Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

With 10 days until the Midterms, Donald Trump plans to go all in on anti-immigrant racism next week in order to rally his fearful, hate-filled base.

President Trump is preparing to announce a sweeping border crackdown in a speech Tuesday, a week before the midterm elections, in which he is expected to invoke emergency powers to stop migrants from entering the United States and depict them as a grave national security threat, administration officials said Friday.

Trump is considering steps that would bar migrants from crossing the border and deny them a chance to apply for asylum in the United States, measures that legal scholars and immigrant rights groups say would contravene U.S. laws and international treaties, likely triggering challenges in federal court.

The president, undeterred, has been buoyed by rising approval ratings in recent weeks and eager to cudgel his Democratic rivals on border issues, depicting the migrant caravan moving through Mexico as a menace to U.S. security.

Administration officials with knowledge of the speech preparations said the exact measures Trump will announce remain under discussion, as attorneys from the Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department and White House attempt to craft policies that put the administration on the least-vulnerable legal footing.

Trump plans to approach the speech as a chance to lay out his vision for an overhaul of immigration policies and border security, according to aides, eager to whip up his base and convince voters his party will take a firm stand on border security.

Democrats have accused Trump and Republicans of “fearmongering” on immigration ahead of the election.

“President Trump’s immigration policies have been a failure from day one,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “Unlike previous presidents, he has failed to work with our partners in the region, and we are seeing the consequences of his failure today.”

Trump will say he's going to seal the border and make a big production out of it, his base will buy it and go vote because they dream of the day when they can burst open heads like melons and they believe Trump will give them the chance to make that happen. 

Having such an order immediately blocked by a federal judge so that Trump can scream about the horde of evil brown people days before the midterms guarantees that the MAGAbomber gets off the front page too.

And if Hispanic or black folk get hurt or killed on the way to polling places as a result of the rhetoric, well that only means Trump is a manly man, doesn't it?  What they really want is for Trump to have to declare a national emergency and suspend rule of law, and then things get really fun, don't they?

Trump sure does love his autocrat playbook, because he's using every page in it on the way to his burgeoning dictatorship.

That Little Domestic Terroism Problem Of Ours, Con't

The MAGAbomber, as the suspect in the spate of dangerous packages this week mailed to Trump's enemies' list has been called on Twitter, has apparently been caught by law enforcement.

A man in Florida with a lengthy criminal record was arrested Friday in connection with the suspected mail bombs sent to high profile figures, authorities said.

The arrest came after law enforcement responded to two more devices on Friday — one in Florida, the other in New York — pushing the total number of packages found by authorities to 12. All of the devices were sent to people who have criticized or clashed with President Trump, and while none have detonated, officials have been on high alert and worried about whether more could be delivered.

The suspect has been identified as Cesar Sayoc, 56, according to a law enforcement official. State records show he had a criminal record dating back decades, including a past arrest for making a bomb threat.

These run-ins with law enforcement date back at least to an arrest for larceny when Sayoc was 29 years old, according to state records. Other charges of larceny, grand theft and fraud soon followed across the southern part of the state. In 2002, the Miami police arrested him for a bomb threat, a felony. Sayoc pleaded guilty without trial and was sentenced to probation, the records show.

According to the police report, Sayoc called Florida Power and Light, a power company, in August 2002 and threatened to blow them up.

“It would be worse than September 11th,” Sayoc said, according to the police report, which also said Sayoc threatened the company’s representative with physical harm if his electricity was turned off.

And of course, he's a registered Republican and a die-hard Trump fan who apparently had a white van covered with pro-Trump, anti-Democratic propaganda and he regularly went after liberals on social media.

Sayoc—who was named by several national media outlets as the man authorities arrested Friday in connection with the attempted bombings—tweeted frequently from what appears to be his account: @hardrock2016.

The account and his Facebook profile, which feature pictures of Sayoc, 56, at Trump rallies, also contain some of the same images plastered to Sayoc’s van, including flags for Florida’s Seminole tribe and collages of pro-Trump and anti-CNN meme stickers.

The Facebook account is almost exclusively pro-Trump content, including pictures and videos Sayoc purportedly filmed at one of the president’s political rallies. And the Twitter feed is littered with far-right conspiracy theories or violent threats aimed at some of President Trump’s most outspoken critics.

He appears to have repeatedly tweeted about George Soros, the liberal billionaire philanthropist who has long been the target of far-right, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

At one point, Sayoc purportedly wrote “you will vanish” in a tweet aimed at the billionaire. Soros received a suspicious package at his Westchester County home on Monday—the first of at least 12 mailed to liberal public figures this week.

Other tweets falsely claimed the February 2018 mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was a false-flag operation orchestrated by Soros and his liberal allies.

It's weird how all of these domestic terrorists and mass shooters over the last couple of years are all registered Republicans who voted for and loved Donald Trump, hated liberals and the media, believed and spread conspiracy theories, and resorted to deadly violence in order to "win".  It's almost like Trump's rhetoric is gasoline on a bonfire and that Trump shares some responsibility for his legion of orcs howling for blood.

I mean it's not like the guy goes around the country regularly calling for violence against and prosecution of people he considers to be his political enemies, right?

 

Another #MeToo Moment, Con't

Only slightly behind the Trump regime and Congress and Hollywood as far as places where powerful men abuse women and have gotten away with it is Silicon Valley, and perhaps the tech industry is the worst at dealing with it.  Case in point, the latest NY Times bombshell report on legendary former Google executive Andy Rubin, the man behind the company's multi-billion dollar Android mobile operating system, and how his firing from the Big G involved a $90 million golden parachute and a 4-year cover-up.

Google gave Andy Rubin, the creator of Android mobile software, a hero’s farewell when he left the company in October 2014.

“I want to wish Andy all the best with what’s next,” Larry Page, Google’s chief executive then, said in a public statement. “With Android he created something truly remarkable — with a billion-plus happy users.”

What Google did not make public was that an employee had accused Mr. Rubin of sexual misconduct. The woman, with whom Mr. Rubin had been having an extramarital relationship, said he coerced her into performing oral sex in a hotel room in 2013, according to two company executives with knowledge of the episode. Google investigated and concluded her claim was credible, said the people, who spoke on the condition that they not be named, citing confidentiality agreements. Mr. Rubin was notified, they said, and Mr. Page asked for his resignation.

Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years, said two people with knowledge of the terms. The last payment is scheduled for next month.

It gets worse.  Much worse.

Mr. Rubin was one of three executives that Google protected over the past decade after they were accused of sexual misconduct. In two instances, it ousted senior executives, but softened the blow by paying them millions of dollars as they departed, even though it had no legal obligation to do so. In a third, the executive remained in a highly compensated post at the company. Each time Google stayed silent about the accusations against the men.

The New York Times obtained corporate and court documents and spoke to more than three dozen current and former Google executives and employees about the episodes, including some people directly involved in handling them. Most asked to remain anonymous because they were bound by confidentiality agreements or feared retribution for speaking out.

The transgressions varied in severity. Mr. Rubin’s case stood out for how much Google paid him and its silence on the circumstances of his departure. After Mr. Rubin left, the company invested millions of dollars in his next venture.

Sam Singer, a spokesman for Mr. Rubin, disputed that the technologist had been told of any misconduct at Google and said he left the company of his own accord. Mr. Singer said that Mr. Rubin did not engage in misconduct and that “any relationship that Mr. Rubin had while at Google was consensual and did not involve any person who reported directly to him.”

While Mr. Rubin’s exit from Google after an inappropriate relationship was previously reported, the nature of the accusation and the financial terms have not been disclosed.

Silicon Valley is broken.  Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, all these trillion-dollar companies are just too big and too powerful, and as we now know, too morally rotten to be allowed to continue. 

They must be broken up.

StupidiNews!

• The FBI continues to hunt for leads as more suspicious and dangerous packages have turned up mailed to prominent Democrats and vocal Trump regime critics.
• Two decades after Matthew Shepard was kidnapped and killed for being gay, his remains will be interred at the Washington National Cathedral.
• Saudi Arabia has changed its story on the murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi once again, now saying that his death was premeditated and not unintended.
• The pharmaceutical lobby is coming down hard on Donald Trump's proposal to lower drug prices by calling it "socialized medicine" that will lead to prescription shortages and cost lives.
• CBS has ordered a Star Trek animated series for its streaming service that will take the series to a new "frontier": comedy.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Time to check in with Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball team of election prognosticators as the 2018 midterm elections are now under two weeks away, and while Sabato sees Sen. Heitkamp's seat in North Dakota as vulnerable, the rest of the Senate map remains in play with Florida, Missouri and Indiana as true toss-ups that Dems must defend, and two GOP tossups that are vulnerable in Nevada and Arizona.  Texas and Tennessee remain in play for the Dems to pick up, as do Montana and WV for the GOP to go after.

On the House side, Sabato sees 20 pickups for the Dems and 2 for the GOP, 18 of the 23 pickups the Democrats would need, still leaving 20 GOP seats as tossups and 1 Dem tossup, and a staggering 33 more GOP leaners that could be picked off compared to just 2 for the Dems.  Longer shot races still find 29 more likely House Republican seats in play, with only 10 Dem likely seats in the same condition.  The Dems are in excellent position to retake the House.

Having said all that, it's the gubernatorial races that could be the most surprising.

The highlights of this week’s ratings changes come in the gubernatorial races, where we’re moving three additional races into the Toss-up column, giving us a whopping 10 races where we don’t see a favorite with less than two weeks to go. Red states Kansas and South Dakota go from Leans Republican to Toss-up, while Gov. Kate Brown (D-OR) moves from Leans Democratic to Toss-up.

Notice that these are all states with decided federal political leans where, nonetheless, the federal minority party may have a chance to steal a governorship. In the case of the minority parties in Oregon and South Dakota, gubernatorial wins would break very long losing streaks: A Republican has not won a governor’s race in the Beaver State since 1982, and a Democrat has not won such a contest in the Mount Rushmore State since 1974. A key ingredient in the potential upset bids of both state Senate Minority Leader Billie Sutton (D-SD) and state Rep. Knute Buehler (R-OR) is that they both can point to mainstream (for their respective states) positions on abortion: Sutton does not support abortion rights, Buehler does. Our sense is that both races are very close. Buehler is running against Brown’s management of the state; Sutton is running against Rep. Kristi Noem (R, SD-AL) as a Washington insider.

When it comes time to pick these races, as we will, it may be hard to go against the ingrained federal partisanship of each state. But they are very much in play.

The same goes for Kansas, where Democrats have won the governorship recently — for instance, former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS) won in 2002 and 2006 before becoming President Obama’s secretary of Health and Human Services. If this race was just a head-to-head contest between Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) and state Sen. Laura Kelly (D), Kelly probably would have an edge. But the presence of independent former 2014 Senate candidate Greg Orman has pushed this race into something of a tie, although some Republicans believe Kobach is a little bit ahead. Kelly has to hope Orman, who attracts something around 10% support, performs worse than that on Election Day, as often happens to third-party candidates. Kelly has the support of several prominent Kansas Republicans against Kobach, who is from the more conservative wing of the party. One challenge for Kelly: In a socially conservative state, she’s pro-choice on abortion.

One other change this week: Gov. Gina Raimondo (D-RI) has seemed very much in trouble throughout the cycle, but polling has shown her taking a stronger lead against her 2014 opponent, Allan Fung (R), as well as former state Rep. Joe Trillo, an ex-Republican who is running as a pro-Trump independent and splitting the vote in a way helpful to the incumbent. A group backed by the Republican Governors Association recently stopped running ads in the Ocean State, signaling that Raimondo’s path to a second term is clearer. We’re moving Rhode Island from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic.

So now we’re left with 10 gubernatorial Toss-ups, a situation similar to four years ago, where many gubernatorial races (although fewer) were up in the air at the same point of the cycle.

A quick word on all the current Toss-ups:

Of the three races we just moved to Toss-up, Kansas seems like it might be the likeliest to flip, but we also remember how embattled Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) was left for dead in 2014 but won anyway. However, that year featured a GOP-leaning national environment, whereas this one does not. If one goes by the polls, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers (D) may be a tiny favorite over Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI). The same is true of Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum (D) in his open-seat Florida race against former Rep. Ron DeSantis (R, FL-6), as well as state Attorney General Janet Mills (D) in Maine, where she faces businessman Shawn Moody (R) and a couple of independent candidates who may hurt her more than Moody. We don’t have even a slight lean at this point in Iowa, Nevada, and Ohio. In Georgia, we think a runoff is likelier than not.

One final note: Late last Friday, Gov. Bill Walker (I-AK) dropped out of the Alaska governor’s race. He remains on the ballot but his exit makes former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy’s (R) position a little less secure against ex-Sen. Mark Begich (D). We moved that race from Likely Republican to Leans Republican, but it remains the GOP’s best opportunity to win a governorship the party currently does not hold.

Overall, Democrats are going to net governorships, and perhaps many, but a lot of the individual races remain up in the air.

Oregon is always unpredictable, as is Alaska, and it's a shame that Ben Jealous isn't getting more help in Maryland against Larry Hogan.  But for Kansas, Iowa, and South Dakota to be in play right now really feels good.  Dems are already poised to pick up Michigan, New Mexico, and Illinois, and it's entirely possible that Dems could pick up eight more seats, vitally important going into 2020 and the Census.

We'll see.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

It's starting to look more and more like right-wing operative Roger Stone is the link between Russian intelligence actions to influence the 2016 contest and the Trump campaign, and that he's most likely going to prison for the rest of his life.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office has obtained communications suggesting that a right-wing conspiracy theorist might have had advance knowledge that the emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman had been stolen and handed to WikiLeaks, a source familiar with the investigation told NBC News.

Mueller's team has spent months investigating whether the conspiracy theorist, Jerome Corsi, learned before the public did that WikiLeaks had obtained emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers — and whether he passed information about the stolen emails to Donald Trump associate Roger Stone, multiple sources said.

Mueller's investigators have reviewed messages to members of the Trump team in which Stone and Corsi seem to take credit for the release of Democratic emails, said a person with direct knowledge of the emails.

The source and other people familiar with the matter say they have seen no evidence suggesting either man played any role in the hacking or release of the emails. Stone adamantly denies doing anything but passing on information already in the public domain.

Mueller's spokesman, Peter Carr, said the office had no comment. Corsi and his lawyer, David Gray, declined to comment.

There is zero doubt at this point that WikiLeaks was used by Putin's merry band of saboteurs as a clearing house for Russian intelligence operations and information.  There is zero doubt at this point that the Russians stole DNC emails through phishing.  There is zero doubt at this point that WikiLeaks was given those emails to distribute in order to cost Hillary Clinton the election.

If Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone knew these stolen DNC emails were coming from WikiLeaks beforehand, then they are the connection between Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign.

We also now know that Stone wanted to reward WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with a Trump pardon, and that Stone was pushing Trump to give Assange one in direct exchange for WikiLeaks' help in winning the election.

In early January, Roger Stone, the longtime Republican operative and adviser to Donald Trump, sent a text message to an associate stating that he was actively seeking a presidential pardon for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange—and felt optimistic about his chances. “I am working with others to get JA a blanket pardon,” Stone wrote, in a January 6 exchange of text messages obtained by Mother Jones. “It’s very real and very possible. Don’t fuck it up.” Thirty-five minutes later Stone added: “Something very big about to go down.”

The recipient of the messages was Randy Credico, a New York-based comedian and left-leaning political activist who Stone has identified as his backchannel to WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign—a claim Credico strongly denies. During the election, Stone, a political provocateur who got his start working for Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign, made statements that suggested he had knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to publish emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and other Democrats, and his interactions with WikiLeaks have become an intense focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian election interference. As Mueller’s team zeroes in on Stone, they have examined his push for an Assange pardon—which could be seen as an attempt to interfere with the Russia probe—and have questioned at least one of Stone’s associates about the effort.

Assange has not been publicly charged with a crime in the United States, though the Justice Department has investigated WikiLeaks over its publication of classified material and and role in releasing emails pilfered from Democratic targets by hackers working for Russian intelligence. Last year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions described arresting Assange, who for the last six years has taken refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy to evade criminal charges in Sweden stemming from a rape allegation, as a “priority.” Justice Department prosecutors have considered charges against Assange since 2010, when WikiLeaks released more than a quarter million diplomatic cables.

Credico says that Stone repeatedly discussed his effort to win a pardon for Assange. At one point, he notes, Stone claimed that he was working with Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News personality and former New Jersey Superior Court judge, on a plan in which Napolitano would float the idea on his show or directly to President Donald Trump. Napolitano said in a statement that he “categorically denies” working with Stone to secure a pardon for Assange.

Stone confirmed the pardon effort, though declined to answer specific questions. “I most definitely advocated a pardon for Assange,” he said in an email. He also said that he had “most certainly urged my friend Andrew Napolitano” to support an Assange pardon.

This is about as obvious as a conspiracy gets:  Russia steals DNC (and RNC!) emails, they give the emails to WikiLeaks, they inform Stone what's coming, Stone tells Trump.  When the Access Hollywood tapes drop, within hours the counterattack is the DNC email leak that wipes the story of Trump's massive history of criminal sexual assault off the front page.  Trump goes on to win the election, and in return Stone works to get WikiLeaks founder Assange a pardon.

That's just part of the huge mess, but a big part.  And Mueller has all this evidence on Stone, Corsi, and WikiLeaks.  Obstruction of justice abounds, Stone is in the middle of it all.

Stay tuned.

Deportation Nation, Con't

The party of separating refugee kids from their parents and keeping them in cages in detention camps seems to think that martial law on the southern border is going to be a political winner for them in a couple weeks.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) suggested that President Donald Trump might have to declare martial law along the southern border of the United States to prevent a large group of Central American refugees and migrants from entering the country.

Gohmert appeared Tuesday on the “Todd Starnes Radio Show,” a Fox News program, to discuss the so-called migrant caravan, a group of thousands of migrants currently en route to the United States to seek asylum or residence.

Starnes called the group of mostly Honduran nationals a “mob.”

“If, in fact, this mob heads towards California, what’s gonna happen then?” Starnes asked Gohmert. “Because [Democratic governor] Jerry Brown will welcome them. You know it’s a sanctuary state. Do you think the president will allow that to happen?”

“I don’t think the president will allow that to happen,” Gohmert replied, suggesting that Trump could send troops to the borders over Brown’s objections and that the California governor would be committing treason by aiding the migrants.

“This has got to be so massive, I mean, you might have to declare martial law along the border,” Gohmert said. “And the Democrats have been to stupid to realize that encouraging this caravan they may actually empower the president to do things they never wanted.”

When Starnes asked Gohmert what “martial law” would look like, the congressman responded that it would mean “federal troops coming in and being at the border, and if anyone tried to stop them, they could be dealt with.”

“You would probably need federal law enforcement to be there to arrest any Americans who might try to stop it,” he elaborated. “The military needs to have their weapons pointed towards Mexico and not toward the American people, but it may be that we have to have enough federal law enforcement, and maybe we have to have the National Guard if Jerry Brown is going to force the issue ― but I hope and pray he won’t be so stupid as to try to stop the U.S. government from enforcing our border because then we’re talking treasonous-type acts.”

I know picking on Louie Gohmert, arguably the most ignorant and brutish oaf in Congress (and that's really saying something in 2018) is the definition of low-hanging fruit, but Gohmert seems to be in the midst of an ecstasy of going the full Kent State on The Scary Brown Horde™ and that's, you know, crimes against humanity and what not.

But note the Gohmert makes no distinction between the fate of the convoy and that of the need for "weapons pointed towards the American people" because they're traitors in his eyes, and especially note that Gohmert considers this an excuse to use the full coercive power of violence reserved for the state against its political internal enemies to remove them from the earth.

As I keep saying, right now America is at hard six headed towards seven on the Ten Stages of Genocide, but Gohmert is ambitiously thinking we need to skip the whole "internment, removal and property theft" mass deportation phase of seven and go straight to the trial massacre part of eight where a whole lot of people end up dead.  I mean, China's moved quickly down this chart into seven with ethnic Uighur Muslims and Beijing is definitely in the concentration camp phase of that particular operation currently, eight is probably already underway.

Gohmert's just letting us know that the Trump regime plan is to blame Democrats when something similar becomes "necessary" here very, very soon.  They want that shooting war, they want that crackdown, and they want to finally purge America of those people so badly they can taste it.

Will anyone take a sitting Congressman to task for his call for martial law, mass roundups and even deadly force to be used on US citizens? Not Gohmert's Texas constituents.  Five Thirty Eight figures he'll get 70% of the vote anyway, at he does pretty much every two years.

Like I keep telling you guys, this is America.  This is who we are and always have been.

StupidiNews!

• Two are dead after a shooting at a Kroger store in Jeffersonville, Kentucky, a suspect killed a man inside the store and killed a woman in the parking lot before being apprehended later by police.
• Donald Trump has signed into law bipartisan anti-opioid abuse legislation that among other measures expands treatment under Medicaid and provides federal grant money for drug programs.
• China's defense minister is warning the West that Beijing will take actions "at any cost" to prevent Taiwan from breaking away in self-rule.
• Super Typhoon Yutu is the strongest storm to his the US Mariana Islands in nearly 70 years, the category 5 storm took direct aim at the US territory with nearly 180 MPH winds Wednesday.
• Apple will launch its own streaming service to compete with Netfilx and Hulu next year, the service's original content could be free to Apple device owners, but may not be available on other platforms.

Last Call For That Sinking Feeling

Don't look now, but the Obama boom is coming to a definite end under the Trump regime.

Stocks plummeted on Wednesday as a sharp drop in tech shares and worries about corporate earnings added fuel to this month's steep pullback.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 608.01 points at 24,583.42 and erased all of its gains for 2018. The S&P 500dropped 3.1 percent to 2,656.10 and also turned negative for the year. The Nasdaq Composite fell 4.4 percent to 7,108.40— entering correction territory — as Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet all traded lower.

"An increasingly murky macro picture is clouding the 2019 earnings outlook leaving investors to largely shrug off a solid start to the third quarter earnings season," said Alec Young, managing director of global markets research at FTSE Russell. "While valuations have certainly come down in recent weeks, at 16 times forward earnings for the Russell 1000 index, they aren't in the bargain basement by any means, especially if earnings growth slows more than expected next year."

Stocks have taken a beating this month. The Dow has dropped 7.1 percent in October, while the S&P 500 has pulled back 8.9 percent. The Nasdaq, meanwhile, has tumbled 11.7 percent.

Netflix tumbled 9.4 percent as investors second-guessed valuations for the once high-flying video streamer. Facebook and Alphabet both fell more than 5 percent, while Apple dropped 3.4 percent. AT&T, meanwhile, dropped more than 8.1 percent after releasing its quarterly results.

Worries about a slowing economy under pressure from rising interest rates grew after the Commerce Department said new home sales fell to a two-year low. The data also hit homebuilder stocks.The SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB) dropped 3.5 percent.

"The housing numbers were not good," said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade. "There's a lot of uncertainty heading into the end of the year. It just feels like people feel more comfortable spending short-term rather than long term."

We were in correction territory in March, but the Dow recovered and set a new record earlier this month.  Since then, in the last 3 weeks, the markets have dropped 10%.  I don't expect a full-on 2008 crash, not yet at least, but I sure as hell don't think Trump's people can prevent one from happening, not when the full impact of tariffs hit.

The cynical man inside says that this is being done on purpose, to create chaos in order to take advantage of it.  We know that's the Trump m.o. when it comes to his escape plans.  Should things turn against the GOP in three weeks, that chaos will be very handy.

It's far from the darkest time in our history, but it's the worst it has been for a while, and there's a fair distance down we can still go.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Nate Silver reminds us that predictions of Democrats taking the House (and Republicans keeping the Senate) are only as good as the accuracy of state-level polling, and the accuracy of state-level polling is only as good as the likely voter models in those polls. In 2014, 2015 and 2016, state-level polling underestimated Republican turnout because likely voter models were wrong, especially here in the Midwest.

The forecasts are in, and they say the 2018 elections can go any number of ways.

If you’re following election coverage and forecasting models, you know the conventional wisdom at this point: Democrats are the favorites to take the House, and Republicans are the favorites to hold on to the Senate.

FiveThirtyEight’s “classic” forecast — which has become the gold standard in elections forecasting — gives Democrats an 85.6 percent chance of retaking the House and Republicans a 81.3 percent chance of holding the Senate, as of Tuesday evening.

So both of those are highly likely to happen, right?

Well, one person who’s been trying to complicate that assessment is FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver himself.

One point Silver has made over and over again in recent weeks is that even if you take his House and Senate forecasts at face value, when you think about both of them together, there’s around a 40 percent chance that one of them will be wrong.

He elaborated on this on Twitter this week, making a point that’s important to understand — that a “very normal-sized polling error” in either direction could result in a dramatically different outcome.

If polls underestimate Republicans by 2-3 points—which is a very normal-sized polling error—the House is a district-by-district nail-biter.

If polls underestimate Dems by 2-3 points, their path to victory in the Senate is much more viable; toss-ups go their way, TN/TX close etc.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 22, 2018

That's a major issue.  If those state-level polls are once again underestimating Republican turnout as "likely voters" by 2-3 points, then a lot of those 29 GOP tossups I talked about yesterday become Republican leaners and the proposition of the Dems taking half of those tossups and the House becomes Republicans defending the vast majority of those seats and limiting their losses to 15-20.

In the Senate, that means that Republicans defend Nevada and Arizona and pick up North Dakota, but it also means they pick up Indiana, Missouri, Florida, Montana and maybe, just maybe New Jersey, one of Minnesota's seats (Tina Smith's), and Joe Manchin, Tammy Duckworth, and Debbie Stabenow have very, very long nights.

On the other hand, if this goes in the other direction, then yes, we see the Blue Wave scenario where Democrats pick up 40-50 seats and maybe more, and in the Senate, Dems defend nearly all of their Trump state seats and pick up Nevada and Arizona, and maybe even Tennessee and dare I say it, Beto slays a troll in Texas, and suddenly Dems have 51 or 52 in the upper chamber to go with it.

So yeah, I take Nate at his word when he says there's a decent chance one party takes Congress.

We should vote like we have that chance.  Early voting started in Florida on Monday and continues.

Arkansas, Alaska, Idaho, Massachusetts and Texas also opened their polls for early voting Monday. They will be followed by Hawaii, Louisiana and Utah on Tuesday; West Virginia on Wednesday; Maryland Thursday and the District of Columbia Friday.

Kansas and Oklahoma will start early voting next week.

A large swath of states -- including Arizona, California, Georgia, Virginia, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee -- have been voting early for weeks.

The time to cast your early vote in these states is now.  Do it today if you can.

That Little Domestic Terrorism Problem Of Ours, Con't

Somebody sure doesn't like Democrats and the media, to the point of, you know, targeting them in the mail with suspicious explosive packages.

Explosive devices were sent to former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as to CNN’s offices in New York, sparking an intense investigation on Wednesday into whether a bomber is going after targets that have often been the subject of right-wing ire.

The three devices were similar to one found Monday at the home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and liberal donor who has come under fierce criticism from conservatives and conspiracy theorists.

None of the devices harmed anyone. Law enforcement officials said they were investigating whether all the devices were sent by the same person or persons.

In a statement, the Secret Service said it had “intercepted two suspicious packages addressed to Secret Service protectees,” who were identified as Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama.

The device addressed to Mrs. Clinton in Westchester County was found late on Tuesday by a Secret Service employee who screens mail for her, the statement said. The package addressed to Mr. Obama was intercepted early on Wednesday by Secret Service personnel in Washington, who screened mail for the White House.

Shortly after the Secret Service made that announcement, the Time Warner Center, a major office complex in Midtown Manhattan, was evacuated after a similar device was discovered to have been sent to CNN’s offices there.

By the end of the week, Republicans will be screaming that Clinton sent them to herself as a false flag, tens of millions will believe it because it keeps them from having to deal with reality, and that maybe if they had exploded, America would be better off. 

Then they'll call Democrats a "violent mob" for the next forever while the very same media targeted for violence warns Democrats not to do anything rash and to blame the left for not being subservient enough to Angry White Working Class Voters™.

We know how this plays out.  The chance to edit this script is at the ballot box.

StupidiNews!

• Six children are dead, 12 more are infected due to an outbreak of adenovirus at a pediatric center in New Jersey, the facility is not accepting new patients until the outbreak is under control.
• Retired Supreme Court Justice and pioneer Sandra Day O'Connor has announced she has been diagnosed with dementia, most likely from Alzheimer's disease.
• House Republicans have postponed a Wednesday closed-door session grilling Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the rescheduled session could become a public hearing.
• Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is proceeding with a controversial investors' conference as international outrage grows over the death of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
• Republican attorneys general from Texas, Arkansas and Nebraska are weighing in on the side of the Trump regime against the 22 states challenging the FCC's termination of net neutrality regulations.

Last Call For The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

With two weeks to go, it's becoming a question of how big the bloodbath in the House is going to be for the GOP.  Dave Wasserman at Cook Political Report:

Two weeks out, district-level polls reflect a House battleground gradually polarizing along the lines of the 2016 presidential race. Democrats are maintaining leads over GOP opponents in upscale, Clinton-won "Whole Foods suburbs" of Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Minneapolis and Northern Virginia. But Republicans' numbers continue to improve in Trump-won districts in places like rural Minnesota, Upstate New York and Downstate Illinois.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows Democrats enjoy a four-point lead in midterm election interest, narrower than their ten points average lead for the first nine months of the year. It's likely that cultural flash points like the Kavanaugh confirmation fight and the "migrant caravan" are better-suited to rallying and awakening the Trump base than tax cuts, which mostly fell flat for Republicans in this year's special elections.

However, Democrats' staggering success in third quarter fundraising reports injects some last-minute uncertainty. An astounding 112 Democrats outraised GOP opponents in Republican-held seats between July and September. Of the 93 GOP incumbents who were outraised, 20 are currently in our Likely Republican column and 23 in Solid Republican. Democrats' late dominance in the air wars could produce several Election Night surprises.

Today, we're changing ratings in ten districts, including eight where Democrats' position has improved. Democrats now have a clear advantage in 17 GOP-held seats and Republicans have an advantage in two Democratic-held seats. If the 30 Toss Ups were to break evenly between the parties (15 seats apiece), Democrats would score a net gain of 29 seats, six more than the 23 they need to retake the majority.

And history tells us that toss-ups don't break evenly, but that a vast majority go to one side.  Cook's prediction of 29 is conservative, I personally think Dems can take 24 of those 30 tossups, plus 10 or 12 more of the GOP leaners in those surprise wins.  That would give Dems close to a 2010-style wave win of 50 or so pickups.

But again, that all depends on turnout.  If Republicans show up and we don't, all this crumbles to dust.  And we have to show up in numbers that not only beat systemic GOP voter suppression efforts, but historical midterm apathy and the Trump fear card rallying his toxic, hateful base.

Vote like your country depends on it, because it does.

Trump Cards, Con't

Because at this point one side is celebrating violence against journalists, covering up the murder of a Saudi dissident, and planting IEDs in George Soros's mailbox.

The explosive device found in a mailbox at the home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist, on Monday afternoon was relatively small, a senior law enforcement official said on Tuesday.

The device was “proactively denotated” by bomb squad technicians from the Westchester County Police Department.

The bomber’s motive remained unclear. Mr. Soros is a favorite target of right-wing groups. He was not home at the time.

The investigation has been taken over by the New York offices of the F.B.I. and the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, said the senior law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is open.

Federal and state law enforcement officials responded to the scene in Katonah, N.Y., a hamlet in the upscale town of Bedford in northern Westchester County, after the Bedford Police Department received a call about a suspicious package at about 3:45 p.m.

“An employee of the residence opened the package, revealing what appeared to be an explosive device,” the police said in a statement. “The employee placed the package in a wooded area and called the Bedford police.”

Later that day Donald Trump's latest rally lowlight while stumping for Ted Cruz in Texas was to declare himself a "nationalist" in opposition to "globalists" like Soros.

President Donald Trump declared himself a "nationalist" during his rally here on Monday night, officially tagging himself with the label that has long defined his populist rhetoric and protectionist policies. 

"A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly not caring about the country so much. You know, we can't have that," Trump said, prompting boos from the crowd. 

"You know what I am, I'm a nationalist," he added, as the crowd erupted in "USA! USA!" chants. "Use that word." 

The comment marked the first time Trump has directly associated himself with the political ideology, which has long defined his outlook and the protectionist trade policies he has implemented in an effort to boost domestic manufacturing. 

The remark came during a nearly hour-and-a-half-long rally in the arena that is home to the Houston Rockets, where the President rallied his base in this deeply red state 15 days before the midterms, stoking fears about illegal immigration, painting Democrats as criminal accomplices and basking in the glory of his accomplishments.

Keep in mind that when Trump and his friends uses the term "globalist", it means "eeeeevil Jewish cabal" the same way "inner city" means "poor black and criminal".  "Nationalist" here means the preceding term "white" is implied.  They are playing the fear card as often and as heavily as they can, and frankly it's working.

President Trump on Monday sharply intensified a Republican campaign to frame the midterm elections as a battle over immigration and race, issuing a dark and factually baseless warning that “unknown Middle Easterners” were marching toward the American border with Mexico.

The unsubstantiated charge marked an escalation of Mr. Trump’s efforts to stoke fears about foreigners and crime ahead of the Nov. 6 vote, as he did to great effect in the presidential race. Mr. Trump and other Republicans are insistently seeking to tie Democrats to unfettered immigration and violent crime, and in some instances this summer and fall they have attacked minority candidates in nakedly racial terms.

Mr. Trump is now railing daily in speeches and on Twitter against the migrant caravan moving north through Central America, and on Monday called it a national emergency. The caravan has dominated conservative talk radio and Fox News, where there has also been loose speculation about a link to terrorism. The apparently groundless inclusion of “unknown Middle Easterners” to the caravan echoes Mr. Trump’s longstanding practice of amplifying fears about Islamic militants on the campaign trail.

“That is an assault on our country and in that caravan you have some very bad people and we can’t let that happen to our country,” the president said at a rally in Houston on Monday night. Mr. Trump suggested without any proof that the opposition was involved in instigating the caravan. “I think the Democrats had something to do with it,” he said.

Scary brown horde, criminal black thugs, evil Jewish conspiracy, and only Donald Trump can save you, white America!

This is just a taste of the absolute racism and deadly violence coming in the next two years, guys.  If you think it's scary now, and it most certainly is, the next 24 months are going to be the darkest time in American history since the Civil War.

It may also be the bloodiest.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

The Mueller investigation definitely has Roger Stone in its sights, the question is simply how much trouble is Stone in as we now know Stone has been the subject of both grand jury testimony and of FBI forensic data investigation.

In recent weeks, a grand jury in Washington has listened to more than a dozen hours of testimony and FBI technicians have pored over gigabytes of electronic messages as part of the special counsel’s quest to solve one burning mystery: Did longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone — or any other associate of the president — have advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic emails in 2016?

While outwardly quiet for the last month, Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have been aggressively pursuing leads behind the scenes about whether Stone was in communication with the online group, whose disclosures of emails believed to have been hacked by Russian operatives disrupted the 2016 presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the special counsel probe.

Stone, who boasted during the race that he was in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has said since that his past comments were exaggerated or misunderstood. Both he and WikiLeaks have adamantly denied they were in contact.

However, prosecutors are closely examining both public comments and alleged private assertions that Stone made in 2016 suggesting he had a way to reach Assange, the people said.

Last month, Randy Credico, a onetime Stone friend, told the grand jury that the Trump loyalist confided during the 2016 campaign that he had a secret back channel to WikiLeaks, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In a series of interviews with The Washington Post, Stone said his only connection to the group was through Credico, a liberal comedian who had hosted Assange on his New York radio program in 2016.

The special counsel’s prosecutors have also zeroed in on Stone’s relationship with conservative journalist and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, examining whether he served as a conduit between Stone and Assange, according to another person familiar with their interest. Corsi appeared before Mueller’s grand jury last month, and FBI agents have recently been seeking to interview Corsi’s associates, according to the person.

In addition, investigators have scrutinized Stone’s communications with Trump campaign officials about WikiLeaks, according to people familiar with the probe.

One apparent line of inquiry: whether Stone lied to Congress about his alleged contacts with WikiLeaks during the presidential race, according to the people.

The question of whether Trump associates were in contact with WikiLeaks is at the heart of Mueller’s inquiry. According to charges filed by the special counsel in July, Russian military intelligence officers used an online persona called Guccifer 2.0 to distribute hacked Democratic emails through WikiLeaks. The Russian operatives also used Guccifer 2.0’s Twitter account to send messages to Stone, who has said the exchanges were benign.

Stone remains the link between WikiLeaks and its Russian intelligence backers and the Trump campaign and the grand jury testimony, plus the investigation into Stone's associates tells me very clearly that Stone is facing his time in the barrel after the election.

Maybe sooner?

Of course, if the GOP keeps Congress...maybe never.

StupidiNews!

• Hurricane Willa is expected to make landfall Tuesday afternoon as a powerful Category 4 storm along the southwestern Mexican coast near Mazatlan with winds up to 150 MPH.
• Donald Trump is falsely saying Congress will institute a 10% middle class tax cut by November 1 even though Congress is adjourned until after the 2018 Midterm elections.
• The US Supreme Court has blocked the testimony of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in a lawsuit filed by 18 states challenging a planned citizenship question on the 2020 US Census.
• Donald Trump says he will cut or even end US foreign aid to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras over a caravan of migrant workers headed for the US through Mexico.
• The Trump regime has ended a self-driving school bus project in Florida over the vehicle's French manufacturer Transdev and for the safety of children.

Last Call For The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Polls show Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum with a very solid lead over GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis in Florida, along with Dem Sen. Bill Nelson with the edge over GOP Gov. Rick Scott in defending his seat, but I don't buy that lead for a second, because I know Trump and the GOP have an army of angry old white people ready to turn up at the polls in two weeks.

President Donald Trump’s loyalists here at Florida’s premier retirement community fear Andrew Gillum.

It has nothing to do with his race, they insist, when asked about the 39-year-old Democrat who could become the state’s first African-American governor. Instead, The Villages’ deeply conservative residents are convinced a Gillum victory would trigger an era of high crime, higher taxes and moral failing.

“He’ll kill everything that’s good about Florida,” says Talmadge Strickland, a 66-year-old retired firefighter wearing a “Trump 2020″ baseball cap at a rally for Gillum’s opponent. “He will hurt us; he will physically hurt us with his socialist mentality.”

In an era defined by deep political partisanship, there’s perhaps no state where the divide runs deeper than Florida, which is in the grip of a fierce culture clash over guns, race, climate change and the president. Gillum sits at the center of the melee, his campaign a proxy for the larger fight between Democrats and President Donald Trump’s GOP.

Gillum’s fate is inexorably linked to fellow Democrats whose success could determine control of Congress. That’s especially true for three-term Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who could benefit from Gillum’s appeal among young voters and minorities.

As early voting begins in Florida this week, that link is tenuous.

“New voters and infrequent voters are everything to us winning,” Gillum told The Associated Press when asked about his impact on Nelson’s race. “I think they will vote for both of us, and that will be to his benefit.”

Young people and minorities are traditionally among the least reliable voters, particularly in midterm elections. Meanwhile, white voters in place like The Villages are lining up behind his opponent, former Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis.

Some 50,000 Trump voters guaranteed to turn out in a midterm election could make the difference.  It did in 2016.  I've talked about The Villages in Florida before, how it's the core of Trump Country in the Gunshine State, and how the flood of retiring Boomers means even more of them will have the time and the anger to go vote.

The rest of us have to show up and vote, because there's about a 99% chance guys like Talmadge Strickland will show up and vote.  If we don't, they win every time.  And there's every reason to believe that Americans have been so burnt out by the Trump regime that they just don't see the need to vote, maybe ever and have simply tuned everything out.

So no, I don't buy the big turnout numbers at all.  Like I said a month ago, I'll be shocked if total turnout is above 40%.

But we have to vote or it really won't matter, ever again.

Oil's Not Well That Doesn't End Well

So, turns out one of America's biggest Gulf oil drilling companies has been sitting on a 14-year-long oil leak that has now dumped 500 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf since 2004, and now the fact that the Trump regime doesn't want to get stuck with the clean-up bill.

An oil spill that has been quietly leaking millions of barrels into the Gulf of Mexico has gone unplugged for so long that it now verges on becoming one of the worst offshore disasters in U.S. history.

Between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site 12 miles off the Louisiana coast since 2004, when an oil-production platform owned by Taylor Energy sank in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Ivan. Many of the wells have not been capped, and federal officials estimate that the spill could continue through this century. With no fix in sight, the Taylor offshore spill is threatening to overtake BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster as the largest ever.

As oil continues to spoil the Gulf, the Trump administration is proposing the largest expansion of leases for the oil and gas industry, with the potential to open nearly the entire outer continental shelf to offshore drilling. That includes the Atlantic coast, where drilling hasn’t happened in more than a half century and where hurricanes hit with double the regularity of the Gulf.

Expansion plans come despite fears that the offshore oil industry is poorly regulated and that the planet needs to decrease fossil fuels to combat climate change, as well as the knowledge that 14 years after Ivan took down Taylor’s platform, the broken wells are releasing so much oil that researchers needed respirators to study the damage.

“I don’t think people know that we have this ocean in the United States that’s filled with industry,” said Scott Eustis, an ecologist for the Gulf Restoration Network, as a six-seat plane circled the spill site on a flyover last summer. On the horizon, a forest of oil platforms rose up from the Gulf’s waters, and all that is left of the doomed Taylor platform are rainbow-colored oil slicks that are often visible for miles. He cannot imagine similar development in the Atlantic, where the majority of coastal state governors, lawmakers, attorneys general and residents have aligned against the administration’s proposal.

The Taylor Energy spill is largely unknown outside Louisiana because of the company’s effort to keep it secret in the hopes of protecting its reputation and proprietary information about its operations, according to a lawsuit that eventually forced the company to reveal its cleanup plan. The spill was hidden for six years before environmental watchdog groups stumbled on oil slicks while monitoring the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster a few miles north of the Taylor site in 2010.

The Interior Department is fighting an effort by Taylor Energy to walk away from the disaster. The company sued Interior in federal court, seeking the return of about $450 million left in a trust it established with the government to fund its work to recover part of the wreckage and locate wells buried under 100 feet of muck.

So, back of the envelope math says 14 years times 365 days times 500 barrels is roughly 2.5 million barrels of oil, so you can see why this might be an issue.   And yes, I understand that this means this went on for six years under Obama since the leak was discovered in 2010, and the Obama administration thought Taylor Energy would actually clean this up instead of sitting on the leak for eight more years and then demanding the taxpayers pick up the tab.

Of course, this isn't a new story in Louisiana, Taylor energy sued the Obama administration in 2016 for the same thing.

In hindsight, probably not a good idea.

 

The Trans-National Race To Erase

The Trump regime is pondering defining trans Americans out of existence at both the federal and state levels, yet another reversal of Obama-era federal policy that would eliminate basic civil rights protections for more than a million Americans.

The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.

A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of gender in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing gender largely as an individual’s choice and not determined by the sex assigned at birth. The policy prompted fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple concept. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, were incensed.

Now the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.

The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.

“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the department proposed in the memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”

The new definition would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were born into.

“This takes a position that what the medical community understands about their patients — what people understand about themselves — is irrelevant because the government disagrees,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the Obama administration and helped write transgender guidance that is being undone.

The move would be the most significant of a series of maneuvers, large and small, to exclude the population from civil rights protections and roll back the Obama administration’s more fluid recognition of gender identity. The Trump administration has sought to bar transgender people from serving in the military and has legally challenged civil rights protections for the group embedded in the nation’s health care law.

Several agencies have withdrawn Obama-era policies that recognized gender identity in schools, prisons and homeless shelters. The administration even tried to remove questions about gender identity from a 2020 census survey and a national survey of elderly citizens.

For the last year, health and human services has privately argued that the term “sex” was never meant to include gender identity or even homosexuality, and that the lack of clarity allowed the Obama administration to wrongfully extend civil rights protections to people who should not have them.

As I have said time and time again, the goal is absolute cruelty to the Obama coalition, not to just break it up and render it politically non-viable, but to smash it to bits and make sure that those who need federal protections the most never get them, to make sure that they never have the political power again to ever dare challenge the status quo of white, Christian, cisgender male patriarchy.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asserted on Sunday that Democrats would impose “mob rule” if they won the U.S. House of Representatives in November.

During an interview on Fox News, the senior senator from South Carolina adopted President Donald Trump’s talking points on so-called Democratic “mobs.”

“I think people are going to be voting on the mob rule of the Democratic Party,” Graham told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “If you elect Democrats to run the House, you know exactly what you’re going to get. They’re going to try and impeach the president and impeach [Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh].”

“They don’t care about your wallet — they just want to get in your wallet,” he continued. “[Kavanaugh’s confirmation], to me, was a despicable episode in the history of the Senate. These [migrant] caravans will never be stopped by Nancy Pelosi. And when it comes to standing up to the world, you need a strong leader like President Trump.”

Graham revealed that he had been handpicked by Trump to campaign for Republicans in 13 states.

“I’m going to let everybody in these states know what happens if you put the Democratic Party in charge of this country,” he said. “You’re rewarding mob rule. You’re undercutting the rule of law. Don’t give these people power.”

“The best thing you can do to make sure [the Kavanaugh confirmation battle] never happens again is punish them for what they were willing to do to this good man,” the senator added. “Two weeks from Tuesday, we can decide what kind of country you want to be. Do you want to be the country of people who run you up and down the halls [of Congress] and spit on you. Or do you want to be a country of Republicans who can actually deliver for working families out there?”

“Nancy Pelosi will welcome the caravans here,” he concluded. “Donald Trump and the rest of us will stop them.”

Or as Adam Serwer keeps saying, "The cruelty is the point".

Besides, the Trump regime's base runs on fear and hatred, and must always be fed new enemies lest the base turn on Trump.  And history tells us that deadly violence against "the other" will only get exponentially worse in the months and years ahead.  They're letting us know exactly what is coming, and they want us so terrified that we hide forever.

I don't plan to let that happen, and if you care about this country, neither should you.

 

StupidiNews!

• The world's longest sea-crossing bridge opens this week connecting Hong Kong to Macau after two years of delays, the bridge/tunnel system is more than 34 miles long.
• A new Public Religion Research Institute poll finds that self-identified white Christians now make up less than 43% of Americans as they are a minority in America for the first time.
• Moscow says it will retaliate if the Trump regime abandons the bilateral Reagan-era intermediate range nuclear missile treaty and that Russia will develop new nuclear weapons in Europe.
• Boring Co. CEO Elon Musk says the first test tunnel for his company's hyperloop transportation system will be operational in December, but many questions remain about the technology.
• Following a lawsuit against California, the broadband internet industry is now suing Vermont to stop that state's net neutrality legislation requiring ISPs to comply for government contract eligibility.