US Politics: Kill (the) Bill

[IheartIheartTesla]

That definitely makes me feel better, the US did survive 8 years of Bush with not much government action on climate change. yet we managed to still meet the Kyoto protocol numbers (while not ratifying it way back when) because of the abundance of natural gas.

So I am hopeful non-government led technology can still be our savior when it comes to climate change. Or that we ride out the next 4 years and hope too much climate change related damage isnt done.

[OldGimletEye]

Death Spiral Watch:

The real death spiral here is the intellectual credibility of conservatism or Trumpism.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/27/15065752/trump-obamacare-explode

Quote

Donald Trump’s initial reaction to the news that his plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t pass the House of Representatives was unusual, to say the least.

“I’ve been saying for the last year and a half that the best thing we can do, politically speaking,” he argued in a statement to the press delivered in the Oval Office, “is let Obamacare explode. It is exploding now.”

 

[denstorebog]

Wow, Nunes' shady behavior really isn't helping Trump right now. Now it's not just the administration, but the people tasked to investigate them, who are under suspicion. Looks like the House committee is going to fold, at least in its current form. That's quite a story, and will dominate headlines for some time to come. This could be really harmful to the party in general. Wonder if any Republicans are gonna back the independent solution soon.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

14 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

Wow, Nunes' shady behavior really isn't helping Trump right now. Now it's not just the administration, but the people tasked to investigate them, who are under suspicion. Looks like the House committee is going to fold, at least in its current form. That's quite a story, and will dominate headlines for some time to come. This could be really harmful to the party in general. Wonder if any Republicans are gonna back the independent solution soon.

Isn't Lindsay Graham getting there?  Does he even count?

[denstorebog]

3 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Isn't Lindsay Graham getting there?  Does he even count?

McCain and Graham keep getting credit for making 'soft' calls for transparency / independent investigations during town halls and such. At the same time, Graham seems more friendly with the administration than McCain does at moment (Trump has his new phone number!), so I'd actually expect McCain to go first.

[Mexal]

26 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

Wow, Nunes' shady behavior really isn't helping Trump right now. Now it's not just the administration, but the people tasked to investigate them, who are under suspicion. Looks like the House committee is going to fold, at least in its current form. That's quite a story, and will dominate headlines for some time to come. This could be really harmful to the party in general. Wonder if any Republicans are gonna back the independent solution soon.

It depends on what the goal of this all was. Yes, Nunes looks bad but no one is doing anything about it. Democrats are clamoring for him to recuse himself but he's refusing and Ryan is backing him. So not sure what else can be done other then consistent pressure and hopefully leaks.

Also, Jeremy Bash thinks this whole situation with Nunes was a way to cancel today's public hearing with Yates. He believes that Yates has damaging intel about Flynn's phone call with Kislyak and the reaction of the White House when she told them that can only be spoken about in front of a Congressional committee. So if that's true, then Nunes did a really good job of grinding the House Intel investigation to a halt and destroying all credibility of it.

At the end of the day, Nunes is pulling a stunt. If he had real information or real sources outside of the WH and was acting in good faith, he would have called the committee together, provided the intel and continued with the investigation. But he's not. He has canceled all meetings and has refused to provide any intel to any other member of the committee, even a week after going to the public and going to the WH. It's clearly bullshit and was done with a very specific purpose, whether it's entirely to back up Trump or a more nefarious purpose of destroying the House Intel's investigation. Ultimately, even if Nunes does recuse himself, we're likely going to end up with Trey Gowdy leading the investigation which is a crying shame. He gives no fucks about Russia/Trump but only leaks and when I say only leaks, I mean only leaks that are a detriment to the Trump administration. He already said he doesn't care who leaked information to Nunes.

ETA: Washington Post just posted an article about Trump Admin trying to block Yates testimony citing Presidential communication privileges. Very clear this is what all of this shit is about.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

12 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

McCain and Graham keep getting credit for making 'soft' calls for transparency / independent investigations during town halls and such. At the same time, Graham seems more friendly with the administration than McCain does at moment (Trump has his new phone number!), so I'd actually expect McCain to go first.

Wapo quotes Graham as saying about Nunes WH visit "Not good.  It's not a confidence builder" and ""we're rapidly getting" to the point where a select committee or indempended commission is needed to conduct the investigation into Russian meddling."

But it's soft, as you say.  It's all completely outrageous.

[Mexal]

Just as a follow up...

 

[TheKitttenGuard]

3 hours ago, Commodore said:

Downside of rule by pen and phone. Obama couldn't get cap and trade through Congress so he tried to achieve the same effect by executive decree. 

Although I am sure a judge can be found to rule that what was done cannot be undone, illogical as that may seem. 

::Yawn::

Here is a list of E.O. by Presidents:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php

Quick summary:

1. Obama has the lowest of 2 term Presidents at 276 since Grant at 217.

2.  If you really want to be angry check out the E.O from 1920-1960.

3. Trump rate is currently the most since Harry Truman.

[denstorebog]

Yeah, The Hill is posting the Yates connection as well now.

So, who's an expert here? Are there other circumstances under which Yates can be allowed to testify than in front of the clearly compromised House committee? Because I have a feeling that Democrats' (and Americans') interest in her is going to go through the roof.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

22 minutes ago, TheKitttenGuard said:

::Yawn::

Here is a list of E.O. by Presidents:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php

Quick summary:

1. Obama has the lowest of 2 term Presidents at 276 since Grant at 217.

2.  If you really want to be angry check out the E.O from 1920-1960.

3. Trump rate is currently the most since Harry Truman.

The total number is only part of the conversation. You also have to consider how impactful each was.

[TheKitttenGuard]

38 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The total number is only part of the conversation. You also have to consider how impactful each was.

So anything to show that Obama's EO on the whole were more impactful than others?  Are there levels of E.O that Obama done more than others?

I can understand the arguement yet the presentation is that Obama was unprecedented in the use of E.O and the numbers show otherwise. 

[maarsen]

1 hour ago, denstorebog said:

Yeah, The Hill is posting the Yates connection as well now.

So, who's an expert here? Are there other circumstances under which Yates can be allowed to testify than in front of the clearly compromised House committee? Because I have a feeling that Democrats' (and Americans') interest in her is going to go through the roof.

Yates testifying in the House is just a sideshow. First you have to remember that anything she says is already known to the FBI.  The threat of her testifying is a great stimulus to others to get on the record with their version before her facts become public.  Think of this a a game of Prisoner's Dilemma. The less Yates reveals,  the more pressure is put on those with anything to lose. 

Yates volunteering to testify, with no expectations of actually doing so, has certainly stirred the pot.

[Fragile Bird]

3 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

That definitely makes me feel better, the US did survive 8 years of Bush with not much government action on climate change. yet we managed to still meet the Kyoto protocol numbers (while not ratifying it way back when) because of the abundance of natural gas.

So I am hopeful non-government led technology can still be our savior when it comes to climate change. Or that we ride out the next 4 years and hope too much climate change related damage isnt done.

Hahaha! Thanks for my morning laugh!

Not only did the US not meet the target for reducing the 6 gases named in the Kyoto protocol, at the time John Kerry made his infamous claim that the US had met Kyoto targets, the numbers were actually 7.5% higher than the baseline, not 7% below 1990 numbers as the US originally promised, rather than the 5.2% called for in the protocol.

A decade later a bill was introduced that aimed to reduce levels in the US, using 2005 as a baseline, a heluva easier target than 1990 levels. And that bill was never passed, so Obama used an executive order instead.

Kerry was correct that the first goal in a decade long plan was met in 2013, certainly NOT the total goal and NOT the Kyoto goal. And it wasn't because the US is using more gas, it was because of the worst downturn since the depression. And it was only 3% below 2005 levels in the year 2009. All that, I believe, has now been wiped out.

There was an excellent article back in 2013 in the Washington Post about the Kerry's comments that I can't link because I've used up all my free articles, called John Kerry's misfire on US performance on Kyoto emission targets.

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

35 minutes ago, TheKitttenGuard said:

So anything to show that Obama's EO on the whole were more impactful than others?  Are there levels of E.O that Obama done more than others?

I can understand the arguement yet the presentation is that Obama was unprecedented in the use of E.O and the numbers show otherwise. 

Are there votes that matter more than other votes? Of course there are, that's why they're called key votes. 

[OldGimletEye]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/trumps-abuse-of-government-data

Quote

n January 22, 1930, not quite three months after the stock-market crash and the ensuing economic collapse, the Times, in a front-page article, quoted President Herbert Hoover saying that “the tide of employment has changed in the right direction.” His Secretary of Labor, James J. Davis, citing reports on America’s industries, pronounced the country “well on the way to complete recovery.”

Well, it seems some things with conservatives just never change.*

Quote

 The White House press corps laughed, but, to government statisticians, the words sounded less like a joke and more like a threat. “When I saw that, I said, ‘Wow. You said the numbers were wrong,’ ” Kathleen Utgoff, who ran the B.L.S. under President George W. Bush, told me. “ ‘Now you are politicizing them.’ ” She said that she is “terrified” by the President’s willingness to declare the government data “very real” or fake news based solely on how they reflect on him.

 

Quote

The danger is that a President who disparages the data might convince his followers that bad economic news is political propaganda, and offer numbers that have no statistical rigor behind them.

Though it seems to me that Trump learned this stuff from other conservative sorts of people, like say Jack Welch and the Pauls.

*though, in fairness to Hoover, I'd say he was a much better man than Trump.

[OldGimletEye]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/03/who-was-devin-nunes-secret-white-house-source

Quote

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking minority member on the House Intelligence Committee, has called for Devin Nunes to recuse himself from further involvement in the Russia probe. This comes after Nunes' bizarre unveiling of supposed evidence that the Obama White House really did surveil Trump aides during the transition. Nunes still hasn't shown his evidence to anyone, and it appears increasingly likely that it doesn't really show anything at all. Nor will he tell us who he met with on the White House grounds to procure his evidence. Here is Michael Isikoff:

 

Quote

Michael Ellis is a former editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Review and a longtime "promising young conservative."

Now there is an effing oxymoron.

[TheKitttenGuard]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Are there votes that matter more than other votes? Of course there are, that's why they're called key votes. 

Alright but is there anything that demostrated that Obama E.O were more impactful than other Presidents E.O? Is there something shows that as a percentage is higher than the other Presidents? 

The arguement that appears to get thrown out is that Obama went overboard in E.O and that is not supported. 

I am open to information to show the type of E.O Obama issued were more impactful than others.  Again, though, the manner which Obama E.O are argued is that is something very out of line with other Presidents.  The total number may be simple but is there something that shows that the kind Obama issued went further than the others?

[MerenthaClone]

3 hours ago, denstorebog said:

Are there other circumstances under which Yates can be allowed to testify than in front of the clearly compromised House committee? Because I have a feeling that Democrats' (and Americans') interest in her is going to go through the roof.

She will be testifying in the Senate regardless of what happens in the House.  

[Mexal]

Just now, MerenthaClone said:

She will be testifying in the Senate regardless of what happens in the House.  

Yea but the public nature of the hearing matters and the Senate seems to be doing all of their investigation in private. I wanted to hear what Yates had to say from her mouth, not through intermediaries that may never actually come out.