I have shingles. If you haven’t enjoyed this little celebration of “hey, you’re old and your immune system now sucks,” take a magic marker and draw a line, head to toe, down the center of your body. Now pick a side—either one will do. Into the selected side, drive roughly 200 panel nails. Spread them around nicely. Good and deep, please. Got that? Now squirt on a heapin’ helpin’ of charcoal grill starting fluid and set the whole thing on fire. There. That’s almost shingles.
However, I know that shingles only go up to 8 on the pain scale. How do I know? Because the week before I had shingles, I had a kidney stone for the second time in my life. Kidney stones define the top of the scale. In fact, kidney stones generate a sort of transdimensional pain warp that rips apart normal space and rational thought, leaving behind only questions like “why the hell are there so many nerves in my kidney when there is absolutely nothing I can do about this?” and “who is responsible for this hideous design flaw?”
Both of these joyful little afflictions set in while I was helping take care of my mother-in-law who is in the hospital, and they immediately followed a frantic month in which I was hurling everything I owned into boxes for an exhausting and frustrating move. Oh, and my water company stiffed me for the $4000 they were supposed to contribute to fixing the street, leaving me with the bill. Thanks, guys. I needed that so much right now.
All of which means a couple of things.
First, you shouldn’t stand too close to me. Though the expert Republican voodoo economists currently driving Trump campaign pins into my wax likeness have clearly gotten their act down, there is no way to know the exact blast radius. Best to just stay clear.
Second, as I’ve said too many weeks lately, this APR may be shorter than usual. Because, really, the only thing I want to write starts with Arrr and ends with ghhhhh. But come on in, let’s pundit.
Nicholas Kristof discovers that … stay with me now … Trump voters still like Trump.
Moreno was sitting at a table with his boss, Rocky Payton, the factory’s general manager, and Amy Saum, the human resources manager. All said they had voted for Trump, and all were bewildered that he wanted to cut funds that channel people into good manufacturing jobs.
“There’s a lot of wasteful spending, so cut other places,” Moreno said.
Payton suggested that if the government wants to cut budgets, it should target “Obama phones” provided to low-income Americans. (In fact, the program predates President Barack Obama and is financed by telecom companies rather than by taxpayers.)
Yet Democrats gleeful at the prospect of winning penitent voters back should take a deep breath. These voters may be irritated, but I was struck by how loyal they remain to Trump.
Trump voters not only remain loyal to Trump even after he cuts programs vital to their own lives, they do so because they believe that, somewhere out there, in some other place, there are black people getting something free. Got it. 1) Yes, apparently someone is still assigned to write this story each week, and 2) someone wake up the person whose job it is to give a furious “Trump voters aren’t racists and Democrats need to address their issues” comment this week. Thankfully, that’s not me.
Emily Bazelon and Eric Posner look into what it could mean to seat Neil Gorush.
The reality is that Judge Gorsuch embraces a judicial philosophy that would do nothing less than undermine the structure of modern government — including the rules that keep our water clean, regulate the financial markets and protect workers and consumers. In strongly opposing the administrative state, Judge Gorsuch is in the company of incendiary figures like the White House adviser Steve Bannon, who has called for its “deconstruction.” The Republican-dominated House, too, has passed a bill designed to severely curtail the power of federal agencies.
In a way, the Tea Party folks were telling the truth—this is a second American revolution. And it’s designed to roll back the first.
As the court has recognized over and over, before and since 1935, Congress is a cumbersome body that moves slowly in the best of times, while the economy is an incredibly dynamic system. For the sake of business as well as labor, the updating of regulations can’t wait for Congress to give highly specific and detailed directions. …
In the past 20 years, conservative legal scholars have bolstered the red-tape critique with a constitutional one. They argued that only Congress — not agencies — can create rules. …
And Judge Gorsuch has forcefully joined in.
Gorsuch isn’t arguing against specific regulations, he’s arguing against the idea of regulations. Under Gorsuch’s theory of the Constitution, bills would have to be written to address every specific detail and agencies would be unable to do more than enforce bills as written on the exact situations that were anticipated in advance. It’s a formula designed to destroy both the regulatory agencies and the Congress.
Colbert King goes back to the Nixon era to find a spittle as licky as Devin Nunes.
Watergate showcased legislators on Capitol Hill in their finest hour: folksy and clever Sam Ervin (D-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee; Howard Baker (R-Tenn.), the committee’s vice chairman (“What did the president know, and when did he know it?”); House Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter W. Rodino Jr. (D-N.J.), who reportedly went to a back room after voting for the third article of impeachment, called his wife and wept, telling her, “I hope we’ve done the right thing”; and Barbara Jordan (D-Tex.), who advised the committee that the United States had come too far for her “to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.”
However, to me the most unforgettable Watergate lawmaker was House member Earl Landgrebe, a three-term Republican from Valparaiso, Ind. Landgrebe’s support for President Richard Nixon throughout the Watergate scandal set a standard for slavish loyalty that remains unmatched to this day.
But now, drumroll please …
They don’t make ’em like that anymore.
Or so I thought, until House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) arrived on the scene.
The chief difference between these two Republicans is that Landgrebe never got the chance to wield a gavel. In the post-Watergate elections, voters in Indiana’s 2nd District decided it was time to bring him home for good.
Nunes may not be an exact genetic copy of Landgrebe, but his behavior puts him in the same pedigree.
What’s sad is that while Nunes may out-Landgrebe Landgrebe, there seems to be no Republican out there who is even close to Baker’s level of country over party.
The Miami Herald has a few comments on Nunes.
Amazing. All this hot air about blocking America’s enemies with border walls and travel bans, and it turns out that the enemies of the American people have been right here all along.
Simply put, U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes is acting like a double agent, and not a very good one at that.
I was thinking that all Nunes’ skulking around was CIA-envy, but maybe that’s not the brand of trenchcoat the chairman of the House intelligence committee is looking to wear.
He cannot be trusted to lead what should be an impartial investigation into ties between Russia and President Donald Trump and his administration. And if he won’t step aside, then he needs to be pushed by his colleagues. His transgressions are that serious. Unfortunately, he seems to enjoy being the star of the intrigue he’s created too much to exit the stage.
Being a Republican means never having to say you’re sorry.
Robert Redford wasn’t actually one of the journalists who uncovered Watergate, but then, he also didn’t spend years making goo goo eyes at George W. Bush.
This year marks the 45th anniversary of the Watergate scandal. Because of my role in the film, some have asked me about the similarities between our situations in 1972 and 2017.
There are many. The biggest one is the importance of a free and independent media in defending our democracy.
When President Trump speaks of being in a “running war” with the media, calls them “among the most dishonest human beings on Earth” and tweets that they’re the “enemy of the American people,” his language takes the Nixon administration’s false accusations of “shoddy” and “shabby” journalism to new and dangerous heights.
Sound and accurate journalism defends our democracy. It’s one of the most effective weapons we have to restrain the power-hungry. I always said that “All the President’s Men” was a violent movie. No shots were fired, but words were used as weapons.
Go read the rest. You know you want to anyway.
Anne Applebaum says the only thing odd about the secret Russian involvement in the US election is that it was secret.
One of France’s presidential candidates, Marine Le Pen of the “far right” National Front, was in Moscow last week as her party is openly seeking Russian financial support. In 2014, her party received a 9 million euro loan from a Russian-Czech bank, and in 2016, it was revealed this week, she received an additional 3 million euros from another Russian bank; a political fund run by her father, the former party chairman, also received 2 million euros from a Russian-backed fund based in Cyprus. Le Pen’s agenda — anti-NATO, anti-European Union — is perfectly aligned with that of Moscow, which seeks to destroy the European and transatlantic institutions that curb Russian influence. That support hasn’t damaged her standing with her voters: At a major Le Pen rally in Lille, France, a few days ago, Putin’s name was cheered.
To be fair, Putin’s name is often cheered at Trump rallies. Usually by Trump. But a pro-Russian, anti-NATO role can be played openly in France. That’s why Le Pen didn’t have to hire Paul Manafort.
Dana Milbank explains how _____ can instantly ______ just by _____.
Politico this week reported on an innovative new policy from the Trump administration: An Energy Department official had directed staff “not to use the phrases ‘climate change,’ ‘emissions reduction’ or ‘Paris Agreement’ in written memos, briefings or other written communication.” …
Banning “climate change” could be the beginning of an elegant solution for this floundering young administration: If you can’t eliminate a problem, eliminate any mention of the problem. And Trump has already amassed a substantial list of people and things he would undoubtedly like to make go away. He could decree no more mention of: Michael Flynn. Immunity deals. Obamacare. Chuck Schumer. The Freedom Caucus. Democrats. The Congressional Black Caucus. April Ryan. The failing New York Times. Mark Meadows. Jim Jordan. Raul Labrador. Jared Kushner’s testimony. Ivanka Trump’s conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest generally. The Club for Growth. Heritage Action. NBC. ABC. CNN. Paul Ryan. Preet Bharara. Snoop Dogg. The Russia probe. The FBI. The CIA. Russia. The Senate Intelligence Committee. Polls. The deficit. Judges. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Congress.
Basically anything but discussions of golf and terms for “locker room talk.” That’s still just fine.
Leonard Pitts has an open letter to Bill O’Reilly this week. But rather than excerpt it, I’m just going to say that if you like Pitts (and you should) and you hate O’Reilly (which… oh come on) then you should go read it. Right to the end.
Michael Gerson's piece actually ran a couple of days ago, but it’s worth hitting again.
Since the rise of the tea party, there have been perhaps 30 members of the House — the Freedom Caucus — who have been consistently unwilling to vote for center-right policy because their anti-government convictions are unappeasable. Incited and abetted by conservative media, they made then-Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) life a living hell, and have greeted Ryan (Wis.) with sharpened pitchforks.
So a party at the peak of its political fortunes is utterly paralyzed. A caucus in control of everything is itself uncontrollable.
All I ask is that they stay paralyzed until, say, November 2018. They’ve wasted two months without getting significant legislation through. Is it really too much to hope that a debate on tax reform could absorb the next twenty?
The GOP needed a large and capable leader who could either unite the whole party (at least temporarily) with a bold, conservative vision, or peel off some centrist Democratic support with innovative policy. They needed an above-average president.
What they got is unimaginably distant from any of these goals. They got a leader who is empty — devoid of even moderately detailed preferences and incapable of using policy details in the course of political persuasion.
Republicans got a leader who is impatient and easily distracted — by cable news on the Russian scandal or by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s TV ratings. The content and consequences of his tweets are bad enough; worse is the disordered personality traits they reveal — vindictiveness, shallowness and lack of discipline. Trump spent a total of 18 days on his health-care bill before demanding a vote. And he made no speech to the nation to advance his ideas — as every other recent president would have done.
The dawn approaches. Somewhere in the distance is the sound of a tweet. Could it be Donald Trump attacking the Freedom Caucus again? Let’s hope so.
1 Year, 7 months, 4 days until the 2018 election. That’s 83 more weeks.
Oh, and Arrrrghhhh.