This, THIS is what we should be worrying about

[Brainstormy]

Everything is a distraction from something much, much worse

The administration is repealing consumer and environmental protections left and right. The Education Department is making it easier for for-profit colleges to defraud students. The Environmental Protection Agency has delayed an air pollution rule that the agency had determined would likely prevent the poisoning of children.

The Trump deregulatory team is rife with former lobbyists and others who have conflicts of interest. President Trump and his family members likewise appear to be financially benefiting from his role in the White House.

Yet fussing over regulatory decisions and vaguely sleazy behavior is itself a distraction from an even more important issue: the fact that Republicans are trying to remake one-sixth of the U.S. economy, largely in secret, while ripping health insurance away from 22 million Americans.

They’re laying out changes opposed by insurers, providers and patient advocacy groups. They are doing so with no hearings and no expert input, and reportedly with a scheme to sideline the one neutral referee of the law’s potential impact, the Congressional Budget Office. Attention must be paid!





https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/everything-is-a-distraction-from-something-much-much-worse/2017/07/13/a42384e0-6809-11e7-a1d7-9a32c91c6f40_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop&utm_term=.7684711fea1b

[pangaia]

1. This is what is known as blitzkrieg..Attack like mad everywhere, from every angle,

fast, furious, and unrelenting.
confuse the enemy so she doesn't know what is happening or where to defend...

spread the defense out until it is too thin to resist anywhere...

[Guilded Lilly]

3. A perfect description!

[Guilded Lilly]

2. It's more a matter of being totally overwhelmed with

the totality of battles this anti-earth, anti-humanity, anti-nation political party is waging daily.
The awareness is there, there is just so much THERE to fight.

[Brainstormy]

7. true. sigh. n/t

[CousinIT]

4. Fighting against Trumpcare, FOR Net Neutrality + AGAINST Trump "budget" shd be our priorities.

No matter how bad it gets for him, here’s why Trump isn’t getting impeached this year

. . .

Trump’s base of support has already appeared to brush aside the obvious demonstration of a willingness to collude in the transfer of information that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” as the first email to Trump Jr. read. President Trump once said that he could shoot someone dead in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any support. That no longer seems much like hyperbole.

. . .

Those hoping for a Trump impeachment, then, might wonder what happens after the primaries. After all, it’s not a coincidence that Richard Nixon resigned in August of 1974, after his party’s primaries that year — and after a visit to his office from congressional leaders who warned that his support on Capitol Hill had collapsed. Part of the concern, clearly, was that Nixon’s unpopularity was going to lead to a bruising defeat for House Republicans that November.

That may be a concern for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan next year, too, but there are two big differences. First, Republicans have a very healthy margin in the House that would allow them to lose more than 20 seats while still maintaining a majority. Second, there are a lot fewer close House races now than there were then — a function of a lot of things including population sorting and gerrymandering.

. . .

To put a fine point on it: Far fewer House Republicans are dependent on cobbling together support from voters outside of their party in order to win reelection. And since the most fervent supporters within their party stand strongly behind Trump, that may offer them all of the political cover they’d seek.

Theoretically, something else could emerge that would cause Trump’s support from those Republicans to crumble. But it’s very, very hard to imagine what that might be.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/14/no-matter-how-bad-it-gets-for-him-heres-why-trump-isnt-getting-impeached-this-year/?utm_term=.f84a2f7cec8a

[malaise]

5. We can do more than one thing at a time

but this is very important

[Igel]

6. There's going to be a conundrum that everybody will have to resolve.

Can the President just decide not to enforce a set of laws?

So far both sides are saying, "Yes. It's not only okay, it's meritorious." Thing is, they can't agree on what to enforce and ignore.

We have DACA. "Prosecutorial discretion" says that the President can ignore laws it thinks are wrong. And if you don't like it, tough. But if it's environmental laws that aren't being enforced, then the judiciary must force the executive to enforce those laws--it's in the Constitution, the President is to uphold the laws of the land.

They have environmental and civil rights laws. "Prosecutorial discretion" says that the President can ignore laws it thinks are wrong. And if you don't like it, tough. But if it's immigration laws that aren't being enforced, then the judiciary must force the executive to enforce those laws--it's in the Constitution, the President is to uphold the laws of the land.

Good luck dismissing the analogy.

Those courts saying that Trump must enforce certain laws are going to be a problem.

[Gabi Hayes]

8. This is most aptly characterized in "Democracy in Chains"

Nancy MacLean
Author of DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS
Interviewed by Jody Seaborn on June 14, 2017


It seems inevitable the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy” will pop into your head while reading Duke University historian Nancy MacLean’s disquieting Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. After all, the phrase made famous by Hillary Clinton in the 1990s popped into MacLean’s head a few times while she researched and wrote her book.

It would seem an apt description, given the covert undermining of American democratic foundations and institutions by the extreme libertarian movement MacLean documents in Democracy in Chains. But as pernicious as the movement is, it “is not a conspiracy,” she said in an interview. “A conspiracy involves illegality, and this movement, while it operates by stealth, is generally careful to stay within the rules that exist.”

She uses “fifth column assault” instead. She acknowledged “fifth column” also is “a phrase with a fraught history.” But the academics, operatives, ideologues, and billionaires of the radical right “have a fundamental hostility to our form of government as it existed over the 20th century,” and seek to vanquish it from within.

Democracy in Chains expands on Jane Mayer’s reporting in Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Where Mayer follows the radical right’s money trail, MacLean examines its intellectual origins—“the master plan behind it,” as she writes in her book’s introduction. Her findings will leave you deeply concerned for our democracy and civic life.

Continue reading >

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/nancy-maclean/

I wish more people knew about this monster Buchanan, and what he's wrought

Watch the author at Democracy Now:

Historian: Republican Push to Replace Obamacare Reflects Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/6/29/republican_push_to_replace_obamacare_reflects

[RandomAccess]

9. Yes, there's a lot that's going on that's very, very bad, and

it's really hard to keep track of everything.

But unfortunately, this author loses me just about completely at the very beginning with the ill-informed comment that Russia is "nonsense," and "just a shiny distraction.:

>>>> Americans, you need to start paying attention. Like, really paying attention — to the issues that actually matter.

Stop getting distracted!

Take this Russian collusion nonsense. Lots of Americans are obsessed with it, but it’s just a shiny distraction. <<<<

I'll admit I'm obsessed with it, but I spend a fair amount of time on other problems -- many, in fact.

But anyone who thinks this is merely "nonsense," either doesn't get it or wouldn't mind their grandchildren - and maybe children -- being forced to speak Russian.

What we've recently learned, and Rachel covered it brilliantly the last 2 nights, is that Russia has invaded not only our politics (just about the whole damn GOP), but they've made significant inroads with the NRA and conservative Christians, both of whom are just fine with being more friendly with Russia. This didn't happen last week or last month, Russia has been implementing these incursion plans for years now.

And let's not forget Bannon's ties with Russia either. He's a big proponent/student of Aleksandr Dugin -- the self-avowed fascist who is a Putin favorite.

Link to tweet

THREAD: ALEXANDER DUGIN RIGHT HAND MAN SENIOR COUNCELOR TO VLADIMIR PUTIN
1)This is where Drain the Swamp Originates IMG
- Dugin is the most influential ethnic nationalist thinker in the world and the architect of Russian foreign policy.
- If you want to understand the philosophical underpinnings of disinformation that de-legitimizes democracy, he is your guy.
- He acts and writes like a crank but has massive influence on Vladimir Putin. Here is his trajectory to influence in the US.
- 1988 - Dugin is member of nationalist / racist / anti-semitic party Pamyat, rumored started by KGB
- 1992 - Dugin joins National Bolshevik Party, a nationalist / racist / anti-semitic party.
- 1994 - Dugin splits NBP part to form a MORE racist and aggressive anti-Kasparov party and gain Putin's support.
- 1998 - Dugin: "genuine, true, radically revolutionary and consistent, fascist fascism" in Russia http://natl.re/1uBFqCz LINK DEAD
- 2001 - Dugin officially starts Eurasia party. Eurasianism is (1) LGBT hostility (2) Authoritarianism (3) Anti-Globalization.
- 2002-2004 - Dugin agitates for foreign policy elements of Eurasianism, direct alliances with friendly authoritarians states.
- Also, Euroasia movement is what it sounds like, a plan to take over Europe and asia. Pacific ocean to atlantic ocean
- Yes and some of it stems from National Socialism.
- They are closely tied to the Alt-Right in the US
- 2004 - Moscow subway bombings change everything. Russian policy pivots to embrace Neo Eurasianism. Dugin much legitimized.
- 2005 - Eurasian militias begin springing up around Russia and Ukraine, under leadership of Dugin.


It's a little frightening to me that this "Russia obsession" has to be defended at all, by anyone TO anyone. (Which is not intended as an insult to you, Brainstormy, but rather to the author, Catherine Rampell.)

And now that I've actually focused on that author's name, I remember her from Twitter. And not in a good way.

[Danascot]

10. What's even more concerning

(if that's possible) is that Trump is appointing judges from SCOTUS on down who will be willing to find that all this crap is perfectly okey dokey, and they'll be there for years after Trump is gone.