Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Start of Operation Desert Storm; Space Shuttle Columbia lifts off; Prohibition takes effect ; Shah of Iran flees into exile; musical “Hello Dolly” opens.

When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future.

Dian Fossey

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The story goes like this- someone (presumably Chinese but it’s not important) asks a Chinese Philosopher (see, that’s why I think the questioner is probably Chinese), “What holds up the world?”

So the Philosopher thinks about it a bit and says, “The World rests on the back of a Giant Turtle”, which was a fairly widely held belief in China at the time.

The questioner persists, “Everybody knows that. What I mean is, what holds up the Turtle?”

The Philosopher scratches his beard for a while and finally says, “That’s easy. It’s Turtles all the way down.”

So what is the modern Republican Party? That’s easy. It’s Bigots and Racists all the way down.

Megan McCain gets upset when you point this out. I suppose I could be a weenie like Atrios and say something conciliatory like #NotAllRepublicans but the truth is that those who are not Bigots and Racists by inclination are operationally so because their primary constituency is Bigoted Racist Old White Guys.

Because there is a limited supply of Bigoted Racist Old White Guys (thank goodness) and it’s not enough to win elections anymore Republicans cheat. They actively disenfranchise and suppress the votes of People of Color, perhaps not because of Bigotry and Racism, but certainly because People of Color are more likely to vote Democratic.

One of the tactics they have proposed, one which might have the farthest reaching effects, is to add a question about Immigration Status to the 2020 Census in the expectation that it will scare recent immigrants into not filling out their Census Forms for fear of disclosing any paperwork problems they might have and subjecting themselves to the merciless cruelty of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Today we took a small step toward stopping that.

Trump’s effort to rig the census takes a hit
By Paul Waldman, Washington Post
January 15, 2019

It has been amply clear for some time that as far as Republicans are concerned, there is no institution of American government that should be immune from being twisted into a tool for them to obtain partisan advantage. On Tuesday, they suffered a temporary setback in that effort.
…
Let me quickly give you the background if you’re not up to speed on the Trump administration’s effort to subvert the census. Upon taking office, the administration decided it wanted to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, but it needed to come up with a reasonable-sounding justification for it, since its true motives were indefensible. So it came up with a cover story: It wanted the citizenship question so that it could properly enforce the Voting Rights Act.

Which is kind of like your kid telling you that you should buy him more Oreos because he wants to make sure he keeps his teeth clean. It’s not a goal he agrees with in the first place, it’s not why he wants the cookies, and getting him the cookies would accomplish the opposite of what he claims.

Why is this important? Anyone who has worked on the census will tell you that getting people to fill out the forms is a challenge, and it gets even worse in immigrant communities where people can feel intimidated by representatives of the government knocking on their doors. Now add in the Trump administration’s relentless assault on immigrants and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) frequent abuses, and the problem becomes even more acute.

In that context, asking people about their citizenship status is guaranteed to result in undercounts in communities where there are lots of immigrants. Which means those areas will get less representation in Congress and fewer federal dollars for services. And that’s the whole point.

When I call the Voting Rights Act tale a “cover story,” I’m not just expressing an opinion. We have a paper trail of documents showing that the story the administration was telling in public, including under oath to Congress, was a lie. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose department oversees the Census Bureau, claimed under oath that the citizenship question was being added because the Justice Department had requested it, and the whole thing was the Justice Department’s idea. “The Department of Justice, as you know, initiated the request for inclusion of the citizenship question,” he said in response to a question about it during congressional testimony.

That was a lie. In fact, it was not the Justice Department’s idea. Ross and his aides approached the Justice Department and asked it to formally ask the Commerce Department for the citizenship question, in order to create a paper trail they could then point to in order to make their false claim. They encountered resistance from officials at the Justice Department, who were obviously uneasy about participating in this scheme. But eventually, after months of pleading and cajoling, they found someone at the Justice Department who was willing to write a letter “requesting” the citizenship question be added to the census. We know this because emails in which they carried out this scheme were obtained in a lawsuit and made public.

Ross also lied to Congress when he claimed that he had not spoken to anyone in the White House about the citizenship question; in fact, he had a conversation about it with Stephen K. Bannon, then the president’s chief political adviser, who suggested that Ross talk about the citizenship question to Kris Kobach, the notorious anti-immigrant vote suppressor who was then Kansas secretary of state; Ross did subsequently consult Kobach about it.

Once these lies were exposed, and facing the possibility that he could at least in theory be prosecuted for perjury, Ross issued statements changing his story, saying that the fog of his memory had cleared and he now recalls that the Justice Department didn’t initiate the request for the citizenship question and he did actually talk to the Trump White House about it.

Not only that, the Census Bureau itself told Ross in a memo in January 2018 that adding a citizenship question “is very costly, harms the quality of the census count, and would use substantially less accurate citizenship status data than are available from administrative sources.” He was undeterred.

All of which is to say that there’s simply no doubt that the Trump administration has been operating in absolute bad faith on this issue, lying to the public and to Congress about it and offering an absurd story to justify its actions. If there’s any silver lining, it’s that the administration is so incompetent that the deception has been completely obvious from the beginning.

Tuesday’s ruling made that clear: “The court concludes that Secretary Ross’s decision was pretextual — that the rationale he provided for his decision was not his real rationale.” That’s a judge’s way of saying, “You lied.”

This has to be seen in the context of a broader effort on the part of Republicans to put a thumb on the electoral scale in every way they possibly can, whether it’s extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression efforts targeted at minorities, or the use of the census to make Republican victories just that much more likely.

And despite this victory, they may well get away with it. This is one in a series of lawsuits filed by states challenging the citizenship question, and the matter will almost inevitably end up before the Supreme Court. Conservatives now have five justices on the court who appear well committed to doing what’s in the interests of the Republican Party. The question is whether they’ll be willing to undermine one of the bedrock institutions of American democracy in order to do it. I wish I could say I had any confidence they won’t.

In defiance of Election Losing “Pragmatists” I’ve been saying for years that Democratic Policy Proposals are, in most respects and especially economic ones, cowardly craven sellouts to Monopoly MegaCorps and Thieving Billionaires. Instead the Democrats have escalated Identity Politics as a substitute for true Social Justice, dangling shiny objects while ignoring the root causes of inequality.

These same DLC Blue Dog New Democrat Republicans with a ‘D’ have been trying to reign in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because she is too “Radical” and is tarnishing the Party Brand and driving away all their fellow Republican Never Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio ers from the “Big Tent” that is perfectly happy to kiss Wall Street’s ass and ignore the plight of their constituents.

The problem is her “Radical” ideas, in particular her “Soak The Rich” Tax Policy are, like Single Payer Medicare For All, enormously popular.

Like 59% popular overall and 45% among Republicans. Republicans!

Poll: A majority of Americans support raising the top tax rate to 70 percent
by Matthew Sheffield, The Hill
1/15/19

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her Republican critics have both called her proposal to dramatically increase America’s highest tax rate “radical” but a new poll released Tuesday indicates that a majority of Americans agrees with the idea.

In the latest The Hill-HarrisX survey, which was conducted Jan. 12 and 13 after the newly elected congresswoman called for the U.S. to raise its highest tax rate to 70 percent, found that a sizable majority of registered voters, 59 percent, supports the idea.

Ocasio-Cortez has not introduced any legislation to enact the concept but the survey shows a broad cross-section of Americans supports it, at least presently.

Women support the idea by a 62-38 percent margin. A majority of men back it as well, 55 percent to 45 percent. The proposal is popular in all regions of the country with a majority of Southerners backing it by a 57 to 43 percent margin. Rural voters back it as well, 56 percent to 44 percent.

Increasing the highest tax bracket to 70 percent garners a surprising amount of support among Republican voters. In the Hill-HarrisX poll, 45 percent of GOP voters say they favor it while 55 percent are opposed to it.

Independent voters who were contacted backed the tax idea by a 60 to 40 percent margin while Democratic ones favored it, 71 percent to 29 percent.

Ocasio-Cortez is among a group of progressive legislators which includes Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who have called for increasing federal income tax rates on wealthier Americans. The New York Democrat kicked off a debate within her party in a Jan. 6 interview with “60 Minutes” during which she said she would support setting the highest tax, which she said would kick in at individuals 10 millionth dollar of income, at 70 percent.

In her comments to the CBS show, Ocasio-Cortez referenced tax rates that had once been in place during the mid-20th century. During the 1950s and 60s, the wealthiest Americans were once taxed at a rate in excess of 90 percent.

“That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder you should be contributing more,” she said.

The proposal has been met with both criticism and acceptance within the Democratic party. Republicans and conservative commentators have been universally critical, some incorrectly implying that the congresswoman wants to tax all income of the richest Americans at 70 percent.

I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Martin Luther King, Junior born; Richard Nixon suspends U.S. offensive in Vietnam; Queen Elizabeth the First crowned; Work completed on Pentagon; first Super Bowl takes place.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Oh, is it that bad? Yes, yes it is.

No wonder Trump is in such a foul mood
By James Downie, Washington Post
January 13, 2019

As a new Washington Post-ABC poll shows, Trump is losing the argument over the government shutdown and building a wall at the southern border. And he’s losing it badly.

In the new poll, released Sunday morning, 53 percent of respondents (including 53 percent of independents) blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown (now the longest ever). Only 29 percent overall (and less than a quarter of independents) blame the Democrats. Fifty-four percent oppose the border wall. As for the musings from Trump and some other Republicans about declaring a national emergency to fund the wall, only 24 percent say the border situation is a crisis. Not a single part of Trump’s framing has taken hold with a majority of the American public.

Other polls have bad news for the White House as well: A new CNN poll finds that 56 percent of voters oppose the wall; only 39 percent support it. Similar to the Post-ABC survey, 55 percent of voters tell CNN they blame the president for the shutdown, with only 32 percent blaming the Democrats. Meanwhile, Trump’s approval rating has dropped five points since December.

The usual fallback here for those determined to find good news in bad polls for the president is “at least his base is holding.” And yes, Republican support for the border wall has “jumped 16 points in the past year, from 71 percent to 87 percent” in the Post-ABC poll. But Trump’s digging in on the border wall hasn’t actually improved his support among Republicans, just their support for the wall itself. Meanwhile, in the CNN poll, Trump’s decline “comes primarily among whites without college degrees, 45% of whom approve and 47% disapprove, marking the first time his approval rating with this group has been underwater in CNN polling since February 2018.” Those voters were crucial to Trump’s victories in Midwest states in 2016; without them, his path to 270 electoral votes narrows further.

That contradictory polling captures just how critical Trump’s crisis has become. Even as independents have turned more against him, the president’s base and conservative media have become more invested in the wall. (In the Post-ABC poll, two-thirds of Republicans who support the wall oppose a Trump compromise with Democrats.) What was “only” a top policy priority has become a near holy cause for the right. So whom should Trump choose to tick off?

At this point, the saving grace for Trump is that when it comes to shutdowns, voters quickly forget. If he folds soon, whatever damage done will be long gone by Election Day 2020. But what if he doesn’t give in for months? Or what if, just as the whole GOP doubled down on immigration before the midterms and suffered the consequences, Trump makes the wall a major issue in 2020? Suddenly, a shutdown would be a political disaster for Trump — and not just a policy disaster for the country.

Tomorrow the British Parliament will finally take a vote on Theresa May’s Brexit Plan. It is all but certain to fail, the biggest question is the magnitude of the failure.

I would vote against it, not because it’s necessarily bad though it’s not a gift to the UK Economy (which it will likely trash almost as much as a No Deal Brexit), but because it makes it probable that May’s Conservative Government will fall and force a General Election.

Jeremy Corbyn has unfortunately not drawn much of a distinction between Tories and Labour on the issue. Other than promising a No Confidence vote after the failure of the plan, his support for a second referendum has been lukewarm at best despite the fact that his own membership is in favor of holding one immediately by a 2 to 1 margin with similar sentiments held almost as strongly by the entire electorate.

Not that a Remain vote is a sure thing, the polling on that is much more evenly divided though Remain seems to be holding a slight edge at the moment.

Still, Corbyn publicly believes he can get a better deal from the EU than May which I consider highly speculative. It could make a difference to approach it from the Left rather than the Right in that there might be some concessions he would be willing to make that the Tories are ideologically opposed to and that might result in addressing some of the Left criticisms of EU membership, but I don’t think they would be particularly significant.

This is mostly due to the EU wanting to punish the UK for leaving as a warning to others who, quite correctly, have concerns about the EU’s Austerity Policy and it’s Autocratic anti-Democratic structure. They have no incentive to negotiate and it would be very hard to generate a new consensus among the 27 nations with individual veto power anyway.

The extent of May’s failure is demonstrated by the fact that the only argument among British observers is whether her Plan loses by more than 200 votes or not. If her defeat is narrow you can envision scenarios like her eeking out a Confidence Vote victory or presiding over an interim custodial Government. About the only thing that Tories agree on is that Labour is a pack of Communist rabble that must be defeated at all costs because…

Well, Communists you know.

Myself? I think Thatcherite Neo Liberal Privatization and looting of the Commons is a proven failure that ought to be tossed on the rubbish heap of History and killed with fire (it’s an Internet meme, not a threat) as soon as possible. Why the British tolerate their monopolistic private Railway System is as much a puzzle to me as why the U.S. doesn’t have one to speak of at all (it’s spotty, inconvenient, and prohibitively expensive with tickets costing 3 to 5 times as much compared to flights to the same destination, of course Airlines are heavily subsidized and Amtrack an unwanted stepchild).

So we shall see what we shall see tomorrow but you should pay attention because it’s a really big deal.

“C” Movie. It’s About Capitalism (Seriously.)