A Mile Wide, An Inch Deep

Julie Swetnick A third woman, Julie Swetnick, has come forward alleging sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh and his best friend in high school, Mark Judge. ( Link to the affidavit . Allegations are disturbing so warning in advance.) Mark Judge—now a conservative writer with a long history of making misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic statements—is also a witness and accomplice to the attempted rape alleged by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Swetnick has stated her allegations in an affidavit under oath and is calling for an FBI investigation. Her  allegations align with  those made by Ford, Deborah Ramirez, and  Mark Judge's high school girlfriend . Two quick asides: 1- Swetnick is represented by Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels lawyer, and Republicans are trying to make him the story , instead of responding to what Swetnick has said under oath. 2- After  Ramirez came forward in the New Yorker , the New York Times ran an absolute shit hit piece on Ramirez...

This week we’re on red alert in response to reports that Republican leadership is gearing up for a vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and gut Medicaid the week of September 25 , with a sham hearing possible before then. Now is the time to call, write, and rally to urge the Senate to reject this new threat and support a bipartisan package instead. The bill, known as Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson for its sponsors Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Dean Heller (R-NV), and Ron Johnson (R-WI), is being sold as a “compromise” and “non-partisan” solution—even though no Democrats support it. But not only is Graham-Cassidy not a compromise, it is the most radical proposal yet. And like the proposals that preceded it, the bill goes far beyond Republicans’ campaign pledge to repeal the ACA; it also attacks long-standing traditional Medicaid. Republicans only have two weeks to ram through repeal with just 50 senators and Vice President Mike Pence because on Sept...

Wondering what’s next after the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was dramatically stopped in its tracks last week ? This week has brought a new round of legislative threats and another promise from a petulant president to actively sabotage the law at the expense of millions of Americans who rely on it for their care. Radical bill from "moderate" senators This week, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), and Dean Heller (R-NV) announced that they are working on yet another extreme GOP-only bill with the House Freedom Caucus to gut the ACA. The bill would repeal the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and its financial assistance to help low- and moderate-income households purchase private insurance. In their place, the bill would give states a block grant worth less than what the federal government would contribute under current law. Furthermore, the states that expanded Medicaid would be cut deeply while the 19 states that have refused to e...

Published November 14, 2016 Updated January 15, 2017 Republicans plan to use a parliamentary tool known as 'budget reconciliation' to pass a partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act (the ACA, aka Obamacare). If reconciliation sounds familiar, it's because Republicans denounced it with great gnashing of teeth in 2010 when they claimed that Democrats were using it to ram the ACA through Congress. I was a Democratic congressional staffer at the time, working on budget policy for a member of the House Budget Committee; I can tell you, we didn't ram through the ACA, with reconciliation or otherwise. But don't take my word for it. Take John McCain's . Or read Jonathan Chait's short and 100% accurate piece: "Every Republican Lie About Passing Obamacare Is True About Repealing It." Or see Norm Ornstein's excellent "The Real Story of Obamacare's Birth," which also covers the myriad ways in which Democrats sought to work with R...

A friend posted this Seth Meyers video and it's well worth the watch. But it's actually what Meyers left out that scares me most: Trump's two biggest allies this year have been ... Vladimir Putin and rogue agents in the FBI . (!) Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election. ... “The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent. I commented on my friend's post: I could actually live with a president who brags about sexual assault, stiffs small business contractors and defrauds working class students trying to get college degrees, cheats on his income taxes, and illegally uses his charity as a front to enrich himself . Perhaps I could even live with one who incites violence against minority groups and buddies up to white supremacists, one who doesn't understand the basic policy 101 details of his own proposals,...

A response in two parts.  Part One.  There is a Republican equivalent of Hillary Clinton and it’s not Donald Trump. It’s Mitt Romney.  Most of what shapes your opinion of Clinton isn’t true. Rather, it’s truthy , and the direct result of a 30-year-long smear campaign, very little of which has ever turned out to be true. It’s the way that many Democrats still think George W. Bush went AWOL during Vietnam even though the documents alleging it were almost immediately debunked and the way some liberals think Romney paid $0 in federal taxes because Harry Reid said so. Accusations get a lot of coverage, particularly in partisan media; debunking gets almost none. T his is what I do for a living, so I end up hav ing to read everything. I don’t design jet engines or treat patients or program software or fill cavities five days a week. I do this.* I like to joke that I read more National Review and American Spectator in any given week than most of my Republican ...