Drinking the Kool-Aid

Heather Digby Parton quotes Scott Pruitt in 2016 about a Republican candidate.

I think he has tendencies that we see in emerging countries around the world where -- he goes to the disaffected, those individuals. And says, "Look, you give me power and I will give voice to your concerns." ... I believe that [Fuckface von Clownstick] in the White House would be more abusive to the Constitution than Barack Obama -- and that's saying a lot.

Pruitt is now EPA administrator.

After meeting him, and now having the honor of working for him, it is abundantly clear that [von Clownstick] is the most consequential leader of our time. No one has done more to advance the rule of law than [Dear Leader]. The president has liberated our country from the political class and given America back to the people.

Parton describes this turn in attitude scary.

That evolution from conservative skeptic to flamboyant sycophant is representative of the evolution of the entire party. There is much about the Republican Party in this era that isn't new. This is. It's what potentially gives [Fuckface] the power to engineer a true constitutional crisis and get away with it. He doesn't have a majority of the country behind him, but he doesn't need it. He has a cabinet full of yes men and a servile majority in Congress. They are happy to do his bidding.

And so Republicans seem to put loyalty to their leader above loyalty to the constitution. They stand by as this administration attacks the independence of the Department of Justice. The deputy FBI director has been forced out. And in a December meeting, Fuckface wanted to know if Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was "on my team". House Republicans voted to release a memo they wrote to try to smear the Russian investigations. The FBI has responded:

With regard to the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it. As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.

And yet, the memo will be released. Charlie May quotes Amanda Carpenter:

We are ... fully engulfed in a narrative explicitly designed to impugn and destroy the credibility of the law enforcement agency tasked with investigating the [Republican] campaign’s relationship with Russia during the 2016 election.

We’ve all been sucked into a story we know probably isn’t true. And, there’s not a thing we can do to stop it. The president has already claimed two scalps with his shameless bullying, rumor mongering and conspiracy peddling: Former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. And it’s happening all over again. With #Releasethememo, the FBI has already been accused of a multitude of various crimes without ever being given the chance to answer or explain.

Lucian Truscott:

[Fuckface] and senior members of his administration, all the way from the White House spokesman to the Attorney General to the Vice President of the United States, have engaged in a blizzard of lies and misleading statements to law enforcement investigators, congressional committees, and the press and the American people in furtherance of a continuing campaign of obstruction of justice of the Russia investigation. They have lied and obstructed justice to cover up what they have done for one reason: because lying and obstructing is potentially less of a crime than what they are covering up, which is the theft of the presidential election of 2016 in conjunction with forces of a foreign power hostile to the interests of the country, namely Russia.

It’s been a slow motion massacre of justice. The only question now is who will be left standing when it’s over: [Dear Leader] or the rule of law in the United States of America.

Update (February 2):  The memo hyped as "worse than Watergate" turns out to be a dud.

But Jefferson Morley argues the memo itself is being used to provoke a constitutional crisis.

[Von Clownstick] does not seek to reform the agencies investigating him; he seeks to "cleanse" them. This hygienic language, echoing in the #ReleaseTheMemo chorus, dresses up the planned Justice Department purge as a necessary procedure to remove filth, purge disease and restore purity.

Will they get away with it?

Nixon's moves cost him support among Republicans in Congress and the press, and he had to resign 10 months later. [Fuckface], by contrast, has solidified his support in Congress and controls the powerful conservative media.

As the constitutional crisis approaches, [Dear Leader] is stronger than Nixon was during Watergate.

Update (February 3):  Carl Bernstein says we're seeing the darkest days since the McCarthy era.

Right now, we have the unprecedented situation of one of the major political parties ... backing the president in showing and believing that he is above the law.

Also, Marcy Wheeler reminds us that the Republicans had no civil liberty concerns when FISA was reauthorized just two weeks ago.

Update (February 4):  Junior talks about the value of declassifying the memo.

There is a little bit of sweet revenge in it for me and certainly probably the family.

Update (February 5):  Is Representative Trey Gowdy a kool-aid teetotaler?

I actually don't think it has any impact on the Russia probe ... [T]o the extent the memo deals with the dossier and the FISA process, the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at [the] Tower. The dossier has nothing to do with an email sent by Cambridge Analytica. The dossier really has nothing to do with George Papadopoulos' meeting in Great Britain. It also doesn't have anything to do with obstruction of justice. So there's going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier.

I'm actually in a really small group, I think, of Republicans that think that this FISA process is suspect and wrong and should not have taken place. But you still have a Russia investigation even without it.

I am on record as saying I support Bob Mueller 100 percent. ... Russia tried to interfere with our election in 2016 with or without a dossier. So you need an investigation into Russia. You need an investigation into [the] Tower and the Cambridge Analytica email, separate and apart from the dossier. So those are not connected issues to me. They may be for other Republicans, but they're not for me. I say investigate everything Russia did, but admit that this was a really sloppy process that you engaged in to surveil a U.S. citizen.

Update (February 7):  While his supporters buy into the narrative of the memo, Gabriel Sherman reports that Fuckface is frustrated his staff isn't doing enough to defend him.

[Von Clownstick] has recently told advisers he wants a “killer” to steer the White House’s response to Robert Mueller’s investigation and craft a midterm election message for him to stump on this fall.

Update (February 11):  Chaos is returning and it's difficult to keep up with the palace intrigue. While the Republican classified memo was terribly important to release despite FBI objections, Dear Leader decided not to release a Democratic memo which sparked a backlash.

Meanwhile, staff secretary Rob Porter was forced to resign over resurrected domestic abuse allegations, which von Clownstick has no problems with, but seems like a move by someone to push out John Kelly.

Moreover, there's this whole military parade distraction that even veterans don't support.

And then tucked away in the Friday night news dump is a New York Times report that third-ranking Justice Department official Rachel Brand is suddenly leaving. Law professor Steve Vladeck says

Brand’s departure raises questions about who will succeed her and what her departure (and her replacement’s selection) might portend for the future of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Update (February 19):  The Porter story isn't going away.

Update (February 24):  The redacted Democratic memo is now released.

Update (July 12):  Republicans are desperate to discredit the Mueller investigation wherever they can. They conveniently overlook how Comey did damage to Clinton while details of the investigation into the Republican campaign were not made public before the election. Peter Strzok admits he did a lousy job of undermining Fuckface.

In the summer of 2016, I was one of a handful of people who knew the details of Russian election interference and its possible connections with members of the [Republican] campaign. This information had the potential to derail, and quite possibly defeat, Mr. [von Clownstick]. But the thought of exposing that information never crossed my mind.

Cenk Uygur asks why have a hearing if they just wanted Strzok to read his texts and not put them in context. Republicans don't really want to hear why Strzok might write something like "we'll stop" him.

[The text came after the nominee had] insulted the immigrant family of a fallen war hero and my presumption based on that horrible, disgusting behavior that the American population would not elect somebody demonstrating that behavior to be President of the United States.

Update (July 13):  Representative Jamie Raskin failed to uncover a widespread Republican conspiracy against Dear Leader.

"Sen. Ted Cruz called [Fuckface von Clownstick] a 'sniveling coward,' a 'pathological liar,' and a 'serial philanderer," Raskin said. "Sen. Marco Rubio said [Fuckface von Clownstick] was 'unworthy of being our president'."

The list went on from there, and after each insult, Raskin asked Strzok if the Republican he mentioned was a part of a deep state conspiracy to undermine the president. Strzok kept saying simply, "No."

2 Minutes to Midnight

The Doomsday clock is as close to midnight as it's ever been.

Although the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists focuses on nuclear risk, climate change, and emerging technologies, the nuclear landscape takes center stage in this year’s Clock statement. Major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race, one that will be very expensive and will increase the likelihood of accidents and misperceptions. Across the globe, nuclear weapons are poised to become more rather than less usable because of nations’ investments in their nuclear arsenals.

Update (May 5):  Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsburg agree the Syrian civil war risks a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Russia. Tracy Keeling reports:

NATO poses a direct threat to Russia, a heavily nuclear-armed state, by deploying on its borders. And the US, the UK and France bombed its ally – Syria – over an alleged chemical attack before confirmation of it, and who carried it out, had taken place. Now, one of America’s closest allies – Israel – is threatening to “destroy” the systems Russia has said it might use to protect its ally from “aggression”.

42 Equals Half of the World

It turns out Oxfam needed to revise last year's figure of eight to 61. But the new figure is 42.

The world saw the biggest increase in billionaires in history in the year prior to March 2017, with a new one added every two days .... The world now has 2,043 billionaires, and nine of every 10 are men.

How well have they done?

In 12 months, the wealth of this elite group of 2,043 has increased by $762 billion — enough to end extreme poverty seven times over.

Jeff Bezos is the world's richest man with $106 billion--he gained $6 billion in the first ten days of this year.

Update (January 25):  Andrew Hwang shows what it's like to live on a billionaire's budget.

Let’s call $4,000 one “Joe buck,” or J$1. Joe Billionaire’s annual income is J$50,000. Thus, a $2,000-vacation package costs J$0.50, proportional to a half-dollar from a middle-class income.

Update (July 5):  Johnny Miller has a project called Unequal Scenes that uses aerial photographs from a drone to illustrate stark contrasts in human geography.

Update (January 20, 2019):  Oxfam's new number is 26.

[T]he wealth of billionaires has increased by $900 billion in the last year, or $2.5 billion a day. This bonanza has not been felt by the poorest half of the world, which saw its wealth decline by 11 percent.

Update (January 21, 2019):  Turns out the billionaires are 12 percent wealthier while the poor are 11 percent poorer.

Update (January 19, 2020):  This year's number is 162. So, progress?

[W]hile huge numbers of people have been pulled from extreme poverty over the last few decades, 735 million people still live in extreme poverty ― meaning they survive on $1.90 or less a day ― and nearly half of the world (3.4 billion people) live on less than $5.50 a day.

Another Temperature Record

Joe Romm reports that while 2017 is the second warmest year on record, it can also be viewed as the warmest non-El Nino year.

And that has scientists worried, since the warmest years usually happen when the long-term human-caused global warming trend gets a short-term boost from an El Niño’s enhanced warming in the tropical Pacific. 

Update (January 14):  Romm further reports that December in Alaska was 15.7 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average. And Arctic sea ice extent was a record low for the end of December.

Jupiter

Photographs from the Juno spacecraft look like abstract paintings.

Annexation

Steven Cook reports on vote taken within Israel's ruling party.

[T]he Likud Party’s Central Committee voted to extend Israel’s legal jurisdiction to settlements in the West Bank. It is a legal nuance that seems insignificant against the backdrop of 50 years of occupation, but it has significant consequences. The move is a prelude to annexation.

It appears that thoughtless moves by Dear Leader emboldens this way of thinking. According to an Israeli activist:

If the president of the United States believes Jerusalem is ours, there is no reason why a right-wing party and coalition cannot. It’s important for us to show [Fuckface] what the ruling party in Israel wants, and since he loves the Jewish people, sooner or later, he will come to the same conclusion.

Update (July 21):  Israel has passed a law that's described as a form of apartheid. Meanwhile, ongoing Palestinian protests lead to the death of one Israeli soldier and now the government is carrying out a massive bombing campaign in Gaza.

And Jeffrey St. Clair puts the West Bank into perspective:

Population: 12% Israeli Settler, 88% Palestinian
State Land Allocation by Israel: 99.76% Settler, 0.24% Palestinian

Update (July 22):  Hamas has a deal with Israel to stop the bombing.

Permanent Drought

A study published in Nature Climate Change "predicts that aridification would emerge over about 20 - 30 percent of the world's land surface by the time the global mean temperature change reaches 2ºC".

The risks increasingly point toward catastrophe. Jason Moore and Raj Patel:

Regardless of what humans decide to do, the twenty-first century will be a time of “abrupt and irreversible” changes in the web of life.