This Was Horrifying the First Time

Update: thanks again to Steve in Manhattan for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Stay safe, everyone, and read up on how to wash out tear gas.

Back in the first term of the Darkest Timeline, we had a serious problem of trump's administration detaining entire families and separating the kids for maximum trauma. This was in 2018: 

Offensive above all is how - seemingly beginning under trump's misrule - the Border Patrol and ICE agents are intentionally splitting up families "in order to send a message". This message just happens to be "Hey, Mexico and Central America! The United States is now led by a group of rampaging assholes!"

'Cause only assholes would take a baby getting nursed by her mother.

The situation has gotten enough attention - especially after a reporter did a recent tour of a detention facility (converted from an empty Wal-Mart, how's THAT for symbolic?) - to where the DC Press Corps tried asking the White House Press Room about what was going on.

The answers they got? Shut up and don't question your government overlords...

And here we are deep into trump's second term as History's Greatest Monster, and he and his anti-immigrant allies like Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem are back attacking families and children without any moral constraint. They have ICE and Border agents basically kidnapping children (via Sam Levin at the Guardian (US)):

Liam Ramos, a preschooler, and his father were taken into custody while in their driveway, the superintendent of the school district in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, said at a press conference on Wednesday. Liam, who had recently turned five, is one of four children in the school district who have been detained by federal immigration agents during the Trump administration’s enforcement surge in the region over the last two weeks, the district said.

Liam and his father had just arrived home when they were detained, according to Zena Stenvik, the superintendent, who said she drove to the home when she learned of the detentions.

When she arrived, Stenvik said the father’s car was still running and the father and son had already been apprehended. An agent had taken Liam out of the car, led the boy to his front door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in, “in order to see if anyone else was home – essentially using a five-year-old as bait”, the superintendent said in a statement.

Remember how trump and the Far Right described their anti-immigrant effort as "going after the bad hombres" like gangs and drug dealers and such? The truth of their anti-immigrant campaign is that they are going after families, working class people, those who came to this country legally and were following the rules to make new lives here.

The truth is that trump's racist regime is arresting five-year-olds. Does this child look like a ganger?

photo from Columbia Heights Public Schools
the school superintendent arrived at the scene and took the picture

And the agents tried to use the boy to bait more people to come out and get arrested by them. The sadists.

Stenvik said another adult living in the home was outside during the encounter and had pleaded to take care of Liam so the boy could avoid detention, but was denied. Liam’s older brother, a middle schooler, came home 20 minutes later to find his father and brother missing, Stenvik said. Two school principals from the district also arrived at the home to offer support.

Marc Prokosch, an attorney representing the family, said the family had an active asylum case and shared paperwork showing the father and son had arrived to the US at a port of entry, meaning an official crossing point.

“The family did everything they were supposed to in accordance with how the rules have been set out,” he said. “They did not come here illegally. They are not criminals.” He said there was no order of deportation against them and he believes the father and son have remained together in detention...

“Why detain a five-year-old? You cannot tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal,” Stenvik said.

It doesn't matter to Miller, Noem, trump, or anybody else eagerly volunteering to serve in the ICE brute squad. Liam Ramos, his father, and thousands of other migrants getting shipped off to detention camps are seen as criminals by the racist Far Right simply for existing.

And Liam isn't the only one. That Guardian article references a number of other children and teens getting grabbed and shipped off to god-knows-where. And even after the immediate outrage that Liam's "arrest" created, the ICE thugs doubled-down on their cruelty towards children (via Matt Lavietes with NBC News):

A 2-year-old girl and her father were taken by ICE on Thursday, according to a Minneapolis council member. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed it has detained the father, who was with a child at the time.

Elvis Joel Tipan-Echeverria and his 2-year-old daughter Chloe Renata Tipan Villacis were taken in south Minneapolis on their way home from the grocery store, Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez said on Instagram.

A spokesperson for DHS confirmed that Tipan-Echeverria was taken into custody and that he was driving with a child when he was stopped. The agency did not identify the child’s name, age or gender.

“A suspicious vehicle followed her father’s vehicle home, broke his window and kidnapped them,” Chavez wrote with the post. “No judicial warrant was provided.” In a brief interview with NBC News, he confirmed that they had been taken and added that he met with the father and daughter’s family on Thursday evening.

Why arrest a TWO YEAR OLD? Because they can. Because that two year old offends them just by being here. the Homeland Security spokespeople are claiming "no mother arrived to take care of the child" but the report suggests the mother wasn't even contacted. The agents didn't even try.

Never forget this fact with trump and his wingnut allies: The Cruelty Is the Point. The more vicious they can behave towards families and children, the more the wingnuts believe they can generate obedience through fear.

trump wants the round-up of families and children to continue. he WANTS violent confrontation with the groups in America - the ones defending not only the rights of immigrants but the rights of everyone - he despises to justify triggering the Insurrection Act and suspending all laws to his desire of being dictator. And the Republicans will back his play because - as their conservative ideology compels them - they want all the power for themselves.

As I was typing this, even more discouraging - and heartbreaking - news is coming out of Minneapolis. The downward spiral of state-sanctioned violence is getting worse.

Stay safe, people. But stand your ground as well. We cannot let these bastards win.

trump's Shutdown Gambit

For the Republicans and for trump, the game is pretty simple: Blame the Democrats for the chaos they themselves are causing and keep the Dems from passing their own agenda (via Sam Stein and Asawin Suebsaeng at The Daily Beast):

In their eyes, a prolonged stalemate will likely fracture voters along traditional partisan lines, and the ultimate outcome will be a debate waged largely on the president’s terms. Increasingly, they see an upside in forcing likely incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi to have to spend the first days, if not weeks, of the next Congress engaged in an argument over border wall funding rather than her preferred agenda: a mix of sweeping ethics and election reforms and congressional oversight. And they continue to believe that a conversation around immigration and border security is in the president’s best political interests.

Meanwhile, trump is using the excuse of the shutdown to cut federal workers off from their scheduled pay raises due in February 2019. It's a direct act of cruelty for people already facing troubles without their paychecks.

trump is also threatening to physically close the Mexican border - well, closing the roadways and cutting off all trade - if he doesn't get *his* border funding AKA that goddamn trump Wall. Never mind the fact that our trade with Mexico generates about $600 billion a year and that we're already suffering from the tariff war over soybeans with China.

It's less a Game of Chicken than it is a Round of Schoolyard Bullying.

But it's all trump knows. This is his art of the deal.

• He wants something.
• Someone else has it or has means to make it for him.
• He bullies and intimidates that person, balancing between legal threats and false promises.
• He gets what he wants (or he gets humiliated enough to go skulking away whining he never wanted it anyway).
• He immediately reneges on his end of the deal, forcing his victim to fight a legal battle that ends up resolved in a plea deal because trump pushes them to the point of personal bankruptcy and they can't fight any further.
• He mismanages whatever he gets into bankruptcy anyway, and goes off desiring the next thing.

Here, trump wants a goddamn border Wall, not because it will be effective - it won't even stop the major part of illegal immigration (visa overstays) in the first place - but because it will be a physical monument to his very existence. he may even try to get his name plastered all over it.

In the meantime, he doesn't care about who gets hurt in his "deal-making" because he calculates the other side WILL care. He's trying to inflict enough harm - fiscal, emotional, even actual death - to try and drive Democrats to the bargaining table and succumb to his whims.

If he thinks this is how the great deal-makers in politics played the game... he's wrong.

Look to LBJ. Arguably one of the best deal-makers in American political history. He wooed, he manipulated, he bartered behind the scenes to get small deals done that paid off with big laws. And where he couldn't buy off - legally and illegally - or block off from interfering, LBJ used his Treatment method - very much akin to bullying but not as blunt or ill-informed as how trump does it - to gain enough of a concession to pull off the big win.

Can you picture trump playing the game like Johnson?

Watch how trump tried to bluff and bully his way against incoming Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Schumer in a meeting earlier this month. He never stayed on point, never argued on any merit, and walked himself into making gaffes and indefensible statements. There is no way LBJ would have gotten played like that in his own White House. Even Jimmy Carter wouldn't have been that easily provoked or duped.

trump is trying to play Chicken - "Give me what I want or I drive this bus over the cliff!" - with the government budget and with the nation's economy and with people's lives, and driving that bus up and over the edge with gleeful abandon.

A REAL President would have been playing poker, bargaining and bartering and yes bluffing into getting his opponents to fold. Except it's a poker game where the players know not to push all their chips in to win big once, but upping the ante and scoring good-sized pots to keep the game going.

As far as Shutdown experience matters, the Republicans really don't win much except generating more frustration and despair out of voters about how broken government is. That actually helped them win midterm elections by driving voter interest to horrifying minuscule numbers.

They have to be careful this time, however. The guy they've got playing the game is a rank amateur at political game theory, and he's making bets he can't back.

We are talking about a guy in donald trump who bankrupted his own casinos. This is no poker player at all.

With Thanks To Batocchio and the Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2018

As the year ends, fellow blogger Batocchio - a regular at Crooks and Liars and Balloon Juice - does a Memorial Roundup of blogs in honor of an early revered blogger who wrote under the nom de plume of Jon Swift (in honor of the original snarker). 

I've been honored in previous years to include my blog, and this year I was invited back for the 2018 list. I heartily encourage the seven readers here to click and follow those links to the other honored blogs.

This year's entry is a brief but rage-filled Where Are the Children? rant from the early days of the ongoing national tragedy of the trump Administration's horrific treatment of asylum families, especially the jailing of young children, the physical and psychological damage inflicted on those children (to where children are dying in our government's custody!), and the more horrifying evidence that many children have gone missing from a system that's supposed to be keeping track of everybody.

Our federal government under trump and his fellow corrupt Republicans have turned our immigration system into internment camps, and God help us our nation has been ruining thousands of lives of those who want to come here as honest citizens instead of being treated unjustly.

This story needs to be on the front pages of every newspaper and on the first fifteen minutes of every news channel. The coverage on trump's criminal ties to Russia can take a back-burner while the very real and very painful crime trump is committing in front of the whole world needs to be confronted and pushed back 24/7.

MY GOD. Answer the question trump. WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN?

On This Christmas Eve 2018

As I head out to a family gathering:

The stock markets are having their steepest decline in a single month in almost 15 years, with this December poised to wipe out nearly every stock gain since the GOP passed their tax-cut bill in mid-2017. This is what you get, Wall Street, for blindly accepting a bad businessman you KNEW was a bankrupt con artist all because he promised you massive tax cuts... that are now turning useless even for yourselves.

The federal government is in partial shutdown, still forcing thousands of federal employees to work without pay and even taking some away from planned vacations to cover for employees barred by rules to work during such things. Merry Christmas, Republican assholes!

trump himself is sitting alone in the White House, trapped by his shutdown stunt (and oddly enough not celebrating with any of his five kids: his wife Melania is traveling back from Mar-A-Lago to give him some company on Christmas Day itself but then will depart the next day) and whining like the spoiled brat he is. Every sign of his instability and willingness to bash at anything and everyone is getting more obvious... and of course nothing will be done about it by Republicans until it gets too worse even for them.

Other than that, America, all I got for you is this one True Meaning of Christmas:

DIE HARD IS A CHRISTMAS MOVIE AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT.

Welcome to the party, Hans!

This Day I Can't Even: December 20 2018 A Day Which Will Live in OMFG

I was going to write about things but other things kept popping up.

I was going to write about trump's ongoing tariff wars combined with market anxiety over oil, interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, and growing concerns over a dysfunctional federal government had dropped the New York Stock Market deep into the red over the last two-three months and seriously deep over the past week.

I was going to write about the ongoing revelations in Mueller's Russia-trump Investigations, including how the judge overseeing Michael Flynn's plea agreement openly flipped out in court over Flynn's transgressions and accusing Flynn of treason, "You sold this country out!". Judge Sullivan walked it back later by noting treason only applies in times of war against a declared hostile foreign power, but still whatever the judge saw in the un-redacted portions of the plea deal made the judge recoil in horror.

I was going to write about the REAL power in the Republican Party wasn't trump or the deep pocket SuperPACs, but the Far Right Noise Machine of Limbaugh, Fox Not-News and assorted partners in crime. It's an open secret trump doesn't listen to advisors or experts, he listens to the ill-informed pundits on TV. Considering how the wingnut media has been berating trump for his failures to get his coveted trump Wall funded by Mexico Canada tariff hikes China the U.S. Defense budget American taxpayers...

I was going to write about how trump's sudden temper tantrum - spurred on by that Far Right Noise Machine on Fox & Friends - over getting HIS Wall built created a last-minute scramble by the outgoing Republican House to pass a new Continuing Resolution / Budget... with the glaring problems of A) the Republicans don't have the votes to support including $5 BILLION for the Wall, B) the Senate already passed a CR without it and will NOT be able to vote for a changed bill including it, C) half of the Republicans in Congress have ALREADY GONE HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS. We're essentially going to get a trump Shutdown after all...

But no, I get home today after a crazy day at work and get my dinner done and then I check Twitter and I see stuff about Secretary of Defense Mattis (the last Sane Man in trump's chaotic White House) RESIGNING FROM THE POST AND STEPPING DOWN SOME TIME IN FEBRUARY OMFG OMFG WE ARE SO DEAD THIS IS HORRIFYING WE ARE FORSAKEN BY THE OLD GODS AND NEW THIS NIGHT...

Oy. Seriously, this is a bad thing. Mattis is leaving under duress, no longer willing to abide by trump's unwillingness to listen to reason and trump's impulsive foreign policy moves such as the recent decision to withdraw (ABANDON) from Syria regarding the ongoing civil war/fight against ISIL. To refer to Adam L. Silverman at Balloon Juice about the Syrian withdrawal, this is how bad it's going to get:

The immediate, within 24 hour removal of State Department personnel, while not logistically difficult, is a huge issue. The personnel being withdrawn were working on the civilian side of the Stability Operations we are conducting. This includes the USAID personnel who are working with internally displaced Syrians, as well as refugees in the region and coordinating humanitarian relief and assistance with local NGOs and other local groups. The military withdrawal will, of course, take longer because it isn’t just removing personnel, but equipment, which will obviously take longer than 24 hours...

If we pull out there will be four immediate effects.

1. The collapse of the local stabilization we’re contributing to. This will result in increased internally displaced Syrians and Syrian refugees who will flee ahead of both Syrian and ISIS efforts to fill the vacuum the withdrawal will create.
2. As a result of the first effect, we will see an increased humanitarian crisis in the areas we withdraw from.
3. We will once again have abandoned the Kurds despite the promises we’ve made to them, which further diminishes the United States ability to exercise any form of national power (Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economic), because it further demonstrates that we can’t be trusted, won’t keep our word, and can’t be counted on.
4. The vacuum and destabilization created by the withdrawal will be filled by both Syrian forces and ISIS. They will move to occupy and control the areas we’ve left, will fight each other in them, and this will lead to further destabilization in Syria and, potentially, throughout the Levant. It creates new stresses, challenges, and threats for Iraq and Lebanon, as well as for Israel and Turkey even though both of those states have been pursuing their own interests in Syria. And because of increased refugee outflows, it will increase pressures and problems for our allies in the EU...

The upshot of all this: Russia profits because they keep their allies in Syria in power, Iran profits because they gain from the chaos of the civil war to retain control over Lebanon and keep Iraq destabilized, Turkey profits because the Kurds will become vulnerable again and lose any hope of establishing their own nation. The world has to cope with an escalation in refugees fleeing the war zones, which adds to the Far Right/Nationalist uprisings happening in Europe against that refugee crisis (again, benefiting Russia). All the U.S. will get out of it are the personnel coming back home, but with no guarantees we are leaving a stabilized, functioning Syria and nowhere near a stabilized Middle East. Essentially, we're giving up on trying to help the Syrian people, and that abandonment is going to make the U.S. more despised and disrespected on the global stage than ever before.

Mattis leaving now points to the recent Syria move as a major factor, although working for trump has clear soul-scarring issues that would drive any sane man to have left months ago (Mattis likely only took the job out of a sense of patriotic duty).

Silverman added a copy of Mattis' resignation letter at Balloon Juice - follow the link please - so you can read it and draw your own conclusions.

I've already drawn one conclusion from all this week (and it's not even Friday News Dump Day yet!):

The chaos of the trump Administration is going to destroy this nation. It's no longer a matter of IF it's a matter of WHEN, and that WHEN is now counted by days instead of weeks or months.

WE ARE SO VERY ROYALLY MUTHAFUCKING FUCKED.

It's days like this I *wish* I could drink Saturnalia wine...

Update: It's not so much that I believed Mattis was great as a Secretary of Defense, it's just that he did what he could to keep trump's partisan, unpredictable, and noticeably corrupted ideas away from influencing the military in ways that would have proven disastrous for the nation's well-being. In an administration full of corrupting individuals - some of whom are just now facing criminal investigations for the crimes they're committing in office - Mattis was one of the few who could have been trusted to serve the nation's interests and not trump's. We have no guarantee the next Defense Secretary is going to do that: For what we know, it's going to be a trump-suckup who'll willingly abuse the authority and power of our armed forces to serve trump's whims (and GOD KNOWS what they'll hand over to Putin)...

IO SATURNALIA 2018

It's December 17th! It's the OFFICIAL ROMAN HOLIDAY OF WINTER SOLSTICE IN HONOR OF SATURN, GOD OF TIME AND PLANET RINGS!

Break out the wine!

Gamble with dice!

Wear ALL the funky hats!!!

You'll Shoot Your Io Out, Kid. It's SATURNALIA TIME

Okay, for those who are wondering how you say "IO SATURNALIA" the secret is to say the "I" in Latin like it's a hybrid of the English "J" and "Y". Sorta between the JO and the YO.

So for this season of Latin gambling and drunkenness, I call upon the Roman god Saturn and say unto him "YO BRO GIVE ME SOME NALIA!"

...

Okay, I might be losing it this year. But I do have a wish list and it pretty much goes like this, O Ringed God One:

1) Mueller indicts the whole damn trump criminal empire from the Shitgibbon himself down to the lowest-ranking Russian spy at the NRA.

2) Look, I know there are arguments about sitting Presidents and whether they can be charged/indicted while still in office, but a lot of the deferring relies on the belief that a functioning Congress would actively impeach such a crook in office so that the legal system wouldn't have to get into the political pitfalls. Problem is, THIS CONGRESS IS NOT FUNCTIONING. The Republicans in the Senate will NEVER follow through on any impeachment the Democratic-controlled House may file, meaning trump gets to sit in the Oval Office eagerly committing more crimes on a daily basis (for the Love of GOD every minute he is in office trump is violating the Emoluments Clause!) and maybe even cheat his way into a SECOND TERM OF CROOKED SH-T.

There's also a serious concern about Statute of Limitations: the fraud charges trump currently faces have a time limit to where they expire the year after this one term ends (2021). If trump were to steal (there is no GODDAMN way he wins a legitimate election in 2020) a second term, those charges may well evaporate.

I SAY CHARGE HIM NOW. No man should be above the law.

3) Totally hoping that Saturn pushes a little harder on the NRA's current fiscal woes to where they DO file for bankruptcy. Just desserts for a group that actively teamed up with a con artist in trump and with foreign crooks like the Russians.

4) A paid two-week vacation to Hawaii would be nice. Maybe Mercury can line up some speedy transportation.

5) WHAT PART OF SENDING trump AND HIS CON ARTIST EMPIRE TO JAIL DO YOU NOT GET, SATURN?!

AAAAAAAHHHH IT'S ATTACKING US!!!

The Chief of Staff Blues w/Update

Somewhere in the world, Prince Rebus is finishing off a bottle of whiskey with a smile on his face.

Popehat remains infallible among hats.

To wit: John Kelly, current Chief of Staff to the worst-managed White House in American history and someone who went into that job with eyes open and soul lost, is heading out the door and all of a sudden trump cannot find a single sucker to take the damn job.

As of right now - 7:30 PM or so EST - relatively respectable Republicans have turned down the offer, starting with the guy hand-picked to replace Kelly - Pence's CoS Ayers - en route to half the Cabinet and maybe even "acting" AG Whitaker saying "uh no can do, I gotta go wash my hair or iron the dog or something" and running for cover.

To be fair, the Chief of Staff to the President is one of the hardest jobs in Washington DC. While it's a powerful position with a massive West Wing staff at your command, the headaches outweigh the perks. As the gatekeeper to the President, you have to manage everyone from Cabinet Secretaries all the way down to some part-time intern wanting face-time with the Boss. You have to keep the administration on target with its agenda. You have to keep the scandals to a minimum and the public approval to a maximum. You get yelled at by Congress when the President is refusing to work with them, and you get yelled at by the President when his cereal gets too soggy in the morning.

To be a Chief of Staff you have to have the patience of Job, the zen of Buddha, the golf skills of Arnold Palmer, and the stern determination of a T-800.

So of course, the mayhem and insanity of a trump organization would be an impossible task to oversee.

The Republicans sent in a seasoned political operative in Rience Priebus to try and control trump's worst impulses, and he couldn't. They sent in a veteran Marines (!) general in John Kelly to try and control trump's worst impulses, and HE couldn't.

Who the hell CAN keep this trump administration under ANY semblance of focus and control? Who the hell wants to walk into a job that is - any day now - going to have to handle the revelations of Mueller's (and the other criminal investigations) grand juries into Russia's conspiracy with trump's campaign to subvert the 2016 elections?

Anyone sane and anyone with working brain cells should be saying NO to this job and run for the hills.

You do NOT board a sinking sink, people. You just don't.

You just watch from the shoreline enjoying the schadenfreude. BWHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Update 12/16/18: Trump is getting Mick Mulvaney, currently at his Budget Office, to be the "Acting" Chief of Staff. I thought the name was familiar, and I found I had blogged about THIS crook before...

Unavoidable Conclusions To an Ongoing Train Wreck

Welcome to the Darkest Timeline (via Ken White at The Atlantic).

Federal prosecutors filed three briefs late on Friday portending grave danger for three men: the former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, the former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, and President Donald Trump...

In brief No. 1, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office argues that Paul Manafort breached his cooperation agreement with the government by lying to the FBI and the Special Counsel’s Office in the course of 12 meetings. The brief oozes a level of confidence notable even among professionally hubristic prosecutors: Mueller says he’s ready to present witnesses and documents, and that he gave Manafort’s lawyers an opportunity to refute the evidence but they could not. Mueller is sure he has the receipts.

According to the brief, Manafort lied about his communications with the reputed Russian intelligence agent Konstantin Kilimnik, whom Mueller has scrutinized as a possible conduit between the Trump campaign and the Russian government... Mueller also asserts that Manafort lied about some of the payments he received and about an investigation in another district—possibly, based on the context, the Southern District of New York investigation of Michael Cohen and the president. Finally, and of great concern to the White House, Mueller claims that Manafort lied about his contacts with the Trump administration before his guilty plea, and that text messages, documents, and witnesses prove that he was in contact with administration officials...

In brief No. 2, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York asks a federal judge to sentence the former Trump attorney Michael Cohen to a “substantial term of imprisonment”—meaning between three and four years...

The New York prosecutors blast Cohen’s “rose-colored view of the seriousness of his crimes,” accusing him of a “pattern of deception that permeated his professional life.” Prosecutors portray Cohen as stubbornly obstructing his own accountant to cheat at taxes, even refusing to pay for accounting work that raised inconvenient issues he wanted suppressed...  Cohen, they say, schemed to pay for two women’s stories (Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, we now know) in violation of campaign-finance laws in order to influence the 2016 election, and did so “in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1”—that is, the President of the United States...

And that brings us to brief No. 3: Special Counsel Mueller’s separate sentencing brief in Cohen’s lying-to-Congress case. He does not recommend a sentence but informs the court about the nature of Cohen’s assistance to his office. Mueller discloses that Cohen has “taken significant steps to mitigate his criminal conduct” by pleading guilty to lying to Congress and meeting with the special counsel seven times to discuss his own conduct and other “core topics under investigation.” That includes information about multiple cases of contact between other Trump-campaign officials and the Russian government, and about Cohen’s contact with the White House in 2017 and 2018, suggesting an ongoing inquiry into obstruction of justice...

Just to note, the Obstruction of Justice relates to trump firing James Comey for refusing to stop the investigation on Michael Flynn, a retired general and major trump campaign player who was in deep with Russians already and was tagged as a serious security risk.

Everywhere in this mess of trump scandal, there are Russians. Russian business partners. Russian contacts. Russian handlers and GRU agents. At some point we're going to find red trump hats reading Druzhishche (buddy).

How serious a breach of national integrity is this?

I normally don't quote from Wired magazine, and you wouldn't normally think it would have any political insight to give. But Wired is tied into network security issues - which is where all the Russian hacking/subversion of our national security comes into play - so they would have a reason to comment. Or at least Garrett Graff would:

WE ARE DEEP into the worst case scenarios. But as new sentencing memos for Trump associates Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen make all too clear, the only remaining question is how bad does the actual worst case scenario get...?

A year ago, Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic outlined seven possible scenarios about Trump and Russia, arranged from most innocent to most guilty. Fifth on that list was “Russian Intelligence Actively Penetrated the Trump Campaign—And Trump Knew or Should Have Known,” escalating from there to #6 “Kompromat,” and topping out at the once unimaginable #7, “The President of the United States is a Russian Agent.”

After the latest disclosures, we’re steadily into Scenario #5, and can easily imagine #6...

In fact, what’s remarkable about the once-unthinkable conclusions emerging from the special counsel’s investigation thus far is how, well, normal Russia’s intelligence operation appears to have been as it targeted Trump’s campaign and the 2016 presidential election. What intelligence professionals would call the assessment and recruitment phases seems to have unfolded with almost textbook precision, with few stumbling blocks and plenty of encouragement from the Trump side.

Mueller’s court filings, when coupled with other investigative reporting, paint a picture of how the Russian government, through various trusted-but-deniable intermediaries, conducted a series of “approaches” over the course of the spring of 2016 to determine, as Wittes says, whether “this is a guy you can do business with.”

The answer, from everyone in Trumpland—from Michael Cohen in January 2016, from George Papadopoulos in spring 2016, from Donald Trump, Jr. in June 2016, from Michael Flynn in December 2016—appears to have been an unequivocal “yes.”

Mueller and various reporting have shown that the lieutenants in Trump’s orbit rebuffed precisely zero of the known Russian overtures. In fact, quite the opposite. Each approach was met with enthusiasm, and a request for more.

Given every opportunity, most Trump associates—from Paul Manafort to Donald Trump, Jr. to George Papadopoulos—not only allegedly took every offered meeting, and returned every email or phone call, but appeared to take overt action to encourage further contact. Not once did any of them inform the FBI of the contacts...

What we are uncovering - something I'd long noted and what Graff is highlighting now - is not only a Presidential campaign willing to break election laws but also willing to betray our nation to a foreign power, driven entirely by a lust for everything that foreign power offered them.

I admit to personal bias. I wholeheartedly believe with only the partial evidence shown of Worst Case Scenario #7: trump AS A RUSSIAN AGENT. Straight up treason.

But here's the upsetting thing. Scenario #7 isn't the breaking point. Scenario #5 - where Russians actively infiltrated a Presidential campaign and trump knew/should have known - is just as bad as #7. This is the level where any honest citizen would have stopped and said "No". This is the point where a legal campaign would have drawn a line. ANY foreign intervention into our internal decision-making - our elections - would be tantamount to betraying every American living or dead who stood for our own nation's sovereign status.

trump and his Inner Circle crossed that line. They never said "No," they said "Yes" and repeatedly. They did it with eyes open and arms wide. Violating national security protocols we have in place to prevent foreign meddling, to stop foreign espionage and spying. They propped the door and let every crook in, because they are crooks themselves.

We're openly seeing evidence of Scenario #5 for trump's campaign, and every bit of it points to acts of treason.

And Cohen's revelations point to Russia being involved since the damned PRIMARIES, when trump was kneecapping Republican candidates from Jeb to Rubio to Kasich to Cruz to every other wanna-be who were left whimpering on the sidelines wondering how the hell they were beat. How does it feel, Republicans? HOW DOES IT FEEL TO KNOW YOUR OWN PRIMARY WAS COMPROMISED BY PUTIN?

To quote my boss Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice:

But here’s what matters: If Trump isn’t brought to justice, the United States of America will cease to exist as a sovereign nation. It’s frightening to face that fact, but face it we must because a criminal gang has seized the executive branch. We and our fellow citizens will either root them out, or we’ll pretend accept that this is just how things are now.

Welcome to the Darkest Timeline. Welcome to the Second Civil War, between us and Putin's Puppets.

Get to work saving the United States. STOP trump NOW. STOP THE REPUBLICAN PARTY FROM STEALING THE REST OF US. 'Cause right now, it's not really trump or the Republicans profiting from this crime. It's Putin. And the United States is going to suffer if he wins outright.

Grand Theft Elections

Update: (Not again! Every time it gets busy at work, I miss getting added to the daily Mike's Blog Round-Up at Crooksandliars.com! Sigh. Thank you this time to Frances Langum of the Professional Left podcasts!)

It used to be, not even that long ago, that the political parties showed at least some deference some respect to how the voters made up their minds each election cycle.

But something changed with the Republican Party. Whatever it's been that has driven that party further to the Right on issues, it's also driven them to a point where they won't even give Democrats a modicum of respect when the voters side with Dems.

We've seen it at the national level, when the Republicans dismissed and belittled Bill Clinton's Presidency, even pursuing any hint of scandal to find a way to impeach him out of office. We've seen it from Day One of Obama's entire tenure - with a plan of obstruction and denial on a scale never before seen - where they even denied Obama was an honest-to-God American.

And now we're seeing it at the state level. In situations where the voters have put a Democrat into the governor's office (or other elective executive offices like the Attorney General in Michigan), the Republican-controlled legislatures are holding "lame duck" sessions passing extremist laws taking away much of those offices' power or authority to do ANYTHING.

We saw it last elections in 2016 when North Carolina's GOP legislature decided to kneecap the incoming Democratic governor there (via Tara Golshan at Vox.com):

Within 48 hours, on a late December night in 2016, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a series of bills that pulled Cooper’s ability to make key cabinet appointments without their approval, drastically cut the size of Cooper’s administration, and changed the Board of Elections so that Republicans would control it in election years. They ensured lawsuits had to first go through the Republican-controlled appeals court, before the Democratic-majority state Supreme Court.

Democrats — who thought of Cooper’s victory as one of the few bright spots in an otherwise devastating year for the party — were blindsided...

It doesn't matter if the North Carolina Dems have fought every twisted GOP law in the courts. It's caused just enough delay and confusion to where Governor Cooper has achieved little in office. A perfect example the state Leges in Michigan and Wisconsin are following with great relish.

Worse, the Republican legislatures are insulting the voters directly. Voter referendums that went against GOP dogma - like raising the minimum wage, or opening up voter registration to make it easier to vote - are being blatantly ignored, sabotaged, and overwritten.

To note what is happening in Michigan (via Nancy LeTourneau in Washington Monthly but linking to Paul Waldman in the WaPo ):

Republicans are responding to a Democratic sweep of statewide offices by giving the legislature the ability to overrule the attorney general on state lawsuits and take authority over campaign finance regulation away from the secretary of state. They are also considering a bill to cut off voter registration 14 days before every election, in effect overruling a same-day registration initiative voters just passed...

...Michigan activists had organized to get enough signatures to put a couple of items on the ballot: an increase in the minimum wage and paid sick leave for all workers. If those initiatives had been approved by voters, a two-thirds majority in the legislature would be needed to amend them.

In September, both of those measures were passed, exactly as written, by the state legislature, ensuring they would be removed from the ballot. Over the last week, however, Republican legislators have amended them via a simple majority vote...

The Republicans knew those referendum items were too popular, so they staged a fake-out to get them removed from the ballot and then when all was safe rewrote everything so that the voters would get screwed.

This is not governance. This is bullying.

If we can go back to Golshan at Vox:

“North Carolina set a precedent in playing a kind of political hardball that we haven’t seen in other places,” Rick Hasen, an election law scholar with the University of California Irvine, said. “Does it spiral out of control? This has been more asymmetric with Republicans, but I don’t think it would always stay that way...”

In Wisconsin, some of these proposals passed on Wednesday, and Republican Gov. Scott Walker said he would sign them into law. In all, they would limit Evers’s power to change policies around welfare, health care, and economic development, cut down early voting, and allow the Republican-led legislature to undermine the attorney general, giving them the power to block his decision to remove Wisconsin from federal lawsuits.

“Power-hungry politicians rushed through sweeping changes to our laws to expand their own power and override the will of the people of Wisconsin who asked for change on November 6th,” Evers said in a statement.

In Michigan, a Republican proposal would guarantee the GOP-controlled legislature the right to intervene in any legal battles involving state laws that the attorney general may be reluctant to defend, like restrictions for same-sex couples looking to adopt...

This isn’t normal. There’s a basic understanding in a democracy that when one party wins, they have won.

But Republicans across the country are explicitly rejecting election outcomes. In Wisconsin, the Republican state House Speaker Rep. Robin Vos said the reforms were necessary because otherwise, he said, “we are going to have a very liberal governor who is going to enact policies that are in direct contrast to what many of us believe in.”

These legislatures are turning to extremes, and before long those extremes can become the new norm.

“It’s a further devolution of norms of democracy, where the losers accept the results of an election and move on,” Hasen said. “This is about polarization generally, and a break down of political norms...”

Back to LeTourneau:

Over the last few years, we’ve witnessed many examples of how Republicans have been willing to spit in the face of our democratic principles to maintain their power. But this one should probably take its place at the top of the list. Could it be any more obvious that Republicans have nothing but contempt for the voting public? If this little charade is allowed to stand, what it will take to wake people up to that reality?

This has been one of the reasons why I'd been screaming STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN for the longest time. Republicans are not concerned with leading or responding to the people's will: Republicans want power and more of it, and Republicans want their tax-cut and patriarchal Utopia at all costs. They are willing to bend and break every rule to keep in power even when the majority of Americans are telling them NO We Do Not Trust You With That Anymore.

This is how we've gotten to Minority Rule of an increasingly shrinking and dying party unwilling to accept their losses when they happen and rebuild into a more responsive party.

It would be pretty to think that the growing Majority of Voters will push back, stop voting Republican, drive them out of office. But the bastards are exploiting their ungodly advantage of Gerrymandering to rig the votes, to give them enough seats in the Legislatures to keep rigging more votes and more tricks and more obstruction to favor them.

We're not going to see a truly representative state where the Republicans hold sway. They can't afford to let that happen. We are not going to see any salvation until Gerrymandering itself is wiped out of our electoral process once and for all.

Until then, every election is under threat of thievery by the GOP.

Gods help us.

Getting Ready for the 2018 Saturnalia Season

I've been thinking about making a Saturnalia logo or artwork to make my own Saturnalia stuff - Hallmark DOES NOT respect the holidays like this - so I went and made this:

Thing is, it just... sits there. Kinda underwhelming.

I think I need to add more wine and gambling imagery.

Anyway, I got a little shop up on CafePress to see about getting myself greeting cards printed up.

Things I Remember About Bush The Elder 1924 - 2018

With Bush Sr's. passing yesterday, this has been a day of reflection and pondering.

His was the Presidency of my college years, and the first election I voted in. So there's a lot of significance in this for me looking back at what I recall (more than the Character review I made about five years ago).

• I voted for Bush as President. Yes, in hindsight voting for ANY Republican feels blasphemous. But in 1988 as a college freshman I couldn't really recognize the damage - on social issues and public health issues like the AIDS crisis and the Drug War - being done. And a lot of the REALLY BAD stuff the Republicans would get into came during the 1990s under darker leadership by Newt Gingrich and others.
• Bush on foreign policy was one of the more competent Presidents we had, overseeing a serious transitional moment with the collapse of Communism, the opening of Eastern Europe, and political power shifts across every continent.
• Bush *was* quick on the trigger finger when it came to troop deployments, border clashes, and straight-up war. People seem to forget we sent in armed forces to overthrow Noriega in Panama in 1989 on what turned out to be sketchy reports. There was also the first Persian Gulf War/invasion of Iraq in 1990-91 where U.S. mishandling of Saddam - our government saw him as a useful opponent against a hostile Iran throughout the 1980s - allowed that dictator to invade Kuwait and disrupt the local balance of power. Towards the end of his term, Bush sent troops into Somalia as a peace-keeping force to help the citizenry during a famine caused by civil war... but doesn't leave in place an agenda or pull-out strategy, leaving it to Clinton.
• Bush did attempt bipartisan dealing with a Democratic-controlled Congress... by agreeing to tax hikes that went against the Supply-Side dogma of many Republicans who came to power during the Reagan years. It actually triggered an intraparty revolt by Newt that drove out moderates (RINOs) and led to the current monstrous party leadership running the GOP now.
• As a political campaigner, Bush was a nasty piece of work, relying on slander and mudslinging even in the 1960s as a Texas Congressman. The Willie Horton attack ads of the 1988 Presidential campaign was a new low - even compared to the harsh "Daisy" ad LBJ ran against Goldwater in 1964 - and essentially opened up a new era of dirty campaigning that has darkened our electorate since (and it's a tactic his own sons Dubya and Jeb rely on far too often themselves).
• Bush *did* preside over major achievements such as the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a major Immigration Reform act (something the modern GOP would never touch), a key Civil Rights Act protecting workers from discrimination, overall reductions in nuclear weapons across the globe...
• Oh, and he gave Dana Carvey good reason to earn a paycheck on Saturday Night Live for 4 straight years.

Seriously, message received.

The Ballot Ballad of Bladen County

You wanna know what voter fraud REALLY looks like?

Try what's getting found out in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District (via Vox.com):

There are two major pieces to this puzzle: First, specific allegations of unusual activities related to absentee ballots, made in a series of affidavits submitted to the state board by lawyers for the Democratic Party, and second, analyses by political experts suggesting the number of absentee ballots requested but not returned in the Ninth District was unusually high...

* One voter says a young woman came to her house and asked for her absentee ballot because she was collecting them. The voter had made her choice for only two offices on the ballot, but still gave her ballot to the young woman, who said she would fill out the rest (Note: OMFG THIS IS ILLEGAL AS HELL).
* Another voter also says a young woman came to her house and claimed she was responsible for collecting absentee ballots. The voter filled out her ballot while the young woman waited; the woman then took the ballot, but never asked the voter to sign it and did not put it in a sealed envelope (Note: I've done door-to-door canvassing offering to hand-deliver absentee ballots-by-mail. We *had* to ensure the signatures, put it in envelopes, and leave a receipt. It doesn't seem like this woman did any of that).
* A third voter says she did not request an absentee ballot but received one in the mail anyway.
* A fourth person says she saw unusual activity at a polling site: election results being run after polls closed on the last day of early voting and observed by people who were not elections judges, which she understood to be “improper.” The person said she also helped tabulate absentee ballots after the election that were quite worn and had “coding” written on them.
* A fifth person, Dwight Sheppard, says he overheard people talking outside a polling station on Election Day who said a well-known local operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr., would be paid a $40,000 bonus if Harris won the election.
* In another affidavit — signed and witnessed, but not notarized — a sixth person said he actually talked to Dowless in April during the Republican primary, in which Harris upset sitting Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger (Note: Hmmmmm), According to this person, Dowless said he was working on the absentee vote for Harris, that he had 80 people working for him, and that he accepted cash payments only from campaigns.

This isn’t the first time Dowless’s name has come up in relation to voting shenanigans: In 2016, several people filed complaints about campaign workers hired by Dowless who were collecting absentee ballots, as WECT reported at the time...

You might notice that at no point did any group of "questionable" or "illegal" voters showed up by the bus-load to stuff ballots. Every tidbit of "questionable" actions were by campaign/party workers. This has nothing to do with illegal voters: it has everything to do with illegal campaigners.

Back to Point Two: A high count of absentee balloting within two counties - Bladen and Robeson - with even higher counts of non-returns.

Most of the attention has focused on two counties in the Ninth: Bladen and Robeson, in the southeast corner of the state near the South Carolina border. Notably, each of the affidavits provided by Democratic attorneys involved voters in Bladen County, and one man said that Dowless himself had stated he was working on absentee ballots for Harris in the county.

Michael Bitzer, a politics professor at Catawba College who obsessively follows North Carolina, documented the unusual trend in those counties: They had a much higher rate of mail-in absentee ballots that were requested but not returned, compared to other counties in the Ninth District...

And at the district level, according to Bitzer’s calculations, the Ninth had a much higher rate of unreturned absentee ballots than any other district in North Carolina...

If you follow the link back to Vox, you'll see the charts showing the discrepancies. The volume of non-returns jumps way out of the scope of statistical norms compared to the other counties.

What makes this matter really striking is how the response has been. The state's Elections Board - the oversight authority - is freaking out:

The state board took these allegations seriously enough to vote unanimously — with four Democratic members, four Republicans, and one unaffiliated member — not to certify the results from the Ninth District earlier this week.

Democrats want further investigation into these various allegations of odd behavior and possible tampering, and the state board seems ready to pursue the matter. At the end of the day, North Carolina law allows the elections board to call for a new election if there is evidence that casts doubt on the basic fairness of the vote. The number of ballots in doubt or in question doesn’t appear to make a difference...

The Harris campaign may yet win the argument that overturning the results shouldn't happen. The statistical oddities may not point to an overall attempt to rig the ballots by messing with the absentee/mail-in voting.

But something is rotten in the State of Denmark Counties of Bladen and Robeson. An honest investigation into what happened in those places and how the entire 9th District may have been subverted needs to take place.

 

Waiting For the Week It All Goes Down

It's been established that federal investigators clamp down on issuing indictments or make public statements about cases that would affect things in the months before an election - which is THE reason James Comey will NEVER be forgiven for that nothingburger of a "But Her Emails" report the week before Nov. 9 2016 - so now that the midterms are over (and Thanksgiving done and did) there's a ton of expectations about Mueller's ongoing special counsel cases surrounding Russia's interference in the 2016 elections.

The buzz is out there that Mueller has been sitting on "dozens" of sealed indictments, with various trump Inner Circle players - Roger Stone, donnie junior himself - reportedly telling their friends they're facing charges. trump himself has been going through noticeable mood swings in public, and had re-upped his attacks on Mueller post-election.

With yesterday's announcement that Mueller is pulling Paul Manafort's plea agreement over the fact that Manafort has continued lying to investigators, we're facing a likely moment for those sealed indictments to go out, linking Manafort's culpability to the people about to get arrested.

An interesting side note is "why did Manafort endanger his plea deal in the first place?" I caught this little tidbit on Twitter:

Quick link to Emptywheel here:

Paulie can’t help himself. According to Mueller’s team, he has kept lying and lying since entering the cooperation agreement.

After signing the plea agreement, Manafort committed federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Special Counsel’s Office on a variety of subject matters, which constitute breaches of the agreement. The government will file a detailed sentencing submission to the Probation Department and the Court in advance of sentencing that sets forth the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies, including those after signing the plea agreement herein.
As the defendant has breached the plea agreement, there is no reason to delay his sentencing herein.

As I noted back in September, the standard the government has to prove to claim Manafort has breached his agreement is just “good faith,” as compared to preponderance of the evidence with Rick Gates...

Just about the only explanation for Manafort’s actions are that — as I suggested — Trump was happy to have Manafort serve as a mole in Mueller’s investigation.
But Mueller’s team appears to have no doubt that Manafort was lying to them. That means they didn’t really need his testimony, at all. It also means they had no need to keep secrets — they could keep giving Manafort the impression that he was pulling a fast one over the prosecutors, all while reporting misleading information to Trump that he could use to fill out his open book test. Which increases the likelihood that Trump just submitted sworn answers to those questions full of lies...

If Manafort was an attempt to subvert the investigation within, it didn't work. If it did anything, it revealed that Mueller's team has more damaging - and VERIFIABLE - information on hand condemning a lot of players in trump's world. Worse, Mueller's investigators gave trump enough room to condemn himself by likely answering their questionnaire all wrong.

All this means one thing: a lot of people are facing a lot of jail time (unless trump breaks every foundation of the Constitution first). What does this actually mean?

The most likely targets of the indictment will be every person who showed up at the June  9 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Russians and trump's campaign. This is huge: the most direct link of trump's people to a foreign power in discussions to get aid from that foreign power to steal the election.

So who we know was AT the meeting:

Americans
donald trump junior, inner circle family confidant
Jared Kushner, trump's son-in-law and major campaign advisor
Paul Manafort, at the time trump's campaign manager

Russians
Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with Kremlin connections
Irakly Kaveladze, a Georgian-American, under investigation for money laundering
Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist accused of ties to Russian intelligence
Anatoli Samochornov, Vesenlitskaya's translator

Brit
Rob Goldstone, business go-between and media PR for Russian entertainers/ connected figures.

(If anyone noticed anybody hiding behind the coffee cart in the corner, I hope they get named too)

It's unlikely the Russians will see a courtroom in the U.S. but any charges will restrict their ability to travel outside of Russia. So the real damage is going to hit the Americans and the Brit Goldstone (unless he flees jurisdiction, but I doubt the UK government will give him any protection).

While the direct participants are in serious danger, there's a question mark about the people who knew the meeting happened but didn't personally attend. They could be on the hook - under charge of conspiracy, or related charges to any criminal activity that happened because of that meeting - and it may explain the "dozens of indictments" that insiders say are out there.

It would be interesting to see how broad a net Mueller will cast when the indictments go out.

He'd better do it quick, before we get distracted by our Saturnalia decorating and party plans.

Things That Need to Happen In Florida Before 2020

With the recounting all finished and the sad reality of Republicans winning the Governor and Senate races - DAMMIT FLORIDA RICK SCOTT IS A MEDICARE FRAUD DID YOU EVER UNDERSTAND THE SEVERITY OF THAT - the first thing to do is wipe away the tears and the second thing to do is get prepared for the chaos that will be 2020.

It is going to be a nasty election cycle, a Presidential one where the choices are going to be a handful of Democrats primarying in the spring and the Republicans amped up to defend a goddamned con artist in trump.

But a lot of other things can be on the ballot as well, above all reform amendments that can curtail a lot of the criminal misdeeds of a Florida legislature / Governor's office.

The voters just approved the amendment that would re-enfranchise ex-felons, allowing a million or more non-violent parolees to regain their rights as citizens to vote. That's a positive boon to turnout.

More needs to be done though.

Actual turnout is depressingly low. Population is 20 million, with around 16 million eligible to vote. Yet we currently have 13.3 million registered... and it's looking like barely over 8 million actually cared to vote. How much of that poor turnout is due to voter suppression, how much due to voter indifference?

There's solid evidence that the aggressive gerrymandering that affected this state the last twenty years or more discourages turnout. While anti-gerrymander amendments have passed this decade, the GOP-controlled Legislature and Governor's office have kept figuring out loopholes and means to ignore court orders, crafting districts that still favor their party in partisan ways. With another map redraw coming up for 2020 (the Census is coming), and the likelihood Florida may see another Congressional seat added, the shifting of the map is unavoidable.

If the Democratic party has any concern about breaking the decades-long grip the GOP has had on this state - a grip that has hurt our schools, poisoned our waters, and dismisses our rights - they need to approach this next election cycle in two ways.

One: push for amendment referenda that will crimp gerrymandering (such as an independent map-making committee, and stricter definitions to ensure non-partisan intent), that will improve voter turnout (by opening Early Voting more broadly and by forcing the counties to improve polling access with better voting equipment and more paid personnel), and that will ensure voter turnout (by creating universal voter registration, free IDs, same-day registration, and/or other reforms).

Two: by campaigning and challenging every available state and federal office with reliable local candidates, whether they be progressive or centrist. Florida Democrats still have problems recruiting and promoting for local elections (partly because the party leadership is wary of getting out-there Progressives that would alienate voters the way certain wingnut Far Right candidates would be for Republicans) to where local voters have few reasons to show up to vote. To hell with that. Get the best possible people to run for the State Lege. Get the local teachers (look at Wisconsin they elected a teacher to Governor) angry about low wages, get the local fishermen watching their businesses waste away in toxic algae, get the college-age Millennial railing against the gun violence that devastated her schools. Every seat needs to be challenged. Every voter needs to hear a Democratic voice arguing FOR better pay, cleaner water, safer lives.

2020 is gonna be a zoo: the train wreck that is trump makes that obvious. But Florida needs to tune that noise out and focus on what matters. Saving our state from Far Right misrule.

Get working. Two years goes by faster than you realize.

List of groups to seek out:

Indivisible

Common Cause Florida

League of Women Voters Florida

Lemme know who else to add that will be running amendment petitions for 2020!

Turkey Sacrifice Day 2018

I need to note that I have finally run into a Pagan - all my friends are Heathens dontcha know - and she was not entirely thrilled to hear me call Thanksgiving a Pagan Turkey Sacrifice Day. Especially since I didn't name which deity the poor bird was getting sacrificed to.

So I need to find out of there's a God/Goddess that oversees the fumbling of footballs that were caused by the unfortunate collisions into the posterior of an offensive linesman.

For yea verily, this IS the 6th year anniversary of the infamous Butt Fumble. (Mark Sanchez is playing today as a backup QB for Washington)

But let's go back discussing to WHOM we are sacrificing turkeys.

I got money on the Native American legend of the Thunderbird.

In the meantime, enjoy your sacrifice of Ben Franklin's favorite feathered foe!

Feeling Askew At The Moment

There's stressful situations at work and I'm losing focus on this year's NaNoWriMo project and I'm not entirely sure I'll even get out of bed for much of the Thanksgiving weekend...

So you get a Maru with a magnifying glass.

Good luck with the turkey bombers.

Sliding Down Into the Darker Days of a trumpian Winter

(Note: this is my 1500th blog posting here at You Might Notice a Trend. Just saying. Been a long strange and on occasion horrifying trip with miles to go)

As the post-midterms shakeup here in the U.S. works out the recounts and backroom backstabbing, there are a few clear signs of how dark a winter we're about to endure.

Above all, trump is facing a well-situated Democratic-controlled House in Congress. Dems are currently looking at a 36 seat advantage over Republicans at 229 (expecting 237) and a clear amount of room to pass majority votes (needing 219 seats).

The immediate real-world implication here is that the House under Democratic control can perform the oversight into trump's political and financial abuses that's been needed since Day One. Under rules set in 1924 for example, the chair of the House Ways and Means committee can request access to trump's tax returns (there would, of course, have to be a reason that can stand up in court). The House will have reasons to make such requests: Best example will be the serious allegations into trump's violations of the Emoluments Clause. The House Oversight and Reform Committee (yes, they have one) will certainly be looking into the amount of money trump has been getting from his DC hotel and other properties from foreign powers, which would require looking at his previous years' income statements to compare and contrast.

The threat of looking at trump's tax records are two-fold: One, they can provide evidence of questionable business practices such as money laundering; Two, they can reveal the fallacy of trump's bragging over his personal wealth (he keeps talking like he's a billionaire but his tax returns may reveal much of that is tied up into loans and debt). The second one would be the hardest on trump because it will be a huge hit to his twisted ego.

Just on exposing trump's tax returns alone, Democrats will strike a severe blow at trump-World's bubble.

If there is any comfort (grrrr, never) for trump, it's that impeachment is an unlikely event this coming congressional cycle. Democrats may see the merits of trying to remove a dangerous figure from the White House, but actual removal is still up to a two-thirds majority in the Senate and the current Republican majority there prevents that no matter what.

What the Democratic House can and will do is expose trump's greater sins: the horrific immigration policy decisions, pushing back against trump's insane tariff EOs, critiquing trump's foreign policy miscues on Korea and the Middle East, trump's continued use of violent rhetoric stirring up white supremacist and antisemitic forces. Some of these fights can sustain Democratic outrage into the 2020 Presidential elections and keep independent voters away from backing trump that November.

Also at stake is the ongoing Mueller investigation: trump can try to get the DoJ to shut it down but the House Democrats can intervene - through funding issues, and through their own oversight investigations - to keep Mueller going. trump may be able to interfere but it won't do much now.

And the reports post-election suggest it may be too late. Per tradition, Mueller put a cap on issuing indictments or other public actions during the two months before the November 2018 general vote - something Comey failed to do in 2016, grrrrrrrrrrrrrr - in order to avoid affecting that vote. With the election done, Mueller can issue the indictments he's apparently been sitting on (via John Schindler at the Observer):

To abide by Justice Department rules, Mueller went silent for almost two months before the midterms, to avoid any appearance of election interference, but the Special Counsel’s office is now renewing the public side of their investigation. Team Mueller is reported to be working on the final draft of their report on the president and his Russian ties in 2016. Whatever that report says, it’s not likely to be flattering to Team Trump.

Worse for the White House, Mueller’s prosecutors are widely believed to be closing in on two people close to the president, Roger Stone and Donald Trump, Jr. Stone, the self-proclaimed Republican “ratf*cker,” has spoken openly of his fears of impending indictment over his links to WikiLeaks in 2016. Don Jr. is reported to be concerned as well, since he appears to have lied to Federal investigators about the fateful June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian intelligence officials.

That June 9th meeting is key: it's physical evidence of Russian interaction with an American political campaign, something that is in violation of serious laws. Nearly every person who is linked to that moment is likely facing indictment (if they haven't flipped already).

When Mueller informs the public of more indictments is an open question. That they are coming, however, is not. And there are lots of them. The Special Counsel has been at work for almost 18 months now. An Intelligence Community official who assisted the Special Counsel’s investigation told me this week that Team Mueller is holding “dozens of sealed indictments” of people associated with the president, his 2015-16 campaign, and his administration. “Nobody who’s close to the Russians is getting out of this,” said the IC official...

What will happen - outside of trump trying to use his pardon powers in a last-ditch effort to avoid criminal charges on himself - leaves trump facing a dire situation in his political stance. Above all, facing the likelihood he will lose his own family members getting indicted.

trump operates in a bubble, his own comfort zone where the most trusted allies are his own flesh-and-blood (and in-laws). A Bad Boss to everyone else, trump prefers handlers he knows HAS to rely on his own criminal misdeeds to thrive. His children have no other identity outside of being HIS kids: Ivanka in particular - whose unprofitable patents just got approved by a China we're supposed to be in tariff wars against - would have been kicked out of any other West Wing given the fights she's had with other staffers.

Look at how donnie junior was involved in trump's 2016 campaign to begin with. Nearly every other figure between trump and Russia - the ones he trusted most, like Stone and Manafort - will likely be unavailable to help him run ANYTHING once the Mueller hammer comes down.

How do you think trump can operate without trusted people?

This a guy whose management style is conflict: getting people to vie for his attention and favor regardless how it disrupts the jobs that need to get done. trump is going to have to rely more and more on self-serving backstabbers - hi, Bolton! - with fewer and fewer competent people willing to put up with trump's bullshit.

In the short-term, we're likely to see - we're starting to see it now with reports of Chief of Staff Kelly and Homeland Secretary Neilsen on the outs - a massive wave of Cabinet firings and resignations and intense instability of our government's administration.

In the long-term, we're likely to see - and trump's ongoing war against immigrants and Black voters is evidence of it - a political re-election campaign (and an imploding Republican Party) devolve into outright racism and domestic terrorism to bully its way to another illegal victory.

As the Starks kept warning us, Winter was coming. And now a trumpian winter is here, threatening to last well into 2020.

Gods help us.

Update On The Madness Midterm

Oh No. Not Again.

(via the Tampa Bay Times) Florida ordered mandatory machine recounts in three statewide elections Saturday for the first time in state history.

Secretary of State Ken Detzner issued a one-page order directing all 67 counties to conduct a machine recount of more than 8.2 million combined ballots over the next five days in the races for governor, U.S. Senator and commissioner of agriculture.

Yes, of course, only FLORIDA could make the 2018 Midterms election cycle THIS MUCH CRAZIER.

It didn't help that the state's election services are still seriously compromised, with broken electronic machines, understaffed county offices, confusing precinct locations, long lines, and struggling volunteers (those are the ones I feel worst about: many of them are honest and capable and dealing with a lot of top-down problems).

We've got reports about the Broward County ballot not showing the key US Senate race for people to vote on, creating a massive gap of unaccounted voters.

Long before I started blogging, I lived in South Florida. I was there for the 2000 Debacle. It wasn't fun, stressful as hell knowing the fate of the entire nation hung the balance...

This election cycle, with all the other things that have happened since Tuesday, there's not AS MUCH at stake at the national level - pretty much the US Senate race between Nelson (please) and Scott (NOOOOOOO) - other than how much of a margin the Republicans control the Senate next term (if it's a 1-vote lead all of a sudden McConnell has to work harder to keep his troops in line, if it's a 3-vote margin he has more leeway). The way things are counting out in Arizona, whether Scott wins or loses becomes a bigger deal.

What *is* at stake is at the state level: whether the Republicans retain control of the Governor's seat with DeSantis or if Democrats can force a power-share getting Gillum into that seat. If Gillum DOES recover and gets the win with the machine count (it all depends on if a lot of missing ballots in Blue counties - hello again, Dade - and the absentees by mail are counted in time) this would be a bigger deal.

Statewide, the Dems will have a say in how the gerrymander efforts by the GOP are done (which bodes well for Dems). Gillum would ensure the felon re-enfranchisement amendment is enforced, improving the odds of higher turnout (which favors Dems a bit more).

At the national level, a Gillum win would revitalize an otherwise down-in-the-mouth progressive voting base. For all the wins that DID happen for Democrats and Progressives - winning back the US House, winning more governorships and state offices in the Great Lakes and Midwest states, more women and minorities in office - most of the big-name races (Beto O'Rourke in Texas, Gillum in Florida, Abrams in Georgia) did not pan out.

Beto's loss was close, but not close enough to force a recount. Abrams' run for the Governor's seat in Georgia is still in question because of the closeness of the results (it may yet - IT NEEDS TO - go to recount), but if she prevails it would be the first true big crack in the GOP Southern Strategy. A Black Woman winning in what was a solid Conservative (and historically racist) state would be almost as big a win as Obama winning the Presidency in 2008.

Gillum's win - if it happens through recount - would be almost as big as an Abrams win. Florida may STILL be a Southern state with its own dark history of racism, but the last 30 years or so has seen this state wobble between its redneck leanings or its East Coast Transplant/International(Caribbean)  leanings. That Florida may be ready for a Black man running Tallahassee (well, okay, running Florida) is a big step but it wouldn't be as Earth-shattering as flipping Georgia.

There's still a lot to worry about: there's no guarantee the recounts mean a Gillum or Nelson victory (although both would be a huge relief to me personally) here in Florida. There's every chance the Republicans still in charge of a lot of things - and every chance Rick "No Ethics" Scott tries to shoot the recount down - will mess things up to where the Supreme Court interferes AGAIN with this mess.

But after the blues of Tuesday, this bit of Hope this weekend keeps me going.

P.S.: GOD, I know as a Unitarian you don't listen to me much, but PLEASE for the LOVE OF YOU make sure the recount favors Nelson and Gillum. Please. PPPPPLLLLLEEEEAASSSSEEEEE (gives the Almighty that pleading kitteh-eye expression)

Blood On the Streets of Ventura County

Do you wanna know how bad gun violence has gotten in the United States?

We just had a mass shooting at yet another crowded bar, this time in Thousand Oaks, CA where some of the people getting killed at this shooting had survived the biggest mass shooting of our time in Las Vegas just one year ago.

That's right. Gun violence has gotten so commonplace that people are starting to rack up repeat appearances like frequent flyer miles.

The NRA can start a goddamn giveaway. Survive ten shootings, get one shooting free.

This is where our nation is right now. We're almost to one mass shooting a day.

The gun nuts are starting to run out of fresh victims, and are getting to the leftovers.

GODS HELP US.