Last Call For Tales From The Trump Depression

Georgia governor Brian Kemp reopened the economy at the end of April, and the jobs and the good times are back in the Peach State, right?

Weekly applications for jobless benefits have remained so elevated that Georgia now leads the country in terms of the proportion of its workforce applying for unemployment assistance. A staggering 40.3 percent of the state's workers — two out of every five — has filed for unemployment insurance payments since the coronavirus pandemic led to widespread shutdowns in mid-March, a POLITICO review of Labor Department data shows.

Georgia's new jobless claims have been going up and down since the state reopened, rising to 243,000 two weeks ago before dipping to 177,000 last week. The state cited new layoffs in the retail, social assistance and health care industries for the continued high rate of jobless claims that have put it ahead of other states in the proportion of its workforce that has been sidelined.

Georgia, which began pushing to resume economic activity on April 24, presents an early reality check as the White House amps up pressure on governors to lift shutdown orders and President Donald Trump’s economic advisers predict jobless claims will nosedive after the reopening. The state’s persistent unemployment numbers suggest that government restrictions aren’t the only cause of skyrocketing layoffs and furloughs — and that the economy might not fully recover until consumers feel safe.

Oh.

There are many reasons Georgia’s jobless numbers are still going up, economists say, including that the state, like most of the country, is still whittling through a backlog of applications. State officials also say some laid-off workers are filing duplicate claims, which can artificially inflate the numbers. But the data still underscores how lifting stay-at-home restrictions alone will do little to bring jobs and spending back unless consumer confidence improves, bringing demand with it.

“Think of a restaurant: They’re not going to be able to bring back their entire staff because they’re just not going to have the clientele,” said Laura Wheeler, associate director of the Center for State and Local Finance at Georgia State University. “That’s going to hinder the return of the workforce, because while we’re going to open up, we’re not going to open up to the full capacity that we were at before.”

And in Georgia, public polling indicates that confidence has yet to return. Nearly two-thirds of Georgia residents in a recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll said they felt their state was lifting restrictions too quickly, and only 39 percent said they approved of Kemp’s handling of the outbreak.

“We’ve been chasing a bit of a false narrative that the economic hit is about the restrictions and not the disease itself,” said Julia Coronado, president and founder of Macropolicy Perspectives, an economic research consulting firm. “The economic story really isn’t about lockdowns, and we’re going to make mistakes by pursuing that narrative. It really is about the disease, and how fearful people are about getting sick, and how businesses are going to operate in a world where this virus is with us.”

At the same time, the Trump administration is pushing to get governors to reopen their doors in the hopes that doing so will help revive the U.S. economy.

So you mean as I said a month ago that people aren't going to go out to eat during a pandemic because of the pandemic?

But gosh, I thought the vast majority of Americans were actively against the tyrannical lockdowns and would flood back to restaurants and theaters because they didn't believe the virus was real.

The Trump Depression will continue until the pandemic is actually contained and all the "reopening" of the economy in the country won't fix that, so I guess the next step is to just lie about the dead people in hospital gurneys and makeshift morgue trucks as we approach 100,000 casualties.

Trump's reelection is doomed.

The economy has gone from President Donald Trump's greatest political asset to perhaps his biggest weakness. 

Unemployment is spiking at an unprecedented rate. Consumer spending is vanishing. And GDP is collapsing. History shows that dreadful economic trends like these spell doom for sitting presidents seeking reelection. 

The coronavirus recession will cause Trump to suffer a "historic defeat" in November, a national election model released Wednesday by Oxford Economics predicted. 

The model, which uses unemployment, disposable income and inflation to forecast election results, predicts that Trump will lose in a landslide, capturing just 35% of the popular vote. That's a sharp reversal from the model's pre-crisis prediction that Trump would win about 55% of the vote. And it would be the worst performance for an incumbent in a century. 

"It would take nothing short of an economic miracle for pocketbooks to favor Trump," Oxford Economics wrote in the report, adding that the economy will be a "nearly insurmountable obstacle for Trump come November."

A miracle isn't coming.

Now, divine intervention from the other side, well. That part worries me greatly. As I've said before, the more obvious Trump's coming defeat becomes, the more likely he will do something precipitous. If he loses, he is going to prison for the rest of his life and he knows it. Pence can't pardon him for state crimes.

But there's a lot Trump can do on the way out.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Donald Trump continues to isolate America from allies and to withdraw from treaties as the nation's transition to autocratic rogue nuclear failed state status continues largely unabated.

President Trump has decided to withdraw from another major arms control accord, according to senior administration officials, and will inform Russia on Friday that the United States is pulling out of the Open Skies Treaty, negotiated three decades ago to allow nations to fly over each other’s territory with elaborate sensor equipment to assure they are not preparing for military action.
Mr. Trump’s decision will be viewed as more evidence that he also may be poised to exit the one major arms treaty remaining with Russia: New START, which limits the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear missiles each. It expires weeks after the next presidential inauguration.

American officials have long complained that Moscow was violating the Open Skies accord by not permitting flights over a city where it was believed Russia was deploying nuclear weapons that could reach Europe, as well as forbidding flights over major Russian military exercises.+

And, in classified reports, the Pentagon and American intelligence agencies have contended the Russians are also using flights over the United States to map out critical American infrastructure that could be hit by cyberattacks.

American officials also note that Mr. Trump was angered by a Russian flight directly over his Bedminster, N.J., golf estate, in 2017.

But Mr. Trump’s decision, rumored for some time, is bound to further aggravate European allies, including those in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, who are also signatories to the treaty.

They will remain in the accord, but have warned that, with Washington’s exit, Russia will almost certainly respond by cutting off their flights, too, which the allies use to monitor troop movements on their borders — especially important to the Baltic nations.

For Mr. Trump, the decision marks the third time he has renounced a major arms control treaty.

Two years ago, he abandoned the Iran nuclear accord, negotiated by President Barack Obama. Last year he left the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, again saying that he would not participate in a treaty that he said Russia was violating. The Open Skies Treaty was negotiated by President George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State, James Baker, in 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But the idea was first presented by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the summer of 1955, and was rejected by the Soviets as an elaborate plan to spy on a weaker foe.

For more than a year, Mr. Trump has said he would not renew it unless China also joined. Beijing, which has a nuclear arsenal one-fifth the size of Washington’s and Moscow’s, has rejected the idea.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will try for a brief extension of the treaty of several months — the current wording allows only for a single, 5-year extension — or abandon it altogether if China refuses to join.

So Trump is blaming Russia and China and withdrawing anyway, which is exactly what both Russia and China want.

Putin maneuvering Trump into throwing away another decades-old treaty that leaves NATO more vulnerable is going to be just one example of the damage Trump's regime will cause that will take the rest of my lifetime to fix, if not longer.

It's About Supression, Con't

Donald Trump is now openly threatening states that are trying to expand vote-by-mail, all but ordering his regime to find a way to cut states off from federal money unless they obey Dear Leader's tweets.

During the impeachment of President Trump, an expert witness called by Democrats floated a theoretical scenario involving the president threatening a state hammered by a natural disaster, to illustrate the corruption of Trump’s shakedown of Ukraine.

What would we think if Trump dangled federal disaster aid as leverage to force a governor to do his political bidding, asked Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan, adding: “Wouldn’t you know in your gut that the president had abused his office? That he betrayed the national interest?”

Trump has now done something very close to this. And the answer to Karlan’s question is: Yes, Trump is abusing his office and betraying the national interest:




Trump is referring to the Michigan secretary of state’s announcement that applications for absentee ballots will be mailed to 7.7 million residents. That’s to ensure that Michiganders can vote safely amid a pandemic that has brought more than 50,000 cases of coronavirus to the state and killed more than 5,000 people.

Trump’s new threat is not a precise parallel to Karlan’s scenario. But Trump is threatening to somehow withdraw federal aid unless Michigan drops vote-by-mail, a naked effort to extort Michigan into doing something that could help him politically. (Trump rage-tweeted a similar threat at Nevada.)

That last point is crucial. It has been widely reported that Trump’s advisers fear he’s losing Michigan, which he probably needs again, especially with Arizona at risk.

We also know Trump fears vote-by-mail can hurt his chances. Trump explicitly admitted that with such Democratic voting rights measures, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

And so, in lodging this threat, Trump is saying the corrupt part out loud — with a bullhorn.

Steve M. tells us what happens next.

It won't be just Trump contesting the election results between November and January -- it'll be his entire support network, starting with Fox News. Fox didn't seriously argue for the overturning of election results in 2008 and 2012, but this time will probably be different. The right regards vote-by-mail -- at least in contested states won by Democrats -- as voter fraud by definition. A Democratic win in any vote-by-mail swing state will automatically be declared fraudulent.

If Trump wins Michigan or Nevada, there'll be relentless calls on Fox to challenge the Democratic electors' right to vote in the Electoral College, and those challenges will be taken seriously by Republicans at the state level. In previous years, Republicans in Washington have treated such calls as boob-bait, useful for the building of party unity against the Democrats, but not for much more. This time, I think Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and others might insist that voter fraud allegations need to be taken very, very seriously. They'll also undoubtedly look for reasons to question Senate pickups by the Democrats.

I don't know if they can persuade much of America that the election was fraudulent. But at the very least, they can reframe the narrative so that the media begins describing Joe Biden's ascension to the presidency as accompanied by a "legitimacy crisis" -- even if, unlike Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in 2000, Biden has won a clear victory in both the Electoral College and the popular vote.

Joe Biden might even get sworn in.

And the moment he does, he's going to be told by Our Pundit Betters™ that he needs to pardon Trump or face civil unrest that will kill thousands, if we're not already up to our necks in civil unrest from the Trump Depression and COVID-19.

StupidiNews!

• Thousands have been evacuated from Midland, Michigan as record flooding breached two dams Tuesday along the Tittabawassee River.
• The US has hit a major "baby bust" with the lowest birthrates in the country since 1985, particularly among white Americans.
• The US Supreme Court has blocked the release of Mueller investigation grand jury testimony, granting the Trump regime a reprieve from a House Democratic subpoena until after the election.
• Senate Republicans have passed a bill to delist Chinese companies from US stock exchanges, the bill is not expected to pass the House.
• Justice League director Zack Snyder will re-shoot the movie for HBO Max next year, the film may be "episodic" in nature and Snyder is reportedly getting $20 million for the project.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

As I said back in 2016 when it came to Turkey, if you want to stage a coup, you need five things:

• Armed forces
• Airwaves
• Airports
• Allies
• and the Asshole in charge you're trying to overthrow.

If you think about what Trump's doing in the US right now, it's trying to get a hold of these five things, where the "asshole" is Joe Biden.  Allies he's had from the beginning: the GOP will let Trump do whatever he wants.  Airports, Trump has control of those too if needed.  Airwaves, he has not one but two state TV networks in FOX and OANN, and he's currently going after Biden with Barr and "Obamagate".

That leaves the Armed Forces, the really dangerous one.

I don't have good news in that regard.

President Donald Trump has always prized loyalty in his subordinates, but news about pending personnel moves at the Pentagon could indicate the president is determined to root out perceived enemies within the Defense Department.

Jonathan Swan of Axios first reported in February that the White House had compiled a list of civil servants across the government who should be dismissed because they allegedly had not been loyal enough to the president. The ousted government officials will reportedly be replaced by people who are more ardently pro-Trump.

Since then, it has emerged that Trump intends to nominate retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, a Fox News contributor, to fill the No. 3 leadership position in the Pentagon. Tata left the Army after an investigation found he had affairs with at least two women while serving in uniform, the Raleigh News & Observer reported. More recently, Tata has lauded Trump for his support of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher.
Tata is already serving as a senior advisor to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, a defense official confirmed following a May 15 news story by Foreign Policy’s Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer.

The two Foreign Policy reporters also first revealed that Michael Cutrone will move from Vice President Mike Pence’s office to the Pentagon, raising concern from some administration officials that Cutrone will undermine Esper by vetting political appointees to the Defense Department based on how loyal they are to Trump.

Considering what's most likely coming as the Trump Depression and COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage, looking a few miles downstream is warranted at this point.

While the recent personnel moves may signal a more aggressive push by the president to exert direct control over the Pentagon, the White House has been deeply involved in selecting officials for defense jobs since the beginning of the Trump administration.

Under then-Defense Secretary James Mattis, several defense officials faced a protracted vetting process because the White House felt that their social media posts were not sufficiently loyal to Trump, a former Defense Department official told Task & Purpose.

But since the Senate acquitted Trump in February of allegedly withholding $250 million of military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to get that country's government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, the president has been particularly vindictive against defense officials over any sign of disloyalty — real or perceived.

If confirmed by the Senate, Tata would replace John Rood, who was fired in February. Rood had certified in May 2019 that Ukraine had made enough progress fighting corruption to allow for the military assistance package to go through, thus undermining Trump's arguments about why he withheld the aid.

Trump has also withdrawn Elaine McCusker’s nomination to be the Pentagon’s comptroller. McCusker had reportedly raised concerns with the Office of Management and Budget about whether the president’s freeze of military aid to Ukraine was legal.

Likewise, The White House removed Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council in February. During the president’s impeachment inquiry in November, Vindman told lawmakers there was “no ambiguity” that Trump had asked Ukraine’s president to investigate former Biden during the July 25 phone call between the two leaders.

The president is retaliating against defense officials who argued in favor of providing the military aid Ukraine and anyone who stood up to Trump himself, said Evelyn Farkas, a former Defense Department official in the Obama administration whose purview included Russian and Ukraine.

“I don’t think the president minds that we know this,” said, Farkas, who is running for Congress in New York as a Democrat. “I think that he’s trying to send a signal internally and externally: don’t cross him.”

Getting rid of anyone in the Pentagon who played a role in his impeachment is one thing, but I think Trump's playing a longer game, perhaps much longer.

It's definitely a far more dangerous one, as Jon Chait reminds us.

The most dangerous elements of Trump’s anti-democratic agenda are as-yet-unexploded ordnance, which may over time prove either terrifying or meaningless. His regular incitements to violence, goading his “tough” supporters in the military, police, and biker gangs to finally take off the gloves, have not yet produced a republic-shaking tragedy. And his embrace of Republican vote-suppression logic — he is now threatening to withhold funds from states that allow absentee voting — may, or may not, prevent a free and fair election. These actions are democratic tail risks. Like abolishing the pandemic response team, they’re quickly denounced and quickly forgotten, because they probably won’t matter in the end — unless they do matter, in which case their effect will be catastrophic.

Maybe Trump doesn't have the balls to arrest Joe Biden.  But he'll do everything up to that point, and if civil unrest happens, then all bets are off.

The Return Of Austerity Hysteria

Republicans continue to say there's no reason to do anything even though 30 million Americans have lost their jobs and 90,000 have died needlessly to COVID-19.

Top Republicans on Capitol Hill are pumping the brakes on new coronavirus stimulus spending days after House Democrats pushed forward with a sweeping relief package, underscoring a deep partisan divide as the nation grapples with the pandemic. 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said Tuesday that he does not currently see a need for another relief package, telling CNN there's been no change in his posture despite meeting earlier in the day with Vice President Mike Pence and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about the economy. 

"I don't see the need right now," he said of another package. McCarthy said they talked about the economy, the number of states opening back up and progress in testing.
Asked if there's been a change in his posture against moving now on another relief package, he replied, "No." 

Pence planned to discuss "economic impacts of the coronavirus" during his meeting with Mnuchin, McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell earlier Tuesday morning, according to a source familiar with the Vice President's meeting on Capitol Hill. 

Leaving the Senate floor and after meeting with Pence on Tuesday, McConnell wouldn't respond to questions about whether there's any desire for another rescue package. 

Asked by CNN last week about the possibility of moving ahead on a phase four recovery package, McConnell said, "I don't think we have yet felt the urgency of acting immediately. That time could (come), but I don't think it has yet." 

As Mnuchin left McConnell's office, he said they got a "good update" that was "very helpful" and that he was off to testify before the Senate Banking Committee. 

He declined to respond to a question about whether he thought more Covid-19 aid was needed now.

McCarthy's opinions are meaningless, he's literally the least powerful person in Washington DC right now.  But McConnell continuing to refuse to even offer a package at this point underscores what I've been saying all long: there will be no "phase 4" bill, and you're 100% on your own.

As far as the GOP is concerned, the pandemic is over, you should go back to work, back out to eat, back out to the movies, the gym, the salon, the malls, and spend spend spend. It's your fault the economy is bad.

Meanwhile, Georgia and now Florida have been caught red-handed manipulating COVID-19 data to make sure tourists flock in and hit the beaches.

Late last Friday, the architect and manager of Florida's COVID-19 dashboard — praised by White House officials for its accessibility — announced that she had been removed from her post, causing outcry from independent researchers now worried about government censorship.
The dashboard has been a one-stop shop for researchers, the media and the public to access and download tables of COVID-19 cases, testing and death data to analyze freely. It had been widely hailed as a shining example of transparency and accessibility.

But over the last few weeks it had "crashed" and gone offline; data has gone missing without explanation and access to the underlying data sheets has become increasingly difficult.

The site was created by a team of Florida Department of Health data scientists and public health officers headed by Rebekah Jones. She announced last week her removal as of May 5 in a heartfelt farewell note emailed to researchers and other members of the public who had signed up to receive updates on the data portal.

Citing "reasons beyond my division’s control," Jones said her office is no longer managing the dashboard, is no longer involved in publication, fixing errors or answering questions "in any shape or form."

She warned that she does not know what the new team's intentions are for data access, including "what data they are now restricting."

"I understand, appreciate, and even share your concern about all the dramatic changes that have occurred and those that are yet to come," she wrote.

"As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it."

And yes, Jones was told to delete all COVID-19 data so it could later be replaced with better, happier data.  Republican states are actively rewriting away the dead to save themselves in November.

One day before a top Florida Department of Health data manager was taken off her role maintaining the state’s COVID-19 dashboard, officials had directed her to remove data from public view that showed Floridians reported symptoms of the disease before cases were officially announced, according to internal emails obtained by the Tampa Bay Times. She has since been asked to resign, she said Tuesday.

According to the emails, department staff gave the order shortly after reporters requested the same data from the agency on May 5. The data manager, Rebekah Jones, complied with the order, but not before she told her supervisors it was the “wrong call.”

By the next morning, control over the data was given to other employees, according to an email Jones posted Friday on a public listserv. Jones, the department’s Geographic Information Systems manager, wrote that she was no longer the point person for questions about the department’s “Florida’s COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard.” She implied her removal was an act of retribution.

Jones confirmed Tuesday that she was offered a settlement and the option to resign in lieu of being fired, effective May 26.

To recap, Republicans in Congress are pointing to COVID-19 cases and deaths "dropping dramatically" in red states proof that blue states are failing, and shouldn't be bailed out.  Those who don't play ball are fired.

There's your "conspiracy theory" only we know it's happening in real time.

We'll never know how many people this virus ends up killing, because it will be hidden in dozens of states and by the White House while the economic cost rises like a tsunami.

Now go to Applebee's, citizen. You have a duty to your country and your leader to make him look good.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

GOP Sen. Martha McSally is going down in flames in Arizona, and Democrat Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and husband to former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords, now has a double-digit lead. Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts:

From the Republican uh-oh department: Arizona Sen. Martha McSally is sliding in the polls, dropping four percentage points in a month.

McSally now trails Democrat Mark Kelly by 13 points, according to the latest tracking poll by OH Predictive Insights.

While the April poll of 600 likely voters favored Kelly 51% to McSally’s 42%, in May it’s now 51%-38%.

The poll shows independents breaking more than 2-1 for Kelly.

“McSally is doing terribly,” pollster Mike Noble told me on Monday. “There’s no way to find a bright spot on that one.”

And that’s not even the bad news for McSally.

The bad news comes from Maricopa County, where Republicans rule.

At least, they did rule, until Democrat Kyrsten Sinema defeated McSally there in 2018 -- stealing 88 mostly-suburban precincts that normally would go to the Republican nominee.

McSally's declining support lies within the 4 percent margin of error in the May tracking poll, a blend of live and automated calls made between May 9 to May 11. But her Maricopa County numbers are a disaster.

In May 2019, this same tracking poll showed Kelly up over McSally, 46%-41%, among likely voters in Maricopa County.

In May 2020, Kelly has climbed to 54% in Maricopa County while McSally has dropped to 36%.

Just think about that for a moment. Kelly has gone from a five-point advantage in Maricopa County to an 18-point cruise.

McSally is losing Maricopa County, by far the largest GOP stronghold in the state, by 18 points. It shows that Trump's collapse among senior voters in Arizona as a result of demanding they be fed to the COVID-19 monster and oh yeah, openly planning to cut Socials Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, is not going to spare McSally in any way.

McSally has firmly gotten behind Trump on both sacrificing grandma to the virus and cutting social programs.

This is her position. In Arizona.

Democrats are looking better and better in the Senate almost daily.

StupidiNews!

• A federal judge has ruled that a fraud lawsuit against the Trump Organization may proceed, the suit names Donald Trump and his three eldest children as defendants.
• Norma McCorvey, better known as Jane Roe in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade lawsuit, has reportedly confessed that she was paid by anti-choice activists to turn against abortion rights.
• Johnson & Johnson says it will no longer sell talc-based baby powder in the US and Canada as the company is "reassessing" its product portfolio in the wake of COVID-19.
• South Korean students are heading back to school in June as the virus is largely contained in the country through rigorous testing, mask usage, and contact tracing.
• The nearly 150 million Americans whose credit histories were exposed by credit bureau Equifax won't be getting anything from the company's landmark $575 million settlement after all.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

President Petty McVengeance hates Actual President Barack Obama so much that he now refuses to display or even unveil Obama's official portrait in the White House.

It's been a White House tradition for decades: A first-term president hosts a ceremony in the East Room for the unveiling of the official portrait of his immediate predecessor that will hang in the halls of the White House for posterity. 

Republican presidents have done it for Democratic presidents, and vice versa — even when one of them ascended to the White House by defeating or sharply criticizing the other.

"We may have our differences politically," President Barack Obama said when he hosted former President George W. Bush for his portrait unveiling in 2012, "but the presidency transcends those differences." 

Yet this modern ritual won't be taking place between Obama and President Donald Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. And if Trump wins a second term in November, it could be 2025 before Obama returns to the White House to see his portrait displayed among every U.S. president from George Washington to Bush. 

Trump is unconcerned about shunning yet another presidential custom, and he has attacked Obama to an extent no other president has done to a predecessor. Most recently he's made unfounded accusations that Obama committed an unspecified crime. 

Obama, for his part, has no interest in participating in the post-presidency rite of passage so long as Trump is in office, the people familiar with the matter said.

Can you blame Obama here?  Nobody was more instrumental to spreading and validating the Obama Kenya birther nonsense than Donald Trump as a way to attack the nation's first black President.  Obama in the White House drove Trump to fury, and being the birther candidate meant white voters rewarded him with the White House five years later, pure and simple.

So yeah, you won't see that portrait in the White House anytime while Trump is in office. Trump is an outright racist, and Obama sure as hell shouldn't have to come hat in hand to massa's White House.

I hope Biden puts it up on his first day.

Retribution Execution, Con't

As expected, Donald Trump is no longer letting Sen. Lindsey Graham drag his feet on subpoenas of former Obama administration officials, and it looks like the Justice Department is on board for months of hearings and investigations heading into November.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham is preparing to ask his colleagues on the panel for blanket permission to subpoena dozens of Obama and Trump administration officials connected to the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election — and contacts between President Donald Trump's team and Russians.

His proposal would permit the South Carolina Republican to demand testimony and documents from figures involved in the intelligence associated with the launch of the Russia investigation, including Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former national intelligence director James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey.

But it also stretches into the Trump era, with authorization to subpoena current and former figures involved in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller — including former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and current FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Graham intends to seek a Judiciary Committee vote on the matter on June 4. The proposal would allow Graham to obtain documents or testimony from any figures referenced in a report by the Justice Department Inspector General's review of the FBI's handling of a surveillance warrant connected to that investigation. That probe found corner-cutting, missteps and abuses by officials in the process used to surveil Carter Page, a former adviser to the Trump campaign.

The subpoena is unusually broad — committee subpoenas are usually specific to a smaller number of targets. But its approval, which will likely fall along party lines, would give Graham enormous, unilateral authority to conduct the probe.

Looks like everyone's going to be called in the very near future, in conjunction with the Barr Justice Department's show trial investigations, complete with "well unlike Mueller, we'll be fair and balanced" nonsense.

Attorney General William Barr on Monday said Barack Obama and Joe Biden are unlikely to be under criminal investigation in a review of the Russia probe that began in 2016 -- addressing simmering accusations by President Donald Trump against his predecessor and his 2020 opponent. 

Barr said he was attempting to curtail the politicization of Justice Department investigations, yet his comments could fan speculation from right-wing commentators. 

"Whatever their level of involvement based on the level of information I have today, I don't expect Mr. Durham's work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man," Barr said Monday at a press conference, referring to the US Attorney John Durham's ongoing review of the early Russia investigation, which ultimately led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to examine election interference and coordination with the Trump campaign. 

"Our concern over potential criminality is focused on others," Barr added. 

CNN previously reported that Durham's focus appears to be on decisions made by top officials overseeing the intelligence analysis of Russian election interference efforts in 2016, and particularly the leadership of then-CIA director John Brennan and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, according to more than a half dozen people familiar with the investigation. 

Durham is also investigating the actions of a lower-level FBI attorney who included incorrect information in a surveillance application in 2016. Additionally, the Durham review has also included looking at the information the intelligence community had to back up an FBI court application to wiretap former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Barr on Monday also criticized, broadly, using criminal investigations as "a political weapon." 

"This is not good for our political life and it's not good for the criminal justice system," he said. "As long as I'm attorney general, the criminal justice system will not be used for partisan political ends. This is especially true for the upcoming elections in November."

Sure Barr won't interfere heading into elections.  He has at least three months to go before the election heats up after Labor Day, and he'll continue interfering as long as he can get away with it.

Attorney General William P. Barr has installed a new top deputy at the federal prosecutor’s office in Washington, raising concerns that a key U.S. attorney’s office handling multiple investigations that are of interest to President Trump is becoming further politicized.

The arrival of Associate Deputy Attorney General Michael R. Sherwin — who won the conviction of a Chinese trespasser at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida in September — has triggered new accusations that Justice Department leaders are bypassing career prosecutors in the office and intervening in cases favoring the president’s allies, current and former federal prosecutors in the office said.

Barr’s actions in cases handed off by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe and “packing” senior supervisory positions with close associates “seriously undermines the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C.’s . . . long-standing reputation for independence from political influence,” said Charles R. Work, a former office prosecutor, Republican Justice Department political appointee and president of the D.C. Bar.

“This represents a politicization of the U.S. attorney’s office of the District of Columbia that is remarkable and unique and unprecedented,” said Stuart M. Gerson, a Republican and former Barr aide who served as acting attorney general briefly under presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. “It’s a political coup; there really can be no question about it.”

So the same day Barr is claiming the Justice Department won't be used for "partisan political ends" he's installing Trump loyalists on key cases.

Expect things to get brutal in the months ahead, especially as COVID-19 and the Trump Depression rage on unabated.

 

 

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Republicans in battleground states are warning Trump that he's headed for real trouble in November, and that he may very well end up taking the GOP with him into a 2008-style wipeout.

Donald Trump has made clear he will attack Joe Biden unmercifully in order to ensure the election is a choice between him and Joe Biden — rather than an up-or-down vote on the president’s handling of the coronavirus.

Scott Walker has a different view, at least when it comes to Trump's chances in the all-important battleground of Wisconsin.

“I think it still boils down to a referendum on the president. They’ll beat up on Biden and they’ll raise some concerns,” said the former two-term Republican governor of Wisconsin, who lost his seat in 2018. But in the end, if people felt good about their health and the state of the economy, Trump will probably carry Wisconsin. If not, Walker said, “it’s much more difficult” for the president.

Walker is not alone among swing-state Republicans in his assessment of the president’s political prospects. Interviews with nearly a dozen former governors, members of Congress, and other current and former party leaders revealed widespread apprehension about Trump’s standing six months out from the election.

Many fret that Trump’s hopes are now hitched to the pandemic; others point to demographic changes in once-reliably red states and to the challenge of running against a hard-to-define Democratic opponent who appeals to a wide swath of voters. The concerns give voice to an assortment of recent battleground state polling showing Trump struggling against Biden.

There are certain to be plenty of momentum shifts before the election, especially in such a volatile political environment. Trump enjoys a vast resource advantage and his campaign has only begun going after Biden with sustained advertising — an effort that isn't yet fully reflected in public polls, his advisers said. This past week, the campaign circulated a memo to supporters saying that Trump had closed a once-substantial national gap.

And throughout 2016, many Republicans thought he wouldn't win.

But that hasn’t quelled GOP fears, even in some traditionally friendly states.

Georgia hasn’t gone for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1992. But last week, Republicans released two internal surveys showing a neck-and-neck race, one of which had Biden narrowly ahead.

“Georgia is absolutely at risk for Republicans in 2020 — up and down the ballot, everything is in play. The data from previous elections shows this. It didn’t happen overnight — Democrats have been making gains for years in Georgia,” said Republican State Leadership Committee President Austin Chambers, who has deep experience in Georgia politics and recently released a memo warning the party to take the state seriously.
Chambers said he's confident Trump will ultimately prevail. But concern within the state GOP has been growing, particularly because of the the state's changing demographics and fast-growing Atlanta suburbs, which turned sharply against Republicans in 2018. Former GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss noted that white suburban women have long been a “major key to Republican victories” in Georgia but broke from the party in 2018.

“Trump will need a significant turnout from them and he needs their vote,” Chambliss said.

It's a similar story in Arizona. Public polling over the course of the spring has consistently shown Biden ahead, and a recent private GOP survey had the former vice president with a small lead. Though Democrats haven’t won Arizona in a presidential election since Bill Clinton in 1996, the party flipped four statewide offices in 2018.

“It’s already baked-in that it will be a close election in Arizona from top to bottom,” said Kirk Adams, a former state House speaker and ex-chief of staff to Republican Gov. Doug Ducey. If anyone is just now starting to feel "concern because of the president’s current standing, it means they haven’t been paying attention.”

 If these Republicans are warning Trump could lose, it's because he continues to be losing in GOP polling and has been for months now. It's only going to get worse for Trump.

Unfortunately, it's going to get worse for us, too.

StupidiNews!

• Police in Myanmar have made what UN officials are calling an "off the charts" methamphetamine ring takedown worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the largest drug bust in Asia in decades.
• Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio is replacing NC Republican Richard Burr as Senate Intelligence chair as the FBI investigation of Burr's alleged insider trading scandal continues.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plan a major COVID-19 antibody study in 25 US metropolitan areas, planning to track hundreds of thousands in order to chart the spread of the virus.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emanuel Macron are teaming up for a 500-billion-euro aid package for EU states to help recover from COVID-19.
• Tropical Storm Arthur, off the Carolina coast, marks the fifth straight year that the Atlantic hurricane season has started before June 1.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

The Trump regime purge of various executive agency inspectors general continued over the weekend with the announcement that Trump was giving State Department IG Steve Linick his 30-day notice, but as Greg Sargent reports, Linick's ouster appears to be especially corrupt.

House Democrats have discovered that the fired IG had mostly completed an investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s widely criticized decision to skirt Congress with an emergency declaration to approve billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia last year, aides on the Foreign Affairs Committee tell me.

“I have learned that there may be another reason for Mr. Linick’s firing,” Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement sent to me. “His office was investigating — at my request — Trump’s phony declaration of an emergency so he could send weapons to Saudi Arabia.”
Committee Democrats have also learned that the State Department was recently briefed on the IG’s conclusions in that investigation, aides say. They do not know what role this investigation — and its conclusions — played in Linick’s removal, if any.

But the committee is now trying to establish what those conclusions were and what links they might have to the firing, the aides confirm.

“We don’t have the full picture yet, but it’s troubling that Secretary Pompeo wanted Mr. Linick pushed out before this work could be completed,” Engel said in the statement to me.

The White House has confirmed Linick’s firing came at Pompeo’s request. Trump claimed he no longer has “confidence” in Linick, a thin justification that highlights Trump’s purging of officials exercising oversight on his administration.

Many news organizations have reported that the fired IG had been examining charges that Pompeo had been directing a staffer to run errands for him. Some reported that Pompeo has undertaken abuses of taxpayer funds, including frequent visits to his home state of Kansas. It’s unclear whether these are linked to Linick’s firing.

But the fact that Linick has also mostly completed an investigation into the decision to fast-track arms to the Saudis adds another layer to this whole story.

Pompeo is corrupt as hell, so he had Trump fire the person investigating him. It really doesn't get much more blatant than "firing the cop looking into your illegal stuff" but again, this doesn't even make the Top Ten Trump Regime Scandals List™ overall.

Old enough to remember the Iran-Contra hearings over less than this.

Still, Pompeo should definitely be made to resign.  Of course, this entire regime should, starting with Trump.

That won't happen.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Former Obama State Department Ukraine expert (and current NY-17 House candidate) Evelyn Farkas reminds us in a NY Times op-ed piece that Russia is still very much interfering in the 2020 election as we speak, and the Trump regime is not only refusing to stop them, but they are actively using their successful 2016 tactics to suppress voting in November.

In President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, disinformation and intimidation tactics are commonly used to silence domestic opposition. (So is murder.) False allegations, followed by contradictory, also false, narratives are the norm in Russian media and political discourse. Misinformation is so prevalent that many Russians are largely indifferent to what is actually true. In Trump’s America, similar tactics are taking hold. What began as a disconcerting nexus between Russia and the reactionary right in this and other countries has become part of the American right-wing repertoire.

I sounded the alarm early regarding ties between Trump, his advisers, and Kremlin officials and cronies. During an interview on MSNBC in March 2017, I said that I knew there was more to the story when media reports and statements by Obama administration officials and the intelligence community began unearthing connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia. I drew conclusions based on my expertise about Kremlin policy and operations, and my analysis of Trump campaign actions and conversations.

Attacks against me came first on Twitter and other social media platforms, from far-right sources. Forensics data I was shown suggested at least one entity had Russian ties. The attacks increased in quantity and ferocity until Fox News and Trump-allied Republicans — higher-profile, and more mainstream, sources — also criticized me. They and other conservative outlets accused me of leaking classified information and even wiretapping Trump Tower, allegations that distracted attention from growing evidence supporting my point. I and colleagues from the Obama administration were summoned to testify before the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee.

Transcripts from that 2017 testimony were released this month. My testimony demonstrated that I had not leaked intelligence and that my early intuition about Trump-Kremlin cooperation was valid, as the findings of the Mueller report and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s recently released conclusions reinforce.

Right-wing figures swiftly launched another disinformation campaign: claiming that I said on television that I had access to classified information to inform my concerns about Trump-Russia connections. I had said no so such thing, but this new fabrication supported allegations that the recently released testimony demonstrated I had lied on TV. This audacious, false accusation is so convoluted I have trouble following it — and that’s the point.

Trump surrogates, including former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump Jr. and Fox News hosts such as Tucker Carlson have essentially accused me of treason for being one of the “fraudulent originators” of the “Russia hoax.” These attacks are part of Trump’s larger “Obamagate” allegations, a narrative that distracts attention from his administration’s disastrous pandemic response and attempts to deflect blame for Russian interference onto the Obama administration. This disinformation campaign seeks to color as illegal the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent and investigate Russia’s actions.

These high-profile accusations have been accompanied by a tsunami of online troll attacks targeting my congressional campaign. Our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, email, and phone lines have been overwhelmed with a stream of vile, vulgar and sometimes violent messages, emotionally exhausting staff and volunteers. As our team interacts with supporters online, the attacks spread to them. These intimidation efforts have compromised our work, incentivizing people to keep a low profile at a time when our campaign depends on robust public messaging ahead of the June 23 primary.

There is evidence that Russian actors are contributing to these attacks. The same day that right-wing pundits began pumping accusations, newly created Russian Twitter accounts picked them up. Within a day, Russian “disinformation clearinghouses” posted versions of the story. Many of the Twitter accounts boosting attacks have posted in unison, a sign of inauthentic social media behavior.

Here’s the truth: I wasn’t silenced in 2017, and I won’t be silenced now.

Fargas is yet another victim of the right wing noise machine, and the calls for her arrest (and worse) have been very loud over the last month.  Luckily, she has the expertise and knowledge to defend herself.

Not everyone is that lucky though.  The fact remains that the Russian tactics worked extremely well in 2016, and they will almost certainly work again.

With open help from Trump and the GOP.

Working Nine To Fraud

What a way to make a living.

A group of international fraudsters appears to have mounted an immense, sophisticated attack on U.S. unemployment systems, creating a network that has already siphoned millions of dollars in payments that were intended to avert an economic collapse, according to federal authorities.

The attackers have used detailed information about U.S. citizens, such as social security numbers that may have been obtained from cyber hacks of years past, to file claims on behalf of people who have not been laid off, officials said. The attack has exploited state unemployment systems at a time when they are straining to process a crush of claims from an employment crisis unmatched since the Great Depression.

With many states rushing to pay claims, payments have gone straight to direct-deposit accounts. In Washington State, the agency tasked with managing unemployment claims there began realizing the extent of the problem in recent days when still-employed people called to question why they had received confirmation paperwork in the mail.

“This is a gut punch,” said Suzi LeVine, the commissioner of Washington State’s Employment Security Department.

In a memo obtained by The New York Times, investigators from the U.S. Secret Service said they had information suggesting that the scheme was coming from a well-organized Nigerian fraud ring and could result in “potential losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars.” Roy Dotson, a special agent who specializes in financial fraud at the Secret Service, said in an interview investigators were still working to pinpoint who was involved and exactly where they were.

”We are actively running down every lead we are getting,” Mr. Dotson said.

Mr. Dotson said it appeared the fraud was being aided by a substantial number of “mules” — people, often in the United States, who are used as intermediaries for money laundering after making connections with fraudsters online. He warned people to be wary of quick-money job offers or other suspicious financial arrangements.

The Secret Service memo said Washington State had emerged as the primary target thus far, but there was also evidence of attacks in Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Wyoming. The agency warned that every state was vulnerable and could be targeted, noting that the attackers appeared to have extensive records of personally identifiable information, or P.I.I.

“It is assumed the fraud ring behind this possess a substantial P.I.I. database to submit the volume of applications observed thus far,” the memo said.

State unemployment systems were never designed to handle 35 million applications in two months.  This was done in all 50 states by choice, this was done in states like Florida to make the system so antiquated on purpose that it actively discouraged people from applying at all.

Of course there was going to be fraud, and this is going to be one of the big reasons Republicans will use to say that we can't have any more money to help the unemployed.