The fact that the Right Wing is trying to play this nonsense about Donald Trump every winning any Nobel Prize is actually spit-take funny. I’m thankful I wasn’t drinking water when I heard this, or I would have suffered in a severe manner as the water came out my nose.

No, the Pence White House is not going to be winning any Nobel Prizes -they are the laughingstock of the world at this point, at least during those moments when the world isn’t seriously concerned about the potential for our Tweeter-in-Chief and his minions to generate a nuclear catastrophe. The Pence White House’s approach to North Korea has been to repeatedly attempt to bully its leader in the most childish manner possible – with crude nicknames and bizarre Tweets. I honestly don’t know how anyone would think that would be conduct that merits any kind of award. Granted, if we suddenly witness a major breakthrough between the US and North Korea, I’ll be happy regardless of who the current president is. I just don’t know that we’re going to see any kind of major breakthrough. What we’ve been seeing so far has been North Korea taking advantage of the incompetence of the Pence White House and presenting themselves as the adult in the room and an equal to the US in negotiating strength. All of that inflates the importance of someone like Kim and diminishes the US in the long haul.

The only reason the Right Wing is harping on this is that they continue to resent the fact that President Obama earned a Nobel Peace Prize. (They also continue to fail to understand WHY President Obama was awarded the Prize – it wasn’t for vague ideas of what he would do in the future, as much as the Right Wing wishes that were the case. It was because the Obama White House had very quickly restored a sense of stability to the world and shown that the US was willing to recognize right and wrong and not just its own naked impulses. The Right Wing has never lived that one down, just as they’ve never lived down the fact that President Obama had the temerity to run and win two terms in the White House. Petulantly taking President Obama’s Nobel Prize away from him and giving it to Mike Pence or our Tweeter really is something these guys wish they could do. Thankfully, that’s not something that the Nobel Committee would countenance.

Wolf was a bit harsh with Sanders, but Sanders has more than earned it. She has spent the last year being disrespectful and usually flat-out untruthful to the press corps. She topped that off by shamefully refusing to stand when journalists were given awards at the WHCD this weekend – and it was that disrespect that really fired Wolf up.

There are plenty of prior examples of similarly biting humor at the WHCD – it’s the press equivalent of the earliest, best seasons of SNL at times. Don Imus famously (or infamously) raked the Clintons over the coals in 1996. W took plenty of ribbing (and participated in it himself). Obama saw the WHCD land some solid hits. None of those Presidents hid from the WHCD in terror the way our current Tweeter-in-Chief does. But we shouldn’t be surprised at that – bullies are always cowards by their very nature. Sanders’ presence at the WHCD was frankly the equivalent of Mike Pence’s shameful conduct at the Olympics, where he petulantly sneered through the opening ceremonies because he didn’t want to acknowledge any of the other people sitting near him.

I realize Wolf’s comments may make some people uncomfortable – but I didn’t find her conduct out of line. I do find the suddenly fragile nature of the Right Wing over a comedian’s remarks to be interesting.

I wouldn’t count on this as the last word by any means. After Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner are indicted, we can expect to see Jeff Sessions be forced into a prosecution situation on the Clintons in short order. These guys are not kidding when they spend months and now years chanting “Lock Her Up!” This is simply a matter of time – and a matter of when Trump demands it to happen – after he pardons his own people, of course.

I wish I could say I was surprised to hear about Trump’s on-air tantrum this morning. But I have to be honest – this is nothing unusual for this person. This is just another in a long string of embarrassing childish outbursts from the spokesman for the Pence White House. When the history of this miserable time is written, it will show these years as perhaps the single most embarrassing episode in American history.

And while I’d like to believe that the Democrats have a chance in the House of Reps, the strong GOP gerrymandering of most of the country makes that extremely unlikely. It’s certainly possible, but I haven’t seen any charts that show this as more than a hopeful thought. The Senate, on the other hand, cannot be gerrymandered – and that’s the body that absolutely MUST be flipped if we are to have any sanity in our judiciary.

Trump’s bizarre outburst today just reinforces my hope and belief that the millions of Dems who stayed home in 2016 because they didn’t think it made a difference who won have learned their lesson. We need them to actually show up this year and in 2020.

Fox News (and therefore the Pence White House too) is now in panic mode regarding this attempted appointment. To muddy the waters, they’ve pulled up a few fitness reports from President Obama’s time (when Jackson was only being evaluated in terms of watching the First Family’s health) and are hoping to tie President Obama to any inevitable plunge by Jackson. I wonder if these guys know the difference between a FitRep for a physician and an evaluation of whether the man is capable of running a massive department like the VA. What we see throughout his time as the First Family’s doctor is that he was able to charm whoever was in the White House, regardless of his other issues that were almost certainly not known by the clients.

Not a surprise that Fox News wants to prep its viewers for the expected trashing of the Iran nuclear arrangement. What is a surprise is that the Pence White House has waited this long to get rid of it. I had expected them to dump it by the end of January 2017. The real reason to do this has nothing to do with the nonsensical justifications the Fox personalities are trying to find – it’s just that they want to get rid of it, like they are getting rid of every single other thing accomplished during the 8 years that President Obama worked at the White House.

I also note that while Fox News and hypocrites like Tom Cotton are condemning Dems for not automatically green stamping unqualified candidates like Pompeo, they’re forgetting their own history of obstructionism from just 2 years ago. I suppose Cotton just forgot that he actually sent a letter to Iran during the time the nuclear arrangement was being worked out – a letter that bordered on treasonous as he was telling the Iranians not to sign onto the agreement in direct contravention of what our State Dept was doing at the time. And I note that Fox News cheerled Cotton’s childish behavior at the time. I wonder how they all would respond if a Democratic Senator were to do the same kind of thing?

Hannity’s defense here is perplexing – he wants everyone to believe that he doesn’t know where he’s investing his money and that he doesn’t know where he obtained a loan for tens of millions of dollars as part of that investment. He also wants us to believe that he strategically bought foreclosure properties in run-down areas like Perry, GA out of generosity? He’s got to be kidding.

The reality here is that yes, Hannity is apparently a slumlord in multiple states, and he’s using shell companies to try to hide his involvement in the ventures. If he was such a generous benefactor of the common man, he wouldn’t need shell companies – he’d be talking about the good work he does and trying to play it up to score political points for himself.

From what I can see, there’s nothing illegal in Hannity’s actions here – but that doesn’t mean his behavior is ethically or morally defensible. It just goes to show his character, or lack thereof.

Hannity clearly thinks that if he blusters through this, he’ll skate along as he did after his vicious behavior around the death of Seth Rich last year. He may well be right, given that Fox News apparently doesn’t mind his outright duplicity.

But if something interesting should come out of the document scenario (and that’s what I believe he’s terrified about today), that could change the math very quickly.

I would also note that Hannity cannot claim attorney-client privilege with respect to Michael Cohen if, as he keeps protesting, he was not a client of Cohen’s.

John is correct. The point of the bill is for the Congress, including both parties, to send a clear message to the Pence White House that there will be consequences if Trump tries any funny business. McConnell has clearly been bullied and intimidated out of taking even this small step.

But McConnell is dreaming if he thinks that Trump will sit still after Don Jr and Kushner are indicted. Based on Trump’s behavior so far, we can realistically foresee Trump firing Rosenstein and demanding the next person in that chair fire Mueller. After Mueller is shown the door and Trump has pardoned everyone he wishes, I wouldn’t expect any further reaction from McConnell and the GOP than to reluctantly note that this was inevitable and that we should just move on.

McConnell is blatantly lying, which is not unusual. The Tax Transfer does not give real tax relief to very many people at all. The 80-90% figure he’s trying to tout includes people who may or may not see an additional 5 to 10 bucks in their weekly paychecks. And many of those people may have increased costs in areas like Healthcare, thanks to the GOP’s destruction of the ACA. The supposedly doubled standard deduction is actually inclusive of the eliminated indivdual personal exemption – something that will cost many taxpapers dearly next year. In Blue States, union workers actually face major tax INCREASES, since pretty much all of their deductions have been eliminated aside from the first 10K of state taxes.

The real benefits of this Tax Transfer are for the extremely wealthy and for the mega-corporations who have already been shown to pay very little in taxes in any case.

But that deficit issue is going to be interesting after the midterms – if the GOP maintains their majority in both houses, they will use that issue as a path toward making their long-sought cuts in Social Security and Medicare. All they have to do is invoke the Pay As You Go provision, and the deficit will automatically require those cuts.

Even if the Dems somehow get majorities in both houses, and even if they then were able to pass a correction to the Tax Transfer, it would absolutely be vetoed by the Pence White House in short order. McConnell is correct to note that – although he doesn’t seem to be as smug these days as he was when he stole a Supreme Court seat and then ran around the Senate floor giving his friends high-fives.

Some of the Fox News hosts are making a point of speaking against the “Wag the Dog” move. Carlson has spent the week trying to make it sound like anyone who argues for intervention is stupid, and Ingraham is clearly following along those same lines. OTOH, there are plenty of Fox Hosts who encouraged these strikes and are applauding them.

What all the Fox News hosts are enjoying, regardless of whether they support the actual bombing, is that they can pretend to be covering “real news” as an alternative to the scandalous material that keeps popping from the behavior of the Pence White House and its supporters. Fox News spent this week trying to ignore the ramifications of Trump’s attorney’s files being confiscated, at least when they weren’t openly screaming for Mueller, Rosenstein and everyone else they dislike to be fired. Fox News spent the rest of the week frantically trying to pre-attack James Comey’s book, including some desperate swipes by Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld where they tried to call Comey a “little girl”. Now they can pretend to be more concerned about “serious issues” as the Pence White House launches another pointless bombing mission at the Syrians (and potentially starts a major confrontation with Russia at the same time).

I suppose we should consider Trump’s frantic bombing runs tonight as his way of “Just answering”.

Hannity’s closing sneer makes clear what his actual intention was in his statement. He very much wanted to continue trying to smear Kimmel. And that last little bit was the usual bullying nonsense one would expect from someone as cowardly and frightened as Hannity.

I would suggest that Kimmel call Hannity on his little threat here, and actually play that for his viewers, noting Hannity’s behavior for the childish posturing it is.

Doors is correct. Fox News and AM Radio are doing everything they can to prop up the Pence White House, specifically to avoid the fate that befell Nixon. (And Nixon got off easy – he should have been impeached and convicted for his conduct, rather than being allowed to slink away in the night.)

Rush Limbaugh actually put the cherry on the sundae yesterday when he dragged out the old “criminalization of policy differences” lie from the Reagan years, and demanded that Trump simply pardon everyone in Mueller’s crosshairs, including himself. Limbaugh apparently doesn’t know that the Right Wing canard about “criminalization of policy differences” doesn’t work when we’re discussing the pursuit of political ends through criminal means. And Limbaugh is also leaving out most of the facts of what happened with Bush’s outrageous behavior on his way out of office.

It’s fairly clear that there will be no accountability for the Pence White House in what happened here. It looks more and more inevitable that Trump will move to fire Rosenstein and anyone else he can at Justice, including potentially a direct move to fire Mueller if he thinks he can get away with it. Right Wing media will then line up behind the Pence White House and repeat their party line that Trump had no choice and Mueller needed to go. Right Wing politicians will then make a few comments for show about regretting the current political environment and then tell everyone to move along. Geraldo Rivera was correct when he told Hannity that Nixon could have survived Watergate if he’d had the media sycophants that this bunch of deplorables do today.

Ingraham is blatantly lying, as usual for her.

To start with, her argument about the Reagan years is based on a false premise. Today’s Right Wingers would have you believe that the 1980s were all about patriotism and “happy warrior” conservative values after the “cultural malaise” of the Carter years. As someone who lived through the 70s and the 80s, I can attest that this is another Right Wing attempt to rewrite history. The actual history is a bit less rosy. In truth, the Reagan years was a bitter and vicious time, where Nixon-era Right Wingers tried to bully the rest of the country, and where military contractors made out like bandits on everyone else’s dime. The 1980s was a time when most of the USA was justifiably worried that Ronald Reagan would bumble us into a nuclear war, something that was decidedly not helped by Reagan’s radio gaffe where he told the not-so-funny joke about dropping bombs on Russia “in five minutes!” In addition to the massive nuclear threat of the time, there was also the spectre of the thousands upon thousands of Central Americans who were dying every year while we poured money at the death squads who were killing them. And at home, we saw a resurgence of nativism and greed that generated millions for the lucky few at the top before triggering a stock market crash in 1987 and a Savings and Loan debacle that devastated millions of people.

Ingraham has also blatantly lied about Reagan’s conduct in the 1960s in California, when he angrily sent the National Guard after Berkeley protesters and actually talked in public about getting the “bloodbath” over with if that was what it was going to take to restore Right Wing law and order on the UC Berkeley campus after years of Free Speech protests. Reagan wasn’t showing leadership when he tried to brutalize the protesters. He was showing his hatred of the protesters and of their values. The result of Reagan’s viciousness wasn’t that the protests were ended by any means. Instead, Reagan’s troops made life a misery for tens of thousands of students and residents in Berkeley, including the tear-gassing of the campus and the neighborhoods, and the shooting of Berkeley students, including the killing of James Rector. And Reagan wasn’t looking to “lead” California by attacking Berkeley – he was looking to enhance his credibility with the Right Wing in California and the whole country. (Reagan’s actual legacy both as a governor and as a president was unfortunate, as history records. He was popular at the time because the economy appeared to be doing a little better for a few years before the inevitable crash, and because he was a skilled public speaker who knew how to present himself as “folksy”. But by the end of his presidency, with the economy and the country’s world standing in ruins, his popularity had actually plunged. His VP, George HW Bush, only squeaked into the White House due to the blandness of the Democratic candidate, and due to a vicious smear campaign inflicted by Lee Atwater in 1988 regarding a paroled inmate in Massachusetts.)

Ingraham’s attempt to dig up Right Wing smears from 2016 and 2017 is nonsensical. First she tries to play up a riot that happened around a Trump Convention of Hatred in Santa Clara. Then she tries to ignore the reality of the Right Wing-generated disturbances in Berkeley in 2017. (For the record, Milo Yiannopoulous was not just setting up a genteel speaking event a year ago – he was knowingly trying to generate a riot by announcing he was about to publicly read a list of names and then say those were illegal aliens who should all be deported. In other words, Milo was openly declaring he intended to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. If anything, we should be relieved that Milo’s threats didn’t generate even more of an extreme response. And then we had the nonsense spectacle of Ann Coulter being fraudulently promised a speaking date by the Berkeley Campus Republicans when in fact no venue was available for her. And that’s not to even get into the Right Wing hate-a-thon that was inflicted in April 2017 in a Berkeley park, which predictably led to Right-Left clashes when the locals made clear that they would not tolerate Nazi propaganda in their neighborhoods.)

As for Laura Ingraham’s situation today, it has nothing to do with her free speech rights being infringed or “silenced.” This is about the fact that she picked a fight with a high school student and tried to bully him over his college admission situation. And then the student was able to reach her audience and advertisers and had an impact. Of course, she and Fox News will find new advertisers. But the point has been made, and one hopes that Ingraham will learn her lesson. Gloating with Sean Hannity upon her return to the airwaves is not the way to handle that situation.

If Laura Ingraham is so concerned about bullying, then perhaps she should not be engaging in it.

Interesting to hear a lecture about respecting federal authority from a person who regularly took pleasure in disrespecting anything that came from President Obama. I wonder if she realizes that the photo of her temper tantrum at President Obama on the tarmac is still in the public record?

Rasmussen Reports is not a legitimate polling source. They are an openly Right Wing operation with an agenda to help Republicans win elections. Their practices have been documented and debunked over time, particularly in their shameful performance in the 2012 election, where both they and Gallup were completely discredited. Rasmussen should really be understood as a Right Wing entertainment channel– essentially a conservative group that tells Rush Limbaugh listeners what they’d like to hear.

Rasmussen’s usual approach throughout a campaign is to tip their polling results several points in the favor of the Right Wing candidate. Their intent is clearly to encourage the GOP voters to show up, and to depress the turnout for the Democratic Party members. (By playing the situation as one where the Right Winger is obviously going to win, Rasmussen can subtly discourage anyone else from participating – why would you, since your candidate is obviously going down to defeat?) But there’s another level to Rasmussen’s strategy: they’re also working to tip the numbers in any aggregate polling. By throwing in wildly tilted polling numbers, they can artificially push up the average numbers for GOP candidates and artificially lower the average numbers for Democrats. Of course, they’re regularly defused by aggregators who pay attention, like the guys at Five Thirty-Eight, who adjust the Rasmussen numbers to something closer to reality before including them in their calculations.

In many elections through 2010, Rasmussen’s admininstators would be sure to keep their thumbs on the scale so that the GOP candidates would appear to have a big lead if the situation was actually close, and a neck-and-neck race if the Democratic candidate was actually ahead. This was intended to keep the GOP voters involved and interested as long as possible. When these races would enter their final week, Rasmussen would suddenly shift to razor-sharp accurate polling, which would suddenly change their numbers back to reality. This would serve two purposes. In the first place, it would shock GOP voters into feeling some urgency to show up at the polls, as the races would magically appear to tighten at the last second. In the second, it allowed Right Wing outlets like Fox News to promote Rasmussen throughout an election year as “the most accurate polling service there is!”, particularly as they would only focus that statement on the final week of the campaign in question.

In 2012, Rasmussen and Gallup, along with multiple Right Wing analysts, made a choice to keep their thumbs on the scale all the way through Election Day – in the hope that they could somehow depress the Democratic turnout and goose the GOP enough to get Mitt Romney across the finish line and banish the hated Barack Obama from the White House. (Dick Morris admitted as much in the weeks after the humiliation of that election set in.) Rasmussen’s behavior helped bolster the confidence of Fox News pundits and even of Mitt Romney himself, as he didn’t bother to prepare a concession speech until after the reality set in on the fateful night. Again, in the fallout of the 2012 situation, both Rasmussen and Gallup were exposed for what they were doing. Gallup said they would no longer participate in presidential contests, but perhaps they’ll change their mind at some time. Rasmussen, on the other hand, was a lot more brazen – they calculated that people would forget their track record with just a little time.

Fox News and multiple AM radio hosts are now trying to promote Rasmussen Reports, under their new meme that “Rasmussen was exactly right about how 2016 would turn out!” The problem there is that multiple outlets allowed for a Trump victory, including Five Thirty-Eight, and always with a note that this was possible if Trump’s base turned out and the Democratic voters didn’t. What we saw in 2016 was exactly that scenario. Rasmussen doesn’t suddenly get extra points for, in the final minutes of the campaign, noting the same stats that multiple other pollsters and aggregators had clocked. And Rasmussen does not get to run away from their record.

I find it interesting that Brit Hume is saying even a single word about this matter. Of all the people to be discussing inappropriate questions at the White House, Brit Hume is particularly compromised. I want to remind everyone that Hume disgraced himself when he tried to throw a “gotcha” barb at Bill Clinton on June 14, 1993 at the event where Clinton announced his nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court seat that had been held by Byron “Whizzer” White. Clinton had given a good introduction to both White and Ginsburg, and she had gone on to discuss her background and the history of women serving in the judiciary. Hume jumped up as soon as Ginsburg had finished her remarks and threw the following grenade at Bill Clinton’s head as soon as Clinton waved at him to go ahead and ask his question: “The withdrawal of the Guinier nomination, Sir, and your apparent focus on Judge Breyer, and your turn, late it seems, to Judge Ginsburg may have created an impression, perhaps unfair, of a certain zig-zag quality in the decision-making process here. I wonder, Sir, if you could kind of walk us through it, perhaps disabuse us of any notion we might have along those lines. Thank you.” The nastiness of that “question” was not lost on the crowd, some of whom looked at Hume in shock. Clinton calmly but firmly responded “I have long since given up the thought that I could disabuse some of you of turning any substantive decision into anything but political process. How you could ask a question like that after the statement she just made is beyond me.” Clinton let that sink in, and the crowd gave his response a standing ovation, at which point the event ended.

Hume’s nastiness was then cheered on by AM radio hosts, particularly Rush Limbaugh, which led to more and more Right Wing press people like Hume trying to get their fifteen minutes of fame by asking a vicious “gotcha” on-air and getting in a good, solid cheap shot. Fox News is more than familiar with this approach, given that Ed Henry specialized in it throughout nearly the entire 8 years of President Obama’s two terms and throughout Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. This site has been extremely helpful in documenting Henry’s repeated attempts to “just ask a question” that was really a loaded spinball. (Henry of course had to take 4 months off in 2016 from his regular gotchas when he was himself exposed for having had an extramarital affair with a Las Vegas stripper…)

In fact, throughout President Obama’s time in office, there were repeated spectacles of Right Wingers trying to publicly attack and embarrass him. Who can forget Congressman Joe Wilson shouting “You LIE!” in the middle of a September 2009 address to Congress? And who can forget Rush Limbaugh and the harder line Right Wingers joyfully defending Wilson’s action? And if we’re going to mention Neil Munro’s shameful behavior at the Rose Garden, we must also remember that Fox News happily celebrated the heckling, with Sean Hannity bringing Munro on for a friendly rehab session where they could enjoy the moment again. And we must remember that Tucker Carlson, who was Munro’s editor at the time at the Daily Caller, defended Munro at the time, saying “This is what reporters are supposed to do.” Where Carlson finds the gall to act judgmental about actual reporters at actual news outlets is frankly beyond me, to quote President Clinton from 1993.

And let’s remember that Jim Acosta’s question came only after Trump made a series of childish remarks at the Easter Egg Roll, including a few head-scratchers such as where Trump forgot that the White House actually has a name: The White House. And Trump wanted to make sure the kids at the Egg Roll were aware that he thinks the economy is doing better than EVER before, and he wanted the kids to know that 700 million dollars was going to the military, so that the military is better funded than EVER before, etc. Meaning that Jim Acosta’s questions were more than appropriate. If Pence’s spokesman was going to make comments about how great everything is in the economy and military, and if he was going to send out so many vicious statements about getting rid of DACA and his hatred of Mexicans, then he should have been prepared to answer questions in that area. And from the videos we’ve seen, Trump had no problem answering Acosta, in that he proceeded to repeat his falsehoods about DACA and immigrants – which is why Acosta followed up with the note that it was Trump who killed the DACA program, not the Democratic Party. The Right Wing has no moral ground (or any other ground) to protest against Acosta asking questions. If they don’t want Pence’s spokesman to be called out for telling falsehoods, I’d recommend not having Trump say the falsehoods in the first place.

It’s important to note that our Tweeter-in-Chief’s vicious Sunday morning comments came AFTER that Saturday outing. It is also known that Hannity dined with Trump, among other guests. It is not a stretch to see that Trump’s sudden outburst at Democrats and immigrants came following not only a nonsensical Fox & Friends segment but hours of Hannity pouring these unctions into his ears.

I frankly don’t believe we’ve ever had a scenario where angry Right Wing pundits were actively lobbying a sitting President and seeing their worst impulses actually getting purchase. It is because of this that Pence thought he could get away with the vicious racist proposal he tried to inflict regarding DACA. And now we have multiple Far Right agitators pushing a meme about having the US military invade Mexican territory to set up barrier checkpoints on Mexican soil. (Idea being to interdict anyone they can before they actually get their feet to US soil and become eligible for asylum or anything else. Since the laws are clear about asylum seekers’ rights once they are on US soil, the new Right Wing push is to head that off by preventing them from getting that far.) From what I can tell, Pence’s new plan of having the US military send divisions down to the Mexican border isn’t about the wall that won’t be built – it’s about pushing into Mexico in a hostile fashion to make this Right Wing fantasy a reality. If and when this happens, I really hope that Americans are paying attention – particularly the ones in the swing states who didn’t show up in 2016 and left us with this mess for at least the next 2 3/4 years.

I wouldn’t be pronouncing the end for Laura Ingraham just yet. All that’s happened is that some sponsors have chosen not to support her show. Like Rush Limbaugh before her, she’ll just get other sponsors.

Her problem here isn’t that she was serially harassing her staff or generating multi-million dollar lawsuits Fox News would need to cover up. Her problem is that she is simply a nasty person and for once, she was called out on her behavior.

I expect she’ll be back in a week and back up to her viciousness the moment she gets back. Keep in mind that the viciousness is a big part of the reason why Fox News wanted her to do a primetime show in the first place.