Last Call For Dr. King's Legacy

Another year of the Trump Era, where in America Donald Trump and Mike Pence making an "unannounced two-minute visit" to the MLK Memorial in DC to plop down a wreath and vanish so they can get credit for "promoting unity" while making sure that the base doesn't catch them in the act of believing black people are human, and it's the perfect metaphor.

Black people get 2 minutes out of 24 hours of Trump's time on the one day out of an entire year where America has to pretend there's racial harmony in a white supremacist country, where the current White House spokesman says Dr. King "gave his life" rather than "assassinated by white reactionaries".

And as always, Dr. King's Letter From A Birmingham Jail sums up the Trump voter and the Trump non-voter.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Every year we bring that boil to the surface, every year we point out that the disease of racism and white supremacy that caused the boil is still infecting the country, every year we as a country pretend it's awesome being black or brown or not white in America because at least you people aren't slaves anymore, what else do you goddamn want from us.

The same people who King warned us about more then 55 years ago are the same people who allowed Donald Trump to end up in the Oval Office.  This is where the white backlash to Obama and the Civil Rights Movement in America has gotten us, the most racist president since Andrew Jackson.

I'm tired of America reverting to form.

Halfway Home, Or Halfway To Hell?

The Dr. Martin Luther King holiday this year serves as the beginning of Year Three of the Trump Era, and as WaPo's Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey remind us, the first two years were a disaster of mythical proportions and the next two will be an even larger conflagration.

Donald Trump was elected president partly by assuring the American people that “I alone can fix it.”

But precisely two years into his presidency, the government is not simply broken — it is in crisis, and Trump is grappling with the reality that he cannot fix it alone.

Trump’s management of the partial government shutdown — his first foray in divided government — has exposed as never before his shortcomings as a dealmaker. The president has been adamant about securing $5.7 billion in public money to construct his long-promised border wall, but he has not won over congressional Democrats, who call the wall immoral and have refused to negotiate over border security until the government reopens.

The 30-day shutdown — the impacts of which have begun rippling beyond the federal workforce into the everyday lives of millions of Americans — is defining the second half of Trump’s term and has set a foundation for the nascent 2020 presidential campaign.

The shutdown also has accentuated several fundamental traits of Trump’s presidency: his apparent shortage of empathy, in this case for furloughed workers; his difficulty accepting responsibility, this time for a crisis he had said he would be proud to instigate; his tendency for revenge when it comes to one-upping political foes; and his seeming misunderstanding of Democrats’ motivations.

Trump on Saturday made a new offer to end the shutdown, proposing three years of deportation protections for some immigrants, including young people known as “dreamers,” in exchange for border wall funding.

But before Trump even made it to the presidential lectern in the White House’s stately Diplomatic Reception Room to announce what he called a “straightforward, fair, reasonable, and common sense” proposal, Democrats rejected it as a non-starter.

Donald Trump is losing this fight, and each day that passes makes it more and more likely that he miscalculates with, at this point, negative room for error and really wrecks the country more than he already has.   Considering what's coming down the pike, Trump is going to break something badly, and it may very well be our democracy.  And yes, his base is starting to crack under the weight of his sins.

Two years ago, Jeff Daudert was fed up with politics. He wanted to shake up the status quo. He didn’t mind sending a message to the establishment — and, frankly, he liked the idea of a disruptive president.

But the 49-year-old retired Navy reservist has had some second thoughts.

“What the [expletive] were we thinking?” he asked the other night inside a Walmart here, in an area of blue-collar suburban Detroit that helped deliver Trump the presidency.

While Trump’s relationship with much of his base remains strong, two years after his inauguration his ties are fraying with voters like Daudert, the kind who voted in droves for Trump in 2016 in key pockets throughout the industrial Midwest and flipped previously Democratic states to him. The shutdown fight, as it has played out over the past month, is further eroding his support among voters who like the idea of beefing up border security, but not enough to close the government.

Many here, even those who still support Trump, say they hold him most responsible. They recite his comment from the Oval Office that he would be “proud to shut down the government.” When he said it, they listened.

“It’s silly. It’s destructive,” Daudert said, adding that all he knows about 2020 is that he won’t be supporting Trump. “I was certainly for the anti-status quo. … I’ll be more status quo next time.”

They didn't think they would be the ones to get hurt, just those people would suffer.  They were wrong, and black voters told y'all this, but. again, the cruelty is the point.

A Hat Lands In The RIng, Con't

Another Democratic candidate for Donald Trump's job in 2020 announced this morning, California Sen. Kamala Harris made it official today on GMA after rumors made her candidacy all but certain.

Senator Kamala Harris, the California Democrat and barrier-breaking prosecutor who became the second black woman to serve in the United States Senate, declared her candidacy for president on Monday, joining an increasingly crowded and diverse field in what promises to be a wide-open nomination process.

The announcement was bathed in symbolism: Ms. Harris chose to enter the race on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, an overt nod to the historic nature of her candidacy, and her timing was also meant to evoke Shirley Chisholm, the New York congresswoman who became the first woman to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for president 47 years ago this week.

In addition, Ms. Harris will hold her first campaign event on Friday in South Carolina, where black voters are the dominant force in the Democratic primary, rather than start off by visiting Iowa and New Hampshire, the two predominantly white states that hold their nomination contests first. She will hold a kickoff rally Sunday in Oakland, Calif., her hometown.

For the first time, the Democratic presidential race now includes several high-profile women, with Ms. Harris joining two other prominent senators who have announced candidacies, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii Democrat, has also said she is running, and more women could enter the race in the coming weeks.

Ms. Harris made her announcement on “Good Morning America” and also released a video aimed at supporters and other Democrats.

Here's the announcement video:


Harris is I think the largest threat of the field that did not run in 2016.  Former VP Joe Biden remains the favorite, although I certainly wouldn't call his lead prohibitive considering the already large field and the fact that Biden hasn't announced yet either.

But Harris does have some baggage to deal with from her days as California's Attorney General. Just a few days ago, Harris was blasted in the NY Times by criminal justice activist and law professor Lara Bazelon over her record, and while Bazelon made some pretty good points, the fact of the matter is Harris worked for change from inside the system ir order to achieve reform, and did make some serious changes.

The gripping hand on that is the fact that in a post-Trump era, we need a lot more than incremental change with a new president in 2020.  Harris seems ready, and she's certainly a better choice than Tulsi Gabbard.

We'll see.  Harris is very smart heading to SC first to win over black voters and especially black women, because believe me when I say black women will decide the 2020 Democratic candidate.

StupidiNews!

• Ten United Nations peacekeepers were killed and 25 more were injured in an attack on a UN camp in northern Mali on Sunday, near the Algerian border.
• Green Book has become this year's Oscars favorite after the movie won Best Film of 2018 at Sunday's Producer's Guild of America awards, the movie has also won a Golden Globe.
• Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan says the country's military is ready to take over for the US in the key Syrian city of Manbij, where four US citizens were killed last week.
• A decade after the Great Recession, the world's richest have prospered greatly, with the attendees of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2009 having gained $175 billion combined.
• New court documents released last week allege that the Sackler family, owner of Purdue Pharmaceuticals, not only knew Purdue's OxyContin opioid was addictive, they pushed sales of it anyway.

Last Call For Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is supposedly a Democrat and is even running for President, but you sure wouldn't know it from her words.

Hawaii congresswoman and Democratic candidate for president Tulsi Gabbard said Sunday that her party’s leadership was not blameless for the partial government shutdown that is now approaching a month, accusing both sides of posturing and refusing to compromise.

“The problem here is that this issue, like so many others in Washington, are being relegated to partisan politics,” she said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union."

“Where if a Republican is putting forward a proposal, Democrats are going to shoot it down. If Democrats are putting forward a proposal, Republicans are going to shoot it down, really thinking about which party can call a win on this issue.”

The result, she said, is a loss for the country and especially the 800,000 federal workers affected by the shutdown, which has been driven over disagreements about immigration.

I expect this both sides drivel from pundits, but from a Democratic Congressperson and presidential candidate it comes across as sabotage.

Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday said that Trump’s proposal is not the administration’s final offer and that there could be room to negotiate, but he also said it was disappointing that Democrats had refused the offer outright.

But Gabbard said Sunday that both parties are guilty of being unyielding, adding that both sides are displaying an “unwillingness to actually just sit down and work through the details that each side is putting forward, knowing that neither side is going to get everything they need.”

Both Democrats and Republicans have “completely hardened their positions and are unwilling to come together and work out the differences,” she said, pointing out it’s not an isolated problem.

She said the problem is “an unwillingness to just say, 'Hey, here's my position. Here's yours. Let's figure out how we can work out the differences that we can, putting forward the best solution for the American people.'”

I wasn't aware that John Kasich was a Hindi Congresswoman from Hawaii, but there you are.  And she has about as much chance of winning the 2020 Democratic primary as Kasich does.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Ben Smith and reporter Anthony Cormier went on CNN's Reliable Sources today to talk with host Brian Stetler about their bombshell Michael Cohen story from Thursday night, that was denied, sort of, by the Mueller team on Friday and both Smith and Cormier say they are continuing to stand behind the story.

Towards the beginning of this morning’s lengthy interview, Smith noted that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani had just appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and said that it wasn’t a big deal if the president had discussed the Congressional testimony with Cohen. “As we go to on to talk about process, I do want to make sure we also talk about the fundamental core of this story, about a giant construction project in Russia and secret negotiations through the campaign,” he further told host Brian Stelter.

After Cormier and Smith added that it is “extraordinary” that Giuliani’s story has shifted to “they were probably talking about it” and how that gets at the heart of their reporting, Stelter asked Cormier whether there was “any new evidence since Thursday night that supports your story.”

“I have further confirmation this is right and we’ve been told to stand our ground,” Cormier responded. “Our reporting is going to be borne out to be accurate.”

Stelter asked him directly who his sources are, something Cormier said he wasn’t going to share. “This is an important matter and in order to protect our sources and not put them in any risk, we’re not going to talk about the sourcing,” Cormier stated.

While Cormier said he wasn’t going to talk about sourcing matters or if they had additional sources outside of who they cited in the story, he did point out that the “same sources we used in that story are standing behind it.”

Here's the clip from CNN from Contemptor.



At this point I'm going to have to say that when your reporter and your editor go on a national cable news show about the media and say "Yes, this story is true, we have multiple sources, no I'm not going to burn my sources, this story is vital and will be proven true" then yes, everything is on the line for your news organization, even if it wasn't a story about the guy in the Oval Office committing conspiracy and impeachable criminal acts.  It takes guts to do this.

The Washington Post has more details on the Mueller team's denial.

The reporter informed Mueller’s spokesman, Peter Carr, that he and a colleague had “a story coming stating that Michael Cohen was directed by President Trump himself to lie to Congress about his negotiations related to the Trump Moscow project,” according to copies of their emails provided by a BuzzFeed spokesman. Importantly, the reporter made no reference to the special counsel’s office specifically or evidence that Mueller’s investigators had uncovered.

“We’ll decline to comment,” Carr responded, a familiar refrain for those in the media who cover Mueller’s work.

The innocuous exchange belied the chaos it would produce. When BuzzFeed published the story hours later, it far exceeded Carr’s initial impression, people familiar with the matter said, in that the reporting alleged that Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and self-described fixer, “told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie,” and that Mueller’s office learned of the directive “through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.”

In the view of the special counsel’s office, that was wrong, two people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. And with Democrats raising the specter of investigation and impeachment, Mueller’s team started discussing a step they had never before taken: publicly disputing reporting on evidence in their ongoing investigation.

Within 24 hours of the story’s publication, the special counsel’s office issued a statement doing just that. Trump, who has called the media the “enemy of the people,” on Saturday pointed to the special counsel’s assertion as evidence of what he sees as journalists’ bias against him.

So what I said Friday about the denial from the Mueller team being more about damage control of what was an obvious leak in their ongoing investigation of Trump seems like the best theory right now. Remember, the rest of the circumstantial evidence strongly supports the story being true as well, so for now I'm going to believe BuzzFeed News, with the caveat that if they are bullshitting us, they are done.

But let's remember who we're dealing with here.

Giuliani to @jaketapper when asked if the president talked to Michael Cohen about his congressional testimony: “I don’t know if it happened or it didn’t happen... I have no knowledge if he spoke to him.” Then a beat later, he adds that if they did discuss it, “so what?”

— Ali Rogin (@AliABCNews) January 20, 2019

Sunday Long Read: I Believe You Have My Stapler

One of my favorite movies of all time, Office Space, turns 20 next month and it's just as relevant today as it was in 1999. Entertainment Weekly's Stacy Wilson Hunt rounded up the cast and crew for the story of how the adventures of Milton and his stapler got made.

In 1991, aspiring animator Mike Judge was a touring musician and grad student living outside of Dallas, Texas, when he channeled his past cubicle-life angst – from his former life as an engineer – into a 16mm short film called Office Space, featuring Milton. The vignette about a mumbling office worker and his condescending boss – which Judge drew, voiced and scored –would air on Comedy Central. It was a low-key launch for one of Hollywood’s most singular comedic voices who brought us the generation-defining MTV cartoon Beavis and Butt-Head, the eerily prescient 2006 satirical feature Idiocracy, and HBO’s Emmy-winning tech-nerd lampoon Silicon Valley among others.

The short film also inspired Judge’s live-action feature debut, Office Space: a box-office-flop-turned-cult-classic that ultimately became one of the most relatable workplace comedies of all time. To mark the film’s 20th anniversary (Feb. 19), EW spoke to key on-and-off-screen talent about how the low-budget comedy – starring mostly unknown actors – became a timeless portrait of Everyman Peter Gibbons’ (Ron Livingston) revenge against smarmy bosses, menacing office equipment and T.P.S coversheets. (Did you get that memo, by the way?)

Mike Judge (Writer, director, Chotchkie’s manager Stan): In 1996, I had an overall deal at [20th Century] Fox. [Network president] Peter Chernin had seen the short film and said, “This should be a movie,” so writers pitched ideas for a Milton-focused feature. I said, “It can’t be just about Milton. You don’t want to know what he does at home after work.” [Laughs] Someone said, “Make it an ensemble, like Car Wash, but in an office?” I wrote a treatment in 1996, then wrote the script after season one of [Judge’s animated Fox TV comedy] King of the Hill. Michael Bolton was the only character where I had a specific actor — David Herman — in mind.

David Herman (Michael Bolton): I’d been doing voice work on King of the Hill and also desperately trying to leave MADtv, but was under contract for seven years. Fox said, “Sorry, no. You’re our .360 hitter.” So at the next table-read, I did every sketch screaming at the top of my lungs. They took me off the show and said, “You’ll never work in this town again!” At the next table read for King of the Hill [co-creator] Greg Daniels says, “Don’t worry, you can always work here.” [Laughs] Then I read Office Space. I was in love with it.

Tom Rothman (then President of Twentieth Century Fox Film Group; current chairman of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group): At that time, Fox had been successful with big event movies like Titanic. We needed comedies to balance the slate. When I read Office Space I wondered, “Was Mike hiding in our office?” It was the most brilliant workplace satire I’d ever read.

Judge: We did a reading at the studio in late 1997 with David, Stephen Root, who was also on King of the Hill, and some random actors. I was going to read Milton but thought, “I’d rather just sit back and listen.”

Stephen Root (Milton): So Mike shows me his little Office Space short film. I added more lisp and strangeness to Milton’s voice. He loved it.

Judge: Stephen and David killed it, but otherwise it was a disaster. The actor who read for Peter had too much swagger. I’d been miserable in my office jobs, but I never thought I deserved better. He played it wrong. I felt sick. “Well, I guess we’re not making this movie.” Then Rothman says, “The actors aren’t right, but this is a movie!” I’d felt depressed, then “Okay, I’ll make it better.”

Sanford Panitch (then executive vice president at Fox; current President of Columbia Pictures): I have fond memories of going to Austin, where Mike lived, after that and talking about the script at his house. We’d get Mexican food. He introduced me to chorizo. [Laughs]

It's a fun trip down memory lane.  I remember seeing this in the theaters, but of course it was directly aimed at my young 20's self and this was back when I was working at Radio Shack selling Compaq PCs and satellite dishes.  I definitely got the movie then, not a whole lot of people did until later.

And all of it's still true today.

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

2019 may be a new year, but the Republican party remains the party of Confederate racist white supremacist traitors in states across the country.

House Speaker David Ralston Friday named as one of his committee chairs a state representative who opposed the erection of a statue to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the grounds of the State Capitol and said the Ku Klux Klan made “people straighten up.”

Rep. Tommy Benton, R-Jefferson, will chair the House Retirement Committee, which oversees the retirement funds for Georgia teachers and state employees.

“The speaker’s philosophy is that people deserve a second chance and that’s what he has given Chairman Benton,” said House spokesman Kaleb McMichen. Benton did not respond to requests for comment.

The announcement of Benton as chairman of the House Retirement Committee comes as the state prepares to observe the 90th anniversary of King’s birth on Monday.

Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, stripped Benton of his chairmanship of the Human Relations and Aging Committee in June 2017 after Benton distributed an article to his House colleagues titled “The Absurdity of Slavery as the Cause of the War Between the States.” Ralston also removed Benton from a civics education study committee, despite having just named him to it.

The article was just one in a string of provocative comments or legislative proposals from the retired high school history teacher from Jackson County, 60 miles northeast of Atlanta. In 2016, Benton drew national condemnation for claiming the Klan “was not so much a racist thing, but a vigilante thing to keep law and order.”

“It made a lot of people straighten up,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I’m not saying what they did was right. It’s just the way things were.”

We just have to give these racist losers a second chance, and a third, and a fourth and forever and ever.

Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, only the second African American elected to statewide office in Virginia, briefly bowed out of his duties in the state Senate on Friday in protest of a tribute to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Fairfax (D), who normally presides over Richmond’s upper chamber, stepped off the dais and let a Republican wield the gavel while Sen. Richard H. Stuart (R-King George) marked Lee’s 212th birthday with praise for “a great Virginian and a great American.”

“I believe there are certain people in history we should honor that way in the Senate . . . and I don’t believe that he is one of them,” Fairfax, a descendant of slaves, said in an interview afterward . “I think it’s very divisive to do what was done there, particularly in light of the history that we’re now commemorating — 400 years since the first enslaved Africans came to the commonwealth of Virginia.

“And to do that in this year in particular was very hurtful to a lot of people,” Fairfax said. “It does not move us forward, it does not bring us together. And so I wanted to do my part to make it clear that I don’t condone it.”

Heaping praise on Lee is nothing unusual in the former capital of the Confederacy. For most of the United States, Friday was the last workday before the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend. In Virginia, it was a state holiday: Lee-Jackson Day.

The General Assembly works through both the Lee-Jackson and MLK holidays, and elected officials from both parties have traditionally used the occasions to tip their hats to the Confederates and King alike. Comedian Stephen Colbert lampooned the Virginia Senate in 2013 for adjourning its MLK Day session in honor of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson — on a motion from a Democrat, state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds of Bath.

But they were good people, I hear.

No, they were slaveowners.  Your ancestors owned my ancestors.  And we still celebrate that at the state government level in multiple states in 2019, because racism in America hasn't really changed that much at all in 400 years.

Last Call For Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

As promised, Donald Trump offered a non-starter deal to Democrats on his border wall this afternoon in exchange for temporary DACA extensions, and the deal disintegrated before Trump even finished his speech.

On Saturday, in remarks billed as a “major announcement” on the border and the shutdown, Trump proposed a deal to Democrats. He continues to insist that any bill to reopen the government include billions of dollars for a physical barrier on the US-Mexico border — a “wall” — but is now open to such a bill including other immigration provisions as well.

Most notably, he’s open to extending existing protections for the 700,000 or so immigrants currently protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who currently have legal status under Temporary Protected Status. The Trump administration has moved to sunset DACA, and to end protections for most of the immigrants covered under TPS. Both of those plans are currently held up in litigation.

Democrats aren’t particularly interested in what Trump’s proposing. “Democrats were not consulted on this and have rejected similar overtures previously,” a Democratic aide told Vox. “It’s clearly a non-serious product of negotiations amongst White House staff to try to clean up messes the president created in the first place. POTUS is holding more people hostage for his wall.”

After weeks of all-or-nothing intransigence, Trump’s announcement Saturday indicates that the White House realizes they’re losing the shutdown in the eyes of most Americans, and are willing to compromise to reopen the government. But Democrats also know the White House is losing the shutdown, and the compromise now on offer is something they are unlikely to take.

Trump’s pitching this as a compromise: He wants the wall, Democrats want to help DACA and TPS recipients. But the deal isn’t the result of conversations with Democrats. It’s reportedly the result of discussions that Vice President Mike Pence and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner have had with congressional Republicans (most notably Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)).
And it shows. What Trump’s offering — temporary extensions of existing protections for both groups of immigrants — isn’t something that Democrats have been wildly enthusiastic about in the past. Furthermore, with Trump’s efforts to strip existing protections held up in court, it’s essentially a short extension of the status quo.

DACA recipients are currently being allowed to extend their protections for two years, just as they could under the Obama administration, while the administration fights in court to end the program. (People who don’t already have protections are no longer allowed to apply.) Without knowing when the Supreme Court will rule — or how the Trump administration will proceed if the Supreme Court agrees they can end DACA, since their original plan (issuing no renewals for expirations after March 2018) is obviously moot — it’s hard to say for sure that a three-year one-time extension will protect DACA recipients for longer than waiting for the Supreme Court.

In other words, Trump gets 100% of what he wants in exchange for Democrats maybe getting what they would already have as status quo under Obama if Trump hadn't immediately scrapped DACA in the first place.   Of course Nancy Pelosi told Trump to go to hell, and rightfully so.

Pelosi said in a statement before the speech that based on reports of the deal, she would not support it, calling it a "nonstarter" which was unlikely to pass the House.

"Unfortunately, initial reports make clear that his proposal is a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable and in total, do not represent a good faith effort to restore certainty to people's lives," Pelosi said. "For one thing, this proposal does not include the permanent solution for the Dreamers and TPS recipients that our country needs and supports."

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin also said in a statement that he would not support the rumored deal before the speech.

"First, President Trump and Senate Majority Leader McConnell must open the government today. Second, I cannot support the proposed offer as reported and do not believe it can pass the Senate. Third, I am ready to sit down at any time after the government is opened and work to resolve all outstanding issues," Durbin said.

Some conservatives also voiced their opposition to the deal. Right-wing commentator Ann Coulter tweeted: "Trump proposes amnesty. We voted for Trump and got Jeb!"

And of course the right wing nutjobs hate the deal.  Nobody likes it, and it'll never pass the Senate, let alone the House.  As we come up on 30 days, Trump is content to let tens of millions suffer.

The Kids Are Not Alright, Con't

A new Pew Research poll finds Generation Z, those born after 2000, are as liberal if not more so than Millennials.

On a range of issues, from Donald Trump’s presidency to the role of government to racial equality and climate change, the views of Gen Z – those ages 13 to 21 in 2018 – mirror those of Millennials.1 In each of these realms, the two younger generations hold views that differ significantly from those of their older counterparts. In most cases, members of the Silent Generation are at the opposite end, and Baby Boomers and Gen Xers fall in between.2

It’s too early to say with certainty how the views of this new generation will evolve. Most have yet to reach voting age, and their outlook could be altered considerably by changing national conditions, world events or technological innovations. Even so, two new Pew Research Center surveys, one of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 and one of adults ages 18 and older, provide some compelling clues about where they may be headed and how their views could impact the nation’s political landscape.

Only about three-in-ten Gen Zers and Millennials (30% and 29%, respectively) approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president. This compares with 38% of Gen Xers, 43% of Boomers and 54% of Silents. Similarly, while majorities in Gen Z and the Millennial generation say government should do more to solve problems, rather than that government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals, Gen Xers and Boomers are more evenly divided on this issue. For their part, most Silents would like to see a less activist government.

Of course, there are striking examples of Gen Z kids who are most certainly not liberal, and in fact are budding MAGA white supremacist assholes who make national news, like the kids right here in Northern Kentucky.

Covington Catholic High School faced backlash on social media Saturday morning after video was posted and widely shared showing a tense exchange between indigenous marchers and a group of young men in Washington, D.C.

The video shows a young man wearing a "Make America Great Again" cap standing near and staring at a man who is drumming as other young men surrounding them cheer and chant. Some of the onlookers appear to wear clothing bearing insignia from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills.

It’s even worse when you see the full mob effect. pic.twitter.com/Oe7Zn5srOB

— Lulu Says (@lulu_says2) January 19, 2019

The man with the drum was participating in an Indigenous Peoples March, according to people who posted about the incident.

Twitter users condemned the incident as an attempt by the group to intimidate the marchers and called for a response from the school.

The Enquirer could not independently confirm that students from Covington Catholic were present during the incident or the origin of the video.

However, Laura Keener, the communications director with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington, released a brief statement at about 12:15 p.m. Saturday:

"We are just now learning about this incident and regret it took place. We are looking into it."

Messages left with Covington Catholic Principal Bob Rowe and other school faculty members were not immediately returned Saturday.

The school's website says students planned to attend the March for Life event, held Friday in Washington, D.C., the same day as the Indigenous Peoples March.

The man with the drum is a Vietnam Veteran, by the way.  And yes, this is exactly what I mean when I say racism in America is not dying out, Trump gave white America permission to teach this to their Millennial and Gen Z kids, and that's exactly what's happening.  These smarmy little pricks are wearing MAGA hats on a school field trip on purpose, guys.  It is a symbol of power and privilege and hate, and it's perfectly acceptable.

This is the country that elected Donald Trump as goddamn POTUS.  It has always been this racist, every now and then the pendulum swings a bit and there's a brief window where we're able to reclaim a sliver of the lost humanity from 400 years ago.

And on the other end, there's Trump.  Make America Overtly Racist Again™.

Trump Cards, Con't

Americans just don't see a happy ending for the Trump era, for Trump, or for America itself. CNN's Harry Enten:

Poll of the week: A Pew Research Center poll released this week finds that 29% of Americans think President Donald Trump's presidency will be successful in the long term, 47% think it'll be unsuccessful and 23% say it is too early to tell. 

What's the point: The fact that more Americans think Trump will ultimately be an unsuccessful president than believe he'll be a successful one makes sense. The 18-point margin on that lines up nearly perfectly with his -22 point net approval rating (approval rating minus disapproval rating) in the same poll. 

What is notable is how many people have already made up their minds on Trump being unsuccessful. The 47% who said that are basically saying not just that they don't like the President now, but also that there's a very good chance they'll never like him. It gives Trump very little wiggle room in trying to bring up his low approval rating before his re-election. 

Last year, the gap between successful and unsuccessful was the same as it is now (18 points). The overall percentage of who thought Trump would be unsuccessful, though, was 6 points lower, at 41%. That is, Trump had more room to grow in the past. Now, people are settling in on their opinions of the President. 

The lack of people undecided on Trump is truly unusual. The other three presidents about whom this question was asked elicited much higher percentages of "too early to tell" than Trump. At this point in their presidencies, between 43% and 47% of Americans said it was too early to know if the president would be successful. Trump, at 23%, is 20 points below the lower part of this range. 

More amazing is what we see when we examine all the times Pew has asked this question. Even at the ends of the last three presidents' second terms, at least 26% of Americans still said it was too early to tell if those presidents were going to be successful. In other words, people are more locked in on their opinions of Trump now than they were at the ends of the second terms of the last three presidents. The 47% who say Trump's presidency will be unsuccessful is also higher than ever measured at any point in any term in the last 25 years for any president. 

The idea that people seem more decided on Trump than previous presidents is backed up by the approval trend line over his presidency. As Gallup recently noted, his approval rating over the first two years of his presidency was more stable than it was for any other president over his first years. Pew's future-looking question suggests that stability will continue. 

Indeed, a different question also points to the difficulty Trump will face going forward. His strongly disapprove rating in the Marist poll, at 45% this week, tied his previous all-time high for that pollster. By the Quinnipiac University poll's reading, his strongly disapprove rating stands at 50%. These are very high strong disapproval ratings. Trump is as strongly disliked now as President Richard Nixon was when he resigned in 1974.

So yes, America has made up its mind about Trump's "legacy" and it will be one of failure and scandal.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Marcy Wheeler notes that Thursday night's BuzzFeed News bombshell isn't just about Trump ordering Cohen to lie to Congress, it's about why he did that, and the answer, according to Wheeler, is that Putin has had the Sword of Damocles dangling over Trump's head for years now.

The BuzzFeed article makes it clear that [Felix] Sater’s GRU contact got back involved after Cohen’s conversation with Peskov’s assistant.

All of which is to say that when Cohen called [Dmitri] Peskov’s assistant, he would have told her that he was speaking on behalf of Donald Trump, that Trump remained interested in a Trump Tower in Moscow (as he had been in 2013, the last time Putin had dangled a personal meeting with Trump), and that on Trump’s behalf Cohen was willing to discuss making a deal involving both a sanctioned bank (whichever one it was) and a former GRU officer.

So it’s not just that Trump was pursuing a real estate deal while running for President. He was pursuing a real estate deal involving a sanctioned bank — possibly one sanctioned for its involvement in Crimea — and involving someone with ties to the intelligence agency that was preparing to hack Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager.
Cohen told Peskov’s assistant Trump was willing to negotiate that deal while running for President. The assistant wrote all that down (how Mueller knows this is an interesting question on its own right). And then she or Peskov passed on at least the content of the notes to get Putin’s office to contact Sater.

And all that happened before Trump performed unexpectedly well in the Iowa caucuses on February 1.

Of course, if that ever came out, Trump would be done.  And Trump has been fearing that for years now.

Last year, I argued that — pee tape or no — the kompromat Putin has on Trump consists of a series of receipts of Trump formally communicating his willingness to enter into a conspiracy with Russia, receipts that would be devastating if Putin released them.

What Cohen plea deal makes clear is that Putin pocketed the first of those receipts — a receipt showing Trump’s willingness to work with both sanctioned banks and the GRU — even before the first vote was cast. Even before GRU hacked its first Democratic target (though APT 29 had been spying on the Democrats since the previous summer).

Discussing a real estate deal is not, as Trump has repeated, illegal. If that’s all this were about, Trump and Cohen might not have lied about it.

But it’s not. Even before the GRU hacked John Podesta, even before Don Jr told his June 9 visitors that his dad would consider lifting sanctions if he got elected, Michael Cohen let a key Putin deputy know that Trump would be happy to discuss real estate deals that involved both partnering with the GRU and with sanctioned banks.

And Putin has been sitting on that receipt ever since.

It's a solid theory.  Unfortunately, the BuzzFeed News report from Thursday is not quite as solid.

UPDATE: A spokesperson for the special counsel is disputing BuzzFeed News’ report. https://t.co/BEoMKiDypn pic.twitter.com/GWWfGtyhaE

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) January 19, 2019

For the Mueller team to actually comment on this piece is exceedingly rare. Of course, that might be part of the plan to contain what essentially is a major Mueller probe leak, and this could just be sussing out the holes. After all, it's not like Mueller was going to say WELL YEAH YOU GOT US CASE CLOSED or anything.

We'll see where this goes.

Last Call For Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

Team Orange thinks they have a plan to end the shutdown, and by plan I mean they want to blame Nancy Pelosi for a bill they can't get Mitch McConnell to pass in the GOP-controlled Senate.

The White House has a new, long-shot idea for getting President Donald Trump’s border wall: persuading the Senate to take up the president’s wall request to force a deal with the Democrats, then reopen the government. 

As the government shutdown enters its fifth week, the White House wants the Senate to take up legislation that would provide $5.7 billion for a barrier along the southern border, among other options that have been discussed with GOP leaders. Vice President Mike Pence and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner met Thursday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and one option batted around was for congressional committees to take up the border request and potentially amend it in committee, all while the government is shutdown, according to a person familiar with the talks.

But even Republicans on the Hill recognize the idea is a nonstarter. About 10 of them have been urging the White House to accept their proposal to open up the government for three weeks and allow a quick immigration and border debate, because Democrats are resisting any negotiations until government is reopened. 

“If there’s not a short-term shutdown [solution] to give us the space to negotiate, the Democrats won’t negotiate,” said a GOP senator in contact with the White House. “We all know the Democrats are unwilling to talk at this point.”

The administration, the senator added, is not fully factoring in that the Senate’s 60-vote threshold will require Democratic support. 

“Every time I talk to them. That’s the assumption, that they believe we can just do it,” the senator said. 

The discussion among Pence, Kushner and the majority leader centered around the GOP-controlled Senate taking the lead on legislation, given that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is unwilling to take up new border security funding until the government reopens. The White House, however, has opposed a short-term spending bill to do that. 

And Democrats are refusing to entertain the White House’s ideas until the funding lapse ends. 

In colorful terms, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) summed up the party’s stance toward Trump: “If a kid that is screaming for an ice cream, you can't give him an ice cream cone. Because if you give in, he’ll never eat his vegetables again.”

I freely admit I figured that Chuck Schumer would have folded by now.  Thankfully, Nancy Pelosi is running the show, and she's made of sterner stuff.  Team Trump really figures that Mitch can pass a wall bill, only he can't.  In no universe does Mitch have the 60 votes.

Trump supposedly will be making an announcement Saturday afternoon about the border, so we'll see if he finally makes that emergency declaration and burns every last bridge he has.  Odds are he's going to present this plan and everyone will ignore it as they should.

And on this disaster goes.

The Un-State Of The Disunion, Con't

As I've said multiple times on ZVTS, Donald Trump is driven primarily by petty motivations of revenge and retribution against slighs both real and perceived.  He is a small, petty creature, and he made that abundantly clear as his revenge for being disinvited to the State of the Union over the shutdown was to yesterday cancel Nancy Pelosi's planned trip to Afghanistan.

For more than three weeks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her staff had quietly planned an international trip to Brussels and Afghanistan to check in on America’s longest war. Like most congressional delegations—“CODELs”—it was time-consuming work, involving coordination between numerous agencies, stakeholders, and international officials along with extra security briefings because of the danger of the destination.

Pelosi’s chief of staff worked with a liaison from the U.S. Air Force who was the lead in setting up travel arrangements and the itinerary for the trip. Senior officials at the Pentagon also had been read in on the speaker’s plans, especially those regarding her visit to war-torn Afghanistan, where extra security was needed for her time in Kabul. Two senior officials on the ground in Afghanistan said they received the itinerary for the trip, as they do other congressional trips, weeks in advance and held it close to the chest. Fellow members of Congress made similar accommodations as they prepared to accompany the Speaker on the CODEL.

And then, with minutes to go before they departed, President Trump pulled the plug.

"I am sorry to inform you that your trip to Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan has been postponed," Trump wrote, in a letter to Pelosi. "We will reschedule this seven-day excursion when the Shutdown is over."

"Obviously, if you would like to make your journey by flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative," Trump wrote.

Trump’s stated reason in cancelling the CODEL was the fact that the government remains shut down. But the more obvious explanation was that the president had been searching for a way to fire back at the Speaker after she had informed him that his State of the Union address would be postponed until a resolution on the shutdown was reached.

Left unappreciated by the back and forth was just how impulsive the president’s swift response truly was.

White House officials told CNN that Trump had coordinated with the Department of Defense about the decision to prohibit the use of military aircraft for Pelosi. But as of the time of this publication, staffers in the Pentagon were furiously scrambling to gather information about the cancellation.

“We’re still gathering information just like you,” one Pentagon official told The Daily Beast. “We are trying to figure out what is going on.” One other source inside the Pentagon said that the White House had not coordinated with senior officials in Kabul about the cancellation, either.

If it's absolute pettiness, this White House can react with lightning speed.  If it's anything to do with actually moral acts, well, we'll get back to you on that in a couple on months, enjoy the shutdown. But when Pelosi decided to indeed travel by commercial airline after Trump canceled all military flights for Democrats (military flights for Republicans and Trump's family are fine), the Trump regime leaked those plans as well, putting Pelosi and the entire delegation in danger.

So now Pelosi has called off the whole thing.

The most petty man in the universe.

 

Russian To Judgment: Endgame

A huge week in the Russian collusion front, and if there is one thing everyone in America can agree on, it's that Rudy Giuliani is absolutely horrible at his job of defending Donald Trump somehow not being a criminal Russian asset.

President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani backtracked on Thursday from a surprising assertion he had made a night earlier that left open the possibility that Trump campaign aides might have coordinated with Russia in its election interference in 2016.

“There was no collusion by President Trump in any way, shape or form,” Mr. Giuliani said in a statement on Thursday, reiterating the president’s longstanding defense against accusations that his campaign secretly coordinated with Moscow to help swing the election. “Likewise, I have no knowledge of any collusion by any of the thousands of people who worked on the campaign.”

He added, referring to discredited conspiracy theories that the president and his allies have long cited, “The only knowledge I have in this regard is the collusion of the Clinton campaign with Russia, which has so far been ignored.”

Mr. Giuliani was seeking to clarify an interview on Wednesday night in which he stopped short of defending Trump campaign aides, drawing speculation that he might have inside knowledge of possible coordination with Russia.

“I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign,” he told CNN. He added: “I said the president of the United States. There is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you could commit here, conspired with the Russians to hack” the Democratic National Committee.

Mr. Giuliani’s backpedaling was the latest in a series of conflicting comments he has made about the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. The evolution of his statements have suggested shifts in the president’s defense strategy, often following developments in the investigations. On Tuesday, prosecutors for the special counsel filed a 200-page, mostly redacted court document related to the case against Mr. Trump’s onetime campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. Among the little information that was not blacked out were details about his relationship with a Russian whom prosecutors have said has ties to Russian intelligence.

The special counsel’s document was in response to a recent filing by Mr. Manafort’s legal team, which inadvertently disclosed that Mr. Manafort had provided his Russian associate with American polling data — details that offer the clearest example yet that the Trump campaign may have tried to coordinate with Russia before the 2016 election.

Mr. Giuliani has previously denied that there was coordination by Trump campaign aides.

“When I say the Trump campaign, I mean the upper levels of the Trump campaign,” Mr. Giuliani said during a July interview with Fox News. “I have no reason to believe anybody else did. The only ones I checked with obviously are the top four or five people.”

Mr. Giuliani also went a bit further on the collusion defense, telling Fox, “Even if he did it, it’s not a crime.”

This week has been abysmal for Trump, as of course the Manafort court filing last week and Mueller's court filing earlier this week absolutely shows collusion, and Giuliani has given the game away on national television.  Greg Sargent explains what comes next.

Bob Bauer, the White House counsel under former president Barack Obama, told me that Giuliani “must have some continuing hope” that Mueller cannot prove Trump knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, which Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Manafort attended in the expectation of gaining dirt on Hillary Clinton produced by the Russian government.

Yeah, Mueller's smarter than that.  Rudy clearly isn't.

If Mueller determines that the Trump Tower meeting constituted conspiracy, or if more comes out about that meeting or about other collusion we’ve already seen, or if still other conspiring that we don’t know about yet surfaces, Trump’s team will have to build a wall between that and Trump himself — which Giuliani is now doing.

“The insulation of Trump from the campaign is meant to remove him from the circle of any illegal conspiracy,” Bauer told me, adding that Giuliani is moving “to narrow the defense against collusion by arguing that the president is not responsible for what his campaign did.”

But this is a weak defense. It still remains to be seen what Trump knew about all the collusion, whether or not he actively participated in it. And we still don’t know what else Mueller has established. Giuliani’s defense signals he might be worried that still more is coming.

“If you’re the head of an organization, and you’re aware that your associates are conspiring, even if you weren’t the one doing the conspiring you could face criminal liability for it,” Katyal said. “Right now we have only the tip of the iceberg from Mueller. Giuliani may be starting to float a new defense in the event that there’s more damaging information on the conspiracy front coming out.”

Giuliani’s new comments also signal the coming political defense for Trump. Whether or not Mueller ends up indicting, should he clearly establish conspiracy by members of Trump’s campaign, it could prove politically devastating. Giuliani has now signaled this is a real possibility. He is “drawing a tight line around Trump,” Bauer noted. “Since Mueller is unlikely to indict, the defense is against impeachment.”

We'll see if that's true.  Because last night, BuzzFeed News dropped this bombshell.

President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.

Trump also supported a plan, set up by Cohen, to visit Russia during the presidential campaign, in order to personally meet President Vladimir Putin and jump-start the tower negotiations. “Make it happen,” the sources said Trump told Cohen.

And even as Trump told the public he had no business deals with Russia, the sources said Trump and his children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., received regular, detailed updates about the real estate development from Cohen, whom they put in charge of the project.

Cohen pleaded guilty in November to lying about the deal in testimony and in a two-page statement to the Senate and House intelligence committees. Special counsel Robert Mueller noted that Cohen’s false claim that the project ended in January 2016 was an attempt to "minimize links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1” — widely understood to be Trump — "in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations.”

Now the two sources have told BuzzFeed News that Cohen also told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie — by claiming that negotiations ended months earlier than they actually did — in order to obscure Trump’s involvement.

The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.
This revelation is not the first evidence to suggest the president may have attempted to obstruct the FBI and special counsel investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

But Cohen's testimony marks a significant new frontier: It is the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia.

This is what we all expected would come from Cohen's testimony and cooperation with Mueller, Cohen basically copping to a conspiracy to lie to Congress at the minimum, and if that's the case, then things are going to get very nasty soon.  Straight up, no-frills, full-stop obstruction of justice, period.

I know I keep saying how bad things are for the Trump regime, and how each new week seems more awful for them than the last, but this week is starting to look like a backbreaker. Mueller certainly has the documents and evidence to back up this assertion, so expect today to be quite the ride.  This isn't just impeachable, it's outright indictable.

And Trump's Attoney General nominee, William Barr, was nailed on this exact scenario earlier this week by Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

Senator Amy Klobuchar quizzing William Barr on exactly what he would consider an act of obstruction. pic.twitter.com/tibx2ud2ed

— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) January 18, 2019

Endgame, folks.

It's here.

StupidiNews!

• Ahmed Hussein-Suale, the Ghanan journalist who exposed corruption in the country's governing body for soccer, was found shot to death in Accra Wednesday night.
• Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband and Duke of Edinburgh, is uninjured after the 97-year-old was involved in a car crash near a royal estate.
• Donald Trump has canceled the White House's yearly delegation to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland as the US government shutdown nears its fifth week with no end in sight.
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren is going after Wells Fargo, saying the banking giant's 31 college campus locations should be shuttered after finding student account fees were the highest in the nation. 
• Lenovo is reviving the Motorola Razr flip phone as a smart phone with a foldable screen to compete with Samsung's expected offering, the phone will set you back $1,500 at minimum.

Last Call For Rats Fleeing The Ship

It's clear that Republicans definitely don't like being in the minority in the House, and we're already seeing outright resignations as GOP lawmakers start securing private sector jobs.  First out the door after just being re-elected: Pennsylvania Republican Tom Marino.

Rep. Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican, announced Thursday he'll resign from Congress to pursue a private sector job, after just starting his fifth term in Congress. 

"As of January 23, 2019, I am officially stepping down from Congress," Marino said in a statement. "Having spent over two decades serving the public, I have chosen to take a position in the private sector where I can use both my legal and business experience to create jobs around the nation." 

Marino thanked his constituents, saying serving in Congress was "one of the greatest honors of my life" and was "confident that the area will continue to thrive." 

Marino won 66% of the vote in November and his district covers a wide swath of northern and central Pennsylvania. 

He was an early Trump supporter among congressional Republicans. He was nominated to be the president's Drug Czar but withdrew after a joint CBS "60 Minutes" and Washington Post report revealed he took nearly $100,000 from pharmaceutical lobbyists.

I guarantee you that Marino will land on his feet with a big pharma lobbyist job somewhere...and nobody will bat an eyelash.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Facebook has finally gotten around to taking down pages and accounts linked to Russian "news agency" Sputnik International, itself a front for Russian propaganda for years, even though the accounts happily bought more than $100,000 in ads over the years as a cost of doing propaganda business, and Facebook was more than happy to take their money.

Facebook announced early Thursday morning that it had removed hundreds of troll pages and accounts posing as eastern European news outlets that were actually linked to staff of the Russian state news agency, Sputnik.

The batch of removed content included 289 pages and 75 Facebook accounts that pumped out anti-NATO sentiment alongside posts on anti-corruption and promoting protests. Nearly 800,000 users followed the accounts, which targeted people in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

The pages and accounts spent $135,000 on Facebook ads between October 2013 and this month, and created roughly 190 events. Facebook could not confirm whether or not any gatherings actually occurred.
Facebook said it has been in contact with US law enforcement, the US Congress, other technology companies, and policymakers in impacted countries about the accounts.

The accounts often acted as an amplifier for Sputnik’s content as well as content from its parent organization Rossiya Segodnya, while never mentioning any tie to the media outlets, according to an analysis by the Atlantic Council, based on information Facebook provided ahead of its Thursday announcement.

“The pages represented a systematic, covert attempt to improve Rossiya Segodnya’s online audience across more than a dozen countries. Some had little impact, but others racked up tens of thousands of followers. Sputnik was the main beneficiary, as it was often the only source the Facebook pages amplified,” The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab concluded.

The company also revealed on Thursday that, as the result of a tip from American law enforcement, it had deleted a separate batch of 107 Facebook troll pages, groups, and accounts, as well as 41 Instagram troll accounts, all with Russian origins, but operated in Ukraine.

Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, noted in a postthat the accounts exhibited “behavior that shared characteristics with previous Internet Research Agency activity.” (The IRA is a Russian government online disinformation bureau.)

The over 400 pages and accounts removed on Thursday are the first set of accounts originating from Russia Facebook has deleted since 2017. The company announced in September 2017 that it had discovered accounts linked to the IRA that aimed to influence discourse about American social issues and politics around the time of the 2016 presidential election.

It took them nearly 18 months to remove the Russian propaganda accounts after discovering them, so don't tell me the problem is just Russia and not the greed of Facebook.

The Un-State of the Disunion

Apparently in the era of Trump, the traditional invitation by the Speaker of the House to the President to give the State of the Union address is no longer a sure thing.

House Democrats on Wednesday were making plans to undermine President Trump at his Jan. 29 State of the Union address. Just past 8:30 a.m., the leadership’s communications arm sent an email to lawmakers urging them to bring furloughed federal workers or other “message-related” guests to the nationally televised event.

Unknown to most of her caucus, however, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had decided on a more confrontational approach.

Addressing a closed-door meeting of House Democrats, the speaker read a letter she had just sent to Trump asking him to either postpone the speech until the federal government reopens or deliver the text in writing, citing security concerns.

Surprised Democratic lawmakers cheered their leader’s rationale: If the government stays shut down, Pelosi would deprive Trump of the spotlight he craves. To a president especially sensitive to acts of disrespect — and one with a hearty appetite for pomp and circumstance — the so-called unvitation was not merely a ­power play. It was a calculated personal slight.

In the two weeks since she reclaimed the speaker’s gavel, Pelosi has moved aggressively to leverage her decades of congressional experience to needle, belittle and undercut Trump with swipes at his competence and even his masculinity.

The two leaders are locked in a standoff over a partial government shutdown instigated by Trump’s demand that U.S. taxpayers fund a portion of his promised border wall. Both Trump and Pelosi are gambling that the other will bear the brunt of the blame as the economic impact worsens, with the shutdown now dragging on for nearly a month.

But Pelosi’s challenge to Trump also comes with a degree of risk, for her and for Democrats. The more she becomes the face of Trump’s opposition, the more Republicans will probably use her unpopularity nationally to label vulnerable House Democrats as Pelosi clones — a potentially potent line of attack against sitting lawmakers who cast votes in lock-step with party leaders.

Still, with a self-declared mandate to provide a check on the president’s power, Pelosi is helping to keep Democrats largely united while energizing liberals who have yearned for a leader to challenge Trump directly. 

This is what America elected Democrats to be a check on, and Nancy Pelosi is not shy at all about using the powers granted to her by the US Constitution to act as that check and that balance on Trump.  Good for her.

Besides, I have no intention of watching any Trump State of the Union, or any Trump speech, unless he's resigning.   Still, no doubt that Trump will be furious, and that's exactly what he deserves.

StupidiNews!

• A Georgia man was arrested in connection with a planned attack on the White House using an anti-tank launcher and explosives, federl agents arrested the man after being tipped off by a neighbor.
• Donald Trump says he's considering new auto tariffs on European autos sold in the US, in an effort to get EU negotiators to the table for a new trade deal.
• UK Prime Minister Theresa May has survived a no-confidence vote, 326-306 in Parliament, but there still doesn't appear to be any way forward on Brexit.
• A top North Korean official will meet with Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday, ahead of a possible new summit announcement between Pyongyang and Washington.
• As the rift between China and the US grows, the Department of Justice is considering indicting Chinese tech giant Huawei for theft of trade secrets.