Paranormal Activities

Mall Molester: Things are going downhill fast for former Judge Roy Moore who still has no recollection of ever harassing any young women without their mothers’ permission.  Apparently a lot of locals have known about his predator “tendencies” for a pretty long time.  In the 1980s, he was a regular at the Gadsen, Alabama mall where he hung out primarily to check out adolescent  and teen age girls.  Rumors have swirled for years that he was banned from the mall and the local YMCA for his inappropriate behavior of soliciting sex from the girls. Though a number of his hardcore supporters remain firmly in his camp and the Alabama Republican party still supports him, the Republican National Committee has withdrawn from its funding agreement with him and has pulled its ground team from the state.  Attorney General Sessions who for some strange reason remains one of the most respected people in the state of Alabama said that he has “no reason to doubt these women.”  House Speaker Paul Ryan said the “Moore allegations are credible, he should step aside.”  Steve Bannon, who has trumpeted Moore’s candidacy, taken credit for his primary victory, and spent the better part of the week attacking Moore’s accusers now says that he will “kill” Moore if he finds out that the accusations are true. Moore may want to duck for cover. Even Sean Hannity,  whose fans have been tossing Keurig machines out of the window in solidarity with Moore, is close to giving up on him.  Last night Hannity said that he now feels that he’s been duped by Moore’s faulty memory and less than believable denials and has given Moore “24 hours to come up with a satisfactory explanation” for his “inconsistencies” or withdraw from the race.  We haven’t heard from harasser extraordinaire Trump yet but since Hannity is an influential member of his kitchen cabinet it’s fair to assume that when he finally speaks he won’t be supporting Moore. In the meantime, the dirty tricks squad is out in force in Alabama, trying to bolster Moore’s flailing candidacy.  Yesterday someone with a false NY accent pretending to be a Washington Post reporter named Bernie Bernstein, in other words a faux NY Jew,  launched a false robocall campaign saying that the paper would pay women $5000 to $7000 to come forward with damaging reports about Moore, true or not.  With attention focused on the Moore controversy, Congress has started to address its own sex predation problems.  Yesterday, Rep. Jackie Speier said that she knows of two members of Congress who are currently in office, a Democrat and a Republican, who have sexually harassed staffers, she also noted that because of the convoluted way that Congress deals with harassment allegations victims have to go through an arduous process and any compensation that they receive, an amount that has totaled $15 million over the past decade, comes out of the pockets of Congressional funds rather than the pockets of the guilty parties. She called for changes in the system so that going forward the process is streamlined and the public gets to know the names of the offenders.  In the meantime both the House and Senate have announced that all members will be required to go through anti-harassment training.  

Contentious Sessions: Selective memory loss appears to be a widespread problem among Alabama’s native sons.  Yesterday, Attorney General Sessions testified for five grueling hours before the House Judiciary Committee, his first time back on a congressional hot seat since information about the trips that George Papadopoulos and Carter Page made to Moscow while working for the Trump campaign and reporting to Sessions, then in charge of overseeing the campaign’s foreign relations activities, went public.  Sessions told the committee that he doesn’t have any recollection of Papadopoulos offering to set up meetings with Putin or of Page asking for permission to go to Moscow, but he is one hundred percent certain that he told Papadopoulos not to set up any meetings and that he told Page that he couldn’t go on a campaign condoned Russian trip. If that doesn’t make any sense to you, don’t feel bad, it didn’t make any sense to most of the members of the committee either.”  He didn’t satisfy either side of the aisle or Trump when he tried to commit to nothing, answering questions about whether he would authorize the Department of Justice to hire a special counsel to investigate allegations about Hillary Clinton and her alleged involvement with the controversial Uranium One sale, by saying that he’s looking into it but he would need a factual basis adding that “a president cannot improperly influence an investigation… and I have not been improperly influenced and would not be improperly influenced….we do our duty every day based on the law and the facts.”  As to the facts about the Uranium One sale,  yesterday Fox commentator Shepherd Smith debunked the claims against Hillary, notable both because he works for Fox and because his colleague Sean Hannity is the person who has been most active in promulgating that “false news” and urging his good friend Trump to go after Hillary.  In usual Sessions form, he held off answering a lot of the questions thrown his way by saying either that he couldn’t remember or that he couldn’t answer because he wouldn’t disclose any discussions with Trump.  He also provided no useful explanation for why Trump’s judicial nominees are the least diverse group since Reagan, so far 91% are white and only 19% are women.  Apparently he hadn’t noticed.  We also learned yesterday that Brett Talley, the federal judge nominee with no applicable experience and a wife that he forgot to mention works in the White House is an expert in something, he is a fervent believer and investigator into paranormal activity.  Apparently, that makes him more qualified for a lifetime appointment to the courts than any of the available black or female candidates.

Tax Reform and Health Care:  Before he boarded his plane home from Asia, Trump threw another wrinkle into tax reform plans by tweeting that he’s proud of the House and Senate efforts but wants them to end the “unfair & highly unpopular individual mandate” in Obamacare and “reduce taxes even further.” In response to his tweet and in an effort to plug some of their over the limit deficit hole the Senate now plans to include a provision that eliminates the individual mandate in their version of the tax plan, a strategy that frees up $300 billion, ostensibly for middle class tax cuts but really for corporate cuts. In order to placate their more moderate members who would ordinarily oppose such a measure they are promising to simultaneously support the shelved Alexander-Murray plan that provides authorization for the continuation of the insurance subsidy payments that Trump cut off last month.  Democratic leader Schumer isn’t buying into their strategy both because he doubts that the hapless Republicans could actually pull off simultaneous legislation and because he won’t sign off on the elimination of the individual mandate, a provision that according to the Congressional Budget Office would result in 13 million losing their health insurance.  The House is still expected to move forward with a vote on their version of the tax reform bill tomorrow, but their version does not include Trump’s desired repeal of the individual mandate. Although Speaker Ryan reports that he has the votes for passage, last minute negotiations with high tax state lawmakers are ongoing.