Last Call For Israeli A Mess Now, Con't

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is headed back to the drawing board as he has failed to form a coalition government in the allotted post-election period, meaning Israel is now facing another round of snap elections in September.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suffered a stunning defeat on Thursday after he failed to meet a midnight deadline to form a new government, casting a cloud over his future as prime minister and thrusting Israel into the chaos of a new election.

Just seven weeks ago, when Mr. Netanyahu basked in a postelection “night of tremendous victory,” he seemed invincible, confident that he would serve a fourth consecutive term and a fifth overall. Despite a looming indictment on corruption charges, he appeared set to surpass the nation’s founding leader, David Ben Gurion, as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.

But after weeks of negotiations, his plans ran aground on a power struggle between two blocs of his potential right-wing coalition — the secular ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox factions — who refused to compromise on proposed legislation on military service.

The dream collapsed in a breathtaking display of political maneuvering in recent days, as Mr. Netanyahu, long nicknamed “the magician” for the political wizardry that has kept him in office continuously for the past decade, desperately tried to salvage his fortunes.

With his conservative Likud party claiming it had locked down 60 seats, just one shy of a majority, he sought out new coalition partners and potential defectors from opposition parties. He even approached Labor, the center-left stalwart, which rebuffed his advance.

At the same time, his party advanced a fallback bill to dissolve Parliament and go to new elections.

That bill passed shortly after midnight on Thursday, with Parliament voting to disperse itself just a month after it was sworn in, with 74 votes in favor and 45 against. One member was absent.

Israelis will return to the ballot box in elections tentatively set for Sept. 17, the first time in the country’s history that it has been forced to hold a new national election because of the failure to form a government after the previous election.

Immediately after the parliamentary vote, Mr. Netanyahu angrily blamed Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the ultranationalist party Yisrael Beiteinu, for thwarting a right-wing coalition.

Bibi of course has nobody to blame but himself.  He's still facing indictment as a sitting Prime Minister, and his failure to form a government absolutely reflects that.  We know he won't resign, but his inability to form a government may finally be the death knell for his political career.

We'll see, but there's hope.

It's Mueller Time, Now With Actual Mueller Edition

Robert Mueller made public remarks at the Justice Department today, which probably won't satisfy Democrats who insist he testify under oath, but he did make several "read between the lines of the Mueller report" assumptions very clear.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III reiterated Wednesday that his office could not clear President Trump of obstructing justice, asserting in his first public remarks about his investigation that federal prosecutors cannot accuse the commander in chief of a crime while suggesting Congress still may do so.

Standing alone on stage in a room used for news conferences on the Justice Department’s seventh floor, Mueller said that if his office “had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” and noted that the Constitution “requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse the president of wrongdoing.”

But if Mueller was trying to suggest Democrats could initiate impeachment proceedings, he also seemed to dash any hopes they might have had of doing so with him as their star witness.

The special counsel — who noted he was closing up shop and formally resigning from the Justice Department — said he hoped the news conference would be his last public comments, and if he were compelled to testify before Congress, he would not speak beyond what he wrote in his 448-page report.

So, that's the bad news, and yes, as far as the Trump regime is concerned, it's all over and the noxious indictments of Democrats can now begin.

But Democrats aren't giving up on Mueller speaking under oath or the House investigations.

Democrats, meanwhile, said they would press ahead with their investigations. Several presidential contenders — including Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg — said Mueller’s comments were akin to an impeachment referral. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said Congress “has a legal and moral obligation to begin impeachment proceedings immediately.”

In a statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has resisted a move toward impeachment, thanked Mueller for providing “a record for future action both in the Congress and in the courts” and said lawmakers would “continue to investigate and legislate to protect our elections and secure our democracy.”

A House Democratic leadership aide said Mueller’s public statement would change nothing: the chamber still intends to call the special counsel to appear before Congress — even if lawmakers have to force him. Should Mueller refuse, Democrats could issue a subpoena, though they were hoping to avoid such a compulsory measure.

The aide, who follows the House investigations closely, argued there’s value in having Mueller appear in public, even if he refuses to answer questions beyond what’s in the report. Most Americans, Democrats note, haven’t read Mueller’s findings — but potentially millions would tune in to a highly anticipated hearing broadcast on national television to hear him re-litigate some of what he found.

The bottom line: Mueller is once again saying this is Congress's job, and for Democrats to be able to do that, they want Mueller to spell it out on national TV instead of it coming from Bill Barr or Trump or Sarah Sanders.

But Congress must act.  Period.  That is what Mueller is saying, it's what he said in the report, and he made that clear again today.  Trump is not exonerated.

Whether or not Mueller will agree or even be allowed to testify, well...

No Relief In Sight

My Representative in the House, Thomas Massie, continues to be a national embarrassment and now he's hurting the rest of the country, holding up the latest disaster relief bill for Midwest flood victims out of pure spite and rancor.

For the second time in less than a week, the House on Tuesday failed to pass the Senate-approved $19 billion bill providing disaster aid funding to parts of the United States hit by hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes and wildfires after a Republican lawmaker objected.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., objected to a request to pass the measure by unanimous consent during a pro forma session. If the bill had passed, it would have gone straight to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature. Most lawmakers are back home in their districts this week for a weeklong Memorial Day recess.

"The speaker of the House should have called a vote on this bill before sending every member of Congress on recess for 10 days, and I object," Massie said on the floor.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters afterward that the chamber will again attempt to pass the bill by unanimous consent Thursday. If it's blocked once again, the full House would be poised to pass the bill when lawmakers return the week of June 3.

"House Republicans need to immediately end this shameful sabotage, and allow the House to pass the bill that the bipartisan Senate has finally agreed to," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement. "How many more communities need to suffer before Republicans end their political games?”

Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., slammed Massie's move Tuesday on Twitter, calling it an example of a politician "putting their own self-interest ahead of the national interest."

Even other Republicans are objecting at this point to these idiotic antics.

Massie has to go in 2020, and I hope the DCCC has plans to get rid of him.

StupidiNews!

• Tornadoes and flooding across Arkansas have left at least one person dead as flash flood warnings and damaging hail batter the Midwest for the second week in a row.
• Oklahoma is also the site of the nation's first trial against opioid manufacturers as the state is suing Johnson & Johnson over an epidemic of addicts.
• China says it is prepared to escalate a trade war with the US by limiting shipments of rare earth metals, a move that could devastate the tech industry and cost American consumers tens of billions.
• House Democrats are suing the Trump Organization over emoluments as Donald Trump and his businesses continue to directly profit from foreign dignitaries and overseas trade.
• Baltimore's city government is blaming the NSA and asking for federal money over hackers who held city computer systems hostage with ransomware for weeks using stolen NSA hacking tools.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead

Here in Cincinnati, the last abortion clinic in southwest Ohio remains open thanks to a judge and an injunction preventing Ohio from denying licenses to clinics arbitrarily.  In Missouri, the state is down to one clinic in St. Louis, and the license for that facility expires at the end of the month.

The last remaining abortion clinic in Missouri says it expects to be shut down this week, effectively ending legal abortion in the state.

In a statement to be released later Tuesday, Planned Parenthood said Missouri's health department is "refusing to renew" its annual license to provide abortion in the state. If the license is not renewed by May 31, Missouri would become the first state without a functioning abortion clinic since 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided.
Planned Parenthood would still be able to provide non-abortion health services for women in Missouri.

Planned Parenthood said it plans to sue the state "in order to try to keep serving Missouri women."

"This is not a drill. This is not a warning. This is a real public health crisis," said Dr. Leana Wen, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

A call and email to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services were not immediately returned.

Representatives for Planned Parenthood told CBS News that the upcoming deadline follows weeks of back-and-forth with state health officials.

On May 20, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services notified Planned Parenthood of three issues that could impact license renewal, according to documents reviewed by CBS News and provided by Planned Parenthood.

On May 22, Planned Parenthood said it would address two of them: adjusting who at the clinic provided the state-mandated counseling and adding an additional pelvic exam for abortion patients.

But it said a third request was out of its control. According to Planned Parenthood, the health department said it was investigating "deficient practices," and needed to interview seven physicians who provide care at the clinic. Planned Parenthood said it could offer interviews only with two who are its employees. The remaining physicians provide services at the facility but aren't employed by Planned Parenthood and have not agreed to be interviewed.

In its letter, the Department of Health wrote that it could not "complete our investigation until it interviews the physicians involved in the care provided in the potential deficient practices," and that "the investigation needs to be completed and any deficiencies resolved before the expiration of [the clinic's] license on May 31, 2019."

So-called "Targeted Regulation of Abortion Practices" laws or TRAP laws like this have been the favored weapon of the anti-choice, anti-women crowd for the last decade or so.  Regulating abortion clinics out of existence with impossible and arbitrary rules for operation has been stopped before by the Supreme Court in Texas and several other states, but that was before Justice Kennedy was replaced by Brett Kavanaugh.

We'll see if Planned Parenthood can prevail here, but the clock on Missouri's women is running out.
Meanwhile, we got the first decision on abortion from SCOTUS today blocking Indiana's ludicrous "selective eugenics" law.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked an Indiana law barring abortions based on a fetus' sex, race or disability, while allowing a separate state measure requiring fetal remains to be buried or cremated to take effect.

The justices declined to review a lower court's decision overturning a law restricting when and why an abortion could be performed. Vice President Mike Pence signed the measure into law in 2016 when he was Indiana governor, and it was blocked by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals last year.

That case is the latest abortion challenge the Supreme Court's new conservative majority has passed up. However, it doesn’t indicate whether the court will eventually take up a challenge to Roe v. Wade, as a spate of conservative states including Alabama, Georgia and Missouri approve laws meant to directly challenge the 1973 ruling legalizing abortion nationwide.

In an unsigned opinion, the justices wrote that the state has a "legitimate interest" in the disposal of fetal remains. They reversed the 7th Circuit decision blocking that provision, reinstating Indiana's measure without first holding a hearing.
Indiana argued the prevalence of prenatal screening has led many women to opt for abortion when fetal abnormalities like Down syndrome are detected. Supporters of abortion rights said the law was unconstitutionally intrusive, defying Supreme Court precedent protecting a woman's right for an abortion until the fetus is viable outside of the womb, generally considered to be around 24 weeks.

"A woman, not the legislature, gets to decide whether an abortion is the right decision for her and her family," said Ken Falk, legal director with the ACLU of Indiana, who represented Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky in the case.

Although Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the court's decision to refuse the case, he wrote in a fiery concurring opinion that the justices may eventually consider the constitutionality of similar laws.

"Given the potential for abortion to become a tool of eugenic manipulation, the Court will soon need to confront the constitutionality of laws like Indiana’s. But because further percolation may assist our review of this issue of first impression, I join the Court in declining to take up the issue now," he wrote. 

Justice Thomas just posted a major signpost on the road to Gilead.  If the Supreme Court considers abortion itself to be eugenics, that would not only leave the door open to end abortion in the entire country, but to end birth control as well.

And yes, the Indiana law requiring cremation of fetal remains brings us one TRAP law closer to bankrupting clinics in the state.

Indiana's law won't be the decision that ends Roe, but it's coming.  Justice Thomas is all but promising it.

They Fought The Law And The Law's Gone

The lawless Trump regime rolls on, with rank and file regime bureaucrats now openly thumbing their noses at laws they have no intention of following, will never be prosecuted for, and will get away with breaking repeatedly.

Lynne Patton, a regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, wrote last week that she may have broken a federal law meant to prevent officials from politicizing their government positions, but said that even if that were the case, she “honestly” didn’t care.

“Just retweeted this amazing tweet from both of my Twitter accounts — professional and personal,” Patton wrote on Facebook last week, pointing to a message that championed her boss, HUD Secretary Ben Carson, but was critical of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “It may be a Hatch Act violation. It may not be.”

“Either way,” she continued, “I honestly don’t care anymore.”

The 1939 Hatch Act prohibits officials working in the executive branch from using their “official authority for political purposes” and is meant to prevent “federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity,” according to the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Many members within the Trump administration have run afoul of the law before, and last November, six White House officials were reprimanded for using their social media accounts in violation of the Hatch Act.

Patton, who is paid an annual salary of $161,900, according to 2017 figures, is tasked with overseeing one of HUD’s largest regions with a budget in the billions of dollars. But when someone pointed out her potential lawbreaking, Patton doubled down on Sunday evening, mocking those critical of her as “lazy internet parrots” and “liberal snowflakes” on her personal Twitter account.

Patton is actually under investigation for previous possible Hatch Act violations, but no punishment has been meted out so far, and it's unlikely any will. She knows she's a good friend of the Trump family, and that's all that matters.

We've now reached the point where Republicans openly mock the rest of us because they know there will be no consequences.

GOP senators say that if the House passes articles of impeachment against President Trump they will quickly quash them in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has broad authority to set the parameters of a trial.

While McConnell is required to act on articles of impeachment, which require 67 votes — or a two-thirds majority — to convict the president, he and his Republican colleagues have the power to set the rules and ensure the briefest of trials.

“I think it would be disposed of very quickly,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

“If it’s based on the Mueller report, or anything like that, it would be quickly disposed of,” he added.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to McConnell’s leadership team, said “nothing” would come of impeachment articles passed by the House.

Given the Senate GOP firewall, Cornyn, who’s also a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he doubts that Democrats will commence the impeachment process.

“It would be defeated. That’s why all they want to do is talk about it,” he said. “They know what the outcome would be.”

Rule of law no longer exists in America.  Not for the Trump regime, anyway.

Climate Of Destruction, Con't

The Trump regime is simply going to stop publishing the results of global warming work in an effort to finish off climate science in America permanently.

President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term “global warming” into a punch line rather than a prognosis.

Now, after two years spent unraveling the policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault.

In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback of the most significant federal effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, initiated during the Obama administration. It will expand its efforts to impose Mr. Trump’s hard-line views on other nations, building on his retreat from the Paris accord and his recent refusal to sign a communiqué to protect the rapidly melting Arctic region unless it was stripped of any references to climate change.

And, in what could be Mr. Trump’s most consequential action yet, his administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.

Mr. Trump is less an ideologue than an armchair naysayer about climate change, according to people who know him. He came into office viewing agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency as bastions of what he calls the “deep state,” and his contempt for their past work on the issue is an animating factor in trying to force them to abandon key aspects of the methodology they use to try to understand the causes and consequences of a dangerously warming planet.

As a result, parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels.

The attack on science is underway throughout the government. In the most recent example, the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey, James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously.

Scientists say that would give a misleading picture because the biggest effects of current emissions will be felt after 2040. Models show that the planet will most likely warm at about the same rate through about 2050. From that point until the end of the century, however, the rate of warming differs significantly with an increase or decrease in carbon emissions.

The administration’s prime target has been the National Climate Assessment, produced by an interagency task force roughly every four years since 2000. Government scientists used computer-generated models in their most recent report to project that if fossil fuel emissions continue unchecked, the earth’s atmosphere could warm by as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That would lead to drastically higher sea levels, more devastating storms and droughts, crop failures, food losses and severe health consequences.

Work on the next report, which is expected to be released in 2021 or 2022, has already begun. But from now on, officials said, such worst-case scenario projections will not automatically be included in the National Climate Assessment or in some other scientific reports produced by the government.

“What we have here is a pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science — to push the science in a direction that’s consistent with their politics,” said Philip B. Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the government’s most recent National Climate Assessment. “It reminds me of the Soviet Union.”

And so the projections into the future will simply cease.  It will be somebody else's problem.  Not the Trump regime's problem though.

But it will still be America's problem.

And the world's.

StupidiNews!

• Officials in Kawasaki, Japan say eight children were among the 15 people wounded by a stabbing spree in a city park Tuesday morning, a suspect detained later died from wounds.
• Federal prosecutors in New York are looking into a $1 million donation made to Donald Trump's inaugural committee in connection with possible pay-for-play involving an Alabama power plant.
• Fiat Chrysler is looking to buy out French automaker Renault for $35 billion as the auto industry continues to deal with emissions regulations, electric vehicles, and new technology.
• Canada's government says it will plan to ratify the new NAFTA agreement ahead of a visit by US VP Mike Pence, the Trump regime has lifted aluminum tariffs, clearing the way for ratification.
• Washington state Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee has signed a bill allowing the composting of human remains, Inslee is a dark horse candidate for the 2020 presidency running on climate change.

Back To Business

Well, I took the week off and recharged through the long Memorial Day weekend.  I'll be back on a normal schedule tomorrow.

It's back to business, but the big story of last week remains Donald Trump and Bill Barr giving the game away as to what's coming next.

Attorney General William Barr is likely to consult with the intelligence community on how best to handle classified material related to the Russian investigation as he seeks out “corruption at the FBI and the DOJ,” the top White House spokeswoman said.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in defending President Donald Trump’s moves to declassify intelligence, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday without citing evidence that people within the agencies “were specifically working trying to take down the president, trying to hurt the president.”

“The president wants transparency, and he’s given the attorney general the ability to put that transparency in place, make those decisions,”’ Sanders said.

Sanders didn’t specifically respond to a question about whether Trump would accept “exoneration” of the motives behind the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, if that’s what Barr concludes. “I’m not going to get ahead of what the final conclusion is,” she said, adding, “we already know” that there was “a high level of corruption” and “wrongdoing.”

The president this week gave Barr broad authority to declassify information from the CIA and more than a dozen other U.S. intelligence agencies as part of a review of their role in what became a two-year special counsel probe into the election and Trump’s campaign.

Although Barr isn’t compelled to take suggestions from top U.S. intelligence officials, Sanders said there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t “do everything that is necessary to make sure we’re protecting important intelligence that is vital to our national security.”

“We expect that the attorney general will consult with them on matters that he needs that guidance and advice from them,” she said. “Certainly they work in lock step on a number of things. I don’t see this to be any different.”

Trump’s move has been cast by some as an attempt by the president to exact revenge on political opponents.

“It looks like he’s using the attorney general to be his personal lawyer,” Representative Eric Swalwell of California, one of about two dozen Democrats running for the 2020 presidential nomination, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

The actions by Trump and Barr could put a “chilling effect” on members of the intelligence community, including FBI agents, he said.

Rep. Swallwell is actually wrong on that point.  It's not the declassification order that will have the chilling effect.

It will be the raft of Trumped-up indictments.

Barr will find something to charge FBI personnel on.  Mishandling secure information, leaking to the hated press, something.  Those charges I expect will be provided by the DoJ Inspector General's report on the FBI probe.

Trump's minions have been broadly hinting for months that former Obama administration intelligence officials like James Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper would be facing charges, as well as the FBI agents who worked on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign, like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

The broad and unprecedented declassification power given to Barr means he can leak whatever evidence he can find to harm Democrats and the FBI.  In turn, I expect escalating leaks against Barr himself...and maybe even Donald Trump.  It's at that point that things will get truly ugly.

I don't know who will win this battle.

The Case For Taking A Break

So yesterday a long-time reader, Martin Pollard, told me he was done with ZVTS and my negativity on the Dems.

I'm done with your pessimism. I'm done with your negativity. I'm done with your endless stream of gloom-and-doom. You do absolutely nothing to give any liberal/progressive/Democrat even the slightest bit of hope or encouragement. That's your right and your prerogative, and you might even have some justification for it, but that doesn't mean I have to subject myself to it anymore. So long, and I pray that your negativity ultimately ends up being unjustified.

I respect Martin's opinion, and I know you guys do too.  He's been here at ZVTS for years.  If it's been that bad lately that I'm driving off long-time readers like Martin, then maybe I need to look at taking a break for a while.   I've been at this for ten, coming up on eleven years now.  I know I took a break back in December of 2013 and it was beneficial, but that was more than five years ago.

Some self-reflection is definitely in order.

So, I'm going to step back for a bit and see where I am, and I'm at least going to take the week off.  The place will survive without me for a week, but I'll be back.

I hope you will be too, and I hope that I'm able to continue to give you all a reason to come back as well.

Last Call For The Perfect Storm

Midwest farmers are getting destroyed by the twin grinders of climate change and Trump's trade war with China, and this is where Democrats need to come in and make the case they are better on both issues.  In Iowa as farmers deal with the Mighty Mississippi flooding and soybean and corn prices hitting rock bottom as China is no longer buying, John Deere's tractor plants are cutting production and possibly jobs.

Deere & Co. is scaling back production at some of its major North American plants, with heightened trade tensions and harsh weather hurting farmers' incomes and lowering equipment demand.

Moline-based Deere on Friday cut its full-year profit forecast. The agriculture-equipment manufacturer reported second-quarter earnings of $1.13 billion, or $3.52 per share. That's lower than the $1.21 billion, or $3.67 per share, reported during the same quarter last year.

The revised forecast is another indicator that farmers, and those in the Midwest in particular, are suffering the brunt of the Trump administration's trade battles. On Friday, the president sought to ease fears over the escalating trade confrontations by lifting tariffs on industrial metals with Mexico and Canada, and he has pledged another aid package for farmers hurt by tariffs.

Deere said it lowered its forecasts because farmers aren't buying as much equipment. Farmers are worried about plummeting crop prices, international trade disputes and extreme weather events that have delayed planting, including here in Iowa.

Deere's earnings were lower than Wall Street expectations, causing shares to drop more than 7 percent in afternoon trading.

"Ongoing concerns about export-market access, near-term demand for commodities such as soybeans and a delayed planting season in much of North America are causing farmers to become much more cautious about making major purchases," Chairman and CEO Samuel Allen said in the report.

On a Friday morning call with analysts, Josh Jepsen, director of investor relations, said in response to market dynamics Deere is reducing production in its agriculture business to levels below retail sales. Production will be lower at some of its large North American plants for the remainder of the year.

He said the changes are mostly affecting the production of large agriculture equipment, with its major plants shipping around 20% less than the previous year.

Locally, Deere manufactures large agriculture equipment, such as combines and tractors, at its factories in East Moline and Waterloo.

Deere spokesman Ken Golden said the company is not specifying where production cuts are being made, only that it plans to under-produce market demand in the second half of the year.

"Production changes can be accomplished without changing the size of the workforce," Golden said in an email. "We have not announced any change in workforce."

The job cuts won't come until next year, I figure.  Just in time for 2020 campaign season, too.  But they are coming.  Trump's trade war with China is about to get a lot worse for America's economy across the board as the real effect of tens of billions in new tariff taxes raise prices across the board for everyone.

Like I keep saying, Trump wins as long he keeps his campaign promise of making everyone else other than rural white voters more miserable. The second that misery comes home to farmers and ranchers and Crystal at Wal-Mart and Ricky at the Speedway, he's done.

That's the problem with a "white supremacy/economic anxiety" platform. If you don't deliver on the economic side of it, you're toast.  The economy is going to crater and soon, especially if there's war in Iran.

And then the Democrats have a real shot.

Trump's Taxing Explanation, Con't

Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin is calling House Ways and Means chair Richard Neal's bluff and will not hand over Donald Trump's tax information, saying he has been advised by Attorney General Bill Barr that he is not authorized to turn Trump's taxes over to anyone despite what the law says.

Democrats’ request “lacks a legitimate legislative purpose” and the Treasury Department is therefore “not authorized” to hand over the documents, Mnuchin said in a letter to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.).

Neal had requested the documents under a longstanding federal law giving Congress access to private tax information. Mnuchin said he’s not authorized to produce the documents, but the law actually doesn’t authorize him to refuse.

“The law, by its terms, does not allow for discretion as to whether to comply with a request for tax returns and return information,” Neal said in a statement responding to Mnuchin’s letter.

The tax returns are just one part of a broader standoff between the Trump administration and Congress. Lawmakers have a constitutional right to oversee the executive branch, but the White House has been stonewalling demands for testimony and documents.

Democrats will probably be at the mercy of federal courts to enforce their subpoenas, although some lawmakers have talked about dusting off the legislature’s own power to force compliance through jail or fines.

Neal asked for six years of Trump’s personal and business tax returns last month and followed through with the subpoena last week after Mnuchin refused the initial request.

“I didn’t think that they would turn it over,” Neal told HuffPost on Thursday, before Mnuchin had officially defied the subpoena.

Neal declined to discuss next steps but has previously said he would sue in federal court and ask a judge to enforce the subpoena. Courts have repeatedly ordered executive branch officials to cooperate with subpoenas, but the process typically takes longer than election cycles, meaning Trump could be out of office before Democrats can win.

And so the Trump tax case ends with a whimper.  We will never see them, because they will be tied up in court for years, and by then the 2020 election will be over one way or another.  If Trump loses (or Democrats lose the House in 2020) then the request dies in court, and if Trump wins, the Supreme Court will eventually block the law as unconstitutional considering Trump will get at least one more Justice to pick, if not two, in a second term (and no, Democrats won't block a pick if they should somehow win back the Senate, because they are Democrats.)

This is the effective end of the Trump tax fight.  I hate to say it, but Mnuchin's not going to jail, and Richard Neal isn't going to dust off the cell in the Capitol building to hold him there, and Mnuchin is one of the richest people in the country and fines won't mean a damn thing.

It's over, and we lost.

Trump will win because Democrats aren't willing to use every tool they have, and Trump (and Mitch McConnell) will use every tool.

That's the real story of this decade in American politics.

The Trumpian Wonder Down Under

Australia's conservative Liberal party coalition has won national elections Saturday despite all the polls pointing towards a Labor party sweep, and PM Kevin Morrison will keep his office by running on the Trump platform: tax cuts for the rich, forget climate change, and it's all immigrants' fault.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison led his conservative government to a surprise victory in Australia’s election, seeing off a challenge from the left-leaning Labor opposition with his pledge to safeguard the slowing economy.

“I have always believed in miracles,” Morrison, 51, told cheering supporters in Sydney, flanked by his wife and two daughters. “Tonight we’ve been delivered another one.”

Labor leader Bill Shorten, 52, earlier phoned Morrison to concede defeat, saying it was clear he could not form government even as millions of votes remained uncounted. He wished Morrison “good fortune and good courage in the service of our great nation” and said he would step down as opposition leader.

With 70% of the vote counted, the Liberal-National coalition is expected to win 74 seats in the 151-member lower house, with Labor on 65, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp. The broadcaster said it remained unclear whether the coalition would gain the 76 seats needed to form a majority.

It is a remarkable win for the conservative government, which has been plagued by factional infighting during its six years in office that hobbled its ability to craft policy. Morrison, who took the helm in August and is the Liberals’ third leader in four years, spent much of the campaign relentlessly attacking Labor’s detailed policy platform that included boosting the minimum wage and taking tougher action against climate change.
He urged voters not to risk a change of government just when the economy -- in its 28th year of uninterrupted growth -- appears to be running out of steam.

“The economic story, the economic message, the economic choice was what differentiated the parties at this election,’’ Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said.

Morrison faces a drawn-out battle to legislate planned income tax cuts that could provide much-needed fiscal stimulus for the economy. His ability to do so will hinge on the makeup of the Senate, where populists and independents could hold the balance of power. Vote counting for the upper house will likely continue for days.

Morrison must also navigate the intensifying trade war between the U.S., Australia’s most important ally, and China, its biggest trading partner. The government must shore up ties with Beijing, which have been strained since the coalition last year introduced laws aimed at ending Chinese interference in national affairs, and barred telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co. from participating in its 5G network on security grounds.

Morrison closed down Labor’s lead during the five-week campaign, and a Newspoll published Saturday put the opposition just three points ahead. With the contest so tight, it was vital for both parties to hold or pick up seats held by a thin margin. 

And it was rural voters out in Queensland and Tasmania who won it for the conservatives.  If there seems like there's a lot of similarities to Clinton vs Trump in 2016, that's because there is, and Australia's Trump has won.  Despite deadly wildfires and record summer heat in the country last year, voters turned against climate change and wage increases in order to stop those people and keep Australia for...well, certainly not its aboriginal population, that's for damn sure.

The Trumpification of Alerica's allies continues.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

If you think that red state Democrats wouldn't turn on women faster than red state Republicans in order to try to keep their jobs over doing the right thing, well, you've never met a Louisiana Democrat, particularly John Bel Edwards.

Nearly three decades ago, when Democratic Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’ wife was 20 weeks pregnant with their first child, a doctor discovered their daughter had spina bifida and encouraged an abortion. The Edwardses refused.

Now, daughter Samantha is married and working as a school counselor, and Edwards finds himself an outlier in polarized abortion politics.

“My position hasn’t changed. In eight years in the Legislature, I was a pro-life legislator,” he said. When he ran for governor, his view was the same. “I’m as consistent as I can be on that point.”

Edwards, who has repeatedly bucked national party leaders on abortion rights, is about to do it again. He’s ready to sign legislation that would ban the procedure as early as six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant, when the bill reaches his desk.
Louisiana’s proposal , awaiting one final vote in the state House, would prohibit abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, similar to laws passed in Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia and Ohio that aim to challenge the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. Alabama has gone even further, enacting a law that makes performing abortions a felony at any stage of pregnancy with almost no exceptions.

But the abortion bans in those other conservative states — spurred by anti-abortion activists hoping the addition of conservative judges to the Supreme Court could help overturn Roe v. Wade — were backed by Republican governors.

A rarity in his party, Edwards’ anti-abortion stance provokes angry outcries on social media from Democratic voters and disappointment within the party’s broader ranks across the country.

“When Republicans are taking away women’s rights at every step, it’s on the Democrats to show that we are the party that will protect women. When we fail to do that, we make it absolutely hopeless for women around the country,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive Democratic consultant.

And Bel Edwards never ran as anything other than a Catholic pro-life Democrat in Louisiana.  Democratic voters knew exactly what they were getting when they elected him, and he's up for re-election in less than five months.

Of course he was going to sign this unconstitutional bill.

As a resident of Kentucky, let me assure you that it's never a question of if Red State Dems up for reelection toe the GOP line, it's how often, and how many people get hurt when they do.

And yet the Republican alternative is always somebody 100% willing to follow the GOP mantra.

It's depressing, trust me.

Last Call For It's All About Revenge Now, Con't

Attorney General Bill Barr absolutely gave the game away today on Fox News as to what is coming.  Donald Trump wants Democrats in jail for the Mueller probe, and Bill Barr is all but promising to deliver indictments.  Greg Sargent:

Barr confirmed, as he has before, that he is currently investigating the investigators -- that is, taking another look at the genesis of the investigation into Russia’s attack on the 2016 election, and the Trump campaign’s possible complicity with it. This is, of course, exactly what Trump has demanded for years.

“I’ve been trying to get answers to the questions and I’ve found that a lot of the answers have been inadequate and some of the explanations I’ve gotten don’t hang together,” Barr said, stressing how important it is to know “whether government officials abused their power and put their thumb on the scale.”

This is more than just a declaration that the FBI launched an investigation of a foreign attack on our political system and possible coordination with it by Americans. It also subtly bolsters the idea that the FBI did this in a way that was designed to harm the Trump campaign.

Indeed, Barr openly validated Trump’s longtime claim that the whole FBI probe was a “witch hunt.”
“I think if I had been falsely accused I would be comfortable saying it was a witch hunt,” Barr said.

This echoes Barr’s extraordinary press conference just before releasing the Mueller report, at which he appealed to us to understand how victimized Trump felt by the Mueller investigation when considering his efforts to obstruct it.

Now Barr has gone all the way and validated the phrase “witch hunt.”

Perhaps most strikingly, Barr hinted darkly that Democrats should be worried about the outcome of his investigation of the investigators. Asked about Democratic charges that he’d previously misled Congress, Barr said:

“It’s a laughable charge, and I think it’s largely being made to try to discredit me, partly because they may be concerned about the outcome of a review of what happened during the election.”

Really? The attorney general of the United States is telegraphing that the conclusion of an unfinished investigation should be feared by one of two major political parties?

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for the attorney general to be casting DOJ actions in terms of whether they’re good or bad for one political party," Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told us. “He’s implying that what’s going on behind the scenes at DOJ will be good for Republicans and bad for Democrats.” 

The fix is in, fellas.  And when Trump's political enemies start going to jail, what then?