The Reach To Impeach, Con't

As Greg Sargent points out, Nancy Pelosi has effectively killed impeachment, and California billionaire and Democratic  activist Tom Steyer has had enough.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has succeeded in stifling impeachment talk. The Post reports that the speaker privately told Democrats to stick to policy and forget about an impeachment inquiry, and not a single Democrat uttered a word in protest.

This is meant to illustrate the iron grip that Pelosi often successfully maintains on her caucus. But, whether you support an impeachment inquiry right now, there’s no way to describe the broader strategy that Democrats have adopted on the impeachment question as a success. It’s been a muddled mess.

A new ad that impeachment proponent Tom Steyer is set to launch illustrates this well. Notably, rather than merely making the case for an inquiry, the ad trains its fire at Democrats for failing to initiate one.

The ad — a $1 million buy on national cable and in Iowa and New Hampshire — takes aim at what might be called the Democrats’ “Wait For Mueller” strategy, referring to the investigation conducted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Stringing together quotes from ordinary Americans, it says:

This is a message for leaders of the Democratic Party. For over two years, this president has broken the law, and nothing happened. You told us to wait for the Mueller investigation. And when he showed obstruction of justice, nothing happened.

Numerous Democrats did claim there was no need to decide on an impeachment inquiry until we saw Mueller’s findings.

In retrospect, this was a serious strategic failure. If it was intended as a stalling tactic — a way to delay the moment at which Democrats would reveal their real intention not to act — it only created a situation in which Mueller’s extraordinarily serious revelations made it more difficult to definitively close the door on it.

If it was sincere — i.e., Democrats really wanted Mueller’s findings before making the call — then they were not prepared for the possibility that those revelations would be severe enough to overwhelmingly warrant an inquiry, setting them up to look feckless and weak at a moment of extraordinary challenge to the country.

Whichever it was, the result has been that Democrats have been forced by the seriousness of the revelations not to close the door on impeachment, but rather to again defer the decision, by claiming that they must first do more fact-finding.

And Sargent is correct.

Nancy Pelosi won't save us.

Robert Mueller won't save us.

Tom Steyer won't save us.

We have to save ourselves.

Another Hat Lands In The Ring, Con't

Despite absolutely nobody believing he can win or even that he should be in the race, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is making his 2020 bid for the White House.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will declare his bid for the presidency on Thursday, a campaign spokesperson said Wednesday, joining the almost two dozen other candidates already competing for the Democratic nomination.

De Blasio will make the formal announcement Thursday morning and then travel to Iowa and South Carolina for multiple stops over four days. His wife, Chirlane McCray, who has been a highly visible presence and close adviser during his six years at City Hall, will join him for part of the trip.

A Facebook post from the Woodbury County Democratic Party in Iowa announcing that de Blasio would appear at an event Thursday as the first stop on his presidential tour let the cat out of the bag early before his formal declaration. The post was later deleted.

The mayor plans to highlight his record of liberal accomplishments in the nation’s largest city, including enacting universal pre-kindergarten, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and overseeing a drop in crime to an all-time low.

De Blasio is not particularly popular back home, nor in early surveys of Iowa and New Hampshire, which vote first in the primary process. His popular predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, opted out of a 2020 run.

But allies of de Blasio, who was easily re-elected in 2017 despite a testy relationship with the local press corps and an FBI investigationthat eventually cleared him, argue he has as much or more executive experience as any candidate in the 2020 field and a record of actually doing things other candidates have only talked about.

"Because he has such a present press corps in a tabloid city, we've seen him up close and in an aggressive and unflattering light, but if you look at his actual record of achievement, it's quite lengthy,” said Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist and former top de Blasio aide. "Yes, there's an argument to be made about whether he should be running for president or not, but he is certainly qualified."

With an estimated 8.6 million residents, New York City has a bigger population than 38 states, including Washington, Colorado and Montana, whose governors or former governors are also running for president.

De Blasio isn't a bad guy, there's just no reason why he should be president.  He doesn't bring anything new or useful to the table.  Yes, the Big Apple press certainly tries to make him look like a buffoon every chance they get, but a lot of that is de Blasio himself constantly giving them the opportunity to dunk on him.

Besides, I don't think he can handle the pressure.  He's notoriously thin-skinned and we have enough of that in the current jackass in the Oval Office.

Hard Pass, Bill.  Get your public transportation and schools in order first, then get back to me.

StupidiNews!

• NYPD officials confirm a charter helicopter landed in the Hudson River on Wednesday afternoon, a nearby ferry captain was able to assist and the pilot escaped with minor hand injuries.
• Eric Trump is blaming "gun violence" in cities for lost profits at Trump properties rather than Donald Trump's decreasing popularity nationwide.
• Donald Trump has pardoned two conservative felons on Wednesday, including Conrad Black, the British former media mogul deported after a fraud and obstruction of justice conviction.
• Analysts believe China has well over $3 trillion available to fight Donald Trump's tariffs as the trade war between Beijing and Washington shows no sign of resolution anytime soon.
• Epic Games continues its battle with Steam for online PC gaming store supremacy as the company will soon offer a $10 store credit for users enabling two-factor authentication.

Last Call For Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The Trump regime has decided that openly supporting the online speech rights of white supremacists directly outweighs the rest of us getting hurt or killed, so America refuses to back New Zealand's call for dealing with online extremism.

The United States on Wednesday broke with 18 governments and top American tech firms by declining to endorse a New Zealand-led response to the live-streamed shootings at two Christchurch mosques, saying free-speech concerns prevented the White House from formally signing onto the largest campaign to date targeting extremism online.

The “Christchurch Call," unveiled at an international gathering in Paris, commits foreign countries and tech giants to be more vigilant about the spread of hate on social media. It reflects heightened global frustrations with the inability of Facebook, Google and Twitter to restrain hateful posts, photos and videos that have spawned real-world violence.

Leaders from across the globe, including British Prime Minister Theresa May, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, pledged to counter online extremism, including through new regulation, and to "encourage media outlets to apply ethical standards when depicting terrorist events online.” Companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter, meanwhile, said they’d work more closely to ensure their sites don’t become conduits for terrorism. They also committed to accelerated research and information sharing with governments in the wake of recent terrorist attacks. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was among those who attended.

The call is named after the New Zealand city where a shooter killed 51 people in a March attack broadcast on Facebook and posted afterward on other social-media sites. Facebook, Google and Twitter struggled to take down copies of the violent video as fast as it spread on the Web, prompting an international backlash from regulators who felt malicious actors had evaded Silicon Valley’s defenses too easily. Before the attack, the shooter also posted a hate-filled manifesto that included references to previous mass killings.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron organized the call to action, part of Ardern’s international plea this year for greater social-media accountability. Along with New Zealand and France, countries such as Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom endorsed the document, as did tech giants Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

And I know, the First Amendment protects vile speech, and the Supreme Court has made this clear.  But the fact this regime openly engages in the very practices this pact tries to stop is the much larger problem.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

With Alabama on the brink of outlawing abortion and making it punishable by 99 years in prison or even the death penalty, Irin Carmon at The Cut examines where the road to Gilead may take us all and a woman named Janet Porter, who has been pushing for "heartbeat bills" for years.

The legal scholar Jack Balkin has used the phrase “off the wall,” or on it, to describe how social movements can convince people the constitution says what they want it to say. Their goals are first ignored or seen as “lunatic,” he observed, then “wrong but interesting,” then “plausible but wrong,” until, through a combination of forces, they get to being considered “probably right.” And when it comes to abortion and a changing Supreme Court, we have no idea what will be on the wall.

Heartbeat bills have never been on the wall. For nearly a half century, the Supreme Court has said that states can’t ban abortion before a fetus is viable — no earlier than 24 weeks, not six, before many women even know they’re pregnant. That’s why the focus-grouped, gray-suited architects of the anti-abortion movement believe total bans hurt their cause. They’ve read the polls that say Americans broadly support abortion in the first trimester, that they don’t want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, and that they squirm when they hear about the later abortions allowed under it: after 20 weeks, or later for reason of health or life.

“Legislation is often a process, not an event. It takes time,” the National Right to Life Committee’s James Bopp — the architect of Citizens United, and an opponent of heartbeat bills to this day— once told me. What’s off the wall might not stay there, Balkin has pointed out, and it “depends a great deal on who is willing to put their reputation and authority behind the arguments and stand up for them. If enough important and influential people say that a legal argument is not crazy but one on which reasonable minds can differ — or even the best legal argument, all things considered — then it becomes on-the-wall, although it is by no means guaranteed to succeed ultimately in the courts.”

Janet Porter intuitively understands that. She has pointed out that in 2000, the Supreme Court struck down a “partial birth abortion ban.” Then Samuel Alito replaced Sandra Day O’Connor, and in 2007, the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court pretended it wasn’t overturning a precedent when it upheld the federal version. Back on the wall.

Kennedy’s successor, Brett Kavanaugh, has already made it clear in a Louisiana procedural vote that he’s willing to throw out abortion precedent in radical fashion as long as he can sound slightly calmer than he did in his confirmation hearings. Chief Justice John Roberts, the court’s new swing vote, is no one’s idea of a moderate and, despite voting to keep Louisiana’s clinics temporarily open in a procedural move, has upheld every single abortion law that the court has considered in full. But he has tended to not want to harm the Republican Party’s chances at the ballot, which upholding a total ban might do.

Breyer’s distress might also tell us something about an abortion mystery at the court. Last Friday, the justices considered for the 13th time whether to hear an Indiana abortion restriction that bans abortions in case of a fetal disability and mandates fetal burial or cremations. This was not a close call for the vast majority of judges who threw it out or refused to rehear it, because in the words of one of them, the law “seeks to accomplish precisely what the Supreme Court has held is impermissible,” by banning abortion before viability. So why not send Indiana packing, unless there’s a chance that could change?

For now, Janet Porter has to be feeling pretty good about where she is. Once no state had a heartbeat bill; now they’re multiplying. She was a birther; now, so is the president of the United States. She enlisted conservative Jay Sekulow to work out the legal details of what she wanted to get done; so did Trump. According to the Guardian, “In late 2017, she delivered her message directly to Mike Pence, and has been invited back to the White House for an anti-abortion gathering since.”

We don’t know how judges will read those cues, and neither do the people making laws. “When you have a willing court,” Bopp said, “then you pursue what they’re willing to do.” That was six years ago, and the walls have been coming down ever since.

And now the walls are nearly down.  Abortion won't end in America of course.  Safe abortion that doesn't kill women will end in America.

[UPDATE] Alabama GOP Gov. Kay Ivey didn't hesitate to sign the bill into law this evening.

Liz Warren Says Just FOX Off

In a world where Democratic candidates for 2020 are expected to come crawling and kneel before FOX News only to be tarred and feathered anyway as Socialist enemies of the United States, it's nice to finally see a Democrat take a stand by telling the network to go FOX itself.

Elizabeth Warren turned down a Fox News invitation Tuesday for a televised town hall and denounced the cable network as a “hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists.”

The network has been inviting Democratic presidential candidates to participate in town halls moderated by its news reporters. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar already done the events, while Pete Buttigieg and Kirsten Gillibrand are scheduled to. All of them have criticized the network’s coverage of the Trump administration but defended going on the network as a means to reach voters.

Without mentioning her rivals, Warren argued that agreeing to go on the network would ultimately lend Fox News credibility and boost its revenue.

“A Fox News town hall adds money to the hate-for-profit machine. To which I say: hard pass,” she wrote in a Twitter thread. “Fox News is welcome to come to my events just like any other outlet.”

A Fox News representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Anticipating criticism that she's ducking hard questions, Warren noted that since January she's done town halls in 17 states, had 57 media "availabilities" with reporters and done 131 interviews. After her town halls and events, Warren often takes questions from reporters for a few minutes. Her team said that they tabulated that she has taken over 1,100 questions the media since January.

Warren also participated in two CNN town halls earlier this year.

“I won’t ask millions of Democratic primary voters to tune into an outlet that profits from racism and hate in order to see our candidates — especially when Fox will make even more money adding our valuable audience to their ratings numbers,” she wrote. "Hate-for-profit works only if there’s profit, so Fox News balances a mix of bigotry, racism, and outright lies with enough legit journalism to make the claim to advertisers that it’s a reputable news outlet. It’s all about dragging in ad money — big ad money."

It's incredible that this is news, and that it took this long for a Democratic candidate for higher office finally call out FOX News for what it is, instead of simpering and bleating some ninsense about "winning over FOX viewers" as if the network doesn't happily function as the GOP's propaganda arm 24/7.

FOX News is not news, and I'm glad to finally see someone treat it as the media cancer it is.   There is zero, I repeat, zero benefit to go on FOX News for Dems, but they do it anyway to appear "bi-partisan" when of course all the viewers would rather see Democrats in jail than on FOX.

That part could be coming soon too, I don't know.

StupidiNews!

• Alabama's Senate has passed a state House bill that criminalized abortion procedures with up to 99 years in prison, the bill is headed for GOP Gov. Kay Ivey's desk.
• Legendary actor and comedian Tim Conway has passed at the age of 85, the multiple Emmy award-winning Conway had a career that spanned five decades.
• Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order this week barring US companies from using telecommunications equipment from Chinese giant Huawei, citing national security issues.
• San Francisco is the first major US city to ban use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement and all other city departments as a national debate on privacy continues.
• Cloud Peak Energy, the fourth-largest coal company in the US, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as natural gas and renewable energy is driving down coal prices worldwide.

Last Call For The Drums Of War

It's going off the rails now, guys.  Trump and Bolton, along with Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, are cooking up plans for sending 120,000 troops into US bases in the Middle East and naval vessels to surround Iran.

At a meeting of President Trump’s top national security aides last Thursday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons, administration officials said.

The revisions were ordered by hard-liners led by John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. They do not call for a land invasion of Iran, which would require vastly more troops, officials said.

The development reflects the influence of Mr. Bolton, one of the administration’s most virulent Iran hawks, whose push for confrontation with Tehran was ignored more than a decade ago by President George W. Bush.

It is highly uncertain whether Mr. Trump, who has sought to disentangle the United States from Afghanistan and Syria, ultimately would send so many American forces back to the Middle East.

It is also unclear whether the president has been briefed on the number of troops or other details in the plans. On Monday, asked about if he was seeking regime change in Iran, Mr. Trump said: “We’ll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake.”

There are sharp divisions in the administration over how to respond to Iran at a time when tensions are rising about Iran’s nuclear policy and its intentions in the Middle East.

Some senior American officials said the plans, even at a very preliminary stage, show how dangerous the threat from Iran has become. Others, who are urging a diplomatic resolution to the current tensions, said it amounts to a scare tactic to warn Iran against new aggressions.

European allies who met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday said that they worry that tensions between Washington and Tehran could boil over, possibly inadvertently.
More than a half-dozen American national security officials who have been briefed on details of the updated plans agreed to discuss them with The New York Times on the condition of anonymity. Spokesmen for Mr. Shanahan and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to comment.

The size of the force involved has shocked some who have been briefed on them. The 120,000 troops would approach the size of the American force that invaded Iraq in 2003.

Again, with this incompetent bunch of idiots running the show and Trump easily manipulated by foreign leaders from Netanyahu in Israel to Putin in Russia to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sultan in Saudi Arabia, the odds of a miscalculation or worse, a deliberate act to pull the US into a shooting war with Iran is looking more and more possible.

Eventually all this saber-rattling is going to rattle loose something bad, and it's going to mean another decade-long war that will cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.

Stay tuned.  It will only get worse.

It's All About Revenge Now, Con't

Attorney General Bill Barr is no longer trying to hide his abuse of office.  With two existing Justice Department investigations into the FBI's opening of candidate Donald Trump's campaign and its ties to Russia, Barr is now opening a third investigation with a hand-picked hatchet man.

Attorney General William P. Barr has assigned the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut to examine the origins of the Russia investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter, a move that President Trump has long called for but that could anger law enforcement officials who insist that scrutiny of the Trump campaign was lawful.

John H. Durham, the United States attorney in Connecticut, has a history of serving as a special prosecutor investigating potential wrongdoing among national security officials, including the F.B.I.’s ties to a crime boss in Boston and accusations of C.I.A. abuses of detainees.

His inquiry is the third known investigation focused on the opening of an F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation during the 2016 presidential campaign into possible ties between Russia’s election interference and Trump associates.

The department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, is separately examining investigators’ use of wiretap applications and informants and whether any political bias against Mr. Trump influenced investigative decisions. And John W. Huber, the United States attorney in Utah, has been reviewing aspects of the Russia investigation. His findings have not been announced.

Additionally on Capitol Hill, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said he, too, intends to review aspects of law enforcement’s work in the coming months. And Republicans conducted their own inquiries when they controlled the House, including publicizing details of the F.B.I.’s wiretap use.

Thomas Carson, a spokesman for Mr. Durham’s office, declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the Justice Department. “I do have people in the department helping me review the activities over the summer of 2016,” Mr. Barr said in congressional testimony on May 1, without elaborating.

Mr. Durham, who was nominated by Mr. Trump in 2017 and has been a Justice Department lawyer since 1982, has conducted special investigations under administrations of both parties. Attorney General Janet Reno asked Mr. Durham in 1999 to investigate the F.B.I.’s handling of a notorious informant: the organized crime leader James (Whitey) Bulger.

In 2008, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey assigned Mr. Durham to investigate the C.I.A.’s destruction of videotapes in 2005 showing the torture of terrorism suspects. A year later, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. expanded Mr. Durham’s mandate to also examine whether the agency broke any laws in its abuses of detainees in its custody.

Mr. Barr has signaled his concerns about the Russia investigation during congressional testimony, particularly the surveillance of Trump associates. “I think spying did occur,” he said. “The question is whether it was adequately predicated. And I’m not suggesting that it wasn’t adequately predicated. But I need to explore that.”

Durham may seem like a good guy, but let's remember Trump purged nearly every single US Attorney from the Obama era and installed his own, including Durham, and every one of them is loyal to Trump and Barr.

There is just no way given the existing investigations and the history of Trump and Barr that this is anything other than a bold attempt to put Obama-era officials in jail, and tie them to Joe Biden should he remain the Democratic front-runner.

It's going to be an ugly summer.

Deportation Nation, Con't

And now we know the real reason why Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Niesen and ICE head Ronald Vitello were run out of town: they weren't on board with Stephen Miller's plan for ICE mass deportation arrests in major cities across the country.

In the weeks before they were ousted last month, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and top immigration enforcement official Ronald Vitiello challenged a secret White House plan to arrest thousands of parents and children in a blitz operation against migrants in 10 major U.S. cities.

According to seven current and former Department of Homeland Security officials, the administration wanted to target the crush of families that had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border after the president’s failed “zero tolerance” prosecution push in early 2018. The ultimate purpose, the officials said, was a show of force to send the message that the United States was going to get tough by swiftly moving to detain and deport recent immigrants — including families with children.

The sprawling operation included an effort to fast-track immigration court cases, allowing the government to obtain deportation orders against those who did not show for their hearings — officials said 90 percent of those targeted were found deportable in their absence. The subsequent arrests would have required coordinated raids against parents with children in their homes and neighborhoods.

But Vitiello and Nielsen halted it, concerned about a lack of preparation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the risk of public outrage and worries that it would divert resources away from the border.

Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller and ICE deputy director Matthew Albence were especially supportive of the plan, officials said, eager to execute dramatic, highly visible mass arrests that they argued would help deter the soaring influx of families.

The arrests were planned for New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and the other largest U.S. destinations for Central American migrants. Though some of the cities are considered “sanctuary” jurisdictions with police departments that do not cooperate with ICE, the plan did not single out those locations, officials said.

ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations branch had an initial target list of 2,500 adults and children, but the plan, which remains under consideration, was viewed as a first step toward arresting as many as 10,000 migrants. The vast majority of families who have crossed the border in the past 18 months seeking asylum remain in the country, awaiting a court date or in defiance of deportation orders. 

I have been warning about this for months now, guys.  This was always the plan.  And now the people who have objected to it are gone.

Mass arrests are coming.  They will be regular and they will be in the news constantly between now and November 2020.  It will break the system, and become impetus for emergency measures that will remain in place for years, maybe decades.  It will be a reign of fear like we've never seen, guys.

And it's almost here.

StupidiNews!

• A California civil jury has returned a $2 billion verdict against agriculture giant Monsanto for causing cancer in in a couple with their popular weed killer product, Round-Up.
• Donald Trump says he will veto a House Democratic bill to add protections for LGBTQ Americans to civil rights and housing laws, the White House says the bill is "filled with poison pills".
• The White House says Donald Trump will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in June as trade war between the two countries threatens to damage the global economy.
• Upcoming midterm elections in the Philippines appear to be setting the stage for President Rodrigo Duterte to pass leadership to his eldest daughter Sara, currently Mayor of Davao City.
• BitCoin is back up to $8,000, a new 2019 high, as the price of the cryptocurrency has again skyrocketed in just a few short weeks.

Last Call For Trump Trading Blows, Con't

We're now to the point where we've gone from Americans will be helped by Trump's idiotic trade war with China, to Trump's trade war probably won't hurt, to it will hurt but it's okay, to GOP Sen. Tom Cotton this morning telling Americans that the pain in your pocketbooks is less than the pain of those serving in our endless wars, so suck it up loser.

As the U.S. and China inch closer to an all-out trade war, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton says that the sacrifice Americans will pay for President Trump's tariffs are "minimal" compared to those serving overseas. President Trump has maintained that Americans would not be fronting the brunt of the cost for tariffs, but many, including the president's own economic adviser, say they will.

"There will be some sacrifices on the part of Americans, I grant you that, but I also would say that sacrifice is pretty minimal compared to the sacrifices that our soldiers make overseas that are fallen heroes that are laid to rest in Arlington make," Cotton told "CBS This Morning" when asked about the impact of tariffs on farmers in his own state of Arkansas.

Cotton, the author of "Sacred Duty: A Soldier's Tour at Arlington National Cemetery," said that in the long term, the goal is to make sure that the U.S. "remains preeminent as a global super power both in the economic and the security" worlds.

The price tag for that "preeminence" on the average American family, according to trade experts falls between $700 to $1,000.

"If we remain the world's largest economy and the world's largest economic super power in the short term, I say it is worth that cost," said Cotton.

Enjoy your Trump Patriotic Trade Tax and pay it proudly, citizen!  This money will go to...something.  I'm sure.  But this is the price of your freedom, so pay up.  And keep paying up because Leader Trump says so.  You're a real American, aren't you?

Your grandfather died fighting socialists so that you could have freedom but freedom comes with a price, which is roughly $1000 in extra costs for goods this year so quit whining, liberal!

Tariffs for some, tiny American flags for others!

Trump meanwhile wants more money going to farmers because they are getting wrecked by his policies, but it's okay if the rest of us buy them off because Trump Patriotic Trade Tax.

President Donald Trump is seeking an additional $15 billion in U.S. subsidies in an effort to protect farmers from the devastating impact of his trade war with China. That’s on top of $12 billion already earmarked for the farmers to help them weather the fallout.

That would be an additional bill for U.S. taxpayers already shouldering the cost of increased tariffs in the form of higher costs for products and parts from China.

Trump revealed the subsidy figure in a tweet Friday. He suggested the government use the funds to buy agricultural products to ship to other nations for humanitarian aid, though setting up such a system would be extremely complicated. In his most recent budget proposal, Trump proposed eliminating three food aid programs, Politico noted.

The president appeared to dismiss the impact of the cost as he falsely claimed — again — that “massive” tariff payments are being paid by China “directly” to the U.S. Treasury, which would presumably be used to cover the cost of the subsidy. There is “absolutely no need to rush” to negotiate a deal with China, he tweeted.

In fact, the tariffs are paid by U.S. importers, who pass on the extra costs to the American consumer in the form of higher prices for products, a fact White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow admitted Sunday. Economists have estimated that the trade war is costing the U.S. more than $3 billion a month.

So who's protecting the American consumer from Trump's trade war?

Nobody.  Now go do your patriotic duty and pay that tariff.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The Very Serious Washington Pundits™ tell us that super cunning Trump wants to be impeached, a trap that must be avoided because Trump will never be removed from office by the Senate, and loser Democrats will only lose and Trump's popularity will skyrocket in the wake of a failed attempt.

It seems a crazy idea that any president would actually want to be impeached. 

But Donald Trump has so subverted Washington logic with his wild, norm-crushing presidency that there is now a serious conversation -- at least among Democrats -- about whether he views the ultimate constitutional crisis as a weapon in his re-election campaign. 

The possibility is shaping the strategies of Democratic leaders as they weigh the political risks of impeachment and their duty to defend principles of American governance. 

Many Democrats fear that Trump may be laying an impeachment trap that could consume the House majority, distract them from key issues like health care and alienate persuadable voters. 

But it's also possible their leaders could be talking up the idea that Trump wants to be impeached as a way to quell discontent among some base activists that Washington Democrats are not doing more to constrain the President.  

Now, imagine that those are the only two possibilities, one, that Democrats have already inevitably lost the impeachment battle, and impeachment leads to Trump's master stroke of a 2020 government completely controlled by Republicans eager to exterminate all Dems, or two, that everything in scenario one is correct so that Democrats are using this as the excuse not to impeach in order to save the country.

The question is not going away, given Trump's staggeringly broad effort to subvert investigations of his presidency, campaign, personal finances and business career. 

"The President is almost self-impeaching because he is, every day, demonstrating more obstruction of justice and disrespect for Congress' legitimate role to subpoena," Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday. 

One of Pelosi's top lieutenants, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, is, like Pelosi, wary of the risks of impeachment. But he acknowledged Trump's own actions might be propelling Washington toward a precipice. 

"Part of our reluctance is we are already a bitterly divided country and an impeachment process will divide us further," Schiff said Sunday on "This Week" on ABC News. "He certainly seems to be trying and maybe this is his perverse way of dividing us more ... He thinks that's to his political advantage, but it's certainly not to the country's advantage." 

Trump dodged a question in a Politico interview last week about whether he wanted to be impeached. And he argues that if anyone committed crimes over the 2016 campaign, it is Democrats, not him. 

At other times he has, however, seemed to be testing out arguments that he could use in his defense in an impeachment showdown. 

"It's hard to impeach somebody who hasn't done anything wrong and who's created the greatest economy in the history of our country," Trump told Reuters in an interview in December.

Judging by this article, Democrats have already surrendered.

If that's true, we're done as a country.

The Perpetual Outrage Machine, Con't

For a change of pace, Republicans are attacking Muslim Democrats other than Rep. Ilhan Omar as anti-Semitic, and that of course means taking Rep. Rashida Tlaib out of context entirely.

House Republican leaders took aim at Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on Sunday for a podcast interview in which she discussed her support for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In an interview on Yahoo News’s “Skullduggery” podcast published Saturday, Tlaib was asked about her position on the issue. The freshman lawmaker began her response by noting that the United States commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day two weeks ago. She then discussed her Palestinian ancestors and the founding of the state of Israel, saying she was “humbled by the fact that it was my ancestors that had to suffer” to create a safe haven for the Jewish people.

“There’s, you know, there’s a kind of a calming feeling, I always tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence, in many ways, had been wiped out. . . . I mean, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time,” Tlaib said.

Now, any actual student of history knows this is true, that Palestinians were forcibly removed from parts of what is now Israel in order to make a homeland for the Jewish people after the Holocaust.

She added that the events of the past have informed her views on how to approach a solution to the conflict.

“I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that [safe haven], in many ways,” Tlaib said. “But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away, right? And it was forced on them. And so, when I think about one-state, I think about the fact that, why couldn’t we do it in a better way?”

Tlaib’s comments were picked up by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which published an article with the headline, “Tlaib Says She Is Humbled Her Ancestors Provided ‘Safe Haven’ for Jews After Holocaust.”

But two of the top House Republicans on Sunday criticized her use of the phrase “calming feeling,” falsely accusing her of using the phrase to describe her views about the Holocaust itself.

And that out-of-context garbage is all that matters.

“There is no justification for the twisted and disgusting comments made by Rashida Tlaib just days after the annual Day of Holocaust Remembrance,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said in a statement. “More than six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust; there is nothing ‘calming’ about that fact.”

Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the No. 3 Republican in the House, issued a statement describing Tlaib’s remarks as “sickening.”

“I call on Speaker Pelosi and Leader Hoyer to finally take action against Representative Tlaib and other members of the Democratic caucus who are spreading vile anti-Semitism,” she said, referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.). “All of us, regardless of party, must stand as Americans against the evil of anti-Semitism. If the Democratic leadership continues to stand by in silence, they are enabling the spread of evil.”

And of course, Liz Cheney and Steve Scalise are behind this, two of the most vile, perfidious liars in the GOP.  Expect another week of "Democrats hate Jews" and "How can an American Jew vote for a Democrat" as the needle gets moved off the Trump regime's journey towards autocracy.

StupidiNews!

• An Oregon man wanted by the FBI for 23 years turned himself into police Friday, Wayne Arthur Silsbee escaped authorities for over two decades on sexual assault and child molestation charges.
• Some 44 states are filing a mass lawsuit against more than 20 drug manufacturers over conspiracy and collusion to raise prices on American consumer by over 1,000%.
• Officials in Sri Lanka are temporarily blocking social media after mosques and Muslim-owned businesses were attacked in the capital of Colombo, several arrests have been made in the case.
• Donald Trump says the White House is "where we want to be" after raising tariffs on China this weekend, China is promising swift retaliation that will be "regrettable". 
• Ridesharing giant Uber's first day on the stock market was a bust, with the company losing 7.6% in trading and all news pointing more selling this week.