Marking Out the trump Criminal Scorecard

So what exactly should we expect from Mueller's investigation into trump's ties with Russia and how that might have affected the 2016 elections?

Obstruction

This is the one where Mueller has trump dead to rights.

This one is so obvious that ongoing revelations of how trump is handling the FBI (then Mueller) investigation into his ties to Russia - he wants to keep firing everybody - that by now even amateur prosecutors - even sideline pundits! - can argue a strong case he broke this law.

To quote William Saletan over at Slate discussing what trump tried to do in June 2017 in trying (and failing) to fire Mueller:

Look back over the Russia investigation, and you’ll see this pattern: Trump constantly sought control. In January 2017, he told Comey that he expected loyalty. A month later, Trump tried to stop Attorney General Jeff Sessions from recusing himself. Later, Trump fired Comey and rebuked Sessions for failing to protect Trump from the investigation. In July, Trump drew a red line around his personal finances and signaled to Mueller that he had better not cross that line. And in August, Trump called up members of Congress to derail legislation that would impede him from firing Mueller.

...the Times report shows that when Trump tried to fire Mueller, he did so despite warnings that this might be criminal. By May 22, it was widely reported that Mueller was obliged to investigate—and was, in fact, investigating—whether Trump had obstructed justice by firing Comey. When Trump moved in June to oust Mueller, he was essentially ignoring those reports...

To impeach and remove a president for obstructing justice, you need to show that his intent in targeting investigators was corrupt. The easy way is to find tapes in which he talks explicitly about orchestrating false testimony. The harder way is to show that he has repeatedly lied about his motives and has maneuvered to control the investigation, despite warnings to back off. Trump’s assault on Mueller, coupled with his previous assaults on Comey, Sessions, Rosenstein, and McCabe, solidifies that case. He obstructed justice...

Or referring to Adam Serwer over at The Atlantic:

Obstruction of justice is a crime that depends on a person’s state of mind, and so is difficult for prosecutors to prove. The law on whether a sitting president can be prosecuted, as opposed to impeached and removed from office by Congress, is unsettled. But legal experts say that Trump’s pattern of behavior has made the case against him much stronger, because that pattern shows Trump repeatedly attempting to undercut the investigations into Russian interference and obstruction, and then in some cases misleading the public about it. That Trump was unsuccessful in firing Mueller is irrelevant—obstruction is a crime whether or not the attempt succeeds.

“At some point, a pattern of the same conduct indicates willfulness and intentionality,” said John Q. Barrett, a law professor at St. John’s University and former associate special counsel in the Iran-Contra affair.

This one is so blatant and obvious that when - not if - Mueller presents his Obstruction charges to the court that handles this case - I think it's the DC district - the judge will insist trump's lawyers work out a plea deal because they ain't winning this one. You gotta grade this one a 100 percent lock.

Money Laundering / Financial crimes

The starting point here is Paul Manafort and his circle of questionable financial practices (and foreign government ties) as part of the trump/Kushner financial "empire".

There's a reason Mueller brought onto his team people experienced in pursuing Racketeering and Money Laundering cases. With trump's history of bad business, bankruptcies, fraud trials, and other financial misdeeds, "Follow the Money" is the best way to find out what trump really did and which laws he broke along the way.

Given how Mueller's already brought charges on Manafort, there's a good likelihood any business deals involving trump or Kushner (Son-in-Law) will lead to similar charges on them. Until Mueller reveals exactly what numbers he has, and which laws apply to trump's fraudulent behaviors, none of us should really say for sure. If anything, Mueller better reveal trump's tax returns just so Americans can find out how much trump's been lying about his net worth... Give this one about 90 percent certainty.

Voter Fraud / Campaign Finance Fraud / Electoral Interference

This is the meat of the matter, and one that needs confirmation of what happened. These are the tidbits that have been floating on the edges of the story, clues here and rumors there, about how Russian hackers played a major role in the 2016 elections. With so many public statements from trump and his Republican allies that exposed those stories as more than rumors.

Where Obstruction and Money Laundering may be the easiest things Mueller can prove, these charges are equally hardest to prove.

Part of what Mueller has to prove is how Russia could have used any voter data information from trump's people (and Republican pollsters) to craft a psych-ops program of manipulating voter turnout via social media. This requires understanding how polling works, and how it crafts campaigns (and their third-party SuperPAC supporters). This is where they can lose jurors who might not comprehend how groupthink / "mob mentality" works (and where the law may be incapable of viewing as criminal).

There are reports of voter suppression in the key states - Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania - where results eked out in favor of trump. While the DHS retracted an early report and claimed in that linked report I added that there was no evidence of hacking, it does leave open the possibility that something happened that Homeland Security can't yet confirm. One possible way of confirming that hackers affected the electronic balloting (or vote counting) would be finding out what trump or his people knew about those hacking efforts, of which trump eagerly egged the Russians on.

There's also ongoing reports from the foreign intelligence agencies - wait, the Dutch have a spy agency??? - that have tracked the Russian hacking teams (Cozy Bear?? Who named these guys?) that our intel agencies believe were the major offenders (Cozy Bear has been identified being behind the DNC email hacks during the election).

If trump and/or the Russians have done any due diligence in clearing out/hiding their paper trail on this, Mueller won't have much to go on. And as I've mentioned, Mueller is likely going to focus on what he can prove - and win - in court. So get this around 40 percent likely.

However. If any one of these cyber attacks by Russian hackers can be proved to have affected our elections, that's a serious crime. If Mueller can prove trump or any of his people had knowledge before or after, there better be charges filed against them. If trump and his people had any active role in these attacks...

Treason

This is, in truth, the hardest argument to prove. Not so much because we can't tell if trump betrayed his nation - his eagerness to embrace and trust Russia and Putin over fellow Americans is obvious, not necessarily criminal - but because the Founders intentionally made Treason one of the hardest crimes to prove. (They would know, because they themselves were traitors to the British Crown: they knew what it was like to live on that razor's edge)

There's such a high bar of legality to cross - two or more witnesses, clear actions that go against the national security or well-being of the citizenry - that bringing this to trial requires some serious fucking shit Mueller and his team uncovered (maybe a verifiable handwritten letter from trump to Putin saying "thanks for rigging the election, here's me ending the sanctions and letting you pummel NATO into dust"). It's unlikely Mueller would find something that incriminating, and more likely that Mueller will focus on stuff that will stand up in court (and mollify Congressional Republicans into staying out of the way).

This is up here, because let's be honest a lot of trump-haters - myself included - take one look at trump's eagerness to hand everything to Putin on a silver platter and we recoil with the belief that trump IS betraying us to a foreign power.

This would be pretty to think so, but we should not get our hopes up. I'm not grading this as a possibility of happening, okay maybe 5 percent. Again, Mueller has got to find a planet-busting cobalt bomb of doom in the evidence pile for this to happen.

Mueller's next step is interviewing trump (or else trump's lawyers arguing against it). That's gotta be the last step in this investigation.

We should know soon what Mueller knows.

Gods help us.

Oh Don't You Put Me on the Back-burner

The latest dramatic turn in the ongoing nightmare that is the Russia-trump investigation is one that answered a pressing question: "When is trump going to just say 'fuck it' and try to fire Mueller before Mueller nails him to the wall on Obstruction/Money Laundering/Fraud/Acts of Treason with the Russians"?

The answer was "He already tried!"

Per David A Graham from The Atlantic:

It turns out that Trump wasn’t just rattling his saber publicly: According to a New York Times report late Thursday, the president attempted to fire Mueller in June 2017, roughly a month after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him. But Trump was blocked by White House Counsel Don McGahn, who reportedly threatened to quit rather than make good on the order. The Washington Post confirmed the story.

The episode adds new intrigue to the already transfixing dance between the president and the special counsel’s probe. Mueller is working to interview Trump in the near future, and has already extracted guilty pleas from two former aides, as well as indicting two more. The episode underscores Trump’s volatile temperament and tendency to act impulsively, and it once again thrusts McGahn and his office into the spotlight.

Trump’s desire to fire Mueller was never especially surprising or hidden. Everyone tied to the Russia investigation seems to have been in his sights at one time or another. Mueller’s appointment stemmed from Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, and Trump also raged at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from Russia matters, and at Rod Rosenstein, who he suggested was a random Democrat, rather than a rock-ribbed Republican appointed to his job by Trump himself. The president mused about firing Mueller in an interview with the Times, and in July I wrote that the operative question was not if but when Trump would try to fire Mueller. As it turns out, he already had...

Why is this report coming out now? Graham considers one possibility:

News of the attempted firing comes as Trump’s lawyers negotiate the terms on which the president would offer testimony to Mueller. While the president has long said he didn’t think he’d need to testify, he changed his tune on Wednesday. “I’m looking forward to it, actually,” he said. “I would love to do that—I’d like to do it as soon as possible.” This was followed by the unusual spectacle of the president’s lawyer contradicting him and saying he’d follow legal advice; on Thursday, another Trump lawyer said no decision had been made. Given the president’s previous pretextual justifications for firing Mueller, it would not be surprising to see him argue that Mueller is now irrevocably compromised because he knows that Trump tried to fire him...

That option seems a little too convoluted: that trump would argue "well, I tried firing him so now he's got it out for me" as an excuse to avoid getting interviewed by him, that kind of argument is hard to pull off against prosecutors, special or otherwise. I'm sure a lot of defendants argue to the judge "well you see, the prosecutor hates my guts..." but not a lot of them get any sympathy that way.

The reason I think we're hearing this now is because Mueller has gotten to the point in the investigation where trump is the last person he can interview. As I've noted before, these cases work from the outside in: get the fringe or minor players who were caught, work your way up the chain of the criminal enterprise to key hangers-on, pile up the evidence on the Inner Circle major players, and then nail the Big Bad at the center of the whole crime.

That Mueller wants to interview trump now means the special prosecutor's got enough items on the plate to question the key figure of the investigation. It's not always necessary, but it helps because whatever trump says will - not may, because this is a constantly lying SOB we're talking about - contradict his own earlier words and likely the words of the others that Mueller's already interrogated.

This means we're at the point where trump's defenders are going to try and find any half-baked excuse to paint Mueller in the worst possible light. They've been trying, but not much else has stuck. Even the recent chatter about "secret society" FBI agents on a witch-hunt against trump hasn't panned out.

But this is the interesting thing: Either trump's defenders are leaking this story now to try and argue that Mueller is on a vendetta, or people opposing trump's efforts to Obstruct the investigation into Russia's meddling in US Elections wanted to reveal how the federal agencies are refusing to bend to trump's orders.

I think it may be the latter: on this specific issue, it's likely coming from McGahn's people trying to show McGahn abiding by the Rule of Law (in case trump tries firing him now). But there's the other story about current FBI Director Wray - appointed by trump! - threatening to resign if trump and Attorney General Sessions tried to fire Deputy Director McCabe, who filled in for Comey after Comey's firing and who was a key player in making sure Special Counsel Mueller was able to take over the FBI's investigation into Russian hacking and links to trump's 2016 campaign.

That trump's own hires - who are in positions requiring they abide by the Rule of Law - are forewarnings of how the Federal Government - in particular the FBI, CIA, NSA, and 16 other Intelligence Agencies! - would react if trump tries to Obstruct Mueller by firing him.

These stories are getting out there, not just to trump but to a Republican Congress still refusing to hold trump accountable for the acts of Obstruction and collusion he's already been caught committing. These are warnings: Congress and trump aren't going to get very far if agencies sworn to uphold the Constitution begin refusing to answer any order by Republicans when those agencies can rightly claim every order is illegal.

This is getting close to the end.

This is getting close to an administrative civil war.

Stay aware.

My Thoughts On the Democrats Dealing Away the trump Shutdown

Shouldn't say I was surprised by this, but yeah the Democrats in the Senate decided to make a deal to end the current shutdown (via Washington Post):

Congress voted late Monday to reopen the government after a three-day shutdown, sending President Trump a short-term spending bill that passed after Senate Republican leaders pledged to act on immigration policy next month.

The House joined the Senate in passing the bill to fund the government through Feb. 8, reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program and roll back several health-care taxes. It passed 81-18 in the Senate and 266-150 in the House.

“I’m glad we can finally get back to work here,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said after the vote. He called the shutdown a “manufactured crisis” characterized by “damaging partisan theatrics.”

LOOK IN THE MIRROR WHEN YOU SAY THAT MITCH, 'CAUSE THE PARTISANSHIP STARTS WITH YOU.

In the meantime, my Twitter and Facebook feeds are full of Dem voters decrying the fact that their own party's leadership seemed to fold like origami paper.

We are going to have to recognize some sad truths:

• As much as the Far Left wants it, the main leadership of the Democratic Party genuinely believes in actual governance. They don't play the Republicans' extremist game of Chicken to see every car get smashed to hell going over cliffs. The Congressional Republicans had forced a shutdown, threatening the basic functions of government, and the Congressional Democrats knew that meant minor and major offices weren't going to be doing the Public any good. So yeah, Dems will tend to blink first in these Shutdown showdowns.
• The Dem leadership did get at least one thing good out of this: CHIP should get funded now for six years, which takes one hostage out of the equation.
• The remaining hostage in all this - DREAMers, relying on a DACA bill - may be facing hell over the next few weeks, but there's supposed to be a deal on the table where McConnell agreed to bring a DACA bill to a vote before this Continuing Resolution ends some time in March. This still puts the onus on Republicans, who are divided on the immigration issue to where ANY serious attempt to fix things will collapse on A) trump's wall obsession and B) the wingnut base's hatred of immigrants nullifying any proposal.

It hurts, in truth, to see the Democrats fold this quickly on a fight that they had every reason to play out longer than this. For all the rationales for keeping government working, they are doing this by sacrificing the current well-being of 800,000 or so Americans whose only crime was being brought here as kids by their illegal alien parents. They are seeing this - rightly - as a betrayal, with no guarantee that they are going to get to stay in the country they grew up loving and serving.

And this all still depends on McConnell, a man whose personal honor died years ago when he decided to condemn the nation to his partisan bullshit. As that Esquire article I linked to asked, Can you trust Mitch McConnell? His years of obstruction and manipulation make him one of the most evil men on the planet, and his track record of breaking deals and ignoring rules make me think of the only argument why you should NEVER deal with the devil.

Because a Deal with the Devil is no deal at all.

McConnell is bound to cheat, bound to stall, bound to lie, and do everything in his power to put the blame on Democrats again, who've shown a terrible willingness to shoulder such burdens at the expense of disillusioning their own voter base.

Despite all this, I have to argue that Democratic voters need to step up this midterms. Don't get bummed by this. Look at the bigger picture. Look at the son of a bitch sitting in the White House right now.

NOTHING is holding trump accountable to the law, certainly not the Congressional Republicans who are supposed to do their job maintaining Checks and Balances. On this one point alone, you NEED to show up and vote for EVERY DEMOCRAT on the ballot. With Democrats in charge of Congress after this midterms, you can be assured that they will hold trump and his cronies responsible for the laws they are breaking right now.

On that alone, Democrats, GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT. Don't hide, don't despair. Keep fighting.

Otherwise, McConnell keeps winning, and the Republicans keep destroying everything we love.

What Matters Anymore?

Saturday Night Live finally nailed it on the head:

As the sketch with guest host Jessica Chastain reveals, the last two weeks - of trump dumping on non-Eurowhite nations as "shitholes", of trump getting caught paying off a porn star he had an affair with less than a year after his third wife Melania gave birth to their son, of trump destabilizing government to where nobody in Congress could avoid the #trumpShutdown of 2018 - would otherwise have devastated any other Presidency, shamed the political party of that President into action to rein in such abuses and scandal, or driven most of the nation into rioting in the streets.

But nope. Nada. As Chastain rightly points out, the crazier and reckless trump behaves and the worse he does at the job as Commander-in-Chief, the more his rabid voting base will approve of him.

And the rest of us are stuck because the Rule of Law is relying on the other half of government - the Legislative branch - to do something about it. But the Republicans control the Legislative branch and they are not going to do anything that threatens their chances of getting re-elected by that rabid pro-trump base they rely on as well.

We've entered into the realm of political nihilism, where nothing matters because the ones in power don't fucking care what ethics or rules really mean. The ghosts of 19th Century Anarchists must be roiling in their graves in sheer envy.

And when Chastain raised that bottle of wine to drink it straight, I sympathized. I know that sentiment. Alas, I am unable to drink hard cider as I had hoped. I am stone cold sober. I am so depressed.

We are so royally fucked.

So the Republicans Get Their Shutdown 2018 Edition

It's after midnight. Do YOU know where your United States federal government is?

Oh, right.

It's on shutdown.

Republicans in the Senate couldn't agree on the House bill sent their way, and with the fate of DREAMer immigrants and CHIP childcare health funding being held hostage, there was no way Democrats would come to their rescue on any kind of funding or Continuing Resolution.

Meanwhile, that keen Negotiator world-renown for his art of the deal donald trump went to bed blaming Democrats for the fact that *he* blew up a proposed bipartisan deal on immigration a few days ago when he insulted Haiti and all of Africa.

This is an historic first. This *is* the first time a political party (Republicans) held control of both branches of Congress AND the Presidency and FAILED TO PASS ANY KIND OF A BUDGET TO KEEP THE U.S. GOVERNMENT OPERATING.

This takes a certain level of incompetency AND malice. Some things the modern Republican Party are best at anymore. They're certainly not any good at ACTUAL GOVERNANCE.

This is not going to end well.

In Sadder News, I Did Not Receive Even a Nomination in the Fake News Awards

It turns out that trump and his people did not look to bloggers for their "fake news" documenting trump's many lies, failures, and stumbles.

Which is a damn shame. I'm sure I would have received a nomination for "Most Gratuitous Use of the Word Shitgibbon In a Long-Form Blog Entry".

Just think of all the coverage and attention that nomination would have garnered me. I would have at least gotten three or four more people buying my underwhelming Surviving the Age of Obstruction book off of Amazon or BN.com.

I'm just gonna have to go over to the corner here and cry my out, hoping beyond hope that more people talk their libraries at least into buying my books.

Insert tears here. (Wailing and gnashing of teeth)

I Gots Me More Government Shutdown Blues 2018 Edition

How can you tell there's a federal government shutdown pending?

The Republicans are already trying to blame Democrats for not surrendering to them over it.

It's not as though Republicans control both houses of Congress, which should simplify the GOP's ability to get shit done.

It's not as though Democrats have any influence over the Far Right factions of Congress that are refusing to give their own party some wriggle room with Continuing Resolutions. THAT'S entirely Paul Ryan's fault for not getting his own to agree to vote on another CR to extend their budgeting deadlines a little further down the road.

The budget fight this time is over DREAMers - a way to grant citizenship to those who were brought here as children by illegal immigrants, who grew up as Americans and many of whom are honest hard-working citizens in heart if not by law - and over trump's insistence for massive taxpayer funding for his Godawful Wall (guess what, trumpshirts: Mexico's not ever paying for your shit, YOU ARE).

Democrats are not going to budge on getting DREAMers their citizenship. Whatever compromises the Dems are willing to make to keep government open they're thinking long-term on the matter, and even then it's gonna be a hard sell to the whole party.

This means this is all on the Republicans: A Party that hasn't held itself accountable since Watergate. And yet blaming Democrats for their own failures to govern is all the Republicans can do at this point.

There are a lot of reasons why we've been suffering through one of the Worst Congresses Ever in American history. The failure of genuine bipartisanship out of the McConnell/Boehner/Ryan leadership - if not outright obstruction of Obama's Presidency - since 2010. The failure to rein in the worst racist impulses of their current banner-carrier trump. The failure to recognize their party are governing in the minority, ignoring the polls that show the GOP tax-cut, budget-slashing agendas are woefully unpopular with most Americans.

It all comes down to this: Republicans simply can't govern. Oh, they can win elections, but winning elections doesn't mean you can make hard decisions that elected officials are expected to make. Elections are won based on emotional drives, on bias and impulse: Republicans can sell themselves to their base on fear and anger, but those impulses are useless when it comes time to make Honest-to-God decisions that actually benefits people.

So this is why we're facing the third - or fourth? I lost track - Government Shutdown in modern memory since the 1990s. A trend of Government Shutdowns that happen ONLY when Republicans are in control of Congress, and this is the first time it's happening when they also control the White House (to get past the presidential veto power).

This is how bad it's gotten for us, America. Even when they're in charge of EVERYTHING, the Republicans screw up.

And we're the ones who have to pay for it.

Again.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, AMERICA, STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN.

Some Thoughts On Martin Luther King Jr. 2018 Edition

(Update: Thank you Batocchio for the link to Mike's Blog Round-Up on Crooksandliars.com!)

"...The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes.  ...Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that..." - from Where Do We Go From Here speech (1967)

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice" - a saying attributed to Reverend King, based on sayings from a speech by Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. King says it in one line where Parker took a whole paragraph, and King says it better. (this is kinda like how Jimi Hendrix's take on "All Along the Watchtower" is waaaaay better than Bob Dylan's original)

Never forget King spent his last years fighting against poverty and income inequality, seeing that as a universal problem for everyone's civil rights:

We have come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty...

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available...

MLK essentially argued for guaranteed basic incomes before it came into vogue a few years ago.

Also, this:

I know this kinda goes against Rev. King's admonitions against violence,
but never let a white guy in a bowtie speak for what King stood for.

Also, I really think if Reverend King were alive today (ducks to avoid Huey's thrown chair) he'd be under arrest for beating the everloving hell out of trump.

That trump Is Racist Should Not Surprise Us Anymore. IT SHOULD ANGER US NOW.

Jesus.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Thursday questioned why the United States would want to have immigrants from Haiti and African nations, referring to some as “shithole countries,” according to two sources familiar with the comments...

To the 62 million who voted for trump. You knew.

...The lawmakers were describing how certain immigration programs operate, including one to give safe haven in the United States to people from countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife.

One of the sources who was briefed on the conversation said that Trump said, “Why do we want all these people from Africa here? They’re shithole countries ... We should have more people from Norway.”

The second source familiar with the conversation, said Trump also questioned the need for Haitians in the United States...

As a side note, most Norwegians are Socialists, far Left of any home-grown librul you find here. And I'm pretty sure Norwegians are going to be appalled that trump is abusing their culture like this. But I digress.

Many Democrats and some Republican lawmakers slammed Trump for his remarks.

Republican U.S. Representative Mia Love, a daughter of Haitian immigrants, said the comments were “unkind, divisive, elitist, and fly in the face of our nation’s values” and called on Trump to apologize to the American people and to the countries he denigrated...

That's the thing about racism when it becomes personal for you, isn't it, Republicans? Otherwise you're fine with it.

BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT trump HAS BEEN SINCE DAY ONE OF HIS CAMPAIGN.

How many other times have I pointed out on this blog how racist trump behaves on the national stage? How often does trump come to the defense of Neo-Nazis and known bigots? How many times does he get caught disparaging entire nations because of their skin color or religion or culture?

To quote Tom Levenson at Balloon Juice:

And now this:  Trump, uttering out loud the hate soundtrack that loops constantly through his lizard brain.  This time, he was so obvious as to make it clear even to the meanest comprehension (not implying anything about CNN).  There’s no hidden meaning, no subtext in his words.  This ain’t eleven dimensional chess or brilliant electoral strategery.  January 11, 2018 ain’t the day that Donald Trump became President.

It’s the one on which he reminded us exactly what kind of president he is, what kind of leader the GOP accepts, welcomes, follows.

And thus the test: every single GOP member of Congress, every cabinet official, every White House staffer who fails to condemn this statement, owns it — along with all the sentiments and intentions behind it. They become the bigots, aiders and abettors of the worst impulses in the public sphere. They are to be named and shamed; small children should grimace to see them and each of us will spit on the sidewalks as they pass...

62 Million fellow Americans had no problem with trump's racism when they voted for him. YOU OWN THIS, Republicans. YOU trump VOTERS OWN THIS FOREVER.

Some things remain unforgivable. Supporting racism is one of them.

Damn you.

Killing the Gerrymander: 2018 With the Best News Yet

Again, not a huge fan of the gerrymander.

Which is why the latest news out of North Carolina heartens me. Per David A Graham at The Atlantic:

Federal judges have yet again struck down North Carolina’s congressional districts as an unconstitutional gerrymander, dealing Republicans a blow and throwing the state’s maps into chaos just months before a pivotal midterm election.

A three-judge panel, including one circuit-court judge and two district-court judges, ruled Tuesday evening that the Old North State’s redistricting plan relied too heavily on partisan affiliation in drawing constituencies, violating citizens’ rights under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, the First Amendment, and Article I of the Constitution. The decision is the first time a federal court has ever struck down a redistricting plan as a partisan gerrymander...

As Graham notes, there are two other gerrymander cases on similar arguments in other courts, so we'll likely have to wait for this to get to the Supreme Court (where it could well die for partisan reasons /headdesk).

But this ruling is a huge fcking deal because unlike previous gerrymandering rulings - which focused on minority representation - this focused on Party representation: Between the difference of Republican, Democrat, and Independent/smaller Third parties. As Graham noted, earlier gerrymandering efforts based on race was shot down by the courts, so the Republican-controlled North Carolina state legislature "proudly used partisanship as their primary criterion in drawing new maps." They intentionally drew state and congressional districts to serve Republican needs:

“I acknowledge freely that this would be a political gerrymander, which is not against the law,” said Representative David Lewis, the chair of the state House redistricting committee. He also said, “I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.” And he suggested the committee draw maps that would produce 10 Republican and three Democratic U.S. House districts, on the basis that he didn’t think it would be possible to come up with an 11-2 map...

The court came back and told Lewis and the other Republicans that guess what IT WAS AGAINST THE LAW:

Common Cause and the League of Women Voters both challenged the law, and their two suits were consolidated into one. The plaintiffs argued that the plan violated the Equal Protection Clause, because it discriminated against non-Republican voters; the First Amendment, because it discriminated against voters based on previous political expression; and Article I, because it interfered with the right of the people to elect their representatives...

“A partisan gerrymander that is intended to and likely has the effect of entrenching a political party in power undermines the ability of voters to effect change when they see legislative action as infringing on their rights,” Judge James Wynn, an Obama appointee, wrote for the court. “We agree with Plaintiffs that a wealth of evidence proves the General Assembly’s intent to ‘subordinate’ the interests of non-Republican voters and ‘entrench’ Republican domination of the state’s congressional delegation...”

Wynn was joined in full by Judge William Britt, a Carter appointee, and in part by Judge William Osteen Jr., a George W. Bush appointee who accepted the Equal Protection and Article I arguments but rejected the plaintiffs’ First Amendment claim...

This last bit is important. The judges did not split on two of the three arguments, meaning those arguments can work at the higher appellate (and Supreme Court) levels. The First Amendment argument is open to interpretation, but the Equal Protection and Article I arguments are etched deep into the legal underpinnings of voters' rights.

This partisan gerrymandering on the part of Republicans - in fairness, Democrats have been doing this in states like Illinois as well - is one of the big reasons why we're struggling against a federal government where the Party in power does not actually represent the majority of voters. Most Americans vote Democratic: However, the nature of geography and demographics (which is affected by gerrymandering) gave Republicans more seats in Congress.

If we can get rid of gerrymandering - if we can as a nation make it so that the House AND the Senate reflect the actual voter turnout and the issues they want resolved - we should get a Legislative branch of the federal government that genuinely reflects - and serves - the nation's interests. Only the geographic limitations - on the Senate, where small states are disproportionately represented - would be a problem from that point.

We'd still have elected officials who actually earned their electoral wins, not based on "safe" districts carved out to decimate the opposing party(ies).

Here's hoping.

Letting the Viper Bite Them

So what is with all the recent groveling by the Republicans in deference to the Almighty Shitgibbon?

• Republican Senators Grassley and Graham are trying to get charges filed against British intelligence agent Christopher Steele (seriously that's his name) over his dossier that investigated how deeply Russia had/has ties to  trump before and during the 2016 campaign. The Senators are claiming Steele may have lied to the FBI, but what it looks like from the sidelines is that the Senators are trying to discredit an intel source that for the most part been proven accurate.
• Over in the House, Ryan and Nunes are harassing the FBI into releasing documents related to that Steele dossier, what observers are noting are attempts to force the FBI into shutting down their Russia-trump investigation.
• And the GOP leadership seems to be shooting down any reports that they've been briefed on trump's unfit mental status, or on any discussions about the 25th Amendment being used to shut down trump as more public signs of dementia crop up.

Why are Republicans - who have to be aware that trump is toxic in the polls, and that they're facing angry voter turnout in the general midterms this November - tying their fate to someone who's proven over the last year to be a disruptive force capable of ruining their own chances?

Part of it has to be the recent Wolff book Fire and Fury that chronicles how everyone circling around trump are not-so-privately complaining about how he's a childish moron. There's a level of embarrassment for the party to have their own administration's handlers dissing their own boss like that.

If we refer to Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian:

What did you think would be the Republican reaction to the latest revelations about Donald Trump? Did you expect the party’s luminaries to drop their collective head into their hands, or to crumple into a heap in despair at the state of the man they anointed as president of the United States?

They’d certainly have had good reason. In the book Fire and Fury, which on Thursday received the greatest possible endorsement – namely a “cease and desist” order from Trump’s personal lawyers – the journalist Michael Wolff paints a picture of a man whose own closest aides, friends and even family believe is congenitally unfit to be president...

 ...Instead, the official campaign account for Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, tweeted a GIF of McConnell grinning mightily. And that smirk captured the mood of many of his colleagues. What do they have to smile about? They’re pleased because they believe Fire and Fury marks the downfall of Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist to Trump and source of some of the book’s most scathing lines...

In this regard, the Republican leadership views Bannon's downfall weakens his ability to challenge the incumbents during Primaries as once feared.

There's also the overall Republican delusion that they can control trump, or curb his nastier impulses:

But the more enduring delusion is that Trump is poised to moderate. Republicans predicted he would change once the primaries of 2016 were under way. Then they said he would change once he’d won the party nomination. Or when the presidential election campaign proper began. Or when he’d won the election. Or once he’d taken the oath of office. They were wrong every time. He won’t change. Trump is Trump...

Republicans have enabled trump ever since he jumped into the race in 2015: They tried humoring him, then were forced to placate him when it turned out the Far Right voter base were in his pocket. Even with the revelations that trump's handlers are fooling themselves, they're STILL deluding themselves in order to push yet again for the extremist parts of their agenda not yet passed.

The GOP will eagerly turn a blind eye to the reality that trump remains dangerously ill-informed, recklessly self-serving, and showing every sign of aging dementia in the psychology handbooks. They will pretend that "all is well" and will campaign as such, even as trump commits more atrocities driven by his anger and his folly.

This isn't so much the Farmer ignoring all the signs that the Viper is a viper. This is a political party ignoring all the signs that their banner-carrier is a drooling moron desperate to prove himself a god. They are letting trump bite them over and over, the poison shredding every muscle and bone of their party's corrupted body, and they're happily singing about how every sting is a kiss of the divine.

The Republicans are taking the coward's path of expediency and of least resistance. Rather than confront reality and fix the problem, they're letting the problem dominate every corner of their fantasy world.

We are so very royally fucked.

The Next Recession: Not A Matter of When But A Matter of How Soon

It's been awhile since I've linked to Crazy Eddie's Motie News - if Pinku-Sensei can pass along a good hard cider recommendation for me to get drunk to, that would be nice - but he recently posted an article about the impact of the tax cuts would have on the economy and it looks like he's got a better handle than I do on how the coming recession is gonna look.

If I might quote from the parts of his analysis that stand out to me:

Three things could trigger the next recession.  The most likely would be an inversion of the yield curve, which means that short-term interest rates would rise higher than long-term interest rates.  The Federal Reserve has been raising short-term rates for the past two years while long-term rates have been rising much more slowly.  If present trends continue, short-term rates will rise above long-term ones within a year or two, which always signals a recession within a year...

The second is a rapid rise in oil prices, which has occurred either slightly in advance or concurrently with every recession since 1973...

The last, which the U.S. saw along with both of the above during the last recession, would be a crash in housing prices.  However, that is not as reliable an indicator of contraction, as it took nearly two years between the bursting of the housing bubble and the onset of the Great Recession of 2008-2009, barely happened before the recession of 1990-1991, and it didn't happen at all before the 2001 recession...

...I want my readers to notice the timing of recessions.  They range from seven (2001 to 2008) to eleven years (1990 to 2001) apart.  That range is exactly consistent with the Juglar Cycle, an economic cycle that lasts seven to eleven years, the downturns of which correlate to U.S. recessions since 1980.  The Great Recession technically began in December 2007 and adding eleven years to that means the next one should start no later than December 2018.  We're due...

...In fact, I expect the next recession to be somewhere between the 2001 recession or the 1990-1991 recession in its effects, probably closer to 2001.  Before then, the extra disposable income runs the risk of overheating an already booming economy, never mind that the fruits of that economy are very inequitably distributed.  That will increase demand for oil and other energy sources, making their prices go up.  That will cause inflation to rise again as energy costs become distributed throughout the economy.  Higher inflation will prompt the Federal Reserve to raise short term rates, eventually inverting the yield curve.  Viola, recession!

Now, I won't blame the tax cuts for this.  All of this is going to happen anyway; the tax cuts might marginally speed up the process and make it more acute.  It might make the difference between the recession starting in November or December of 2018...

In short: I think he's telling us we're gonna be screwed by November 2018.

Good timing, Republicans, if you can make that recession happen by November 1st before the midterms. It should give us voters additional incentive to vote you fuckers out.

One of the things I note about these recessions is how they seem to coincide with Republican control of the Presidency (and usually control of Congress). If Pinku-Sensei is correct about how the Juglar Cycle ties into the recession cycles, wouldn't Republicans with any economic backgrounds recognize the pattern and do something to change it by committing to programs that wouldn't exacerbate the recessions the way their current policies seem to do?

Then again, I fear most Republicans with economic backgrounds focus too much on their Randian fixations of greed and self-interest. /sigh

Anyway, Pinku-Sensei does a good job putting his arguments together on this. Go read his work, and then GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR DEMOCRATS TO GET THE DAMN REPUBLICANS OUT OF OFFICE. Thank ye.

A Punchline That Was Never Funny

For all the brouhaha over Michael Wolff's tabloid-esque reveal of the trump administration's first year in office error, it's not the ridiculousness or the folly or the back-stabbing between major players or the idiocy of the Shitgibbon-in-Chief.

It's that we knew it was going to be this bad.

Wolff's book is merely validation. We've been getting stories of dysfunction and ineptitude all through 2017. All he does is confirm how bad it all is. And all this revelation does is underscore just how failed a political party the Republicans are for letting it go on.

To quote James Fallows at the Atlantic:

But what Wolff is describing is an open secret.

Based on the excerpts now available, Fire and Fury presents a man in the White House who is profoundly ignorant of politics, policy, and anything resembling the substance of perhaps the world’s most demanding job. He is temperamentally unstable... He is aswirl in foreign and financial complications. He has ignored countless norms of modern governance, from the expectation of financial disclosure to the importance of remaining separate from law-enforcement activities. He relies on immediate family members to an unusual degree; he has an exceptionally thin roster of experienced advisers and assistants; his White House staff operations have more in common with an episode of The Apprentice than with any real-world counterpart...

This is “news,” in its detail... But it also is an open secret. This is the man who offered himself to the public over the past two-and-a-half years...

...Who is also in on this open secret? Virtually everyone in a position to do something about it, which at the moment means members of the Republican majority in Congress.
They know what is wrong with Donald Trump. They know why it’s dangerous. They understand—or most of them do—the damage he can do to a system of governance that relies to a surprising degree on norms rather than rules, and whose vulnerability has been newly exposed. They know—or should—about the ways Trump’s vanity and avarice are harming American interests relative to competitors like Russia and China, and partners and allies in North America, Europe, and the Pacific.

They know. They could do something: hearings, investigations, demands for financial or health documents, subpoenas. Even the tool they used against the 42nd president, for failings one percent as grave as those of the 45th: impeachment.

They know. They could act. And they don’t. The failure of responsibility starts with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, but it doesn’t end with them. Every member of a bloc-voting majority shares responsibility for not acting on their version of the open secret. “Independent” Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski share it. “Thoughtful” ones, like Ben Sasse and Jeff Flake. Those (in addition to Flake) who have nothing to lose electorally, from Bob Corker to Orrin Hatch. When they vote as a majority against strong investigations, against subpoenas, against requirements for financial disclosure, and most of all against protecting Robert Mueller and his investigation, they share complicity in the open secret...

The Republican Party signed away any accountability when they surrendered their ethics and their norms to an increasingly loud, bullying Far Right faction that hounded out all Moderates and forced elected officials to bow and scrape to wingnut pundits whom nobody elected.

Ryan and McConnell could do something, if they had any integrity and sense of history. But they don't. Even if they had any sense of ambition, they'd have to know letting trump drive this bus would be a disaster for the GOP in the long-term. But their only ambition has been to pass a massive tax cut for the uber-rich that they hope the Democrats can never undo.

Just look at the number of Republicans jumping ship (such as Flake) refusing to face re-election. You'd think with their party in control of all three branches they'd stay on, maintain their incumbency and dominance in office. But they're fleeing like rats from a sinking ship, because they know the United States is gonna suffer sooner rather than later and they don't want to be caught carrying the loot when the mobs show up with the tar and feathers.

No one has the nerve to step up and publicly confront trump on his lies, his failures, his ineptitude and his greed. Anyone who does gets marked for termination by the wingnut base.

Just look at Steve "Guy Is More Out-of-Shape Than I Am" Bannon, one of the major wingnut media pundits who had contributed to the more venomous parts of Wolff's book. By betraying trump's confidence - and by opening hinting that trump and trump's inner circle are neck-deep in Russian hackery - Bannon has suddenly lost a lot of support among his once-supportive wingnut allies. His deep-pocket funder (the Mercers) have cut him off after one angry phone call from trump. Conspiracy nut Alex Jones - one of trump's sources of misinformation - is starting a flame war on Bannon's sorry hide.

If the Far Right wingnut voting base is going to side with anyone in a fight between trump vs. The Establishment, they will clearly side with trump (even if it takes out one of their own).

That has the entire Republican Party terrified of trump. Not trump himself: the trump Voters.

And we're stuck.

Because the Republicans hold reign in Congress, there will be no hearings, no interviews, no impeachment proceedings. They are even attempting to hinder the DoJ/FBI investigations into trump and his criminal sidekicks because they fear the backlash the voters will aim at them if they just stand there and let Mueller do his job.

This was one hell of a practical joke we've pulled on ourselves as a nation, isn't it?

The Republicans allowed the biggest clown in American culture to run for the highest political office in the land, and enough voters bought into the snake oil to let a broken Electoral College system (and likely Russian interference) trick out an unjustifiable "win" that feels more like the biggest loss our nation's ever suffered.

Wolff's book merely shows just how bad a joke this all is. And nobody I know is laughing about it.

It's 2018. Get To Work

Happy New Year.

Now get to work.

Find your local Democratic candidates for these levels of elections:

• State House
• State Senate
• State Governor (where applicable)
• U.S. Congress House
• U.S. Senate
• Any special elections or offices where party identity matters

Make sure you know what your district(s) are, especially at the state level, because gerrymandered districts make that confusing.

A good place to find your candidates is this site ActBlue: It has a directory of fundraising for U.S. House and Senate seats, Governors, and the State House and State Senate seats.

Go and meet or listen to the candidate(s) in your district/state. Make sure they match well with your interests and concerns, and their willingness to clean Republican corruption out of every level of government. And yeah, make sure they're not batshit crazy (elections can bring out the whackos, as trump clearly demonstrates).

Figure out how much time and effort you have to volunteer. Campaigns are still about footwork, paperwork, phone calls, passing out car stickers, and heavy lifting. If you can't volunteer, at least donate and at least show up for events. At the most: Spread the word about the candidate(s) to your friends, co-workers, fellow students, the news media (via letters to the editor), everyone you know to ensure people have an interest in getting the vote out for them.

Above all, do this:

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SHOW UP TO VOTE.

Midterms have been disasters when it comes to voter turnout. It's gotten to where only the obsessive voters, the hard-line voters, the wingnut voters are the only who vote. Which is how we've gotten into this mess.

SHOW UP. YOUR VOTE MATTERS. YOUR FAMILY'S VOTES MATTER. YOUR FRIENDS' VOTES MATTER.

And make sure you all remember this:

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.

Don't let my personal apostasy convince you. Look to their actions, America, and despair.

The Republicans are the ones who just passed a tax cut bill despite a majority of US citizens- including a large number of Republican voters - begging them not to. They do not listen to their OWN CONSTITUENTS when they gleefully pass unpopular bill after unpopular bill. Because they don't care about voters. You're just cannon fodder who show up and vote partisan because they've hardwired the nation's psyche to be partisan.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE THOSE REPUBLICANS BACK INTO OFFICE.

The Republicans are the ones who threaten to "go after" Medicare and Social Security, claiming reforms when in fact they plan to destroy those social safety nets that help our elderly retire, our families healthy, and our futures assured.

For the LOVE OF GOD, Republicans hate things in government like Medicare and Social Security that work for those making under $100,000 a year. Why should any of us who are under that income bracket - that is 75 PERCENT OF AMERICANS - ever vote for THAT (if economic anxiety is truly our concern)???

The Republicans are the party that voted for trump.

trump.

On this point alone, the entire party is unforgivable.

I hope more than my seven regular readers see this article.

This is it. No more moping, no more dreading.

Fight back.

Vote Democratic. Vote Blue. Vote to change Congress from cowardly Republicans to country-loving Democrats who will hold trump accountable for his crimes and fix the damage McConnell and Ryan have done.

Get to work.

The New Year Better Open With a Shit-Ton of Arrests For the trump Campaign

This shit, I can't even right now (via the New York Times):

During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton...

...Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said that night at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear. But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role.

The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired.

Trying to keep up with the timeline on this should be a full-time PAYING gig at the honest media outlets. As long as the benefits include free drinks at the nearest bar because SWEET JESUS CHRIST THIS IS INSANE.

...The information that Mr. Papadopoulos gave to the Australians answers one of the lingering mysteries of the past year: What so alarmed American officials to provoke the F.B.I. to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign months before the presidential election?

It was not, as Mr. Trump and other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by a rival campaign. Instead, it was firsthand information from one of America’s closest intelligence allies...

Don't forget that by July 27 - when the leaks were becoming noticeable and the media was noting that it seemed to come from Russia - trump openly called on Russia to hack Hillary some more.

trump is now running around claiming "It's not collusion, but if it IS collusion is not a crime." Well, dealing with a foreign nation to subvert the U.S. Election system IS a crime. Getting that foreign nation to hack American citizens for your benefit is a crime. And knowing how trump works - that it's all about the money (and money HE can acquire) - I'm willing to bet there's a lot of fraudulent stuff there to boot (there's a reason why Mueller brought in investigators experienced in money laundering cases).

Every last bit of this on trump's side of things reeks of TREASON: "Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason..." We may not be directly at war with Russia, and the Cold War itself a historic relic, but we are opposed to that nation on many foreign issues - especially Ukraine and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Middle East - to where we have active sanctions against Russia (something that trump promised to end, there's your Quid Pro Quo).

If this were England involving itself in our election, if this were France, if this were Canada or Jamaica or Egypt or Saudi Arabia or any other "close ally" of ours, this would still be a problem because a FOREIGN POWER would be involving itself in the sovereign affairs of our own government. We had an international scandal when a British Ambassador commented on the election of 1888, which may have thrown the election against Grover Cleveland (who won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College, SOUND FAMILIAR?). Our own government admittedly meddled in the elections of other nations during the Cold War, under the pretext of stopping global Communism, so say hello to the irony of Russia interfering in ours.

So this bothers me. It horrifies me, truly, that the Republican Party seems willing to sign off on this to clench onto political power they might not have honestly earned. That trump and his campaign staffers seem - based on the known evidence - to willingly, gleefully seek Russia's aid in all of this reaches a level of criminality that fits - to my American sensibilities - the definition of treason.

Arrest them all. Damn them. Let this new year be a clean slate for the nation.

In Short: We're Screwed

There was a dreaded inevitability to this. Republicans obsess over these goddamn tax cuts, it has become their ever-fixed mark. Out of all the things they could do, they pass the one thing they shouldn't do (via Reuters).

...The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval on Wednesday to the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax code in 30 years, sending a sweeping $1.5 trillion tax bill to President Donald Trump for his signature.

In sealing Trump’s first major legislative victory, Republicans steamrolled opposition from Democrats to pass a bill that slashes taxes for corporations and the wealthy while giving mixed, temporary tax relief (NOTE: ha! there's no relief to be had) to middle-class Americans.

The House approved the measure by 224-201, passing it for the second time in two days after a procedural foul-up forced another vote on Wednesday. The Republican-led Senate had passed it 51-48 in the early hours of Wednesday...

Just a reminder to everyone: THIS IS NOT TAX REFORM. What the Republicans just passed was a massive tax cut giveaway to billionaires and profit-laden corporations, while doling out minor snacks to average Americans whose tax rates will go back up in three-five years and also setting the stage to gut every social safety net that average Americans need for themselves and their families.

And in the process, they trip over themselves to lavish praise on the most hated man on the planet (via Washington Post):

Over nearly three minutes, Pence offered plaudit after plaudit after plaudit, praising Trump's vision, his words, his strategy and his results in light of the passage of tax cuts. By the end, Pence offered 14 separate commendations for Trump in less than three minutes -- math that works out to one every 12.5 seconds. And each bit of praise was addressed directly to Trump, who was seated directly across the table.

And Pence wasn't the only one. The entire Cabinet offered hosannas and prayers and genuflections towards the giant Shitgibbon who sat there and basked in the idolatry.

As though passing an UNPOPULAR BILL is going to somehow turn an UNPOPULAR Loser of the Popular Vote into the Second Coming of Saint Ronnie.

I've lived through two major tax cuts passed by modern Republicans:  1) Reagan's massive tax cuts of 1981, which led to a major recession before Democrats in Congress forced Reagan to hike some rates back up in 1983; and 2) Bush the Lesser's major tax cuts of 2001-2003 - done at a moment when we engaged in a global war on terror - that created economic malaise before the banks collapsed the economy in 2007-08 with their toxic mortgage assets debacle.

Both times, I never saw job creation. I never saw wages and incomes for most Americans go up. I only saw the rich get richer off their stock portfolios. The only thing I ever saw out of both massive tax cut plans were massive deficits.

And so here we are, handling a tax cut that goes sharper and deeper than anything previously attempted, with Republicans lying out of their asses about how great this was all going to be. I can't believe a goddamn word they say. The facts of those tax cuts are the only thing I believe.

And those facts taught me: We are so royally fucked.

If there is any justice in this world - and the cynic in me is growing weary of believing there is any justice - the first ones to get hurt the worst by this Republican Armageddon would be the 62 million idiots who voted for trump.

Once this anger subsides, the only sane response now is to fight back. Get the Democratic voters lined up and ready to vote. Agitate. Motivate.

VOTE EVERY GODDAMN REPUBLICAN OUT OF OFFICE FOR GOOD.

Two Minutes to trumpocalypse

There's been a little too much noise this weekend that we may be - finally - facing the end of all things. Not the chatter about Iran and North Korea: I'm talking about the inevitable attempt by Loser of the Popular Vote and Russian Puppet donald trump to try and stop the ongoing investigation into Russia's attempts to compromise the 2016 Elections.

It seems that trump and ilk have seized on a - faulty - argument that Mueller is doing something illegal in the pursuit of emails managed by the GSA handling trump's campaign and transition efforts (via Balloon Juice):

FOX NEWS tweet: BREAKING NEWS: Trump transition team sends letter to lawmakers; claims Mueller team inappropriately obtained private documents.

WEALTHY ELITIST URBAN DWELLER re-tweet: Translation: they obtained embarrassing emails appropriately. 

Here's the Reality: Mueller's investigations went through the proper channels to request those emails, and it was up to GSA to respond or not which they did, and this IS standard prosecutorial procedure to go after such emails.

What trump and co. are trying to do is scrounge up a plausible-sounding excuse to shut down the investigation once and for all. Any excuse will do, really. Because like any mob-boss wannabe, trump doesn't like the law and doesn't feel like he should answer to the law.

Thing is, trump can't directly fire Mueller. There are layers to the bureaucracy that any President had to respect lest the whole thing collapses.

trump would have to fire the Deputy Attorney General responsible for the Special Counsel and then fire every Associate AG until one fired Mueller, or trump would have to rescind something called the Good Clause Regulation and fire Muller himself.

So what will happen if trump takes Option A, and fires everybody he can within the Department of Justice (or he gets a loyalist who'll do the job) in order to fire Mueller?

The likeliest response would be an entire Department of Justice - and the nineteen Intelligence Agencies investigating the Russian hacking of our election - turning in revolt against the White House. These intel agencies already have a good idea what Russia did, and what we know is just the stuff they can leak without compromising our own national security so the nasty stuff they can't release is likely way more criminal. If trump makes this move, all it will take is one of those agencies saying "fuck it" and reveal every nasty detail trump has hiding in his closet (including the already infamous Pee tape).

One thing we know is Mueller has tied much of his investigation into state efforts - especially New York - investigating trump's financial dealings. The likely response to Mueller getting canned is the New York state attorneys filing charges on EVERYONE in trump's circle - as they're ALL tied into his shady business practices - including trump himself. Presidents can't pardon state charges or convictions: if trump tries to burn that bridge down to save himself it would destroy the federal-state balance of government forever and spark a civil war between the states opposing his move - which could include Red States lead by governors who know better - and trump's White House. Congress may well blow up in response, with the Democrats clearly opposed and with enough Republicans terrified of the consequences of trump's actions versus the hardliners still trying to keep the GOP in power no matter what.

Option B - revoking a clause and firing Mueller outright - would be such a blatant move of Obstruction that trump will STILL face open rebellion by the DOJ, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the NCIS, and any other agency using alphabet soup to label themselves. Mueller will still hand over what he's got to the New York State Attorney and have New York arrest everyone from trump down to trump's golf caddy. The separation of powers between federal and state would still be imperiled and we'd still see open revolt among Republican elected officials.

And that's just within the halls of power in Washington. What do you think will happen among the population?

There's already 65 million ANGRY Hillary voters who view trump as illegal, that he cheated his way into the White House despite losing the popular vote and with clear evidence that Russia schemed to hack and manipulate votes to get trump to "win" enough states to skew the Electoral College. Not a one of them will accept Mueller's firing as "legal".

Add onto that the millions of Americans disapproving of trump's performance: his approval is hovering in the low 30s and his disapproval close to 60 percent of polled voters. Just imagine 60 percent of Americans angry enough to rebel against trump when he makes a move that pretty much confirms the worst they already think of him.

I keep thinking back to Machiavelli: it doesn't matter if you're loved or feared, it matters if you end up being HATED. Because at that point the ones hating you will do anything in their power to overthrow you and make your life a living hell.

trump is right now the most HATED man in the United States, and the rest of the world - Russia included - doesn't think well of him either. The only thing saving him from public riots storming the gates has been the people's respect for the Rule of Law, and the belief that the legal system will expose the facts and hold those accountable for their sins. If trump displays his contempt for the Rule of Law by firing Mueller - a blatant act of Obstruction - then nothing can save him past that point. trump will get his war.

It's just the war will be in our streets: between the protesters screaming for justice, and the pro-trump neo-Nazis all too eager to spill blood.

trump is reportedly planning to fire Mueller just as Christmas weekend starts - maybe this Friday, maybe Saturday - so he can prevent Mueller from doing any last-minute steps to preserve his evidence, or at least go off to another golf outing with the belief he's saved himself.

So here's where we are at now, America: trump ruining Christmas for the rest of us. That's how fucked up he is, and how much spite is in his heart for everyone else.

Here's hoping Mueller files his charges on everyone deserving of them - Kushner, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, trump junior, trump himself - this Monday. C'mon. You HAVE to have enough proof by now that trump is Putin's bitch. Drop the hammer. Make this a Christmas Americans can celebrate in relief.

I Have Got No Service In the Club You See

So trump's hand-picked destroyer of the FCC flipped the script on Obama's Net Neutrality orders today.

The agency scrapped the so-called net neutrality regulations that prohibited broadband providers from blocking websites or charging for higher-quality service or certain content. The federal government will also no longer regulate high-speed internet delivery as if it were a utility, like phone service.

The action reversed the agency’s 2015 decision, during the Obama administration, to have stronger oversight over broadband providers as Americans have migrated to the internet for most communications. It reflected the view of the Trump administration and the new F.C.C. chairman that unregulated business will eventually yield innovation and help the economy...

Deregulation does not lead to innovation. INVESTMENT leads to innovation. Deregulation leads to shoddy mismanagement, greed, and the inevitable collapse of the industry involved leading to expensive government bailouts.

RAGE

They are taking away cheap Internet... which wasn't all that cheap to begin with (looks at his $35-77 part of his cable/phone bill)

THEY CAN PRY MY REASONABLE ISP RATES THAT ALLOWS ME TO ACCESS PORNHUB FROM MY COLD STICKY DEAD H

Serious question to the academic institutions that need affordable Internet for information sharing: any chance you guys can start your own non-profit network that the rest of us can sign up for?

A Saturnalia Wish Come True: Some Sanity From the Alabama Special Election

So I just wanna make sure that this is real and that enough Alabama voters turned out to elect Doug Jones over alleged human skeeve Roy Moore:

In a major upset, Democrat Doug Jones won the Alabama Senate special election on Tuesday to fill the seat previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The last time Alabama sent a Democrat to the Senate was in 1992.

The Associated Press called the race for Jones just before 10:30 p.m. eastern.

Alabama is a deeply conservative state. But the race unexpectedly became competitive after multiple women came forward to allege that Republican Roy Moore had made advances toward them as teenage girls, including groping and assault. The result was a stunning victory for the Democratic Party, which has been locked out of power in Washington after the 2016 presidential election.

Insert Happy Dance Here.

Some rough observations in the wake of good tidings and cheer:

• Voter turnout remains the thing that Democrats have to work on. For these midterm-type elections outside of the Presidential cycle, turnout is shockingly low. But this election where the turnout was expected to be around 25 percent, the state GOTV efforts bumped the turnout to 38 percent (still bad, but SO MUCH BETTER than expected).
  Jones' victory - pushed by a ground-game that learned from their failures in 2016 and adapted to a more aggressive effort - alongside the earlier results in Virginia and New Jersey proves the 50-State Strategy can (and SHOULD) work.
• Black voters were the major contributors to Jones' win. It helped that the Republican candidate Roy "Banned from the Mall" Moore was an unrepentant scuzbucket on racial and sexism issues. When Moore was caught at a speech praising how "great things were when we had slavery, even for the slaves" that was just one more motivator among African-Americans to GET TEH DAMN VOTE OUT. Most Blacks are, for what I know, very spiritual and religious in that state but NOT evangelical, meaning that they weren't buying the snake oil from the local White Evangelical pastors who proclaimed Moore a perfect God-inspired candidate.
  And this was IN SPITE OF a massive voter suppression effort committed by the State-level Republicans in charge of the electoral process. For every Black voter who had to fight over getting illegally shunted to INACTIVE Voter status, for every Black voter who had to march past county sheriffs parked illegally outside polling places as intimidation tactics, for every Black voter likely lied to about whether their votes mattered... YOUR VOTES MATTERED, and THANK YOU.
  This should also be a reminder to the Democratic Party at the national level that YES, the Black Vote is a key foundation of their support. The ongoing media chatter about "changing" the party message to attract "Working Class Whites" - AKA Racists who flipped to trump - should go away. Democrats need to focus on the voters they HAVE and just need to get to vote, and make themselves attractive to the Independent voters who aren't lost to a haze of racial hatred. You're not getting those trump voters back, Dems. They're lost. Get the voters - the moderates, the pragmatists, the ones who want government to WORK - who matter. The 50-State Model of nationwide campaigning worked in 2006, and it can work in 2018. Jones' win proves it.
• This is a big blow to the Republican election schemes. For the past four decades, they've plotted out a game-plan of winning thanks to Geography and Demographics, using both to carve out Congressional gerrymanders to win the House and then using the small-population (and more conservative) states to garner enough control of the Senate. While a Senate election can't be gerrymandered, the state of Alabama was so Social Conservative for decades that it had become a "Safe" seat for any conservative candidate, effectively gerrymandered for the Senate.
  No more. The Demographics are starting - finally - to turn against the Geography of Elections. Voters under 40 leaned Democrat for Jones and in the earlier off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey the youth voters went Democrat by around 70 percent. That will be the largest voting bloc - bolstered by a Millennial age group that's more politically involved than the slacker Gen-Xers - in the 2018 Midterms.
  And given the large-scale efforts Republicans are attempting to pull with voter suppression, they're failing at that: voter turnout was higher than normal (which sucks) for non-Presidential cycles, and that overwhelms any attempt to deny voters from their access to the ballot box. The GOP running the elections offices can come up with a lot of ways to stop (minority and youthful) voters, but they can't stop all of them.
  Granted, it took a candidate as evil as Moore to shake things up, but when you look at how close the results were the GOP STILL LOST in otherwise "safe" Alabama. If this had been a special election in a state that wasn't normally +30 or more Conservative/Republican, say a state like Florida that leans Democratic but still has Republicans winning by +2 or so, the Democratic candidate could have snagged a larger win percentage.
  There may be "safe" Red States like West Virginia and Utah and Wyoming out there, but given the voter anger there's no guarantee anymore. The unsafe "competitive" Purple states are now going to be massive fights that the Dems can win. And too many states that were once reliable Red States - hi, Texas! hi, Georgia! hi, Kansas - aren't going to be reliable anymore.
• Following on that point, this is why this should bother Republicans: THEY ARE RUNNING OUT OF NOT-EVIL CANDIDATES TO NOMINATE. Their ongoing purging of moderate, centrist candidates in lieu of extremist, ignorant demagogues - who turn out to be crooks, perverts, or worse - is getting to the point where they can't win in "Safe" seats with such candidates. Any attempt to run a rational lower-case conservative is going to get stomped during the Primaries by the Fox Not-News fueled voter base that bought all in on trump and his ilk. Alabama HAD a sane candidate in Luther Strange, but the primary voters choose Roy Moore whose history of inflamed rhetoric, unhinged religious views, and outright anti-Establishment positions appeased the Far Right but horrified everyone else.
  Granted, if the sexual assaults never went public - which tells you how important it is for actual media like the Washington Post to dig up these things - Moore could have eked out a win. But given his nature, SOMETHING else could have come up to make enough general voters recoil in horror. The man was a walking disease.
  And the Republican leadership has to realize that Moore is the only kind of candidate that can win their Primaries anymore. They need to rethink their need for ethical standards in candidates if they hope to retain the "safe" seats they got. But going that route - bringing in more moderate candidates - will outrage their base anyway and they'd get primaried by Moore-type whackos. They've fallen into a particularly nasty Catch-22.
• Speaking of extremist, ignorant demagogues, this election was as much a referendum on trump as it was on the Republican Party.
  The evidence is there: trump is a drag on the GOP. Both times he went into Alabama to campaign for "his" choice - first for Strange, then for Moore - and both times "his" choice lost.
  While trump wasn't noticeably toxic in Alabama - his approval/disapproval balanced out at 48/48 - he still wasn't any help. In other Red States, trump's disapproval is worse.
  Any idea that trump voters will be there for other Republican candidates in the midterms should be laughed off. As of right now, the Republicans are on their own. Bringing in trump to campaign for you might actually lead to your defeat.
  But the Republicans can't ignore trump either. They're stuck, tied to a blowhard liar whose popularity numbers ought to be lower than the 32-33 percent he's at right now. trump may be enormously popular with the Far Right base, giving him control of the Republicans... but the number of self-described Republicans is dropping, meaning at the broader level of GOP-Indy-Dem the GOP is going to be a superminority party by the time 2020 rolls around. We're getting to the point where gerrymandering and fearmongering isn't going to be enough to bully the Republicans to victory.

What now, mad cow?

Right now, trump is behaving like he never really backed Moore in the first place. his ire towards the rest of the GOP making him look bad is going to create greater divide between him and the party leadership.

Right now, there's a large number of Alabama voters quietly taking their Roy Moore bumper stickers off their coal-roller trucks. There may be a lot of hard Right voters who'll still proudly claim their bona fides, but even they have to feel some shame in having sided with a goddamn pedophile.

Right now, the Congressional Republicans are trying to finish up their conference tax cut bill before their own internal deadlines and before Jones can show up to become a bigger stumbling block. They didn't have much room to maneuver their massively unpopular tax cut for the rich bill before, to where three Republican Senators could say "no" to a bad bill like they did to stop the "Kill Obamacare" bill. Now they're down to two GOP Senators who can say "no"... and there are enough Senators in vulnerable elections who may be more interested in saving their own skins with voters back home (or have already pledged to retire and thus have nothing to lose).

Right now, the Democrats need to take the strategies they had for winning in Alabama and weaponize it. They need to go back to the Fifty-State Strategy that worked so well in 2006 and 2008. They need to push a unifying Get-Out-The-Vote effort to ensure large turnouts that benefit them. If they can win in Alabama (albeit in bizarre circumstances) they can win ANYWHERE.

Know hope.

A Letter to Alabama Today

To the state of Alabama:

Today is a special election to fill the US Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions when he got picked to f-ck up our nation as Attorney General under trump.

This election is a very simple choice.

Alabama voters must choose between The Democrat or The Goddamn Pedophile.

A quick word from the YouTuber known as Liberal Redneck:

Everything known to date about Roy Moore is that he's a showboating, twice-exiled ex-judge who deems himself God's Chosen while violating many of the rules and requests of the Lord and of Jesus. Topping that is the recent revelations that Moore is a known skeeve who stalked after teenage girls at shopping malls and their high schools while he was in his 30s. In one case actively violating Alabama's Statutory Rape laws by seducing and groping a 14-YEAR-OLD GIRL while serving as a state prosecutor (he cannot argue ignorance of the law: the SONOFABITCH was supposed to be upholding it!).

Roy Moore represents EVERYTHING that is wrong with today's Southern region of the United States: an arrogant, self-serving hypocrite who espouses racist and sexist ideology that fights to keep the Deep South states mired in the mindset - and the economic backwardness - of the 1850s.

Doug Jones the Democrat is, well, a Democrat. He's stood for civil rights and fought the KKK, convicted those who bombed a Birmingham church killing four girls back in 1963 (the case finally got prosecuted by 1998, which tells you how hard it is to get justice in the South when it comes to civil rights). He's been described as "middle-of-the-road" on his politics, meaning he's no Bernie Sanders.

And yet there are still Alabamans who think that makes Jones WORSE than a GODDAMN PEDOPHILE.

This is your choice now, Alabama. Your vote for Doug Jones will send a practical, level-headed, scandal-less Democrat to the US Senate to represent you and your state. Or you can vote for the GODDAMN PEDOPHILE who will proceed to embarrass you and your state for another 100 years. You vote for Moore and you will NEVER live it down: Every nasty stereotype of southern assholery will be confirmed for now and all the years to come.

You wanna spite the rest of the nation and the world by voting for the GODDAMN PEDOPHILE. Go ahead. You will mark yourself as standing with the monsters that condemn and assault your own communities forever. Hell of a bargain, as the Devil would tell you.

How Low CAN We Go?

I used to have faith in my fellow human beings that there was some level of common sense to prevent the worst of what we can do to ourselves.

But in the wake of watching 62 million Americans buy into the trumpian BS, becoming willing accomplices in the Crime of the Century, my faith has been shattered. I still cannot comprehend how so many voters genuinely thought trump was a better choice than Hillary. And while I knew that a lot of the Far Right were hypocrites about faith and Christian grace, for so many of them to eagerly embrace a self-avowed pussy-grabber and greedhead in trump seems a betrayal of absolutely everything Jesus stands for.

I still cannot comprehend some of the progressives I know on Facebook and Twitter who openly argue that Hillary would have been just as bad a warmonger and ripoff artist as trump. They've become so convinced that Bernie could have won that they've blinded themselves to how bad trump really is.

Who thinks like that?

This is why this week is going to be so troubling. This Tuesday, Alabama will have their Special Election to fill a Senate seat.

The choice is between a Democrat in Doug Jones who's been an effective prosecutor, with a clear track record of civil rights defense and pragmatic policies that lean Center-Left on the spectrum. The kind of person you think rational Alabamans would support to lead their state into the 21st Century.

The other choice is Republican Roy Moore. The Roy Moore who openly proclaims himself God's Chosen eager to put the Ten Commandments on display as though that would enforce God's will, while violating half of those Commandments on a daily basis. Roy Moore, who openly contends that slavery was great, everyone liked it including the slaves, and shows every sign of wanting to bring those days back.  Roy Moore, who allegedly stalked and molested HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS when he was in his 30s. This is the kind of person who represents every worst aspect of Alabama and the Deep South, the long dark shadow of Slavery and Jim Crow that still haunts this region, combined with the sexist Patriarchy of Far Right religious views of women as playthings and breeders.

And there's every possibility enough Alabamans will close their eyes to everything WRONG about Roy Moore and vote for him.

All because the Conservative mindset of Alabamans excuses every sin a fellow Conservative - now Republican - could and did commit.

All because they've been ingrained over generations to HATE anything that reeks of liberal values that now associate with the Democratic Party.

All because there are enough of us who want everything to burn in the Hellfire that these Republican crooks and hypocrites will inflict on the entire world.

There may be, hopefully, a chance that Doug Jones wins, that enough Alabamans are repulsed by Moore's extremism and sins to turn away. But after what happened in 2016, I can't believe that.

We are so royally fucked, America.

And it's your damned fault, Republicans, for letting us sink this low.

You could have stopped all this. You could have shown some ethical standards and kept trump off the ticket in 2015 when he so clearly came out on a racist, hate-filled agenda. But now you're stuck, like the rest of us. And it's getting worse.

Moore shouldn't have won the primary earlier. You had a standard level evil-doing Hard Right candidate in Luther Strange, but he wasn't hate-filled enough and your own primary voters went with crazy asshat Moore.

And do you think Moore will be the lowest point?

Your voting base can now easily forgive PEDOPHILES as long as they are librul bashers. Your voting base will easily go for the most racist, most sexist, most insane candidate on the ticket because they've bought into your party's nihilistic views on governance.

But you can't control that. For all the dogma and certainty these Far Right candidates present, they will not recognize common sense in any way shape or form. They will pander to the most vicious instinct and destroy everything our nation - even things YOUR OWN PARTY respects - built up for the last 200 years.

Until the Republicans and their media enablers wake up to the damage these extremist candidates present, we are going to get the WORST OF THE WORST coming out of Alabama and every other hardcore Red State.

Gods help us.

We are so very royally fucked.