Mick Mulvaney: Republicans don’t really care about deficits

AlterNet logoActing White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, last prominently seen confessing to Donald Trump’s quid pro quo attempt with Ukraine on national television, with the now infamous “get over it,” has done it again. This time he made his confession overseas in a U.K. visit, so maybe he thought nobody would notice. It didn’t work.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of Mulvaney at the Oxford Union, sounding an awful lot like a Daily Kos blogger. “My party is very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House,” he said. “The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president. Then Donald Trump became president, and we’re a lot less interested as a party.” Until it comes time to wield the deficit as a weapon to cut the safety net, of course.

He left that part out, but made another admission about why Republicans refuse to do anything about climate change, which he implicitly acknowledged as a real thing. “We take the position in my party that asking people to change their lifestyle dramatically, including by paying more taxes, is simply not something we are interested in doing.” That answer got laughs in the student audience, The Post reports. One can only assume those laughs were derisive. Continue reading.

Fox News host shuts down strategist who points out Trump has ‘cheated on all’ of his wives

AlterNet logoJessica Tarlov is a senior strategist with Schoen Consulting, a firm that boasts campaign strategy work for people like Mike Bloomberg and HBO. She is also a frequent contributor to Fox News, coming on as a “Democratic Strategist.” On Monday, Tarlov was on America’s Newsroom, a Fox News show that is every bit as newsroom-y as you might expect from Fox. She was there to discuss Pete Buttigieg’s appearance on the Sunday news shows and specifically his responses to Rush Limbaugh’s homophobic attacks on his same-sex marriage. It’s a way for Fox News to keep playing homophobic statements made by right-wing pundits while playing at being a newsroom.

Newsroom co-host Sandra Smith asked Tarlov for her thoughts on the matter. Tarlov started within the boundaries for Fox News, pointing out that Rush Limbaugh and conservatives are a wee bit full of shit and clearly homophobic when talking about the sanctity of marriage, pointing out “You see a loving, monogamous couple like Pete Buttigieg and Chasten, his husband, up there showing what is possible. That someone who is in a same-sex relationship could be running for president and doing as well. And then they’re torn down by Rush Limbaugh, who’s been married four times I think.”

This was all well and good, but Tarlov then added “And we have Donald Trump, three times married, cheated on all of those wives, and you hear—“, this is when Sandra Smith cut in to strangely say “—Let’s not bring in personal relationships.” A stiflingly bizarre thing to say, and something Tarlov pointed out was incongruous as the attack on Buttigieg was clearly “personal” in nature. Smith pivoted to repeating Limbaugh’s homophobic quote, and then threw to another pundit, one who wasn’t going to point out that Donald Trump is a scumbag and the people that support him are scumbags.  Continue reading.

These 14 GOP Senators Supported Clinton’s Removal, But Not Trump’s

Donald Trump is expected to to be acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial on Wednesday, with most Republicans predicted to vote in his favor.

Among those standing steadfast with Trump are 14 current GOP senators who voted to impeach or remove President Clinton from office in the late 1990s. Many of those senators have since shifted their reasoning on why a president can’t  be removed from office.

Seven Republican senators serving today voted in 1999 to remove Clinton from office: Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Pat Roberts of Kansas, and Richard Shelby of Alabama. Continue reading.

Starr Mocked Over ‘Ridiculous’ Impeachment Argument

Bringing Ken Starr on to President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team seemed like a terrible idea from the start, and on Monday afternoon, the former independent counsel showed why.

As the former independent counsel who pushed for a slew of impeachment charges against former President Bill Clinton, Starr is in the odd position of having vigorously and publicly advocated for removing a chief executive under much less serious accusations that Trump now faces. So inevitably, his defense was going to draw accusations of hypocrisy.

Yet somehow, he didn’t seem to foresee this and try to mitigate the damage. Continue reading.

Why Republicans Will Sidestep Their Garland Rule for the Court in 2020

New York Times logoJustice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s health scare raised the question of how the Senate would handle a Supreme Court vacancy in a presidential election year.

WASHINGTON — When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was released from the hospital last weekend after another in a string of health scares, blue America breathed a sigh of relief. Only one more month, many whispered, until the start of a presidential election year when filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court would be off limits in the Senate.

But would it?

That was the case in 2016 when Senate Republicans stonewalledPresident Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland to fill an opening that occurred with 11 months left in Mr. Obama’s tenure. “Let the people decide,” was the Republican mantra at the time, as they argued that it was improper to consider Mr. Obama’s nominee when voters were only months away from electing a new president who should get the opportunity to make his or her own choice on a Supreme Court justice.

View the complete November 29 article by Carl Hulse on The New York Times website here.

GOP hypocrisy and impeachment hearings: Lindsey Graham and Devin Nunes once sang different tunes

AlterNet logoA video showing Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., during the Clinton impeachment proceedings resurfaced this week, illustrating how the Judiciary Committee chairman has reversed his stance on impeachment now that that an inquiry has been activated into President Donald Trump.

Graham, an ardent ally of President Trump, sponsored a resolution that has been co-signed by all but three Senate Republicans decrying the House impeachment probe. He told Fox News host Sean Hannity in October that any articles of impeachment against Trump should be “dismissed in the Senate without a trial.” He also called the impeachment inquiry proceedings a “lynching in every sense.”

The video from 1998, when Graham was one of the Republican House members pushing to impeach President Bill Clinton, shows that Graham was once staunchly against members of Congress dismissing impeachment before seeing all of the facts.

View the complete November 22 article by Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Now House Republicans Hate The Rules They Made

Congressional Republicans don’t want to debate President Donald Trump’s attempt to extort political prosecutions of Americans from Ukraine — and given the damning facts emerging every day, their reluctance is understandable, if not honorable. But whining about the process of the impeachment inquiry is only bringing them and their party into deeper disrepute.

Consider the ill-advised and possibly illegal invasion of a secure room in the Capitol on Oct. 23, when a gang of House Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), delayed the closed testimony of Pentagon official Laura Cooper. Brandishing cellphones and carrying on like the drunken frat boys they once were, Gaetz and his cronies then held a pizza party — and, after a few hours, departed. The hearing went on without them.

By busting into the Secure Compartmented Information Facility, the Gaetz gang jeopardized national security far more brazenly and purposefully than Hillary Clinton’s errant emails ever did. Those politicians know that cellphones and other electronic devices are barred from any Secure Compartmented Information Facility in Washington, and they also know why: to prevent foreign theft of U.S. secrets. At least one member apparently realized that the phones shouldn’t be there and tried to collect them, but it was too late

View the complete October 24 article by Joe Conason on the National Memo website here.

Republicans Know Deficits Don’t Matter (When They Control Spending)

“No politician (has) ever lost office for spending more money.” Donald Trump reportedly relayed this message from Mitch McConnell to his staff recently, and you can see that philosophy at work in the two-year budget deal he just struck with Congress.

In exchange for putting off the debt ceiling for two years, Trump agreed to eliminate the discretionary spending sequester—automatic spending cuts authorized in 2011 but continually nullified in the ensuing decade—which translates into $320 billion in new spending. This increase is partially offset by the extension of some customs fees and Medicare reimbursement caps that maintain the status quo.

“No politician (has) ever lost office for spending more money.” Donald Trump reportedly relayed this message from Mitch McConnell to his staff recently, and you can see that philosophy at work in the two-year budget deal he just struck with Congress.

In exchange for putting off the debt ceiling for two years, Trump agreed to eliminate the discretionary spending sequester—automatic spending cuts authorized in 2011 but continually nullified in the ensuing decade—which translates into $320 billion in new spending. This increase is partially offset by the extension of some customs fees and Medicare reimbursement caps that maintain the status quo.

View the complete July 27 article by David Dayen on the National Memo website here.