Last Call For The Kids Are Not Alright, Con't

America's kids are learning from Donald Trump's example.  Unfortunately, they're learning how to be bullies, how to harass black and brown and Muslim kids, and how to carry his hatred into a whole new generation.

Two kindergartners in Utah told a Latino boy that President Trump would send him back to Mexico, and teenagers in Maine sneered "Ban Muslims" at a classmate wearing a hijab. In Tennessee, a group of middle-schoolers linked arms, imitating the president's proposed border wall as they refused to let nonwhite students pass. In Ohio, another group of middle-schoolers surrounded a mixed-race sixth-grader and, as she confided to her mother, told the girl: "This is Trump country."

Since Trump’s rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America. Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.

Trump’s words, those chanted by his followers at campaign rallies and even his last name have been wielded by students and school staff members to harass children more than 300 times since the start of 2016, a Washington Post review of 28,000 news stories found. At least three-quarters of the attacks were directed at kids who are Hispanic, black or Muslim, according to the analysis. Students have also been victimized because they support the president — more than 45 times during the same period.

Although many hateful episodes garnered coverage just after the election, The Post found that Trump-connected persecution of children has never stopped. Even without the huge total from November 2016, an average of nearly two incidents per school week have been publicly reported over the past four years. Still, because so much of the bullying never appears in the news, The Post’s figure represents a small fraction of the actual total. It also doesn’t include the thousands of slurs, swastikas and racial epithets that aren’t directly linked to Trump but that the president’s detractors argue his behavior has exacerbated.

“It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected,” said Ashanty Bonilla, 17, a Mexican American high school junior in Idaho who faced so much ridicule from classmates last year that she transferred. “They hear it. They think it’s okay. The president says it. . . . Why can’t they?”

Asked about Trump’s effect on student behavior, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham noted that first lady Melania Trump — whose “Be Best” campaign denounces online harassment — had encouraged kids worldwide to treat one another with respect.

“She knows that bullying is a universal problem for children that will be difficult to stop in its entirety,” Grisham wrote in an email, “but Mrs. Trump will continue her work on behalf of the next generation despite the media’s appetite to blame her for actions and situations outside of her control.”

Most schools don’t track the Trump bullying phenomenon, and researchers didn’t ask about it in a federal survey of 6,100 students in 2017, the most recent year with available data. One in five of those children, ages 12 to 18, reported being bullied at school, a rate unchanged since the previous count in 2015.

However, a 2016 online survey of over 10,000 kindergarten through 12th-grade educators by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that more than 2,500 “described specific incidents of bigotry and harassment that can be directly traced to election rhetoric,” although the overwhelming majority never made the news. In 476 cases, offenders used the phrase “build the wall.” In 672, they mentioned deportation.

The nation's kids are becoming more like Trump every day, especially young white boys copying his hatred of black and brown folks and women.  They think it's funny because it shocks the adults in their lives.  They think it's okay and like Trump, they believe they should be able to get away with it.

Unless something changes, they will.

And then they'll grow up and vote and become the new leaders of Trumpism.

The Great Equalizer

After nearly 100 years, the Equal Rights Amendment is both closer to becoming part of the Constitution, and further away from it, than it's ever been.

The U.S. House gave the Equal Rights Amendment a temporary new lease on life Thursday by voting to remove a 1982 deadline for ratification by the states.

The 232-183 vote, on a resolution introduced by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), pushes the issue to the Senate, where Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have introduced a similar measure.
During debate on the House floor, Republicans leaned on antiabortion and constitutional arguments to oppose the ERA, arguing that enshrining protections for women in the Constitution would mean abortion could not be restricted. Democrats focused on the legality of deadlines and the importance of equal rights.

“This has nothing to do with the abortion issue. That is an excuse, not a reason,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), arguing that women are still paid less than men for similar work, and often are shorted on pensions and maternity leaves.

She and some of the other female lawmakers wore purple to show their support for the long-sought constitutional amendment, which was first proposed nearly a century ago.

But it will take more than color coordination to enact the ERA.

Three-quarters of the states must ratify a proposed amendment for it to be added to the Constitution. With new Democratic majorities in both chambers, the Virginia General Assembly met that threshold last month, becoming the 38th state to ratify the ERA.

Supporters of the amendment say that Congress’s deadline can be changed by a simple vote of the same body, because the Constitution itself does not specify a ratification deadline.

Others disagree.

In anticipation of Virginia’s vote, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel advised the national archivist not to certify the ratification because of the expired deadline.

Three lawsuits have been filed over the ERA, including one this month by the attorneys general of Illinois, Nevada and Virginia, calling for its addition to the Constitution. A lawsuit opposing ratification was filed in Alabama last year by the attorneys general of Alabama, Louisiana and South Dakota.

Another lawsuit supports ratification and was filed in Massachusetts by Equal Means Equal, the Yellow Roses group and Katherine Weitbrecht.

At least one of the legal challenges is expected to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

And it's that last part that's the killer.  Even if the ERA got past the Senate tomorrow, the Roberts Court would block it. Even Justice Ginsburg has openly questioned the process, noting five states have withdrawn their support for the ERA since 1972.

It doesn't look good, and it looks like it won't make it into the Constitution at any point soon.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Donald Trump has continued his attacks on anyone and everyone involved in his impeachment and the/or the Mueller investigation as he went on yet another Twitter rampage on Wednesday.

President Trump is testing the rule of law one week after his acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial, seeking to bend the executive branch into an instrument for his personal and political vendetta against perceived enemies.

And Trump — simmering with rage, fixated on exacting revenge against those he feels betrayed him and insulated by a compliant Republican Party — is increasingly comfortable doing so to the point of feeling untouchable, according to the president’s advisers and allies.

In the span of 48 hours this week, the president has sought to protect his friends and punish his foes, even at the risk of compromising the Justice Department’s independence and integrity — a stance that his defenders see as entirely justified.

Trump complained publicly about federal prosecutors’ recommended prison sentence for one of his longtime friends and political advisers, Roger Stone. After senior Justice Department officials then overruled prosecutors to lighten Stone’s recommended sentence, the president congratulated Attorney General William P. Barr for “taking charge” with an extraordinary intervention.

Next Trump sought to intimidate the federal judge in the Stone case, badgering her on Twitter for previous rulings, and attacked the four prosecutors who resigned from the case in apparent protest of the Justice Department’s intervention. Then Trump floated the possibility of a presidential pardon for Stone, who was convicted by a jury in November of tampering with a witness and lying to Congress.

The president has openly encouraged his Justice Department to retaliate against a quartet of former FBI officials who long have been targets of his ire for their involvement in the Russia probe.

“Where’s [James] Comey?” Trump bellowed Wednesday in a stream-of-consciousness diatribe from the Oval Office. “What’s happening to [Andrew] McCabe? What’s happening to Lisa and — to Pete Strzok and Lisa Page? What’s happening with them? It was a whole setup, it was a disgrace for our country, and everyone knows it, too, everyone.” 

For months now, Trump has been enraged that these FBI officials have not been charged with crimes. And he has vented at length privately in recent weeks that James A. Wolfe, a former aide to the Senate Intelligence Committee, received a prison sentence of two months for lying to FBI agents about his contact with reporters during a federal leak investigation — a criticism the president repeatedly publicly on Wednesday.

Some of Trump’s top aides have counseled him against speaking out on legal matters, warning him that doing so could wrongly influence proceedings because officials at the Justice Department or elsewhere would then know they needed to please him or risk his wrath. Trump has often responded, “I have a right to say whatever I want,” according to a former senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

“He knows exactly what he’s doing,” this official explained. “He knows that he has more power than anyone else in the government — and when he tweets, everyone has to listen to him.”

A second former senior official, former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, said of Trump, “He is mad and he should be mad. The Democrats and the media wasted three years of the nation’s time on a witch hunt. Now he understands how to use the full powers of the presidency. The pearl-clutchers better get used to it.”

We've reached the point now where Trump is openly defying the Constitution on an hourly basis and feels he no longer is answerable to anyone on the planet.  There's no effort to cover up or conceal what he wants.  He wants everyone who defied him to go to prison.  And Bill Barr is going to have to make a decision very soon about whether or not he delivers on that.

Our country is run by a rampaging toddler in full tantrum mode in the middle of the grocery store.  Nothing resembling a parent or guardian is around.  There's no longer any indication that the "adults" that were supposed to be in charge even exist.  It's all Trump Twitter rage, all the time.

Bill Barr won't even bother talking to Congress until the end of March and in the intervening seven weeks Trump will have carte blanche to wreck the country.  Trump keeps demanding people go to jail.  We know now Barr will do whatever Trump orders him to do.  How long does it take Trump to order Barr to round up Comey, Mueller, and whoever else he wants?

We're well past the point where we should be in the streets.

StupidiNews!

• China is now saying a whopping 14,800 new Wuhan coronavirus cases have appeared over the last 24 hours, dashing hopes of a slowdown and possible peak of the spread of the disease.
• Texas has filed a lawsuit with the US Supreme Court against California over the Golden State's travel ban on Texas stating the Roberts' Court precedence on religious beliefs prevents it.
• House Republicans want to address climate change and deforestation by planting a trillion trees in the US by 2050, a goal climate experts say is far too little, too late without also cutting emissions.
• Senate Republicans are looking to back a new bipartisan bill that would limit Donald Trump's military options in Iran, but it's unclear if the bill can get enough votes to override a guaranteed veto.
• Chinese network manufacturer Huawei is firing back at Pentagon critics who say the company is funneling data to the Chinese government by pointing out AT&T has done the same for the US.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

As Donald Trump continues to build his Derp State executive branch and cabinet agency made of loyalists, yes men and sycophants, the six-month clock is coming up on his acting replacement for former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, which means Trump has to name somebody and get them past the Senate.  

He's failed that before with Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe's disastrous nomination.  As such, he appears to be counting on four-term Republican Congressman Chris Stewart to fill the job of suck-up.

Joseph Maguire, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, has filled in as the acting director of national intelligence since Dan Coats resigned in August. But under current law limiting the duration of postings for acting cabinet-level officials, Mr. Maguire must step down next month.

Mr. Trump has not nominated a permanent replacement for Mr. Coats since his early pick, Representative John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, withdrew in August after questions about whether he exaggerated his résumé.

Mr. Stewart, like other Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, vigorously defended Mr. Trump during impeachment hearings in the fall that focused on the president’s pressure campaign on Ukraine. And he has been sharply critical of the handling by the Justice Department and F.B.I. of an investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“They want to take away my vote and throw it in the trash,” Mr. Stewart said of Democrats just before the impeachment vote in the House. “They want to take away my president and delegitimize him so he cannot be re-elected.”

Mr. Stewart, 59, has long been interested in the post of intelligence chief, people close to him said. He is well-liked by congressional Republicans and is thought to enjoy support from Senate Republicans, who would confirm him if he is nominated.

But Democrats are likely to balk at the selection of a House lawmaker with such a political track record. Senate Republicans could have the votes to approve on their own a nominee like Mr. Stewart, but some have said they want to see a nominee with bipartisan support. Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, was cool to Mr. Ratcliffe’s nomination and is likely to influence the White House’s ultimate choice.

The clock is ticking on a decision. Mr. Maguire cannot serve past March 11 under federal law. Before then, the administration must have a director nominated and confirmed or be forced to find a new acting director.

So expect another cog to be placed in Trump's Derp State machine by a compliant Senate GOP.  Watch Mitt Romney's votes to approve Trump judges and cabinet members.  Remember, this is someone who thinks Trump should have been removed from office.

That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

The latest Quinnipiac University national poll wrecks the notion that Trump somehow benefited from his acquittal, as he gets crushed in all the head-to-head matchups by a margin that not even the electoral college can save him from.

Among all registered voters, Democratic candidates lead President Trump in general election matchups by between 4 and 9 percentage points, with Bloomberg claiming the biggest numerical lead against Trump: 

• Bloomberg tops Trump 51 - 42 percent;
• Sanders defeats Trump 51 - 43 percent;
• Biden beats Trump 50 - 43 percent;
• Klobuchar defeats Trump 49 - 43 percent;
• Warren wins narrowly over Trump 48 - 44 percent;
• Buttigieg is also slightly ahead of Trump 47 - 43 percent. 

President Trump's favorability rating is underwater, as 42 percent of registered voters have a favorable opinion of him, while 55 percent have an unfavorable view of him. However, it is his best favorability rating since a March 7th, 2017 poll, when his favorability rating was a negative 43 - 53 percent.

So people hate him slightly less now, but he still loses to everybody.

Even Bloomberg.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

Trump's Attorney General, Bill Barr, is now openly taking control of all federal cases involving Trump and his criminality.  There is no Justice Department anymore.  It's just the Trump regime legal division now.

The U.S. attorney who had presided over an inconclusive criminal investigation into former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe was abruptly removed from the job last month in one of several recent moves by Attorney General William Barr to take control of legal matters of personal interest to President Donald Trump, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

A person familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News that Trump has rescinded the nomination of Jessie Liu, who had been the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., for a job as an undersecretary at the Treasury Department.

Liu also supervised the case against Trump associate Roger Stone. On Tuesday, all four line prosecutors withdrew from the case — and one quit the Justice Department altogether — after Barr and his top aides intervened to reverse a stiff sentencing recommendation of up to nine years in prison that the line prosecutors had filed with the court Monday. (Liu left before the sentencing recommendation was made.)

But that wasn't the first time senior political appointees had reached into a case involving a former Trump aide, officials told NBC News. Senior officials at the Justice Department also intervened last month to help change the government's sentencing recommendation for Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. While the prosecutors had once recommended up to six months in jail, their latest filing now says they believe probation would be appropriate.

The new filing came on the same day Liu was removed from her job, to be replaced the next day by a former prosecutor selected by Barr. Liu had been overseeing the criminal investigation into McCabe, who was accused by the department's inspector general of lying to investigators. McCabe has not been charged, despite calls by Trump for him to go to prison. 

The resignations and the unusual moves by Barr come as Trump has sought revenge against government officials who testified after congressional Democrats subpoenaed them in their impeachment investigation. In the days since the Senate acquitted him, Trump fired his ambassador to the European Union, a political supporter whom he nominated, and had other officials moved out of the White House. 

"This signals to me that there has been a political infestation," NBC News legal analyst Chuck Rosenberg, a former U.S. attorney in Virginia, said on MSNBC. "And that is the single most dangerous thing that you can do to the Department of Justice."

The Justice Department doesn't appear to care that this looks like the Attorney General is personally interfering with multiple federal cases involving Trump anymore.  It's not even lifting a finger to deny this is what's going on.  More will be coming, and soon. 

StupidiNews!

• Bernie Sanders has won the New Hampshire primary with a narrow 26% win to Pete Buttigieg's 25%, Amy Klobuchar came in with a strong third-place 20% finish, followed by Warren and Biden.
• Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky has fired his Chief of Staff and has replaced him with the man who negotiated directly with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.
• The death toll from the Wuhan coronoavirus is now over 1,100 but the number of new reported cases in China has fallen dramatically, a development that doctors say could mean the virus has peaked.
• Defeat for the party of Indian PM Narendra Modi in local elections in Delhi represents the third straight local election loss for Modi so far.
• National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien says the US has proof that Chinese mobile network company Huawei has given backdoor access to all its global networks to the Chinese government.

Last Call For Stone Cold Criminal, Con't

The prosecution in convicted Trump lackey Roger Stone's case filed sentencing recommendations last night for Stone for witness tampering in his role in the WikiLeaks DNC hack, and asked for seven to nine years in prison.  The Trump regime in the last 24 hours has gone completely insane with rage over the recommendation.

The Justice Department plans to reduce its sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of President Trump, after top officials professed to be blindsided by the seven-to-nine-year penalty prosecutors urged a judge to impose, a senior Justice Department official said Tuesday.

In a stunning rebuke of career prosecutors that immediately raised questions about political interference in the case, a senior Justice Department official said the department “was shocked to see the sentencing recommendation in the Roger Stone case last night.”

“That recommendation is not what had been briefed to the department,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive case. “The department finds the recommendation extreme and excessive and disproportionate to Stone’s offenses. The department will clarify its position later today.”

The statement came hours after Trump tweeted about the sentence prosecutors recommended, saying: “This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!” The senior Justice Department official, though, said the decision to revise prosecutors’ recommendation came before Trump’s tweet.

Stone was convicted by a jury in November of obstructing Congress and witness tampering. His was the last conviction secured by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as part of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Stone has been a friend and adviser to Trump since the 1980s and was a key figure in his 2016 campaign, working to discover damaging information on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

All four prosecutors who signed the sentencing memo have now left the Stone case over the DoJ overriding the recommendations, one has resigned from the DoJ completely in protest.

Four federal prosecutors dramatically quit the criminal case against Republican operative Roger Stone as the Department of Justice reduced their recommendation that a judge sentence the longtime ally of President Donald Trump to up to nine years in prison. 

In a revised sentencing memo filed Tuesday, Timothy Shea, U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., said Stone deserves to be sentenced to “far less” time in prison than what the four prosecutors, who worked under Shea, proposed Monday.

Jonathan Kravis, who delivered the closing argument at Stone’s trial last fall, resigned as an assistant U.S. Attorney, according to a court filing in Washington federal court. 

Kravis, who did not give a reason in the filing, will no longer work as a prosecutor for the federal government. 

The other three prosecutors, Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed and Michael Marando, also withdrew from Stone’s case, according to their own separate filings, which did not explain their decision. 

But those three all will continue working for the federal government.

Marcy Wheeler believes this is being done to keep Stone from talking to the press.  It's not just helping a loyal lackey, it's self-preservation.  Trump doesn't just want to commute Stone's sentence or pardon Stone (or both!) but that he has to.
 

The trial itself provided ample evidence of what Mark Meadows considers “collusion” involving Donald Trump personally. It showed the campaign — and probably Trump personally — were working through Stone to optimize the WikiLeaks releases from the very day they came out on June 14, 2016. It showed that Stone was informing Trump personally about his efforts to optimize the releases. After some arm-twisting to adhere to his grand jury testimony, Steve Bannon testified he knew of all this, contrary to some of what he had said in earlier testimony that Trump would learn about. Erik Prince was in the loop. Gates testified that Stone was strategizing with Jared Kushner on all this. And it appears that Paul Manafort was in the loop, too.

But all that really damning evidence came out in a trial that only had to prove that Stone had lied to cover up the actions he took to optimize the release of the WikiLeaks emails. The trial did not need to explain what Stone’s actual back channel was, what he had to do to obtain it, and how involved Trump was in that process. And the trial did not explain it.

Indeed, there’s evidence I’ll lay out at more length in a follow-up that the government chose not to lay out all it knew. That is, it appears the government came to trial prepared to present evidence about the underlying “collusion,” but ultimately decided to hold it back for now.

At multiple times during the trial, however, the prosecution pointed to suspiciously timed phone calls, right before or after Stone discussed WikiLeaks with Gates, Manafort, or Jerome Corsi. Only Stone or Trump can tell us what happened between the two men, what Trump’s actual role in maximizing the degree to which his campaign benefitted from Russia’s theft of his opponent’s email.

Immediately after the trial, Stone made an intense effort to get Trump to pardon him, with his wife Nydia appearing on Tucker Carlson’s show to ask directly and a man with a vuvuzela inside the White House calling for a pardon gates.

Since that time, Stone was silent, until the time that the Probation Office provided the sentencing range for the crimes that was built in to the way that Mueller charged this just over a year ago. That is, by charging Stone with witness tampering, Mueller built in the possibility that Stone would be facing the steep sentence recommended yesterday. And that steep sentence may have been envisioned not as the sum of what Stone’s actual actions entailed — certainly every single warrant save the last four showed probable cause that Stone had done far more, but rather as leverage to get Stone to tell what he knows about Trump’s involvement in all this.

Bill Barr was brought in as AG to bury abundant evidence that Trump was personally involved in efforts to maximize the Russian operation, to deny all the ways that Trump did cheat to win. From his initial misleading claims in the wake of the report’s release, he was always suppressing the centrality of Roger Stone in all this.

So it’s fairly safe to conclude that DOJ’s reversal today is not just an effort to prevent a rich white man, Roger Stone, from facing the full consequences of his actions, but to prevent voters from learning what another rich white man did to cheat to get elected.

Yes, ultimately Trump will commute what is left of Roger Stone’s sentence, probably on November 4, just like he fired Jeff Sessions the day after the 2018 election. But I suspect that Roger Stone, rightly, isn’t going to leave anything to chance. And so neither can Bill Barr.

And some in Trumpland are saying that Dear Leader will pardon Stone even earlier, as soon as he is sentenced.

Democrats were quick to respond:

Schumer calls for IG probe into DOJ overruling prosecutors to give Roger Stone lighter sentence. Nadler says his panel will “get to the bottom” of it. Schiff says Trump administration represents “the gravest threat” to rule of law “in a generation.” McConnell declines to comment

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 11, 2020

We'll see.  The one thing that isn't in doubt is the obvious interference in Stone's case by the Trump regime, but that no longer matters in America, does it?

Retribution Execution, Con't

If the Trump regime can fabricate a scandal for Joe Biden to sink his 2020 chances and to threaten him with investigations and worse and get away with it, they can do the same to the one Republican who stood up and said no to these thugs, Mitt Romney.

And they are doing exactly that as we speak.

The MAGA machine is attempting to turn President Donald Trump’s latest nemesis — Sen. Mitt Romney — into the next Hunter Biden.

Trump in recent days took a new turn in his attacks on the Utah senator, veering from assailing his character and loyalty and tossing him into the wilds of Ukraine.

Trump over the weekend retweeted several conservative personalities and stories attempting to connect the Republican senator to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and its former board member Hunter Biden, two parties at the center of Trump’s attempted quid pro quo. The allegation was featured in several far-right blog posts: A senior advisor from Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign was on Burisma’s board of directors, and that by voting to impeach Trump last week, Romney was covering for his fellow swamp crony. 

While Trump’s campaign had highlighted the allegation earlier, the post-impeachment flurry of tweets was the first time that Trump himself acknowledged the theory. At one point, the president retweeted a random follower’s newfound suspicion: “Romney is covering up his part in corruption in Ukraine. This has nothing to do with truth or God. He is a desperate man. The truth will come out.”

Prior to Sunday, Trump and the GOP’s first anti-Mitt salvo centered on a familiar set of name-calling: Romney is a “failed presidential candidate” jealous that Trump won the presidency; Romney craves the attention of the liberal media; Romney, a sanctimonious do-gooder, is a coward who wears mom jeans.

The Burisma attack signaled a new front in Trump world’s attempts to punish Romney, as well as keep the Burisma narrative alive. After all, Trump’s attempted quid pro quo centered around his obsession with launching an investigation into whether Joe Biden, his ostensible rival in the 2020 election, illegally leaned on the Ukrainian government to protect his son’s board seat — a storyline Trump adamantly clung onto during his impeachment trial. Should Romney look complicit, then so much the better for explaining his vote.

“It’s a fact. Why shouldn’t they know?” Matt Wolking, the Trump campaign’s deputy communications director, said when asked why the official account retweeted a story about Romney’s adviser. He did not respond when asked whether this fact provided adequate context for Romney’s vote.

Romney is also facing trouble back home in Utah, where the state Republican party is looking to make an example of him.

Some conservative leaders of the Utah GOP have readied a resolution censuring Sen. Mitt Romney for voting to remove President Donald Trump from office and urging him to “vigorously support” Trump’s agenda or vacate his seat.

The draft resolution submitted Friday is expected to come up for discussion and a possible vote during the Feb. 29 Republican Party state central committee meeting.

Orem Republican Brandon Beckham, who submitted the resolution, said he “thought it was pretty obvious” that Trump was innocent of the charges leveled against him in the impeachment trial. Rather than sticking up for the president, Beckham argues, Romney sided with the Democrats.

"A lot of us feel that it's sort of an embarrassment to our party," Beckham said.

The resolution, co-sponsored by nine other state central committee members, notes that Trump endorsed Romney in his 2018 Senate race. It also notes that Romney used a covert Twitter account — under the alias “Pierre Delecto” — to like critical tweets about the president and alleges that this activity displayed a “pre-impeachment bias.”

Furthermore, Beckham contends, Romney’s decisions were at odds with the position of the Utah GOP, which in December passed a resolution that expressed full support of the president and called on congressional Republicans to stand by him.

“On February 5, 2020, despite zero evidence of a federal crime committed or any wrongdoing that rises to the level of removal of office, Senator Romney voted with Democrats to remove President Trump from office and as a direct result received praise and applause from Democrats on nationally televised interviews and the Democrat presidential debate,” Beckham’s resolution states.

While nine of the 187 central committee members have co-sponsored the resolution, Beckham said he expects most to vote in favor of the measure, given the president’s popularity.

Romney will have a lot more than just censure in his future.  Dear Leader Trump has to crush him utterly or he risks others defying his rule.  There are things Romney can do, but if he ends up persona non grata then he's just a ghost.

On the other hand, "Mitt Romney (UT-I)" could be...amusing.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

There's a non-zero chance that raging Islamophobic bigot Laura Loomer ends up a Republican Congresswoman from (where else) Florida in January, because the party of Trump isn't ever going to back down from being the party of white supremacist inchoate hatred.  Dean Obeidallah explains:

Donald Trump wants to be president forever. He made that clear again with his tweet on Wednesday that featured campaign signs of Trump for President extending from 2020 to 2048. But that scenario is not going to happen, barring Trump being able to somehow suspend the 22nd Amendment of our Constitution.

It’s clear though that regardless of how long Trump remains in the White House, he and many in his base want Trumpism—a celebration of cruelty, bigotry, and sexism—to continue long after he’s gone. That helps explain Trump’s support for anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer, who is running for Congress in Florida’s 21st District—and, incredibly, is increasingly the likely GOP nominee. After all, anti-Muslim bigotry is one of the cornerstones of Trumpism.

Before we talk how Trump, Rep. Jim Jordan, GOP Florida officials, and even a Trump Fox News ally are promoting Loomer, let me give you a Loomer primer. First, she’s not the least bit bashful about her efforts to stoke hate against Muslims.

In 2017, she bragged on Twitter about being a “#ProudIslamophobe,” as she called Muslims “savages,” calling for a ban on allowing Muslims into America “EVER AGAIN.” She has called Islam a “cancer,” and worse, she wrote that there’s “no such thing as a moderate Muslim. They’re ALL the same.” Loomer dangerously wants you to believe that a Muslim American like myself is no different than a person in ISIS.

Loomer, who once worked for the right-wing group Project Veritas, seems to especially despise immigrant Muslims, tweeting in 2017, “Someone needs to create a non-Islamic version of Uber or Lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver.” That resulted in her being banned from Uber and Lyft for violating its community standards, which prompted Loomer to tweet, “Uber will literally hire an Islamic terrorist, but they will ban a conservative journalist for addressing legitimate safety concerns.”

In 2019, Loomer took to Instagram, where she made a video attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in vile terms, blaming all Muslims including Omar for 9/11, and adding, “Muslims should not even be allowed to seek positions of political office in this country.”

Beyond social media, in October 2018 Loomer praised and appeared with self-professed Canadian white nationalist Faith Goldy, who has claimed in the past that homosexuality facilitated the Holocaust and openly recited and defended the “14 word” mantra used by white supremacists. Loomer also trespassed on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s property in January 2019 along with her colleague, Charlottesville Unite the Right marcher Antonio Foreman, to denounce her refusal to support Trump’s wall. While on Pelosi’s property, Loomer reportedly made racist comments about Latinos.

Loomer’s history of spewing hate online resulted in her being banned in the past year from just about every social media platform out there. In November 2018 Twitter banned Loomer for violating its rules against hateful conduct. In May 2019 Loomer was banned by both Facebook and Instagram, along with others who had used these platforms to promote haters, such as Louis Farrakhan for repeated anti-Semitic statements, and Paul Nehlen, the Wisconsin businessman who ran for Congress and continually spewed white supremacist garbage.

I think you get the idea. Loomer is someone who, in the times before Trump, would’ve been marginalized to the fringes of society along with other bigots and racists. But these aren’t normal times. This is the time of Trump, and Loomer is Trumpism personified. She fits perfectly in today’s party of Trump which is why in August 2019 she announced her run for Congress as a Republican to take on Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel in the Palm Beach-area district. Loomer describes Frankel as “a staunch obstructionist and critic of President Donald J. Trump.”

Now, the good news is Lois Frankel has a solidly Democratic district (D+9 on the Cook PVI) and multiple signs point to Loomer being so toxic that she loses.  But let's remember that Illinois Republicans ran Actual Nazi Art Jones in 2018, and ran raging Islamophobic bigot Duncan Hunter who actually won (before being indicted and taking a plea deal for his corruption).

StupidiNews!

• The death toll from Wuhan coronavirus has exceeded 1,000 as some 43,000 cases have now been reported worldwide from the illness.
• Donald Trump wants to personally approve the designs for all new federal buildings as critics are attacking the executive order plan.
• The Justice Department is filing new lawsuits over sanctuary cities as Attorney General Barr declared the legal action to be a "significant escalation" against local governments.
• Democratic primary voters take to the ballot box in New Hampshire today as Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg are leading in polls.
• NASA says it will need an additional $35 billion to complete its goal of putting a manned mission to the Moon in 2024 as the Trump budget proposed sharp cuts to the space agency.

Last Call For Operation Mindbender

Last month when Trump was on the brink of a shooting war with Iran, Tehran attacked an Iraqi base where US soldiers were housed.  At the time, we were told that US personnel had been evacuated and that there were no casualties.  But like every single thing this regime tells us, it was a lie and American troops are now suffering from brain injuries from the attack...over 100 such cases.

The U.S. military is preparing to report a more than 50% jump in cases of traumatic brain injury stemming from Iran’s missile attack on a base in Iraq last month, U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement, said there were over 100 cases of TBI, up from the 64 previously reported last month.

The Pentagon declined to comment, but in the past had said to expect an increase in numbers in the weeks after the attack because symptoms can take time to manifest and troops can sometimes take longer to report them.

No U.S. troops were killed or faced immediate bodily injury when Iran fired missiles at the Ain al-Asad base in Iraq in retaliation for the U.S. killing of Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike at the Baghdad airport on Jan. 3.

The missile attacks capped a spiral of violence that had started in late December. Both sides have refrained from further military escalation, but the mounting number of U.S. casualties could increase pressure on the Trump administration to respond, perhaps non-militarily.

Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month that the service members suffering from traumatic brain injuries had been diagnosed with mild cases. He added the diagnosis could change as time went on.

Symptoms of concussive injuries include headaches, dizziness, sensitivity to light and nausea.

Pentagon officials have repeatedly said there has been no effort to minimize or delay information on concussive injuries. But the disclosures following Tehran’s attack has renewed questions over the U.S. military’s policy regarding how it internally reports suspected brain injuries and whether they are treated publicly with the same urgency as loss of limb or life.

U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to play down the brain injuries last month, saying he “heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things” following the attack, prompting criticism from lawmakers and a U.S. veterans group.

These are serious injuries that can lead to major future problems.  Trump is treating this like it was these troops getting a migraine headache.  Our troops deserve a better Commander-in-Chief, that's for damn sure.

Austerity Hysteria, Con't

We warned you time and time again (and I say we because a hell of a lot of Democrats warned you this was coming) that the Trump Tax Scam was going to be followed by massive, draconian cuts and lo and behold, Trump's 2020 budget goes straight after Medicaid, food programs, and more with trillions in cuts.

President Donald Trump‘s budget request on Monday will pitch billions of dollars in cuts to non-defense spending despite a budget deal he already negotiated with Congress, in addition to seeking major savings by targeting the federal safety net, a senior administration official told POLITICO on Sunday.

Trump also will ask Congress for a slight spending increase for the Pentagon as he releases his $4.8 trillion budget blueprint for the upcoming fiscal year, all proposals sure to be rejected by Democrats who control the House.

The president aims to cut $4.4 trillion in spending over a decade and projects an end to annual deficits in 15 years, rather than a more aggressive 10-year goal. Much of the savings would stem from the Trump administration’s push to overhaul food stamp benefits and cap Medicaid spending, among other reforms. The federal deficit is forecast to blow past $1 trillion this year.
Trump will also ask Congress for an extra $2 billion for border wall construction, in addition to billions in funding hikes for immigration enforcement.

Democrats will never agree to carve up domestic programs for savings, and it will be up to Congress to decide on final fiscal 2021 spending levels. While the president is looking for significantly less border money than last year, any increase is still bound to spark a fight with Democrats, as will the extra cash for immigration enforcement.

The two-year budget deal forged by Congress and the Trump administration last summer cemented $738 billion in fiscal 2020 funding for the military and $632 billion for non-defense departments. Federal funding limits will be even higher — but still tight — for the fiscal year that begins in October, allowing an extra $2.5 billion for the military and another $2.5 billion bump for non-defense programs, under the agreement

Trump is instead pushing for cuts to the non-defense spending level that he negotiated with Congress, bringing that level down to $590 billion, while maintaining military funding at $740.5 billion.

As with his previous budget proposals, Trump is once again seeking deep and unrealistic cuts to a number of federal agency budgets, and the cuts are unlikely to be embraced by Congress.

For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development would see a 15 percent cut, the Commerce Department’s budget would be reduced by 37 percent after the completion of the 2020 census and foreign aid would be reduced by about a fifth.

I mean maybe Trump forgot it was an election year, because $2 trillion in domestic spending cuts and forcing Republicans to vote on those cuts is exactly what helped hand Democrats the House in 2018, well that and voting on gutting Medicaid expansion and taking health care access away from millions.  Republicans are about to do it again.

We'll see how many Americans will vote to hurt themselves in order to hurt others even more.

Shamrocked At The Ballot Box

Ireland's Sinn Fein took the plurality of votes in weekend national elections and the current government of PM Leo Faradkar and his Fianna Fail party now have a new junior partner, whether they like it or not.

Irish nationalists Sinn Fein demanded on Sunday to be part of the next Irish government after early results indicated the left-wing party secured the most votes in an election that leader Mary Lou McDonald described as a ballot box “revolution”.

The former political wing of the Irish Republican Army, which has recast itself as the main left-wing party, secured 24% of first-preference votes, almost doubling its share from the last election in 2016, early results showed.

That put it narrowly ahead of the party of Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and fellow center-right rival Fianna Fail in an election analysts described as a seismic shift away from Ireland’s century-old, center-right duopoly.

But Sinn Fein is likely to fall behind at least one of its rivals in terms of seat numbers because it stood far fewer candidates and is unlikely to be more than a junior partner in a government.

“This is certainly an election that is historic... this is changing the shape and the mold of Irish politics. This is just the beginning,” McDonald told reporters after arriving at her election count to a huge ovation from party supporters.

She said Sinn Fein would talk to all parties about forming a government and that others should accept their responsibility to do the same.

“I do not accept the exclusion or talk of excluding our party, a party that represents now a quarter of the electorate and I think that is fundamentally undemocratic,” she said.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, who have between them led every government since the foundation of the state, ruled out a coalition with Sinn Fein before the election.

But although Varadkar reiterated his rejection due to “principle and policy”, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin declined to repeat earlier refusals to consider a coalition with Sinn Fein, saying only that there were significant incompatibilities on policy.

“Our policies and our principles have not changed overnight,” he said. “But what is important is that the country comes first.”

We'll see what kind of government gets formed in the wake of this, but for Sinn Fein to come in first is watching the earth move in Ireland, especially in a post-Brexit era.  I'm nowhere near versed enough in Irish politics to know if McDonald can become PM or not, but whoever does lead Ireland's government from here on will have to contend with her party being part of it.