Folks, it’s a fact and has been since the mid 70s that Republicans have no ideas or agenda other than pure racism, bigotry, and misogyny (well, that and stealing for their Plutocratic Donors). To call them the Party of the Klan and the Nazis is rather understating it because they also hate the 51% majority of the United States- women.

As an intellectually bankrupt and corrupt Party the only way they can be politically successful is by cheating, which has accelerated as their ideology has become more transparent and vastly unpopular and their demographic base is dying.

Like past parrot, no kidding. You have to nail them to the perch.

This of course explains their desperation to codify their radical agenda and their attempt to disenfranchise those they perceive as threats (fake voter fraud).

Jim Crow discrimination is losing effectiveness as a tactic (witness the collapse of the Kobach Commission) so recently the focus has been on good old fashioned Gerrymandering. The concept is to jam as many Democrats as you can into as few Districts as you’re able to manage and leave the rest of them open for Republicans. Democrats have had overwhelming popular vote advantages over the last decade or two but there has been a steady decline in their representation because of this (among other things like their Neo Liberal agenda, but that’s not what I’m talking about here).

Some Courts have finally roused themselves to this reality, like North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and decided that this is not very fair (Duh!). Despite adverse rulings, because they are a Party in massive decline and denial, some of them have decided to adopt the attitude of Andrew Jackson-

“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”

Sen. Scarnati refuses Pa. Supreme Court order to turn over map data in gerrymander case
by Jonathan Lai, Philadephia Inquirer
January 31, 2018

State Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson) said Wednesday he would not turn over any data requested by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the wake of the gerrymandering ruling that Republicans are fighting in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last week, the state high court ruled that Pennsylvania’s congressional map was the product of unconstitutional gerrymandering and ordered the General Assembly to submit files “that contain the current boundaries of all Pennsylvania municipalities and precincts” by noon Wednesday.

In a letter to the court, Scarnati’s lawyers said he would not do so, repeating an argument they have made to the U.S. Supreme Court: The state court is overstepping its authority.

“In light of the unconstitutionality of the Court’s Orders and the Court’s plain intent to usurp the General Assembly’s constitutionally delegated role of drafting Pennsylvania’s congressional districting plan, Sen. Scarnati will not be turning over any data identified in the Court’s Orders,” the lawyers wrote.

In the first place, the United States Supreme Court has no business at all in this case. The Constitution leaves selection of Representatives to the States. Republicans argue Legislatures! Ok, fine, your Legislature has just been found to be in violation of your State Constitution by the highest Court in the State.

Did Marbury v. Madison suddenly disappear? Perhaps we are not as fond of the 10th Amendment and State’s Rights as we’ve been pretending.

Republicans also complain the Court has not provided the guidance they need to draw a new map. Well, you are withholding the information they need to do that.

In my Court, since you’ve missed your Wednesday (Yesterday) deadline, Marshalls would already have siezed the required documents and be waiting to toss your sorry ass in Jail until I decide you’re no longer in Contempt of Court.

Get comfortable, it could take a while.

Atrios (who had this last night) is not the only one to have noticed.

Pennsylvania GOP leader tells state supreme court he will ignore its anti-gerrymandering order
by Ian Millhiser, Think Progress
Jan 31, 2018

In an audacious move by a political leader who could potentially be held in contempt of court, Pennsylvania Senate President pro tempore Joseph Scarnati (R) informed the state supreme court on Wednesday that he will openly defy one of the court’s recent orders (PDF) in a gerrymandering case.

On January 22, the state supreme court struck down the state’s gerrymandered congressional maps — maps which enabled the GOP to win 13 of the state’s 18 congressional districts even in years when Democrats won the statewide popular vote. That order explained that the state’s maps must be “composed of compact and contiguous territory” and must not “divide any county, city, incorporated town, borough, township, or ward, except where necessary to ensure equality of population.” It also gave the legislature until February 9 to draw new maps, and the governor until February 15 to approve the maps and submit them to the court for review.

If either deadline is not met, “this Court shall proceed expeditiously to adopt a plan based on the evidentiary record developed in the Commonwealth Court.”

Four days after its initial order, on January 26, the court issued a subsequent order (PDF) requiring the legislature to turn over certain data — including geolocation files “that contain the current boundaries of all Pennsylvania municipalities and precincts” and various reports analyzing how well the legislature’s proposed new maps comply with the court’s January 22 order.

In a letter from his legal counsel, Scarnati explicitly refuses to comply with the second order (PDF). Though the letter claims that “the General Assembly is currently advancing bills aimed at creating an alternative map,” the letter also states that “Senator Scarnati will not be turning over any data identified in the Court’s Orders.”

Scarnati’s stated reason for this defiance is his belief that the court’s January 22 order “violates the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause.” Last week, Scarnati sought a stay of the January 22 order from the Supreme Court of the United States, claiming that only the state legislature and not the state courts are constitutionally allowed to weigh in on questions of gerrymandering. The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet ruled on this stay request, which means that both the January 22 order and the January 26 order remain binding upon Scarnati.

As ThinkProgress previously explained, Scarnati’s request for a stay also conflicts with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistrict Commission (PDF). It is also difficult to square with the Court’s landmark 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison, which held that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”

Look, a comprehensive compendium of all the lies in Tuesday’s farce would take too long and be too much work as I am very, very lazy. This piece from The Real News Network outlines some of the more comprehensive falsehoods and is not limited to those articulated during the event (though it is informed by them).

What I like about it is that it features Stephanie Kelton, whom I’ve come to like and respect, as well as James Henry and Robert Pollin who I don’t know at all. What makes them kind of credible is that they’re all actual factual Economists as opposed to rattle shaking Shamen.

Trump’s Economic Nationalism: Who’s It Good For?

I’ve been going around the country a lot in the last year giving a talk broadly to do with Trumponomics and asking this very question. Can Trumponomics extend the recovery? Is this economic program likely to deliver on the sorts of promises that President Trump has made to the American people, communities in the Rust Belt, those who’’ve been struggling, “Help is on the way,” this is what he told workers. We’’ve been talking about this four-cent-an-hour pay increase that workers have enjoyed over the course of the last year, that’’s obviously going to do a lot to boost the incomes of people who are struggling and who helped to put Donald Trump in the White House. But, look I think one of the things that’s being underplayed, to some extent anyway, is the impact, the potential impact of these tax cuts.

If you look at the analysis that was done by the Joint Committee on Taxation, which is one of Washington’s score-keeping groups that looked at Trump tax cut proposal, they said everybody across the income distribution, every decile that we look at, is going to see, on average, some increase in their take-home pay as a result of the Trump tax cuts. So whether you’re in a bottom 10% or the top 10%, you’’re likely to feel somewhat better as a result of the tax cuts.

Now, we know that the cuts are skewed overwhelming towards those at the very top, more than 80% of the benefits go to people in top 1%. But that doesn’’t mean that people in the bottom 10 and 20 and 30 percentiles aren’’t going to feel a little bit better. And what concerns me, I think, is that Democrats are underestimating the extent to which people who for the last eight years didn’’t feel much in terms of the recovery at all, are going to get some small benefit — however, you know, unequal in terms of the way it’s distributed, and they’re going to feel a little bit better.

I think the big question is what happens in terms of business investment, that’’s where we have not seen what we need to see, to generate the kind of job growth and wage pressure and so forth. I don’’t think that what Trump has done with the tax cuts, with repatriation, with the cooperate income tax, I think it’’s pretty obvious to most economists that what we’re going to see are businesses ploughing those profits back into, share buy backs, mergers and acquisition, they’’re going to pay dividends, they’’re going to do the kind of things that boost the stock markets. So those three people the Bernie Sanders talked about, who saw their wealth increased by $68 billion, so they are going to feel a lot better.

But broadly speaking, I don’’t think this is an economic program that’’s designed to do much for the middle class and those at the bottom, and I don’’t think is going to deliver in the sense that Donald Trump promised.

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.

The Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy; a searing image from the Vietnam War; Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran, ending years of exile; actor Clark Gable born.

I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.

Langston Hughes

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Tonight, I owe Donald Trump an apology. Tonight, I was moved and inspired. Tonight, I have hope and faith in America again.

It may go away tomorrow…
But tonight, America is great again. — Frank Luntz

Frank Luntz has a bad haircut. He’s also fat.

Oh, and he’s a lying sack of crap. His toady tweets did not escape the observation of that bastion of D.C. “Centrism”, Morning Joe, and though he plays one on TV even they were not buying Luntz’s “Centerist” act today.

If you’re possibly unaware, the nighttime news is taped (in front of a live audience to be sure) sometime between 4 and 6 pm EST. But not last night, last night they were live.

Trevor Noah

Stephen Colbert

Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy takes these racist assholes far too seriously. Stormy Daniels I’ll show you at another time you perverts.

Finally, for the truly paranoid and weird take (when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro)-

Jordan Klepper

Pre (via AlterNet)-

Tuesday night is Trump’s State of the Union speech. Nobody knows exactly what he will be discussing, but I’m absolutely certain what he will NOT be talking about.

He will surely not be apologizing for the many lies he told American voters: how he promised to defend the interests of working people, but then sold them out to Wall Street and the billionaire class.

During his campaign he promised to provide health care to “everybody,” but then supported legislation which would have thrown 32 million Americans off of the healthcare they had. Although we managed to stop his effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, 3.2 million fewer Americans today have health insurance than when Trump first came into office, and millions more will lose their health insurance as a result of the repeal of the individual mandate.

During his campaign he promised to pass tax reform legislation designed to help the middle class. The legislation that he signed will, at the end of 10 years, provide 83 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent, drive up the deficit by $1.7 trillion and raise taxes for millions of middle class families.

During his campaign he promised to take on the outrageously high prices of the pharmaceutical industry which, he told us, was “getting away with murder.” Then, as president, while drug prices continue to soar, he appointed a drug company executive as Secretary of Health and Human Services who worked to triple insulin prices.

During his campaign he promised to take on the greed of Wall Street, but then proceeded to appoint more Wall Street titans to high positions than any president in history. Now, with Wall Street firmly behind him, he is trying to repeal the modest provisions of the Dodd-Frank legislation which provide some consumer protections against Wall Street thievery.

Trump will also not be talking about the role that he has played in significantly lowering the respect that people all over the planet have for the United States. Once, not so many years ago, we were considered to be the political and moral leader in the world, the country most admired. Now, according to a recent Gallup poll, since Trump has been president median approval of U.S. leadership plummeted to 30 percent, down from 48 percent in 2016.

Trump will not talk about his efforts to undermine democracy in the United States and his support for authoritarianism abroad. He will not mention his encouragement to Republican governors to accelerate efforts for voter suppression, and his admiration for the leaders of countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines.

Trump will not talk about his belief that climate change is a “hoax,” and his appointment of agency leaders who are undermining our ability to move toward sustainable energy and protect the environment.

Trump will not talk about how he is the first president in modern history who is intentionally trying to divide this nation up based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or nation of origin. He will not be mentioning his overt and covert efforts to win the support of white supremacists.

And on and on it goes. I suspect that there will be a lot more interest in what Trump will NOT be talking about in his speech than what he will discuss.

I don’t have to tell you what you already know.

The very bad news is that Donald Trump is president of the United States and he is pushing the most dishonest, reactionary and divisive agenda in modern American history.

There is good news, however. And that is that, in an unprecedented way, we are witnessing a revitalization of American democracy with more and more people standing up and fighting back. We are seeing the growth of grassroots organizations and people from every conceivable background starting to run for office—for school board, city council, state legislature and Congress.

And these candidates, from coast to coast, are standing tall for a progressive agenda: Medicare for All, a $15 an hour minimum wage, free tuition at public colleges and universities, transformation of our energy system away from fossil fuels, a woman’s right to choose and pay equity, progressive taxation, fair trade, criminal justice and immigration reform and much more.

Yes. The Koch brothers and their billionaire friends are planning to spend some $400 million in the 2018 midterm elections supporting right-wing Republicans. We will beat them, however, because we are in the midst of creating a political revolution. When ordinary people, by the millions, demand economic, racial, social and environmental justice – we will not be denied.

Keep the faith and please remember, despair is not an option.

Post

Give it a chance, there’s about 55 seconds of title card at the beginning.

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.

US launches first satellite into orbit; Libyan intelligence officer convicted of Pan Am 103 bombing; US Soldier executed for desertion during World War II; Norman Mailer born; Franz Schubert born.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

Charlotte Bronte

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The oral version of the type that customarily issues from the other end of the GastroIntestinal tract.

Watch if you must and feel free to vent here, but I would have been tuned in to Curse of Oak Island anyway. There’s just so much I can stand.

I’ll read about it in the funny papers tomorrow.

Don’t worry, it’s not long or complicated or even counter intuitive like some of my economic pieces are, it’s simply about lying and yes, both sides do it- wise up. I draw it to your attention because I find it a remarkably clear and concise summary.

Paul Waldman offers this in the context of tonight’s State of the Union and Trump’s Infrastructure initiative, but it’s true of every Neo Liberal Public/Private deal.

In normal circumstances, the government decides it needs a new bridge, so it hires Joe’s Construction to build it. But the bridge still belongs to the government; we just have to pay maintenance costs. In the kind of “partnership” the Trump administration wants more of, the government decides it needs a new bridge, so it gives PriveCo Equity Partners a gigantic tax incentive to build the bridge, which they now own — and will charge tolls on in perpetuity. Taxpayers could (should read almost always do) shell out nearly as much in tax incentives to the private company as we would have spent to just build the bridge, and then on top of that you’ll have to pay tolls to cross it — forever. As long as the bridge stands, people are paying extra so PriveCo Equity Partners can make a profit.

Some bargain.

You won’t find me crying about any particular insult to the institution of the FBI.

The FBI: With great power comes great scandal
Douglas M. Charles, Salon
2017-05-22

When the FBI was established, its purpose was to help enforce federal anti-monopoly and interstate commerce laws by scouring corporate financial records for wrongdoing, while Justice Department attorneys prosecuted. This mission was at the behest of President Roosevelt, whose interests involved regulating abusive aspects of corporate capitalism. Over time, however, the FBI and its directors assumed increased responsibilities and became more independent. But balancing this authority and independence was sometimes a struggle, resulting in scandals.

(Chief Examiner Stanley) Finch was obsessed with prostitution, calling it “evil” and writing widely about its threat. He avidly pursued it as head of the FBI.

His efforts were based on passage in 1910 of the White Slave Traffic Act, a law banning the transportation of women across state lines for “immoral purposes.” The bureau’s investigative responsibilities quickly expanded to include targeting prostitution rings. The law’s wording, however, was vague — resulting in FBI agents enforcing their ideas about morality and the proper roles of women and men.
…
During World War I, the FBI’s responsibilities expanded again. This time it entered the field of domestic security. Fears of external influences abounded — immigrants, so-called “hyphenated Americans” like Italian-Americans and concerns over German espionage and sabotage. The FBI independently enforced new laws covering espionage, sedition, the draft and immigration.

A. Bruce Bielaski was head of the bureau at the time. He was a former subordinate of Finch, a lawyer, son of a minister and member of the Justice Department baseball team. During his tenure, Congress investigated mass federal enforcement of the Selective Service Act. The FBI rounded up and illegally detained Americans until those who were detained could prove they had registered for the draft. Ultimately, Bielaski was forced to resign in February 1919 for his handling of the raids.

FBI improprieties did not end as the U.S. entered the 1920s. Under the leadership of William J. Burns, the first FBI head to use the title “director,” the country experienced what until Watergate was the granddaddy of American political scandals: the Teapot Dome scandal.

President Warren Harding’s financially strapped interior secretary, Albert Fall, had allowed oil companies to tap U.S. Navy emergency oil reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, in return for kickbacks. Eventually Sen. Burton K. Wheeler and others discovered and began investigating the improprieties.

FBI Director Burns, at the request of Attorney General Harry Daugherty, tried to end the Senate probe. Burns was the owner of a private detective agency, and a man apt to believe investigative ends justified the means. He was not afraid to target powerful men. So, he dispatched agents to dig up dirt on Sen. Wheeler. Not finding any, he and Daugherty concocted baseless corruption charges against Wheeler that only backfired. The attorney general was fired and replaced with a reformer, who promptly forced the resignation of the corrupted Bureau Director Burns in 1924. The FBI was placed under the tutelage of J. Edgar Hoover.

The cross-dressing (not that there’s anything wrong with that), blackmailing anti-Communist.

Over time, Hoover’s FBI also became notorious for its political intelligence gathering, obscenity investigations, secret files and targeting of African-Americans, gays, war protesters and leftists.

So spare me the outrage over impugning their integrity, I’m not questioning it, it is what it is.

What is outrageous in this particular instance is that Donald John Trump is working, just as Richard Milhouse Nixon before him (both Republicans in case you missed it), to bend the surveillance power of our Domestic Spy Agency to thwart and imprison his political enemies, or at least take his political allies, friends, and family beyond the reach of the law.

Yeah, that’s some Fascist stuff right there.

And has the Misadministration’s pressure made it worse on themselves? Well, things could hardly get any worse.

Has Trump Given Mueller a Case?

Featuring our friend emptywheel.

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.

Tet Offensive begins: Nazi leader Adolf Hitler becomes Germany’s chancellor; Franklin D. Roosevelt is born; Hindu extremist assassinates Mahatma Gandhi; as “Bloody Sunday” begins; “The Lone Ranger” airs

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

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