I have spent 20 years building a wine-import company. On Jan. 14, the Trump administration could destroy it all by imposing a 100 percent tariff on European wine.
Mine is not the only American business that would suffer. The United States imports over $4.25 billion a year in European wine, which is handled by thousands of importers, distributors, wine stores and restaurants. In recent weeks we’ve all been scrambling to avoid disaster. We are sending emails and letters to clients, begging them to call their representatives in Congress. We are fighting not just to be able to drink European wine; we are fighting for our livelihoods and for our hundreds of thousands of employees.
We have already been hurt by tariffs. In October — a peak season for wine sales — the government imposed a 25 percent tariff on French, Spanish and German wines, along with single-malt Scotch and other European food products.
Monday, January 6th, 2020
Stephan: Criminal Trump and the Republican Party supported by the rightwing propaganda media -- FOX, Breitbart, Infowars, Limbaugh, Daily Caller, Life Explained, etc. -- take it as an article of faith that mainstream media is strongly biased against christofascists or, as they put it, strongly biased in favor of liberals. Putting aside for the moment that being against christofascism in a democratic country sounds like a good idea, is this charge true?
Well, now we have an answer and, unsurprisingly, like everything else in the Republican world the claim is a lie, carefully nurtured and repeated endlessly by the christofascists. They have been very effective, Americans no longer trust real journalists.
I have a number of complaints about the mainstream media, most notably that they only poorly cover non-American stories, and television news and commentary programs only have two main blocks of coverage, and a few quick passes over a couple of additional stories. I have to watch BBC, Chinese media, and read a wide selection of English language non-U.S. publications to find out what is going on in the world because mainstream media doesn't cover it.
But that is a very different issue than the rightwing charge about bias. Here are the facts.
Complaints about press bias are as old as the press itself, but in recent decades, conservatives have pushed one complaint above all other: The media is biased against them because it is overwhelmingly staffed by liberal journalists. A new study, forthcoming in Science Advances, provides the strongest evidence ever that they’re half-right — but only the least important half: Yes, reporters overall are significantly more liberal than the general population. In fact, almost one in six are more liberal than Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, based on who they follow on Twitter. But no, that doesn’t matter — even for the most liberal cohort of them. The title of the study says it all: “There is No Liberal Media Bias in the News Political Journalists Choose to Cover.”
Even though “journalists are dominantly liberal and often fall far to the left of Americans,” the paper itself was emphatically clear in its conclusion:
In short, despite being dominantly liberals/Democrats, journalists do not seem to be exhibiting liberal media bias (or conservative media bias) in what they choose to cover. This null is vitally important — […]
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Monday, January 6th, 2020
Lisa Friedman, - The New York Times
Stephan: Just in case you had any questions about how America was going to deal with climate change and exiting the carbon-energy era here's your answer. We aren't going to deal with it, or even prepare for it. That's right. At least at the federal level as long as criminal Trump and Mike Pence are in office we aren't going to even allow for planning. Here's the story.
Sections of unused pipe, intended for the Keystone XL project, near Gascoyne, N.D., in 2014.
Credit: Andrew Burton/Getty
WASHINGTON — Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects, according to a Trump administration plan that would weaken the nation’s benchmark environmental law.
The proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and other fossil fuel projects that have been stymied when courts ruled that the Trump administration did not properly consider climate change when analyzing the environmental effects of the projects.
According to one government official who has seen the proposed regulation but was not authorized to speak about it publicly, the administration will also narrow the range of projects that require environmental review. That could make it likely that more projects will sail through the approval process without having to disclose plans to do things […]
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Monday, January 6th, 2020
Stephan: We have spent almost two trillion dollars, had thousands of Americans killed and wounded, as well as tens of thousands of Iraqis. Over the past thirty years we have destroyed Iraq as a functional state, and what do we have to show for it. Well, let's start with this.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mahdi.
Credit: Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty
The Iraqi parliament passed a resolution Sunday calling on the government to expel U.S. troops from the country in response to the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani and the leader of an Iraqi militia on its soil.
Between the lines: A senior Iraqi government official told Axios’ Jonathan Swan that the actual expulsion of U.S. troops is far from a certain outcome. This is a resolution and the prime minister who must sign it has already resigned, the official said.
- “This is a temporary victory for the parties which are pro-Iranian,” they added. “But it’s also a clear message from the Sunnis and from the Kurds [who didn’t vote] and from some Iraqi Shia for the Americans to tell them we want you to stay in Iraq.”
The big picture: The legal basis for the U.S. presence in Iraq is that it comes at Iraq’s invitation. This vote does not formally revoke that invitation, but it is a step […]
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Monday, January 6th, 2020
, - The Guardian (U.K.)/Associated Press
Stephan: With everything else going on this story has more or less gotten lost in the fog or crime corruption, and incompetence. But I think it is important. The President of the United States is on trial for raping a woman. Stop and think about that for a minute. Criminal Trump has redefined American politics down, way down.
I have begun to wonder if there is any level of moral turpitude to which a Republican politician can sink that would cause them to lose the support of the christofascists as long as they wrapped themselves in the Bible and the flag and supported White supremacy and male dominance.
E Jean Carroll is seen in New York. Photograph: Craig Ruttle/AP
Donald Trump’s lawyers asked a judge on Friday to throw out an advice columnist’s defamation lawsuit over his response to her allegation that he raped her in the 1990s.
The president’s lawyers argue E Jean Carroll’s suit cannot go forward in a New York state court because his statements were made in Washington.
New York law does not allow for defamation suits over statements made elsewhere, except in circumstances Carroll’s case does not meet, Trump lawyer Lawrence S Rosen wrote. He did not address the substance of Carroll’s claims.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said it was “obviously ridiculous” to argue Trump cannot be sued in New York, his longtime home town, though the president said in October he plans to change his residency to Florida after leaving the White House.
Kaplan called Friday’s filing “a transparent effort to avoid discovery at all costs in a case involving a sexual assault”, referring to the pretrial evidence-gathering process called […]
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