Last Call For The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

I haven't said too much about the Democrats retaking the Senate because despite being down 51-49, Democrats have ten seats to defend in states Trump carried in 2016.  To think that Democrats would win all ten and then pick up two more seats on top of that in Arizona and Nevada meant that they would have to be perfect 12 of 12 in those contests with zero room for error.

There's now room for error, with Phil Breseden in Tennessee and Beto O'Rourke in Texas making two more Democratic pickups in play.

NBC News released a poll of Tennesseeconducted with Marist on Thursday, and Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen has a statistically insignificant 2 percentage point lead over Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn among likely voters. Among all registered voters, Bredesesn's lead expands to 4 points, 48 percent to 44 percent. Both results are within the poll's margin of error (±4.5 points for registered voters, ±5.5 points for likely voters), but combined with NBC/Marist polls this week from Indiana and Missouri, they suggest Democrats have a shot at winning control of the Senate in November, despite an unfavorable map. 

Bredesen, a popular former governor, and Blackburn are running to succeed Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). Democrats, meanwhile, are defending Senate seats in Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota, Missouri, Florida, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states President Trump won in 2016. They need a net gain of two seats to win control, and their best shots of flipping seats are Arizona and Nevada. 

In NBC/Marist's poll of Indiana released Wednesday, Sen. Joe Donnelly (D) leads GOP challenger Mike Braun 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, just outside the poll's ±5 point margin of error. In Missouri, Tuesday's NBC/Marist poll found Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) and state Attorney General Josh Hawley (R) tied in a two-way race, 47 percent each, and McCaskill takes a 4-point lead if Libertarian and Green candidates are included. All three polls were conducted Aug. 25-29. Political handicapper Stuart Rothenberg, looking at those polls and others in Florida, West Virginia, and elsewhere, sees new hope for the Democrats.

Of course, at this point in 2016, Hillary Clinton had 1 70% chance of winning too, which is about what Democrats have of winning the House back.

There's still plenty of time for things to go wrong, and Democrats cannot forget that.

Another #MeToo Mogul Meets His Maker

Another powerful Hollywood executive is being shown the door, this time it's CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, who is now leaving the network over sexual harassment claims, and the fact they're bad for business, and Ronan Farrow has followed up his July expose' on Moonves with what was the final nail in his coffin.  (Bit of a language warning here.)

Members of the board of the CBS Corporation are negotiating with the company’s chairman and C.E.O., Leslie Moonves, about his departure. Sources familiar with the board’s activities said the discussions about Moonves stepping down began several weeks ago, after an article published in the The New Yorker detailed allegations by six women that the media executive had sexually harassed them, and revealed complaints by dozens of others that the culture in some parts of the company tolerated sexual misconduct. Since then, the board has selected outside counsel to lead an investigation into the claims.

As the negotiations continue and shareholders and advocacy groups accuse the board of failing to hold Moonves accountable, new allegations are emerging. Six additional women are now accusing Moonves of sexual harassment or assault in incidents that took place between the nineteen-eighties and the early aughts. They include claims that Moonves forced them to perform oral sex on him, that he exposed himself to them without their consent, and that he used physical violence and intimidation against them. A number of the women also said that Moonves retaliated after they rebuffed him, damaging their careers. Similar frustrations about perceived inaction have prompted another woman to raise a claim of misconduct against Jeff Fager, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” who previously reported to Moonves as the chairman of CBS News.

One of the women with allegations against Moonves, a veteran television executive named Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb, told me that she filed a criminal complaint late last year with the Los Angeles Police Department, accusing Moonves of physically restraining her and forcing her to perform oral sex on him, and of exposing himself to her and violently throwing her against a wall in later incidents. The two worked together in the late nineteen-eighties. Law-enforcement sources told me that they found Golden-Gottlieb’s allegations credible and consistent but prosecutors declined to pursue charges because the statutes of limitations for the crimes had expired. Early this year, Moonves informed a portion of the CBS board about the criminal investigation.

The terms of Moonves’s potential departure have yet to be settled. Last week, news reports had circulated that he might leave with an exit package of nearly a hundred million dollars. Several of the women expressed outrage that Moonves might be enriched by his departure from the company. Jessica Pallingston, a writer, alleges that Moonves coerced her into performing oral sex on him when she worked as his temporary assistant, in the nineties, and that, after she repelled subsequent sexual advances, he became hostile, at one point calling her a “cunt.” “It’s completely disgusting,” she said of the reports of Moonves’s potential exit package. “He should take all that money and give it to an organization that helps survivors of sexual abuse.”

In a statement, Moonves acknowledged three of the encounters, but said that they were consensual: “The appalling accusations in this article are untrue. What is true is that I had consensual relations with three of the women some 25 years ago before I came to CBS. And I have never used my position to hinder the advancement or careers of women. In my 40 years of work, I have never before heard of such disturbing accusations. I can only surmise they are surfacing now for the first time, decades later, as part of a concerted effort by others to destroy my name, my reputation, and my career. Anyone who knows me knows that the person described in this article is not me.” Moonves declined to specify which three encounters he considered consensual.

In separate statements, the CBS board of directors said that it “is committed to a thorough and independent investigation of the allegations, and that investigation is actively underway,” and the CBS Corporation said it “takes these allegations very seriously,” and called the board’s investigation “thorough” and “ongoing.”

Again, hours after this piece was published, CBS announce Moonves was gone as of Monday. Hollywood still has much to answer for, but it's being cleaned up one asshole at a time.

Sunday Long Reads: Playing Duterte Pool

If you want to know where the FAKE NEWS!!! regime of Donald Trump's use of social media and FOX News as state media is heading, ask somebody we know that Trump admires and wishes to emulate.

In August 2016, a handful of crude images began circulating widely throughout Facebook’s Filipino community: a middle-aged man and woman having clumsy sex atop a tacky floral bedspread. The man’s face, obscured by shadows, was impossible to make out. The woman’s was not. She appeared to be Sen. Leila de Lima — a fierce critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his bloody war on drugs.

But the woman was not de Lima.

The senator issued a strong public denial (“That’s not me. I don’t understand”) and internet sleuths subsequently tracked the provenance of the images to a porn site. Still, the doctored photos very quickly became part of a narrative propagated by Duterte, who had accused de Lima of accepting bribes from drug pushers. Duterte, who’d previously threatened to “destroy” de Lima in public, touted the pictures as stills from a sex tape featuring the senator and her chauffeur — the person she'd allegedly ordered to collect illicit payments on her behalf. “De Lima is not only screwing her driver, she is also screwing the nation,” Duterte said in September. If he were de Lima, the president added, he would hang himself. (“We believe the president was referring to another video,” Martin Andanar, communications secretary of the Duterte administration, told BuzzFeed News.)

De Lima was soon beset by disparaging fake news reports that spread quickly across Facebook: She had pole-danced for a convict; she’d used government funds to buy a $6 million mansion in New York; the Queen of England had congratulated the Philippine Senate for ousting her. Six months later, her reputation fouled, de Lima was arrested and detained on drug charges, though she vehemently disputes them. She has now been in jail for over a year, despite outcry from international human rights groups over what they consider a politically motivated detention.

For all the recent hand-wringing in the United States over Facebook’s monopolistic power, the mega-platform’s grip on the Philippines is something else entirely. Thanks to a social media–hungry populace and heavy subsidies that keep Facebook free to use on mobile phones, Facebook has completely saturated the country. And because using other data, like accessing a news website via a mobile web browser, is precious and expensive, for most Filipinos the only way online is through Facebook. The platform is a leading provider of news and information, and it was a key engine behind the wave of populist anger that carried Duterte all the way to the presidency.

Yet some Filipinos say Facebook treats the Philippines as an absentee landlord might, occasionally dropping by to address minor issues but often shrugging off responsibility for the larger, more problematic stuff: the conspiracies that helped land de Lima in jail, the misinformation that has clouded the public’s understanding of a brutal drug war, and the propaganda that continues to damage the democratic process in the Philippines.

“Until we find an effective way to counter” the misinformation problem in the Philippines, de Lima wrote to BuzzFeed News from Camp Crame, where she is imprisoned, “we cannot hope to repair the damage [it’s] already caused and to ensure it can never hijack our democratic way of life again.”

Facebook told BuzzFeed News the images violated its policies and were removed. The company also noted that it eventually prevented links to bogus reports about de Lima from being shared on its platform — but only after de Lima had been arrested.

Yet it is the photos, more than the links to fake news, that show what Facebook and the Philippines are up against. Unlike the fake news scandals in the US, which often sought to drive readers to third-party sites, misinformation campaigns in the Philippines live largely on Facebook itself. It is images, Facebook Live videos, and posts written directly on the platform; a never-ending meme-driven propaganda campaign that’s easier to share and harder to police.

If you want to know what happens to a country that has opened itself entirely to Facebook, look to the Philippines. What happened there — what continues to happen there — is both an origin story for the weaponization of social media and a peek at its dystopian future. It’s a society where, increasingly, the truth no longer matters, propaganda is ubiquitous, and lives are wrecked and people die as a result — half a world away from the Silicon Valley engineers who’d promised to connect their world.

"Weaponized social media" is a very good term, because it's what America is facing under Trump.  It's been fully weaponized by a bloody dictator in the Philippines, and it's being used to destroy and detain Duterte's political foes.

We're not that far away from that happening in the US, either.

Maybe just one election away, at most.

The Revenge Of Obamacare

Eight years after passing it ended up costing Democrats more than 70 House seats and a dozen Senate seats, the Affordable Care Act (and the Republican plans to dismantle it and take health care away from millions in red states with large white working-class voter blocs) just might save the necks of Blue Dog Democratic senators like Joe Manchin in November.

In a state where approval of President Trump is near the country’s highest, Mr. Manchin, a Democrat, was once thought to be deeply endangered in his re-election this year. But the 71-year-old incumbent, who likes to say “Washington sucks,” has a 7- to 10-point polling edge over his Republican opponent, Patrick Morrisey. A lot can happen before Election Day, but for now, he is the envy of other red-state Democrats as the parties wrestle over control of the Senate.

For an explanation, look no further than the issue Mr. Manchin has made No. 1 in his campaign: health care, specifically protections enshrined in the Affordable Care Act, a once-vilified law that has grown increasingly popular now that its benefits are woven deeply into a state with high poverty and poor health. West Virginia has the highest share of its population covered by Medicaid, 29 percent, including about 160,000 who became eligible in the Medicaid expansion under the law.

Mr. Manchin, a former governor and the state’s dominant politician for more than a decade, rarely cites the law’s formal name, much less its toxic-for-West Virginia nickname, “Obamacare.”

But he has relentlessly raised the alarm over the potential loss of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, about one in three West Virginians.

Mr. Morrisey, the state attorney general, practically handed him the issue by joining a new lawsuit seeking to repeal the health care law, which Mr. Morrisey calls “devastating” because of rising premiums in the individual market.

A federal judge in Texas heard arguments Wednesday in the case, which was brought by Republican state officials from around the country. If they win and the Affordable Care Act, or pieces of it, falls, an estimated 17 million Americans will lose coverage. And in a change that would affect far more people, insurers would once again be able to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions or charge them more.

Democrats have seized on the lawsuit to defend endangered senators in red states, including North Dakota, Montana and Missouri.

But few are using it to galvanize votes as aggressively as Mr. Manchin, whose state has epidemic levels of diabetes, heart disease and opioid addiction. His TV ads star West Virginians with pre-existing conditions. He hosts round tables on the topic. And in the Senate, he introduced a resolution to fight the Republican lawsuit.

Running on health care is designed to overcome his chief vulnerability: Mr. Trump’s 60 percent job approval here.

Jimmy Ulbrich, from nearby Dawes, is a prime target. “He is bringing America back the way it should be,” Mr. Ulbrich, 48, said of Mr. Trump. But Mr. Ulbrich, who is disabled, does not like the idea of overturning the Affordable Care Act. “I guess Joe Manchin gets my vote,” he said.

The racist game show host is gonna make America white again, but in the unhealthiest state in the nation, people don't want to lose their government health care, either.

And that's how Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, and Heidi Heitkamp are going to win.

I hate Joe Manchin, he's an asshole and he regularly sabotages progressive legislation.  There's a reason his StupidiTag for years has been "Joe F'ckin Manchin".

But West Virginia gets two Senators like every other state, and if we can get a Democratic one in every red state and win back the House, we'd have a hell of a lot fewer problems.

Give people in red states reason to vote blue.  "I don't want to lose my health care" is a damn good reason, so more power to Manchin.

Maybe it'll work in Texas, too.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

Back in April, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was the deciding vote that shot down the Trump Regime's plans to assume basically all crimes were deportation-worthy "crimes of violence".

In a 5-to-4 decision Tuesday, the court overturned the deportation of a 25-year legal U.S. resident from the Philippines who was convicted of two burglaries.

James Dimaya came to the U.S. at age 13 as a legal permanent resident. More than two decades later — after he was convicted of two home burglaries in California and sentenced to a total of four years in prison — the government sought his deportation under a "violent crime" immigration law, though neither of Dimaya's crimes involved violence. The statute defines a violent crime as one involving force or the "substantial risk" of force.

The Supreme Court, however, said that language is so vague that it invites arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.

At the time, I noted Ian Millhiser warning that Gorsuch only did so out of a desire to cripple the federal government's regulatory capacity beyond verbatim what Congress allowed it. That's a double-edged sword, as Congress does have to define what the law is in order to be enforced, Gorsuch wrote in his concurrence.

On Friday, the House took the first steps towards doing just that.

The House on Friday passed a bill that would restore the federal government's ability to deport immigrants for a wide variety of violent criminal offenses in a vote that won quick praise from President Trump.

The Community Safety and Security Act aims to address an April Supreme Court ruling that found that the federal definition of a “crime of violence,” which under immigration law prompts the mandatory deportation of a noncitizen, is impermissibly vague. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Karen Handel (R-Ga.), specifically enumerates more than a dozen crimes that would qualify.

The bill passed 247-152, largely along party lines.

Democrats objected to the bill for being rushed to the floor without hearings or an amendment process in committee, though 29 broke ranks and supported it; four libertarian-oriented Republicans opposed it.

Trump tweeted his approval of the legislation early Friday afternoon: “House GOP just passed a bill to increase our ability to deport violent felons (Crazy Dems opposed). Need to get this bill to my desk fast!"

Among the offenses that would be considered a “crime of violence” under the bill: “murder, voluntary manslaughter, assault, sexual abuse or aggravated sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact, child abuse, kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, firearms use, burglary, arson, extortion, communication of threats, coercion, fleeing, interference with flight crew members and attendants, domestic violence, hostage taking, stalking, human trafficking, piracy, or a terrorism offense” defined elsewhere in federal law.

Also qualifying would be any offense involving illegal explosives or weapons of mass destruction or involving “the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another."

All of those would become deportable offenses under the law.  Most of them definitely fit "crimes of violence". But "communication of threats" and "fleeing" along with "the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another" is all extremely vague, and that's going to mean that saying mean things about Trump or fleeing an ICE raid means you go away if you're a non-citizen.

And we already have the Trump regime openly questioning American citizenship now.

You can guess where all this is going.

This bill needs to die in the Senate, but I'm not sure it will.

Race To The Bottom, Con't

Here's FOX News and unofficial Trump adviser Tucker Carlson giving us the 2018 Donald Trump white supremacy movement in under 30 seconds.

Tucker Carlson really really really really does not like living in a diverse country pic.twitter.com/iLpMr6QrNV

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) September 8, 2018

This is what a whole hell of a lot of Americans believe, politely, and overtly.  It is definitely what the Republicans running our government believe, including the man in the Oval Office.

Straight -up white nationalist propaganda.

The Absolution Solution

Ezra Klein arrives at the correct conclusion that both Barack Obama, in his speech yesterday, and conservative loudmouth Ben Shapiro, in his response to Obama, both made a massive mistake by absolving Trump voters of their sins.

Where Obama and Shapiro differ sharply in their explanation is in the attribution of blame. Obama blames Trump — and others in the Republican Party and conservative media — for demagogically preying on Americans’ fears and anxieties. Shapiro blames Obama for adopting a lecturing tone that alienated a critical mass of Americans.

Over email, I asked Shapiro to unpack this point for me. “Obama suggested that his political opponents were badly-motivated ignoramuses, routinely ignored the rule of law, and utilized identity politics to divide the country,” he replied. “He savaged McCain and Romney in scurrilous ways. Many in the Republican base felt angered and slighted, and raged at the supposed nice guys in the party who were allegedly too weak to fight back. They supported the most aggressive candidate on the stage.”

Some of this strikes me as, well, strange. John McCain just had Obama speak at his funeral. The idea that the 2008 campaign was uniquely scurrilous is provably wrong. The rest of it is the usual Rorschach test of American politics; I think Obama treated issues of identity with unusual care and caution and, particularly early in his presidency, was unusually willing to believe the best of his political opponents, but I doubt I’ll change any minds on that in this column. Indeed, the deep division over how identity politics was wielded in the Obama era, and who was really acting outside the norms of American politics, is exactly what you’d expect if you believe this broader story of demographic, political, and cultural upheaval.

More interesting, I think, is the way both Obama and Shapiro implicitly absolve voters of responsibility for the choices they made. Obama’s basic argument is that too much change, too fast, made right-leaning voters susceptible to a demagogue’s charms; Shapiro’s basic argument is that too much of Obama’s liberal provocations, for too long, made right-leaning voters long for a strongman of their own.

The term “white fragility” is overused in politics right now, but it is relevant here: The unwillingness to state the obvious — a critical proportion of Republican primary voters enthusiastically supported the candidate who promised to turn back the demographic clock — might be politically wise, but it’s analytically disastrous. Black voters who supported Louis Farrakhan would never be treated with such delicacy.

Trump, for all his flaws, ran a campaign based on clear positions and aspirations. He promised to build a wall; he said that our country was being weakened by louche, violent, parasitic immigrants; he said Obama was an illegitimate president with a forged birth certificate; he vowed to stop Muslims from traveling to the country; and in every speech, at every turn, he promised to turn back the clock, to make America great again.

That a crucial portion of the Republican electorate agreed with him in all of this is undeniable. What it says about them is often treated as if it is unspeakable — either because to state their beliefs clearly is insulting or because it just makes a bad political situation worse.

Trump did not create these voters. They long predated him — they were present in both Pat Buchanan’s and Ross Perot’s candidacies — but they were homeless in American politics, suppressed by the two parties for reasons of both principle and political expediency.

Trump, with his money, celebrity, and media-savvy, taking advantage of new communication technologies, a weakened Republican Party, and the rage that grew on the right amid the daily affront of Obama’s presidency, was able to break through the cartel and offer those voters the choice they actually wanted, and in the Republican primary, enough of them took it to make him the nominee. (The general election, it should be said, had more complex dynamics, with a lot of voters unhappily choosing Trump over Clinton, which is why I think the primary was the real pivot here.)

So yes, Republican voters enraged by the feeling that they were being lectured by the first black president is a big part of how we got Trump. This idea is popular in some quarters of the right because it’s understood as somehow absolving them of blame for Trump, but it’s just another way of saying that Obama’s presidency — and the broader demographic and cultural changes it both revealed and represented — activated ugly sentiments in the Republican Party, those fears and resentments were amplified by conservative media, and Republican voters turned to the candidate who championed those sentiments most clearly.

Which is all to say Trump’s voters made a rational choice based on their beliefs about, and preferences for, the country they live in. There’s a powerful impulse to absolve them of that choice, to blame it on someone or something else, but doing so obscures the reasons it was made and confuses our attempts to move forward.

This is not only correct, but clear-headed and sobering to boot.

The reason we have Trump in the White House is that 63 million Americans made the choice to vote for him.  

You know what?

Those 63 million Americans are the problem. 

Oh I know, "But Zandar, you can't blame the voters, that's playing right into the hands of the politics of resentment".

Horseshit.

Take responsibility for what you did.  Fix it in November by throwing out the Republicans at the ballot box.

Trump Flew Over The Coup-Coup Nest

What is it with Republican regimes and plotting South American coup attempts all the damn time? Donald Trump sure has more in common with Reagan/Bush CIA hijinks than he lets on, now that we have this NY Times story exposing a secret US coup attempt in Venezuela.

The Trump administration held secret meetings with rebellious military officers from Venezuela over the last year to discuss their plans to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, according to American officials and a former Venezuelan military commander who participated in the talks.

Establishing a clandestine channel with coup plotters in Venezuela was a big gamble for Washington, given its long history of covert intervention across Latin America. Many in the region still deeply resent the United States for backing previous rebellions, coups and plots in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, Brazil and Chile, and for turning a blind eye to the abuses military regimes committed during the Cold War.

The White House, which declined to answer detailed questions about the talks, said in a statement that it was important to engage in “dialogue with all Venezuelans who demonstrate a desire for democracy” in order to “bring positive change to a country that has suffered so much under Maduro.”

But one of the Venezuelan military commanders involved in the secret talks was hardly an ideal figure to help restore democracy: He is on the American government’s own sanctions list of corrupt officials in Venezuela.

He and other members of the Venezuelan security apparatus have been accused by Washington of a wide range of serious crimes, including torturing critics, jailing hundreds of political prisoners, wounding thousands of civilians, trafficking drugs and collaborating with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

American officials eventually decided not to help the plotters, and the coup plans stalled. But the Trump administration’s willingness to meet several times with mutinous officers intent on toppling a president in the hemisphere could backfire politically.

Suddenly that drone attack on Maduro last month allowing him to consolidate power and crack down militarily while the nation's economy disintegrates is bathed in a whole new light.  The military intervention that Trump openly bragged about in August of 2017 fell apart fantasitcally, and now we have a failed state on our hands in real time.

What will Republicans do about it?  Will there be any oversight?

Of course not.  Not in this banana republic.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Con't

Three for the Friday Night Mueller News Dump™ file, first up, George Papadopoulos got a light sentence plea deal for his role in the Trump collusion mess for lying to the FBI.

A once low-profile foreign policy campaign adviser whose offhand remark in a London bar in May 2016 helped trigger an FBI counterintelligence investigation into President Trump’s campaign was sentenced to 14 days incarceration Friday by a federal judge in Washington.

George Papadopoulos, 31, pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about key details of his conversations with a London-based professor who had told him the Russians held dirt, in the form of thousands of emails, on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Papadopoulos tried futilely for months to arrange a meeting between top campaign aides and Russian officials.

In asking the court for leniency, Papadopoulos said he made “a terrible mistake, for which I have paid a terrible price, and am deeply ashamed,” and that he was motivated to lie to the FBI try to “create distance between the issue, myself, and the president.”

In hindsight, he said in court, he recognizes that was wrong and “might have harmed the investigation.”

Papadopoulos’s attorney, Thomas M. Breen, went further, saying “the President of the United States hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever could,” by calling the investigation fake news and a witch hunt.

It seems like small potatoes, but in reality George was a small potato.  Like it or not, Mueller has bigger fish to deal with, like Paul Manafort.

Paul Manafort’s lawyers have talked to U.S. prosecutors about a possible guilty plea to avert a second criminal trial set to begin in Washington this month, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, was convicted of bank and tax fraud last month in a Virginia federal court. He’s accused in Washington of financial crimes including conspiring to launder money, as well as acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Ukraine and obstructing justice.

The negotiations over a potential plea deal have centered on which charges Manafort might admit and the length of the sentence to be recommended by prosecutors working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the person familiar with the matter said. Manafort, 69, already faces as long as 10 years in prison under advisory sentencing guidelines in the Virginia case.

By pleading guilty, Manafort could avoid the risk of a longer prison term if he’s convicted at a second trial, as well as the threat of forfeiting several properties and financial accounts. He could also save the cost of paying lawyers to defend him at trial. Such white-collar criminal cases can cost defendants millions of dollars.

The talks may break down without a deal, but if they succeed, they could prompt Mueller to request a reduced sentence in both the Washington and Virginia cases. It’s not clear whether Manafort might cooperate in Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to the person. Trump, who said he was “very sad” after Manafort’s conviction, could still pardon him.

This could be Manafort fishing for a pardon now, but it's a dangerous game, ask Michael Cohen, who's going to be in jail for quite some time, about that.  Still, Republicans probably want the Manafort trial to go away ASAP rather than a long drawn out trial smack in the middle of midterm campaigns, and Manafort knows it.

We'll see if the deal happens soon.

And speaking of Cohen, the campaign finance probe is apparently far from over.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating whether anyone in the Trump Organization violated campaign-finance laws, in a follow-up to their conviction last month of Michael Cohen, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The inquiry, not previously reported, shows that the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office doesn’t intend to stand down following the guilty plea from Trump’s longtime personal lawyer. Manhattan prosecutors are working on a parallel track to U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is tasked with examining Russian interference in the presidential election and who is referring other matters as they arise to appropriate sections of the Justice Department.

Representatives of the prosecutors in New York declined to comment, while officials for the Trump Organization didn’t immediately respond to several requests for comment.

Among other crimes, Cohen admitted to violating campaign finance laws. He acknowledged that he paid off a woman who claimed to have had an affair with the president, saying he did it at the direction of the candidate himself and that Trump’s company then repaid him. Notably, the president said the next day that Cohen’s acts weren’t a crime. Whether others in Trump’s orbit were complicit -- steering money to benefit his campaign without making proper disclosures or by exceeding federal limits -- is not yet clear. No one else has been charged.

Again, more charges ill be coming from this, and it won't be Mueller running the probe.  Trump can't shut down everything without proving his guilt and causing a massive headache for Republicans going forward.

Stay tuned.  This is all far, far from over.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Earlier this week I talked about Denmark's Danske Bank, facing a massive scandal involving Russian money laundering through its tiny Estonian branch.  It turns out however that the $30 billion in rotten rubles was really more like $150 billion or more, as the scandal has exploded into a full-blown international incident.

Investigators at Denmark’s largest bank are studying around $150 billion of transactions that flowed through its Estonian outpost between 2007 and 2015 as part of an internal money-laundering probe, according to people familiar with the matter.

Much of that figure, which dwarfs Estonia’s total deposits, came from companies with ties to Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Danske Bank A/S has been criticized by its regulator for lax oversight of illicit money flows. The bank’s investigators haven’t determined if all $150 billion handled by non-Estonian entities should be deemed suspicious. But such a large flow of money suggests that roughly $8 billion of suspected money-laundering transactions previously reported by a Danish newspaper could grow higher.

Shares in the bank traded down more than 7% on Friday after The Wall Street Journal reported on the scope of the investigation.

The $150 billion figure, which has been presented to the bank’s board of directors, is a substantial sum considering Estonia’s entire banking system reports total deposits of €17 billion ($19 billion). Even in the context of Russia, the suspected source of some of the funds, the figure would represent more than a year’s worth of the country’s corporate profits. The flows would have stayed in the branch for only a short time before leaving Estonia, according to a person familiar with the investigation, so wouldn’t fully show up in official statistics.

“Any conclusions should be drawn on the basis of verified facts and not fragmented pieces of information taken out of context,” Danske Bank Chairman Ole Andersen said in a statement. “As we have previously communicated, it is clear that the issues related to the portfolio were bigger than we had previously anticipated.” The bank says the results of its probe are being finalized.

Danske’s Estonian branch is the subject of criminal investigations in Denmark and Estonia, prosecutors in the countries said. The Danish Financial Supervisory Authority reprimanded the bank for weak controls in May and ordered Danske to hold about $800 million more in capital, but didn’t issue a fine.

The problems at Danske highlight the growing concern among authorities about how illicit money flows—especially from Russia—are channeled through European-regulated banks to the West.

Shell companies, including many registered in the U.K., controlled most of the accounts in question, and many of the accounts had links to people in Russia and former Soviet Union countries, people familiar with the matter said. The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority isn’t probing the bank, according to a person familiar with the matter.

I bet that's going to change.  And again, I bet Robert Mueller is taking a long, hard look at that 2007-2015 period too, especially the last three years.

Don't be surprised if some familiar names come up in this investigation.

Deportation Nation, Con't

The Trump regime is now officially pursuing permanent detainment of undocumented minors, so as the country wrestles with Trump's fitness for office and phantom op-eds, America's official policy will soon be kids in cages, all day, every day.

The Trump administration took the first official step Thursday toward withdrawing from a court agreement limiting the government’s ability to hold minors in immigration jails, a move that could lead to the rapid expansion of detention facilities and more time in custody for children.

The changes proposed by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services would attempt to terminate the Flores Settlement Agreement, the federal consent decree that has shaped detention standards for underage migrants since 1997.

The maneuver is almost certain to land the administration back in court, while raising the odds that the government eventually could petition the Supreme Court to grant the expanded detention authority lower courts have denied.

U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee, who oversees the Flores agreement, has rejected the government’s requests to extend the amount of time migrant children can be held in immigration jails beyond the limit of 20 days. The administration’s new proposal does not set limits on the amount of time children could be held in detention. Rather, it seeks the authority to hold migrant children and their parents until their cases have been adjudicated, a process that could take months.

DHS officials said the change would not undermine the protections mandated by the court agreement, but would instead fully implement them as a set of formal policies to ensure migrant children are treated “with dignity, respect and special concern for their particular vulnerability as minors,” according to a statement.

“Today, legal loopholes significantly hinder the Department’s ability to appropriately detain and promptly remove family units that have no legal basis to remain in the country,” DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement. “This rule addresses one of the primary pull factors for illegal immigration and allows the federal government to enforce immigration laws as passed by Congress.”

Because permanent detainment of children as immigration criminals is "in their best interest".

Jesus.

There is cartoonishly evil, and there is locking up kids for the crime of existing in America.  Will the rest of the world continue to overlook our obvious human rights crimes, or will somebody finally stand up to America and take action?

StupidiNews!

• India's highest court has unanimously overturned a 150-year-old colonial era ban on gay sex, allowing LGBT Indians the first steps towards equality.
• China is warning the UK that post-Brexit free trade talks could be in jeopardy after a British warship sailed by Chinese-claimed islands last week.
• Mexican officials say at least 166 bodies have been discovered in several mass graves in the state of Veracruz, authorities believe the graves are connected to drug trafficking violence.
• US businesses are scrambling to avoid $200 billion in new Trump Chinese tariffs that could go into effect as soon as today, the public comment period ended Thursday with no Beijing trade deal.
• After congressional testimony this week on the company's role in spreading fake news, Twitter has handed down a permanent ban on Alex Jones and his Infowars site.

Last Call For Supreme Misgivings, Con't

Republicans have been doing everything possible to hide the judicial record of Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, from scrutiny.  They've sat on literally one million such documents, and only released about 45,000 of them the night before the Senate Judiciary hearings got underway on Tuesday.  

When Democrats objected to such nonsense, chair Sen. Chuck Grassley assured the Democrats that his office had reviewed every document, and that it was Democrats who were not doing due diligence.

Cory Booker then went off, daring Grassley to cesure him by releasing these documents himself.

Still, that meant hundreds of thousands of documents were being blocked under executive privilege from Kavanaugh's time working as White House counsel for George W. Bush. and it was only a matter of time before the nastier documents on Kavanaugh's judicial views leaked to the press.

As a White House lawyer in the Bush administration, Judge Brett Kavanaugh challenged the accuracy of deeming the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision to be “settled law of the land,” according to a secret email obtained by The New York Times.

The email, written in March 2003, is one of thousands of documents that a lawyer for President George W. Bush turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Supreme Court nominee but deemed “committee confidential,” meaning it could not be made public or discussed by Democrats in questioning him in hearings this week. It was among several an unknown person provided to The New York Times late Wednesday.

Judge Kavanaugh was considering a draft opinion piece that supporters of one of Mr. Bush’s conservative appeals court nominees hoped they could persuade anti-abortion women to submit under their names. It stated that “it is widely accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land.”

Judge Kavanaugh proposed deleting that line, writing: “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.”

[Read the e-mail.]

He was presumably referring to then-Justices William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, along with Justice Clarence Thomas, conservatives who had dissented in a 1992 case that reaffirmed Roe, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The court now has four conservative justices who may be willing to overturn Roe — Justices Thomas and John C. Roberts Jr., Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — and if he is confirmed, Judge Kavanaugh could provide the decisive fifth vote.

Still, his email stops short of saying whether he personally believed that the abortion rights precedent should be considered a settled legal issue.

This alone should have disqualified Kavanaugh, clearly he's going to overturn Roe and allow states to decide whether or not abortion is legal.

What Democrats are going to do to stop him, I don't know, but the charade is clearly over.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Just A Few Miles Away

America's mass shooting epidemic came to Cincinnati this morning, with four people killed, including the gunman, when a man opened fire in the lobby of the Fifth Third Center building downtown on Fountain Square.

Gunshots and chaos erupted in the heart of Cincinnati's downtown Thursday morning when a man opened fire in the lobby of Fifth Third Center, killing three people and wounding two others.

Dozens of police officers rushed to the scene and exchanged gunfire with the suspect as a crowd of people who had been on their way to work scattered across Fountain Square to safety.

Police said the gunman, who has not been identified, is dead.

The four fatalities, including the gunman, make this one of the deadliest mass shootings in Greater Cincinnati in years.

"There was definitely a lot of blood," said Zach Fritzhand, who saw police taking victims out of the building.

When the shots first rang out at 9:10 a.m., people ran or took over where they stood. Many were getting their morning coffee or a donut before work when they heard gunshots and screams.

Michael Richardson was smoking in front of the building when he saw a man open fire in the lobby.

"A bunch of cops were coming in with guns," he said. "I saw a lady down. A Cincinnati police officer dragged her out of the bank. She was talking. She was bleeding. Her shirt was red."

Leonard Cain said he saw a woman wearing headphones get shot as she entered the building. He said she dropped to the ground, and everyone else started running.

City Councilman Wendell Young said during Thursday's City Council session he was told the shooter had more than 500 rounds of ammunition.

If that's true, Young said, the body count would have been much higher “if not for the brave intervention of our first responders.”

Mayor John Cranley also praised the quick response from police and said he regretted Cincinnati had joined the growing list of American cities that have experienced mass shootings in the past year.

"There's something deeply sick at work here and we as a country need to work on it," Cranley said.

So now the area where I live now has to deal with America's most deadly disease, questions will be asked, and maybe Mayor Cranley and the City Council will try to take action, but Ohio statehouse Republicans have made it clear that home rule gun safety measures will not be tolerated.  A federal judge blocked the city's bump stock ban six weeks ago after a similar ban in Columbus was struck down, and Cincinnati was sued.

Can't wait until metal detectors start appearing in all downtown buildings and City Hall, because that's coming before the end of the year, but it won't help.

Sigh.

The Greatest Coward In Modern Political History

The self-serving "anonymous" Trump regime official who penned this NY Times op-ed trying to be the hero and keep enabling Trump to do what Republicans want is my definition of the very problem in modern American politics today.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The Times is tight-lipped about the true identity of the author, but the smart money is on Vice Dictator Mike Pence (who would have the most to gain from the existence of such a piece under both Occam's Razor and cui bono plus the clout to get the NYT to agree to run it), Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats (who is smart enough to make the piece sound like Pence wrote it but is a total desk weenie coward with Senate connections and is from Indiana, close enough to Pence to serve as his proxy), or Attorney General Jeff Sessions (who has the least to lose by writing such a piece as he's on his way out, and is crafty enough to crib Pence's speech notes, and who also has Senate connections).

Long shot: Jim Mattis, who is also on the way out.

Whoever the author is, they're a complete and utter coward, however. LA Times columnist Jessica Roy sums it up very well.

The truth is, Republicans don't want Trump out of office. They're clearly pleased with this “two-track” arrangement. They're advancing the right-wing economic agenda that President Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz would have been championing while preserving their popularity with Trump's base.

If you're reading this, senior White House official, know this: You are not resisting Donald Trump. You are enabling him for your own benefit. That doesn't make you an unsung hero. It makes you a coward.

It's this that makes me believe it's one of these three people.  Trump had an afternoon-long Twitter screaming fit, demanding the NY Times reveal the author's identity for "national security" but I'm willing to bet I'm right on this.

Still, Trump has his "fake news witch hunt conspiracy" to rally the base, and the author can come forward when the time is right to be the hero and claim Trump's head (which is why I think it's Pence, if I had to hang my hat on one of the three).  If they play it right, they have a lot to gain, but remember, whoever they are, they're a manipulative coward. Adam Serwer in the Atlantic this morning:

The biggest open secret in Washington is that Donald Trump is unfit to be president. His staff knows it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell knows it. House Speaker Paul Ryan knows it. Everyone who works for the president, including his attorneys, knows it. But they all want something, whether it’s upper-income tax cuts, starving the social safety net, or solidifying a right-wing federal judiciary. The Constitution provides for the removal of a president who is dangerously unfit, but those who have the power to remove him will not do so not out of respect for democracy, but because Trump is a means to get what they want. The officials who enable the Trump administration to maintain some veneer of normalcy, rather than resigning and loudly proclaiming that the president is unfit, are not “resisters.” They are enablers.

The anonymous Times op-ed writer is no different. While claiming that they and other officials are “thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses,” the op-ed provides few examples of this, and the author must know that the mere existence of their piece will only inflame those impulses. Already Trump has declared that “the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!” If the president ever decides to issue unconstitutional orders to the Justice Department or the Pentagon, he and his supporters will point to this op-ed and claim that drastic action was necessary to “protect democracy.”

As I have said time and time again, Trump is the symptom, the real problem has been the "gutless" Republican cowards enabling him, and whoever wrote that NYT op-ed is my Exhibits A through ZZ supporting that theory.

Bottom line:

The op-ed is an attempt to take out an insurance policy for the GOP and conservatism if and when things get much much worse. It's a very public hedge meant to preserve the reputation of the GOP's entire political and governing class.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 5, 2018

This is one of Trump's chief enablers covering the ass of the Republican party.  It's part of a larger plan going forward.  Part of that plan is for the writer to reveal themselves, and very soon. Count on that.

But for right now, they're buying time so that Brett Kavanaugh can be confirmed to the Supreme Court at record speed.  Once that's done, all bets are off.

StupidiNews!

• As the remnants of Tropical Storm Gordon dump rain on the Ohio Valley, Hurricane Florence has reached Category 4 strength and could threaten the East Coast  next week.
• One person is confirmed dead and 32 missing after a magnitude 6.7 quake near the Japanese island of Hokkaido knocked out power to millions and triggered landslides slowing rescue and recovery.
• North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is now saying he wants to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula "during Trump's first term" according to South Korean officials.
• Hong Kong has surpassed New York City as the home to the most individuals worth $30 million or more as Chinese millionaires are on the rise and returning from overseas.
• Amazon has joined Apple as the first two US companies to reach the $1 trillion mark as the retail shipping giant continues to grow and expand.

Last Call For The Anti-Social Network, Con't

Facebook and Twitter execs faced tough questions on Capitol Hill today over failure to stop Russian propaganda operations and white supremacist users (Google didn't even bother to show up apparently) and it did not go well for any of them, especially when Alex Jones showed up as a guest.

The Senate Intelligence committee's hearing on election interference on social media Wednesday swiftly turned into unconventional political theater, complete with a conspicuously empty chair set aside to highlight Google's absence and a notable cameo from InfoWars host Alex Jones.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg fielded questions for nearly three hours on their companies' efforts to combat online disinformation and foreign influence operations ahead of the midterm elections. Lawmakers also pressed the executives on an array of issues including data privacy, hate speech and doing business China.

But it was Jones, who claims he's being silenced by the tech giants, who grabbed attention outside the hearing room, where a scrum of reporters huddled around him as he pontificated on the wrongs he said the industry has done him. The far-right provocateur, known for spreading baseless conspiracy theories, at times took a seat in the front row of the hearing room as Dorsey and Sandberg testified.

No wonder then that new numbers from Pew Research finds Americans are dumping Facebook like toxic waste (along with Trump having the same effect on Twitter) and that the primary social media networks of this decade may not even make it into the next.

Just over half of Facebook users ages 18 and older (54%) say they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Around four-in-ten (42%) say they have taken a break from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more, while around a quarter (26%) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their cellphone. All told, some 74% of Facebook users say they have taken at least one of these three actions in the past year.

The findings come from a survey of U.S. adults conducted May 29-June 11, following revelations that the former consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had collected data on tens of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge.

Facebook has separately faced scrutiny from conservative lawmakers and pundits over allegations that it suppresses conservative voices. The Center found that the vast majority of Republicans think that social platforms in general censor political speech they find objectionable. Despite these concerns, the poll found that nearly identical shares of Democrats and Republicans (including political independents who lean toward either party) use Facebook. Republicans are no more likely than Democrats to have taken a break from Facebook or deleted the app from their phone in the past year.

There are, however, age differences in the share of Facebook users who have recently taken some of these actions. Most notably, 44% of younger users (those ages 18 to 29) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their phone in the past year, nearly four times the share of users ages 65 and older (12%) who have done so. Similarly, older users are much less likely to say they have adjusted their Facebook privacy settings in the past 12 months: Only a third of Facebook users 65 and older have done this, compared with 64% of younger users. In earlier research, Pew Research Center has found that a larger share of younger than older adults use Facebook. Still, similar shares of older and younger users have taken a break from Facebook for a period of several weeks or more. 

It's Millennials who are abandoning Facebook, and without them, the network is done. Generation Z won't even have Facebook around to get into at this rate.  Google is in the best position of the three, but that's not saying much.

Couldn't happen to a nicer group of privacy-abusing assholes.

The End Of The Session(s), Con't

Last week I talked about Donald Trump all but firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, with both Sens. Lindsay Graham and Chuck Grassley giving Trump tacit permissions to fire him after the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was wrapped up. But it seems Trump's true cabinet -- FOX News hosts and right-wing pundit sites -- want Sessions's head on a pike now, and are telling Trump that he needs to make his move as soon as possible.

“It’s clear Jeff Sessions is more concerned with his career than the good of America. That said, it’s high time President Trump fires his ineffective Attorney General,” Eric Bolling, a close Trump friend and a former Fox News personality, told The Daily Beast on Monday. “I would NOT, however, fire [special counsel Robert] Mueller. For no other reason than political optics.”

He was hardly the only one calling for Sessions’ head for his alleged failure to protect Trump due to the attorney general’s recusal from the Russia probe. According to several people who speak regularly to Trump, the president still keeps polling his inner circle and allies for their take on what he should do about Sessions, all the while highlighting what he views as Sessions’ weaknesses, failings, and annoying qualities.

And nowhere is Trump’s fury on this better reflected and projected than on his preferred conservative media behemoth.

For her Labor Day weekend episode of Justice With Judge Jeanine, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro dedicated her opening monologue to personally and professionally trashing Trump’s attorney general as a witless “shill” and as a pathetic enabler of supposed “corruption by the Democrats.”

Her overarching message to Sessions was: Nobody likes you, nerd.

“What don’t you get? Have you no self-esteem, self-regard, self-respect? Where is your dignity? Why would you stay in a job where you’re not wanted?… And why do you continue to stay?” Pirro said in her lengthy “Opening Statement” on the program. “You’re so clueless you don’t even know you’re being used. You don’t even know you’re nothing but a shill. In fact, the only constituency that wants you is the ‘Deep State’… Are you proud of yourself?”

“Are you kidding? All of America knows the DOJ continues to be to be influenced by politics," she added. "You need to do one of two things: Resign immediately, because you are not wanted. Or put on your big boy pants and be a real attorney general.”

Pirro is a longtime friend and ally of Trump’s, and she had even been interviewedduring the Trump presidential transition for the job of deputy attorney general. The president watches her weekend show routinely, and Pirro stands in the same Trumpworld echelon as someone like Sean Hannity, another Fox star who doubles as a confidant and top outside adviser to Trump.

This seems to me to be a coordinated move in order to get Sessions to resign, by application of a hint fired out of railgun.  The plan of course is to neuter the Mueller probe, and make sure its conclusions never reach the light of day.  Rudy Giuliani gave away that game on Monday.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said that the administration may claim executive privilege to block Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein from releasing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report when the investigation is finished, according to a New Yorker report.

Giuliani claims that President Donald Trump’s original legal team—which has undergone many mutations since—cut a deal with Mueller that that the White House can object to public dissemination of information from the probe on the grounds of executive privilege.

When asked if the White House is likely to invoke this clause, Giuliani was frank: “I’m sure we will.”

And with Kavanaugh as the fifth vote on SCOTUS even if the Democrats with back the House, Trump then buries the report permanently, the GOP in Congress does nothing, and the investigation vanishes.

Greg Sargent says this is all part of the plan to bury the Mueller report.

Could this work? On Tuesday, I spoke to Andrew Kent, a professor at Fordham University School of Law. The short answer is: Probably not, but there are scenarios under which it could have some success, and a lot may turn on whether Democrats win back one or both chambers of Congress.

Under the special counsel regulations, Mueller is supposed to provide a “confidential” report explaining his conclusions to the attorney general — or, in this case, to Rosenstein, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself. Rosenstein, not Mueller, is then supposed to provide the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate judiciary committees with an “explanation” for the Justice Department’s decision to conclude the investigation.

This explanation can be released publicly if the Justice Department official overseeing the probe decides it would be “in the public interest.” In this scenario, Rosenstein would have a great deal of discretion to decide how much to put in that report — he could keep it very brief, or supply a lot of detail.

Kent tells me the White House could try to override the regulations and stop the report’s release to Congress — or at least part of it — by claiming executive privilege covers certain information in it. Kent says most of the information in the report probably would not plausibly be covered by any such claim, but that Trump might try to assert that much of it is, anyway.

And should Rosenstein object, he's fired or replaced, and the new overseer of the Mueller probe refuses to release the report at all.  The only way it happens is if Congress subpoenas the report, which will never happen unless the Dems can take back the House or Senate in November.

It's possible then, very possible in fact, that Trump may not actually fire Robert Mueller, but simply erase the report.  Either way, Jeff Sessions will not be Attorney General in 2019, that's a 100% certainty at this point.

He may not be Attorney General by the end of the month.

Stay tuned.

Battering Rahm, Or Replacing An Emanuel Transmission

There will be no third term for Chicago's Democratic Mayor and former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, as his utter failure in the police killing of Laquan McDonald four years ago has now grown into a millstone large enough to drown him in the Chicago River. Vox's German Lopez:

The primary cause: Emanuel and his office played key roles in delaying the release of video of the 2014 police shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black 17-year-old.

The footage, which was released more than a year after the shooting, revealed that police had lied about what happened. Instead of lunging at police, as officers said, the teenager appeared to stumble around and move away from the officers when he was shot. The video, autopsy, and other forensic evidence also indicated that the officer who shot McDonald did so for as long as 15 seconds straight, with most of the shots seemingly fired after McDonald fell to the ground.

The release of the video led to heavy protests — as the shooting became part of the broader Black Lives Matter movement, which protests racial disparities in policing and particularly police use of force. Much of the criticism fell on Emanuel and other city officials, who in court resisted calls to release the video earlier, citing an ongoing investigation. A judge forced the release of the video despite the mayor’s resistance.

The video led to an investigation of the Chicago Police Department by the US Department of Justice, then led by President Barack Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The subsequent report found that Chicago police often treat people in minority communities “as animals or subhuman,” resulting in widespread racial discrimination and excessive use of force. The report was a huge political blow for Emanuel (who was White House chief of staff under Obama): As mayor he oversees the city’s police force.

The officer who shot McDonald, Jason Van Dyke, is now on trial over the shooting, facing first-degree murder charges.

It says something that Rahm bailed on his $10 million campaign war chest before the verdict in McDonald shooting (he was done either way, frankly) but the guy has been a complete failure across the board as Mayor.

Emanuel tried to recover in the aftermath of the video’s release and Justice Department report — naming a new police superintendent and carrying out some policing reforms, including the adoption of body cameras and new training. “Nothing less than complete and total reform of the system and the culture that it breeds will meet the standard we have set for ourselves as a city,” he told the City Council, according to the New York Times.

But the efforts were widely seen as too little, too late. As the Times noted, “Mr. Emanuel’s seven and a half years as Chicago mayor can be separated into periods: pre-Laquan and post-Laquan” — with the post-Laquan period marking a downturn for Emanuel as critics demanded his resignation for what they saw as a cover-up in the McDonald police shooting.

There were other problems as well. Gun violence was a big one — leading to big protests across Chicago last month, in which demonstrators demanded that Emanuel resign and other efforts be taken up to clean up the streets and provide new economic and education opportunities in the city’s worst-off neighborhoods. The Tribune also reported that Emanuel “had drawn the ire of some voters for record property taxes he instituted to shore up the city’s woefully underfunded police employee pensions and for closing 50 schools in 2013.”

I'm not sorry to see him go in the least.  There are Democrats who are unremittingly awful human beings who need to be driven out of politics for good, and Rahm Emanuel is one of them.

Door, ass, way out.

StupidiNews!

• Ten-term Dem incumbent Rep. Mike Capuano lost in a massive, historic primary upset to Ayanna Pressley last night, 58-41% as she would become the state's first black female Congresswoman.
• For the first time, Japanese officials are acknowledging that a Tokyo Electric Power worker died after being exposed to radiation by the 2011 tsunami at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
• UK officials have named two Russian suspects in the attempted murder of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia by military-grade nerve agent.
• Donald Trump will meet with Republican leaders in Congress to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month, Trump has threatened a "good shutdown" to get border wall funding.
• A company that makes lidar laser sensors for driverless cars has figured out how to turn them into cameras as well, a move that could put the startup on the map in the driverless car tech race.