Schadenfreude Panama Style (SUCK IT trump)

I don't have the complete story on what's happening in Panama, but a hotel down there that had gotten trump's name on it has been in one hell of a fight trying to get trump evicted altogether from the place. THAT'S how toxic that Shitgibbon has become.

Here we go: Found some details...

More than a dozen police wearing bulletproof vests entered the lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Panama on Monday morning and evicted the Trump Organization’s staff, a move that comes after weeks of simmering tensions over control of the property.

The Trump Organization manages the hotel in the 70-story tower overlooking the Punta Pacifica Peninsula and the new majority owner had gone to court in the U.S. and Panama to evict the company run by President Donald Trump’s sons. There were scuffles as police arrived to carry out the eviction, and Panamanian court officials were present...

The Trump Organization in court filings called the effort a “design to wrongfully seize control over the hotel property.”

 “Rather than abide by the clear terms of the agreement he had signed, Mr. Fintiklis had been conspiring with others to remove Trump Hotels as manager and fire most, if not all, of its loyal and dedicated employees,” the Trump Organization said in a statement to the press. “Looking back, it is now apparent that Mr. Fintiklis, in flagrant violation of the commitments he had made, never had any intention of keeping his word and had been plotting a takeover and termination of Trump Hotels all along.”

Fintiklis has argued in documents filed in a U.S. court in Florida that the Trump Organization had mismanaged the property, causing occupancy levels “to collapse” and expenses to “bloat.”

“Operators gross incompetence and deficient sales organization stands in the way of [the] owner making any profit on its investment, all the while lining the [Trump Organization’s] pockets,” he alleged in a court filing.

Given trump's poor business history, I think Fintiklis is the more believable side of this fight.

There's been earlier reports that a lot of trump properties - save for the one in Washington DC where foreign agents book in order to curry favor with trump's administration - are going under because everyone else refuses to do business in those properties, use them for hotel stays, or any other activity.

I'm not surprised this is happening. I just hoped it was going to happen sooner.

A lot of places with trump's brand name all over it are going to be toxic, because nobody wants to get slimed by his toxic identity. We're going to see a lot of this kind of video clip via ABC News on Twitter:



OOOOOHHHHHHHHH THIS IS SOME TASTY TASTY SCHADENFREUDE.

In case of a trade war, I hope all the other nations do this to trump-owned properties.

trump Thinks He Can Rule For Life. He Is Wrong AGAIN In So Many Different Ways

So this popped up last night on my Twitter feed (via Brian Stelter):

Insert hour-long screaming here.

This shouldn't be surprising. trump has talked about wanting to be a dictator well before 2015, and his admiration for the likes of Putin and Philippines President Duterte are on the record.

It's just never a good thing to read about trump. The threat of Cadet Bone Spurs staying in the White House well past his welcome would drive a teetotaler like me back to another attempt at drinking hard cider.

So, as the morning rises and I've had a chance to step back and assess the situation, how dire and real a threat is this?

Right off the bat, we need to point at the 22nd Amendment and go "Thank God Republicans HATED FDR That Much."

That part of the Constitution is turning out to be a life-saver. By capping Presidential terms to two, it forces a would-be dictator hoping to rule forever to vacate in 8 years no matter what. Granted, the amendment doesn't remove the guy from ALL power - trump could arguably go from a two-term stint to running for the US Senate and retaining control on a puppet front-man - but the system of checks and balances in place would severely crimp any attempt to rule from behind the curtains.

If trump wants to rule forever, he either has to get the 22nd Amendment abolished with a new amendment or ignore it altogether.

I've mentioned elsewhere, passing any amendment is tougher than expected. You need either a Constitutional Convention - unlikely, as both parties in Congress are terrified of how uncontrollable such a thing is - or you need two-thirds of BOTH Houses of Congress PLUS two-thirds (I think 38) of the states to approve it.

If trump thinks both Congress and the states will do this deed for him, he's beyond delusional and pretty much insane. By example, there was talk of repealing the 22nd for Ronald Reagan, who was popular enough among the voting base and across enough states to make it a feasible effort. There is no goddamn way trump is as popular as Reagan ever was. If trump tries to make this push, he is not going to find enough votes even among Republican Congresscritters (despite their fears of their own party base). And even state legislatures controlled by Republicans would recoil by the obvious move towards dictatorship this will be.

That means trump would have to ignore the amendment outright (or suspend all elections for as long as he can). This would be so unconstitutional a move - so much in violation of the Oath of Office to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of (his) ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" - that the entire federal government should fall apart in opposition to him.

For trump to pull this off, he'd have to have the entire military on his side. While a President does serve as Commander-in-Chief, the military is not directly loyal to the President but instead to the Constitution. They have rules allowing them to refuse to follow any order they view as "illegal or in violation of" the Constitution. I do not think any of the Joint Chiefs - the heads of each military branch - owe trump any favors, especially something on this scale.

trump certainly won't have the Will of the People backing him either. he remains one of the most deeply unpopular (HATED) Presidents in modern polling. trump may have the support of the Far Right voting base - and definitely among the Neo-Nazis and racists he caters to - but those number in the thousands not millions. 62 million people may have voted for him, but a lot of them held their noses to do it (hating Hillary more at that moment). I would argue enough of them did not vote for him to become a dictator to rule outside of the law: If he tries this we would see a mass exodus of Republican voters from the party that would wreck its electoral chances far beyond any gerrymandering or vote-rigging the party could try.

trump's attempt would cause a schism among the states themselves. Solid Blue states like New York and California would declare his presidency illegal. Solid Red states would support him, but a number of them might not because even their local political ranks would fear the implications (trump would ignore the system of dividing powers between the states and the federal governments).

If trump tries to become Dictator-For-Life, he would have to do with a dwindling support staff. Not only is he losing people to Mueller's criminal probes into his 2016 campaign, Mueller is also digging into all of trump's business dealings now (pursuing just how deep Russia's ties to trump already were during that campaign) meaning trump's own family and his own financial base are threatened. Anybody who helped trump during 2016 is not going to be there to help him run in 2020 if he even tries for a second term: They certainly are not there to help him plan a coup.

On top of that, his administrative attrition is happening at a pace faster than any previous administration: he's not keeping anybody on long enough for them to learn the ropes, and he's failing at attracting the best and the brightest among even Republican supporters to fill major vacancies (nobody who's serious about a political career wants to work for him). A move of this scale requires a team of a large enough scale and political pull to clamp down on all threats, solve all contingencies, steamroll over any opposition. trump's West Wing can't even figure out the goddamn light switches, and he's down to maybe, what, thirty-one staffers in a White House that needs about three-hundred?

The only ones on the entire planet who would want trump to make himself Dictator are the nations who know his move would shatter us: Putin in particular would revel in the collapse of the world's most visible democratic republic. China and half the Middle East would kick back and pop the champagne bottles as well. However, I doubt any of them would actively involve themselves in such an attempt. Even Putin would rather sit on the sidelines and let us decimate ourselves, without the risk of committing resources that could compromise or trouble him. If trump thinks his buddy Vlad will help out, he better expect the only thing for the Russians to do is pat trump on the back and tell him "you go girl."

In short: trump has no political clout or muscle to pull this off. he could try, but it would be his final move.

It would be a messy one. trump could get some supporters in Congress to back him, but it would likely drive any remaining Centrist/Moderate Republicans out of the Party into a third party to oppose him. trump could get some of the military troops - the covert racists among the ranks - and a handful of officers buying into the wingnut mythos, but not enough of the high-ranking officers to make a coup attempt stick. trump could get local law enforcement to back him, but most of them are only in a position to uphold laws at their level (and city/county governments may not want to get involved either way).

The worst part would be the Far Right militia crowd who would rally to trump's effort to become dictator, who would lash out not at the federal government but at their local communities much like the SA Brownshirts would smash their way across 1930s Germany. Those militia may number about 50,000 or so hard-core members, but that would be just enough - and spread across enough states - to cause serious damage to millions of innocent American lives.

If trump tries to make himself Dictator, we will be deep into our Second Civil War, bloody and messy and leaving the United States tattered perhaps beyond repair.

Hurry up, Mueller. Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

One Two trump Four Let's Have Ourselves a Trade War

I wrote what felt like ages ago a What If scenario of what trump's first year of a presidency would look like. Actually it was in February 2016. What happened was two months later the Boston Globe went and did their own predictions, and I kinda felt like bragging that I had gotten there first.

But the Globe beat me at considering one disaster that I had overlooked: the likelihood that trump would start some kind of trade war - especially with China - as part of trump's nationalist-populist agenda to take America back to an age of protectionism and high tariffs.

Well, it didn't happen in trump's first year - although there were moments he threatened to roll something out - but hey, now that trump is at a stage where his entire administration is falling apart, why not go the extra mile and wreck the economy by boosting tariffs on steel and aluminum?

Via CNBC:

President Donald Trump's plan to slap tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel could help U.S. producers, but it could also fuel inflation, slow the economy and trigger other retaliatory actions against U.S. industries, analysts said.

These fears weighed on stocks, and the market sold off sharply after initially flip-flopping amid confusion over whether there would be an announcement or not. But stocks sold off sharply when Trump surprised the markets and announced a 25 percent tariff on steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum.

"One of the largest fears we have is we've got tariffs. We could have trade wars, and it could blow up NAFTA negotiations, and nobody wins a trade war," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley FBR.

The Dow closed down 420 points to 24,608, and the S&P 500 slid 1.3 percent to 2,677. The move was viewed as one of the most protectionist actions from the Trump administration, and it is one of his policies that has most worried markets, even as stocks have rallied on tax reform and his other pro-growth policies.

"Tariffs would probably have the unfortunate effect of both slowing growth and accelerating inflation, and that's not a good thing," said Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies. "For this economy, this is the worst possible time to be doing that."

The effects of what trump proposes won't just have a negative effect on the stock market.

I could link you to other economic pundits - say Anne Lowry at the Atlantic or David Lynch at the Washington Post - but let me have a go at it. Me, a barely-competent person at finances who got a C in Economics 1101 back at Gainesville (GO GATORS) in 1990 or so.

How trump's tariffs proposal are gonna suck:

• The tariffs are like a tax on the items in question, meaning the costs on these items will go up. While the steel mills may see more profits out of it, all of the other industries that build using steel will have to pay more and will pass those costs onto the consumers, namely us. I'm seeing reports of how this will affect the automakers, especially the ones here in the U.S. I just spotted a report from Coors about how this will affect their beer canning. These tariffs do not happen in a vacuum: Every other industry that relies on cheap materials for cheap products will have to make those products more expensive to us consumers. And those industries will see their profits decline, leading to lost jobs and a downward cycle.
• The tariffs will spark a trade war, and not just against countries who compete against us but also our allies. Other countries will not like having access to a solid market like ours curtailed with a tax on steel as steep as a 25 percent increase. The early observations was that trump wants this trade war as a way of attacking China, but on steel I'm finding out the nation getting hit hardest is going to be CANADA: Canada ships us about 11 percent of imported steel while China ships less than Germany (3 percent). Canada just happens to be one of our biggest trading partners, and also our sole neighboring nation to the North. PISSING THEM OFF IS NOT A GOOD IDEA, EH?
• Tariffs make economies worse, not better. And this one I learned from watching Ben Stein in that Ferris Bueller movie:

While Smoot-Hawley wasn't the prime cause of the Great Depression, it did make things worse.

Just on those three points alone that I can think up off the top of my head - coming from a C-grade economics student - I've made salient arguments why tariffs need to be treated with more subtlety and finesse (say, very minimal increases on a tariff while pursuing connected policies that would alleviate any negative responses). Instead, here comes the ole Shitgibbon with a sledgehammer looking to start a fight with some of the largest economic powerhouses on the planet.

This is a fight that by all accounts a lot of trump's own people were counseling against. I can't link to anything yet, but I thought I saw something online from experts noting that these particular tariffs will wreck whatever economic gains were to be coming out of Congress' massive tax-cut boondoggle.

Here it comes, America, the train wreck Boston Globe and a lot of other experts warned you was coming if trump got into the White House on his protectionist, isolationist platform.

62 million of you voted for this. And now you're going to find out that economics is a lot harder than simple "buy low sell high." And that the guy you backed isn't a financial genius, just the grandest biggest con artist of all time.

Gods help us.

Chaos Reigns

Via Talking Points Memo today:

White House Communications Director Hope Hicks will resign in the coming weeks, the New York Times’ first reported Wednesday.

The announcement comes one day after Hicks testified before the House Intelligence Committee for its investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The reports are hinting that Hicks is bowing out because she admitted to the Committee - even as she refused to answer most of their questions - that she told some "white lies" during her time working in trump's administration.

Here's the part that's both tragic and hilarious:

Hicks is the fourth person to serve as communications director in the Trump administration, in addition to Sean Spicer, Mike Dubke and Anthony Scaramucci. She was named to the position in September of last year, after serving in an interim capacity the previous month.

This trump White House has one of the most chaotic managements in modern political history. It's already gone through Four Communications Directors, Three Chiefs of Staff, Two National Security Advisors, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree (sorry, couldn't resist).

Part of the problem is trump himself: He favors a competitive form of having staffers under him compete with each other to curry his favor and receive his boons. As a result, rather than have the departments and staffers work harder to prove themselves competent, his underlings tend to backstab each other and overplay their position among the ranks (meaning they worry more about looking good than actually being good).

Hicks had been under fire recently, partly for her role in the Roy Porter scandal, partly for the fact that she'd never really been qualified to hold a position as important as Communications Director before, partly for the possibility she's getting scrutinized by Mueller's investigation due to her role trying to cover up trump junior's involvement in the June 2016 meeting with Russians that may have interfered in our Presidential elections that year. Her jumping overboard with a life preserver on is actually the sanest move she can make right now.

If anything else, Hicks is a sign that the trump administration is about to implode from staff desertions. There's been buzz for months that the people working there are overwhelmed - because they couldn't find enough people to actually WANT to work for trump in the first place - and incapable of keeping up with the constant chaos trump employs.

For a long-standing trump employee and faithful family ally like her to bolt for the exits can well be the flag drop for everyone else to race out the door.

This is gonna get uglier, real fast.

Update On the Update On the Manafort Gates Part of the trump-Russia Scandals

What I wrote yesterday when it looked like Rick Gates was backing out of a plea deal with Mueller's investigations into trump-Russia, which led to Mueller getting one of his grand juries to add 32 more indictments on Gates and Manafort:

I'm kind of surprised Gates bailed on the deal, if he knew in some way Mueller had more of these charges filed away for this moment. Unless Mueller was offering something that involved jail time, or taking away something Gates viewed as personally valuable, all Gates has done from reneging on the deal has been making it more likely a court will find him guilty on something among all the money laundering and fraud he's getting accused of.

There may be only one reason Gates would back off: if he really thinks trump will come in and shut this all down. Scary consideration, which is the only reason why I don't put this in the Schadenfreude column yet.

Okay, time to make this a Schadenfreude article!

The deal is back on (via Vox.com)!

Special counsel Robert Mueller just flipped another former Trump staffer. Rick Gates — Paul Manafort’s longtime junior business partner and a 2016 Trump campaign aide — agreed to a plea deal in Mueller’s investigation Friday afternoon in which he’ll cooperate with the probe.

Gates pleaded to one count of conspiracy against the United States and one count of making false statements to the FBI. In exchange, other charges related to money laundering, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, and making other false statements will be dropped. Here are his statement of offense and plea agreement.

Though Gates pleaded not guilty after he was first indicted last October, he’s increasingly been looking at an expensive legal defense with no end in sight and a potential decades-long prison sentence — particularly since Mueller filed a dizzying new set of tax, financial, and bank fraud charges against him and Manafort just yesterday.

It's like Gates was all "you must be bluffing, I can't take that deal" and Mueller was all "I don't bluff" and then Gates was all "yuh-huh" and Mueller was "here's 32 more counts on your ass" and Gates was then "oh shit" and...

The thing that stands out: Gates agreeing to plea out to a "Conspiracy Against the United States," something that the previous plea deals never had (nearly everyone else pleading out has gone with just "lying to the FBI"). The indictment seems to spell out that the actual charge involves Gates' lied to the government about his foreign business deals... but the word "conspiracy" itself implies that "more than one person was involved in breaking this particular law". Just how many other people were part of this conspiracy?

It's nice to see the word pop up in this investigation. So far, the word of choice had been calling everything trump and Russia did together as "Collusion", which is suspicious but not criminal. "Conspiracy" is criminal, and we can now describe things happening here in trump-World as conspiracy.

The other thing that the Vox article points out, this is a major turning point in the Mueller investigation, because Gates is someone high enough in trump's 2016 campaign to be a key link to a lot of the questionable acts that have been alleged about them and Russia:

After all, Gates worked on the Trump campaign. And unlike cooperator George Papadopoulos, he actually had a high-level job there, which had him work quite closely with the person running the campaign for several months: Manafort.

For instance, there have been recent reports that Mueller is keenly interested in the White House’s story about the June 9, 2016, meeting Donald Trump Jr. arranged with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower for the purpose of getting “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Gates wasn’t at that meeting — but Manafort was. And if anything inappropriate involving Russian interference with the campaign did happen there, one person Manafort just might tell could be his close friend and business partner of more than a decade, Rick Gates...

It's also important to note that Gates stayed with trump well after Manafort was kicked from the campaign when his own troubling issues went public. Gates can well flip on other trump campaigners on matters that Mueller is uncovering.

So all in all, fun times.

Until trump freaks out and makes another attempt to fire Mueller, or fires Rosenstein, or shuts down the entire FBI, or...

Update On the Manafort Gates Part of the trump-Russia Scandals

Apparently, whatever deal Mueller was trying to get out of Gates fell through. That means Mueller piled on top of the existing charges even more - and more serious - charges (via Vox.com):

A federal grand jury in Virginia approved a new set of charges from special counsel Robert Mueller against former Trump campaign aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates Thursday afternoon.

Mueller had indicted Manafort and Gates on a combined 12 counts last October in Washington, DC, but he has now assembled a “superseding indictment” with a combined 32 counts of tax, financial, and bank fraud charges against the two men — in Virginia rather than Washington.

Mueller is actually overseeing various grand juries because the scope and size of the investigation into Russia's attack on our 2016 Elections covers a lot of literal ground.

If you want to take a look at the actual paperwork filed, Vox provided a PDF link here.

For Mueller and for the investigation overall, this is further confirmation that there was - IS - a lot of corruption in trump's business world. It'd be nice to see when/if any of that sticks to trump.

I'm kind of surprised Gates bailed on the deal, if he knew in some way Mueller had more of these charges filed away for this moment. Unless Mueller was offering something that involved jail time, or taking away something Gates viewed as personally valuable, all Gates has done from reneging on the deal has been making it more likely a court will find him guilty on something among all the money laundering and fraud he's getting accused of.

There may be only one reason Gates would back off: if he really thinks trump will come in and shut this all down. Scary consideration, which is the only reason why I don't put this in the Schadenfreude column yet.

The Kids Are Alright

And these children that you shoot at /
As they try to dodge your bullets /
Are immune to your Fox Not-News punditry /
They're quite aware you're on the NRA payroll...
- Updated version of David Bowie's "Ch-Ch-Changes"

In the aftermath of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting (via The Atlantic):

What made Parkland different were the people who stepped forward to describe it. High-school students—the survivors of the calamity themselves—became the voice of the tragedy. Tweets that were widely reported as coming from the students expressed grief for the victims, pushed against false reports, and demanded accountability...

...On television, on social media, they were unignorable. Many of them called for legislation to address the violence.

“We are children. You guys are the adults. Work together, come over your politics, and get something done,” David Hogg, a student who survived the killing, told CNN...

When the conservative pundit Tomi Lahren demanded that “the left ... let the families grieve for even 24 hours before they push their anti-gun and anti-gun-owner agenda,” the same survivors, who knew the victims, responded in kind:

I think the gun nuts just fucked with the wrong high school.

...Those students understand that they live in a country that they have very little power to change—a country where, several times a year, a school for children becomes a charnel house. So when that hideous transformation struck their school, they already knew what they wanted to do. That girl in the closet, talking to her classmate, anticipated the next several days of talking points without knowing whether she would get to see those days at all. These assorted Florida teenagers knew the contours of the gun debate so well that they were rebutting NRA talking points just after emerging from their safe zones. Now, a few days later, their insistence on their own authority has gummed up the works of the otherwise cliched national debate. Their calls for action may not lead to any imminent change in policy. But they have given the country a striking symbol of what—and who—we’re really talking about when we have these debates. And they will not be the last victims to face a loaded assault rifle and think: This IS preventable. I MUST politicize this.

Then there's student Emma Gonzalez, using the aftermath to rail against the people in power (hint: Republicans) who haven't done shit to address the rise of gun violence in our schools, our public places, and our lives:

There's talk of making a nationwide boycott, of students walking out of their school on April 20 (anniversary of Columbine, what had been the deadliest school massacre until Parkland) and refusing to go back until Congress passes gun safety laws such as banning assault weapons used in most of our mass shootings and implementing Universal Background Checks.

This is the generation following us. This is the generation that grew up in the shadow of Columbine, and who were in middle school when the Sandy Hook massacre took place, and who have been living through monthly school lockdown drills their entire lives.

They are sick of it. They are sick of the NRA buying enough politicians to stop common sense safety laws passing, they are sick of angry guys with guns using them for target practice, they are sick of a status quo that has been enforced on our nation based on fear, lies, and ignorance.

And the kids are not rolling over.

And the kids are standing up.

The kids are alright.

Update: I am not the only one noting these kids are alright.

Guardian article

New Yorker article.

NY Daily News article.

P.S. some of these kids are gonna be old enough to vote this 2018 midterms.

P.S.S. ALL of these kids are gonna be old enough to vote in 2020.

You Republicans can throw all the issues at the glass - abortion, tax cuts, immigration, racial fears, what have you - in order to distract people but I guarantee you these kids are gonna be single-issue voters. They got something to rally around. They are gonna be voting against guns, and you lot sold yourselves to the NRA for far too long.

I hope to God it's an electoral bloodbath this November to match the literal bloodbaths filling up our schools.

Past the Looking Glass And Into the Darkest Timeline: February 2018 edition

Well, this Friday night news dump was heavier than expected. Mueller dropped a 16-tonner in fact (via David A Graham at the Atlantic):

A 37-page indictment filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Friday lays out the most detailed picture of how the Russian government sought to interfere in the 2016 election, meddling with voters to sow division in American society, and encouraging the election of Donald Trump in what the defendants referred to as “information warfare against the United States of America.”

This is one of the key points of Mueller's investigation: Finding out if the Russians actively interfered in our nation's 2016 election cycle, and if they did find out who, where, when, and how badly.

trump and his handlers/ family members/ faithful lapdogs/ toadies kept arguing there "was no collusion" and that the investigation is all a "hoax" and a "witch hunt." Well, Mueller's mic drop says otherwise:

“The conspiracy had as its object impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of the United States by dishonest means in order to enable the Defendants to interfere with U.S. political and electoral processes, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” the indictment states. There are 16 defendants, including three organizations and 13 individuals, who are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing enforcement of election law as well as wire fraud and bank fraud.

The document is the most complete set of allegations offered by the government yet about one subset of Russian interference, going far beyond an intelligence-community report released in early 2017. At its peak, the alleged conspiracy had a budget of more than $1.25 million per month for activities in the U.S. (!!!) and elsewhere.

The indictment also stands as an implicit rebuke to President Trump, who has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the Russian role in the election...

For all that Mueller had done up to this point - charges on Manafort and Gates, plea deals for Papadopolous and Flynn - none of it directly referred to Russia and any ties to trump. No more.

Friday’s indictment contains far more detail, and while its contents are allegations, not claims proven in a court, they are bolstered by extensive documentary evidence, including emails and messages. Much of the material has been reported in various news outlets, but the indictment puts it all in one place for the first time...

The Russian effort to meddle in the election began way back in 2014, long before anyone viewed Trump as a serious candidate for the presidency, much less a likely nominee. The goal was simply to create division and chaos by exploiting existing cleavages in American society—or as the indictment puts it, operators were instructed to create “political intensity through supporting radical groups, users dissatisfied with [the] social and economic situation and oppositional social movements...”

In other words, use Fox Not-News to rile up an anger-driven conspiracy-obsessed Republican base.

Vladimir Putin’s government has long detested Hillary Clinton, and as Trump rose, the IRA seems to have concluded that he was a useful vector for grievances. Employees sought to boost Trump and Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s principal primary opponent, while also attacking GOP candidates who were more hawkish on Russia: “They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump...”

The Russians at some point really focused on trump as their primary weapon to shatter the American electoral process:

Even if the conspiracy did not set out to boost Trump, it jumped into the task with gusto once latching on to him. There was a distinctly pro-Trump bent in its social-media presence... Certain ORGANIZATION-produced materials about the 2016 presidential election used election-related hashtags, including: “#Trump2016,” “#TrumpTrain,” “#MAGA,” “#IWontProtectHillary,” and “#Hillary4Prison”" Defendants and their co-conspirators also established additional online social media accounts dedicated to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including the Twitter account “March for Trump” and Facebook accounts “Clinton FRAUDation” and “Trumpsters United.”

Just remember: this is the stuff Mueller and his team can prove in open court. They're still dealing with sensitive national-security level intel, a lot of which they can't share for the next 20-50 years without getting declassified.

One of the more shocking things in this indictment are the bits about how Russia committed criminal acts during the campaign:

The rallies produced criminal activity, according to the government. First, in order to organize rallies, the defendants were required to register with the U.S. government, which they did not. Second, they allegedly committed wire and bank fraud while attempting to move money under false pretenses. On Friday, the government also unsealed a guilty plea from Richard Pinedo, an American who acknowledged selling bank accounts to the Russians to assist them in circumventing financial laws...

These aren't fantastical charges, products of a deluded mind, or fake news. These are actual legal findings, things that have to stand up in a court of law, things that have gone through rigorous scrutiny and can't be denied nor ignored. Guys like Pinedo and Flynn are pleading out as they're caught dead to rights (and one of the indicted, Gates, is reportedly close to getting a plea deal himself). trump and his ilk can't lie about this, no matter how hard they try.

There's still other elements of this investigation - the more direct ties between trump and Russia that have come out focusing on trump's campaign actively digging for dirt on Hillary, such as the infamous June 2016 meeting at trump Tower - that aren't detailed in these indictments. Those elements may be covered in other parts of Mueller's probe... and may yet come out when possible indictments for trump, trump junior, and Kushner get dropped.

That last part has always been one of the serious conundrums of this ongoing scandal. The long-standing realization that trump - having committed acts of Obstruction in firing the likes of Yates and Comey who were digging too close to trump's Russian ties - is bound to try and shut down the investigation before it directly touches him (or those closest).

There's an argument now that by revealing Russia's involvement like this, Mueller and Rosenstein have insulated themselves from any reprisal: If trump tries firing either one of them now, it would be such a blatant act to protect Russia that trump (and his Republican backers) loses all remaining shreds of credibility left to them.

That's never an issue with trump, though: His voting base will never accept the facts that Mueller uncovers.

My argument is that trump can't remove Mueller or Rosenstein now because doing so creates a major schism in both domestic and foreign affairs. If he tries to shut this investigation down, he loses any control over the Intel agencies tasked with protecting our nation, and he runs the risk of having large swathes of our military refusing to obey any orders from what they'll view is an illegal Presidency. Another thing to consider: Our foreign allies and neighbors will go from barely-concealed loathing to open hostility, treating trump and his Republican allies as criminal usurpers on the Russian payroll.

trump is in the unenviable place of "damned if he does. damned if he doesn't". He can't shut the investigation down without paying a high price... and Mueller's investigation is getting closer to the point of revealing direct ties with Russia and all the criminal charges that would entail.

Then again, it's his own damn fault he's in this predicament. he's the one who decided to run in order to mock his rival Obama's legacy... he's the one who refused to play by the election rules... he's the one breaking every ethical and legal practice on the books.

trump deserves the punishment - one form or another - aiming his way. It's called KARMA and he's earned every piece of pain and humiliation that's coming.

It's just gonna be messy for all of us when it hits.

Bad News From Florida: Blood On the Streets Of Parkland

I started writing my good news article today this morning.

I just got the word this afternoon about Parkland.

Jesus Christ no.

I lived there, back when I worked in Broward County Libraries. Not exactly in Parkland, but in Tamarac for a few years, then Coconut Creek. I know the neighborhoods, I know those communities.

Jesus Christ.

17 dead.

All because of one angry guy with a military-grade assault rifle.

All because the National Body Count Association owns most of the elected Republicans between here to Alaska. All because the National "Our Guns Matter More Than Your Kids" Association will throw another hissy fit if any sensible gun safety laws even gets mentioned on the floor of Congress.

All because the only thing our elected officials will do is "send thoughts and prayers" as though the last 180,000 times hadn't worked.

We have a national gun death rate comparable to a war zone. We're racking up more kills than the Syrian Civil War this year. I might not even be exaggerating.

We will keep seeing our schools and churches and malls and movie theaters and concert events used for target practice until we do one of two things: Get rid of angry guys or get rid of military-grade assault rifles that make it too goddamn easy to kill.

Good News from Florida, A Reminder to All Voters Opposed to trump

This is happening in my back yard (via the Daily Beast):

Margaret Good won a special election for state representative in Florida’s 72nd district on Tuesday night, the Democratic party’s 36th legislative flip since President Donald Trump’s inauguration last year.

The closely watched race pitted Good against Libertarian Alison Foxall and Republican James Buchanan, whose father Vern represents the area in Congress...

Essentially, this should have been an easy roll for Buchanan: his family is the local political power, able to cash in favors here, promises there... Instead:

The seat opened up after Republican Alex Miller resigned last year, citing her family and business as reasons. Trump won the district by just five points, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by some 13,000 voters.

Good’s final margin was nearly eight points and over 3,000 votes.

What's interesting is that for a non-Presidential cycle, plus midterm, also special election for a small state legislative seat, the turnout for this was bigger than expected (via the local Sarasota Herald-Tribune):

Before Election Day voting even commenced, turnout for the District 72 state House race may have set a record for a state House special election in Florida, another sign of how much interest the race is attracting as both major parties look to make a statement heading into the November midterm election.

Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Ron Turner researched voter turnout results in the state archives. The turnout figures only go back to 2003, but since then the largest voter turnout for a state House special election was 22 percent in 2008. Turnout in the District 72 race already was at 22.8 percent as of Monday evening, and that’s only from absentee and in-person early voting. By 11 a.m. Tuesday turnout had reached 25 percent, Turner said.

“For the type of election it is, it certainly is strong turnout,” Turner said, adding that the turnout figure “says a lot about the interest and excitement in this race.”

I might actually start smiling again.

This answers some of my ongoing calls for action.

This proves that the key to victory for Democrats is turnout. GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT.

This proves to me on an emotional level that there are a lot of angry voters - 65 million worth - who watched the 2016 elections go against their interests and put into office people - trump especially - they didn't vote for.

This proves that the voters are NOT going to slack off for 2018 midterms like they usually did, when turnout in 2014 and 2010 dropped because they weren't Presidential cycles.

This proves that if Democrats challenge every seat, if they refuse to let Republican get into elected offices without a fight, they've got better than expected chances to win in even "solid red pro-Republican" districts. They won't win every race: But the way things are trending they CAN win enough seats to matter.

This year it means everything to get the vote out.

Work on this, Dems. You've got a mission: Stop trump. You've got the numbers: 65 million voters nationwide. You've got the odds: A majority of Americans are WITH YOU, not the GOP.

Get the vote out, people. Vote for every Democrat you can, throw Republican you can out into the trashbins.

February 14: Introverts Shamefest Day

When you get older, and you stay lonely all these years, Valentines' Day just loses its appeal, if it ever had any.

I'll just go over into the corner and cry my eyes out, like always.

To the rest of you: honestly, how do you do it? What do I keep doing wrong?

Overwhelmed

I'm not underwhelmed at the moment, I can tell you that.

There's about ten-twenty things I gotta do, and for all the outrage I currently have about our trumpian state of misdeeds I'm lacking the time to get focused on even one anger-inducing stupid thing.

Although I'll take a moment and say that trump insisting on a military parade for his own bruised ego is the height of hypocrisy coming from a draft-dodging coward with bone spurs who still golfed without a goddamn care.

Meanwhile, pray to God we're still here in a week or two from now.

AND GET THE GODDAMN VOTE OUT. You have voter registration for state/congressional Primaries coming up! GET EVERYONE SANE YOU KNOW OF SIGNED UP AND READY TO VOTE REPUBLICANS OUT OF OFFICE.

Good Luck. We're all counting on you.

As Now trump Sees Himself as Above All, And To Oppose him is Treason

So while the stock markets were tanking, Loser of the Popular Vote donald trump took the time to call Democrats a bunch of traitors for being mean to him (via Splinter):

During a speech in Blue Ash, OH, on Monday, President Donald Trump—a man who once described neo-Nazis as “some very fine people”—said that the Democrats who didn’t stand and applaud for him during his first State of the Union were traitors.

"You’re up there, you’ve got half the room going totally crazy wild....they love everything, they wanna do something great for our country. And you have the other side—even on positive news, really positive news like that—they were like death. And un-American. Un-American. Somebody said treasonous. Yeah, I guess why not? Can we call that treason? Why not."

Never mind how trump ignores the simple fact that opposing Parties have a Free Speech right to NOT applaud you, never mind that trump doesn't even admit to how Republicans behaved far WORSE when it was Obama speaking to the nation - remember Joe Wilson shouting "You Lie!"

Never mind - that of the two groups of Americans divided today into partisan factions - trump and his people are the ones OPENLY bragging about being in league with a foreign power in the Russians, and that trump and his people are under investigation for working with those Russians to subvert our nation's 2016 election.

Never mind the growing evidence trump himself is the traitor.

Never mind the standard Republican rulebook to accuse their Democratic opponents of committing crimes they themselves commit and expect to get away with.

Here is where we are now, as a nation.

To oppose donald trump is to be treasonous.

This is the hypocrisy of the Republican Party laid bare. They've been like this since the days of McCarthy: accuse their opponents of "hating America" in any way shape and form. A mixture of projection (of the sins they commit) and defensive posturing so that when they DO get caught the Republicans can complain "it's all part of the game and the Democrats are just sliming us the way we slime them."

This is an open declaration by trump that he is above criticism, above reproach, above the laws and rules that have guided our nation for generations.

This is the next step in his authoritarian fantasy, the one right before he grants himself judicial powers to decide who sucks up to him and who goes to jail.

And so here comes trump, playing the role of Charles I, offended by those who question his divine right to rule, marching his way into Parliament like a bully to arrest any and all who oppose him.

It didn't end well, considering the English Civil War started that moment.

It didn't end well for Charles I either.

As Patrick Henry declared, "If this be treason, make the most of it."

Hope You Invested In Manure Futures...

This may not be the kickoff of the recession that Pinku-Sensei warned was coming, but am willing to bet this is the tsunami alarm going off: The Stock Market has dropped sharply both on Friday and today (via CNN):

Stocks went into free fall on Monday, and the Dow plunged almost 1,600 points -- easily the biggest point decline in history during a trading day.

Buyers charged back in and limited the damage, but at the closing bell the Dow was still down 1,175 points, by far its worst closing point decline on record.

Percentage-wise, it was about a 4 percent loss - not as bad as the 1987 crash or the 2008 crash - but the optics of seeing a huge wave of red (losses) dominate the screens has to hurt.

I'm seeing other people online say this is merely a "course correction," that the markets can't ALWAYS go up like they've been doing the last 18 months. But you rarely see a course correction this steep.

I'm also seeing the argument about the crash happening because of inflationary fears and/or concerns about interest rates going up, in responses to the "strength" of the American economy when it comes to employment numbers (which isn't as sound as it looks either).

When you consider a lot of pension plans - city, county, state, private - tie their revenues to stock portfolios and mutual funds, there's a lot of money getting lost for people right now. So this is not good news.

The long-term implications for this are beyond my meager understanding (I got a C in economics: the best I can tell you is "buy low, sell high."), but when I consider Pinku's early warning about the recession, and the fact we've got a federal government led by morons who create economic chaos wherever they go, I am not looking forward to the coming fiscal year.

Yo Memo Jokes

So, to consider the release of the Nunes Memo that supposedly would reveal that the FBI investigation into trump's dealing with Russia during the 2016 elections was an anti-trump hit job?

Yeah, big huge nothingburger... Again.

This is never about the Republicans' actually wanting government to work properly. If you're thinking Nunes and his Congresscritters will use this as a starting point to reform FISA's warrant process, you're wrong.

This isn't about the civil rights of every trump campaigner - Manafort, Carter, Kushner, trump junior, and trump himself - getting trampled on, because that doesn't show up in the memo at all. If it's in the actual warrants, that's all still hidden from view.

This isn't about the facts of the matter, which all point to the FBI and Mueller both going by the book and getting their warrants done proper and legal.

This is about the Republicans wanting to retain their tenuous hold on power. This is about the Republicans looking to dismantle every last aspect of effective government in order to secure their own one-party rule at the expense of everyone else's rights.

This is about giving trump a weapon he can use to shut down a legitimate investigation into his (possible) misdeeds ranging from Obstruction (which he's ADMITTED to and has been caught doing over and over) to criminal interference with our elections with the aid of a foreign power (bordering on treason). Not against Mueller, but against the Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein who is the one person standing in trump's way.

This is about giving the talking heads on Fox Not-News - in particular Sean Hannity - a way to compare this to Watergate but in reverse, where the FBI is illegal and the poor president a victim of partisan librul hacks (?!) inside the Bureau.

This is about giving the conspiracy-driven GOP voting base their red meat, to keep feeding them the fiction that Hillary/Obama are the heads of a vast librul criminal enterprise to ruin 'Murrika. And to fuel the growing anti-government hysteria the Far Right's had for decades.

This is about driving the rest of America crazy. As Nunes and Hannity and the wingnuts collectively aim middle fingers in every direction, the rest of us are clinging onto the twin pillars of Despair And Satire.

It's not that Humor is the only defense we've got left - we still have the Rule Of Law no matter how hard trump and co. are trying to break it - but it's the best weapon we have to let the Far Right know we view them as the hapless clowns they truly are.

So, tweet away every #YoMemoJoke you've got.

And keep fighting to get every Democratic candidate elected to office this 2018. Start making the Republicans feel the despair they've earned.

Republicans In Flight 2018 Edition

"Only Barnes can kill Barnes." - the movie Platoon

While discussing the apt - yet tragic - metaphor of having a train full of House Republicans crashing into a garbage truck, we should consider the real train wreck going on with Republicans coping with a world dominated by their Almighty Shitgibbon.

What's happening is that despite the control the GOP holds over all three branches of federal government - they hold the Executive with trump, they hold the Legislative with control of the House since 2011 and the Senate since 2015, they hold the Judicial with five Supreme Court seats - there are an abnormally high number of vacating and retiring party leaders. In the fashion of rats abandoning the ship.

The latest one looking to get out of Dodge before the bills come due is a familiar name: Trey Gowdy, he of the "We'll Get You to Confess You're a Witch, Hillary" from not so long ago.

To the Talking Points Memo article (via Cameron Joseph)!

House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) won’t run for another term, he announced Wednesday, making him the latest GOP chairman to announce he’s heading for the exits in recent months.

“I will not be filing for re-election to Congress nor seeking any other political elected office,” Gowdy said in a statement. “Instead I will be returning to the justice system. Whatever skills I may have are better utilized in a courtroom than in Congress, and I enjoy our justice system more than our political system.”

Gotta admit, the "return to justice" excuse is a fresh one, a lot better to buy than the "wanna spend more time with the family" we usually get.

But let's read a little bit between the lines, shall we?

His announcement makes him the ninth Republican committee chairman to announce he’s leaving, the second this week alone...

Joseph is referring to New Jersey's Rodney Frelinghuysen (gesundheit) clearing out from the powerful Appropriations Committee, something you don't walk away from because that's the committee what controls where the spending money goes.

The overall number of departing Republicans is intriguing:

House Republicans have been retiring at record rates this year, outpacing even previous wave elections. There are now 34 GOP lawmakers who won’t be back next year...

And this is still early. The Primaries are a few months away, and there's a likelihood that a number of incumbents are getting in-party challenges that could knock "safe" veteran seats off with more radical Far Right candidates that could lose the General Election in November.

As it stands, there's 238 Republicans and 193 Democrats filling the House. That's a 45-seat difference. All the Democrats have to do is flip more than 50 percent of those seats while retaining their own and they regain control of the House. That's 23 seats to gain.

There's 34 retiring Republican congresscritters. Granted, some of those are "safe" districts, but given the power of incumbency that allowed for a near-lock on those "safe" seats. Many of those "safe" seats are likely going to be toss-ups, where Democrats have a legitimate chance to win because an axiom of American politics is that the party in control of the White House during midterms tends to lose seats due to voter dissatisfaction.

All those toss-up seats. All those chances for Democrats to control the House - the Senate's math is harder to reach since only 1/3rd of that chamber is up for a vote - and break the grip the GOP currently holds on us. It's also a chance - with the chamber that controls the purse-strings and holds oversight powers - to finally force trump to answer for his bullshit.

It's odd, don't you think, for the party in power to start losing so many of their own party leaders like this, especially as the Republicans are working overtime to further suppress voter turnout among Democratic demographics.

There's three key factors: 1) The Republicans just passed their massive Tax Cut gift to the super-rich. Now they need to get out of the way before the economic fallout from that bad idea hits everybody. 2) A number of these incumbents are seeing shrinking support even in their "safe" gerrymandered districts, as the Game of Demographics that favored them is finally slipping. 3) The party has a huuuuge albatross around their necks called donald trump. His constant unfavorable numbers make him toxic to the GOP in the General election polling. Just look at Alabama, where TWICE trump went in that state to campaign for "his" favored Senate candidate only to have BOTH candidates lose (Strange in primary, Moore in general)... in an otherwise solid Red State where trump's current value was zilch.

The pundits are looking at what they're calling another Wave Election - which given the hyperactive state of partisanship in the country now seems to be every 6 years instead of 20 - that favors the Democrats in ways the GOP suppression efforts can't contain.

For all the slavish devotion the current GOP leadership has towards trump, the "sane" members of the Party have to be looking at the polling numbers and running for their lives. trump's leadership - or lack thereof - normally requires a political party to answer either by standing up to his inept and corrupt ways (which some try but then find themselves disinvited from Fox Not-News), or by surrendering to trump's corruption and risk getting sucked into that black hole with criminal charges sooner or later.

The third option is to run. And so they are. In numbers that can well give the Democrats the House this November.

Get the vote out, America. GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, DEMOCRATS. To all the Indy voters out there, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE FOR THE DEMOCRATS this 2018.

Make more Republican rats flee for their lives.

The State of the Union is Divided. And That's How Republicans Love It.

Things you should know before leading up to tonight's State of the Union address.

We are currently dealing with a federal government where the White House and certain Republican members of Congress are openly attacking agencies like the FBI and Department of Justice, because those agencies have been digging into financial and political scandals caused by the current White House administration before trump entered the Oval Office in January 2017.

There have been signs that the FBI has been digging into the backgrounds of various trump lackeys - such as Paul Manafort and Carter Page - years before trump even announced his candidacy in 2015.

Yet we've got Congresscritters like Nunes tossing around "classified" memos - that he and his staffers created - trying to discredit the Bureau for really only one purpose: protect trump from the oncoming inevitability of Mueller prosecuting him for Obstruction (or worse).

Referring to David A Graham at the Atlantic:

Not long ago, the standoff now consuming Washington would have been unthinkable.  The Trump White House and Justice Department are sharply at odds over releasing a memo prepared by Representative Devin Nunes, alleging misconduct by the FBI and Justice Department. The president seems poised to approve the release of the document in order to seek his own vindication...

Most remarkable of all is the all-out assault by Trump and his allies on the independence of the Department of Justice and the FBI. On Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan joined the chorus of critics calling for the release of the Nunes memo. “Let it all out, get it all out there. Cleanse the organization,” he told Fox News.

This crisis may have arrived suddenly, but the conditions that allow for this moment have been building for some time. While there’s great concern about Donald Trump destroying longstanding norms, this is the latest example of how the Trump presidency has hastened the demolition of norms that began eroding long ago.

Consider the Nunes memo. Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, prepared the memo along with staffers. The four-page document reportedly suggests that DOJ and FBI officials relied upon information from Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence official who investigated Trump on the Democratic Party’s dime, in applying for a warrant to surveil Carter Page, a former Trump foreign-policy adviser...

This ties into the trumpian argument that the Steele Dossier is a partisan hoax, getting abused as a source of information that the FBI is relying on to get illegal FISA warrants (and other calamities).

Problems with that argument are:

1. The report notes that Rod Rosenstein - Deputy Attorney General backing Mueller's special counsel investigation into trump/Russia - requested a renewal on a FISA warrant on Page, meaning there was existing evidence that passed muster for a FISA warrant in the first place.
2. Steele's Dossier isn't what started the investigations into trump, Manafort, Page, and others in trump's orbit. FBI had received reports from other foreign agencies and contacts about Russian meddling into our elections for years (look at the Dutch giving us heads up about Russian hackers as early as 2014). All Steele's dirt-digging turned up was corroborating evidence...

You don't even have to scratch the surface of this faux outrage to see what Nunes is attempting: He's trying to discredit Rosenstein (at the worst to drive him from office), any high-ranking FBI officials in favor of the investigations into trump/Russia (to purge them out as well), and create any kind of excuse (even a lie) to justify shutting down Mueller before he hits trump with any charge.

This is all causing a Constitutional Crisis where the political partisanship of one party is hampering a federal agency's ability to do its job. Back to Graham:

Seldom has a congressional committee launched such a frontal assault on the FBI and Department of Justice. It’s been more common for oversight panels to be criticized for excessive coziness with the executive-branch agencies they regulate. A rare exception is the mid-1970s Church Committee, which investigated intelligence-community abuses. Yet that committee conducted lengthy investigations following standard procedures; the rush to push out a short memo that seems mostly to serve the president’s political purposes is rather different...

This is not to say that any of these institutions were ever beyond reproach. As I wrote last week, the FBI and the intelligence community make for imperfect vessels for the hopes of those who see them as defenders of rule of law against Trump. The FBI has at various moments in history wielded its powers to persecute political opponents. But the FBI, and the Justice Department, were granted a presumption of some objectivity. This, like the delicate diplomatic concepts that Trump has casually destroyed, was a fiction, but it was a fiction that allowed the system to function by presenting procedures and rules. Institutions provided a framework, and while there might be differences of opinion about the conclusions reached, there was a process for reaching them.

Now, however, the various factions can’t even reach an agreement on what the rules are. The Republicans and Democrats on the intelligence committee don’t agree on the rules, much less the outcomes. The White House is attacking its own Justice Department; Trump expresses puzzlement at why “my guys” in the department don’t care of his dirty work, while the Department of Justice puzzles over why Trump is endangering their procedures and reputation...

We are at the point where one of the major institutions of our government - one responsible for investigating crimes and performing some semblance of justice for our citizenry - is under partisan attack on a scale darker than any previous ones. An attack designed to force that agency - and others - to become partisan wings to a single political party (Republicans) dominated by a would-be dictator eager for such powers to abuse to his whims.

It’s important for Americans to question the FBI and the Justice Department, and to criticize the press. Accountability is essential in a democracy, and none of these institutions has ever been perfect. But in the present case, those leading the assault seem to be doing so for cynical reasons. Trump is attacking the Justice Department and FBI because of an investigation that threatens his presidency; he has repeatedly made charges (remember the “wiretapping” claim?) that proved to be false. Nunes and other House Republicans claim overreaches by the intelligence community, yet just voted against reforms of the surveillance process.

These attacks aren't out of any duty toward reform, or reparation. These attacks are by a criminal president (and his Congressional allies) doing everything he can to stop investigations into crimes he may have committed before (and especially during) his political campaign.

The consequences to these attacks can be devastating. If trump gets his way, he gains full control of an agency in the FBI able to investigate any individual on any charge that trump can aim at them. trump could gain full control of the Department of Justice that could carry out any criminal proceedings on people guilty only of opposing trump. Critics in the media could find themselves in jail. Democrats at the federal and state level could find themselves hounded out of elected office, creating a one-party authoritarian rule.

trump becomes the bullying dictator he dreams of being. And the Republican Party gets to tag along for the ride.

We are at the point where it's clear that the United States is now in another Civil War. It's not like the first one, where it was mostly states vs. states. Today, it's a civil war between Parties: between one party still holding to the rule of law and constitutional norms (Democrats) against a party driven to the extremes of breaking every law in order to seize and keep power (Republicans).

The state of the Union tonight is in tatters. It's Republicans vs. Democrats. It's trump vs. the Constitution. It's Russia, standing on the sidelines laughing their collective asses off at our riven status.

If trump succeeds at breaking the FBI, at turning the entirety of the DoJ bureaucracy to his whims, we are so very royally fucked. Charles I of England won't have sh-t on what trump could do.

People, you need to call now, before it's too late, and let every Congresscritter - Republican and Democrat both - know you will stand up against trump's attempt to save his criminal ass from the rule of law.

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.