Last Call For Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

Matt Bevin refuses to go out graciously after his loss last month to Democratic Gov.-Elect Andy Beshear, giving a series of giant dog-foghorn racist interviews on why he was defeated at the ballot box.

During a series of interviews on talk radio shows Wednesday morning, outgoing Republican Gov. Matt Bevin said that he lost his race for reelection because the Democratic Party “harvested votes in urban communities.”

Bevin lost to Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear last month by a little more than 5,000 votes.

During an interview on 55KRC in Cincinnati, Bevin said that the election was a “surprise” that defies logic.

“The left, those who think of a different ideological bent, they are getting so good at harvesting votes in the urban communities,” Bevin said.

“They were able to go into urban communities where people are densely populated on college campuses and public housing projects.”

Bevin has repeatedly questioned the outcome of the election, suggesting — without evidence — that voter fraud took place.

Beshear did well in Kentucky’s urban and suburban areas like Louisville, Lexington, Bowling Green, Richmond and northern Kentucky, as well as some historic Democratic strongholds in eastern Kentucky.

Vote harvesting refers to collecting absentee or mail-in ballots in order to sway an election. The practice is illegal in some states, but Kentucky is one of 27 states that allows absentee ballots to be returned by a designated agents.

Vote harvesting took place in the 2018 race for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional district, which Bevin referenced in the aftermath of his failed reelection attempt. Vote harvesting is illegal in North Carolina and a new election was ordered in the race.

During the interview on 55KRC, Bevin said that he was encouraged by his supporters on Election Day, but that Democrats brought “more less-informed people” to the polls.

“Conservatives are going to have to find some counterpoint,” Bevin said. “The harvesting of votes in urban cores in particular that is done by the left overwhelmed even that. And that’s the difference, that’s the tipping point."

So yeah, confirming once again that the Republican definition of voter fraud is an election where black people are allowed to vote, Bevin goes out like a racist piece of human filth he is.

Once again, there's a reason why Republicans want fewer people to be allowed to vote, guys.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

Attorney General Bill Barr's statements outside the Justice Department continue to signal that he is a fascist and autocrat, and that he is arguably more dangerous than Donald Trump is right now to the American people.

Speaking to a roomful of police officers and prosecutors on Tuesday, Attorney General William P. Barr drew a parallel between protests against soldiers during the Vietnam War and demonstrations against law enforcement today.

But this time, he suggested, those who don’t show “respect” to authority could lose access to police services.

“Today, the American people have to focus on something else, which is the sacrifice and the service that is given by our law enforcement officers. And they have to start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deserves,” Barr said in pointed remarks delivered at a Justice Department ceremony to honor police officers.

Barr added that “if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.”
Although Barr didn’t specify what “communities” he was referencing, activists decried his speech as a clear attack on minorities who have protested police brutality and other racially skewed law enforcement abuses.

“Barr’s words are as revealing as they are disturbing ― flagrantly dismissive of the rights of Americans of color, disrespectful to countless law enforcement officers who work hard to serve their communities, and full of a continuing disregard for the rule of law,” Jeb Fain, a spokesperson for liberal super PAC American Bridge, told HuffPost, which first reported on the comments.

As attorney general, Barr has attacked liberal district attorneys who have pushed for police accountability in cities like Philadelphia and St. Louis and suggested that there should be “zero tolerance for resisting police.”

Before handing out honors to police officers at Tuesday’s ceremony for the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service in Policing, Barr described seeing deployed troops celebrated at airports and lamented that police aren’t more openly feted.

“When police officers roll out of their precincts every morning, there are no crowds along the highway cheering them on, and when you go home at the end of the day, there’s no ticker-tape parade,” he said, echoing virtually word-for-word comments he made in August to the Fraternal Order of Police.
The attorney general then compared police to Vietnam-era soldiers returning home to face those opposed to the conflict.

“In the Vietnam era, our country learned a lesson. I remember that our brave troops who served in that conflict weren’t treated very well in many cases when they came home, and sometimes they bore the brunt of people who were opposed to the war,” he said. “The respect and gratitude owed to them was not given. And it took decades for the American people finally to realize that.”

The fascism from fifty years ago never left the GOP.  Steve M explains:

Boomer Republicans love to invoke the late 1960s and early 1970s. They love it because the fifty-year backlash to the much shorter era of protest and progress began at that time, with Nixon's election and reelection, with the governorship of future president Ronald Reagan, with hard-hat riots against anti-war protestors and Clint Eastwood revenge movies. They also love the era because they've never updated their stereotypes of the enemy. Black and Hispanic people are criminals. Feminists ("women's libbers") are hairy-legged man-haters. Men on the left are effeminate, smelly, sandal-wearing longhairs. Can it be that it was all so simple then?

The fantasy, then and now, was a complete withdrawal of "law and order" from the cities, or at least the "bad" neighborhoods, at which point all "those people" would kill one another off and leave the good people in a state of pleasant suburban peace, and allow the rich to turn the cities into high-end playgrounds. To a large extent, the rich got the latter wish, but it was as a result of the War on Crime -- which is a reminder that the police presence in higher-crime areas isn't on behalf of the residents, but on behalf of the elites who want the poor kept down. So Barr is bluffing -- the elites will always want have-nots policed. But it's a fantasy that's never lost its appeal to people like him.

Barr may be bluffing to the extent that no city government wants a riot on their hands and in the press and that police chiefs get fired when they happen, but then again the local press is disappearing at a rapid clip, and the FOX doomsday preppers have always loved a good "no-go zone" bullshit story.

Thing is though Barr can cause a lot of trouble for people, and once again I remind you that the nation's top cop saying "Protect and serve, but only if I think they deserve it" while comparing cops to the military is pretty much peak fascism.

America will survive a second Trump term with Barr as AG, but you'd better double the estimates of the number of people currently incarcerated and triple the estimates of police killing people.

Trump's Taxing Explanation, Con't

Only the Roberts Court can save Trump now from his tax return nightmare and they may not even bother to do so.

A federal appeals court in New York handed President Donald Trump another legal defeat, ruling Tuesday that Congress can see his banking records for investigations into possible foreign influence in U.S. politics or other misdeeds.

A panel of 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges said two banks, Deutsche Bank and Capital One, should comply with subpoenas from the House Financial Services and Intelligence committees seeking records related to Trump’s business ventures.

The court said Congress was acting within its constitutional authority to investigate a series of significant issues, including whether Trump was “vulnerable to foreign exploitation.”

It rejected arguments that the subpoenas were meant merely to embarrass the president, though the court said Trump did deserve some privacy protections and outlined procedures for protecting some sensitive personal information in the documents from public disclosure. It also gave Trump a limited chance to object to disclosure of certain documents.

Judge Debra Ann Livingston said in a partial dissent that the lower court should take a longer look at the “serious questions” raised by the case and give the parties time to negotiate.

Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal lawyer, said in a statement that an appeal to the Supreme Court was under consideration.

“We believe the subpoena is invalid as issued. In light of the Second Circuit decision, we are evaluating our next options,” he said.

The ruling by the appeals court upheld a May ruling by U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos, who had said Trump and his company were unlikely to succeed in proving that the subpoenas were unlawful and unconstitutional. The 2nd Circuit panel said three of his children had not shown a likelihood of success on any of their claims and had not identified a single factual issue to take to trial or a single witness or document that might add substance to their claims at trial.

Lawyers for the House committees, both of which are controlled by Democrats, say they need access to documents from the banks to investigate possible “foreign influence in the U.S. political process” and possible money laundering from abroad.

In a decision written by Circuit Judge Jon O. Newman, the appeals court said that while Trump and his children might suffer a loss of privacy if the documents were disclosed to Congress, the records had to do with their business ventures, not intimate personal details.

“The Committees’ interests in pursuing their constitutional legislative function is a far more significant public interest than whatever public interest inheres in avoiding the risk of a Chief Executive’s distraction arising from disclosure of documents reflecting his private financial transactions,” the decision said.

Deutsche Bank has lent Trump’s real estate company millions of dollars over the years.

The court noted that the president had not disputed that the bank loaned him at least $130 million when no other bank would do so.

“That unusual circumstance adequately supports requests for information to determine whether proper banking procedures have been followed,” the decision said.

Again, Donald Trump has been willing to go all the way to the Supreme Court to stop anyone from seeing his tax returns.  If you don't believe there's evidence fatal to his re-election in those returns, and there probably is, just the thought of getting caught misusing the power of the executive to cover the equivalent of his tiny financial penis should be enough to give him nightmares.

We've known for years that Trump isn't a billionaire and he hasn't been for some time.  If that's all he's hiding, why is he quite literally trying to make a Supreme Court case out of it?  The answers is asking why he has no choice but to go that far.

That massive Deutsche Bank loan connects him to Russian money laundering, full stop.

He has to make sure it never sees the light of day.

StrupidiNews!

• China has banned all US military personnel from visiting Hong Kong in response to Donald Trump signing a bill into law last week supporting Hong Kong protesters.
• Republican Congressman Steve Watkins of Kansas is facing possible voter fraud and perjury charges over listing a UPS Store as his address of residence.
• The House Intelligence Committee approved and released its 300-page report on Ukraine in a 13-9 party line vote, the House Judiciary Committee will hold impeachment hearings today. 
• Donald Trump all but threatened French President Emanuel Macron Tuesday at NATO's annual summit in London, Trump asked Macron if he would like "some ISIS fighters".
• Google co-founder Larry Page is stepping down from Google and its parent company Alphabet as Sundar Pichai will now take control of both companies.

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The big reveal in today's House Intelligence Committee report on Ukraine is just how much trouble both Rudy Giuliani and GOP Rep. Devin Nunes, who I remind you is ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, are both in.

Rudy Giuliani and one of his indicted Ukrainian associates exchanged a flurry of phone calls with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the top Republican on Congress’ impeachment investigation panel, amid a Giuliani-led effort to dig up dirt on President Donald Trump’s political opponents in Ukraine.

The House Intelligence Committee obtained phone records from AT&T showing extensive communications in early April involving Nunes, Giuliani, Lev Parnas, and The Hill columnist John Solomon, according to records released in the committee’s formal report on its investigation underlying impeachment charges against President Donald Trump.

The records shed new light on the relationship between Nunes, one of the impeachment inquiries most vehement critics, and the individuals at the center of what committee Democrats describe as an illicit campaign to weaponize U.S. foreign policy to Trump’s political advantage.

The records in the committee’s 300-page report show three phone calls between Nunes and Giuliani on April 10 of this year, and at least two with Parnas two days later. Derek Harvey, a member of Nunes’ staff, also had a phone call with Giuliani the following month.
The Nunes calls came on the tail end of a long series of communications between Parnas and Solomon, who on April 1 had published a column relaying the same conspiracy theories at the center of Giuliani’s Trump-endorsed inquisition in Ukraine: that high-ranking officials in Kyiv had sought to scuttle Trump's 2016 presidential candidacy, and that former Vice President Joe Biden had corruptly attempted to insulate a company that employed his son from prosecution. Parnas and Solomon exchanged more than a dozen phone calls in the subsequent two weeks, during which Solomon reiterated the allegations about Biden and Ukraine in another column that Giuliani relayed in an interview on Fox News.

Giuliani, meanwhile, was in frequent communication with the White House. Throughout April, he placed numerous calls to unidentified individuals in the Office of Management and Budget, the office led by acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. The report also notes a number of Giuliani calls later in the year with an individual at an unidentified number—appearing only as “-1” in phone records—amid a series of phone calls and text messages with numbers associated with the White House.

The committee’s report describes those individuals as part of a “smear campaign” coordinated with “one or more individuals at the White House.”

Giuliani did not respond to a text message for comment.

April.

Not July, or August.

April.

Giuliani, Mick Mulvaney, Devin Nunes, Lev Parnas, the Hill's John Solomon, they were all in on the plan to smear Joe Biden by extorting the President of Ukraine with US military aid.

They were all in on it at the direction of Donald Trump.

We get it now?

Another Hat Leaves The Ring

The first big name of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary is out, Kamala Harris is suspending her campaign as of today.

First-term U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California on Tuesday will end her 2020 presidential campaign after failing to garner support in key states despite an early rise in the polls, according to a campaign source.

“I’ve taken stock and looked at this from every angle, and over the last few days have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life,” Harris said in an email to supporters on Tuesday. “My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.”
Harris held a conference call with staff on Tuesday afternoon to inform them of her decision, according to sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Harris, 55, positioned herself as a unifying candidate who could energize the party’s base of young, diverse progressives while also appealing to more moderate voters.

Yet after climbing into double digits in opinion polls following a strong debate performance in June, Harris slid out of the top tier in recent months and lags behind leading candidates’ fundraising hauls.

The senator from California’s departure from the race is the first of a top-tier candidate from the crowded nominating contest.

Harris entered the race as an immediate front-runner but then struggled to maintain support, which critics said was fueled by her inability to articulate policy positions and the backlash of an attempt to attack rival former Vice President Joe Biden.

The papers had already written her political obituary last week, the only person who didn't truly know she was done back in October was Harris herself, I suspect.  The shift to Iowa, along with the fact she was running behind Andrew Yang and recently Michael Bloomberg in her home state of California, was a huge warning bell.

Booker is probably next.  It's going to come down to Biden, Warren, Buttigieg and Sanders after all and Warren's star is fading fast too.  Bloomberg meanwhile is trying to buy his way in and it just might work.

Are we really going to have this come down to a bunch of white guys in 2020 versus the orange one?

Because that's where we're at.  No non-white candidates have qualified for next week's debate deadline for the December 19th debate.  As of today, six white candidates have.  I'm going to give a few buck to Booker and Castro just to keep them going.  We need voices.

We needed Kamala's voice too.

Was that ever not going to be the case?

Enemies Of The People, Con't

The Trump regime has officially blacklisted Bloomberg News and will no longer allow them any press credentials after the news outlet chose to distance itself from owner Michael Bloomberg by not targeting his Democratic primary rivals.

President Donald Trump’s campaign said Monday it will no longer give credentials to Bloomberg News reporters to cover campaign events because of coverage “biases,” an accusation that the news organization rejects.

The decision comes a week after the news service’s founder, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, announced he was seeking the Democratic nomination for president. And Bloomberg News, which the former New York City mayor founded in 1990, said it would not investigate him or his Democratic rivals but would continue to probe the Trump administration, as the sitting government.

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale called it a troubling decision to “formalize preferential reporting policies.” He said Bloomberg reporters would no longer be credentialed to cover campaign events until the policy is rescinded.

“As President Trump’s campaign, we are accustomed to unfair reporting practices, but most news organizations don’t announce their biases so publicly,” Parscale said.

Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait said the accusation of bias couldn’t be further from the truth.

“We have covered Donald Trump fairly and in an unbiased way since he became a candidate in 2015 and will continue to do so despite the restrictions imposed by the Trump campaign,” he said.

The Trump campaign’s action illustrates the difficult position Bloomberg’s candidacy has imposed on the news organization.

By saying reporters could not investigate Bloomberg or his Democratic rivals, some critics have said this would prevent the news organization from doing in-depth reporting on the campaign. Bloomberg officials say it’s a position they’ve navigated before when he was mayor.

“This is my nightmare come true,” said Kathy Kiely, a University of Missouri journalism professor who quit as Bloomberg political director when he was considering a run for the 2016 presidential nomination.

Journalists at Bloomberg would have been better served if he had made clear that he was stepping away from his company for the campaign and said that he — and any candidate for president — was fair game for any kind of stories that Bloomberg News reporters could dig up, she said.

“It’s unfortunate that this is creating a perception that this is how journalism works, that journalists are manipulated by their bosses,” she said.

I would even side against Bloomberg on this in a universe where Donald Trump didn't have FOX News as his own personal state television network.

Brad Parscale screaming about biases is pretty much like the national rattlesnake lobby complaining that scorpions might be a health hazard.  This is just bullying and bad faith nonsense, and the Bloomberg people should absolutely call out the Trump regime on it.

StupidiNews!

• India's Navy will get its first woman pilot this week as Sub Lieutenant Shivangi will join ongoing operations after completing training in 2018.
• Journalists and workers at the Seattle Times were evacuated Monday night due to a bomb threat, nobody was harmed, and the newsroom staff continued work on the sidewalk.
• The Trump regime is considering a 100% tariff on French luxury imports like cheese, Champagne, and handbags in response to a French digital tax on US tech products.
• The US Senate confirmed Deputy Energy Secretary and former lobbyist Dan Brouilette to replace outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry in a 70-15 vote, no change in department policy is expected.
• Samoa's government is facing shutdown as the island's measles outbreak enters its seventh week, only 31% of Samoa's infants are vaccinated after a nurse error killed two infants 18 months ago.

Last Call For The Hunter Becomes The Hunted

Embattled California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter is done being hunted by the feds and is taking a plea deal.

California Rep. Duncan Hunter said he plans to plead guilty to misusing campaign funds and is prepared to go to jail, a stunning turn of events for the six-term Republican who had steadfastly denied wrongdoing and claimed he was the victim of a political witch hunt by federal prosecutors.

Hunter had pleaded not guilty, but in an interview that aired Monday said he will change his plea at a federal court hearing Tuesday in San Diego. He said his motivation is protect his three children from going through a trial, which was set to begin Jan. 22.

His wife Margaret Hunter also was charged in the case and in June accepted a plea deal that called for her to testify against her husband.

“I think it would be really tough for them,” the 42-year-old Hunter said in an interview with San Diego TV station KUSI. “It’s hard enough being the kids of a public figure. I think it’s time for them to live life outside the spotlight.”

Hunter, who was re-elected last year and has been actively campaigning for a seventh term next year despite being under indictment, indicated he will leave office but didn’t say when.

The combat Marine veteran and an early supporter of President Donald Trump said he will plead guilty to one count of misuse of campaign funds. Federal prosecutors alleged he and his wife spent more than $250,000 in campaign money for golf outings, plane tickets and a family vacation to Italy, as well as household items from places like Costco.

The crime is a federal felony, so there's no way he can stay in office without being expelled.  The bad news is with Hunter out, Darrel Issa is completely ready to slime his way back into Congress.

Former Rep. Darrell Issa, former San Diego Councilman Carl DeMaio and state Sen. Brian Jones all announced they would run against Hunter, who barely survived his 2018 reelection campaign against Democratic challenger Ammar Campa-Najjar.

Campa-Najjar is once again vying for the now-open seat. He said Hunter’s change of plea will improve his chances of winning in the March primary and the November general election.

“We are all ready to move past this dark cloud of scandal,” Campa-Najjar said by telephone. “I look forward to restoring some integrity and dignity to this district.”

Issa, who represented the neighboring 49th District over 18 years before deciding not to seek reelection last year, said Hunter faced a difficult decision between defending himself in court and protecting his family from testimony that he cheated on his wife — and paid for affairs with donor funds.

“The reality is Duncan made a mistake,” Issa said by phone. “Reaching for the campaign credit card in what clearly is a personal expense is inappropriate. It was certainly bad judgment and not reimbursing it much earlier was a mistake.”

Issa said voters should remember there were “two Duncan Hunters” — one who joined the Marines after the Sept. 11 attacks and defended veterans in Congress for a decade-plus, and one who veered from his marriage and made improper campaign spending decisions.

DeMaio said Hunter did the right thing.

“While this must have been a difficult decision for him, Congressman Hunter’s decision to plead guilty is the right one for his family and his constituents and shows that no one should be above the law — especially members of Congress,” DeMaio said by phone.

While Hunter’s main political rivals did their best not to focus on how the guilty plea might improve their election chances, political experts were not so reluctant.

“This gives the Republicans a much stronger chance of holding on to a critical seat,” UC San Diego political scientist Thad Kousser said. “They lose the advantage of incumbency and name-brand, but getting away from the scandal and the soap opera this has become will allow the party to focus on issues that are popular to voters in this district.”

San Diego State political science professor Brian Adams also said Republicans are much more likely to retain the seat with Hunter off the ballot.

“I think the Democrats’ best chance was a Campa-Najjar/Hunter matchup,” he said. “I think DeMaio, Issa or Jones all match up well against Campa-Najjar.”

Unfortunately, I have to agree.  And it's very likely that Darrell Issa will once again be in the House starting in 2021.  It's an R+11 district and the biggest GOP stronghold left in SoCal, the hills above San Diego north of I-8.  The Hunter family ran this district for decades, and now Darrell Issa is going to make one last grand theft auto attempt to steal it for himself.

It's Still About Suppression, Con't

Donald Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin by fewer than 400,000 votes in 2016, but in every case the margin was dwarfed by registered voters who didn't cast a ballot for president at all in 2016 or voted third party, and that margin was dwarfed by those who stayed home.  Getting those voters back onto the Democratic side as a way to remove Trump has to be the top priority.

One of the biggest surprises in 2016 was how many voters declined to even cast a ballot for president: More than 75,000 Michiganders who went to the polls didn’t vote for president at all — more than double the number in 2008.

“That’s an amazing number,” said Susy Heintz Avery, a former Michigan Republican Party chairwoman and co-director of the Michigan Political Leadership Program at Michigan State University.

Of those, nearly half — more than 35,000 voters — were from counties won by Hillary Clinton. The state hadn’t backed a Republican nominee since 1988.

Voter apathy may explain part of it, with people turned off by either Trump or Clinton, who did little outreach in the state. Democratic consultant Joe DiSano also said, “It was a question of people thinking it was a foregone conclusion (that Clinton would win). They thought it was taken care of … There’s no question she should have done more on the ground (to get out the vote).”

In 2020, expect both sides to take nothing for granted, regardless of what the polls say.

“The get-out-the-vote effort is going to be huge in 2020 … Bigger than we’ve seen in a long time,” said Heintz Avery. The question is how many of those missing voters are ready to support the Democratic nominee against the president, or if, in the end, they decide to sit it out again.

Clinton did almost as well in Detroit as President Barack Obama did in 2012, winning 95% of the vote in the majority black city. But Clinton got about 47,000 fewer votes in the city than Obama did.

“Obviously African American votes in the cities … were a key loss for Clinton,” said Matt Grossmann, director of Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research.

Amid criticism that Clinton took those predominantly Democratic votes for granted, party officials say that’s unlikely to happen again.

Democrats have more than a dozen organizers on the ground in Detroit and are training even more, pointing out that health care protections remain as uncertain as ever and that Trump has tried to gut programs that help pay for development efforts in urban centers. The Trump campaign, meanwhile, is running ads in newspapers and on radio in Detroit touting the administration's record and launching “Black Voices for Trump.” The campaign says Trump's presidency has greatly helped minority voters by lowering the unemployment rate and notes the president has also enacted criminal justice reforms,

In the 2018 midterm elections, Detroit’s turnout was up 10 points from the previous midterm, a trend that could greatly help Democrats if it holds. But Grossman says the party needs to motivate black voters, not simply expect them to turn out.

“Hillary Clinton managed to convince white voters she cared a lot about racial minorities and their concerns, but it was not enough to mobilize African American voters,” he noted.

Black voters in Philly, Detroit, and Milwaukee are going to make the difference in those three critical swing states, and they will make the difference in Florida and NC too.  That's why voter suppression efforts in those five states have been specifically targeted at black voters.  That's how Republicans were able to win huge state legislature majorities in all of those states.

It's the black vote, guys.  Stop pretending "working-class white voters" are the key to anything.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Back to the business at hand, and that business is the House Intelligence Committee's report on Ukraine out today and expected to be approved tomorrow as the action now shifts from Schiff and Intel to Jerry Nadler and the House Judiciary.

Members of the House Intelligence Committee will begin reviewing a report Monday on the panel's investigation of President Donald Trump's efforts to press Ukraine to investigate his Democratic adversaries, a crucial step in the House's fast-moving impeachment inquiry.

Lawmakers on the panel will get a 24-hour review period, according to internal guidance sent to committee members and obtained by POLITICO. On Tuesday, the panel is expected to approve the findings — likely on a party-line vote — teeing it up for consideration by the Judiciary Committee, which is in turn expected to draft and consider articles of impeachment in the coming weeks.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff had indicated in a letter to colleagues earlier this week that a report would be coming "soon" from his committee but had not provided a specific timeframe.

Schiff had also indicated that his committee was still open to receiving new witnesses or testimony as it began to draft the report, but it’s unclear if any new information has become available since lawmakers departed for a one-week Thanksgiving recess.

The Ukraine report is expected to make up the core of Democrats’ likely articles of impeachment against Trump. Lawmakers leading the inquiry have suggested Trump could face an article alleging abuse of power for withholding military aid and a White House meeting from Ukraine while Trump and his allies pressured the country’s new president to investigate Democrats.

The House has been moving quickly to investigate Trump since Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24. Democratic leaders, including Pelosi, have refused to assign a public end date to their investigation but many lawmakers have said privately they hope to wrap up by the end of the year.

The House Judiciary Committee is slated to hold its first impeachment hearing on Wednesday, with a panel of constitutional experts explaining exactly what constitutes an impeachable offense, including defining the nebulous “high crime and misdemeanor” term specified in the Constitution.

It's Nadler and the Judiciary who will decide on exactly what the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump will be, and Republicans on the Judiciary will be there every step of the way to derail the process, their first move being to call Adam Schiff himself as a witness.

It's gonna get hairy this week, I guarantee.

StupidiNews!

• Former Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak is dropping out of the 2020 presidential contest, Sestak thanked his followers with a letter on Sunday and is suspending his campaign.
• The future of Germany's government is in question after Chancellor Angela Merkel's second-place coalition partner and chief rival third-place far-right party both changed leadership Saturday.
• The US Supreme Court will hear arguments this week on New York's state gun transport restrictions and whether they are Constitutional.
• Donald Trump is headed to this year's NATO summit in London claiming Democrats can't be allowed to hold any impeachment hearings while he's out of town.
• After years of allowing questionable ads for stem cell treatments, Google is now blocking the ads on the internet but the move isn't expected to make much of a dent in shoddy medical clinics.

Turkey Week Last Call: The Road To Gilead

With the end of legalized abortion seven months and one SCOTUS decision away, the circular firing squad by women's groups, abortion rights activists, and fundraisers on the Left is now in full bloom.

As Planned Parenthood and its progressive allies have rallied the resistance, the shift in fortunes in the abortion wars has been mostly attributed to the right’s well-executed game plan. Less attention has been paid to the left’s role in its own loss of power.

But interviews with more than 50 reproductive rights leaders, clinic directors, political strategists and activists over the past three months reveal a fragmented movement facing longstanding divisions — cultural, financial and political. Many said that abortion rights advocates and leading reproductive rights groups had made several crucial miscalculations that have put them on the defensive.

“It’s really, really complicated and somewhat controversial where the pro-choice movement lost,” said Johanna Schoen, a professor at Rutgers University who has studied the history of abortion.

National leaders became overly reliant on the protections granted by a Democratic presidency under Mr. Obama and a relatively balanced Supreme Court, critics say, leading to overconfidence that their goals were not seriously threatened. Their expectation that Mr. Trump would lose led them to forgo battles they now wish they had fought harder, like Judge Merrick B. Garland’s failed nomination to the bench.

Local activists in states like Alabama, Georgia, North Dakota and Missouri where abortion was under siege say national leaders lost touch with the ways that access to abortion was eroding in Republican strongholds.

“Looking at the prior presidential administration, there was a perception that everything is fine,” said Kwajelyn Jackson, the executive director of the Feminist Women’s Health Center, an independent clinic in Atlanta that has provided abortions since 1976. “We were screaming at the top of our lungs, everything is not fine, please pay attention.”

Discord at Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest and most influential abortion provider, exacerbated the problem. In July the group’s new president, Dr. Leana Wen, was forced out in a messy departure highlighting deep internal division over her management style and how much emphasis to place on the political fight for abortion rights.

Planned Parenthood’s acting head, Alexis McGill Johnson, said that Mr. Trump’s election, new abortion restrictions and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court provided a wake-up call to many national leaders, including herself, that forced them to confront the entrenched challenges of class dividing their movement.

“A lot of us are awakening to the fact that if you are wealthy, if you live in the New York ZIP code or California ZIP code or Illinois ZIP code, your ability to access reproductive health care is not in jeopardy in the same way that it is in other states,” Ms. McGill Johnson said in an interview.

"Where the pro-choice movement lost" was when 53% of white women decided Donald Trump was a better candidate for women than Hillary Clinton in November 2016.  That's where it lost, guys.  This was a choice white women made.

You took abortion away when you voted for Trump.  It's not the fault of the pro-choice movement.  It's the fault of the women who took the pro-choice movement for granted and said "Trump won't take abortion away from me, I voted for him."

What did you think was going to happen?

Sunday Long Read: A Prime Example

Our Sunday Long Read this week is Scott Shane's look at just how pervasive Amazon is in American life, as the NY Times reporter examines the company's shipping, distribution, fulfillment, web services and delivery operations in Baltimore.

Another big Prime Air 767 takes off from Baltimore-Washington International Airport — where Amazon’s shipping last year eclipsed that of FedEx and U.P.S. put together — and wheels above the old industrial city. Below, the online giant seems to touch every niche of the economy, its ubiquity and range breathtaking.

To the city’s southeast stand two mammoth Amazon warehouses, built with heavy government subsidies, operating on the sites of shuttered General Motors and Bethlehem Steel plants. Computers monitor workers during grueling 10-hour shifts, identifying slow performers for firing. Those on the floor earn $15.40 to $18 an hour, less than half of what their unionized predecessors made. But in Baltimore’s postindustrial economy, the jobs are in demand.

Near the Inner Harbor are the side-by-side stadiums of the Ravens and the Orioles, where every move on the field is streamed to Amazon Web Services for analysis using artificial intelligence. Football players have a chip in each shoulder pad and baseball players are tracked by radar, producing flashy graphics for television and arcane stats for coaches.

Up in northwest Baltimore, a pastor has found funding to install Amazon Ring video cameras on homes in a high-crime neighborhood. Privacy advocates express alarm at proliferating surveillance; footage of suspects can be shared with the police at a click. But the number of interested residents has already outstripped the number of cameras available.
In City Hall downtown and at Johns Hopkins University a few miles away, procurement officers have begun buying from local suppliers via Amazon Business — and even starred in a national marketing video for the company. Buyers say the convenience more than justifies interposing a Seattle-based corporation between their institutions and nearby businesses. Critics denounce the retail giant’s incursion into long-established relationships. It is a very Amazon dispute.

As federal regulators and Congress assess whether Amazon’s market power should be curbed under antitrust laws — and whether, as some politicians argue, the company should be broken up — The New York Times has explored the company’s impact in one American community: greater Baltimore.

Baltimore’s pleading pitch last year to become an additional headquarters city for Amazon, promising a whopping $3.8 billion in subsidies, did not even make the second round of bidding. But Amazon’s presence here shows how the many-armed titan may now reach into Americans’ daily lives in more ways than any corporation in history. If antitrust investigators want to sample Amazon’s impact on the ground, they could well take a look here.

Anirban Basu, a Baltimore economist who has studied the region for years, is skeptical of apocalyptic claims about Amazon, saying Sears and Walmart were both once seen as all-powerful. But he called Amazon a “profit-margin killer” and said it should be scrutinized, particularly because technological trends that include artificial intelligence, driverless trucks, drones and new payment systems all play to its advantage.

“All these things are a threat to other industries,” Mr. Basu said. “But they’re all good for Amazon. As powerful as it is, Amazon is set to be much more powerful.”

Imagine a corporation so large and so powerful that it control every aspect of the items you buy from manufacture until it reaches your door, a company so large that its economy of scale can simply drive every other single competitor out of business.  Imagine that everything you bought came from one company, especially the final mile to your home: groceries, home services, security cameras, clothing, flower seeds, books, curtains, that new TV and the streaming service to watch on it, and everything else.

How powerful would that company be once it outpriced its competitors out of business?  How powerful would it be if it eliminated 90% of its workforce and automated the rest?

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, these companies need to be shattered.

Or they will own us all.

Turkey Week: The Devils Came Out Of Georgia

In the Trump regime mob, you do what Don Arancio Trumpino says or you get replaced by someone who does.  It's one thing for that to happen in the White House and executive branch where Trump can hire and fire.  But now Trump's picking Senators and not every red state governor is going along with his "requests", and there's a price to be paid.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) warned Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Friday that he could face a primary challenger when running for reelection if he doesn’t select President Trump’s favored candidate for the Senate seat soon to be vacated by Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).

Gaetz’s tweet Friday comes amid reports that Kemp is expected to announce that financial executive Kelly Loeffler will be chosen over Trump’s preferred selection of Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.).

“You are ignoring his request because you THINK you know better than @POTUS,” Gaetz tweeted. “If you substitute your judgement for the President’s, maybe you need a primary in 2022. Let’s see if you can win one w/o Trump.”

Gaetz in a follow-up tweet said Kemp would be "hurting Trump" if he does not select Collins.

“It’s not the establishment you are screwing with your donor-induced stubbornness,” Gaetz wrote. “You are hurting President Trump. You know this because he told you.”

Gaetz is a vocal supporter of Trump and his message underscores the dilemma Kemp will face if he follows through with selecting Loeffler.

Kemp’s upcoming decision to select a new senator comes after he met with Trump at the White House on Sunday, with the two reportedly having a disagreement regarding who should fill the seat set to be vacated by Isakson, who is stepping down at the end of the year due to health issues.

You know those quiet parts that you're not supposed to say in public when you're shaking down a governor in your own party?  The Trumpino mob never got to that part in Mobstering for Dummies. It doesn't help Kemp's case that his reason to select Kelly Loeffler is because Trump is absolute poison among white suburban women in the Peach State.

Her appointment would do little to tamp down the internal Republican fighting over the seat. Trump and his allies have repeatedly pressed the governor to tap Collins, and the two were still at odds over Loeffler’s appointment even after Kemp brought her to a secretive meeting with the president last week.

And it would come as no surprise to Republican insiders, who have labeled Loeffler the presumptive favorite ever since she submitted her application hours before a deadline imposed by Kemp.

Collins’ allies have aggressively pushed Kemp to appoint the congressman in recent weeks, describing the Gainesville Republican as a champion for conservative causes – and a bulwark of defense against impeachment proceedings headed for the U.S. Senate.

And Collins has helped energize his supporters by telling The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he is “strongly” considering a run for the Senate seat in next year’s special election if he’s not picked.
Kemp, however, has surprised even his critics with his appointments to key posts, and he’s long seen the U.S. Senate opening as a chance to help the Georgia GOP win back female voters.

He’s also mindful that his selection would not only be on the ballot in 2020 to fill out the remaining two years of Isakson’s term but also potentially alongside Kemp in 2022 when the governor runs for a second term.

We could have a major fight on our hands for Georgia's two senate seats in 2020.  There are multiple Dems running for David Perdue's seat next year with Stacey Abrams passing on the race, and I'm sure many will look for Isakson's seat in the special election next fall.

Bonus Republican fail: Isakson was chair of the Senate Ethics Committee and literally no Republican senator wants the job.