[Winstonm]

Zelandakh, on 2019-August-28, 06:42, said:

I think you miss the point Winston. Even if he does not actually hold the conference at his resort, just by announcing it he has gained the benefit of millions of dollars' worth of free advertising through his position as POTUS. I would hope that this is against the rules. Democrats should stop shrieking about what might happen in the future and start impeaching for what has already happened and continues unabated.

Good point, Zel. And another good reason to start a formal impeachment inquiry in the House. Unlike the Mueller investigation, the House does not look only for criminal behavior. Impeachment can be based on "high crimes and misdemeanors", a phrase used in common law and well-understood at the time it was adopted as the wording in the constitution to mean, in essence, abuse of power.

A president has wide latitude to exercise judgement; an impeachment inquiry can make a determination about the motivation that prompts the decision-making. That was never part of Mueller's mandate of what to investigate.

[johnu]

That f'ng Manchurian President and his soulless minions have soiled themselves once again after sinking to new levels of depravity.

Trump administration finds a new way to punish migrant children

Quote

Previously, a small program called “medical deferred action” allowed people — often children — to stay in the United States an extra two years if they were receiving treatment for severe medical needs. In many cases, these families came to the country through legal means but simply did not complete the medical treatment in the original time allotted, and are seeking more time to continue their care.

As first reported by WBUR Boston, several applicants for this kind of deferral were surprised to receive letters from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) informing them that the agency was no longer considering such requests. Moreover, they were told they only had 33 days to leave the country, after which they could be forcibly removed, which would make it much harder to return in the near future to continue treatment.

These are people, sometimes very young children, with cancer, heart conditions, life threatening medical problems who may die without medical treatment.

If any of the administration officials can be convicted of crimes, we should show them the same level of mercy they are showing to the most vulnerable people in the country.

[Winstonm]

johnu, on 2019-August-29, 02:26, said:

That f'ng Manchurian President and his soulless minions have soiled themselves once again after sinking to new levels of depravity.

Trump administration finds a new way to punish migrant children


These are people, sometimes very young children, with cancer, heart conditions, life threatening medical problems who may die without medical treatment.

If any of the administration officials can be convicted of crimes, we should show them the same level of mercy they are showing to the most vulnerable people in the country.

There should be Nuremberg-like trials for these monsters, especially Dickless Stevie Miller.

[Winstonm]

How Miller and Trump support the troops:

Quote

PHOENIX (AP) — The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled new rules that will make it harder for children of some immigrants serving in the military to obtain citizenship.

[y66]

From Jeffrey Goldberg’s conversation with former secretary of defense Jim Mattis at The Atlantic:

Quote

When Call Sign Chaos is refracted through the prism of our hallucinatory political moment, it becomes something more than a primer for middle managers. The book is many things, apart from a meditation on leadership. It is the autobiography of a war fighter, and also an extended argument for a forceful, confident, alliance-centered U.S. foreign policy. Read another way, though, it is mainly a 100,000-word subtweet.

Quote

I’ve known Mattis for many years, and we spent several hours in conversation this summer, at his home in Richland, Washington, and at the Hoover Institution, on the campus of Stanford University. In these conversations, we discussed the qualities of effective leadership, the workings of command-and-feedback loops, the fragility of what he calls the American experiment, fishing the Columbia River, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and many other topics. But about Trump he was mainly silent. I caught glimpses of anger and incredulity, to be sure. But Mattis is a disciplined man. While discipline is an admirable quality, in my conversations with Mattis I found it exasperating, because I believe that the American people should hear his answer to this question: Is Donald Trump fit for command?

[y66]

From Daniel Drexner at WaPo:

Quote

For the past week or so, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has noticed a crescendo of commentary about whether Donald Trump is actually losing it. Rick Wilson offered up one example in the New York Daily News: “Red warning lights are flashing across Washington as even the now-typical levels of uncertainty and political chaos reach epic proportions.” My Washington Post colleague Megan McArdle offered up another one: “This is not normal. And I don’t mean that as in, ‘Trump is violating the shibboleths of the Washington establishment.’ I mean that as in, ‘This is not normal for a functioning adult.’ ”

Quote

The Atlantic’s James Fallows explores the past few weeks of Trump’s behavior — and finds it more than a little disturbing:

Quote

These are episodes of what would be called outright lunacy, if they occurred in any other setting: An actually consequential rift with a small but important NATO ally, arising from the idea that the U.S. would “buy Greenland.” Trump’s self-description as “the Chosen One,” and his embrace of a supporter’s description of him as the “second coming of God” and the “King of Israel.” His logorrhea, drift, and fantastical claims in public rallies, and his flashes of belligerence at the slightest challenge in question sessions on the White House lawn. His utter lack of affect or empathy when personally meeting the most recent shooting victims, in Dayton and El Paso. His reduction of any event, whatsoever, into what people are saying about him.

Fallows concludes that in most other professions, Trump would already have been suspended from his job.

Quote

Here’s the big secret: Trump has not declined as president because that would imply there was a better time when this president possessed more of his wits. As long as he has been the commander in chief, he has displayed temper tantrums, poor impulse control, a short attention span and massive knowledge deficits. This month ain’t new; it’s just a particularly concentrated form of this behavior on public display.

That is not to say that nothing is new in the Trump White House. The New York Times’s Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman got at this with a recent story:

Quote

Some former Trump administration officials in recent days said they were increasingly worried about the president’s behavior, suggesting it stems from rising pressure on Mr. Trump as the economy seems more worrisome and next year’s election approaches.

After casting off advisers who displeased him at a record rate in his first two and a half years in office, Mr. Trump now has fewer aides around him willing or able to challenge him, much less restrain his more impulsive instincts.

Trump is who he always is. What is different is what is happening around him. The economic and political environment is worsening for him, and he has no idea how to cope with it. Furthermore, Trump’s burn rate on staff has been so high that he is scraping the bottom of the bottom of the barrel. His current dregs are so sycophantic they release statements no self-respecting communications professional would ever say.

There are excellent reasons to be worried about Trump’s behavior through 2020. The cognitive decline of the president is not one of those reasons. Rather, it is that the benign environment and support structures that restrained Trump’s worst impulses are gone.

[y66]

From Lisa Friedman at NYT:

Quote

The Trump administration is set to announce on Thursday that it intends to sharply curtail the regulation of methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change, according to an industry official with knowledge of the plan.

The Environmental Protection Agency, in a proposed rule, will aim to eliminate federal government requirements that the oil and gas industry put in place technology to inspect for and repair methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities.

The proposed rollback is particularly notable because major oil and gas companies have, in fact, opposed it, just as some other industries have opposed the Trump administration’s other major moves to dismantle climate change and other environmental rules put in place by President Barack Obama.

Some of the world’s largest auto companies have opposed Mr. Trump’s plans to let vehicles pollute more, while some electric utilities have opposed the relaxation of restrictions on toxic mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants.

“This is extraordinarily harmful,” Rachel Kyte, the United Nations special representative on sustainable energy, said of this and other Trump administration efforts to undo climate regulations. “Just at a time when the federal government’s job should be to help localities and states move faster toward cleaner energy and a cleaner economy, just at that moment when speed and scale is what’s at stake, the government is walking off the field.”

Under the proposal, methane, the main component of natural gas, would only be indirectly regulated. A separate but related category of gases covered under the Obama-era rules, known as volatile organic compounds, would still be subject to regulation under the new rules. Those curbs would also have the side benefit of averting some methane emissions.

The new rule must go through a period of public comment and review, and would most likely be finalized early next year, analysts said. The Wall Street Journal initially reported the expected rule.

Over all, carbon dioxide is the most significant greenhouse gas, but methane is a close second. It lingers in the atmosphere for a shorter period of time but packs a bigger punch while it lasts. By some estimates, methane has 80 times the heating-trapping power of carbon dioxide in the first 20 years in the atmosphere.

Methane currently makes up nearly 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. A significant portion of that comes from the oil and gas sector.

Erik Milito, a vice president at the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group representing the oil and gas industry, praised the proposed rule, saying, “We think it’s a smarter way of targeting methane emissions.”

But some major oil companies, including some members of the industry organization, have called on the Trump administration to tighten restrictions on methane.

Exxon wrote to the Environmental Protection Agency last year urging the agency to maintain core elements of the Obama-era policy. And, in March, Gretchen Watkins, the United States chairwoman for Shell, said the E.P.A. should impose rules “that will both regulate existing methane emissions by also future methane emissions.”

Susan Dio, the chairwoman and president of BP America, wrote an op-ed article in March saying that regulating methane is the “right thing to do for the planet” and for the natural gas industry.

Ben Ratner, a senior director with the Environmental Defense Fund, a group that works closely with oil companies to track and reduce methane emissions, noted that the industry had invested millions of dollars to promote natural gas as a cleaner alternative to coal.

With natural gas under increasing pressure from more affordable forms of renewable energy, he said, companies are wary of any move that might tarnish its reputation as a cleaner energy source.

“The reputation of American natural gas is at the precipice, and methane rollbacks are the shove,” Mr. Ratner said.

[barmar]

If the industry opposes easing of regulations, doesn't that suggest that they'll voluntarily comply with the old standards? It's not like Trump is forcing them to pollute more. Reducing regulations just means they don't have to spend the resources dealing with regulators to show that they're meeting the requirements.

Kind of like when he pulled out of the Paris Accord, many states and companies said they would continue to work towards meeting those standards. Not everything has to be forced by the federal government.

This was also McConnell's argument for why he's not bringing legislation about election security to the Senate floor, he claims this should be handled at the state level, not federal level. He's probably lying, because he knows that this won't happen adequately and election insecurity favors the GOP, but it's not an unreasonable argument on its face. A major plank of the Republican platform is reduced federal oversight.

[y66]

barmar, on 2019-August-29, 10:10, said:

If the industry opposes easing of regulations, doesn't that suggest that they'll voluntarily comply with the old standards? It's not like Trump is forcing them to pollute more. Reducing regulations just means they don't have to spend the resources dealing with regulators to show that they're meeting the requirements.

Kind of like when he pulled out of the Paris Accord, many states and companies said they would continue to work towards meeting those standards. Not everything has to be forced by the federal government.

This was also McConnell's argument for why he's not bringing legislation about election security to the Senate floor, he claims this should be handled at the state level, not federal level. He's probably lying, because he knows that this won't happen adequately and election insecurity favors the GOP, but it's not an unreasonable argument on its face. A major plank of the Republican platform is reduced federal oversight.

Only part of the industry opposes the new rule, including major players Shell and Exxon. According to E.A. Crunden at ThinkProgress: "Shell executive Gretchen Watkins asserted that her company plans to continue reducing its methane emissions, with a goal of cutting its net carbon footprint 50% by mid-century". So, perhaps some major players will continue to play by the old rule. While it's safe to say that most Republicans favor reduced oversight, former EPA administrator under Nixon and Reagan, William Ruckleshaus, said this in an NYT op-ed a couple years ago:

Quote

A strong and credible regulatory regime is essential to the smooth functioning of our economy. Unless people believe their health and the environment are being safeguarded, they will withdraw their permission for companies to do business. The chemical industry executives who came in to see me that day felt this loss of public support and were asking me to reassure Americans that the government would do its job to protect them.

Our collective freedom and well-being depends on a set of restraints that govern society and how it operates. Those restraints need to be clear and effective.

[johnu]

barmar, on 2019-August-29, 10:10, said:

If the industry opposes easing of regulations, doesn't that suggest that they'll voluntarily comply with the old standards? It's not like Trump is forcing them to pollute more. Reducing regulations just means they don't have to spend the resources dealing with regulators to show that they're meeting the requirements.

Kind of like when he pulled out of the Paris Accord, many states and companies said they would continue to work towards meeting those standards. Not everything has to be forced by the federal government.

This was also McConnell's argument for why he's not bringing legislation about election security to the Senate floor, he claims this should be handled at the state level, not federal level. He's probably lying, because he knows that this won't happen adequately and election insecurity favors the GOP, but it's not an unreasonable argument on its face. A major plank of the Republican platform is reduced federal oversight.

When the Democrats take back the White House, all these rollbacks of EPA and any other standards should be immediately declared null and void. Democratic presidential candidates should make clear that there will be no grace period to comply with the standards that were in place when Obama left office. It shouldn't be economically practical to strip out pollution controls for 1 1/2 years when they are going to have to be reinstalled when the next president is inaugurated. There will be some percentage of companies that will take advantage and pollute more until January 2020.

If a company is building a new plant, it would be a major economic blow to design a factory with with reduced pollution standards, and then be forced to close the plant in a year to retrofit new pollution equipment. The Democrats should make it clear that there will be no bailouts and no tolerance for failing to meet the original pollution standards.

[cherdano]

Dear Democrats, you have a lot of candidates that are strong on the merits. This guy isn't one of them. Yours truly, The Truth.
As he campaigns for president, Joe Biden tells a moving but false war story

[johnu]

cherdano, on 2019-August-30, 02:27, said:

Dear Democrats, you have a lot of candidates that are strong on the merits. This guy isn't one of them. Yours truly, The Truth.
As he campaigns for president, Joe Biden tells a moving but false war story

I'm sure Biden has told a number of lies and untruths over the years as has everybody. He's got to lie another 12000 or so times (Donald Trump Reaches Yet Another Bleak Milestone With His Lies)more to catch up with the Liar in Chief. In reality, the Manchurian President is on turbo drive to churn out lies at faster and faster rates so Biden can never overtake him.

In any case, every single Democrat running for president would be a much better president than the Manchurian President.

In any case, Biden was never "my guy" in the 2020 race.

[hrothgar]

cherdano, on 2019-August-30, 02:27, said:

Dear Democrats, you have a lot of candidates that are strong on the merits. This guy isn't one of them. Yours truly, The Truth.
As he campaigns for president, Joe Biden tells a moving but false war story

I'm happy that most of the Democratic candidates that I consider highly problematic have either dropped out of the race (Gillibrand) or are out of the next debate (Gabbards, Williamson).

I really hope that Biden is forced out relatively soon. (Bernie as well)

At this point, I'd like to see the Party consolidate around Warren / Castro or Harris / Castro.

[kenberg]

cherdano, on 2019-August-30, 02:27, said:

Dear Democrats, you have a lot of candidates that are strong on the merits. This guy isn't one of them. Yours truly, The Truth.
As he campaigns for president, Joe Biden tells a moving but false war story

I had just read this in the Post with my my morning coffee,,I thought the most revaling quote was Biden saying "I don't know what the problem is. What is it that I said wrong?"

Joe, baby, let me explain. If you are going to tell a story of military heroism, or really a story of anything, people want the story to be accurate. You honor people by telling their story the way it actually happened.

About military service, or lack of it.:
I am four years older than Biden. As I was finishing high school I thought I might join the Navy, just about every boy expected to put in a couple of years in the service as part of young adulthood, but I got a scholarship to college and took a student deferment. Later, when Viet Nam was well underway, I was classified 1-A but they apparently were looking for younger guys and I was never drafted. I neither ran to Canada, nor would I have if drafted, nor did I run down to the recruiting station to volunteer. People can judge me as they wish on this, but I don't make things up. A lot of people died, whatever our story is we should tell it straight.

There is also the Biden quote:
"We can lose a vice president," h said, "We can't lose many more of these kids. Not a joke."
Sorry, but this is pathetic. If he had to say anything at all, maybe "Any modest danger that I might face pales, beyond pales, in comparison with what our soldiers face every day". Or he could just shut up.

I expect that Joe Biden is a far better person than Donald Trump. and he would be a better president than I would be. Neither is a very high standard. If nominated, he will lose. We need to win this one.

[y66]

From Quinta Jurecic at Lawfare via NYT:

Quote

The Justice Department’s internal investigator has concluded their widely anticipated report into the former F.B.I. director James Comey’s handling of his memos documenting his interactions with President Trump — and the document is far from a page-turner. In fact, it’s outright boring.

Famously, Mr. Comey began keeping records of unorthodox outreach to him by the president out of concern for Mr. Trump’s apparent efforts to gain Mr. Comey’s personal loyalty, along with what Mr. Comey described in a Senate hearing as “the nature of the person.” The inspector general’s inquiry concerned whether Mr. Comey acted improperly in passing the contents of one memo to the press through an intermediary, an act that Mr. Trump and his allies have lambasted as a disclosure of classified information. Reports earlier this summer indicated that the Justice Department would not be prosecuting Mr. Comey for any misconduct regarding the memos, so the only question in the intervening weeks has been what criticism the inspector general might unleash outside the realm of law.

It turns out that, according to the inspector general, investigators “found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.” And, contrary to some speculation in right-wing media, the document includes no finding that Mr. Comey was untruthful or incomplete in his answers to investigators. But Inspector General Michael Horowitz is still not happy with Mr. Comey’s conduct: The former director “violated F.B.I. policy and the requirements of his F.B.I. employment agreement” when he provided information contained in one memo to The New York Times through an intermediary. Mr. Comey did the same, the inspector general argues, when he retained copies of the memos without authorization to do so after leaving the bureau and did not notify the bureau after learning that one memo contained “six words” that the F.B.I. later deemed to be classified.

It’s a bit hard to take these concerns seriously in light of the events that moved Mr. Comey to disclose the information to The Times in the first place: The president of the United States threatened to disclose possibly nonexistent “tapes” of his conversations with Mr. Comey, the substance of which involved the president’s effort to quash an F.B.I. investigation into a former close adviser. As the former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller put it, the report “basically faulted Comey for speeding on his way to tell the village that a fire was coming.” Mr. Horowitz knocks Mr. Comey for setting “a dangerous example” for F.B.I. employees who might be tempted to follow in his footsteps — but if other F.B.I. employees are routinely facing crises comparable to what Mr. Comey dealt with, the country is in dire shape.

The response to the inspector general report has been predictable. Mr. Comey claimed vindication (on Twitter, of course). The White House called him a “liar and leaker.” Meanwhile, attention has already shifted among the president’s supporters: figures like the pro-Trump pundit Bill Mitchell and Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida warned that Mr. Comey would soon find himself on the wrong end of another inspector general report, this time on the Russia investigation as a whole and involving supposed abuse of surveillance powers. By now, over two years after Mr. Comey publicly released the contents of the offending memo, everybody knows what role to play. The circus goes on. The true moment of victory and of reckoning is always just around the corner.

Quote

At Lawfare, where I work, my colleague Benjamin Wittes argues that the inspector general’s criticism of Mr. Comey amounts to a declaration that “it is misconduct for a law enforcement officer to publicly disclose an effort to shut down his investigation.” (Mr. Wittes, and Lawfare, make a small cameo in the report itself, though neither had any involvement with the memos; Mr. Wittes spoke on the record with a Times reporter about concerns Mr. Comey had expressed to him about Mr. Comey’s relationship with the president, and the report references a piece he wrote on the subject for Lawfare.)

[barmar]

cherdano, on 2019-August-30, 02:27, said:

Dear Democrats, you have a lot of candidates that are strong on the merits. This guy isn't one of them. Yours truly, The Truth.
As he campaigns for president, Joe Biden tells a moving but false war story

Memory is a funny thing.

A lie is a deliberate falsification. This sounds like he just jumbled up a bunch of episodes involving the military in his mind. Was this a prepared speech or extemporaneous remarks?

Compared to the BS we get on a daily basis from Trump, this pales in comparison. Even if the precise details are wrong, the spirit seems to reflect his character, and isn't that what we're trying to assess?

[Winstonm]

barmar, on 2019-August-30, 08:58, said:

Memory is a funny thing.

A lie is a deliberate falsification. This sounds like he just jumbled up a bunch of episodes involving the military in his mind. Was this a prepared speech or extemporaneous remarks?

Compared to the BS we get on a daily basis from Trump, this pales in comparison. Even if the precise details are wrong, the spirit seems to reflect his character, and isn't that what we're trying to assess?

Problem is that in social media this will be considered a wash for all Trump lies; Trump said this, well Biden said that. The character will be promoted as even, as, (as will be claimed), all politicians exaggerate to make a point.

In the wash, the one sock that is Biden's genuine character will be lost.

[barmar]

Some might also wonder if we really want a president with such fallible memory. Well, I personally give it a pass, as I wouldn't be able to write an autobiography to save my life. I marvel every time Ken recounts some story from his life, I can remember practically nothing from decades ago. My most vivid memory from childhood is stepping on a big piece of glass in our backyard, but my mother says it never happened -- I suppose it was a bad dream that has stuck with me. If I want to know what years I worked for a particular employer, I have to go to my LinkedIn page. I can only remember the names of maybe a half dozen of my friends from my grade school years.

OTOH, I remember what the first computer program I wrote did, even though it was over 40 years ago. It was a BASIC program that printed the Enterprise insignia from Star Trek on a Teletype. And that memory just brought to mind the name of the high school classmate who showed me how to write programs.

[y66]

From the Editorial Board at Bloomberg:

Quote

Carbon dioxide is the best-known greenhouse gas, but methane may be more dangerous: One pound can capture up to 84 times as much heat as a pound of carbon dioxide. A byproduct of fossil fuel production as well as agriculture, it’s to blame for about a quarter of all manmade global warming.

So when the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans Thursday to roll back regulations curbing methane emissions, environmental groups were quick to object. More surprisingly, some of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies complained as well. “[We] have made clear our support of 2016 law,” said the president of Shell Oil Co. BP Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. agreed.

That’s partly because the rules introduced under President Barack Obama were hardly onerous. They required oil and gas companies to take action to prevent methane leaks from new wells, pipelines and storage tanks. Methane, unlike carbon dioxide, is a fuel, so companies have reason to do this anyway. And existing wells, which outnumber new ones, would have plenty of time to adapt: The EPA would have taken years to develop new standards for them.

If President Donald Trump’s administration has its way, those wells won’t need to be checked for leaks. The EPA’s own figures show the proposal would cause about 370,000 tons of additional methane emissions between now and 2025 — the equivalent of burning more than 4 million tons of coal. It would save oil and gas companies maybe $20 million a year — a drop in the bucket for a $100 billion-plus industry.

No wonder oil majors aren’t impressed. To be sure, the industry isn’t united in opposition — but the heavyweights understand the costs of bad publicity are more than a few million dollars each year. A backlash is already brewing: One group representing some 140 institutional investors, accounting for a combined $5.5 trillion of assets, has urged energy companies to ignore the proposed rule.

Businesses can’t ignore public opinion as blithely as the Trump administration apparently believes it can. Voters overwhelmingly agree that global warming is happening, is dangerous, and requires government action to stop it. Just last month, major automakers sided with environmentalists against a Trump administration push to relax emissions standards. As consumers increasingly feel the effects of global warming, the pressure will grow. Smart businesses see the writing on the wall.

The public has 60 days to comment on the proposal. Businesspeople, consumers, scientists and environmentalists — all of whom wish to live and prosper on the same warming planet — should make their voices heard.

[y66]

From Mark Glongoff at Bloomberg:

Quote

Overall, of course, Corporate America has been OK with what Trump has done for it so far, even if he occasionally tweets mean things at it. He’s cut corporate taxes and regulations, and most CEOs agree with him that China should play fairer on trade, notes Mohamed El-Erian. But his methods are starting to worry them, Mohamed writes. Most notably, Trump’s unilateral, unpredictable trade warring is hurting global economic growth and raising uncertainty, which is bad for business (and not just “Excuses!”). Working with allies to confront China and having some clear goals could help. Finally doing something about infrastructure and worker training would go a long way, too.