my post from six years ago here.  And against that backdrop Ryan offers #readthebill? Sheesh, he needs to be more motivational than that!

I also wonder if anyone else has taken a look at Pelosi's comments. I mean, gates and fences and pole vaulting and parachuting could be just the keys to working around that wall we've heard so much about.

Or, maybe that won't be too much of an issue.  It seems the Trump Administration is looking for ways to pay for the wall, and they're not making a lot of friends with some of their ideas, including gutting the budgets of the TSA (and FEMA too) by 10%, and the Coast Guard by 14%, in fiscal year 2018 which begins in October.

I don't know about you, but I'm wondering how slashing the budget for two agencies that actually work to protect us here in the homeland makes sense when the goal is to protest us here in the homeland.

Thoughts?

The Update Desk: Did He Really Just Say That?

In Monday's post, I expressed incredulity that HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson would refer to Africans who were brought to America against their will and sold into slavery as immigrants.

Surely, they were people who came to "a country to take up permanent residence" if you can actually call being bought and sold repeatedly a life of permanent residence, but perhaps that's splitting hairs.

Today, we have reports that former President Obama reportedly used similar language, with varying degrees of specificity, on multiple occasions. For example, speaking to recently naturalized citizens in December 2015, Obama noted:

It wasn't always easy for new immigrants. Certainly it wasn't easy for those of African heritage who had not come here voluntarily and yet in their own way were immigrants themselves. There was discrimination and hardship and poverty. But, like you they no doubt found inspiration in all those who had come before them. And they were able to muster faith that, here in America, they might build a better life and give their children something more.

Here's what immediately preceded the remarks above:

Down through the decades, Irish Catholics feeling hunger, Italians fleeing poverty filled up our cities, rolled up their sleeves, built America. Chinese laborers jammed in steerage under the decks of steamships, making their way to California to build the Central Pacific Railroad that would transform the West and our Nation. Wave after wave of men, women, and children - from the Middle East and the Mediterranean, from Asia and Africa - poured into Ellis Island or Angel Island, their trunks bursting with their most cherished possessions - maybe a photograph of the family they left behind; a family Bible or a Torah or a Koran; a bag in one hand, maybe a child in the other - standing for hours in long lines. New York and cities across America were transformed into a sort of global fashion show. You had Dutch lace caps and the North African fezzes, stodgy tweed suits, colorful Caribbean dresses. And perhaps, like some of you, these new arrivals might have had some moments of doubt, wondering if they had made a mistake in leaving everything and everyone they knew behind. So life in America was not always easy.

This context may make soften the blow a little; reading this one could make the connection between the people in leading passage being the ones Obama was referring to in the section referencing slaves as 'in their own way, immigrants themselves."

Either way - with or without the context, I find it disturbing to use immigrant and slave glowingly in the same sentence. Had I been aware of the Obama comments, I would have had the same reaction as I did to Carson's remarks: What the hell are we doing?

The other times when Obama is said to have used similar language, he referenced a 'connectedness' and a sense  of  'we're in this together" because, as a nation of immigrants (other than the First Americans), we share the same dreams about America: people come here because they wanted a better life then they had wherever they came from.

I don't think that's the case with the slaves, do you?

Did He Really Just Say That?

I had to double check, even triple check this one to make sure it wasn't fake news. I watched the video a couple of times, just to be sure. And I haven't found a report telling me that this is anything other than what it appears to be.

Below, the words of Dr Ben Carson, former pediatric neurosurgeon and current Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, from a message to HUD employees:

That's what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slaves ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons granddaughters, great granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.

When a Cabinet secretary in the United States government says that slaves were 'immigrants' who had a dream, where exactly do we go from here?

No, seriously --  where the hell do we go from here?

Wasn't it bad enough when Texas called slaves 'workers'? Or tried to deny that slavery had anything to do with the Civil War? Or when Virginia tried to sell elementary school children on the thought that thousands of Southern blacks fought for the South in the Civil War?  Or when we try and re-write history at the homes of slave-owning former Presidents, which I saw with my own eyes?

Remember when Carson said that having him as a federal bureaucrat would be like a fish out of water?

Is it too late to throw him back?

Sunday School 3/5/17

I know, I know.

We've had a few weeks of no school; blame it on the fact that I've put my pajamas on inside out and put the toilet paper in the freezer, or whatever it is that kids to when they want school to be cancelled.

Today, anticipating we'd have a lot of consistency in what was discussed in our various classrooms, I tried something different with today's lectures: I used a keyword search.

Here are the words I figured would be making an appearance: FISA, foreign,impeach, impeachment, intelligence, investigate, investigation, lie, lied, lies, Obama, resign, resignation, Russia, Russian, Russians, Sessions, Trump, and wiretap.

I realize it's an imperfect analysis, with no context for how the terms were used. It's also imprecise; Attorney General Sessions was a guest on NBC's Meet the Press, and every time he spoke, his name appeared in the transcript, so there's a bit of skewing there. Also,if a show talked about Obamacare, in addition to Obama being mentioned in relation to the Trump tweet-storm, that will also skew the numbers.

Keyword	ABC	CBS	CNN	FOX	NBC
FISA	10	6	6	4	17
Foreign	7	4	2	6	8
Impeach/Impeachment	1	0	0	0	1
Intelligence	28	21	18	41	36
Investigate/Investigation	34	24	16	27	30
Lie/Lied/Lies	7	0	9	3	1
Obama	40	15	33	51	20
Resign/Resignation	5	2	2	2	6
Russia/Russian/Russians	50	38	31	56	89
Sessions	18	3	15	21	18
Trump	101	40	50	97	69
Wiretap/Wiretapped	29	6	11	14	8

Is there anything grossly unfair just looking at the numbers? Not really. Was there anything earth-shattering in any of the shows?  Nope, not that I saw. 

We'll see what the week brings us. Supposedly we'll get a new travel ban tomorrow, although with all of the churn, that might be delayed a little, until it can get the attention it deserves. 

The Pro of Con

Certainty used to be the c-word of the Republicans. You know, we need certainty about health care and taxes and the environment and all that. The kind of certainty that couldn't be found in the laws and regulations related to those topics; it could only be found in the repeal of those laws and regulations, we were told.

For a while, since last year's Republican National Convention, we were all about carnage. You remember that, right?

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leave our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. 

This American carnage stops right here and right now. 

 So, on Inauguration Day, it was all about carnage, and public education depriving our children of every last bit of knowledge they had when they walked into the system. Dark stuff, just lie what I wrote about last year, right after his convention.

Less than a full month later, we're all about confidence.

When we fulfill this vision, when we celebrate out 250 years of glorious freedom, we will look back on tonight as when this new chapter of American Greatness began. The time for small thinking is over  The time for trivial fights is behind us. We just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts, the bravery to express the hopes that stir our souls, and the confidence to turn those hopes and those dreams into action.

Ah, confidence. Our friends at Merriam-Webster define it this way:

What does that mean for us?

Businesses now have brash confidence that the anti-regulation billionaires in the president's Cabinet will strip the Federal Register of all those foolish regulations that simply job killers, that offer no redeeming features. For example, clean air, clean water --  those are thing we will promote, but not anything we actually have to secure.

And they can have perfect confidence in their success; after all, this president and this Congress are going to reduce the tax rates so much that they'll probably be close to what the businesses are actually paying today, since I think the only business paying the highest tax rate on the books is one without an accountant. Several pay no income taxes, similar to their fearless leader who admitted as much during the campaign.

And they can have faith in their leader, a man who has already started his massive remodeling of our government, via executive orders, rallies, and tweets.

We can see their confidence, as the stock market soars to ever greater heights, almost daily. One can only hope, I guess, that it does as well over the course of Trump's administration as it did during the Obama years, when everyone was suffering from all of that uncertainty. We'll know whether it has, when we see the Dow reach 50,000.

That's right, from around 20,000 to about 50,000 would be the same 2.5 factor we saw under Obama.

And we'll know if they start investing some of their almost two trillion dollars in cash held in the US, regardless, of whether or not we determine how to repatriate an even larger amount of cash held overseas by American companies.

Here's another great use of confidence by our feckless leaders, those in the Republican majority in Washington, and the president, and the Republicans in control of two thirds or more of our statehouses. Republicans have been chipping away at voting rights laws, for years, with court approval in some cases, telling us we need to do this so we can have confidence that our processes are safe and legitimate. They plant the seed that it's not safe. and they water the seeds by changing the rules, and then people say we need to have the rules changes, and the Rs claim validation for instilling confidence in the process.

It's incredibly brilliant circular logic, and people fall for it, repeatedly, feeling ever more confident each time they see another bill pass that their vote is safe, that it can't be stolen by dead people, or by Massachusetts people, or illegals, or people voting illegally.

A similar example is the battle to restrict abortion, based on needing to provide safety to women, even through the rules they put in place solve problems that simply don't exist. Why, for instance, does the hallway in a clinic need to meet the same standards as that of an ambulatory surgery center, having to be wide enough to fit two hospital beds side by side, when clinics don't use and don't need to use hospital beds? What does this have to do with a woman's safety? You guessed it - absolutely nothing.

These examples and others like them also illustrate another c-word; the definition is again from Merriam-Webster

See, the thing about voter fraud -- the kind the president has talked about, the kind where crazy liberals are bused in from Massachusetts, that bastion of blue, to mess up things in New Hampshire, or the millions of illegals who voted (or maybe it was just people voting illegally, which is different) -- the thing about this kind of voter fraud is that it doesn't happen. Well, there was that woman from Iowa who voted twice for Trump, but anyway, with a rate of between 0.0003 and 0.0025, it's less than negligible. So the efforts that the Rs are going through are contrary to the reality, which doesn't need correcting.

And people being registered to vote in more than one jurisdiction? Sure, that's an issue; after all, there were a number of folks affiliated with the Trump administration among them Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, Sean Spicer, and Steve Mnuchin, as well as fourth child Tiffany Trump -  who fell victim to multiple registrations themselves. Now, of course they would never be chastised for that, nor would they attempt to cast more than one ballot for president, right?

We are to believe that these white Republicans would never consider doing the wrong thing, contrary to how we must perceive the other people on the list who make up the 3 million who voted illegally and cost Trump the popular vote.

In my least optimistic moments, I can be swayed to believe that politics is all a con, and that many of the people who get involved are in it for themselves, or that they've completely lost touch with why they got involved in the first place: to serve, not to be served. To lead, not to be led. To collaborate and find common ground, rather than to completely disavow the other side's positions.

There are days I can be persuaded into thinking that many of our elected officials is nothing more than a con man, one who promises much and but then delivers what they're told to, whether by a lobbyist or a more senior statesman or by a billionaire with lots of money to spread around, or by a corporation who helps write legislation.

These are traits that are not exclusive to the Rs vs. the Ds, even though it might seem that way to some people. In fact, I think it looks like that because of the success that the Rs, and their confidence game, and their contrary circular logic, have had across the country.

And I think it's particularly visible, now that we have elected Donald Trump, the Pro of Con, as president.

Focus, People. Focus.

You can say that Donald Trump's administration has a Russia problem, if you want, but they have a bigger problem than that.

First, Russia:

• Seventeen US intelligence agencies have said they are confident in their assessment that the Russians interfered in the presidential election, via hacking or through dissemination of fake news. 
• We know that people believe fake news - and that people who didn't or don't support Trump are not immune to fake news. I know this from my own social media pages. Even articles that flat out say they are satire, or communicate they're satire by allowing you to read the facts behind their fake stories, are widely shared with OMG comments, as well as with long tirades on the subject of the satire.
• We know that a number of Trump's current and former close associates had current or former relationships with Russia, or Russians, or interests in Russia, or business in Russia or with Russians in other places. 
• And we know that many of those close associates had encounters of one sort or another with Russians, particularly the Russian ambassador, during the campaign or since the election, including Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and Carter Page and J.D. Gordon. The whole list of them, or I should say, the whole list of them that has been discovered so far, is in this Washington Post article. 
• We know that US sanctions against Russia were discussed in at least one of these meetings, because the "intelligence community" as Trump refers to it, has it on tape. 
• We don't know whether Trump has or had any of those relationships, because he cannot keep his story straight. He met Putin in a green room, or he maybe he never met him, he doesn't seem to be able to keep that part straight. His son indicated that Russian money was pouring in to their company, but we don't know whether that was true a few years ago when he said it but is no longer true, or if its still true and they know it, or if it's still true and they don't know. 

Now, the bigger problem: The Trump Administration, in its infancy, is a swamp. 

veritable pastiche photo

The very kind of swamp that Trump is allegedly draining by issuing his Executive Order requiring a signed ethics statement from certain government employees.

The very kind of swamp that ignores strongly worded recommendations and opinions of the Office of Government Ethics, regardless of what issue the OGE is addressing.

The very kind of swamp that thinks Kellyanne Conway acted 'inadvertently' when she offered up her "free commercial" from the White House briefing room. In an interview on Trump & Friends, Conway told us to "Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online" after telling us she owned some of the line. This was after the kerfuffle caused when the brand itself used a 60 Minutes interview with the first family as a marketing ploy, suggesting that we could get ourselves Ivanka's favorite bracelet for a mere $10K. I was going to rush out and get one, but you know, I had to rearrange my sock drawer. 

The very kind of swamp where the now-Attorney General raised his right hand high into the air and lied to Congress during his confirmation hearing. I honestly don't care that his lie was about meetings with Russia; I honestly do care that he's either unethical, or unintelligent, each of which would be disqualifiers for the Attorney General. 

Either he lied on purpose and thought he could get away with it, or he's so blind to what's been going on in America for the past six or eight months, and oblivious to what happened in the White House just last month, when Lyin' Mike Flynn was fired, that he really thought he could say he hadn't had meetings or discussions or conversations that he clearly had, that were witnessed by other people including his own staffers? 

If he's that unaware about Russia, about current events, about the importance of not lying to Congress. one has to wonder what else is out there about which he might actually or pretend to be blissfully unaware?

The very kind of swamp where the President himself lies, daily, knowingly, purposefully, and either denies lying or blames others for the lies he tells. 

The Trump Administration is a swamp of people who think that running America is the same as running a big old family business, One where obfuscation and diversion and dismissal and deflection are the norm. One where, knowingly or ignorantly, rules are skirted, or it's pretended that there are no rules. Where the moral compass is provided by the man in the mirror, or by that same man in the corner office, or by other members of the family, or hand-picked associates, without external scrutiny. 

 

It's incredibly easy to focus on Russia --too easy, actually. It's equally easy to lose focus on the swamp, and that we simply cannot do. If it's this bad, this consistent, less than 100 official days in, how bad will it be at the end of four years? 

Focus, people. We cannot afford to lose focus.

Low Expectations, Met?

Well, what did you think of the premiere of Low Expectations?

Yep, I'm talking about The Donald's speech last night to a joint session of Congress. You know, the one where everyone was impressed that he stayed on message, didn't deviate from the teleprompter, made chest-thumping motions, brought some guests for people to acknowledge, and pointed at people in the crowd.

He did all of the things that politicians are supposed to do when they talk to the American people and to our elected representatives in Congress.

And yet, we couldn't stop talking about the low expectations, as if, because he's Trump, we shouldn't ask too much from him. When will it be time for us to ask of him what we ask of anyone else?

Much of what I've heard today from the Right is a sigh of relief that he was able to deliver the message without blowing it, that he looked presidential, which, coming from his own party is a pretty weak endorsement. Except for Chris Wallace, who thought it was the greatest speech since President Sliced Bread made a sandwich. And there were of course happy thoughts from the mainstream Republicans, but not so much from the most conservative folks, the Freedom Caucus,who are expected to be unhappy with Trump's free-spending proposals and generosity.

On the other side of the aisle, there was serious doubt that this was any kind of pivot, that Trump was doing anything other than pay lip service to ideas that all American could rally around, his calls for us to dream big together notwithstanding. More people opposed him than supported him, we remember, even if he doesn't - so there is no earthquake of a mandate. He continued to strike a protectionist, nationalist pose, and avowed he was not the leader of the free world, he was just President of the United States.

While he signaled earlier yesterday, before the speech, a potential softening on immigration, none of that came out last night. Softening doesn't seem to be in the picture with his new branch of Homeland Security, called VOICE, designed to serve a minuscule population of Americans: those who are Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement.  At that point, we were reminded of the existence of the Steves, Bannon and Miller, and their closeness to the President.

Only in their America, in Donald Trump's America, can we say that a person who is robbed by an illegal immigrant is more worthy of our attention and support than, say, someone who lost their child at at the hands of an American terrorist at a Connecticut elementary school, or whose teenager was victimized by a terrorist American priest, or whose husband was killed at a by an American racist bastard at an AME church prayer meeting in South Carolina, or by an American terrorist at a movie Colorado movie theater, or whose husband or child died at the hands of a police officer, or in a drive-by shooting, or any other way in which any number of Americans who were Victims of American Crime Engagement. Only in their America.

He continued, suggesting that, in nine years,

when we celebrate our 250 years of glorious freedom, we will look back on tonight as when this new chapter of American Greatness began.

He had also suggested, earlier in the speech, that

Each American generation passes the torch of truth, liberty, and justice -- in an unbroken chain all the way down to the present. That torch is now in our hands. And we will use it to light up the world.

Let's remind ourselves of how we will light up the world with the torch of truth, liberty and justice. We'll do that, he told us, by

• exercising our crucial demand, that America put itself first; 
• by deregulating American businesses, blessing us with untold miracles
• by building a wall, a great wall
• by cutting taxes on American businesses
• implementing merit-based immigration
• spending $1,000,000,000 on infrastructure
• #BAHA - buying American, Hiring American
• reducing the number of people covered by health insurance plans, but providing greater access to health care plans
• promoting clean air and water (but not necessarily having either)
• investing in women's health (I truly can't type that with a straight face)
• rebuilding our military ($54 billion in, $54 billion out of everything else)
• diverting taxpayer dollars to pay for private schools, religious schools, or home schools for disadvantaged youth, even black and brown ones

We will light up the world with the torch of truth,liberty, and justice. Honest, we will.