Anti-theocracy

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700441

The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

● VA-Gov:  Republican Ed Gillespie has dropped another "anti-immigration" ad that makes his first one look positively tame by comparison (it's still terrible, though).​

​Gillespie's new spot essentially equates "dangerous illegal immigrants"—itself a racist anti-Latino trope—with MS-13, a dangerous and violent street gang that actually heavily targets undocumented Latinos. The ad further equates Democrat Ralph Northam's vote against prohibiting "sanctuary cities" with "increasing the threat of MS-13." It uses photos of imprisoned MS-13 members and flashes the gang's "Kill, Rape, Control" motto across the screen in a positively Willie Horton-esque attempt to stoke racially charged fears among Virginia voters.  

And here's a fun fact about that Northam vote on "sanctuary cities": The vote Gillespie hits Northam for in the ad was almost certainly engineered by GOP lawmakers to force Northam to break a tie in the state Senate—solely to give the Republican an anti-immigration talking point, because Virginia doesn't technically have any "sanctuary cities" to ban in the first place.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700441

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700549

We begin today’s roundup with Paul Krugman at The New York Times who explains how Republicans are lying in an attempt to gain support for their latest effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act:

Graham-Cassidy, the health bill the Senate may vote on next week, is stunningly cruel. It’s also incompetently drafted: The bill’s sponsors clearly had no idea what they were doing when they put it together. Furthermore, their efforts to sell the bill involve obvious, blatant lies.

Nonetheless, the bill could pass. And that says a lot about today’s Republican Party, none of it good.

Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin analyze the impact of block grants:

An internal analysis by the Trump administration concludes that 31 states would lose federal money for health coverage under Senate Republicans’ latest effort to abolish much of the Affordable Care Act, with the politically critical state of Alaska facing a 38 percent cut in 2026.

The report, produced by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, focuses on the final year of a block grant that states would receive under the Cassidy-Graham legislation. It shows that government funding for such health insurance would be 9 percent lower overall in 2026 under the plan than under current law.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700549

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700119

Rhode Island is on a roll this week, going from committing to pay the renewal fee for every DACA recipient in the state to its state legislature passing paid sick leave, with Gov. Gina Raimondo expected to sign the bill into law.

Under the bill, starting in July 2018, workers will be able to take up to three earned sick days, phasing up to four days in 2019, and finally five days starting on Jan. 1, 2020. Workers at companies with 17 or fewer employees would be allowed the same amount of sick time each year without adverse consequences for the employee, but it would not have to be paid. [...]

Employers violating the statute would be subject to the same penalties applicable to minimum wage violations: fines ranging from $100 to $500 for every day they have been in violation. The measure would take effect July 1, 2018.

The bill would mean 90 percent of Rhode Island workers would now have access to paid sick days. In addition, another 44,000 workers would be able to take unpaid sick days.

In a statement, Wendy Chun-Hoon, co-director of Family Values @ Work, said that:

“Rhode Island joins its New England neighbors Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut, as well as the 37 other jurisdictions that have created new laws ensuring workers’ access to paid sick days. Nearly 100,000 Rhode Islanders who work without paid sick days can now count on the fact that they won’t be forced to ignore their own health needs or choose between caring for their families and providing for them. Rhode Island's law has the strongest family definition of the statewide paid sick day laws in New England, allowing workers to care for loved ones whether or not they are directly related by blood or marriage. This law also covers safe time, so that workers can take time off work to deal with domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking, or so that they can take care of a loved one who needs safe time support.  

Even in Donald Trump’s America, states and cities can make progress to help working families.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700119

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700189

A week and a half later, no one seems to know what exactly happened to Kenneka Jenkins. On September 9, the 19-year-old went to a party with friends at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Rosemont, Illinois. She never made it home. She was later found dead inside of a freezer in the hotel. While results of the autopsy are pending, the theory police are currently working with is that Jenkins was drunk and wandered into the freezer, accidentally locked herself in, and died there. Her family isn’t convinced.

“To me, I feel like they helped kill my child: the police department and this hotel,” Teresa Martin, Jenkins’s mother, told local media during a heart-wrenching interview alongside other family members. She said neither the authorities nor the hotel’s staff did enough to address her repeated pleas for help. [...]

Jenkins’s friends, Martin said, told her the young woman disappeared after they briefly left her alone in the hotel hallway to retrieve her car keys and cellphone from inside the room.

But Martin has since questioned that account, telling local media that the friends’ description of events keeps changing.

According to Martin, Kanneka’s friends called her around 4 AM to tell her that they were unable to find her daughter. She proceeded to call the police and tried to file a missing report—citing that Kanneka wasn’t the type of person to just wander off and that she was worried because she didn’t have a high tolerance for alcohol. The dispatcher told her to give it some time and the police did not file a missing person’s report until 1PM. It was then that the family began their own search in the hotel. The police found her body sometime after 12:30 AM the next morning. 

Video from social media and surveillance cameras seems to capture her last moments. 

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700189

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700376

On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort offered to give a “private briefing” on the state of the campaign to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

“If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote in the July 7, 2016, email, portions of which were read to The Washington Post along with other Manafort correspondence from that time.

A spokesperson for Deripaska has denied that any briefing took place. But if it did, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time Manafort exchanged notes with the Russian aluminum king. After all, Deripaska was the sugar daddy to many of Manafort’s activities in Eastern Europe. And more than a decade ago, Manafort offered to provide the oligarch with very special information.

Manafort told Deripaska in 2005 that he was pushing policies as part of his work in Ukraine “at the highest levels of the U.S. government — the White House, Capitol Hill and the State Department,” according to the documents. He also said he had hired a “leading international law firm with close ties to President Bush to support our client’s interests,” but he did not identify the firm. 

According to the New York Times, we now know the name of that law firm.

The Justice Department, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation, recently asked the firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, for information and documents related to its work on behalf of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, which crumbled after he fled to Russia under pressure.

And one of the things that law firm did for Manafort, was justify political prosecutions in Ukraine.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700376

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700469

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has become keenly interested in many White House episodes in which Donald Trump played a central role, not least of which was the crafting of an initial statement about the meeting between Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and a Kremlin-linked lawyer. That statement—which disintegrated over a period of days under the weight of further reporting—was reportedly dictated by Trump from Air Force One, which has piqued Mueller’s interest. Politico writes:

Special counsel Robert Mueller has sought phone records concerning the statement written aboard Air Force One defending a meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russians at Trump Tower last year that was set up by Donald Trump Jr., according to two people familiar with the investigation. [...]

The statement about the Trump Tower meeting, written on the return from a European summit earlier this year, touched off a frenzy inside the White House, with dozens of phone calls from Air Force One and back in Washington and New York.

A few other things capturing Mueller interest include Trump's bizarre Oval Office meeting with Russian officials and the firing of both Mike Flynn and James Comey.

Investigators are particularly interested in what happened inside the White House after former deputy attorney general Sally Yates told White House lawyer Don McGahn of the Flynn meeting with Russians. Flynn was said to have misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian officials during the presidential transition.

What Mueller’s team undoubtedly knows at this point is Yates’ full accounting of those back-to-back meetings in which she informed McGahn that Flynn had been lying and might be compromised. We don’t know all of what transpired in those meetings because Yates wasn’t at liberty to say during her Congressional hearing, but Mueller sure wants to know how that information settled into the West Wing because it took another two weeks before Flynn was finally ousted from his sensitive national security adviser post.

Oh, and in case you missed it, Spicey and his penchant for taking meticulous notes may wind up being a gift to Mueller. If he was as prolific as Axios reporting suggests, his notes could provide a window into White House atmospherics at many of these critical junctures.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700469

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700404

Donald Trump is a little touchy about leaks these days and now his administration is taking action! First up, the White House Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where employees attended anti-leak classes this week. The AP writes:

Government employees who hold security clearances undergo background checks and extensive training in safeguarding classified information. Relatively few EPA employees deal with classified files, but the new training also reinforces requirements to keep “Controlled Unclassified Information” from unauthorized disclosure.

Surely EPA employees have been the ones providing a hotbed of sourcing that's taking down Trump. Seriously, dude? Start with the White House—the people you hired—because they clearly hate you. Or better yet, take a look in the mirror.

A three-page fact sheet sent to EPA employees as part of the training warned that leaks of even unclassified information could have serious consequences to national security.

“Enemies of the United States are relentless in their pursuit of information which they can exploit to harm US interests,” the document said.

Wonder if there's any warnings in there about putting foreign agents in the most powerful national security post at the White House. Or how about guidance that conferring with people working expressly against the interests of the United States is discouraged.

That could have been useful.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700404

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700156

Helen Huynh and her family were devastated when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia this past February, one that required immediate chemotherapy until she could undergo a lifesaving stem cell transplant. Despite the grim news, there was a ray of light for the Garden Grove, California, grandmother of three: one of her three sisters in her native Vietnam was a perfect match.

But when Thuy Nguyen, Helen’s baby sister, interviewed with U.S. officials in Ho Chi Minh City, her visa was denied. Immigration officials claimed that because she had never traveled out of Vietnam before, they believed she wouldn’t return home after the transplant:

“Evidence may come in many forms, but when considered together, it must be enough for the interviewing officer to conclude that the applicant’s overall circumstances, including social, family, economic and other ties abroad, will compel him or her to leave the United States at the end of the temporary stay,” the letter stated.

“Regrettably, Ms. Nguyen was unable to establish to the satisfaction of the interviewing officer that her employment, financial and family situation in Vietnam constituted sufficient ties to compel her to depart the United States.”

But Helen’s family says that officials cut Thuy’s interview so short that she had no chance to show that she has a family and businesses that she must return to in Vietnam. “She’s not poor, but that’s the mentality that these interviewers have,” said Yvonne AiVan, Helen’s eldest. “If you are from a less developed country, you won’t leave.”

When Thuy tried to make her case in another request, immigration officials denied her again. And then a third time.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700156

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700424

Facebook has agreed to provide Congress with the 3,000 ads paid for by suspected Russian trolls.

"After an extensive legal and policy review, today we are announcing that we will also share these ads with congressional investigators," Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch said in a statement. "We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election."

Though Facebook had previously released the ads to Special Counsel Robert Mueller when presented with a warrant, they have refused to make these ads public citing company policy.

After denying for months that any Russian entities purchased ads on Facebook during last year’s election, the social media giant has admitted that it belatedly discovered that some 470 phony accounts linked to a shadowy St. Petersburg media firm with ties to the Kremlin. The firm allegedly placed ads on highly charged issues in American politics, such as LGBT and gun rights — ads that in some cases explicitly mentioned Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election.

Without the ads becoming public, along with information from Facebook on how the ads were deployed, it’s impossible for Americans to determine how many of the online ads they saw during the election cycle were actually propaganda generated in Moscow.

With the ads being presented to congressional investigators as well as Mueller, it becomes more likely that this information will eventually become public. While studies indicated that many of the stories that circulated on Facebook in the closing days of the campaign were sourced from fake sites set up by Russian propaganda providers, it’s not clear what percentage of Facebook’s political ads also came from these sources.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700424

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700356

Three years after the Flint water crisis, we are still learning the devastating impact that drinking poisoned water had on the city’s population. In addition to the outbreak of Legionnaires disease that killed at least a dozen people and sickened almost a hundred others, a new study reveals that the water crisis also affected fertility rates and fetal mortality. 

Fertility rates decreased by 12% among Flint women, and fetal death rates increased by 58%, after April 2014, according to research by assistant professors and health economists David Slusky at Kansas University and Daniel Grossman at West Virginia University. The pair examined vital statistics data for Flint and the rest of the state of Michigan from 2008 to 2015, zoomed down to the census-tract level.

That post-April 2014 time period is significant, because that's when — in an effort to save money — the city of Flint switched from water supplied by the city of Detroit to using the Flint River as a drinking water source, without adding needed anti-corrosives to the water. Lead levels in drinking water supplies spiked as a result.

While approximately fifteen local and state officials have been charged for their role in the water crisis, no one has actually gone to jail. And there are currently no plans to charge Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R). This is the problem with a greedy, capitalist society that values profit over people. In a country as plentiful and resource rich as the United States, politicians can compromise clean drinking water in an effort to save money and poison an entire city. And years later, no one is held accountable. Meanwhile, the damage for Flint residents is long-lasting. 

There is no safe level of lead in the body, but the impacts of lead are considered most severe on the developing brains and nervous systems of children and fetuses. It can lead to lower intelligence, behavioral problems and diminished life achievement, according to researchers. And the damage is irreversible; it cannot be undone. [...]

Babies born in Flint were also nearly 150 grams lighter than in other areas, were born a half-week earlier and gained 5 grams per week less than babies in other areas examined over the time period.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700356

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700380

Want to know what the wild card is in the GOP's dead-sprint to a vote is? The P-word. Yep, the parliamentarian, who's sort of a like a congressional referee, still has to rule on which parts of the Graham-Cassidy repeal bill are valid based on the whether they are directly related to the budget. It was the Senate parliamentarian, for instance, that told Republicans they only had until September 30 to repeal health care with a simple majority.

But now the parliamentarian will be weighing in on the Graham-Cassidy bill's most critical element: whether states can waive the Obamacare provision that requires insurers to cover certain essential health benefits (EHBs) and prevents them from jacking up prices for people who have pre-existing conditions. It's the bill's entire reason for being. When Sen. Lindsey Graham says they are trying to give "flexibility" back to the states, what he means is the federal government would give states the power to allow insurers to limit their coverage and price gouge people with pre-existing conditions in order to make overall coverage cheaper. But guess what? That provision might not even be allowable, which would completely upend the nature of the bill. The Washington Post's Greg Sargent writes:

Some health policy analysts think there’s a decent chance that the parliamentarian will strike those deregulatory features under the Byrd Rule, because they don’t have a direct budgetary component. Daniel Hemel of the University of Chicago, for instance, points out that a very similar feature was struck from a previous GOP repeal bill and thinks it should — and very well may — happen again. [...]

I asked Hemel what the consequences of this would be, and he emailed:

“Without the waiver provision, Graham-Cassidy is a totally different bill. It doesn’t provide states with flexibility, but it still takes away a lot of money. This would change the terms of the debate entirely — and would do so just a few days before the senators cast their final votes.” [...]

Nicholas Bagley of the University of Michigan agrees and adds that this would mean that a primary selling point for the bill would vanish: It would no longer meaningfully offer the states “flexibility” and would no longer constitute the “federalism” that supporters have extolled.

If this were to happen, the bill would become a virtual monster in the eyes of Republicans—keeping all of Obamacare's protections in place while simultaneously failing to lower costs and yet still  sucking billions of federal dollars away from the states. Honestly, it's hard to imagine who would vote for that and there's a good chance we would never know because it's equally as hard to imagine Mitch McConnell bringing it to the floor.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700380

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700324

With a blast of bombast, Donald Trump made clear once again this week that he wants to dump or renegotiate the Iran nuclear agreement—known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—which he calls “an embarrassment to the United States.” He also says he has already made up his mind about what to do, but he’s not telling anybody what he has decided. And he seems to mean not anybody. 

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters that UK Prime Minister Theresa May asked Trump if he would tell her what he had decided, but he wouldn’t. Hardly surprising since Tillerson himself hasn’t been told, saying: "He has not shared that with anyone externally." He said that Trump will announce his decision "when he thinks it is useful to let you know." White House chief of staff John Kelly, who reflected the feelings of lots of Americans when he publicly face-palmed during Trump’s grotesque speech to the United Nations Tuesday, seems to know. But while he is signaling his feelings regarding his boss’s oratory in other ways, he’s not talking about what may be coming on Iran.

The twisted reality we now live in has spurred the nation’s chief diplomat to consider himself “external” when it comes to major matters of U.S. foreign policy. 

The response to Trump’s bluster and enigmatism has been highly critical. For instance, Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said all parties to the agreement are in compliance, including Iran, and "There is no need to renegotiate parts of the agreement because the agreement is concerning a nuclear program and as such is delivering." Yukiya Amano, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran is complying with the agreement, noting that that nation “is now subject to the world’s most robust nuclear verification regime.”

What the agreement has done is close off pathways to an Iranian nuclear weapon for the immediate future and open the door to improved relations. Since signing, Iran has dismantled two-thirds of its uranium enrichment centrifuges, plugged its plutonium-producing reactor with concrete, exported more than 20,000 pounds of uranium, put a cap on how much uranium can be enriched to the level needed for research reactors, shipped away its spent fuel, and allowed highly intrusive international inspections. 

All of this doesn’t matter to the regime squatting in the White House. 

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700324

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700343

Talk of Republican moderates typically involves someone being played for a sucker, as the party’s efforts to repeal Obamacare show off. Time after time, we see a Republican senator make what looks like a principled stand against their party … until caving on the final vote, having been bought off by a concession a fraction the size of their original objections. Was the so-called moderate played for a fool by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s arm-twisting and Donald Trump’s attack tweets, or was the media played for a fool by a performance of Reasonable Moderate Standing Up to Their Party that was rigged all along? Whatever the answer, the rush to pass Graham-Cassidy shows off just how fake the whole thing is.

On the past failed Obamacare repeal bills, several Republicans extracted concessions that supposedly justified their yes votes. West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito and Ohio’s Rob Portman got $45 billion in opioid funding that wasn’t going to make up for the gutting of Medicaid expansion, but they could pretend to have gotten a win. But, Alice Ollstein reports:

This time around, with a bill that includes even deeper cuts to Medicaid and no additional opioid funding, Capito refuses to say how she will vote and Portman has said he is “open” to the proposal.

When asked by TPM whether Portman is attempting to negotiate the same funding boost and whether that will influence his final vote, Portman’s office would only say: “The senator is reviewing the proposal and getting feedback.”

Cynical but safe money is on Capito and Portman voting for Graham-Cassidy without any opioid funding added. Meanwhile, the Republicans who did follow through and stand up to their party last time wanted some stuff going forward—like having bills go through regular order rather than being rammed down their throats. Will John McCain do an about-face and decide regular order isn’t so important to him after all, or will he live up to his own hype? Will Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski continue to stand firm even as the pressure their leadership is putting on them builds? There’s even less in Graham-Cassidy for all these people than there was in previous votes, so if they go along with McConnell and Trump, they’ll be telling us a lot about where principle ranks in relation to partisanship.

There is only one way to stop Trumpcare: Republican senators must pay their political price by having constituents mad at them. We need you now, more than ever to make calls. Call your senator at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to vote NO. (After you call, please tell us how it went.)

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700343

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700311

Reports this week that Paul Manafort was under surveillance before, during, and after his six months as chair of Donald Trump’s campaign show that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has access to information showing how the relationship between Trump and Russia evolved over an extended period. According to a report at Axios, there’s another potential long-term source of information for Mueller.

Former colleagues of Sean Spicer tell Axios that he filled "notebook after notebook" during meetings at the Republican National Committee, later at the Trump campaign, and then at the White House.

It’s seems unlikely that Spicer jotted down “and then Trump told us all we were working for Putin,” but the notebooks do provide a good check on dates, attendance, and topics of discussion. 

One White House official told me: "People are going to wish they'd been nicer to Sean. … He was in a lot of meetings."

Asked by Axios reporter Mike Allen to comment on the story, Spicer had a succinct reply.

"Mike, please stop texting/emailing me unsolicited anymore. … From a legal standpoint I want to be clear: Do not email or text me again. Should you do again I will report to the appropriate authorities."

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700311

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700305

Republican healthcare repeal bills have been massively unpopular. Many of the members of Congress who’ve supported them have hidden out and refused to face constituents, while those who dared hold town halls were angrily confronted. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was hailed as a hero back home for her vote against repeal. But the Washington Post lets us know what really mattered to the Republican senators who are now, yet again, getting ready to vote for a massively unpopular bill. After they failed at their longtime campaign promise of Obamacare repeal:

... according to GOP senators and aides, Republicans faced an unrelenting barrage of confrontations with some of their closest supporters, donors and friends. The moments occurred in small gatherings that proved even more meaningful than a caustic town hall — at meetings with local business executives, at church, at parks.

They didn’t dare hold town halls open to all their constituents, but boy, they heard it from their donors. The GOP’s repeal bills might have had support under 15 percent in some polls, might have had less than half the support of Obamacare … but the hardcore base, the Republican donors and local bigwigs who your senator actually listens to and cares about? They were all worked up by Donald Trump’s tweets and angry that congressional Republicans had failed. And that’s why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying, again, to ram through a vote on a bill that few people understand but that has an awful lot in common with those earlier bills that voters loathed.

Thought Obamacare was safe? Think again. Republicans have revived their repeal effort and we must stop them. Keep calling your senators at (202) 224-3121 and tell them DON’T REPEAL OBAMACARE! (After you call, please tell us how it went.)

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700305

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700298

By any measure, Maria is a monster. It struck Puerto Rico with sustained winds of 155 mph and some areas reported gusts above 200 mph. Damage isn’t extensive, it’s near universal. With electricity out across the entire island, and cell service limited to a few areas, it’s difficult to even determine just how badly Hurricane Maria has pummeled Puerto Rico. But … it’s bad.

"Definitely Puerto Rico — when we can get outside — we will find our island destroyed," Abner Gómez, director of Puerto Rico's emergency management agency, told reporters on Wednesday as the storm engulfed the entire island. "The information we have received is not encouraging. It's a system that has destroyed everything it has had in its path."

Flooding in San Juan is described as “intense” and on Thursday morning, rain is continuing to generate flash floods across the island. In addition to punishing winds and a strong surge along the coast, Maria dropped more than a foot of rain on Puerto Rico in just a few hours. The continuing flash floods represent a deadly threat, with messages like this going out, and many people not in a position to hear.

This is a FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY for Central Puerto Rico. This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!

Images coming from San Juan have been both terrifying and heartbreaking.

"The San Juan that we knew yesterday is no longer there," Yulín said, adding: "We're looking at four to six months without electricity" in Puerto Rico, home to nearly 3.5 million people.

Some rescue and recovery forces from the continental United States had already deployed to Puerto Rico following the close passage of Hurricane Irma less than two weeks ago. But additional forces will definitely be needed.

Americans came together to support the victims of Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma—which was as it should be. But the victims of Hurricane Maria, in both Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, are in far more desperate straits. This is an American tragedy that demands a massive American embrace and support for the affected areas.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700298

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700191

The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

● WV-Sen: On Wednesday, MetroNews' Brad McElhinny reported that West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice told a group of lawmakers that he was supporting Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin's bid for re-election. Before early August, that probably wouldn't have been very exciting news. Justice is close to Manchin and last year, the senator endorsed Justice in the three-way Democratic primary; Justice also hired several of Manchin's advisers for his campaign. But just last month, Justice attended a rally with Donald Trump and announced he was joining the GOP.​

​Manchin is running for re-election in a state that backed Trump 68-26, and he's going to need to win over a lot of voters who like Trump. Justice argued that, by re-electing Manchin, West Virginians would actually be helping Trump. McElhinny quotes the governor telling the room, "Now he may be a terrible person to y'all but Joe has been a friend of mine and I'm going to tell you this as straight up as I can be: Joe Manchin is becoming a very key, integral part with Donald Trump. And I'm going to take my read off of Donald Trump." Justice continued, "Joe Manchin is — and I know this — Joe Manchin is Donald Trump's liaison with the Democrats. And you want, and I want, what Donald Trump is trying to get done."

It's unclear how much help Justice will be for Manchin. Justice, a coal billionaire, did very well as the Democratic nominee in coal country, an area that has abandoned Democratic presidential candidates but still is open to voting blue down-ballot. These are the type of voters Manchin is going to be seeking next year, and if Justice is still well-regarded in the region, his cross-party seal of endorsement could be a big help.

However, that's a big if. While a recent poll from Repass and Research America Inc. gave Manchin a 51-34 approval rating, that same sample found the newly Republican governor with a weak 34-44 score. West Virginia doesn't get polled often, so we don't have other numbers to compare it to. But it's possible there just aren't many voters Justice could appeal to who already don't like Manchin.

And as we've seen in the past year, Justice is an eccentric guy. If he really believes he's backing Manchin to help Trump, he may change course if Trump tells him to. Indeed, an unnamed person who was at the meeting tells Buzzfeed's Henry Gomez that Justice indicated he'd follow Trump's lead. Still, Republicans will be working hard to caricature Manchin as a typical Democrat who has lost his way in D.C., and the senator will be happy to echo Justice and define himself as a bipartisan figure.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700191

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700259

Happy Thursday! And happy Rosh Hashanah, too! (And my super-calendar also says it’s Peace Day, and that the first day of Muharram begins tonight!) I’m off to go dip everything I can in honey, but to ensure that you too can enjoy a sweet new year, I offer you this ALL-NEW, pre-taped episode of the show. It’s a big day on the Trump-Russia front, and we’re ready for it!

Listen right here at 9:00 AM ET!

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Sorry, no penis weightlifting do’s and don’ts today. However, between David Waldman and Greg Dworkin, today’s KITM manages to address all other conceivable topics—with the exception of those David reserved for tomorrow’s KITM  Rosh Hashanah Special... Stay tuned! Norms! Donald Trump is the Normless President. Actually, his single issue, himself, reflects his supporter’s single issue, themselves. His “tone” indicates that focus to conservatives. Fury! As if what the public feels truly matters. It’s not just our opinion though, we need to win. Jimmy Kimmel has a right to be furious. Bill Cassidy doesn’t need to lie, it just helps. Republican Senators blow a Category 5 anal smoke hurricane. CBO? What’s a CBO? Chaos! Republican Plan B—destroy everything, anyhow. The Gop is closing off all exits. The Koch brothers are turning off their money spigot. She might have seemed heroic fighting alongside her daughter in the Cupcake Wars, but Kelly Roberts doesn’t have what it takes to be Ambassador to Slovenia: a transparent business record. Tom Price used to dislike fiscal irresponsibility, but then… Trump won’t shut up, but California hopes to censure him occasionally. Trump’s lawyers never know when to shut up, just like the boss. Michael Cohen, who has a Trumpian daddy-daughter thing, loves the news cameras too. People buying MAGA hats knew, deep down, their money would be paying Donald’s legal bills, but so did the big donors. Nearly a dozen cities are calling on Congress to impeach Trump over foreign emoluments. Someone figured out that the United States Coast Guard administers the charge card program for the Department of Homeland Security! The Free Telegraph is the new Republican fake news you’ll soon be seeing cited. The day a doctor’s husband leaves her and her house is burgled, she began research on saving women from cancer.

(Thanks to Scott Anderson, who writes our summaries! Please help me pay him more!)

Need more info on how to listen? Find it below the fold.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700259

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700213

John Carl Baker is a Mellon-ACLS Public Fellow. His writing has appeared in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the New Republic, War Is Boring, and elsewhere. At Jacobin, he writes—Averting Annihilation:

These fears of nuclear apocalypse were on full display this week, as three full days of nuclear-tinged Trumpisms inspired half-serious jokes about our impending doom across social media. On Tuesday, Trump made his now-infamous comments about unleashing “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against North Korea. On Wednesday, in the preferred presidential medium of Twitter, Trump took credit for modernizing the nuclear arsenal — despite the fact that this process began under Obama and will take thirty years (and $1.2 trillion) to complete. Yesterday, Trump wondered aloud whether his initial comments about the DPRK weren’t “tough enough,” thereby ensuring the apocalyptic fervor continues for yet another news cycle.

Trump is clearly capable of heightening atomic terror all on his own, but the media-fed dynamic he inhabits with Kim Jong-un, autocratic leader of the latest nuclear-armed state, exacerbates the situation even further. Between them, they’ve increased public fears of nuclear war like no set of national leaders since Reagan and Andropov.

That said, it’s probably unfair to lay fully half the blame for this heated environment at the feet of Kim Jong-un and the North Korean government. After all, it’s difficult for experts, let alone laypeople, to separate out the real Jong-un from the omnipresent media caricatures tailor-made to reaffirm North Korea’s bogeyman status. This rich and racist tradition of foreign policy journalism drinks deeply of what Hugh Gusterson calls “nuclear orientalism” — essentially, the idea that our nuclear monarchs are calm and rational while those in the East are inscrutable, impulsive, and dangerous. [...]

Any nuclear attack would be met by a devastating flurry of counter-strikes from the US, whose military resources — nuclear and otherwise — are so superior to North Korea’s that it’s rather silly to even compare the two. The DPRK nuclear weapons program is worrisome, but it exists because the government is terrified of regime change — an outcome Kim Jong-un has legitimate reason to fear, given US actions in Iraq and Libya.

The real danger — the one that definitely exists right now — is that the two countries could unintentionally reignite the Korean War. The situation has been extraordinarily tense for months (remember the Carl Vinson episode in April?), and Trump’s bellicose comments are exactly the sort of thing that could turn a heated environment into, well, “fire and fury” in a heartbeat. If the president issues something that sounds like a threat, it might be interpreted precisely as such, pushing the other side to take preemptive action in anticipation of an immediate attack. [...]

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QUOTATION

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BLAST FROM THE PAST

At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—Billions for Iraq, Part II:

How much the U.S. ultimately spends on reconstruction projects in Iraq is a question of no small consequence since aspects of our country’s own infrastructure suffer gravely from what budget-makers call "deferred maintenance." However, another question comes to mind. Given how much taxpayer money is being dished out, how can we be certain the corporations that take on reconstruction projects are on the up and up?

This question arises because many of the corporations - some of them America's biggest - have run afoul of the law on numerous occasions. And there's far more than reconstructing Iraq that's at issue. There is the overall Defense budget, which is soaring independently of the extra $67 billion that Bush seeks for military operations in Iraq.

Don’t we need a strong defense? Absolutely. Wouldn’t we be crazy not to spend enough money to deter another 9/11? Without a doubt. But let’s argue at another time about the proper size of the Pentagon budget.

Almost half America’s military spending now flows to corporations, and some of the biggest defense contractors are crooks. Repeat offenders. Incorrigibles.

In this era of supposedly tough-on-crime politicians across the spectrum, shouldn't we have a “three strikes” law applied to these corporadoes?

It’s a simple approach. Get caught once or twice in fraud or other outlawry and we’ll give you another chance - just as we do street criminals. Get caught three times and you can explain to your shareholders how you came to be excluded from obtaining government contracts for, say, the next two decades. Felons can’t vote until they do their time. So why not prohibit felonious corporations from making campaign contributions, their version of voting?

Obviously, I’m dreaming. But shouldn’t we at least be able to count on Washington to enforce laws already on the books when it comes to the shenanigans of taxpayer-fueled contractors? Shouldn’t more of these crooks be incarcerated? Oops. Dreaming again. [...]

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1700213

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1699735

A few things stand out about a CNN article headlined “Trump privately tries to mend fences with Senate Republicans.” First, its very existence. Sure, every president is going to have a rocky moment or two with his party’s senators, but how often do we see the sheer number and variety of beefs as Trump has accumulated? He’s repeatedly attacked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, his nastiness toward John McCain is legendary, he feuded with Bob Corker after Corker was critical of his embrace of white supremacists after Charlottesville … the list goes on. The man has a lot of fences to mend, for some strange reason.

But the next thing that jumps out is that Trump himself isn’t the primary fence-mender. That duty is falling to his No. 2 guy, Mike Pence. Of the senators named in the article as having been attacked by Trump prior to fence-mending, Trump has invited Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski to lunch and spoken with Corker and McConnell. But Pence “has been in regular communication with” McConnell and talked to Corker long before Trump did. He’s also in touch with McCain and with McCain’s Arizona colleague Jeff Flake, who Trump has apparently not reached out to—and really how awkward would that conversation be, considering that Trump has talked up a primary challenge to Flake?

And you can’t help but think that Pence could have ulterior motives in keeping such great relationships with the very people who might, depending on the results of the special counsel’s investigation, end up voting on whether to remove Trump from office.

Finally, Senate Republicans really do see Trump as an unpredictable, tantrum-prone child:

"I think it's like a thunderstorm," Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said of his conference's relationship with Trump. "After a while it clears up, the sun comes out and everything is OK." [...]

Asked if he finds that kind of relationship acceptable, Cornyn said bluntly: "What choice do I have?"

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1699735

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1699742

Although there are persistent stereotypes that label it as such, sickle cell disease (a red blood cell disorder) is actually not a condition that only affects black people. While it is commonly found among people of African descent in the U.S., it is also found in Hispanics, Southern Europeans, people from the Middle East and India. There are, however, glaring disparities in how sickle cell patients are treated in the U.S. healthcare system—mainly due to the fact that the majority of sickle cell patients in the U.S. are black. In a country where racism and white supremacy are embedded into every structure, it is unsurprising that black sickle cell patients find it hard to get comprehensive and quality treatment. And, as a recent article by STAT shows, this is made even more complicated by the ongoing opioid epidemic. 

The U.S. health care system is killing adults with sickle cell disease. Racism is a factor — most of the 100,000 U.S. patients with the genetic disorder are African-American — and so is inadequate training of doctors and nurses. And the care is getting worse, sickle cell patients and their doctors said, because the opioid addiction crisis has made ER doctors extremely reluctant to prescribe pain pills. [...]

In hospitals, sickle cell patients are typically treated by generalists who know little about the disease and patients’ desperate need for pain relief. At one hospital, researchers found that sickle cell patients waited 60 percent longer to get pain medication than other patients who reported less severe pain and were triaged into a less serious category.

STAT-conducted interviews with 12 sickle cell patients in order to understand their experiences when seeking medical care. Many reported that they are often treated by doctors who know very little about the disease and the need for pain management among patients. They also shared that it is common knowledge among sickle cell patients that if you go to the emergency room for treatment, you may not leave alive. Failure to provide accurate treatment is a cause of early death among patients and speaks to the need for improved education and training for doctors and medical professionals.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1699742

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1699877

And now James Mattis joins the list of Trump officials attempting to shut out press coverage of his agency. Given that he is the secretary of defense and his "agency" is the Pentagon, this is a bit of a big deal.

You can tell what reporters think of Mattis when none of them are willing to go on the record criticizing him. The problem appears to be, and stop us if you've heard this one before, that Mattis both doesn't trust the press and wants to make damn sure nobody reports anything that could get him in trouble with his paranoid, hypersensitive nutcase of a boss.

The real problem is that no two members of the administration appear to ever be on the same page when asked about either the president's supposed position or his administration's supposed policies. But Mattis may indeed see reporters asking him to clarify just what the flying hell is going on, during any given day, as a “gotcha” question. He seems to be taking steps to avoid appearing on camera, as well, by having spontaneous off-camera "gaggles" with reporters rather than scheduled, on-camera briefings:

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/1699877