monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I think [Dems getting past their "huffy principals"] is something the left in the US really needs to wrap their heads around. I totally get what he's saying.

I wouldn't discount his analysis so lightly.

annoyed or irritated and quick to take offense at petty things.
"ask writers for more than a second draft and they get huffy"
synonyms: irritable, irritated, annoyed, cross, grumpy, huffish, bad-tempered, crotchety, crabby, crabbed, cantankerous, curmudgeonly, moody, petulant, miserable, morose, sullen, surly, churlish;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on Saturday he will force a vote soon on a resolution to disapprove the Trump administration's decision to relax sanctions on three Russian companies connected to oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

"I have concluded that the Treasury Department's proposal is flawed and fails to sufficiently limit Oleg Deripaska's control and influence of these companies and the Senate should move to block this misguided effort by the Trump Administration and keep these sanctions in place," Schumer said in a news release.

The U.S. Treasury announced on Dec. 20 that it would lift sanctions imposed in April on the core businesses of Deripaska, including aluminum giant Rusal its parent En+ and power firm EuroSibEnergo, watering down the toughest penalties imposed since Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea.

After lobbying by European governments that followed the imposition of sanctions, Washington postponed enforcement of the sanctions and started talks with Deripaska's team on removing Rusal and En+ from the blacklist if he ceded control of Rusal.

The businessman, who has close ties to the Kremlin, also had ties with Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, documents have showed.

An FBI agent said in an affidavit attached to a 2017 search warrant unsealed earlier this year that he had reviewed tax returns for a company controlled by Manafort and his wife that showed a $10 million loan from a Russian lender identified as Deripaska.

On Thursday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin insisted that the Trump administration would keep tight control on companies linked to Deripaska, despite the decision to ease restrictions.

Mnuchin said the firms would face consequences including the reimposition of sanctions if they failed to comply with the terms.

Schumer said given Deripaska's potential involvement with Manafort, and since special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's ties with Russia has not yet concluded, "It’s all the more reason these sanctions must remain in place."

Passage of the resolution of disapproval of Treasury's decision would require the approval of both the Democratic-majority house and the Senate, led by Trump's fellow Republicans who are unlikely to break with his policy.

FBI agents and several top officials became suspicious of then-candidate Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign but didn’t launch an investigation at that time because they weren’t sure how to approach such a sensitive and important probe, according to the Times‘ sources. However, President Trump’s behavior in the days surrounding Comey’s May 2017 firing, specifically two instances in which he seemed to tie Comey’s ousting to the Russia investigation, helped trigger the counterintelligence part of the investigation, according to the newspaper.

Responding to the report, President Trump said Saturday morning that the FBI launched the probe for “no reason & with no proof” aftehis firing Comey, whom he referred to as a “total sleaze.”

Seek help.

I’d like to apologize to all the “banana republics” I’ve offended over the decades with snarky references to their dysfunction. This is karma: I now live in a nation where a petulant president has shut down much of the most powerful government in the world — so the White House isn’t even paying its water bills.

The government has shut down before, under presidents of both parties. But this shutdown is particularly childish and unnecessary; to revise Churchill, rarely have so many suffered so much at the hands of so few.

It’s difficult to pick the craziest of the arguments that President Trump is making about the shutdown — there’s a vast buffet of imbecility to choose from — but here’s my good-faith effort.

1. This is a crisis! Terrorists are crossing the border! Rapists!

This is more like a lull than a crisis. The number of people apprehended at the border remains near a 45-year low. From 1972 on, there were more apprehensions every single year than there were in 2017.

As for terrorists, experts say that there isn’t a single known case of a terrorist sneaking into the United States along unfenced areas of the southern border. Ever.

2. Only a wall can do the job. A big beautiful wall that stops people and drugs.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was wrong to describe a wall as “an immorality,” for we need border security, and a wall in some places can be effective. But a great majority of the undocumented immigrants in the country didn’t arrive by sneaking across the border, but rather came legally, often at airports, and overstayed their visas. The most beautiful of walls wouldn’t stop them.

Likewise, drug smuggling is a real problem, but narcotics have mostly been smuggled in on trucks, cars and airplanes at official ports of entry, or through tunnels under the border, or through the postal system — not by individuals crossing remote parts of the border.

“The Daily Show” dug up a 2004 college graduation speech in which Trump counseled perseverance of just the kind that makes walls, by themselves, not terribly effective: “Never, ever give up. … If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it, go over it, go around it, but get to the other side of the wall.”

3. But this is a humanitarian issue!

Yes, it is. The most egregious humanitarian concern has been Trump’s brutal policy of separating children from parents at the border.

“Kids are still being separated,” Lee Gelernt of the A.C.L.U. told me. Mostly the government does this when it says that a parent has a criminal history, but the offenses sometimes were minor or unsubstantiated.

Meanwhile, the government shutdown causes other tragedies. For example, even in normal times 3,000 people a year die in the United States from food-borne illness, yet the Food and Drug Administration has now had to stop most routine food inspections, with inspectors sent home on furlough. The result may well be more people getting sick or dying from food poisoning.

4. The president doesn't need Congress. After all, he's the president!

Plenty of people would be a bit relieved if Trump took the dubious route of declaring a national emergency and trying to steal, er, divert money intended for disaster victims to pay for his wall. It might be a way out of our national stalemate, allowing the government to reopen.

But look, folks, when we welcome our president doing something possibly illegal, as he unjustly takes money from disaster victims, that just confirms that we have a crisis — not at the border but in Washington.

Trump’s wall isn’t about governing but about creating a political symbol and rallying his base. The problem is that it’s an expensive symbol.

By my calculations, the $5.7 billion could send 100,000 at-risk American kids to a high-quality preschool for a year AND provide Pell grants for 100,000 students to attend college for a full four years, with enough left over to ALSO provide a year’s comprehensive treatment to 115,000 Americans struggling with opioid addiction.

5. Anyway, Mexico will pay for the wall.

Trump repeatedly declared that Mexico would pay for the wall, and he still insists that Mexico will pay for it indirectly “many, many times over.” So I have a solution to the whole mess.

Since Mexico will pay for the wall eventually, the problem now is one of cash flow. Fortunately, we have financial instruments to deal with precisely this issue.

I propose that Trump pay the $5.7 billion himself, and then the U.S. will repay him (with a nice interest rate) as the Mexican payments for the wall pour in. The Federal Reserve can verify the Mexican income stream and forward the sums to Trump.

Since he’s so confident that the wall will pay for itself, he should be delighted with this option. Right, Mr. President?

So the Democrats saw Reagan’s smile and decided … yeah, Walter Mondale is the ticket! Next up: that dazzling Dukakis. Then … Al Gore, for Pete’s sake. Gore had by far the better case, had a popular incumbent president behind him, a booming economy, a budget surplus and rising wages, knew foreign policy cold, and was a visionary on climate change. He should have won in a landslide. But there is and was something so deeply strange about him, so stiff and pious and condescending, so stilted and entitled, he managed to turn the contest into a dead heat. Listening to my own inner Paul Krugman, I know he should have won. But within five minutes of his debate with George W. Bush in the fall of 2000, I knew he’d lose. The idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to have that dude lecturing them for four long years was absurd. And Kerry? That droning bore? I supported him, but feared it was over before it began.