Blatant, Chapter Two

Following in the footsteps of Moscow Mitch, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Dixie) has stopped even trying to appear fair and impartial:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Saturday pledged to help impeachment "die quickly" in the Senate as it becomes increasingly likely that the House will vote to impeach President Trump, leading to a Senate trial.

"This thing will come to the Senate, and it will die quickly, and I will do everything I can to make it die quickly," he told CNN while at the Doha Forum in Qatar.

"I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I'm not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here," Graham added. "What I see coming, happening today is just a partisan nonsense."

Emphasis added.

And of course, which party made it "partisan"? (I'll take Republicans for $400, Alex.)

Via Joe.My.God.

The Trump regime has given up even pretending to work for anything but their own control of the country. Thanks, Uncle Vlad.

Digby has more background on Graham's transformation. Yes, once upon a time, about twenty years ago, he was all in favor of impeachment. This video is from November, 1998:

“I know many of them don’t want the president to be impeached, but I’ve got a duty far greater than just getting to the next election.” @LindseyGrahamSC pic.twitter.com/mBPmCGFCZ4

— Windsor Mann (@WindsorMann) December 14, 2019

Let me think -- who was president then?

How times have changed. something tells me Graham hasn't -- he's just gone public.

Investigate What?

Paul Waldman has an excellent piece at WaPo on Trump's cell phone usage and the Republican reaction:

If you cast your mind back to 2016, you’ll recall that Republicans were emphatic when it came to their deep concern for proper information security and email management in government. The fact that Hillary Clinton used a private email server wasn’t an outrage simply because she was their political opponent; no, there were principles involved, about protecting American secrets and adhering to proper protocols and procedures.

Fast forward to 2018:

But no. No Republican members of Congress are calling for an investigation, no conservative pundits are shaking their fist at the cameras and saying this is a national crisis, and there will be no round-the-clock denunciations of the president on Fox News. (One National Review writer did note that “If Trump was a Dem, Fox might try to bend the space/time continuum to put Hannity on for 25 hours a day to chase the story.”)

You could call it “hypocrisy,” but that word doesn’t quite cover it. It’s become so expected that we’ll drop it and move on by tomorrow; all Republicans will have to do is avoid the cameras for a few hours so that they don’t have to answer any uncomfortable questions, and then they can go back to saying how mad they are that Brett Kavanaugh had to answer some uncomfortable questions before getting his lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

Via Digby, who underscores that last paragraph:

Senate Judiciary committee chair Chuck Grassley has called for an FBI investigation into lawyer Michael Avenatti and Julie Swetnick, one of the many women who have accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, reported John King Thursday on CNN.

That should be fun -- Avenatti is going to eat Grassley alive. And not even burp.

Let's see -- what kind of country is it where high-ranking officials call on the resources of the government to "investigate" (read "harass") political enemies? That, to me, is just as bad as Trump's casual disregard for national security. Oh, I forgot -- five thousand women and children seeking refuge is a threat to national security; the Russians and Chinese, not so much.

In Honor of the Senate Judiciary Committee

Fox News, and other right-wing hacks:

Thanks to commenter Jean-Marc in Canada at Joe.My.God.

Today in Right-Wing Civility

Fromo "Pastor" Rick Wiles, one of the leading lights of the unhinged "Christian" right:

We’re in for the fight of our lives. If these people get power in this country again, you and I are toast, we’re done. Do you understand that? If they regain power, you and I are history. They’re coming after us. They will exterminate all opposition. Take my word for it. These people are ruthless. They’re murderers, they’re perverts, they’re pedophiles, they’re the worst scum that’s ever crawled on this planet and they’re dangerous. They will do anything to hold on to power, including exterminating their domestic opponents because they’re driven with madness, total madness. When you reject God, you’re opening your mind to madness. And these people have rejected God, they rejected God decades ago and madness has taken over.”

And of course, he has a TV show -- and, one assumes, an audience.

Via Joe.My.God.

Snowflake du Jour: Tomi Lahren

She really is one of the stupidest people using up air time:

“Because it’s going to get worse,” Lahren warned. “The final stages of Trump derangement syndrome are not just heckling and harassment. There are going to be physical confrontations. And I truly don’t believe that’s what the Democratic Party wants for conservatives, for us to be attacked. But they need to make that very clear.”

“Because until then, there are many of their followers and supporters who do think it’s okay to do these things,” she insisted. “They think it’s their right and their duty. And that’s dangerous.”

It is their right.

The Evolution of a Terrorist Organization

Specifically, the National Rifle Association. It's long -- almost 17 minutes -- but it's fascinating, sort of like watching a building collapse.

This was posted by commenter KnownDonorDad in the comments to this post.

USA Today reports:

The National Rifle Association filed a federal lawsuit this afternoon against the state to block a law that had just been signed by Gov. Rick Scott that prohibits gun sales to anyone between the ages of 18 and 21.

“We filed a lawsuit against the state for violating the constitutional rights of 18 to 21 year olds,” said Marion Hammer, lobbyist for the NRA in Florida. NRA lawyers in Tallahassee and Washington D.C. were working on the complaint this afternoon, and filed the complaint moments before the court’s deadline.

It'll be interesting to see how that works out. You know the NRA will go all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

Today's Must-Read: Remember Joe McCarthy?

Digby gives a good overview of the Nunes memo shenanigans and coming attractions. This part summarizes the attitudes of the hard-core Nunes adherents quite nicely:

It's true that a few others have joined that chorus, signaling that at least a handful of Republicans don't want to be associated with the notion that this memo "vindicates" the president. (Notably, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was not among them.)

Chairman Nunes is undeterred. Axios reported on Sunday:

The House Intelligence chair and his team have told members and associates they've found other examples of politically motivated "wrongdoing" across various agencies, including the FBI, the broader Justice Department, and the State Department . . . Republicans close to Nunes say there could be as many as five additional memos or reports of "wrongdoing."

One wonders if Nunes has any knowledge of that time in 1950 when a senator named Joseph McCarthy pulled out a "list" he claimed had the names of 200 people in the State Department whom he accused of politically motivated wrongdoing. It didn't end well.

I'm sure there will be more memos forthcoming -- Trump's gotten so much mileage out of this one that it makes no sense to stop. And of course, there will be more rebuttals, which Fox News and the base will ignore and the New York Times will find some excuse to discount.

At any rate, read the whole thing -- it's deja vu all over again.

No Surprises Here

Here's a couple of very revealing facts about Republicans and "Christians" in the wake of the accusations against "Judge" Roy Moore:

But the answers to this question are disturbing: "Given the allegations that have come out about Roy Moore’s alleged sexual misconduct against four underage women, are you more or less likely to support him as a result of these allegations?"

Just 38 percent said they now are less likely to vote for Moore, 33 percent say it makes no difference to them, and a nearly one in three Alabama voters (29%) say they are more likely to vote for Moore as a result.

The poll, conducted November 9-11, also says nearly six in 10 (58%) call themselves evangelical Christians.

It's bad enough that 29% of Alabama voters are more likely to vote for Moore after the allegations, but that 33% don't care is even more appalling.

I think it's become quite clear over the past couple of years, and especially since the election of Trump, that evangelical "Christianity" is not a religion and has nothing to do with Christ: it's a tribal identity marked by hating the same people. As long as that's in order, there are no expectations of good behavior or moral probity (except, of course, in calling out the failings of the disfavored groups), especially for men.

(For an illuminating discussion of evangelicals' attitudes toward women and sexual predators, see this post by Digby.)

In other words, it's everything we as a society have been moving away from for the past century.

A Note: Oh, an about all those senators taking back their endorsements, etc.: Moore's not well-liked in Washington to begin with, but he's what they had. Now they have a credible excuse for cutting him loose.

Hard Call

It's really difficult to decide whether Robert Jeffress deserves the Tony Perkins Award for lying as a reflex or the Through the Looking Glass Award for inhabiting an alternate universe. From an appearance on Fox & Friends:

There is a better way to protest social injustice without disrespecting our country or disrespecting our country's leaders. I mean, for example, a few years ago, you had those Oregon Christian bakers who were almost driven into bankruptcy for practicing their faith. That's injustice. But they didn't respond by calling then-President Obama a "bum." Or this football coach you all have covered who was fired for voluntarily praying. He didn't respond to that injustice by failing to stand for the national anthem. I think what these players are doing is absolutely wrong. These players ought to be thanking God that they live in a country where they're not only free to earn millions of dollars every year, but they're also free from the worry of being shot in the head for taking a knee like they would be with the were in North Korea. And I think tens of millions of Americans agree with President Trump when he says they ought to be called out for this. I know this president. President Trump is not a racist. For President Trump, this is not about race, it's about respect of country.

Lie #1: Those "Christian" bakers made off with a cool half million over and above the amount of their fine.

He's lost me on the football coach -- I missed that story.

Lie #2: Donald Trump most certainly is a racist, and proud of it. This is a man (and I use the term loosely) who comes down on black athletes for protesting racial injustice in law enforcement while making it easier for the police to do worse.

Alternate universe: "They're also free from being shot in the head. . . ." No, they can be shot in the head in lieu of a speedding ticket. Or for walking down the street in the wrong neighborhood. Or even in their own neighborhood.

At any rate, he certainly is a disgusting person.

PS: This is the cherry on top:

You know, Ainsley, many of these players claim to be strong Christians, and I believe they are, and I think they ought to remember what Jesus said. Jesus said render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. Jesus said we have a responsibility toward our government. We owe our government just not our taxes, but we owe them our respects and our prayers. And I think that needs to be kept in mind in all of this discussion.

Jesus said a lot of things that Jeffress routinely ignores. Let's start with Matthew 25:31-46 (my favorite). (And I don't see Jeffress, or Tony Perkins, or James Dobson, or any of the Wildmons leading efforts to help out in Puerto Rico, or welcoming refugees, or feeding the hungry, or sheltering the homeless.)

And what about what the government owes us? Like respect for our exercise of our fundamental rights.

Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

God-Botherers to the Fore (Update)

Two stories this morning seem to hang together. First, from NCRM, this article on a Washington Post op ed by Albert Mohler responding to criticisms of the so-called "Nashville Statement." It's a document rife with the trademark "Christian" characteristics of arrogance, smugness, self-absorption, and authoritarianism.

This got a laugh from me:

We signers know ourselves, like all humanity, to be broken by sin. We have no right to face the world from a claim of moral superiority. We know and confess that Christians have often failed to speak the truth in love.

I wonder why they never act like it. He's right about them having no claim to moral superiority: they have no idea what morality really is.

David Badash, in the NCRM article, takes that a little farther:

He also does not address why same-sex marriage, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are his targets, along with those who support the right of a woman to choose to have an abortion.

Why not speak to divorce? Inequality? Immigration? Economic challenges?

Why not speak to the historic Hurricane Harvey, which Mohler's group was apparently unaware was ravaging Texas and Louisiana as they were releasing their statement attacking LGBT people.

"In releasing the Nashville Statement, we in fact are acting out of love and concern for people who are increasingly confused about what God has clarified in Holy Scripture," Mohler says.

In other words, he's doing what evangelical Christians have been doing for decades: calling LGBT people sinners while claiming their "truth," aka hate and condemnation, is love.

He makes a couple of good points: why weren't Mohler -- and Tony Perkins, Donald Wildmon, and the other signers of this "statement", out helping people in Houston? (Can you imagine Tony Perkins ladling out stew in an emergency shelter? Neither can I.) Update: Speaking of Harvey, Joel Osteen just doesn't know when to shut up.

“The reason it may seem like God is not waking up is not because he’s ignoring you, not because he’s uninterested, it’s because he knows you can handle it,” he stated and added that Christians should “take it as a compliment” from God when their lives are impossibly difficult.

I'm sure those people who have lost everything take great comfort in that. (There's video at the link, if you can stand seven-plus minutes of Osteen's teeth.)

As for why they aren't addressing those other issues -- well, how can they make money off of that? I mean, it's not as easy to scare people with divorce as it is with men in the women's bathroom. And Trump has the immigration thing wrapped up.

Oh, and Dr. Mohler? When your idea of love starts with judgment and ends with condemnation, you've really missed the point.

And it seems that the left are not the only ones calling bullshit on the "Nashville Statement":

“Had white evangelicals leaders … withheld support for Mr. Trump after the infamous ‘Access Hollywood’ tapes, maybe their opposition to same-sex marriage would be viewed … as a principled, rather than a bigoted, position,” said Skye Jethani, a prominent Chicago-area pastor and author. The Nashville Statement met such criticism in part because white evangelicals’ broad voting support of Trump, at 81 percent, despite his moral violations, “squandered” their moral authority, he said.

My one problem with that comment is that they -- the signers -- are the only ones who believe they have any moral authority. (I mean, outside their flock of sheep -- and I don't think it's by chance that the Bible repeatedly refers to Christ's followers as "sheep.") Otherwise, he's right: their hypocrisy is dripping all over everything.

And as for Mohler's statement that they were called on the "clarify" God's teaching on human sexuality -- no. The "Nashville Statement," like the Manhattan Declaration, is a manifesto, and an instruction to political leaders. Enter Digby:

He is a violent, cretinous narcissist and his cabinet is filled with Goldman Sachs greedheads and government slashing zealots. His foreign policy is incoherent and national security is totally in the hands of generals. And then there are the theocrats who are getting every last thing they want from their beloved pussy grabbing, sexual predator.

Peter Montgomery surveys the success of the Religious Right under Trump:

Amid the stream of outrage about President Donald Trump that dominates my Facebook feed, one friend desperately sought a silver lining: “Well, at least we don’t have the theocrat Pence as President.” It reminded me that I, like some of my LGBTQ friends, thought during the Republican primary that we would prefer Trump to someone like Ted Cruz, whose unshakeable religious-right ideology and matching policy agenda was clear.

We were wrong. My Facebook friend is wrong. Not only is Trump a reckless and divisive president who shows contempt for anyone who crosses him and who has energized a white nationalist movement that could wreak havoc on American political and social culture for a long time to come—he’s also the best thing that’s ever happened to the religious right.

In case anyone is still wondering, the religious right is not about morality or virtue -- it is about power, which should be obvious to anyone with the slightest acquaintance with the history of the Moral Majority and its successors.

Digby is right in line with my take:

But what's most important about this is the complete breakdown of any pretense that these "Values Voters" have any moral core or are in any way sincere in their beliefs. They are nothing more than a political faction looking for power and they are willing to use any means necessary to achieve it. Let's not ever be confused again or allow the media to use them as some kind of symbol of morality in our politics.

They are beyond hypocrites. They are simply frauds.

And cynical manipulators on top of it. As Digby puts it, this is enough to make me lose my lunch.

Today's Must-Read: The Evangelical Clown Show

I'm not talking about the evangelical "Christians" themselves, but what they seem to be willing to put up with from The Hairpiece. From Jennifer Rubin (yes, that Jennifer Rubin):

No group has been as blindly loyal to President Trump as Christian conservatives. They have not let religion or values get in the way of their support. Consider the “Access Hollywood” tape, the attack on a Gold Star family, a mass of inexplicable ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials (and the president’s open invitation to Russia to continue hacking), the firing of the FBI director, the humiliation of evangelical-favorite Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the politicization of the Boy Scouts, the threats to the special counsel and now an interview with Trump’s out-of-control, potty-mouthed communications director. What about Trump, exactly, reflects their values? (Taking Medicaid away from millions and separating families to deport law-abiding immigrants?) The Trump administration is a clown show — but it’s the evangelicals who supplied the tent, the red noses and the floppy shoes. Each day presents a new insult to the office of the presidency and a repudiation of civilized behavior.

She goes on from there. And the comments are scathing. Read it.

Today's Must-Read: The Right's Moral Vacuum

Tom Sullivan has a good piece at Hullabaloo on the Republican's complete lack of moral foundation:

After decades of accusations from conservatives that the American left advances reprehensible moral relativism, this week we saw that the real sin was having morals of any kind. What the Trump family modeled for the world this week is what it looks like to have none. Watergate veteran John Dean warned during the Bush II administration of the rise of "Conservatives Without Conscience." The Trumps consider that lack a plus.

"What stood out most in the interview was the moral emptiness of the president’s son," Slate's William Saletan wrote after Donald Trump Jr. appeared with Sean Hannity to explain away his meeting last June with a Russian emissary offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. What looks to be a willingness to conspire with a hostile foreign power to undermine an American election, Trump Jr. dismissed as no big deal. “That’s what we do in business. If there’s information out there, you want it." He might have done things differently, but he'd done nothing wrong.

It's not just the Trumps, although more and more I think that they're an accurate reflection of their class -- the movers and shakers, the "job creators," the plutocrats who trade in congressmen and senators -- it's the right as a whole: they've demonstrated time and time again that they have no idea of what morality is about. (This is only one example.)

Sullivan digs deeper, noting this by WaPo columnist Jennifer Rubin:

We have always had in our political culture narcissists, ideologues and flimflammers, but it took the 21st-century GOP to put one in the White House. It took elected leaders such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and the Republican National Committee (not to mention its donors and activists) to wave off Trump’s racists attacks on a federal judge, blatant lies about everything from 9/11 to his own involvement in birtherism, replete evidence of disloyalty to America (i.e. Trump’s “Russia first” policies), misogyny, Islamophobia, ongoing potential violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause (along with a mass of conflicts of interests), firing of an FBI director, and now, evidence that the campaign was willing to enlist a foreign power to defeat Clinton in the presidential election.

Out of its collective sense of victimhood came the GOP’s disdain for not just intellectuals but also intellectualism, science, Economics 101, history and constitutional fidelity. If the Trump children became slaves to money and to their father’s unbridled ego, then the GOP became slaves to its own demons and false narratives. A party that has to deny climate change and insist illegal immigrants are creating a crime wave — because that is what “conservatives” must believe, since liberals do not — is a party that will deny Trump’s complicity in gross misconduct. It’s a party as unfit to govern as Trump is unfit to occupy the White House. It’s not by accident that Trump chose to inhabit the party that has defined itself in opposition to reality and to any “external moral truth or ethical code.”

I'd take Rubin's final comment one step further: the Republican party and its adherents are completely lacking in any moral truth or ethical code whatsoever.

Read it and weep.

Pandering Squared

OK. This one stopped me cold:

An imprint for HarperCollins will publish The Faith of Donald J. Trump: A Spiritual Biography in 2018.

The book will “[draw] on unparalleled access to the White House to explore the rarely discussed, but deeply important, religious beliefs and worldview of Trump and his advisors,” the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) announced. The CBN’s Chief Political Correspondent David Brody will co-author the book with conservative columnist Scott Lamb.

The announcement follows two solid weeks of Donald Trump’s pandering to the evangelical community amidst increasing scrutiny of his administration’s ties to Russia, beginning with his decision to cost taxpayers at least $400,000 to headline the Celebrate Freedom Concert in Washington D.C. with anti-gay pastor Robert Jeffress.

If that's not enough for you, this is what CBN had to say:

“President Trump won over evangelicals not by pandering to them,” CBN wrote in their book announcement, ignoring that he’d pandered to their community since the campaign trail, “but by supporting them and all their most important issues without pretending to be something he’s not.”

The network continued by claiming that “President Trump has surrounded himself with believers who think he is the one guiding figure who can return us to traditional values—hard work, discipline, duty, respect, and faith—that have long been the foundation of American life and truly make America great again in all ways.”

The cynicism on both sides of this is off the scale.

Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge

You may have run across stories about the speech Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III gave behind closed doors to recognized hate group Alliance Defending Freedom. Well, after the threat of a FOIA request from Right Wing Watch, a transcript magically appeared at The Federalist. An excerpt:

Under this administration, religious Americans will be treated neither as an afterthought nor as a problem to be managed. The federal government will actively find ways to accommodate people of all faiths.

The protections enshrined in the Constitution and our laws protect all Americans, including when we work together, speak in the public square, and when we interact with our government. We don’t waive our constitutional rights when we participate fully in public life and civic society.

This administration, and the upcoming guidance, will be animated by that same American view that has led us for 241 years: that every American has a right to believe, worship, and exercise their faith in the public square. It has served this country well, and it has made us not only one of the tolerant countries in the world, it has also helped make us the freeist and most generous. Thank you.

Given Sessions' record, I think the title of this post is amply justified.

By the way -- ADF really doesn't like being called a hate group.

Today in Disgusting People: Weapons-Grade Projection

There are almost too many to pick from today, but I thought this was worthy of note: Rush Limbaugh attacking Steven Hawking on climate change. Being Limbaugh, of course, it's not just Hawking, it's "the left":

He continued, "We're living in dangerous times. The left has so succeeded in dumbing down people that they've even dumbed down themselves. They've dumbed down their professoriat, they've dumbed down their commentariat, they have dumbed down practically everybody in their ranks. They have filled them with paranoia and fear."

And just who is it that's been peddling paranoia and fear for -- what, forty, fifty years?

Today in Disgusting People

Another cafeteria "Christian":

Republican U.S. Congressman Jodey Arrington of Texas this week decided a House hearing debating the future of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was the perfect time to pick and choose a Bible verse to deny the poor food stamps.

After listening to several anti-hunger experts testify on the crisis of food insecurity across the country, including one from a state food bank, a human services agency, and a budget and policy think tank, Rep. Arrington announced he would take five minutes to deliver his own remarks.

"The Scripture tells us in 2 Thessalonians 3-10, he says, 'For even when we were with you we gave you this rule: If a man will not work he shall not eat.' And then he goes on to say, 'We hear that some among you are idle,'" the Texas Congressman preached.

It's called "cherry-picking" and it crops up frequently among evangelicals, especially those who are in it for the money.

Aside from the sheer inappropriateness of using the Christian Bible to support a position on legislation, as I recall, Thessalonians was Paul, not Jesus -- and in fact, Paul never met Jesus and never heard him preach first-hand. Paul was also a piece of work himself: he's the one who lived with a courtesan for a number of years, had a son with her, then left her to marry a rich widow -- and then started preaching against sex.

There's also the fact that he's full of bull-pucky: as the article points out, a minority of those needing food assistance are not working although able: most are children, the elderly, handicapped -- and the working poor. And I have to wonder how many of those able to work can't find jobs because of Republican economic policies -- like giving the "job creators" huge tax breaks so they can create jobs in Mexico, China, Vietnam. . . .

Congressman Arrington might do well to consider the words of the Christ he claims to follow:

From Matthew 25:

41 Then he will say also to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels;

42 for I was hungry, and you didn’t give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink;

43 I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in; naked, and you didn’t clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

44 “Then they will also answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn’t help you?’

45 “Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Most certainly I tell you, because you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.’

46 These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

And we have a First Runner-Up:

Former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, who signed the state’s anti-trans bathroom bill, has celebrated a “deal” to repeal the law as a loss for the LGBT+ community. . . .

But former Governor McCrory, who signed the bill last year, and one of its most vocal supporters, has now spoken out to celebrate the “deal”.

Taking aim at the Human Rights Campaign, which described the deal to repeal the bill as a “disaster”, McCrory said: “The good news is this: the HRC lost the battle… With their resources and power and money, and their trying to get some other corporations to help support them in the battle…[The] fact of the matter is, they did not get a full repeal of HB2.”

Aside from being vicious and petty, McCrory seems to be fairly stupid: you're not supposed to admit things like that, you're supposed to pretend that the new bill repealed HB2 -- which it didn't.

Trump vs. US

Reading through the news this morning, I had a thought: what could make Putin happier than crippling the U.S. intelligence establishment?

Let's start with Trump dismissing intelligence reports that he apparently, from all evidence, has not seen. He'd rather put his confidence in Julian Assange (which position he's now furiously backing away from). My reading is that he wants to sweep Russian involvement in throwing the election as far under the carpet as possible, despite the fact that US intelligence has caught high Russian officials high-fiving each other over Trump's win.

So now he's developed this relationship with the American intelligence community that can only be described as "adversarial." This sort of sums it up, if a bit snarkily:

Priess says the intelligence community will continue to try to adapt to the new president, and suggests “at one extreme that could mean producing the President’s Daily Brief in the form of tweet-length analysis. If the president prefers to have judgments expressed in easy-to-digest short form, that’s doable, and there is precedent for that.”

But then, someone has to get him to read them, and we know that doesn't necessarily happen (especially if the president is preoccupied with making a deal for a new resort development in say, the Crimea). Remember 9/11? There was ample warning of that.

And it seems that mere public criticism isn't enough:

"President-elect Donald Trump, a harsh critic of U.S. intelligence agencies, is working with top advisers on a plan that would restructure and pare back the nation’s top spy agency, people familiar with the planning said," The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday night. "The move is prompted by his belief that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has become bloated and politicized, these people said."

The Journal added, "One of the people familiar with Mr. Trump’s planning said advisers also are working on a plan to restructure the Central Intelligence Agency, cutting back on staffing at its Virginia headquarters and pushing more people out into field posts around the world."

And under the heading "Lame Excuses":

The president-elect, who has been nervously tweeting more frequently in the past days, Thursday morning posted tweets claiming he has only been posting statements from Julian Assange to help "the people" decide what's the truth – a ridiculous and irresponsible excuse akin to a climate change denier or evolution denier insisting there are two sides to the already scientifically settled arguments.

I never thought I'd be one to defend the CIA, but much as I distrust them, we need them.

This is not going unnoticed or unremarked, even in the Senate (even though Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing his best to keep the lid on it):

Senator McCaskill, who thankfully won her seat in 2012, is up for reelection in a very red state, so her voice is something we cannot take for granted. Unless, however, Democrats get off their butts and mobilize like the Tea Party did in 2010, 2018 could mean a 4th Reich for America. McCaskill wants answers, as do most people who prefer the facts.

SEN. MCCASKILL: Who actually is the benefactor of someone who is about to become commander-in-chief trashing the intelligence community?

I assume that the biggest benefactors of the American people having less confidence in the intelligence community fact that the actors you have named today: Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and ISIS. . . .

The notion that the soon elected leader of this country would put Julian Assange on a pedestal compared to the men and women of the intelligence community and the military that is so deeply embedded in the intelligence community, I think it should bring about a hue and cry no matter whether you're Republican or a Democrat. There should be howls! And mark my word if the roles were reversed their would be HOWLS from the Republican side.

Others are not being so gentle:

Malcolm Nance✔
@MalcolmNance

We must finally admit Trump is openly giving aid & comfort to a foreign intelligence agency & a cybercriminal. He is 1 step away fm treason.
1:27 PM - 4 Jan 2017

2,816 2,816 Retweets
4,631

I may update this as I run across more info.

Today's Must-Read: Whither America?

From Ian Millhiser at Think Progress:

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) joked to Republican volunteers on Saturday about gun owners shooting Hillary Clinton. In audio first obtained by CNN, the North Carolina senator talks about wandering into a gun store and seeing a magazine with Clinton’s picture on it. “I was a little bit shocked,” he quips, that “it didn’t have a bullseye on it.”

He later apologized. And, in fairness, it is unlikely that the sitting chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee believes that assassination is the appropriate response to a Democratic woman running for president. But the same recording in which he made those remarks also captures his thoughts on the appropriate response to a Democratic presidency. And it is a constitutional crisis.

“If Hillary Clinton becomes president,” said Burr, who is currently locked in a tight race to keep his seat in the Senate, “I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court.”

Forget about the bulls-eye remark -- that's surface noise and Millhiser makes a little too much of it. (It can just as easily be read as an ironic comment on the propensities of North Carolina Republicans, although given the source, that may be a little too generous.)

What's important is the part about the Supreme Court vacancy, which, as Millhiser points out, echoes comments made by John McCain and Ted Cruz.

The main thrust of the article is the somewhat tattered condition of the Court at this point. We're at the point -- long past it, actually -- where ideology is a prerequisite for consideration of candidates to the bench. The result, depending on who has the majority on any given question, has been disastrous. (Citizens United, Hobby Lobby, and now Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless are, put quite simply, ridiculous decisions)

Which leads me to my own sidebar on Millhiser's essay: I don't think even our "reliable news sources" could cast this as a "both sides do it" scenario. It's quite evident that the majority in this country is still center-left (Millhisers cites some surprising statistics about popular votes, Democratic/Republican, and the make-up of the Senate), and the Republican party is adamantly opposed to most of what the rest of the country favors. Their response is not to rethink their ideology, but to tinker with the system until they get what they want -- gerrymandering, vote suppression, you name it.

And as a footnote, this is what the right wing in this country considers "liberal."

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Republicans Built This

Digby points out that the real danger in Trump's bid for the presidency is not Trump himself, but his supporters:

I'm sorry, but I think people are missing the point. Trump is Trump and saying that he can get away with grabbing women's crotches because he's a star is not really different from him saying "I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and wouldn't lose any voters." He has used blatantly racist, sexist, xenophobic, violent psychopathic language since the first day of his campaign.

This "political incorrectness" is what his followers like about him.

People like this are not going to quietly acquiesce to the idea that Trump was forced to quit the race over saying the word pussy and docilely vote for Mike Pence instead[.]

She has illustrations of some of the hard-core trumpanzees. Click through to view.

And in the post immediately following, she quotes this story from Kurt Eichenwald, who has written extensively about Trump's business dealings and their possible impact on our national security should, gods forbid, he be elected:

Shortly after I wrote an article for Newsweek about how Donald Trump’s business interests could undermine national security should he be elected president, one of his supporters assaulted me. He used the internet to do it.

Read the whole thing -- it's not that easy to excerpt without losing important details. And it's scary. There's not much that frightens me. This does.

The Republicans are madly trying to cover their asses on this, but let's face it: this phenomenon is their creation. Digby goes back to the Tea Party, but the origins are much earlier than that: think about the Moral Majority's rise in the '70s and the way that Reagan and the GOP figured to use them to create a "permanent majority," which only led to the increasing dominance of the "religious" right on the party's policy positions, to the extent that the likes of Tony Perkins drafted portions of the Republican platform. (And note how, after the revelations of the "Pussy Tapes," the "Christian" leaders are standing firm in support of this disaster. Click through to read their comments, which are simply jaw-dropping. And then read the Twitter responses -- Perkins and Company aren't fooling everyone.)

So, the GOP has spent two generations creating this monster and, as monsters tend to do, it's gotten out of control. It's beyond hope that this point that the Republican party is going to come to its senses -- they've become too focused on winning at any cost, and for what? They want to rule, not govern, that's been made plain over the past eight years.

And in the meantime, they've made themselves into the party that stands squarely against everything America means.

Today's Must-Read: The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

Digby nails it again. Considering the stress on Hillary Clinton's "ill health" coming from the right, this is more than relevant:

Back in the 1990s the political establishment made fun of Hillary Clinton for her comment that the press was missing the real story of "the vast right wing conspiracy" that had been dogging her family throughout her husband's presidency. Any mention of it provoked eye-rolls and knowing smirks among the cognoscenti who were all absolutely sure that it was just more evidence of Clinton's guilty conscience over something.

But she was right. And there was some real reporting on it even at the time although as it was revealed, the Republicans would throw out another shiny object and the press pack would go running in the opposite direction like a herd of gazelles so it was very difficult to get a handle on the whole story.

One of the key players is Larry Klayman, whom you may know as "the dumbest lawyer in America no named Mat Staver" (with full credit to Ed Brayton). Klayman specializes in filing frivolous lawsuits, but to give him his due, he's not after winning -- he's after character assassination and causing major headaches for his targets. Digby goes into some detail on his tactics.

The sad part is, it doesn't matter whether any of it is true or not. Digby cites "Cokie's Law" in another article that's worth a look:

Cokie's Law is "it doesn't matter if it's true or not --- it's out there."

The press, of course, eats it up, because it hasn't been about journalism for a long time -- it's all click bait.