Epic Mar-a-No-No: Al Franken 2020?

Mika Brzezinski's Twitter response
to Trump's buffoonery

After reading about Donald Trump's remarkably juvenile insults earlier this morning aimed at MSNBC Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, I'm officially turning my focus to the 2020 presidential race.    

It's a bit early, sure, but why not?

America's resident liar-in-chief stunned political observers by holding a $35,000-a-plate campaign funding event on Wednesday evening just over four months into his so-called presidency.

An event Norm Eisen, who served as the top ethics lawyer under President Obama, called a clear violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution because it was held at a Trump-owned hotel located in a building he leases from the U.S. government.

Maybe Republicans define "Making America Great Again" as totally ignoring laws that govern ethics?

If you're reading this you've likely heard that Trump's trite misogynistic comments were widely criticized by leading Republican and Democratic politicians - and Brzezinski herself shot back with a tweet (pictured above) featuring a box of Cheerios that served as a not-so-subtle shot at 45's notoriously tiny hands.

The whole debacle was made worse by Scarborough and Brzezinski's revelation this morning that Trump's politically-inexperienced lackey-son-in-law Jared Kushner personally relayed his delusional father-in-law's threat to use his ties with David Pecker, the owner of the company that owns the sleazy grocery store gossip rag National Inquirer, to prevent a piece trashing the MSNBC duo from being published if they would publicly apologize to the astonishingly thin-skinned president.

While most people would consider it beneath the dignity of the office of the president to engage in crass blackmail, is hardly a surprising tactic for Trump.

And for all the outrage Trump's latest tweet has generated, there's little question it was intended to do one thing only - to distract.

Especially given the bombshell report by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday about a May interview in which former conservative political operative Peter W. Smith admitted working with Russian hackers to try and hack Hillary Clinton's email server in order to give the information to Michael Flynn - who was serving as the national security adviser for the Trump campaign.

"Opposition researcher" Peter W. Smith

Political wonks may recall Smith, described by Wall Street Journal reporter Shane Harris as "a private equity executive from Chicago active in Republican politics",  as one of the ideological sleaze-bags responsible for dredging up unproven accusations by former Arkansas State Troopers of marital infidelity by former President Bill Clinton in the 90's.

Did Smith really sink to the same level of partisan obsession to try and actively work with Russian hackers (during the 2016 presidential campaign no less) in order to try and illegally access Hilary Clinton's private emails in order to intentionally torpedo her chances of being elected?

The WSJ, owned by Rupert Murdoch and hardly a bastion of liberal political perspective, certainly thinks so based on Harris' article published on Thursday.

I'm ready to get behind a candidate now.

And based on the political calendar, the 2020 presidential race isn't actually that far off.

Considering the disaster that befell the American people last November and the terrifying ramifications of the loony political agenda of the current Republican-majority House and Senate, 2020 is quickly shaping up to be one of the most important presidential elections for the Democratic Party in decades.

One of the more interesting political profiles I've read lately was Mark Binelli's piece on the progressive Minnesota Democratic Senator Al Franken in the June 15th issue of Rolling Stone.

From my perspective, the former Saturday Night Live writer and occasional cast-member is quickly shaping up to be the progressive front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Think that's far-fetched?

Remember one of the normal prerequisites of any American presidential candidate (the afore-mentioned Trump excepted) is the publication of a memoir that reveals something substantive about who they are, where they come from, and what their vision for the country is.

Democratic Senator Al Franken

Franken has already checked that box having lately been out and about promoting his appropriately irreverently-titled new memoir Al Franken, Giant of the Senate.

The other morning Franken was interviewed on the Brian Lehrer Show to share his insights on the pending Republican healthcare bill, why voters are attracted to Trump and his reflections on the bedrock values of the Democratic Party.

I think this guy is the kind of president this country needs now more than ever.


Franken is a well-informed intellectual progressive policy-wonk who has acknowledged the former Democratic Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone as a political mentor and who knows and understands the minutiae of the policy that lies behind political legislation.

As his deft handling of the questioning of Attorney General Jeff Sessions before the Senate Intelligence Committee during recent hearings on Russian influence in the 2016 presidential elections demonstrates, this guy can hold his own in complex investigations on Capitol Hill.

From a progressive political standpoint this guy is the real deal.

During the Republican-engineered government shutdown in 2013, he donated his Senate salary to a Minnesota-based hunger relief organization called Second Harvest Heartland.

As Mark Binelli wrote in his June 15th Rolling Stone piece, Franken has effectively utilized his more than ten years as a comedy writer for SNL to help "shape the modern comedic voice of lefty dissent - pointed fact-checking as mocking entertainment - that would become de rigueur on shows like The Daily Show and its many spawn."  

From a progressive standpoint he can arguably be called a visionary of 21st century politics.

But more importantly, this is a guy who stands up for the common man, not because he's checking off some box, but because it's the right thing to do, it's what he believes in, and because that's the kind of man he is.

So let me close out the month of June by saying that Al Franken is the kind of man that Americans could get behind as the Democratic candidate for president in 2020 - and for what it's worth I don't say that lightly.

In my next blog, I'll share a story about a personal encounter I had with him in New York City that illustrates his natural inclination to stand up for the little guy.

Lost In the Bushes

Paranoid? Or just delusional?

In a Washington Post article on Saturday, reporter Phillip Rucker quoted an unnamed high level Republican source close to the White House as worrying that Trump is "in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion." 

Arguably, millions of people had already reached that conclusion the moment Trump launched his 2016 presidential campaign by accusing Mexicans of being rapists and drug dealers.

Particularly given the widely-respected Constitutional scholar and Harvard law professor law professor Laurence Tribe's op-ed in the Washington Post on Saturday explaining why Trump needs to be impeached.

Let's be clear, even though I'm admittedly somewhat biased in the political sense, I'm not simply saying Trump needs to be impeached because I don't agree with his political views.

This guy has obstructed justice and continues to violate Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution due to the astonishing range of ways in which he continues to use the power and influence of his office to directly channel financial profit to himself and his family.

Late this afternoon WaPo reported that Trump revealed highly classified intel on a possible ISIS attack with (of all people) the Russian ambassador and the Russian foreign minister during a meeting at the White House last week - the day AFTER he fired the FBI director leading the investigation into links between Russia and members of the Trump administration.

Part of the title of my previous blog, in which I used the term "car-wreck presidency" to describe the unmitigated chaos of the current presidential administration, it's a phrase borrowed from journalist Matt Taibbi's words from his April 6th Rolling Stone article, "Trump the Destroyer".

It's not my habit to assign homework or anything on this blog, but if you do have the time and haven't already done so, I would highly recommend you take some time to read it.

I've found it helpful to put Trump's publicly warning former-FBI Director James Comey about "leaking to the press" on Friday just days after firing him, into some kind of context.
  

Republican Senator Dean Heller

Trump's (latest) actions are so far outside the boundaries of normalcy and ethics that even some Republicans, including Nevada Senator Dean Heller, are now saying that an independent investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections and links between Russia and members of the Trump administration "should be on the table".  

The erratic POTUS is loosing popular support, even among his own base.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in the wake of Comey's firing puts Trump's approval rating at an anemic 29%.

According to a Newsweek article by Tim Marcin last Thursday, Trump is actually loosing significant support among the segment of white voters who elected him in November.      

Any newly-elected presidential administration is going to have it's fair share of missteps as a new commander-in-chief and the staff responsible for handling the herculean complexity of running the executive branch of the federal government learn how to operate the levers of power.

But the baffling jumble of policy announcements and executive orders, which are often contradicted by Trump's own nonsensical Tweets or statements, sew disorder and confusion.

The daily White House press briefings conducted by Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (the daughter of former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee) are so rife with false statements and bogus facts that they're now being openly ridiculed by many in mainstream media

Spicey answering questions in near darkness Tuesday

For Pete's sake, on Tuesday night poor Spicey spent several minutes hiding in the bushes outside the White House in an attempt to avoid talking with reporters demanding answers about Trump firing the FBI Director.

Take a couple minutes to watch CNN's Don Lemon laugh at Spicer's attempts to justify the fact that Congress will not authorize billions for Trump to build the "beautiful wall" along the southern border with Mexico that he made a central theme of his campaign.

Each day it seems like this presidency gets more and more surreal.

At this point it's more of a horror show-circus than a presidential administration.

As Politico reported earlier today, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus scolded members of the senior staff for putting clips of fake news on Trump's desk.

Including the embattled former Fox News commentator Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland, who slipped POTUS a copy of a phony Time Magazine cover about climate change.

Seriously, what kind of White House is this when a Fox News opinionator can slip into the Oval Office and put a fake magazine cover that's been known as an Internet hoax for years on the desk of the president?

The Trump administration conducts itself like some kind of vindictive, punch-drunk boxer who ignores the rules of the ring, issuing right-hand hooks, sweeping jabs, sneaky upper cuts and body blows even after the bell rings - not just to win, but to try and pummel the opponent into submission.

That's just how Trump, who famously fawns over authoritarian leaders who trample human rights and jail or kill their political opponents, and considers Roy Cohn a mentor, operates.

Trump with Machiavellian mentor Roy Cohn

Cohn is the combative, Machiavellian attorney who served as the chief counsel to anti-Communist crusader Senator Joseph McCarthy during the controversial Senate hearings into wide-ranging Communist infiltration of the U.S. government in the 1950's.

He later represented notorious Mafia figures like "Fat Tony" Salerno and John Gotti and is widely considered the man who shaped Trump's propensity to respond to any disagreement with all out war.

To regard any critique as an insult and keep a lengthy enemies list.

Trump first hired Cohn to represent him in the early 1970's when the government accused the Trump organization of widespread discrimination against African-American applicants in Trump-managed apartment complexes in New York and Virginia.

Cohn died 31 years ago but his influence on the chaotic and combative 45's White House is very much alive today.

Given everything else going on in the world today, it's not easy for the average American citizen to keep up with everything White House Inc. is doing and what Trump's strategy for governing actually is.

The glimpses we do get are genuinely horrifying.

On Friday Jessica Huseman of ProPublica reported that Trump is expecting to tap the conservative talk radio host from Iowa Sam Clovis as the undersecretary of the US Department of Agriculture; a position normally held by scientists with years of experience in research and economics.

Sam Clovis: Science? Who needs science?

So a guy with zero scientific knowledge or degree who's loyal to Trump and denies the existence of climate change, will likely head up the department that manages research for the USDA - a federal department with over 100,000 employees and a yearly budget of almost $140 billion.

That's the department responsible for creating the federal laws that govern forestry, farming, and food.


It also oversees the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) that provides poor and working class Americans with food stamp assistance.

What's going to happen to American kids and families who depend on SNAP with Sam Clovis at USDA is too scary to ponder.

To sit down and look at the totality of how this White House operates and what it's priorities are is to face the horror of this presidency; and the damage it's doing to America's reputation, political institutions and the people those institutions are supposed to serve.

Sean Spicer huddling in the bushes while trying to avoid answering questions from the press about why the president fired the director of the FBI is an apt metaphor for Donald Trump's presidency.

An administration huddling in the bushes of lies in a forest of secrecy to avoid the scrutiny of a free and open press - and the American people they're supposed to serve.

Is Trump truly "in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion" as Phillip Rucker says a Republican insider suggests?

Based on his decisions, actions and words in the past few weeks, sadly for America, it seems likely.

Polarization In the Pipeline

Opposition to DAPL in Oklahoma on Tuesday

Critics of America's divisive new POTUS have pointed to his unpredictability as one of the numerous flaws in his shaky leadership style.

But on the first Tuesday of this fledgling administration Trump was anything but unpredictable as he signed a slew of executive orders that read like the start of an all-out assault on the environmental protections that keep our air, water and soil safe.



It's probably safe to say that those executive orders were, in part, a reaction to the fact his fragile ego is likely still bruised from all the Women's Marches that took place across America (and the world) on Saturday.

Trump's latest political boasting includes pledges to kickstart the stalled Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, but if he had even a remote interest in reuniting a country left divided by his toxic presidential campaign, this was clearly not the move. But he did it anyway.

As a brief snapshot-reminder of just how divisive these pipeline projects are, my good friend and former high school classmate James sent me the above photo his wife took yesterday afternoon.

Now some of you may recall that James is a resident of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma, a state where rampant natural gas fracking has already caused an exponential increase in earthquake activity - and yes, the state where Scott Pruitt, Trump's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency served as attorney general.

James and his wife were just outside of Ada, Oklahoma on Tuesday when they saw the car pictured above with hand-drawn letters covering the back windshield spelling out the widely-shared Twitter hashtag,  #NoDAPL and the words "Water Is Life."

Major Canadian & U.S. pipelines 

It was encouraging to see that kind of grass roots resistance popping up so quickly after Trump's announcement about moving forward on both controversial pipeline projects.

The White House announcements also sparked quick reactions from environmental groups and politicians in Washington as well.

Including Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The feisty former Democratic candidate, who made opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline a plank of his presidential campaign, defiantly Tweeted that "I will do everything I can to stop Keystone XL and DAPL."

Native American activists who spent months protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline quickly announced plans to oppose it in court if necessary, but the larger trend is troubling for America's natural, political and ethical environments.

Remember, Trump stands to reap massive personal windfalls as a direct result of his using his executive powers to push to approve these pipelines.

Most reasonable-minded folks would call that conflict of interest...on steroids.

Not only has the unpopular POTUS disclosed large personal investments in some of the major oil companies that have partnered to invest in building the DAPL, as Greenpeace.org reported he's accepted large campaign contributions from the CEO of the largest fracking company in America Harold Hamm.

Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners

Kelcy Warren, the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the DAPL, donated $100,300 in campaign contributions to Trump's presidential campaign.

Trump is already facing a potential lawsuit filed on Monday by a team of legal and Constitutional scholars and experts who argue that his tangled secretive web of foreign investments represents a clear violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

We should all familiarize ourselves with the Emoluments Clause by the way, the way Trump's transition is going, odds are good that we'll be hearing about it again soon.

The massive grassroots opposition to the DAPL and Keystone XL isn't just about those two specific projects, it's also about the larger threat to America's environmental protections that are now in the hands of a Republican president who thinks climate change is a "hoax" cooked up by the Chinese, and a Republican Congress largely bought and paid for the nations largest oil and gas companies.

There are other large-scale pipeline projects in the works that have received far less national media attention which also pose grave potential threats to the natural environment.

Like the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana.

As New Orleans reporter Aviva Shen reported in an article posted on ThinkProgress.org back on January 14th, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline would form the final leg of the Dakota Access Route, forming a "bridge" pipeline that would link to an existing pipeline that stretches from Nederaland, Texas to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Section of swamp in the Atchafalaya Basin

As Shen notes:

"The Bayou Bridge Pipeline would carry 480,000 barrels of oil a day a final 162 miles across the state to refineries and ports, through eight watersheds and long stretches of fragile wetlands."

That includes parts of the Atchafalaya Basin, a fragile system of rivers, swamps, bayous and wetlands covering 1.4 million acres that stretches 140 miles across central Louisiana.

Not only is it a National Heritage site, it's the largest area of wetlands and swamp in the United States teeming with wildlife where the Atchafalaya River meets the Gulf of Mexico.

The idea of a pipeline that carries 480,000 barrels of crude oil a day rupturing in a remote section of the Atchafalaya Basin is like imagining an environmental crime of incalculable proportions.

And remember that's oil we (Americans) don't actually need - the bulk of the tar sands crude extracted from North Dakota will be transported south to refineries and ports along the Gulf of Mexico where it will be loaded on to tankers and exported to other countries.

In the long term that has little to do with America's "energy independence", it only makes sense to the profit margins of the web of companies that will extract the oil, build the pipelines, refine the oil and ship it overseas to make a profit.

Trans-Pecos Pipeline cuts through Texas 

Profit (for a relative few) that comes at a cost to the environment that will be passed on to human, wildlife and plant life in the form of increased toxins in the soil, more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and contaminated fresh water from pipeline leaks.

There are real consequences to this fury of pipeline expansion, for example an Aljazeera.com article in 2015 reported an 87% increase in pipeline accidents between 2009 and 2014.

Not just oil pipelines either.

With America's untested Twitter-happy POTUS intentionally releasing outlandish headline-grabbing statements via his social media account on a daily basis to distract the media and public from all the real crazy shit Republicans are doing, it's pretty unlikely the words Trans-Pecos Pipeline will splash across the headlines of mainstream media anytime soon.

Since 2014 when it was first announced, local residents who live in the Big Bend region of Texas have been standing in opposition to this project that will transport fracked natural gas 143 miles from Texas to Mexico through a 42-inch diameter pipeline that will transport up to 1.4 million cubic-feet of natural gas per day under 1,400 pounds of pressure per square-inch.

Raise your hand if you'd want to live within a mile of that.

Who won the contract to build this $770 million project designed as a way to export some of the massive glut of natural gas in America (a result of rampant over-production) to a country with the 6th largest natural gas reserves in the world?

As MotherJones.com reported, two multi-billionaires, Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, the 2nd richest man in the world and (drum roll please....) Kelcy Warren, CEO of the aforementioned Energy Transfer Partners.

Same company building the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Same guy who's in business with Trump as you read these words and gave $100,300 to his campaign.

With the profiteering POTUS announcing that his own administration officials will now censor the science presented on the Web pages of the EPA, it's a clear signal that his goal is to allow fossil fuel companies unlimited leeway to encroach on the environment to increase their profits.

It's also clear that this slew of new pipeline construction is going to contribute far more to global warming and political polarization than it will to the long-term prosperity and best interests of the American people.

We're not in Kansas anymore, and we're way beyond "drill baby drill."