Last Call For Trumpcare Or Else

Donald Trump has decided what he meant by mentioning he'd be open to "working with" Democrats on Obamacare earlier this month.  What he meant was "working over" Dems, not to mention tens of millions of Americans by threatening to sabotage government payments to insurers unless Dems surrender totally.

President Trump suggested to the Wall Street Journal Wednesday that he would withhold from insurers Obamacare subsidy payments that are the target of a House GOP lawsuit in order to force Democrats into negotiations over repealing the Affordable Care Act, a move that could bring chaos to the individual health insurance market.

In the same interview Trump said he believed Democrats still “own” the Affordable Care Act, but acknowledged that the longer he was in office the more likely it was he would be blamed for problems with the law.

“That’s part of the reason that I may go the other way” on the insurance subsidies, Trump told the Journal. “The longer I’m behind this desk and you have Obamacare, the more I would own it.”

The Trump administration and congressional Republicans are under increasing pressure to continue the subsidies, known as cost sharing reduction payments, at least through 2018 as insurers prepare to submit their plans for next year. The Department of Health and Human Services, as well as GOP leaders on Capitol Hill, have signaled that the payments will continue through the next stage of the legal case, which has been delayed until May.

House Republicans in 2014 sued the Obama administration over the payments, claiming they were illegal because they were not explicitly appropriated by Congress, and won a favorable ruling from a federal judge last May who then halted her decision to allow the Justice Department to appeal it.

Trump’s threats to end the payments come as the Obamacare repeal effort in Congress has faltered. He also told the Wall Street Journal that he will not release the White House plan for tax reform—the next item on the GOP’s agenda and where congressional Republican leaders have shifted their attention—until an Obamacare repeal bill is passed.

Trump said he believed that withholding the payments for insurers would bring Democrats to the table on negotiations.

“I don’t want people to get hurt,” Mr. Trump said. “What I think should happen—and will happen—is the Democrats will start calling me and negotiating.”

Extortion, plain and simple.  And Trump thinks that treating tens of millions of voters like poker chips that can be sacrificed will help him with his dismal approval ratings.

Sure, Donny.  You go right on believing that.

Revenge Of The Bathroom Bill

Because North Carolina Republicans will never, ever stop hating LGBTQ folks, and will never stop trying to codify LGBTQ folks as second-class citizens, my home state will never stop being a national embarrassment.

Just two weeks after repealing and replacing its controversial and costly HB2 "bathroom bill," North Carolina lawmakers have introduced legislation that seeks to invalidate same-sex marriages in the Tar Heel state. 

"Marriages, whether created by common law, contracted, or performed outside of North Carolina, between individuals of the same gender are not valid in North Carolina," House Bill 780 states. 

The Republican-sponsored bill, titled the Uphold Historical Marriage Act, asserts the U.S. Supreme Court "overstepped its constitutional bounds" when it struck down North Carolina's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. 

"The General Assembly of the State of North Carolina declares that the Obergefell v. Hodges decision of the United States Supreme Court of 2015 is null and void in the State of North Carolina, and that the State of North Carolina shall henceforth uphold and enforce Section 6 of Article XIV of the North Carolina Constitution, the opinion and objection of the United States Supreme Court notwithstanding," the bill reads. 

Rep. Deb Butler, one of the only openly LGBTQ lawmakers in the North Carolina General Assembly, called the legislation "despicable." 

"Nothing surprises me out of this legislature anymore," Butler told NBC Out. "As if we haven't already been in the national spotlight for all the wrong reasons this year with HB2, we're now going to prove just how draconian and ridiculous we are." 

"It seems that these alt-right legislators don't learn from mistakes made, and they feel this sort of damaging and disruptive behavior is somehow going to get them reelected, and I think the contrary will prove true," Butler added.

I guess it's really up to whether or not NC Republicans believe in outright discrimination enough to make this law, because there's nothing stopping them from passing this bill and overriding Gov. Roy Cooper's veto, either.

I'm not sure what the NC GOP is trying to pull here, but the much larger question is what if this leads to actual, outright nullification, and in the Trump era I don't even expect the Sessions-led Justice Department to take action against NC for this.

Why would they?  What's stopping Trump from saying "They're right, we refuse to enforce this."

Who's going to make them?  We could very well have another Nullification Crisis on our hands, only this time it wouldn't be the Obama administration in charge.

At this point I'd be very concerned.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Another puzzle piece in the Trump/Russia story today from the Washington Post on the board today, and it's a key one.  Surveillance of Russian nationals ensnared members of the Trump campaign, but so far we didn't have a exact identity on who, if anyone, that NSA surveillance led to on the Trump side. Today we now know that the FBI used that surveillance to get a FISA warrant to investigate former Trump adviser Carter Page.

The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said. 

The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials. 

This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor. 

Page has not been accused of any crimes, and it is unclear whether the Justice Department might later seek charges against him or others in connection with Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The counterintelligence investigation into Russian efforts to influence U.S. elections began in July, officials have said. Most such investigations don’t result in criminal charges. 

The officials spoke about the court order on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of a counterintelligence probe.

This is pretty big.  NSA surveillance of foreign nationals leading to a FISA warrant on a US citizen is no small matter, which means whatever Carter Page was saying to the Russians at the time was of strong enough interest to the FBI to go to a judge and get the ball rolling on an investigation into Page being a foreign agent possibly at the time he was working for Trump. If that last part is true, this thing just got deadly serious (if it wasn't somehow deadly serious before.)

Again, the very curious defense of Trump by the right continues to be "If there were any actual criminal wrongdoing here, it would have leaked months ago!" which conveniently ignores the existing Trump/Russian connections with Paul Manafort and Mike Flynn as irrelevant.  That rings especially hollow coming from the party that spent literally years on Hillary Clinton's emails, and then had those emails...wait for it...leaked by multiple sources over those years.

We'll see where this goes, but at this point we have at least one Trump campaign adviser under investigation as a foreign agent.  My guess is we'll find out that FBI investigation is much larger than Page.

StupidiNews!

• Russia is warning the Trump regime not to strike Syria again ahead of talks between Moscow's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
• London's Daily Mail will settle a lawsuit filed by Melania Trump over the British tabloid's story involving her modeling career.
• Puerto Rico is once again on the clock and facing bankruptcy as the US protectorate faces a congressional May 1 deadline to negotiate deals with creditors over $70 billion in debt.
• Trump regime spokesman Sean Spicer is facing calls to resign following comparison of Syria's Assad to Nazi Germany and falsely arguing that the Nazis did not use chemical weapons.
• Astronomers have discovered a "Great Cold Spot" on Jupiter, a massive swirling storm in the gas giant's atmosphere hundreds of degrees cooler than the surrounding clouds.

Last Call For Close But No Cigar...Yet

It looks like James Thompson will go down to defeat, but a surprisingly close one, in Kansas's 4th, in a district where Republican Ron Estes should have won by 20 points.  Thompson looks like his loss will be within single digits, which, while it means that Estes will keep the seat for the GOP, means that the honeymoon for Trump among Republicans is now officially over.

Reminder that this is a R+15 district, blood red and just about as safe as they come, and Thompson looks to have cut that margin in half, if not by two-thirds. Yes, it's a special election and anything goes, but if I were Republicans in Georgia right now in the 6th? I'd be scared out of my ever-loving mind.

Also keep in mind Trump won this district by almost 30 points in November.  It looks like today the GOP will carry it by only 7 or 8.  For this to happen within the first 100 days of a presidential election of a Republican is mind-blowing.  Trump isnt just an albatross, he's well past millstone or even anvil, we're talking black hole.

This district never should have been in play, and if anything within say, R+10 is viable, that's literally dozens of seats that the Dems have a shot at.  Even winning a majority of GOP seats that are R+6 or less would give the Dems the House back, and it could be a 2010-level wave that would devastate the GOP.

So, while Thompson won't be a winner, I'm betting a lot of other Dems will be, starting with Jon Ossoff next week in Georgia.

We'll see.

Speaker Of Bedeviled And He Shall Appear

Republicans are beginning to voice their displeasure with their leadership, and while Mitch McConnell may have scored a win with Neil Gorsuch's confirmation to the Supreme Court, House Speaker Paul Ryan has nothing but failure on his scorecard in 2017, and his own party isn't letting him forget the fact.

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) on Monday suggested that House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) may need to be replaced to deal with the dysfunction in Washington. 

"We need either a change in direction from this Speaker, or we need a new speaker," Amash said during a town hall on Monday in response to a question about gridlock in Washington, according to CNN. 

He said Ryan should be replaced with someone who is "nonpartisan." 

The comments come after a top White House aide earlier this month sent a tweet calling for a primary challenge to Amash, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who opposed the House GOP's healthcare bill last month.

".@realDonaldTrump is bringing auto plants & jobs back to Michigan. @justinamash is a big liability.#TrumpTrain, defeat him in primary," Dan Scavino tweeted. 

Amash responded to the tweet, saying the Trump administration and establishment have "merged into #Trumpstablishment." 

"Same old agenda: Attack conservatives, libertarians & independent thinkers," Amash tweeted earlier this month.

Twitter beef between Republicans aside, the GOP is devolving (even further than they have with Trump now in charge) from smug frat boys plotting hazing rituals for Americans into whiny high school kids screaming over student council meetings.  I'm not sure how Paul Ryan ever got the moniker of policy wonk, but the guy's a fraud, and now that Boehner's enjoying his retirement puttering around the many golf courses in the Cincinnati area, Ryan's ineptness is showing daily.

Should safe Republican House seats start falling to Team Blue in upcoming special elections, then expect another revolt on the Hill.

No Static At All

The Gang That Couldn't Executive Branch Straight is quickly approaching the "First 100 days" milestone and they have precisely nothing to show for it so far other than disaster, despair and a lingering cloud of Russian interference.  I think they'll need more than a "rebranding" effort to save them, but that's where we are right now.

For a president who often begins and ends his days imbibing cable news, the burden has fallen heavily on a press team that recognizes how well they sell Trump’s early tenure in the media will likely color the president’s appetite for an internal shake-up. 

That was the backdrop for a tense planning session for the 100-day mark last week. 

More than 30 Trump staffers piled into a conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjoining the White House, according to a half-dozen attendees who described the Tuesday meeting. 

Mike Dubke, Trump’s communications director, and his deputy, Jessica Ditto, kicked off the discussion of how to package Trump’s tumultuous first 100 days by pitching the need for a “rebranding” to get Trump back on track. 

“I think the president’s head would explode if he heard that,” one of the White House officials present said. 

Staffers, including counselor Kellyanne Conway, were broken into three groups, complete with whiteboards, markers and giant butcher-block-type paper to brainstorm lists of early successes. One group worked in the hallway. 

“It made me feel like I was back in 5th grade,” complained another White House aide who was there. “That’s the best way I could describe it.” 

Dubke, who did not work on the campaign, told the assembled aides that international affairs would present a messaging challenge because the president lacks a coherent foreign policy. Three days later, Trump would order missile strikes in Syria in a reversal of years of previous opposition to such intervention. 

“There is no Trump doctrine,” Dubke declared. 

Some in the room were stunned by the remark. 

“It rubbed people the wrong way because on the campaign we were pretty clear about what he wanted to do,” said a third White House official in the room, “He was elected on a vision of America First. America First is the Trump doctrine.” 

One of the administration officials lamented, “We’ve got a comms team supposedly articulating the president’s message [that] does not appear to understand the president’s message.”

If the Trumpies think the problem is the White House communications team and not Trump himself and the people he's chosen to surround himself with, well no amount of whiteboarding, rebranding or message discipline is going to help.

You voted for America's executive branch to be run like a business, America, and you got it.  You also elected a CEO who has declared bankruptcy numerous times to boot.  Surprise!

Folks, nothing's going to rescue Trump from being the worst president in modern US history, and there may not be too much of an America left after we get rid of him.

StupidiNews!

• North Korea is warning of "catastrophic consequences" in response to the Trump regime sending a naval carrier task force to the region this week after a Pyongyang missile test.
• A federal judge has found a Texas voter ID law to be discriminatory against black and Hispanic voters after an appeals court requested the judge determine the intent of lawmakers.
• The main suspect in last week's truck attack in Stockholm, Sweden has reportedly admitted to the crime, the attack killed four and injured 15.
• The US coalition of Gulf State and European allies held an emergency meeting at the G7 summit ahead of Trump regime Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's visit to Moscow today.
• FCC chair Ajit Pal is scrapping a 2013 plan to allow in-flight cell phone calls on airliners, saying passengers and flight crew deserve peace and quiet on flights.

Last Call For Bitter Home Alabama, Con't

Alabama GOP Gov. Robert Bentley has now resigned effective today, as the impeachment scandal involving his affair with Rebekah Mason, a former staffer, and his use of state police resources to try to cover up the affair has led his own party to begin formal impeachment hearings.  Rather than face ouster and a trial over felony corruption charges, Bentley is resigning and pleading to misdemeanor charges instead.

Embattled Gov. Robert Bentley this afternoon agreed to a deal that forced him to resign the office of governor, plead guilty to two misdemeanors and agree to never again hold public office.

The extraordinary agreement, hammered out over the weekend and throughout the day by lawyers for the Alabama Attorney General's office and Bentley attorneys Chuck Malone and Cooper Shattuck, requires Bentley to repay the state for misused funds and perform community service.

In response, the state attorney general's office will not pursue other felonies against Bentley, including those referred for prosecution last week by the Alabama Ethics Commission.

Bentley, as part of the deal, was expected to:

• Resign immediately and leave public life.
• Plead guilty to two campaign violations: converting campaign contributions for personal gain and failing to report campaign contributions.
• Serve one year of probation.
• Perform 100 hours of unpaid community service as a physician.
• Repay the $8,912 his campaign spent on the legal fees of former aide Rebekah Mason, whose involvement with Bentley led to the charges against him.
• Forfeit all the money in his campaign account, which is currently $36,912. The money will go into state coffers.

In response, the state attorney general's office will not pursue other felonies against Bentley, including those referred for prosecution last week by the Alabama Ethics Commission.

Whether the governor faces jail time on the misdemeanors - which are technically punishable by as much as a year in prison - is left to the judge who will sentence him. It is unlikely he will serve time.

He won't.  But the misdemeanors mean Bentley won't pull a Blagojevich and contest a conviction on state ethics laws.  Considering Bentley was facing the rest of his natural life in prison at age 77, he's taking the easy out his party is giving him.  100 hours of community service is a cakewalk compared to what he was going to get.

Another crooked Republican goes down.  Hopefully he won't be the last to resign in 2017.

A Double Helping Of The House Special, Please

I've talked about Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgia running for now HHS Secretary Tom Price's seat in Georgia's 6th in what would be a major upset, but it turns out there's another special election for now CIA Director Mike Pompeo's old seat in Kansas' 4th district tomorrow, and Democrat James Thompson actually has an outside shot in that race.  Roll Call's Nathan Gonzales:

Former Capitol Hill aide Jon Ossoff, 30, is riding the Democratic energy stemming from Trump’s election and raised an astounding $8.3 million in the first three months of the year — a staggering amount for a House candidate. For some perspective, former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland took an entire cycle to raise $10.7 million for his Ohio Senate race last year.

In the beginning, Ossoff looked like a long shot to make the June 20 runoff, but now he has the opportunity to win the race outright by winning a majority in the open primary later this month. Democrats are dominating early voting and, most importantly, could be changing the makeup of the electorate by turning out low propensity voters.

Most public and private polls have Ossoff in the low to mid-40s and leading the field by a wide margin. Based on his position, the difficulty of accurately predicting special election turnout, the polls’ margins of error, and Ossoff’s financial advantage, we are changing the Inside Elections rating from Lean Republican to Toss-Up.

You can read the full analysis about the rating change in the April 7 issue of Inside Elections.

Republicans are also trying to avoid an unexpected problem in Kansas’ 4th District, where Mike Pompeo vacated his seat to become CIA director.

The April 11 race between Republican state Treasurer Ron Estes and Democrat James Thompson, a lawyer, hasn’t received a lot of attention, but the National Republican Congressional Committee recently began an ad campaign in a district Trump carried comfortably in November. National and local Democrats haven’t put in much time or effort into the race, but there is some GOP concern about the enthusiasm gap and the quality of the Estes campaign.

We’re changing the Inside Elections rating from Solid Republican to Likely Republican. You can read more analysis on the race in the April 7 issue of Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.

Ossoff has a better shot than Thompson does, but Pompeo won this bright-red district by 25-30 points since 2010. the fact that Thompson might make the race closer that double-digits is news in and of itself.

And of course the 800-pound orangutan in the room is Trump's sub-35% approval rating.  If he's worth this big of a shift towards the Democrats so far in special elections less than three months in, by the time November 2018 rolls around it could be a bloodbath for Team Red.

In related news I see this morning that Tom Perez and Ben Ray Lujan are already having a positive effect on bringing back the "50 states and every seat" strategy as the Democrats are making moves to flip seats in that reddest of red enclaves in California, Orange County.

Stay tuned, especially in Georgia.

Crime and Punishment And Punishment And Punishment

Keep in mind that the goal of "criminal justice reform" to the Trump regime and AG Jeff Sessions is not reversing Obama-era improvements or even going back to the bad old days of the Clinton crime bill, but to fully profitize the prison industry and create a permanent criminal underclass source for forced labor for local and state governments out of poor black and Hispanic kids destined to be stuffed into the prison pipeline from day one.   And the man you want to look to for this is Jeff Sessions's new point man on criminal justice, Steven Cook.

When the Obama administration launched a sweeping policy to reduce harsh prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, rave reviews came from across the political spectrum. Civil rights groups and the Koch brothers praised Obama for his efforts, saying he was making the criminal justice system more humane.

But there was one person who watched these developments with some horror. Steven H. Cook, a former street cop who became a federal prosecutor based in Knoxville, Tenn., saw nothing wrong with how the system worked — not the life sentences for drug charges, not the huge growth of the prison population. And he went everywhere — Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, congressional hearings, public panels — to spread a different gospel.

“The federal criminal justice system simply is not broken. In fact, it’s working exactly as designed,” Cook said at a criminal justice panel at The Washington Post last year.

The Obama administration largely ignored Cook, who was then president of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys. But he won’t be overlooked anymore.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has brought Cook into his inner circle at the Justice Department, appointing him to be one of his top lieutenants to help undo the criminal justice policies of Obama and former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. As Sessions has traveled to different cities to preach his tough-on-crime philosophy, Cook has been at his side.

Sessions has yet to announce specific policy changes, but Cook’s new perch speaks volumes about where the Justice Department is headed.

Law enforcement officials say that Sessions and Cook are preparing a plan to prosecute more drug and gun cases and pursue mandatory minimum sentences. The two men are eager to bring back the national crime strategy of the 1980s and ’90s from the peak of the drug war, an approach that had fallen out of favor in recent years as minority communities grappled with the effects of mass incarceration.

Crime is near historic lows in the United States, but Sessions says that the spike in homicides in several cities, including Chicago, is a harbinger of a “dangerous new trend” in America that requires a tough response.

If you want to know what's coming to America's cities in the next few years, think a Ferguson, Missouri in every state and you're starting to get the picture.  Turning drug possession crimes into felonies makes it easier to disenfranchise them, as well as control them.  This "dangerous new trend" is something Trump has been pushing for years, the idea that urban centers full of blue voters are somehow lawless hellholes that need massive police presences.

It's an old story, but the stakes are much higher now.

StupidiNews!

• Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will declare a state of emergency in the wake of the Palm Sunday bombings of two Coptic Christian churches by ISIS that killed at least 49.
• Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch will be sworn in today in Washington DC after Senate Republicans both refused hearings for Obama's nominee and changed filibuster rules.
• Greek PM Alexis Tsipras agrees with Germany that Athens needs to implement more austerity measures before additional EU debt relief can be obtained.
• The upcoming French presidential election now appears to be a four-way race as left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon is gaining support in recent polls.
• Adidas wants to sell running shoes with 3-D printed soles with a process that could allow the German athletic wear company to make and sell 100,000 pairs in 2018.

Last Call For Advising A Shakeup

Looks like former FOX talking head K.T. McFarland is out as Deputy National Security Adviser, having been given the ambassadorship to Singapore as a consolation prize.

K. T. McFarland has been asked to step down as deputy National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump after less than three months and is expected to be nominated as ambassador to Singapore, according to a person familiar with White House personnel moves.

The departure of the 65-year-old former Fox News commentator comes as Trump’s second National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, puts his own stamp on the National Security Council after taking over in February from retired General Michael Flynn.

McFarland proved not to be a good fit at the NSC, the person said, adding that Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was involved in the decision as well.

Her removal follows a reorganization of the NSC in the past week that removed Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor, from the principals committee, the Cabinet-level interagency forum that advises the president on pressing security matters.

Other officials, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were brought back onto the committee as “regular attendees,” reversing a move made in January. The changes were outlined in a presidential memorandum dated April 4.

Former Goldman Sachs executive Dina Powell stays on as another deputy national security adviser, and a second person is expected to be named to a similar role to replace McFarland.

Keep an eye on McMaster.  If Trump's response to his dismally low approval ratings is to start a war, McMaster and Homeland Security head John Kelly will be involved along with Defense Secretary Mattis, and right now, Trump's permanent focus on "winners" means if they deliver for him, they'll keep being the ones Trump listens to.

In other words, we may be approaching the point where Trump decides to surround himself with people who can actually attempt to carry out what he wants.  That's a problem.

Bitter Home Alabama, Con't

Yesterday I talked about the link between embattled Alabama GOP Gov. Robert Bentley's impeachment scandal and the move by the staffer he was having an affair with to close drivers' license offices in predominately black counties in the state in order to make it harder to get voter IDs.  Bentley is in a lot of trouble, and now the impeachment proceedings against him will get underway starting this week.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled on Saturday that impeachment proceedings against Governor Robert Bentley can start next week, halting a court order that had blocked hearings stemming from his relationship with a former aide.

Bentley, a 74-year-old Republican, has battled impeachment efforts over the last year and has defied calls from political leaders that he stand down.

The 7-0 decision by the high court allows impeachment proceedings to begin in the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee on Monday even as justices consider new filings in the case.

Bentley, who is in his second term, is accused of inappropriate use of state resources. His troubles began last year when recordings surfaced of him making suggestive remarks to a former adviser, Rebekah Mason, before his wife of 50 years filed for divorce in August 2015.

Bentley has denied having a physical affair with Mason, who is married. She resigned as questions about the pair's relationship began to dominate Alabama politics.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court stayed a temporary restraining order issued by a circuit court judge on Friday. The order had halted the impeachment process until hearings could be held on Bentley's claim that lawmakers did not give enough time to present an adequate defense.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Mike Jones hailed the decision, saying in a statement, "This is a great day for the Constitution of Alabama."

The Judiciary Committee will make a recommendation to the full House on whether to impeach Bentley.

Even Republicans want Bentley gone, and it seems difficult to imagine how he survives this now that it's gotten to the point of actual impeachment proceedings being led by his own party, when that party has supermajorities in both the state House and Senate.  If they wanted Bentley to stay, they could have made this vanish at any point.

We'll see where this goes.

Sunday Long Read: The Man Who Can't Shut Up

Coming from North Carolina, being a college basketball fan is in my blood, I grew up in a place where the ACC Tournament meant elementary school teachers would bring out the TVs so we could watch for a while because nobody was paying attention to class anyway with one earbud hidden up our jacket sleeves for the second half of winter.

And the voice and face I've connected to college basketball all my life is ESPN's legendary broadcaster Dick Vitale, who has been the play-by-play firehose of praise for "diaper dandies"and "primetime players" since I could dribble a ball.  And in the age of social media, the 77-year-old Dickie V is even happier...and louder...than ever.

At Le Colonne, an Italian restaurant in Sarasota, Florida, there’s a young woman who sits near the outdoor hostess stand and sings karaoke. One Sunday night last month, she was drowned out by a bald man at a nearby table, who was performing his own hits from the ’80s, the ’90s, and today.

“Hi, everybody! Dick Vitale here. What a night in college hoops!”

For nearly four decades, Vitale has looked into the red light of an ESPN TV camera and spoken those words. Tonight, he was looking into his smart phone, recording a video for Instagram. Howie Schwab, the former ESPN producer and star of Stump the Schwab, held Vitale’s phone aloft. Lorraine, Vitale’s wife of 46 years, looked on with the indulgent expression of someone who has seen many dinners — and even life itself — come to a halt so her husband can talk.

To date, the marriage of 70-something sports announcers and social media has mostly been a loveless one. Brent Musburger told me his sons discourage him from logging on at night after he’s had a few drinks. But for Vitale, who is 77, social media provides two things he desperately craves.

One is a microphone that no producer can switch off. Vitale used to do color commentary only on college basketball. Now, he does color on his own life.

“Hey, baby,” Vitale said in a March Periscope video he recorded in the lobby of the Bellagio hotel. “Just arrived. Las Vegas. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas …” This is one of the more accomplished entries in the Vitale cinematheque. Another recent video had Vitale walking down his driveway in Sarasota while a camera swung around wildly as if it were attached to a linebacker’s helmet. “We laugh our asses off behind the scenes about how he uses the phone,” said Dave O’Brien, a frequent ESPN play-by-play partner.

The second thing Instagram and Periscope offer Vitale is more important. It’s a method for Vitale to absorb the adoration of the masses — to be held aloft digitally as he is by the Cameron Crazies. As Vitale told me, “I like the fact that I can exchange feelings with people.”

Vitale and his companions were dining in Sarasota on the first Sunday of the NCAA tournament. There were games on — including a thriller between North Carolina and Arkansas — but Vitale wasn’t watching. He seemed just as happy to meet fans. Some sports broadcasters skip restaurants to avoid the endless line of selfie seekers. Vitale eats every meal out, seven days a week, so he’ll never miss them.

On this night, Vitale brought autographed copies of his books to the restaurant, which he handed to startled admirers. “People come over and say hello,” he said. “I give ’em a book.”

One recipient was a middle-aged woman who stopped at our table after the appetizers had been cleared. She said her son had heard Vitale at one his many paid speaking gigs.

“Did he like me?” Vitale asked.

“He took a picture with you,” the woman said.

Lorraine Vitale had an idea. Vitale and the woman could take a picture, and the woman could text it to her son, thus completing a selfie circle of life in which everyone in the family had their picture taken with Dick Vitale.

Now, Vitale pointed to another woman three tables over who’d been eyeing him. “C’mere!” he said. The women told Vitale that she knew Steve Prohm, the basketball coach of Iowa State. She and Vitale took a picture, which she promised to send to Prohm, thus extending the Dickie V brand deeper into the heartland. “People are so nice,” Vitale said.

“One of the beauties of traveling and doing games with Dickie V,” said Musburger, “was the fact you never — as in ever — had to call ahead for a reservation at a restaurant. Dickie V would always lead the way. He would burst through the door, and everybody would look up and there would be smiles all around. Anybody and everybody would get us a table. Dickie V would obligingly sign all the autographs. Then it was 50–50 whether the restaurant would pick up the check or bring it to me.”

I really enjoyed this profile of the man.  He's been a part of my life since the amazing runs of the ACC teams of the early 80's, Michael Jordan and Dean Smith in 1982 and Jimmy Valvano and the Cardiac Pack the following year, and the eternal war between Duke and Carolina.  I got a kick out of this one, and yeah, I expect Dickie V will be back this winter for another season.

On And On To Pyonyang

Well now is where things start getting interesting on the North Korea front, as a carrier strike group anchored by the USS Carl Vinson is on its way to say hi to the neighbors.

A U.S. Navy strike group will be moving toward the western Pacific Ocean near the Korean peninsula as a show of force, a U.S. official told Reuters on Saturday, as concerns grow about North Korea's advancing weapons program.

Earlier this month North Korea tested a liquid-fueled Scud missile which only traveled a fraction of its range.

The strike group, called Carl Vinson, includes an aircraft carrier and will make its way from Singapore toward the Korean peninsula, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak to the media and requested anonymity.

"We feel the increased presence is necessary," the official said, citing North Korea's worrisome behavior.

The news was first reported by Reuters.

In a statement late Saturday, the U.S. Navy's Third Fleet said the strike group had been directed to sail north, but it did not specify the destination. The military vessels will operate in the Western Pacific rather than making previously planned port visits to Australia, it added.

This year North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Un, have repeatedly indicated an intercontinental ballistic missile test or something similar could be coming, possibly as soon as April 15, the 105th birthday of North Korea's founding president and celebrated annually as "the Day of the Sun."

Oh good hooray!

Well at this point we've already shot at Syria, so we might as well be efficient and go harass North Korea while we're at it, right?

Look, I know this is saber-rattling at its finest and all, but frankly the odds of two unstable leaders with nuclear weapons having an incident that escalates very quickly should something go wrong is spectacularly high here.  Even if you're convinced Hillary would have taken the same actions, there's no way she would be as bugnuts as Trump is when it comes to being so obviously goaded into taking a stupid, dangerous action.

So yes, considering Trump has made the worst possible decision at every turn so far, I do not have a good feeling about this at all.

Last Call For Looney Suit Larry

Hey guys?  Just a reminder that stupid, unhelpful conspiracy theories are not the sole province of the right, as Lawrence O'Donnell floats the idea that last week's chemical strike in Syria was...Putin's doing.

A volley of U.S. cruise missiles had barely been launched into Syria before the Internet filled up with fact-free theories about the real reason for an international crisis.

A popular one on the right-most fringes: The U.S. government actually carried out the chemical weapons massacre in Syria last week — a “false flag” to trick President Trump into retaliating, thus entangling himself in a foreign war.

A slightly more convoluted strain on the left: Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the chemical weapons massacre to help Trump — distracting Americans from an investigation into Trump's campaign ties to Russia by provoking the missile strike.

That theory — evidence-free — was laid out on a small anti-Trump website shortly after the missile strike.

But it went mainstream Friday night, when Lawrence O'Donnell advanced similar speculation on his MSNBC show, “The Last Word.”
“Wouldn't it be nice,” O'Donnell asked a nodding, smiling Rachel Maddow, “if it was just completely, totally, absolutely impossible to suspect that Vladimir Putin orchestrated what happened in Syria this week — so that his friend in the White House could have a big night with missiles and all the praises he's picked up over the past 24 hours?”

The theory was impossible to rule out, O'Donnell said, because of the Trump campaign's ties to the Russian government.

A few minutes later, the host elaborated on his theory under banner text: “Wag The Dog?” — recalling a similar conspiracy theory that President Bill Clinton launched missiles in 1998 to distract from his own scandal.

“It changes the conventional wisdom about the dynamic between President Trump and Vladimir Putin,” O'Donnell said. “President Trump has finally dared to do something Vladimir Putin doesn't like. It changes everything.”

O'Donnell didn't offer any evidence on his theory, promising only that “you won't hear ... proof that the scenario I've just outlined is impossible.”

Jesus hell, Larry.

It's one thing for Trump to spout nonsense, because frankly he's a chronic liar and has all the credibility of a soggy bowl of corn flakes.  But moonbat bullcrap like this, with no evidence, blurted out on cable news, well it's just as moronic when the left does it.

I'm not sure what O'Donnell is doing with this one, but it's only going to help Trump continue to erode the country's stability, especially when actual evidence exists that Putin really is a serious problem.

Knock it off, man.

Bitter Home Alabama, Con't

I've covered the two biggest messes in Alabama GOP politics, the state's GOP leadership stuck in a massive impeachment scandal that has already taken down the state's House Speaker Mike Hubbard while Gov. Robert Bentley is facing an impeachment scandal after the ridiculously failed cover-up of an affair with one of his staff, and the state's attempt to disenfranchise black voters by passing a strict voter ID law and then closing 90% of drivers' license offices in predominantly black counties, a move that generated enough national outrage that the state reversed the closings.

It turns out that Bentley's scandal and the DMV office closings have a connection, and it's Rebekah Mason, the staff member Bentley was having an affair with.

Governor Robert Bentley's former top advisor and secret paramour Rebekah Mason led a politically-motivated effort in 2015 to close 31 driver's license offices in mostly black counties, a move that embarrassed the state and was later reversed.

The decision also led to a federal investigation and drew civil rights protesters such as Jesse Jackson to the state.

Mason's role was highlighted in a 131-page report released Friday by the investigator leading impeachment efforts against Gov. Bentley, a report largely focused on the relationship between Mason and Bentley.

The report and exhibits can be found here.

According to that report, which was compiled by lead investigator Jack Sharman, it was Mason who "proposed closing multiple driver's license offices throughout the State" and asked the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency to "put together a plan."

According to Sharman's report, former ALEA head Spencer Collier understood Mason's intentions were to have the plan "rolled out in a way that had limited impact on Government Bentley's political allies."

Collier, according to the report, claims he then reported the closure plan to then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange's office because he was concerned about a Voting Rights Act violation.

Collier assented to the closure plan, but through the use of an "objective measure based on processed transactions per year to determine which offices to close," the report states.

The closures were estimated to save around $200,000, an extremely small savings in a General Fund that typically has annual shortfalls ranging from $100 million to $200 million.

So yeah, the Governor's mistress very much wanted to keep black people in Alabama from being able to vote, and wanted to do so in a way that "protected" her lover.  Nice lady, huh.  Meanwhile, the impeachment proceedings against Bentley continue, and the former state AG?  He's now Senator Luther Strange, Jeff Sessions's replacement.

Alabama keeps on keepin on in the corruption department.

Negasonic Teenage Warmongers

It seems that the feud between White House "evil geniuses" Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner has finally gotten the notice of Trump, and he's sick of the kids fighting in the back seat and he will turn this car around, dammit.

Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner, two warring senior White House aides, had a bury-the-hatchet meeting ordered by President Donald Trump, after arriving at Mar-a-Lago this week.

The sit-down, which was confirmed by two White House officials, was an attempt to smooth over tensions between the two men, which have dominated headlines for days. Whether the meeting was successful in creating a détente – and how long it lasts – is an open question, especially in a White House that has been dominated by infighting.

Bannon and Kushner had for months been allies. In recent weeks, though, there has been substantial discord between them. The fight, people in the administration say, centers on policy differences. Bannon, White House chief strategist, is a flame-throwing populist who formerly ran Breitbart News. He has criticized Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, for his more politically moderate approach. Kushner is suspicious of Bannon’s fiery style and has been concerned about how he’s influencing the president.

Suspicion between Bannon’s team and Kushner’s has intensified in recent days, with both sides accusing the other of planting negative stories in the media.

It's not the fact that Bannon and Kushner are acting like spoiled teenagers in a fight over who gets to be student body president, it's the fact they're doing it while they are affecting the direction of the entire United States of America.

Frankly I don't care which one of these jackasses gets grounded by dad first, the fact is the whole regime needs to go, and the sooner the better.  By 2020 there might not be an America left for these idiots to run into the ground.

It's Quite A Kushner Job If You Can Get It

The worst-vetted White House staff in modern American history continues its greatest hits, this time it's Trump's newest wonder boy and son-in-law Jared Kushner who has run afoul of the security clearance process, and once again the reason why is to hide contact with Russia.

When Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, sought the top-secret security clearance that would give him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years. 

But Mr. Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. They include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian state-owned bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Mr. Kislyak’s behest. 

The omissions, which Mr. Kushner’s lawyer called an error, are particularly sensitive given the congressional and F.B.I. investigations into contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. The Senate Intelligence Committee informed the White House weeks ago that, as part of its inquiry, it planned to question Mr. Kushner about the meetings he arranged with Mr. Kislyak, including the one with Sergey N. Gorkov, a graduate of Russia’s spy school who now heads Vnesheconombank. 

Mr. Kushner’s omissions were described by people with direct knowledge of them who asked for anonymity because the questionnaire is not a public document. 

While officials can lose access to intelligence, or worse, for failing to disclose foreign contacts, the forms are often amended to address lapses. Jamie Gorelick, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, said that the questionnaire was submitted prematurely on Jan. 18, and that the next day, Mr. Kushner’s office told the F.B.I. that he would provide supplemental information. 

Mr. Kushner’s aides said he was compiling that material and would share it when the F.B.I. interviewed him. For now, they said, he has an interim security clearance. 

In a statement, Ms. Gorelick said that after learning of the error, Mr. Kushner told the F.B.I.: “During the presidential campaign and transition period, I served as a point-of-contact for foreign officials trying to reach the president-elect. I had numerous contacts with foreign officials in this capacity. … I would be happy to provide additional information about these contacts.” No names were disclosed in that correspondence.

Surprise!  Jared Kushner is just as deep into the Russian mess as the rest of the Trump regime, if not more so because he actually knows what's going on as Trump's right-hand and being married into the family.

Why Kushner has anything remotely resembling a security clearance after, you know, actively lying to the FBI about "dozens of contacts" is a mystery to me, as is why Kushner isn't currently languishing in federal prison (which is what you or I would get if we lied to the FBI dozens of times.)

Hopefully the FBI will quickly remedy both of these glaring issues.  Keep that in mind while Trump tries to distract the world with Syria.