Last Call For The Long Shadow Of The Hawk(eye)

Unfortunately, I have to agree with Jon Chait here.  The one thing everyone needed from Iowa was a demonstration that our political process was solid and working at least on the Democratic party side and most of that was to stop the Bernie folks from seeding chaos.  We absolutely did not get that last night in Iowa.

One of the oddities of the 2016 presidential race is that, while the Republican Party was taken over by an outsider initially viewed as dangerous and unacceptable by its party elite, it was the Democratic Party that concluded its nominating process had failed. Supporters of Bernie Sanders repeatedly applied his trademark phrase — “rigged” — to explain a primary they clearly lost. Complaints about “rigging” began with an agonizingly narrow Sanders defeat to Clinton in the Iowa caucus four years before. They continued throughout the contest, with every routine snafu — in Nevada, New York, and the possibility that party superdelegates would provide Hillary Clinton the winning margin — held up as more evidence of the conspiracy.

Sanders himself has toggled between cooperating with the party and stoking the paranoia of his supporters. He never fully abandoned the claim that — despite losing by a double-digit margin — the party robbed him. “Some people say that maybe if the system wasn’t rigged against me, I would’ve won the nomination,” he insisted last year.

The party instituted a number of changes intended to inoculate itself against accusations of rigging. In Iowa, the Democratic caucus instituted new rules, “mandated by the DNC as part of a package of changes sought by Bernie Sanders” and “designed to make the caucus system more transparent.” The new rules required reporting several different sets of numbers from every precinct. This reflected a long-standing proclivity in left-of-center politics to meet every demand for fairness with new layers of complexity. Anybody who has witnessed or participated in a grassroots progressive organization has seen this intricate, rules-based method democracy in action. Monty Python lampooned the tendency in Holy Grail. (“We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune,” a peasant explains to the impatient King Arthur. “We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major …”)

Still, the caucus failure ultimately boiled down to a banal organizational failure. The party attempted to introduce a new app to report precinct results, which its older precinct captains largely failed to master, and its phone-reporting system buckled under the weight of the elevated confusion. There is no evidence voting results themselves have been compromised (at least not beyond the normal levels of confusion produced by the chaotic process).

What may turn a routine bureaucratic failure into a larger Democratic crisis, though, is the Bernie movement’s preexisting suspicion. Sanders is not alone in this — the Biden campaign shamefully issued a statement calling the results into doubt, in a transparent effort to discredit a vote it clearly lost. But the bulk of the suspicions came from Sanders supporters, who quickly reprised their 2016 rigging claims.

Trump has seized upon the Sanders supporters’ propensity toward grievance. Republicans began spreading the message in mid-January that impeachment was a plot by the party leadership to take Sanders off the campaign trail, a theory also echoed by some of Sanders’s nuttier fans, like Aaron Mate and Krystal Ball. In advance of the Iowa caucus, Republicans switched over to spreading the message that the voting process itself had been rigged. Republicans began circulating baseless claims of vote fraud in Iowa. When the first problems appeared in Iowa Monday night, Republicans like Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, Senator Lindsey Graham, and independent operators of the Trump-family blind trust, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, gleefully charged that it was all rigged to stop Bernie.

Yeah, Biden's camp messed up, but Sanders's camp has had it in for the DNC for four years.  There's no way the primary goes smoothly now.  It's going to be six months of chaos.  If Sanders doesn't win the nomination, he and his supporters will hand the country back to Trump and we'll all lose.

Here's what we should be doing:

Let's take some of the Iowa outrage and channel it into outrage about:

-Lack of automatic voter registration

-Voter suppression

-Fewer polling places in minority communities

-Gerrymandering

-"Voter fraud" disinformation

Every vote matters, not just when an app fails to work

— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) February 4, 2020

Sadly that won't happen.  All five major candidates declared victory last night without results. Six months of guaranteed outrage, Bernie folks screaming at every vote not counted for them as "rigged" and a convention that will devolve into street fighting.

Despite the Sanders folks going from "The DNC is evil and is rigging everything!" to "The DNC is too incompetent to hold a caucus!" and the absolutely laughability of their position, the sound bites will still hurt and Trump will egg on the resentment.

Here's the real tea though: there were reasons enough to abandon the entire idea of caucuses before Monday, and if there is anything remotely good that comes from this, it's the fact that Iowa will be under tremendous pressure to drop the caucus and hold a primary that doesn't disenfranchise thousands of Iowa voters, or lose their first-in-the-nation status.

I think we can all agree on that.

Press The Meat, Con't

An emboldened Trump regime is now fully committed to its war on non-FOX media outlets, regularly excluding them from press events and junkets, and unless the media starts boycotting the regime altogether, Trump is going to pick them off one by one. NPR is still being blacklisted over Mike Pompeo, and Bloomberg News was ejected from Trump's Iowa rally last night as the Trump regime has a standing blacklist order against them.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump’s campaign ejected Jennifer Jacobs, a reporter for Bloomberg News, out of a campaign event in Iowa.

The decision, according to the report, is in accordance with the campaign’s “pledge no longer to approve credentials for the news organization.”
Trump cracked down on credentials for the organization as its CEO, Michael Bloomberg, has mounted a campaign for president and blanketed the airwaves across the country with advertisements slamming the president.

The president’s relationship with the press has always been among the most hostile of any modern chief executive, with Trump repeatedly referring to reporters as “enemies of the people” and advocating that America should “open up libel laws” to allow politicians to retaliate against reporters who cover them. His White House previously drew controversy for revoking the press credentials of CNN reporter Jim Acosta, a move that was blocked by a federal judge he had appointed. 

Now Trump is excluding CNN from its pre-SOTU lunch today.

President Donald Trump's targeting of CNN is moving to yet another arena: The annual presidential lunch with television network anchors. 

CNN anchors are being excluded from Tuesday's lunch, three sources said on Monday night. 

Trump, like presidents before him, typically invites anchors from all the major networks to dine with him at the White House in advance of his State of the Union address. The lunch conversation is considered off the record, but it gives the anchors a sense of the president's state of mind before they anchor SOTU coverage. "Despite Trump's persistent attacks on the news media, he's kept up such traditions," Politico pointed out last year. 

CNN's Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer attended last year's lunch. Blitzer has been attending these lunches longer than almost any other anchor — 20 years in a row. 

Journalists from other networks are still planning on attending Tuesday's session, according to sources at those networks. 

This is the first time in recent memory that a president has singled out one network and opted not invite any anchors from there. 

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham did not respond to a request for comment on Monday night.

This will keep up until non-FOX outlets are forced to come crawling individually to the White House to regain access, and the price will be to provide 100% favorable coverage to Trump. (and to attack Democrats all the time).

And Trump won't need them at all anymore should he win reelection.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

As senators take to the chamber well to explain to the American people why Donald Trump is allowed to be a despot today, West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is leading the charge slow embarrassed shuffle towards a Senate censure measure, in an effort to try to shame his GOP colleagues into admitting Trump did something wrong.

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), a moderate who is friendly with the White House, on Monday asked his colleagues to consider censuring President Trump as the Senate moves toward votes on impeachment.

“I do believe a bipartisan majority of this body would vote to censure President Trump for his action in this matter. Censure would allow this body to unite across party lines,” Manchin said in a speech on the Senate floor. “His behavior cannot go unchecked by the Senate and censure would allow a bipartisan statement condemning his unacceptable behavior in the strongest terms.”

It is an effort that could put pressure on some Republican senators as they mull whether to reprimand Trump in coming weeks, even if they vote Wednesday to acquit him on the House’s two articles of impeachment — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

But Manchin’s proposal will face obstacles as lawmakers in both parties resist the idea and hew to their leadership’s position on how to respond to Trump’s conduct.

Manchin has prepared a censure resolution for fellow senators to review in coming days, which would be a less severe rebuke than removal from office for Trump’s involvement in pressuring Ukraine to investigate a domestic political rival, former vice president Joe Biden.

“What the president did was wrong,” Manchin said in his speech.

The crux of the case against Trump is the allegation that he withheld military aid and a White House meeting to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter. Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, while his father was vice president.

The resolution was shared with The Washington Post by a person close to Manchin who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk freely.

Manchin is trying to provide a fig leaf, the question is for whom.  The measure will never get a Senate floor vote, Mitch McConnell will see to that.  If that's the point, to shame the GOP twice, then I guess it will have just as much effect as the first time, which is none at all.

But what I think may very well happen is Manchin will trade his acquittal vote and the vote of several Democratic senators for bringing the censure measure to the floor.  Trump badly wants "bipartisan" acquittal and Manchin doesn't want to go down as voting to convict in a state where Trump won by 24 points in 2016 and will win by a similar margin in November.

In other words, this is going to be cover for Democrats to vote to acquit.  And when Mitch sabotages the censure vote, Manchin and his friends will end up holding the bag.  At this point there's no reason to trust McConnell at all.

That might change next January with a smaller GOP margin or, the universe willing, a Democratic-led Senate.  But for now, McConnell no longer needs Manchin for anything.

Both of them know it.

StupidiNews!

Only one story this morning.

The Iowa Democratic Caucuses were a complete disaster last night.

More later today.

Well, make that two stories, Rush Limbaugh has advanced lung cancer.

Have a nice one.

Last Call For Orange Revenge

Trump is now fully unleashed and deep into grievance as his acquittal on Wednesday is certain now, but the first of many pounds of flesh Trump will exact will come from John Bolton's mustache.

With Senate Republicans on track to acquit Donald Trump on Wednesday, Washington is bracing for what an unshackled Trump does next. Republicans briefed on Trump’s thinking believe that the president is out for revenge against his adversaries. “It’s payback time,” a prominent Republican told me last week. “He has an enemies list that is growing by the day,” another source said. Names that came up in my conversations with Republicans included Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Mitt Romney, and John Bolton. “Trump’s playbook is simple: go after people who crossed him during impeachment.”

Several sources said Bolton is at the top of the list. Trump’s relationship with Bolton was badly damaged by the time Bolton left the White House in September. Trump has since blamed his former national security adviser for leaking details of his forthcoming memoir that nearly derailed the impeachment trial by pressuring Republicans to call witnesses. In the book Bolton reportedly alleges Trump told him directly that Ukraine aid was tied to Ukraine announcing investigations into the Bidens (Bolton has denied being a source of the leak).

The campaign against Bolton has already begun. On January 23, the White House sent a cease and desist letter to Bolton’s lawyer demanding that Bolton’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, not release the book in March without removal of certain information. Trump intends to ratchet up the pressure, and some Republicans close to the White House fear how far Trump will take things after he’s gotten off for a second time (Trump famously made his July 25 call to Volodymyr Zelensky the day after Robert Mueller testified before Congress.) “Trump has been calling people and telling them to go after Bolton,” a source briefed on the private conversations said. The source added that Trump wants Bolton to be criminally investigated. A person familiar with Trump’s thinking said Trump believes Bolton might have mishandled classified information. According to a former official, the White House is planning to leak White House emails from Bolton that purportedly allege Bolton abused his position at the National Security Council. The official said that West Wing officials have discussed releasing emails “showing [Bolton] was doing pay-to-play,” the official said. A person close to Bolton dismissed the story. “John plays things straight,” the person said.

Indeed, Bolton is being systematically excommunicated and exiled from the GOP gravy train.

Several of President Donald Trump’s most loyal donors and supporters are telling other conservative financiers to shun former national security advisor John Bolton’s political action committee and super PAC as he prepares to publish a memoir that is reportedly critical of the administration.

The financiers are signaling to their networks not to give to his committees following a report in The New York Times about claims Bolton made in a draft of the book, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter who declined to be named in order to speak freely about Bolton.

The move by these donors to take on Bolton is the latest example of how Trump has command of those who fund the Republican Party.

“You’re on the president’s side or you’re not. It’s simple,” said Arthur Schwartz, a Republican consultant with close ties to the White House.

Trump will not settle for just Bolton's head, either.  He'll go after anyone who supports him, because Trump is the GOP, and the GOP is Trump now.  It's a mob operation from top to bottom, and capos who break the silence of Trumpmerta end up getting horse heads in their beds.

And yet more excerpts from Bolton's book are sure to drop over the next few weeks and months. We'll see if Trump decides to go after Bolton in a more...punitive...manner soon, but this is absolutely the kind of thing to expect from the autocratic despot from now on.

We're transitioning from Trump tossing out reporters and shouting "Lock them up!" at his hate rallies to actually having Bill Barr and the Senate GOP doing it.

The State Of Play Of The Hawkeye State

No matter who wins in Iowa tonight and how many delegates are assigned, the truth is Iowa, like Ohio and Indiana, won't be contested by Democrats in November and conceded to Trump. Tim Alberta:

Iowa’s place at the molten core of the political universe has, for much of the past half-century, owed to the marriage of its first-in-the-nation nominating contest with the state’s reputation as a quintessential general-election battleground. The swinging of Iowa’s electoral votes between the two parties, and the tight margins by which those contests have often been decided, guaranteed the state would be just as relevant in October as it was in January.

That won’t be the case this year. A new sentiment has echoed throughout recent conversations with Democratic strategists, activists and campaigns, a consensus that would have been unthinkable just eight years ago: Iowa is no longer a battleground. Not in 2020, anyway.

After decades spent at the center of both parties’ strategies for winning the Electoral College, Iowa is suddenly an afterthought. Its six electoral votes no longer seem essential, not when states like Texas and Arizona and Georgia — longtime GOP strongholds — all were decided by tighter margins in 2016, and all have demographic tailwinds that benefit the Democratic Party.
Few states received more time and attention from Barack Obama during his White House campaigns than Iowa. Part of that was due to its pride of place in his political ascent; Iowa, after all, was the state that vaulted him from long shot to Clinton slayer. But there also was as widespread view then that Iowa was up for grabs in November. Now, less than five years removed from his presidency, Democrats talk openly about not contesting the state at all.

“The trends here are much more red than purple. I could see that swinging back at some point, but probably not with Trump on the ballot,” says Ben Foecke, who served as executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party four years ago. “It became clear to us in 2016 that this was the path we were heading down, at least in the short term, so I'm not surprised when I hear these conversations or read these memos explaining that Iowa isn’t really a swing state in 2020."

At a glance, this fatalism might seem exaggerated. Democrats carried the state in six of the seven presidential contests before Trump came along, and the one exception — George W. Bush’s victory in 2004 — was decided by 1 percentage point. Even today, the RealClearPolitics average of general election polling shows Trump leading Joe Biden by just 3 points and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders by 6 points apiece —hardly the indicators of a blowout.

Moreover, there’s recent history to consider: Democrats flipped two Republican-held congressional seats in the 2018 midterms, giving the party control of three of the state’s four districts, and also won a number of bellwether legislative races in the suburban areas around Des Moines. These victories, on top of ousting the Republican state auditor, gave some Democrats confidence of being able to compete statewide with Trump’s apparatus in 2020.

And yet, embedded in those 2018 results were trend lines that demonstrate just how distinct Trump’s advantage in Iowa has become. Despite overall midterm turnout spiking by some 180,000 votes, Republicans were able to hold both chambers of the Legislature and several statewide offices, including the governorship, all while growing their advantage in active party registration. The reason: Even in a terrible environment for the GOP, driven by suburbanites fleeing the party, Republicans performed even better in rural areas than they did in the 2014 cycle, one of the best in modern history for the party.

“Joni Ernst ran up significant margins in rural Iowa in a great Republican year in 2014,” explains David Kochel, the longtime Iowa GOP strategist who led the senator’s campaign. “But the Trump effect put those margins on steroids to such an extent that [Gov.] Kim Reynolds won many counties in a bad Republican year at even higher margins than Ernst."

Short-term or not, as Midwestern states lose population to the coasts as younger voters move away from the farms and shuttered factories, these states are becoming more white and older, and they are voting Republican.  They are voting Trump.  That's not going to change anytime soon, maybe not even in my lifetime.

But I don't buy that Iowa is out of play.   Not after they came within 5 points of preventing Gov. Kim Reynolds in 2016. Not after Dems took 3 of 4 House seats in 2018.

It did happen with Kentucky and West Virginia.  Pennsylvania and Michigan are still battlegrounds for now, and Minnesota and Wisconsin are also in the mix more than Iowa.  The hope for Dems in the next decade is flipping Georgia and North Carolina and fighting for Florida, and the big prize: a blue Texas.  But Iowa and I think Kansas are coming around.

Stupor Bowl Post-Game

The Chiefs defeated the Niners last night, but the loser was the American taxpayer, who gave millions to King Trump so he could hold court at Mar-A-Lago for his big game party.

Taxpayers shelled out another $3.4 million to send President Donald Trump to Florida this weekend so he could host a Super Bowl party for paying guests at his for-profit golf course.

The president’s official schedule shows him spending two and a half hours Sunday evening at a “Super Bowl LIV watch party” at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Tickets sold for $75 each, but were only available to members of the club — the initiation fee for which reportedly runs about $450,000, with annual dues costing several thousands of dollars more.

“Well, obviously there are no TVs in the White House, so what alternative did he have?” quipped Robert Weissman, president of the liberal group Public Citizen. “He could have saved money by chartering a plane and flying club members to watch the game at the White House.”

In response to a query, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham defended Trump’s trip and attacked HuffPost: “The premise of your story is ridiculous and false, and just more left-wing media bias on display. The president never stops working, and that includes when he is at the Winter White House.”

Her phrase “Winter White House” refers to Mar-a-Lago, the for-profit resort in Palm Beach that is several miles east of the golf course and that doubled its initiation fee from $100,000 to $200,000 after Trump was elected in 2016. Trump frequently mingles with guests at social events there.

On Saturday, for example, Trump appeared at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago arranged by the “Trumpettes,” a group his female supporters. The dinner did not appear on the president’s publicly released schedule, and in any case was a campaign event, not an “official” one.

When a pool reporter asked the White House on Saturday what work Trump did over the weekend, the reply was that he had calls and “meetings with staff.” The president did not attend a rally on Saturday for Venezuelan leader Juan Guaido, whom the United States and other governments have recognized as the legitimate president of that country. That rally began while Trump was still at his golf course, and attending it could have made him late for the start of the Trumpettes’ dinner.

"He never stops working."

Except when he's at his Florida private club hosting football game parties at our expense.

It doesn't matter which state the winner is in.

Except that this Kansas City is in Missouri. pic.twitter.com/HzK2yC3p91

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) February 3, 2020

We are all subjects of King Donald The Orange now.

StupidiNews!

• Iowa caucus-goers will decide delegates today in the Hawkeye State's first-in-the-nation Democratic contest with several possible candidates in the running to win.
• The death toll from the Wuhan coronavirus has topped 360, exceeding the fatality count from SARS 20 years ago as the virus continues to spread in China and multiple other countries.
• Japanese PM Shinzo Abe says the country will be ready for the Tokyo Olympics in July, keeping a close eye on the Wuhan coronavirus and other global events.
• As the UK enters the Brexit era, PM Boris Johnson says Briatian will walk away from EU trade talks unless Brussels drops demands for London to join market regulations and court rulings.
• Four years after clandestine affair website Ashley Madison was hacked, researchers have discovered another round of extortion schemes based on exposed user data.

Last Call For Dancing With Who Brought You

Democratic candidates in Iowa are chasing those elusive Midwestern working-class whites, and black women in the Hawkeye State are saying the field is taking the black vote for granted.  Again.

Blow dryers hum. Electric razors buzz. Steam rolls off strands of hair as they glide through a hot flat iron. This is the scene, on a brisk Saturday morning, at Tranzitions Salon & Beauty Bar in Des Moines, Iowa. A place where black women convene to talk beauty, business and, sometimes, politics.

The Hawkeye State is preparing for what the Iowa Democratic Party predicts will be record turnout at this year’s presidential nominating caucus on Monday.

But, some black women say they may sit this one out.

“I'm not sure if I’ll caucus this year,” 63-year old Cheryl Barnes told NBC News. “Because I'm not sure about the candidates yet.”

Brandy McCracken, a 42-year-old Democrat, echoed that sentiment. “It will basically come down to me finding time to caucus — if there's someone that interests me.”

These women are not alone in their indecision. The latest Iowa poll shows only 40 percent of likely caucusgoers have picked a candidate. However, what may distinguish this group is why they remain largely undecided.

While black women, including Barnes and McCracken, turned out in droves to help secure a caucus win for Barack Obama in 2008, some say this time around they feel left out of the special treatment that comes with being a voter in the state up first in the presidential nominating process.

"They're reaching out more to the rural areas of Iowa than they are in Des Moines to me,” said 61-year-old Kim McCracken-Smith. “And in rural Iowa, there's no black people.”
Obama’s historic win in Iowa in 2008 came with his managing to pick up key delegates in rural Iowa while also winning counties in the state where voters of color are concentrated.

African Americans make up only about about 4 percent of the state's population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But with such a large field of candidates heading into caucus night, community activists say every vote this year will matter.

“Those are the kind of percentages that get you over the hump when it’s close, and it’s going to be close in a lot of places,” Izaah Knox, executive director of Urban Dreams, a community organization in Des Moines, told NBC News.

While campaigns have worked to replicate Obama’s diverse coalition of voters — with many hiring outreach directors tasked with targeting specific communities — that hasn’t been enough to win over some black caucusgoers.

Some potential caucusgoers said the outreach they’ve received has seemed rote and impersonal.

“I’ve just been getting these generic text messages and calls that I know are just the standard they’re reading off of the paper,” TranZitions salon owner Tyechia Daye said. “Come and see us — if you want our votes.”

It's weird that with every candidate still in the race saying they need every vote and every delegate in order to get through the first four contests to Super Tuesday a month from now, how this is happening and how black voters in red state primaries are being ignored.

Then again, I live in Kentucky, I know exactly what this feels like.  Oh wait, Obama came here three times in 2008.  Booker and Harris did visit black Iowans too, but Booker and Harris were run out of the race before a single vote was cast.

We notice stuff like this, guys.  Just saying.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

Mitch McConnell never had to stop Mitt Romney and Susan Collins from straying in order to enable Trump's complete victory.  He just had to stop every other Republican senator from doing so, and he did.

Trump’s acquittal was never in question in the Republican-controlled Senate, but the uncertainty about whether to call witnesses — as had been done in each of the previous 15 impeachment trials — created last-minute drama amid new revelations about Trump’s move to strong-arm Ukraine into investigating his domestic political rivals.

In the end, McConnell held his conference together, arguing that witnesses would drag the trial out for weeks and delay other Senate work. Several Republicans acknowledged that the president did use nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine as leverage to benefit himself politically, calling it inappropriate, but argued it wasn’t grounds to oust him from office.

“What was, I think, the most persuasive was just the open-ended consequences of starting down that path, and particularly the delays inherent in litigation that would ensue in the middle of the trial,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.).

McConnell was among the first to argue that Republicans should avoid calling witnesses despite Trump’s clamor for the whistleblower whose report triggered the House impeachment probe, former vice president Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, to testify. The leader warned in a mid-December lunch that a protracted witness fight would be dangerous for both parties.

“Mutually assured destruction,” he told them.

In he end, he told Trump to let him handle it and he did.

Meanwhile, McConnell was working to ensure Trump and the White House trusted him to handle the trial strategy as he dealt with a mercurial president who had his own ideas about the proceedings. In one phone call shortly before Christmas, McConnell bluntly told Trump that while the president was getting a lot of feedback about how the trial should be conducted, he knew the Senate better than anybody who had been advising the president and, most importantly, how to make his members comfortable.

McConnell told Trump that he needed to trust him, according to a person familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly. Trump responded that he did.

The administration mostly left the wavering senators alone — namely out of McConnell’s insistence. He warned Trump in the fall not to alienate moderates lest he make the situation worse, according to Republicans.

“The White House has not asked for calls,” said one senior GOP official close to the moderate senators. “They’ve not asked for meetings. They’ve not texted.”

As I've said before the Constitution was ready to handle Trump.  It was not ready to handle a Senate majority leader as corrupt and as immoral as Mitch McConnell.

 

Sunday Long Read: The Best Big Game Big Show

I don't have any real desire to watch the Superb Owl this year, so here's Dan Evans at The Ringer giving us the story of the best haltfime show ever put on: Prince in Miami in 2007.

On February 4, 2007, heavy rain fell over Miami—and for those planning the Super Bowl XLI halftime show, so did a sense of dread. It’s one thing to play a football game in a storm. It’s another to put on an intricately staged concert in one.

“It was the most scared I was in my life,” says executive producer Charles Coplin, then the NFL’s head of programming. “And I’m sure I wasn’t alone.”

The man scheduled to perform was nervous, too. Yes, even Prince saw the potential for disaster. “People are like, ‘He gets nervous?’” says his musical director and keyboardist, Morris Hayes. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, he’s not nervous for himself. He’s nervous for us.’ He’s trying to make sure that we’re in the right places at the right parts. What’s gonna happen when it starts raining and the floor’s slick?”

By that point, the Super Bowl halftime show was in dire need of the Purple One’s energy. Over the course of 40 years, the event had gone from a marching band showcase to an Up With People residency, to a Disnified pageant with occasional drop-ins by pop stars like Michael Jackson, to an MTV-produced, superficially edgy spectacle that bottomed out in 2004 when Justin Timberlake infamously exposed Janet Jackson’s breast to a worldwide audience of 144.4 million. A course correction followed, as the NFL turned to baby boomer–friendly acts Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones. And while they may have been rock legends with countercultural roots, by the aughts they’d become safe entertainment.

Prince was different. Even after decades of fame, the sex symbol hadn’t toned down his genre-defying music or his envelope-pushing persona. Just three years prior, on the night that he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, his guitar solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” stole the show from a handful of less-otherworldly legends. Unlike his big-game predecessors, Prince refused to trot out a handful of his hits and call it a night. For the intermission, the icon designed a unique 12-minute set. After all, he wasn’t about to allow himself to be overshadowed by the biggest damn sporting event of the year.

“It was one of those instances where you dread something might happen and then when it does,” says executive producer Don Mischer, “suddenly it turns around and almost becomes a blessing.”

The story of the greatest Super Bowl halftime show of all time starts not on that rainy South Florida evening, but with a sales pitch by late producer David Saltz at Prince’s house in Los Angeles …

I guarantee you the story of Prince's legendary performance that night 13 years ago will be better than anything you'll see at this year's version.

Last Call For Peace In Pieces

The Trump/Netanyahu "Peace plan" is the peace of the Palestinian grave, and the Palestinians are done bothering with Jared Kushner and his "just accept your fate" plan.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday the Palestinian Authority has cut all ties with the United States and Israel, including those relating to security, after rejecting a Middle East peace plan presented by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Abbas was in Cairo to address the Arab League, which backed the Palestinians in their opposition to Trump's plan.

The Arab League rejected Trump's plan, saying in a communique it would not lead to a just peace deal and adding it will not cooperate with the United States to execute the plan.

The ministers affirmed Palestinian rights to create a future state based on the land captured and occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, with East Jerusalem as capital, the final communique said.

Israeli officials expressed hope Saturday that the League's rejection could bring the U.S. closer to green-lighting unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank, in light of the fact that Jared Kushner opposed immediate steps toward annexation because he thought the Arab League might support the plan.

Abbas, who said “a thousand no’s” to U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal, spoke at the gathering: "We requested this urgent meeting to put a halt to the consent bound up in the U.S. plan on everything related to the Palestinian issue, and we will fight to prevent a situation in which the plan will become a legitimate formula that is adopted by the international community."

"We told Israel and the United States that we will not have any more ties with them, including on the security level," Abbas said.

So now the new apartheid will begin as Israel's tanks and soldiers will come in and take the West Bank and then the Gaza Strip, and there will be nothing left but a wall and ashes.  The 20's are going to be a brutal decade for the world, and it will start with the end to any hope for a peace process in the Middle East.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

It's all over except for the shouting obsequious justification of King Trump.

There is no question, Sen. Lamar Alexander said, that President Donald Trump actions were “inappropriate” when he asked Ukraine’s leader to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden.

But not bad enough, he said, to warrant Trump’s removal from office, or even to hear from witnesses or other evidence.
That distinction has been embraced by other Republicans as the trial moves toward a near-certain acquittal of the president in the coming days. It’s also in line with arguments from Trump’s legal team, which after initially asserting that the president did “absolutely nothing wrong” moved toward insisting that Trump had done nothing impeachable — and attacked the trial as a partisan exercise.

The evolving arguments have allowed Republicans to cite political and historical grounds for acquitting Trump without feeling compelled to condone his behavior, a split-the-difference judgment that avoids a clean break with the president as he stands for reelection.

Alexander, who is retiring from office at the end of the year, was the most vocal, saying he did not need to hear more evidence to conclude that Trump was wrong to ask a foreign leader to investigate a rival.

“But,” said Alexander, “the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.”

Similarly, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican whose opinions have been closely watched because of her centrist reputation, issued a five-paragraph statement Friday that declared her opposition to witnesses without mentioning Trump once or registering any support for his actions.

“Given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout, I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate,” Murkowski said. “I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything.”

Trump has repeatedly called his July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy “perfect,” but a drumbeat of revelations that continued even after the trial started made that claim harder for even staunch allies to sustain.

The latest revelation came courtesy of an unpublished manuscript from former national security adviser John Bolton, who writes that Trump tied suspension of military aid to Ukraine to the country’s willingness to undertake the investigations the president wanted.

Inside and outside the chamber, the president’s allies spent more time questioning the relevancy of the book’s content than disputing its accuracy. Republican senators signaled through their questions at trial a willingness to concede certain basic facts of the case, which made it easier them to brush off calls for more witnesses. They insist they already have the information they need to make a decision.

“For the sake of argument, one could assume everything attributable to John Bolton is accurate and still the House case would fall well below the standards to remove a president from office,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a vocal defender of Trump’s, said in a statement.
One question this week from Sens. Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, two Republicans who on Friday joined Democrats in seeking witness testimony, and Murkowski who voted against witnesses, asked whether Trump could be guilty of the abuse of power count if he was motivated by both national interest and “personal political advantage.” It was a clear indication that the trio did not dispute that Trump had in fact, been inspired by the pursuit of a “personal political advantage.”

Nor did Trump deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin, when it came time to answer the question. He simply suggested that a president cannot be removed from office for having mixed motives.

“There’s always some personal interest in the electoral outcome of policy decisions,” Philbin said, “and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Dick Cheney's "plenary executive" era has arrived.  The White House has unlimited, unchecked power as long as it can keep either 34 Senators or 218 House votes to support it. Our system of checks and balances were ready for Trump.  They were not ready for Mitch McConnell and a Senate openly colluding with a criminal president.

As we open Black History Month, the final vote won't be until Wednesday as slimy GOP senators want their time to explain to voters just how great our new autocracy in service of white supremacy is.  Keep that in mind when the truly unleashed, unrepentant, unstoppable Trump regime changes all the rules and does so in an openly brazen fashion just to laugh at us.

That phrase, Trump regime, is now a reality.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman and Trump';s Ukranian "plumbers" team didn't just get rid of US Ambassador Marie Yovanovich as envoy to Ukraine, they ran her out of the State Department and out of foreign service entirely to boot.

The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who accused the Trump administration of a "smear" campaign against her has retired from the foreign service, NPR has learned.

The career diplomat was abruptly forced out of her post in Ukraine amid accusations of disloyalty in a scheme allegedly involving President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and two of Giuliani's associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were arrested and charged with campaign finance violations in October.

After her recall in May, Yovanovitch remained on the State Department payroll, teaching at Georgetown University. But sources tell NPR that she has officially left the department.

Yovanovitch had served presidents of both parties during a 33-year career in the foreign service, which included posts in some of the world's most challenging countries.

Her ouster has become a key topic in the president's impeachment and Senate trial. In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment inquiry in November, Yovanovitch accused Giuliani of leading an "irregular channel" of diplomacy between the U.S. and Ukraine that was driven by the business interests of private individuals.

"These events should concern everyone in this room," Yovanovitch said. "Shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American ambassador who does not give them what they want."

She added that in the days leading up to her removal, she was told to "watch my back"

In excerpts from the now-infamous July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president called Yovanovitch "bad news."

"She's going to go through some things," Trump added in the call.

Yovanovitch testified that the State Department said she was being recalled over concerns about her security.

A federal indictment, unsealed in October, alleges that Giuliani associates Parnas and Fruman met with a congressman with the aim of removing Yovanovitch from her post. According to the documents, the two committed to raising $20,000 for the unnamed congressman.

In an interview earlier this month, Parnas said Trump pushed to fire Yovanovitch four or five times. Parnas also handed over text messages to Congress suggesting that Robert Hyde, a retired Marine running for Congress as a Republican in Connecticut, had the ambassador under surveillance in Kyiv.

The State Department says it is investigating the possible surveillance of Yovanovitch.

A 30-plus year career evaporated due to the shady cartoon villainy of Rudy and his goons, all working for the most corrupt man on earth in Donald Trump.  Marie Yovanovich came forward and put her reputation and career on the line to save this country and to tell the truth, and she paid dearly for it.

The truth about Trump will continue to leak out between now and November.  Whether or not it's enough to break his hold on the country is up to us.

Last Call For Hate Spreading Like A Virus

This regime is terrible, will always be terrible, and given any opportunity to not be terrible, it chooses actively to be terrible.  The latest example: turning the Wuhan coronavirus into cover for the regime's latest Muslim travel ban.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar declared a public health emergency in the United States at a White House press briefing on coronavirus Friday.

U.S. citizens returning from Hubei province in the previous 14 days will be subject to up to a 14-day quarantine. Foreign nationals, other than immediate family members of U.S. citizens, who have traveled to China in the previous 14 days will be denied entry into the country. The temporary measures take effect Feb. 2 at 5 p.m.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered a federal quarantine order for all 195 people who were evacuated from China and have been voluntarily quarantined at military base in California.

Those people were on a government-chartered flight earlier this week for American consulate staffers and private U.S. citizens from Wuhan. The quarantine, the first order of its kind in 50 years, will last for 14 days from when the plane left Wuhan, health officials said at a news conference Friday.

"We are preparing as if this was the next pandemic," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said of the quarantine.

"If we take strong measures now, we may be able to blunt the impact of the virus on the United States," she added. "We would rather be remembered for overreacting than underreacting."

Messonnier stressed that Americans should not let panic or fear guide their actions and reiterated the CDC's recommendation that the general public does not need to wear face masks. She also called for people to not discriminate against Chinese Americans amid the outbreak.

This is effectively a standing ban on entry for any Chinese national, and anyone who has been to China, other than exceptions for immediate family members.  There's no indication that this ban will be lifted anytime soon.  That's blocking a couple billion people from entering the US.

But this grants instant cover to the Trump regime's actual permanent travel ban also announced this afternoon.

The Trump administration on Friday announced an expansion of the travel ban -- one of the President's signature policies, which has been derided by critics as an attempt to ban Muslims from the US -- to include six new countries. 

Different immigration restrictions will be placed on Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar (known as Burma), Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania. 

The latest iteration comes three years after President Donald Trump -- in one of his first moves in office -- signed the first travel ban, which caused chaos at airports and eventually landed at the Supreme Court. The announcement also comes at the end of a major week for Trump with the signing of the USMCA trade deal and expected acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial. 

The updated ban has already sparked controversy over its targeting of African countries.
The administration has argued that the travel ban is vital to national security and ensures countries meet US security needs. 

"The restrictions are tailored to country-specific deficiencies, as well as travel-related risks to the homeland," a Department of Homeland Security official told reporters Friday.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation, Tanzania is number six, Sudan is number 9.  Those three African nations alone have about the same combined population as the US.  Eritrea is another 6.5 million.

This is just Stephen Miller and his happy squad of racists closing the door to Africa's most populous and most prosperous country for no good reason other than yeah, half the population happens to be Muslim.

How long do you suppose it will take before other countries will start banning Americans?

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

As the Senate GOP cult careens towards the dark blessing of the autocracy of Donald Trump with acquittal in the middle of the night, and the very real possibility that the acquittal will forever have the word "bipartisan" in front of it as the ultimate smokescreen, another round of leaks from John Bolton's book reveals Trump called him in on the plan to pressure Ukraine into fabricating an investigation of Hunter Biden all the way back in May of 2019.

More than two months before he asked Ukraine’s president to investigate his political opponents, President Trump directed John R. Bolton, then his national security adviser, to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Trump gave the instruction, Mr. Bolton wrote, during an Oval Office conversation in early May that included the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, who is now leading the president’s impeachment defense.

Mr. Trump told Mr. Bolton to call Volodymyr Zelensky, who had recently won election as president of Ukraine, to ensure Mr. Zelensky would meet with Mr. Giuliani, who was planning a trip to Ukraine to discuss the investigations that the president sought, in Mr. Bolton’s account. Mr. Bolton never made the call, he wrote.

The previously undisclosed directive that Mr. Bolton describes would be the earliest known instance of Mr. Trump seeking to harness the power of the United States government to advance his pressure campaign against Ukraine, as he later did on the July call with Mr. Zelensky that triggered a whistle-blower complaint and impeachment proceedings. House Democrats have accused him of abusing his authority and are arguing their case before senators in the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump, whose lawyers have said he did nothing wrong.

The account in Mr. Bolton’s manuscript portrays the most senior White House advisers as early witnesses in the effort that they have sought to distance the president from. And disclosure of the meeting underscores the kind of information Democrats were looking for in seeking testimony from his top advisers in their impeachment investigation, including Mr. Bolton and Mr. Mulvaney, only to be blocked by the White House.

In a brief interview, Mr. Giuliani denied that the conversation took place and said those discussions with the president were always kept separate. He was adamant that Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Mulvaney were never involved in meetings related to Ukraine.

“It is absolutely, categorically untrue,” he said.

Neither Mr. Bolton nor a representative for Mr. Mulvaney responded to requests for comment. A White House spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Bolton described the roughly 10-minute conversation in drafts of his book, a memoir of his time as national security adviser that is to go on sale in March. Over several pages, Mr. Bolton laid out Mr. Trump’s fixation on Ukraine and the president’s belief, based on a mix of scattershot events, assertions and outright conspiracy theories, that Ukraine tried to undermine his chances of winning the presidency in 2016.

As he began to realize the extent and aims of the pressure campaign, Mr. Bolton began to object, he wrote in the book, affirming the testimony of a former National Security Council aide, Fiona Hill, who had said that Mr. Bolton warned that Mr. Giuliani was “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”

Mr. Trump also repeatedly made national security decisions contrary to American interests, Mr. Bolton wrote, describing a pervasive sense of alarm among top advisers about the president’s choices. Mr. Bolton expressed concern to others in the administration that the president was effectively granting favors to autocratic leaders like Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Xi Jinping of China.

To recap, Donald Trump's impeachment defense lawyer was a material witness to Trump's criminal acts, who lied about that fact for the last week on the Senate floor.

It's just so darkly comical that I can't take much more.

And yet we know there will be much, much more.  The truth will come out, but at this point does it even matter anymore?

If the answer is no, then we are in an autocracy and America is lost.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

Maybe this weekend will finally disabuse the Democrats of the notion that there are still good Republicans out there.  There are none left, because they are all gone.

For nearly two weeks, Democrats took to the floor of the Senate in the hopes that GOP lawmakers would support the call for additional witnesses as part of impeachment proceedings of President Donald Trump.

To a person, party members believed that the evidence they gathered and case they presented was compelling and nearly flawless in its execution. Their convictions only hardened after several rounds of massive news breaks—from audio recordings of the president to seeming confirmation from his former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, that Trump sought a quid-pro-quo with Ukraine.

But as the days rolled by and Republican after Republican publicly declared they’d heard enough, a sense of dismay has begun to set in. Increasingly, Democrats believe and concede, there was simply no argument they could have made that would have moved the needle.

“The arguments that have been asserted by the White House are nonsense,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA). “There's plenty of evidence to move anyone who's listening. But I think what we're seeing is there is no amount of evidence that will move the Senate Republicans in this political environment. I think we expected that if they followed their constitutional oath, they would actually have a real trial. I think it's really just a failure of courage.”

Asked whether there was any frustration in the Democratic ranks about the lack of movement to call witnesses, Scanlon joked, “What? I don’t sound frustrated?”

A final vote on whether to hear new evidence or witnesses is set for Friday. Publicly, Democrats on both sides of the Capitol had held out hope that four GOP senators will side with them on, among other things, a need to call Bolton as a witness.

Increasingly, however, Democrats acknowledge that their efforts are likely to fail and that the impeachment proceedings will be wrapped up shortly thereafter. An announcement late Thursday night from Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) that he would vote against calling more evidence basically sealed the deal, leaving no path for a prolonged trial.

“It’s more than frustrating—it's pathetic,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO). “If you had any regard at all for the prerogatives of the legislative branch, to allow the White House to stonewall the House of Representatives in a completely unprecedented way, and then accept a set of rules … that are just a cover up for what the President has done, I think demonstrates a complete lack of regard for what this institution is supposed to be about.”

So my friends, it is now up to us to fix the problem.

It always was up to us as Americans.  We had a chance in 2016 and failed.

The problem is as Americans, as a people, as a body politic, we created this problem in the first place.

Not all of us are going to make it out to the other side, either.

What comes next remains up to us, but do we have the will to do what is necessary to correct the problem?

America has ended up in worse places before. Slavery. Civil war. Internment of citizens. assassinations and riots.  But his feels fundamentally different.

This feels like it won't get better.

StupidiNews!

• The US State Department is now advising Americans to avoid traveling to China due to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak as the World Health Organization has declared an official emergency.
• With Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexandar announcing his opposition to calling witnesses, White House officials are expecting a swift end to impeachment proceedings on Friday.
• The Trump regime is expected to dismantle Obama-era restrictions on landmines as arms control groups are swiftly denouncing the move.
• UK PM Boris Johnson is calling for national unity and for Britain to "level up" as Brexit goes into effect today.
• Amazon's 2019 4th quarter earning beat expectations catapulting the company's stock valuation over the $1 trillion mark again and making CEO Jeff Bezos more than $10 billion richer.

Last Call For Impeachment Reached, Con't

Here in sixty seconds, Adam Schiff sums up the absolute ridiculousness of the Trump defense team.

SCHIFF: "While we've been debating whether POTUS can be impeached for bogus claims of privilege, the DOJ is resisting subpoenas in court today... the judge says 'if Congress can't enforce its subpoenas, what remedy is there,' & DOJ's response is impeachment! You can't make it up" pic.twitter.com/Tim1HHDgBO

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2020

The almost inevitable outcome is that by this time tomorrow we will live in a country where there is no longer any direct check on the Executive branch, with a lawless despot who will issue whatever executive orders to do an end run around Congress, and who will ignore direct federal court orders, because enough members of the Judicial and Legislative are content to let this unitary monstrosity continue in order to reshape the country for generations.

There will be no witnesses, Trump will not be convicted and removed for his crimes, and the brutal oppression of those who tried to stop him will begin in earnest.

There is no reason to believe that Trump will leave office if he loses the election in November, let alone there being any reason to believe the election itself will be either free or fair.

January 31 is looking like the day we go over the cliff, folks.

Coming back from this will take decades, if if ever happens, and history assures us that in no way will that journey back to where we were even five years ago be peaceful.

The bad guys are about to win.

I don't know what happens next.

That should terrify all of us.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Georgia is shaping up to be an opportunity for not one, but two Democratic pickups for the Senate as Team Blue already has their sights set on David Perdue's seat, and the fight over the special election for retiring Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson's seat is heating up on the GOP side.  The damage could put both seats in play as Republicans have to split their resources to defend two Senate seats in the same state on the same day.

The conservative Club for Growth plans to air a massive ad campaign attacking Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), adding fuel to the intraparty battle that kicked off after the GOP congressman launched a Senate campaign this week.

Collins announced Wednesday he is challenging Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who was sworn in this month to replace Sen. Johnny Isakson after he resigned due to health issues. Collins is a top ally to President Donald Trump, but his decision to run for Senate sparked significant blowback among some Republicans who expressed concern it could jeopardize their hold on the seat and cause problems elsewhere on the Senate map.

The Club for Growth is the first group to launch an ad war aiming to knock down Collins' image as he gears up for the statewide run. The anti-tax organization plans to spend $3 million on TV, starting next week, with issue-based ads going after Collins' record. The flight will run for five weeks, according to details shared first with POLITICO. Content for the planned ads was not yet available.

"Over the next month, Club for Growth will educate Georgia voters about Doug Collins’ record on economic issues and demand that he change his ways," David McIntosh, the Club's president, said in a statement.
The advertising blitz comes after the Club publicly chastised Collins for having a 57 percent score on their legislative scorecard last year, though he has an 80 percent lifetime score with the Club.

Along with the Club, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and several top allies to Republican leadership, including a super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, rallied around Loeffler and panned Collins' run as a selfish move that was harmful to the party.

Collins pushed back against the NRSC response on Twitter and brushed off any concerns about creating an intraparty rift when he announced his bid in an interview on "Fox and Friends" Wednesday morning.

"I think we fought for the president, we fought for our state and we fought for this country," Collins said. "And we're going to continue to do that. I look forward to a good exchange of ideas and look forward to this election."

While Loeffler has significant support from Senate Republicans, Collins' campaign has some clear signs of strength. An internal poll conducted in December showed him leading Loeffler by 21 percentage points in the all-party race in November, holding a significant edge among Republican voters. He also had a positive image among all voters statewide — and an overwhelmingly positive image among Trump supporters, according to the poll.

Republicans spending millions to attack each other in Georgia can only help the Democrats in an increasingly purple state.   Mitch and the GOP establishment want Loeffler to remain, but Collins wants that Senate seat and he's willing to burn down anyone in his way to get it.

Bring the popcorn.  I predict things will get so ugly in the Peach State for Republicans that Dems might surprise everyone come November.