Last Call For Franken My Dear, I Don't Give A Damn, Con't

Sen. Al Franken's hometown newspaper isn't buying his apologia for his sexual harassment behavior, and neither am I to be honest.

U.S. Sen. Al Franken broke his self-imposed silence over the weekend, submitting to a series of media interviews on the sexual misconduct allegations against him, professing his shame and embarrassment. That was a necessary move — Minnesotans and the country at large deserved to hear from him. But his apology falls lamentably short in several respects. 

The Minnesota Democrat said in one interview it was important "that we listen to women," but then refuted the story of Leeann Tweeden, the USO entertainer who accused him of shoving his tongue down her throat during a rehearsed "kiss." He recalls "a normal rehearsal," but didn't elaborate. On the subsequent allegations of women who say he groped them during photos — specifically, that he grabbed their buttocks — Franken apologized, but for what, exactly? 

He said he does not recall groping and said he "would never intentionally" squeeze or grope a woman but often hugs people. Is he suggesting these women could not distinguish between a friendly embrace and groping? Or that at his age he somehow groped unintentionally? Can one credibly apologize for acts without acknowledging they occurred? 

With a Senate ethics investigation looming, Franken remains on politically shaky ground. It's debatable whether he is, as he said, "holding myself accountable." Without saying he didn't do it, he nevertheless has countered every allegation except the one that carries indisputable proof — the infamous photo of him appearing to grab at Tweeden while she slept. 

Under such circumstances, Franken's apology is less a statement of accountability and more akin to "I'm sorry for what you think I did." Franken may just be trying to ride out the storm, as is the case too often these days. After all, President Donald Trump survived multiple sexual misconduct allegations to become president, and it's possible that Roy Moore will become Alabama's next senator despite credible allegations that he molested a 14-year-old and repeatedly approached underage teens. Moore's conduct is in a different league from what Franken is accused of, but none of it is acceptable.

And that's really the issue, isn't it?  How much sexual harassment is "acceptable" in our political leaders, particularly the ones in the party we support?  Republicans obviously don't give a damn, about that, Trump and Moore prove that beyond any objective doubt.

And yes, I know that it's easy to say "This is another GOP ratfvcking operation, just done by people smarter than O'Keefe and his Project Veritas clowns."  Sure, this has Roger Stone's primordial ooze all over it. But as the Star-Tribune notes, Franken's not denying the allegations from Tweeden, and he's not denying that more women may come forward still. No matter how cynical you are about Tweeden's timing, a picture speaks a thousand words, and she didn't deserve to be groped, even in jest.  At some point however, we have to be better than the damn GOP when it comes to having morality.

We're not Republicans.  We do give a damn. And you'll excuse me for thinking that Al Franken needs to go.

Not before Trump does and Moore too for that matter.  But he still needs to go.

All The News That's Fit To Fake

Remember the next time you hear conservatives scream that the news media has nobody to blame but themselves as to why people don't trust them that there's a concerted effort by the right to try to cripple and/or destroy journalism in the US in order to make it easier to continue to lie to America without anyone around to challenge them.

Fortunately for the news media, the concerted effort to destroy them is headed by idiots like James O'Keefe III and his merry band of blockheads at Project Veritas, as once again an obvious "sting operation" to discredit a major news outlet, in this case the Washington Post and its coverage of Roy Moore's sexual assault, gloriously backfired as the reporters at the newspaper actually did their job and followed up on O'Keefe's attempt to plant a fake accuser against Moore.

A woman who falsely claimed to The Washington Post that Roy Moore, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama, impregnated her as a teenager appears to work with an organization that uses deceptive tactics to secretly record conversations in an effort to embarrass its targets. 

In a series of interviews over two weeks, the woman shared a dramatic story about an alleged sexual relationship with Moore in 1992 that led to an abortion when she was 15. During the interviews, she repeatedly pressed Post reporters to give their opinions on the effects that her claims could have on Moore’s candidacy if she went public.

The Post did not publish an article based on her unsubstantiated account. When Post reporters confronted her with inconsistencies in her story and an Internet posting that raised doubts about her motivations, she insisted that she was not working with any organization that targets journalists. 

But on Monday morning, Post reporters saw her walking into the New York offices of Project Veritas, an organization that targets the mainstream news media and left-leaning groups. The organization sets up undercover “stings” that involve using false cover stories and covert video recordings meant to expose what the group says is media bias. 

James O’Keefe, the Project Veritas founder who was convicted of a misdemeanor in 2010 for using a fake identity to enter a federal building during a previous sting, declined to answer questions about the woman outside the organization’s offices on Monday morning shortly after the woman walked inside. 

“I am not doing an interview right now, so I’m not going to say a word,” O’Keefe said.

In a follow-up interview, O’Keefe declined to answer repeated questions about whether the woman was employed at Project Veritas. He also did not respond when asked if he was working with Moore, former White House adviser and Moore supporter Stephen K. Bannon, or Republican strategists. 

The group’s efforts illustrate the lengths to which activists have gone to try to discredit media outlets for reporting on allegations from multiple women that Moore pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his early 30s. Moore has denied that he did anything improper.

A spokesman for Moore’s campaign did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Now, this absolutely was a stupid, long-shot stunt on O'Keefe's part.  He's tried such sophomoric nonsense before. But remember, even if there was a 99% chance he was going to be caught here, if he hadn't, if the Post had run the false accusations, it would have destroyed the Post's credibility for years, and most likely served as a major deterrent for people to come forward on sexual harassment for a significant period of time.

That is the the gamble O'Keefe was willing to take, and it's worth it to him.  As with ACORN, the voter registration outfit that he helped to destroy with a ludicrous "sting" video (which still serves as a right-wing coded dog whistle) and with Shirley Sherrod, who was fired wrongfully from her government job in 2010 after a false story in Breitbart accused her of being racist, remember that all he has to do is catch a news outlet napping once.

The news media on the other hand has to be vigilant 100% of the time against O'Keefe's cartoon villainy, and must defeat him every time.  Eventually O'Keefe will get his Trump era brass ring, and he knows it.

It's just a matter of time and of the odds.

Tales Of A Lesser Moore, Con't

Alabama's special Senate election is two weeks away as Roy Moore and Doug Jones battle it out, and Steve M. has noted a new write-in challenger has appeared.

A retired Marine colonel who once served as a top aide to White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly plans to launch a long-shot write-in campaign Monday afternoon to become Alabama’s next senator, with just 15 days left in the campaign.

Lee Busby, 60, of Tuscaloosa, Ala., said he thinks that the allegations of sexual impropriety against Republican nominee Roy Moore have created an opportunity for a centrist candidate to win more than a third of the state’s votes in the Dec. 12 special election....

Busby, who was lacking any formal campaign structure or even a working website as of Monday morning, said he is counting on social media to spread the word about his campaign. He said he plans to run as an independent on his record as an investment banker, military leader and defense contractor and entrepreneur. He spent the weekend working on a logo and said he is just starting to explore the legal requirements for raising money for a campaign.

Steve argues that Col. Busby is the GOP's last-ditch effort to help Moore.

It's likely that a certain number of voters who normally vote Republican have qualms about Moore, because they think his God-bothering goes too far or because they're disturbed by the sex allegations against him. Some might be thinking of voting for Democrat Doug Jones -- but if they find out about Busby's campaign, they can vote for him without voting for either Moore or (horrors!) a Democrat. So I think the candidate Busby could hurt is Jones.

Or, more likely, Moore's going to win by a comfortable margin. Polls are close, but I suspect that many GOP voters will come home at the last minute, or have already settled on Moore but aren't saying so out loud. If they need an excuse for their moral relativism, they can just say that John Conyers and Al Franken are still in office, so why not a perv who's their perv? However, I hope I'm wrong.

He's probably not wrong at all.  A Moore victory by 8-10 points is still the most likely scenario. Alabama had no problem voting for Trump, he won by 28 points. Why would they be bothered voting for Moore? And yes, if Moore wins by that much, it will mean that the very credible accusations made against him will mean precisely nothing to Alabama voters as the polls showed Moore with a close to a double digit lead in October, before the story of his long history of sexual assault broke.

So yes, I fully expect Moore to win and win easily.  Republican voters in Alabama are simply telling themselves that the allegations against Moore are fake news.  They will vote for Moore anyway, because Republican voters who still vote Republican these days are just as awful as the Republicans they vote for.

Maybe this will finally get that fact through people's heads, and Democrats will finally stop chasing them.  I hope I'm wrong, but after Matt Bevin's massive win in 2015, I take all state polling with a large deposit of salt.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• As Donald Trump goes to Capitol Hill to sell Senate Republicans on the GOP tax plan, a new CBO analysis finds the legislation would hurt Americans making less than $40,000 the most.
• A federal judge has delayed the Trump regime's efforts to deport Indonesian Christians who settled in New Hampshire 20 years ago, fleeing violence in the majority-Muslim country.
• Greek police have detained nine people and found bomb-making equipment in an early morning Athens raid on Tuesday, the suspects are said to have ties to Turkish terrorists.
• The Trump regime's one public EPA hearing in 2017 on climate change will be held this week in West Virginia to get feedback on ending the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan.
• The Justice Department has indicted three Chinese nationals in connection with a Chinese cyber-security firm that allegedly stole data from multinational corporations.

Last Call For Raiding The Till

If you're still somehow wondering why Congress has yet to lift a finger to seriously curb asset forfeiture raids by state and local governments, the fact of the matter is that it's a massive income cash cow for cities and counties worth billions every year of what basically amounts to free money taken from citizens by police and prosecutors. In Suffolk County, NY for example, the county prosecutor's office issued millions in bonuses to employees paid for with -- you guessed it -- a major increase in asset forfeitures since 2012.

Newly disclosed records show Suffolk district attorney employees have received $3.25 million in bonuses since 2012 — $550,000 more than reported previously — as county lawmakers prepare for a hearing Tuesday on a bill to tighten legislative control over how proceeds from seized criminal assets are spent. 

Bonus recipients included deputy chief homicide prosecutor Robert Biancavilla, who received a total of $108,886 between 2012 and 2017, and division chief Edward Heilig and top public corruption prosecutor Christopher McPartland, who each received $73,000, according to records obtained from county Comptroller John Kennedy’s office through the Freedom of Information Law. 

Federal prosecutors have charged McPartland and former District Attorney Thomas Spota with attempting to cover up former county Police Chief of Department James Burke’s assault of a suspect who broke into his car. Spota and McPartland have pleaded not guilty. 

The bonuses, which were funded from assets seized in criminal cases by the district attorney’s office, did not receive legislative approval. The original figure of $2.7 million came from documents provided by County Executive Steve Bellone’s office, which only included bonuses for top management employees.

On Tuesday, the legislature will hold a public hearing on a bill by Legis. Robert Calarco (D-Patchogue) to require asset forfeiture expenditures, including by the district attorney’s office and the police, sheriff’s and probation departments, to be approved by the Public Safety Committee. 

Calarco called it inappropriate to spend asset forfeiture money on bonuses, particularly without a legislative vote. 

“Asset forfeiture money that comes into this county counts into the millions of dollars,” Calarco said. “That’s a lot of money to be spent at the sole discretion of an individual with no oversight.”

Note that Albany's proposed solution isn't "asset forfeiture is bad", it's "spending the massive windfall from asset forfeiture should require state legislature approval, not county approval."   Don't in fact be surprised if states start collecting county/city police asset forfeiture funds like this across the country in the name of "transparency".

It's still legal police shakedown tactics that net billions every year, and once these funds start disappearing down the rabbit holes of state legislatures, well states will just have to keep making their seizures in order to help balance the budgets, you know.

So no, Congress won't do anything, and neither will states.  Except for, you know, counting the money they forcibly take from Americans.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

John Schindler reminds us that while there are obvious KGB ties to Republicans like Donald Trump and GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, there are a couple of problematic Democrats with Kremlin dalliances as well, and none more prominent than Rep. John Conyers of Michigan.  The esteemed civil rights leader has quite the background on his own ties to Moscow over the years, his sexual harassment issues notwithstanding.

That’s because, whatever inappropriate things Conyers may (or may not) have done with female staffers, he’s unquestionably been uncomfortably pro-Moscow for decades. Cursory examination of Conyers’ words and actions reveal a politician who is, at best, a longstanding dupe of the Kremlin. Worst of all, this “secret” aspect to Conyers’ political life has been hiding in plain sight for years, something that polite people didn’t bring up at Georgetown soirées, yet which was known to anybody who can access Google. 

However, in the current hothouse climate regarding Russian spies and lies in our nation’s capital, Conyers’ ties to the Kremlin matter needs to be discussed. From the beginning of his political career, Conyers had close relations with prominent members of the Communist Party USA, and he was a longtime member of the National Lawyers Guild, a CPUSA-affiliated group, as well as a leader of its Detroit chapter. Conyers never made much effort to mask his associations with known CPUSA members, even after being elected to Congress. Keep in mind that, as proven by KGB files, the CPUSA was a wholly-owned Kremlin operation, clandestinely funded by Soviet spies, and operating under Moscow’s direction. 

Conyers went further and associated with known KGB fronts. He was long active in the World Peace Council—which sounds like a Quaker-run group but was founded by the Kremlin at the beginning of the Cold War. The WPC followed the Moscow line religiously, serving as a conduit for KGB Active Measures against the West, regularly denouncing American “war-mongering” and “imperialism” while coordinating anti-NATO protests in many countries. 

With the publication of the Mitrokhin archive in 1999, the KGB’s supervisory relationship to the WPC was made public, though it was obvious long before to anyone who wanted to see that the latter was a leading Kremlin front for espionage and propaganda. Not that Conyers was deterred from involvement with the WPC, and he helped establish its American chapter, the U.S. Peace Council. He addressed its inaugural meeting in Philadelphia in November 1979, alongside numerous KGB agents, including Romesh Chandra, a prominent Indian Communist who headed the WPC for decades and was a senior operative of the Soviet secret police. 

Such public actions did not go undetected, and on occasion the press made noteof Conyers’ ties to the WPC and other Soviet fronts, particularly in the early 1980s, when KGB Active Measures against NATO reached their peak. It should be noted that Conyers was hardly the only left-wing Democrat in Washington who cultivated links to Kremlin spy-fronts during the Cold War. 

American counterintelligence had questions, too. Investigating members of Congress was always a touchy issue for our counterspies, given the political sensitivities, but Conyers’ chumminess with the KGB was noted in our Intelligence Community. The benign take on Conyers’ questionable associations was that was a mere dupe, a “useful idiot” to use the proper term. Others weren’t so sure, and when I asked a veteran IC counter-intelligencer who had checked out Conyers back in the 1980s, he responded with a wry smile: “Do you really think anybody’s that stupid?” 

Moreover, this isn’t just a historical matter. Conyers has continued to follow the Moscow line on countless issues down to the present day. Back in 2010, when WikiLeaks was busy dumping hundreds of thousands of stolen classified State Department files on the Internet, Conyers came to the defense of Julian Assange and his cyber-criminal gang, stating that WikiLeaks had committed no crimes. That was a remarkable thing for the then-chair of the House Judiciary Committee to say, particularly when the leadership of his own party—including President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—proffered a radically different take on the case. 

Since WikiLeaks barely bothers to conceal its Kremlin links these days, questions abound regarding Conyers’ public defense of the group which did so much damage to the Democrats and their presidential nominee in 2016. Even as relations with Moscow have soured since Russia’s seizure of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine in early 2014, Conyers has continued to spout Kremlin propaganda, as he has done for decades. 

In June 2015, Conyers went on a tirade against Ukraine on the floor of the House, denouncing Kyiv’s military as “neo-Nazi”—a slander that was quickly parroted by Kremlin mouthpieces online. He stated that Ukraine should not get anti-aircraft missiles from Washington, citing as evidence the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, the murder of 299 innocents—without noting that it was Russians, not Ukrainians, who downed the civilian airliner. It comes as no surprise that the bill amendment before the House to block anti-air missiles for Ukraine that was sponsored by Conyers was arranged by the notorious pro-Kremlin lobbyist Paul Manafort—the very same swamp macher who’s now facing indictments over his shady ties to President Trump and the Russians. 

Conyers’ decades of spouting unfiltered Kremlin propaganda is so notorious in Washington that last year the Huffington Post, nobody’s idea of a right-wing outlet, ran a piece on him entitled “Putin’s Man in Congress.” That charge seems fair, based on the evidence, and is something that needs public discussion, particularly as Washington prepares to root out Moscow’s secret spy-propaganda apparatus in our nation’s capital. 

Just another reminder that the Russians have been playing us for a very, very long time, and it's not always the GOP causing the damage, and again, as with Trump and Rohrabacher, the case can be made with publicly available information that Conyers's ties to the Kremlin are at best very unseemly.

Don't be surprised if Conyers gets caught up in this along with Rohrabacher when Mueller brings the hammer down, and that could be sooner rather than later as there's yet more evidence that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn is actively working out a plea deal with Robert Mueller.

The lawyer for President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn met Monday morning with members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, the latest indication that both sides are discussing a possible plea deal, ABC News has learned. 

Trump’s legal team confirmed late last week that Flynn’s attorney Robert Kelner alerted them that he could no longer engage in privileged discussions about defense strategy in the case, a sign Flynn is preparing to negotiate with prosecutors over a deal that could include Flynn’s testimony against the president or senior White House officials. 

That process would typically include a series of off-the-record discussions in which prosecutors lay out in detail for Flynn and his lawyers the fruits of their investigation into his activities. Prosecutors would also provide Flynn an opportunity to offer what’s called a proffer, detailing what information, if any, he has that could implicate others in wrongdoing. 

When reached Monday, Kelner declined to comment on the nature of his morning visit to Mueller’s offices in Washington, D.C. 

Sources familiar with the discussions between Flynn’s legal team and Trump’s attorneys told ABC News that while there was never a formal, signed joint defense agreement between Flynn’s defense counsel and other targets of the Mueller probe, the lawyers had engaged in privileged discussions for months.

I love how everyone involved is completely pretending this is normal and how it doesn't mean Flynn has flipped and turned on Trump in order to save his own ass and his son's ass from a lifetime in prison, too.  Stay tuned.

Who's The Boss?

Now that Richard Cordray has resigned from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (ostensibly to run as the Dems' best shot to replace John Kasich as Governor of Ohio) the question is who will lead the agency in his wake.  Cordray named deputy director Leandra English to run the agency, but Trump is naming his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, as the acting director of the agency, setting up a legal fight for the ages.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's top lawyer sided with the Justice Department over President Donald Trump's appointment of Mick Mulvaney to lead the CFPB as a leadership battle over the controversial watchdog agency escalated.

In a memorandum obtained by POLITICO, CFPB general counsel Mary McLeod said Trump had the legal authority to name an acting director to the bureau under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

"It is my legal opinion that the president possesses the authority to designate an acting director for the bureau," McLeod wrote in the Nov. 25 memo to the CFPB leadership team. "I advise all bureau personnel to act consistently with the understanding that Director Mulvaney is the acting director of the CFPB."

Yet even as McLeod's memo was circulating, Leandra English, former CFPB Director Richard Cordray's choice to serve as acting director of the watchdog agency, sued the Trump administration in U.S District Court in Washington.

In her lawsuit filed late Sunday, English named Trump and Mulvaney as defendants and asked the court to establish her authority as acting director.

"Ms. English has a clear entitlement to the position of acting director of the CFPB," the filing claims. "The President's purported or intended appointment of defendant Mulvaney as acting director of the CFPB is unlawful."

Here's the difference: Leandra English actually wants the agency to continue to fight for consumer rights against huge financial corporations and big banks. Mick Mulvaney wants to shut the agency down completely and says it was a mistake for the agency to even have been created in the first place.

English has a case because the 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation specifically says the deputy director takes charge of the agency should the director step aside, and that the President cannot fire the director without cause.  The Trump regime says that's all nice and good, but that Dodd-Frank is superseded by the Vacancies Reform Act because Trump says so, and that he gets to appoint an interim director for any federal agency that doesn't have a permanent head.

Who's right here?  Nobody knows.  Should be an interesting day at work today for the CFPB though.

StupidiNews!

• Indonesia's Mount Agung has erupted, prompting evacuation warnings for the island of Bali and shutting down the island's main airport for 24 hours.
• Democrat Rep. John Conyers will step down as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee pending an House ethics review into sexual harassment allegations.
• Democratic Sen. Al Franken says he is "embarrassed and ashamed" of his conduct but will not resign despite calls from both supporters and opponents to step down.
• Publisher Meredith Inc. will buy Time Inc. for $1.8 billion, giving the Koch brothers a $650 million share in the magazine.
• Tesla has completed South Australia's 100-megawatt battery array ahead of schedule, storing power from a nearby wind farm to power the state's grid.

Last Call For Shutdown Countdown, Con't.

The latest Republican can-kicking on the federal budget expires in less than two weeks on December 8, and while another continuing resolution is almost certain, it's not a sure thing.  Nothing in the Senate is certain at all, and there's still a pretty good chance Paul Ryan will lose control of the House GOP and shut the government down.

A short-term funding patch delaying the current Dec. 8 deadline at least a couple of weeks is inevitable, since top Hill leaders haven’t even agreed on spending numbers for federal agencies. The appropriations committees would need at least three to four weeks to write funding legislation.

Because it involves a must-pass bill, the spending fight gives House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) maximum leverage to demand a top priority for Democrats by year’s end: codifying Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals into law.

While not explicitly threatening to withhold votes without a DACA measure, both Pelosi and Schumer have vowed to save the Obama-era immigration program legislatively before lawmakers leave Washington for the year. Moderate Republicans have also urged their leadership to find a fix.

But doing so could prompt a rebellion among conservatives who don’t want to be steamrolled by Democrats on such a contentious issue. The White House is also insisting on funding for President Donald Trump's border wall with Mexico.

In addition to a huge omnibus spending package, Congress has another pricey funding measure to deal with — aid for hurricane-wrecked states and territories — that many on Capitol Hill say doesn’t go far enough. 

The White House has suggested a $44 billion emergency measure distributed to Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands for ongoing hurricane relief, as well as money for combating wildfires in the West. Democrats and some powerful Republicans — including Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 GOP leader — have said the package is far too small, though they will have to contend with fiscal conservatives who are getting weary of continued spending on aid, particularly if it’s not paid for with other cuts.

Other prime government programs could be temporarily shuttered if Congress fails to act.

One is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which empowers the NSA to monitor communications without a warrant. That authority expires at the end of the year, and there is bipartisan opposition to a “clean” renewal of the spying powers. There are varying proposals that would extend the programs, but with key reforms.

The National Flood Insurance Program, which has become financially strapped after the spate of powerful hurricanes this year, also needs to be reauthorized by Dec. 8. The House and Senate have dueling proposals to renew the program.

On the health care front, the expiration of funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program is already causing problems as more states have turned to temporary cash infusions from the federal government to keep the programs running.

House Republicans passed a largely partisan CHIP funding measure earlier this month. Still, CHIP could be a relatively simple fix: One option would be to let funding ride along with a short-term continuing resolution that will need to clear Congress by Dec. 8.

Lawmakers will also face pressure to act on legislation that would stabilize the Obamacare markets after Trump’s decision last month to stop paying so-called cost-sharing reduction subsidies to insurers.

Basically any of these could blow up and the House GOP could vote to shut the place down for a while, and even if things pass, there's no guarantee that the increasingly unstable Trump would sign anything into law.

It's a dice roll at this point, and millions of people could be affected.  And it doesn't look like the GOP cares one whit about it.

Sunday Long Read: Lessons We Failed To Learn

Anyone who had gone over Klansman David Duke's near-win in 1990 for Louisiana's Senate race could have seen Donald Trump coming a mile away, but as Adam Serwer documents in The Atlantic, Republicans, the media, and voters refused to call Duke out for his racism or to take responsibility for nearly electing him to the Senate based solely on appealing to white supremacy and were allowed to chalk it up to "economic anxiety" of the Poppy Bush years.

Thirty years ago, nearly half of Louisiana voted for a Klansman, and the media struggled to explain why.

It was 1990 and David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, astonished political observers when he came within striking distance of defeating incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston, earning 43 percent of the vote. If Johnston’s Republican rival hadn’t dropped out of the race and endorsed him at the last minute, the outcome might have been different.

Was it economic anxiety? The Washington Post reported that the state had “a large working class that has suffered through a long recession.” Was it a blow against the state’s hated political establishment? An editorial from United Press International explained, “Louisianans showed the nation by voting for Duke that they were mad as hell and not going to take it any more.” Was it anti-Washington rage? A Loyola University pollster argued, “There were the voters who liked Duke, those who hated J. Bennett Johnston, and those who just wanted to send a message to Washington.”

What message would those voters have been trying to send by putting a Klansman into office?

“There’s definitely a message bigger than Louisiana here,” Susan Howell, then the director of the Survey Research Center at the University of New Orleans, told the Los Angeles Times. “There is a tremendous amount of anger and frustration among working-class whites, particularly where there is an economic downturn. These people feel left out; they feel government is not responsive to them.”

Duke’s strong showing, however, wasn’t powered merely by poor or working-class whites—and the poorest demographic in the state, black voters, backed Johnston. Duke “clobbered Johnston in white working-class districts, ran even with him in predominantly white middle-class suburbs, and lost only because black Louisianans, representing one-quarter of the electorate, voted against him in overwhelming numbers,” The Washington Post reported in 1990. Duke picked up nearly 60 percent of the white vote. Faced with Duke’s popularity among whites of all income levels, the press framed his strong showing largely as the result of the economic suffering of the white working classes. Louisiana had “one of the least-educated electorates in the nation; and a large working class that has suffered through a long recession,” The Post stated.

By accepting the economic theory of Duke’s success, the media were buying into the candidate’s own vision of himself as a savior of the working class. He had appealed to voters in economic terms: He tore into welfare and foreign aid, affirmative action and outsourcing, and attacked political-action committees for subverting the interests of the common man. He even tried to appeal to black voters, buying a 30-minute ad in which he declared, “I’m not your enemy.”

Duke’s candidacy had initially seemed like a joke. He was a former Klan leader who had showed up to public events in a Nazi uniform and lied about having served in the Vietnam War, a cartoonishly vain supervillain whose belief in his own status as a genetic Übermensch was belied by his plastic surgeries. The joke soon soured, as many white Louisiana voters made clear that Duke’s past didn’t bother them.

Many of Duke’s voters steadfastly denied that the former Klan leader was a racist. The St. Petersburg Times reported in 1990 that Duke supporters “are likely to blame the media for making him look like a racist.” The paper quoted G. D. Miller, a “59-year-old oil-and-gas lease buyer,” who said, “The way I understood the Klan, it’s not anti-this or anti-that.”

Duke’s rejoinder to the ads framing him as a racist resonated with his supporters. “Remember,” he told them at rallies, “when they smear me, they are really smearing you.”

The economic explanation carried the day: Duke was a freak creature of the bayou who had managed to tap into the frustrations of a struggling sector of the Louisiana electorate with an abnormally high tolerance for racist messaging.

While the rest of the country gawked at Louisiana and the Duke fiasco, Walker Percy, a Louisiana author, gave a prophetic warning to The New York Times.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking David Duke is a unique phenomenon confined to Louisiana rednecks and yahoos. He’s not,” Percy said. “He’s not just appealing to the old Klan constituency, he’s appealing to the white middle class. And don’t think that he or somebody like him won’t appeal to the white middle class of Chicago or Queens.”

A few days after Duke’s strong showing, the Queens-born businessman Donald Trump appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live.

“It’s anger. I mean, that’s an anger vote. People are angry about what’s happened. People are angry about the jobs. If you look at Louisiana, they’re really in deep trouble,” Trump told King.

Trump later predicted that Duke, if he ran for president, would siphon most of his votes away from the incumbent, George H. W. Bush—in the process revealing his own understanding of the effectiveness of white-nationalist appeals to the GOP base.

“Whether that be good or bad, David Duke is going to get a lot of votes. Pat Buchanan—who really has many of the same theories, except it's in a better package—Pat Buchanan is going to take a lot of votes away from George Bush,” Trump said. “So if you have these two guys running, or even one of them running, I think George Bush could be in big trouble.” Little more than a year later, Buchanan embarrassed Bush by drawing 37 percent of the vote in New Hampshire’s Republican primary.

We failed then to see the Republican party for what it was: the last bastion of white supremacy in America.  Both Bush and his son tried to pretend the party wasn't what it clearly was, and for a while it worked.  Then Obama was elected, and the backlash finally hit home for tens of millions of white voters who decided that Trump's overt racism was no longer a dealbreaker in a White House candidate.

The signs however have been there for my entire lifetime.

We Don't Need No Education. Con't

Everywhere you turn, the Republican Party stands for the destruction of government and the services it provides to the people, moving to privatize everything from roads to schools to water to the internet and turn it into revenue streams for corporations.  Higher education is no different, it's been under attack ever since I was in college in the 90's and 20 years later, the majority of the GOP now wants American public universities all but shut down.

Frank Antenori shot the head off a rattlesnake at his back door last summer — a deadeye pistol blast from 20 feet. No college professor taught him that. The U.S. Army trained him, as a marksman and a medic, on the “two-way rifle range” of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Useful skills. Smart return on taxpayers’ investment. Not like the waste he sees at too many colleges and universities, where he says liberal professors teach “ridiculous” classes and indoctrinate students “who hang out and protest all day long and cry on our dime.”

“Why does a kid go to a major university these days?” said Antenori, 51, a former Green Beret who served in the Arizona state legislature. “A lot of Republicans would say they go there to get brainwashed and learn how to become activists and basically go out in the world and cause trouble.”

Antenori is part of an increasingly vocal campaign to transform higher education in America. Though U.S. universities are envied around the world, he and other conservatives want to reduce the flow of government cash to what they see as elitist, politically correct institutions that often fail to provide practical skills for the job market.

To the alarm of many educators, nearly every state has cut funding to public colleges and universities since the 2008 financial crisis. Adjusted for inflation, states spent $5.7 billion less on public higher education last year than in 2008, even though they were educating more than 800,000 additional students, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

In Arizona, which has had a Republican governor and legislature since 2009, lawmakers have cut spending for higher education by 54 percent since 2008; the state now spends $3,500 less per year on every student, according to the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Tuition has soared, forcing students to shoulder more of the cost of their degrees.

Meanwhile, public schools in Arizona and across the nation are welcoming private donors, including the conservative Koch brothers. In nearly every state, the Charles Koch Foundation funds generally conservative-leaning scholars and programs in politics, economics, law and other subjects. John Hardin, the foundation’s director of university relations, said its giving has tripled from about $14 million in 2011 to $44 million in 2015 as the foundation aims to “diversify the conversation” on campus.

People across the ideological spectrum are worried about the cost of college, skyrocketing debt from student loans and rising inequality in access to quality degrees. Educators fear the drop in government spending is making schools harder to afford for low- and middle-income students.

State lawmakers blame the cuts on falling tax revenue during the recession; rising costs of other obligations, especially Medicaid and prisons; and the need to balance their budgets. But even as prosperity has returned to many states, there is a growing partisan divide over how much to spend on higher education. Education advocates worry that conservative disdain threatens to undermine universities.

An uneducated population is far easier to control.  Millennials are the most college-educated generation in American history, but it's come at the cost of massive student debt. Mine's been paid off, I got a scholarship and had to borrow the rest, but that was 20 years ago. Besides, for the tens of millions who can't afford college, it's easier to demonize it.

Antenori views former president Barack Obama, a Harvard-educated lawyer who taught at the University of Chicago Law School, as the embodiment of the liberal establishment. Antenori said liberal elites with fancy degrees who have been running Washington for so long have forgotten those who think differently.

“If you don’t do everything that their definition of society is, you’re somehow a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal cave man,” Antenori said.

Antenori was drawn to Trump, he said, because he was the “reverse of Obama,” an “anti-politically correct guy” whose attitude toward the status quo is “change it, fix it, get rid of it, crush it, slash it.”

Even though Trump boasts of his Ivy League degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Antenori said he “had a different air about him.” Unlike Obama, Trump has not emphasized the importance of Americans going to college.

"My college education was a mistake" is what I hear from people.  "If fewer people went to college, it would be less expensive, they would have to get rid of stupid arts and humanities programs and have to concentrate on majors that produced high-paying jobs. Nobody can use an English major, everyone can use a business degree."

You know, like Trump, the smartest businessman who ever lived, or something.

We don't need no education.

Last Call For White Washing

I'm trying to figure out the whole "White Supremacist next door isn't so bad" genre of news since the Trump Era began, especially for those aforementioned white supremacists who live less than an hour from you.

Tony and Maria Hovater were married this fall. They registered at Target. On their list was a muffin pan, a four-drawer dresser and a pineapple slicer.

Ms. Hovater, 25, was worried about Antifa bashing up the ceremony. Weddings are hard enough to plan for when your fiancé is not an avowed white nationalist.

But Mr. Hovater, in the days leading up to the wedding, was somewhat less anxious. There are times when it can feel toxic to openly identify as a far-right extremist in the Ohio of 2017. But not always. He said the election of President Trump helped open a space for people like him, demonstrating that it is not the end of the world to be attacked as the bigot he surely is: “You can just say, ‘Yeah, so?’ And move on.”

It was a weeknight at Applebee’s in Huber Heights, a suburb of Dayton, a few weeks before the wedding. The couple, who live in nearby New Carlisle, were shoulder to shoulder at a table, young and in love. He was in a plain T-shirt, she in a sleeveless jean jacket. She ordered the boneless wings. Her parents had met him, she said, and approved of the match. The wedding would be small. Some of her best friends were going to be there. “A lot of girls are not really into politics,” she said.

In Ohio, amid the row crops and rolling hills, the Olive Gardens and Steak ’n Shakes, Mr. Hovater’s presence can make hardly a ripple. He is the Nazi sympathizer next door, polite and low-key at a time the old boundaries of accepted political activity can seem alarmingly in flux. Most Americans would be disgusted and baffled by his casually approving remarks about Hitler, disdain for democracy and belief that the races are better off separate. But his tattoos are innocuous pop-culture references: a slice of cherry pie adorns one arm, a homage to the TV show “Twin Peaks.” He says he prefers to spread the gospel of white nationalism with satire. He is a big “Seinfeld” fan.

“I guess it seems weird when talking about these type of things,” he says. “You know, I’m coming at it in a mid-90s, Jewish, New York, observational-humor way.”

Mr. Hovater, 29, is a welder by trade. He is not a star among the resurgent radical American right so much as a committed foot soldier — an organizer, an occasional podcast guest on a website called Radio Aryan, and a self-described “social media villain,” although, in person, his Midwestern manners would please anyone’s mother. In 2015, he helped start the Traditionalist Worker Party, one of the extreme right-wing groups that marched in Charlottesville, Va., in August, and again at a “White Lives Matter” rally last month in Tennessee. The group’s stated mission is to “fight for the interests of White Americans.’’

Its leaders claim to oppose racism, though the Anti-Defamation League says the group “has participated in white supremacist events all over the country.” On its website, a swastika armband goes for $20.

If the Charlottesville rally came as a shock, with hundreds of white Americans marching in support of ideologies many have long considered too vile, dangerous or stupid to enter the political mainstream, it obscured the fact that some in the small, loosely defined alt-right movement are hoping to make those ideas seem less than shocking for the “normies,” or normal people, that its sympathizers have tended to mock online.

And to go from mocking to wooing, the movement will be looking to make use of people like the Hovaters and their trappings of normie life — their fondness for National Public Radio, their four cats, their bridal registry.

“We need to have more families. We need to be able to just be normal,” said Matthew Heimbach, the leader of the Traditionalist Worker Party, in a podcast conversation with Mr. Hovater. Why, he asked self-mockingly, were so many followers “abnormal”?

Mr. Hovater replied: “I mean honestly, it takes people with, like, sort of an odd view of life, at first, to come this way. Because most people are pacified really easy, you know. Like, here’s some money, here’s a nice TV, go watch your sports, you know?”

He added: “The fact that we’re seeing more and more normal people come is because things have gotten so bad. And if they keep getting worse, we’ll keep getting more, just, normal people.”

And so in America, in Ohio, we have a friendly New York Times profile on a regular, everyday Millennial couple who just happens to think that the races need to be separated for their own good, that tens of millions of undocumented need to be immediately rounded up and deported, and that fascism is necessary in order to make all that happen.

They're convinced that they're on the side that will eventually win.

The problem is that in 2017, I can't definitively say that people like Tony Hovater are wrong about that assumption anymore.

Keeping Up With The Jonses

A depressing story from the Washington Post finds that Doug Jones's biggest vulnerability is getting black voters to turn out for the special election in less than three weeks, but this is Alabama, a state where Republicans have done everything they can to ensure permanent GOP power through suppressing the black vote, and it continues to work.

Jones’s campaign believes he can win only if he pieces together an unusually delicate coalition built on intense support from core Democrats and some crossover votes from Republicans disgusted with Moore. Crucial to that formula is a massive mobilization of African Americans, who make up about a quarter of Alabama’s electorate and tend to vote heavily Democratic.

Yet, in interviews in recent days, African American elected officials, community leaders and voters expressed concern that the Jones campaign’s turnout plan was at risk of falling short.

“Right now, many African Americans do not know there is an election on December 12,” said state Sen. Hank Sanders (D), who is black and supports Jones.

The challenge for Jones is clear. According to Democrats working on the race, Jones, who is white, must secure more than 90 percent of the black vote while boosting black turnout to account for between 25 and 30 percent of the electorate — similar to the levels that turned out for Barack Obama, the country’s first black president.

As a result, Jones and his allies are waging an aggressive outreach campaign. It includes targeted radio and online advertisements, billboards and phone calls. Campaign aides are debating whether to ask former first lady Michelle Obama to record a phone message for black voters.

The message emphasizes that Jones prosecuted two Ku Klux Klan members who bombed a black church in Birmingham in 1963.

The Jones campaign expects to intensify its black outreach in the final stretch. Among the messages under consideration for radio ads and already included in mailers that have been produced, according to campaign officials, are reminders that Moore once opposed removing segregationist language from the state constitution and expressed doubt that Obama was born in the United States.

The Moore campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The real problem remains though that in Alabama, Jones will still need some white voters to win.

A key question for Jones’s campaign is how to balance a more partisan campaign message aimed at energizing core Democrats, particularly blacks, with the need to appeal to GOP voters with a more middle-of-the-road approach. Not only must Jones come close to matching Obama’s performance among blacks, but also he must far surpass the former president’s tallies among whites. Exit polls show that Obama won 15 percent of the white vote in Alabama in 2012 — and Jones, according to Democratic strategists working on the race, may have to win more than a third of white voters to beat Moore.

So it's not black voters who will be at fault if Jones loses.  The real issue is whether more than two-thirds of white voters in Alabama will still turn out for the racist pedophile thrown off the state's Supreme Court twice, and there's every indication that in the Trump era, they'll do just that.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

A couple of solid explainers on just how much trouble Donald Trump is in should former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn truly be cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, and there's yet more evidence that Flynn has been in Mueller's sights for some time now.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Michael Flynn’s work on an unfinished Turkish propaganda film that attacked an exiled Muslim cleric who’s been accused of planning a coup attempt in Turkey, the Wall Street Journalreports.

As part of the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and collusion with the Trump campaign, Mueller’s team is reportedly probing a film targeting Fethullah Gulen, who Turkish officials say tried to orchestrate a takeover of the Turkish government.

Flynn worked on the film as part of his $530,000 contract through the now-defunct Flynn Intel Group. That consulting firm—and more broadly, Flynn’s failure to disclose his work on behalf of the Turkish government—is an integral part of Mueller’s investigation. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Mueller is also zeroing in on Flynn’s former business associate Bijan Kian.

So what makes people think Flynn is cooperating?  The Daily Beast's Margaret McQuade offers one theory as Flynn's lawyers withdrew from the joint defense agreement with the Trump regime earlier this week.

First, what is a joint defense agreement? A joint defense agreement is a pact among attorneys for multiple targets or subjects in a criminal case in which they agree to share information. The agreement may be written or unwritten. Any joint defense agreement will be defined by its explicit terms, but generally, under such an agreement, attorneys have a duty to keep the confidences of all of the clients covered by the agreement. The attorneys also have a duty to avoid conflicts of interest as to any of the clients. The attorneys can compare notes, allocate work efficiently by dividing tasks and avoiding duplication, and develop a unified strategy.

The main advantage of joint defense agreements is that the information that they share is protected by a form of the attorney-client privilege, known by some courts as a joint interest privilege. These agreements can help targets or subjects sidestep the so-called prisoner’s dilemma, in which they must decide in a vacuum whether to help each other by remaining silent or betray each other by cooperating with authorities. When subjects or targets form a unified defense strategy, it is more difficult for prosecutors to “flip” targets, and use them as cooperators against their co-conspirators.

In the special counsel’s investigation, it has been reported that members of the administration have entered into a joint defense agreement. This makes sense because as they field requests from Mueller and his team for documents and interviews, they can work together to share the work and develop a unified defense strategy.

But what does it mean if Flynn has decided to withdraw from the defense agreement? It could mean that he and his attorney have decided that his interests have diverged from the other members of the agreement. Perhaps Flynn and his attorney have decided to pursue a different strategy. For example, they may decide against voluntarily turning over documents and instead to litigate disclosure issues in court. But such details can usually be worked out within the defense team. For that reason, it seems more likely that Flynn has withdrawn from the agreement because he has decided to cooperate with Mueller to provide truthful information and possibly testimony in exchange for leniency for any crimes of which he is convicted.

Recent reports suggest that Flynn has significant exposure to criminal prosecution. Mueller effectively fired a shot against Flynn’s bow when he charged Paul Manafort with violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act, among other offenses. Similarly, reports say that Flynn belatedly filed notice with the Department of Justice regarding his own lobbying work for the government of Turkey. Even more concerning, other reports indicate that Flynn participated in meetings to discuss the kidnapping and rendition to Turkey of cleric Fethullah Gulen from his refuge in Pennsylvania. Gulen is a rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Martin "BooMan" Longman backs this up and takes a look a few moves ahead, but again, it depends solely on what Flynn can offer Mueller.  When you're in as much trouble as Flynn and his son Mike Jr. are right now, the only way out is to offer up the biggest fish possible.

Michael Flynn has so much criminal exposure it’s almost ridiculous, including things as potentially serious as conspiracy to kidnap, perjury, and obstruction of justice. He has to worry about those charges, plus a long list of problems with disclosure forms involving his lobbying work, background checks, and compliance with military rules and regulations. And he’s reportedly worried that his son will wind up with a lengthy jail term, as well. To significantly reduce all that exposure, he’s going to have to tell a pretty compelling story to Robert Mueller’s prosecutors.

It’s true that plea negotiations could still break down, but they’ve almost certainly begun. The chances are now very high that Flynn will be testifying against the president of the United States and that his testimony will be the basis for a criminal referral of some sort to Congress from the office of the special counsel.

This also has to be of concern to Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, because they’re missing the chance to be the first cooperating witnesses, and are therefore losing the opportunity to reduce the amount of time they’ll be spending in prison.

The floodgates could now open, but even if they don’t it’s beginning to look like a worst-case scenario for Trump. It would be hard enough to try to explain why he fired an FBI director for refusing to drop an investigation of a man now facing a dozen or more indictments. But if that man becomes the star witness against Trump, it will be impossible to defend against the central obstruction of justice charge.

Impeachment is by design a political process with a political definition of what constitutes a removable offense. For that reason, Trump can survive some pretty serious charges, just as Bill Clinton did in the late 1990s. But there are still limits, and a guilty Flynn presents a serious problem. A guilty testifying Flynn could be fatal.

Trump knows this.  Flynn could be the one that buries him.  We'll see what happens, but I'm guessing we'll know Flynn's fate before the end of the year...and possibly Trump's fate as well.

Trump's Really Packing Them In

If you want to know why Republicans "deeply concerned" with Trump continue to do nothing about him, it's because he's giving them what they want: permanent control of the American government for a generation.  Having gerrymandered state legislatures and the House into oblivion and stolen Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat, the only remaining task is to stuff the federal courts full of  hundreds of jurists in the mold of current SCOTUS conservatives, seats the Mitch McConnell blocked for years under Obama.  And frankly, there may be nothing that Democrats can do to stop it.

Conservatives have a new court-packing plan, and in the spirit of the holiday, it’s a turducken of a scheme: a regulatory rollback hidden inside a civil rights reversal stuffed into a Trumpification of the courts. If conservatives get their way, President Trump will add twice as many lifetime members to the federal judiciary in the next 12 months (650) as Barack Obama named in eight years (325). American law will never be the same.

The “outer turkey” in the plan is the ongoing Trumpification of the courts. In the final two years of Obama’s presidency, Senate Republicans engaged in tenacious obstruction to leave as many judicial vacancies unfilled as possible. The Garland-to-Gorsuch Supreme Court switch is the most visible example of this tactic but far from the only one: Due to GOP obstruction, “the number of [judicial] vacancies . . . on the table when [Trump] was sworn in was unprecedented,” White House Counsel Donald McGahn recently boasted to the conservative Federalist Society.

Trump is wasting no time in filling the 103 judicial vacancies he inherited. In the first nine months of Obama’s tenure, he nominated 20 judges to the federal trial and appellate courts; in Trump’s first nine months, he named 58. Senate Republicans are racing these nominees through confirmation; last week, breaking a 100-year-old tradition, they eliminated the “blue slip” rule that allowed home-state senators to object to particularly problematic nominees. The rush to Trumpify the judiciary includes nominees rated unqualified by the American Bar Association, nominees with outrageously conservative views and nominees significantly younger (and, therefore, likely to serve longer) than those of previous presidents. As a result, by sometime next year, 1 in 8 cases filed in federal court will be heard by a judge picked by Trump. Many of these judges will likely still be serving in 2050.

Oh, but it gets worse.

Enter the next element of the court-packing turducken: a new plan written by the crafty co-founder of the Federalist Society, Steven Calabresi. In a paper that deserves credit for its transparency (it features a section titled “Undoing President Barack Obama’s Judicial Legacy”), Calabresi proposes to pack the federal courts with a “minimum” of 260 — and possibly as many as 447 — newly created judicial positions. Under this plan, the 228-year-old federal judiciary would increase — in a single year — by 30 to 50 percent.

Never mind that Republicans saw no urgency in filling judicial vacancies while Obama was president. Never mind that they ignored pleas from conservative Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to fill positions in courts facing “judicial emergencies.” Now, conservatives want a 30 to 50 percent increase in the number of federal judgeships. And they have a clear idea of who should fill this massive number of new posts: “President Trump and the Republican Senate will need to fill all of these new judgeships in 2018, before the next session of Congress.” 

And believe it or not, it gets even worse.

Calabresi has also proposed that Congress abolish 158 administrative law judgeships in federal regulatory agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, Federal Communications Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission, and replace these impartial fact-finders with a new corps of 158 Trump-selected judges who — unlike current administrative law judges — would serve for life.

These new Trump administrative law judges would have vast power over environmental, health and safety, fair competition, communications, labor, financial and consumer regulation for decades. Unlike the existing administrative law judges, selected as nonpartisan members of the civil service, Calabresi’s replacement corps would all be picked in a single year, by a single man: Donald J. Trump.

If this sounds like the beginning of a permanent single-party autocracy, that's because it is.  Even the best-case scenario out of this would be a rollback of a century of progressive values, and the end of the civil rights era.  In short, even if it's not a "Trump dynasty for life" dictatorship, it'll still be a complete and total victory for the GOP.

Keep in mind this process has already started.  Trump judges are being appointed and confirmed in assembly line fashion.  Even if Trump is somehow removed from office, the GOP gets 99% of what they will want from him, and they will have the power to crush progressives for a lifetime.

Good thing we didn't elect that Hillary bitch though, right?

Russian To Judgment, Con't

There were a couple of developments yesterday that certainly ruined the Trump family's Thanksgiving plans, and frankly I hope Donny and friends lost quite a bit of sleep, after all, he had a long day of golfing and not destroying America on Thursday ahead of him.  First up, our old friend Paul Manafort has much more extensive connections to the Russians than previously disclosed (I know. Surprise!)  Turns out he's been deep in Putin's pocket for close to a decade.

Political guru Paul Manafort took at least 18 trips to Moscow and was in frequent contact with Vladimir Putin’s allies for nearly a decade as a consultant in Russia and Ukraine for oligarchs and pro-Kremlin parties. 

Even after the February 2014 fall of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych, who won office with the help of a Manafort-engineered image makeover, the American consultant flew to Kiev another 19 times over the next 20 months while working for the smaller, pro-Russian Opposition Bloc party. Manafort went so far as to suggest the party take an anti-NATO stance, an Oppo Bloc architect has said. A key ally of that party leader, oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, was identified by an earlier Ukrainian president as a former Russian intelligence agent, “100 percent.” 

It was this background that Manafort brought to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which he joined in early 2016 and soon led. His web of connections to Russia-loyal potentates is now a focus of federal investigators. 

Manafort’s flight records in and out of Ukraine, which McClatchy obtained from a government source in Kiev, and interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with his activities, including current and former government officials, suggest the links between Trump’s former campaign manager and Russia sympathizers run deeper than previously thought. 

What’s now known leads some Russia experts to suspect that the Kremlin’s emissaries at times turned Manafort into an asset acting on Russia’s behalf. “You can make a case that all along he ...was either working principally for Moscow, or he was trying to play both sides against each other just to maximize his profits,” said Daniel Fried, a former assistant secretary of state who communicated with Manafort during Yanukovych’s reign in President George W. Bush’s second term.

“He’s at best got a conflict of interest and at worst is really doing Putin’s bidding,” said Fried, now a fellow with the Atlantic Council. 

A central question for Justice Department Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and several congressional committees is whether Manafort, in trying to boost Trump’s underdog campaign, in any way collaborated with Russia's cyber meddling aimed at improving Trump’s electoral prospects. 

His lucrative consulting relationships have already led a grand jury convened by Mueller to charge him and an associate with conspiracy, money laundering and other felonies – charges that legal experts say are likely meant to pressure them to cooperate with the wider probe into possible collusion. 

I bet that particular prospect is keeping Donny up nights.  But I bet it's only half as angina-inducing as the fact that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn has almost certainly flipped.

Lawyers for Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, notified the president’s legal team in recent days that they could no longer discuss the special counsel’s investigation, according to four people involved in the case, an indication that Mr. Flynn is cooperating with prosecutors or negotiating such a deal. 

Mr. Flynn’s lawyers had been sharing information with Mr. Trump’s lawyers about the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining whether anyone around Mr. Trump was involved in Russian efforts to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. 

That agreement has been terminated, the four people said. Defense lawyers frequently share information during investigations, but they must stop when doing so would pose a conflict of interest. It is unethical for lawyers to work together when one client is cooperating with prosecutors and another is still under investigation. 

The notification alone does not prove that Mr. Flynn is cooperating with Mr. Mueller. Some lawyers withdraw from information-sharing arrangements as soon as they begin negotiating with prosecutors. And such negotiations sometimes fall apart. 

Still, the notification led Mr. Trump’s lawyers to believe that Mr. Flynn — who, along with his son, is seen as having significant criminal exposure — has, at the least, begun discussions with Mr. Mueller about cooperating.

Lawyers for Mr. Flynn and Mr. Trump declined to comment. The four people briefed on the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The Washington Post is backing up this Times story so whether or not Flynn has anything worthwhile is still unknown to anyone but Flynn and Mueller, but as the Times says, Flynn is at least willing to give up somebody up the chain, and there's not a whole lot of people higher than him that aren't Trump, ya know?

Happy Thanksgiving, you turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here's to you, my readers, who I am very thankful for.  Thanks for sticking around, for some of you it's been years and others are just discovering the blog, but no matter how long you've been a reader, I'm happy to have you aboard.



Have a great Thanksgiving holiday and I'll see you tomorrow.

Last Call For Take It Out Of Neutral

As expected Trump FCC head Ajit Pai is announcing the end of "net neutrality" rules on the internet, allowing your internet provider to charge you per site rather than just per gigabyte.

The proposal, put forward by the F.C.C. chairman, Ajit Pai, is a sweeping repeal of rules put in place by the Obama administration. The rules prohibited high-speed internet service providers from blocking or slowing down the delivery of websites, or charging extra fees for the best quality of streaming and other internet services for their subscribers. Those limits are central to the concept called net neutrality.

The action immediately reignited a loud and furious fight over free speech and the control of the internet, pitting telecom giants like AT&T against internet giants like Google and Amazon, who warn against powerful telecom gatekeepers. Both sides are expected to lobby hard in Washington to push their agendas, as they did when the existing rules were adopted.

“Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet,” Mr. Pai said in a statement. “Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them and entrepreneurs and other small businesses can have the technical information they need to innovate.”

The proposal from Mr. Pai, a Republican, is widely expected to be approved during a Dec. 14 meeting in a 3-to-2 party line vote from the agency’s five commissioners. But some companies will probably put up a legal fight, or actions by lawmakers, to prevent it from taking hold.

The clear winners from the move would be the giant companies that provide internet access to phones and computers, which have fought for years against broadband regulations. A repeal of the rules would allow the companies to exert more control over the online experiences of American consumers.

Big online companies like Amazon say that the telecom companies would be able to show favoritism to certain web services, by charging for accessing some sites but not others, or by slowing the connection speed to some sites. Small online companies say the proposal would hurt innovation. Only the largest companies, they say, would be able to afford the expense of making sure their sites received preferred treatment.

And consumers, the online companies say, may see their costs go up to get quality access to popular websites like Netflix.

Imagine having to pay Netflix your monthly subscription fee, and then either having to pay your internet provider an extra monthly charge to go to Netflix's site and get their streaming services, or for your internet provider to demand billions a month in order for Netflix to access the ISP's customers (and Netflix in turn jacking up your subscription fee in order to cover it.)

Or you know, your internet provider doing both of those.  It would be flat out extortion, and that's exactly what Pai and the Trump FCC are voting to allow next month. It would also mean that the most powerful companies on earth would be internet service providers and mobile carriers, because they would literally get to decide what information you get to see.

And it would be a total and complete repeal of all these protections.

Six months from now, when Comcast announces a "market test" to charge customers extra for accessing Google, Facebook, Netflix, or Yahoo, when the cost of everyone's internet doubles or triples, maybe people will care then.

Maybe.

It Makes Perfect Census

Even Politico sounds the klaxon on Trump's leading pick to run the 2020 Census as it's the man who literally wrote the book on why and how Republicans should be using modern gerrymandering and redistricting tactics to ensure a permanent GOP majority.

The Trump administration is leaning toward naming Thomas Brunell, a Texas professor with no government experience, to the top operational job at the U.S. Census Bureau, according to two people who have been briefed on the Bureau’s plans.

Brunell, a political science professor, has testified more than half a dozen times on behalf of Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts, and is the author of a 2008 book titled “Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America.”

The choice would mark the administration’s first major effort to shape the 2020 Census, the nationwide count that determines which states lose and gain electoral votes and seats in the House of Representatives.

The fate of the Census under Trump has been closely watched by voting-rights advocates worried that the administration — which has already made unsupported claims about voter fraud — might nudge it in directions that over- or under-count some Americans. Subtle bureaucratic choices in the wording and administration of the Census can have huge consequences for who is counted, and how it shifts American voting districts.

The pick would break with the long-standing precedent of choosing a nonpolitical government official as deputy director of the U.S. Census Bureau. The job has typically been held by a career civil servant with a background in statistics. It does not require Senate confirmation, so Congress would have no power to block the hire.

If you're thinking that Republicans would do everything in their power to use the 2020 Census to remove several Congressional districts from large blue states like California, Illinois and New York and give them to red states like Texas (or more likely, take those blue state districts away and "round up" and distribute an extra district to lower population Midwest/Rocky Mountain red states like Utah, Arizona, Kansas, and/or Oklahoma) then you're right on the money.

The 2010 apportionment was a major blow to Democrats just based on demographics, but 2020 could be far, far worse.  Imagine the Census Bureau saying California and New York "massively overcounted illegal immigrants previously" and you get the idea.  Also, keep in mind population counts in many cases for dollars for federal programs and federal funding for things like education and Medicaid.  Knocking the blocks out from under blue states on that would mean de facto austerity cuts in the billions.

So yes, this is going to be bad but "control of the 2020 Census" was yet another reason why I voted for Clinton in 2016 while others said "We have to teach the Democrats a lesson".

Taxing Our Patience

As Francis Wilkinson over at Bloomberg notes, the IRS "scandal" over "targeting conservative groups" quietly died earlier this month with the on-schedule resignation of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, and the suddenly "tax-reform" minded GOP has let it die because suddenly under Trump, the IRS is working for "We The People" again.

Shortly before Koskinen left office, the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration released the (presumably) final report on the scandal. Like a previous Inspector General report, it tried to soothe Republican feelings – the IRS really, really should’ve handled things differently -- while utterly refuting Republican charges about what had transpired.

The story told by Republicans is so well known that it substitutes for fact. In the first years of the Obama administration, Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations rose up to defy the government. When the groups sought IRS approval for their designations as “social welfare” organizations under the tax code, the IRS targeted them with burdensome queries, harassing the groups while slow-walking reviews of their applications. In this telling, it was a political vendetta – carried out against conservatives by a government agency that many anti-government, anti-tax conservatives especially despised.

Republicans claimed the IRS served as an attack dog for the Obama White House. But inquiries by the House Ways and Means Committee, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the Justice Department all failed to produce evidence of political interference.

Perhaps it was because the premise of the scandal -- that Obama’s political team would want to destroy local Tea Party groups -- was absurd. For Democrats, local Tea Party groups were a political Giving Tree, bearing glorious, loopy fruit such as Christine O’Donnell and Todd Akin, Tea Party candidates who managed to lose crucial Senate campaigns that a competent Republican – perhaps anycompetent Republican -- would’ve won.

What’s more, none of the groups actually needed IRS approval to operate. “These organizations didn’t have to wait for the IRS to tell them anything to go into business,” Koskinen said in a telephone interview last week.

Yet the IRS clearly applied extra scrutiny to groups that it thought might be engaged in too much politics to warrant the preferential tax designation. One way IRS personnel did that was to look for key words, such as “Tea Party.” Other words that triggered IRS scrutiny included: “Occupy,” “green energy,” “medical marijuana” and “progressive.”

Contrary to the Republican story, the IRS never targeted conservatives. The IRS targeted politics, which was pretty much what it was supposed to do.

And frankly, they got away with it.  Now, the IRS is okay again because Trump has "drained the swamp" and your taxes will be "so easy you can do them on a postcard".  None of that is true of course, but the IRS is no longer a convenient target for the Party of Trump now that they're in charge of it.

Trump has appointed an interim IRS Commissioner, who for some weird reason is still holding his current post as Assistant Treasury Secretary because somebody told him it would be a good idea.  It's not. David Kautter is Treasury's point man on the Trump tax plan, and trying to both write tax reform and run the IRS at the same time is basically impossible.

But it's interesting to note that like Benghazi, this died as soon as attacking the government as incompetent and cruel meant attacking Trump.