It's About Suppression, Con't

Last month, Pennsylvania's state Supreme Court ruled that the state's congressional districts were gerrymandered to the point of violating the state constitution, which requires the state to have "free and fair" elections.  State Republicans immediately appealed the decision to the US Supreme Court, who today told Pennsylvania to basically figure this out themselves.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let a court-ordered redrawing of congressional districts in Pennsylvania proceed, raising Democratic hopes that a revamped map might yield them several more seats this fall.

Justice Samuel Alito, who handles emergency appeals from Pennsylvania, rejected the request from GOP legislative leaders and voters to put on hold an order from the state Supreme Court intended to produce new congressional districts in the coming two weeks.

The Pennsylvania high court ruled last month that the current map of 18 districts violates the state constitution because it unfairly benefits Republicans.

The decision comes just four days before the Republican-controlled Legislature’s deadline for submitting a replacement map for Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf to consider. So far, there has been a notable lack of bipartisan movement on getting such a deal.

Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation has been 13-5 in favor of Republicans during the three election cycles since the GOP-drawn 2011 map took effect, and experts have said those 13 seats are several more than would have been produced by a nonpartisan map.

Democrats have about 800,000 more registered voters than Republicans and hold all three elected statewide row offices, but Republicans enjoy solid majorities in both chambers of the Legislature.

With the court order now remaining in effect and the redistricting map due at the end of the week, the GOP is moving to simply impeach and remove the justices who ordered the redistricting.

In a memorandum sent Monday evening to all members of the state house, with the subject line “Impeachment of five PA Supreme Court Justices,” Rep. Cris Dush alleges “the five Justices who signed this order that blatantly and clearly contradicts the plan language of the Pennsylvania Constitution, engaged in misbehavior in office.”

He claims “each is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office and disqualification to hold any office or trust or profit under this Commonwealth.”

Never mind that far-right conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito refused to say the state court’s ruling. Dush is calling on his fellow legislators to join him in his impeachment legislation.

“This is a usurpation of the sovereign power of the legislature under the Pennsylvania Constitution,” he said. “In the Constitution, it’s a contract between the people and the government that they hired to oversee them. And the sovereigns in this issue are God, the people, and the legislature — in that order.”

So we're right back to "Constitutional crisis" for the Keystone State.  We'll see where this goes, but whatever happens, it's going to happen fast.

StupidiNews!

• The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously to make the Democratic rebuttal to last week's memo by GOP chair Devin Nunes public, but it is unknown if Trump will block its release.
• The City of Seattle says Facebook violated a city ordnance requiring disclosure of who bought political ads in the 2016 election, Seattle may levy fines of $5,000 for each ad buy.
• The global market sell-off continues as some $4 trillion in value has been wiped from world stock markets since hitting record highs last week.
• US Firearms sales are down for a second January in a row as Republican control of the government isn't stoking the kind of fear-based buying the industry saw during the Obama years.
• European scientists have concluded that without new improvements to technologies for removing carbon from the atmosphere, the world will fall well short of limiting global warming to 2C.

Last Call For This All Feels Familiar

It's no coincidence that after the ugliest tax bill in history on top of a year-long market bubble that saw the Dow gain 35% in 15 months that the law of averages would finally kick in in a big, big way.

It was the scariest day on Wall Street in years. 

Stocks went into free fall on Monday, and the Dow plunged almost 1,600 points -- easily the biggest point decline in history during a trading day. 

Buyers charged back in and limited the damage, but at the closing bell the Dow was still down 1,175 points, by far its worst closing point decline on record. 

The drop amounted to 4.6% -- nowhere close to the destruction on Black Monday in 1987 or the financial crisis of 2008. But for investors lulled to sleep by the steady upward climb since Election Day, it was alarming. 

The White House said through a spokesman that "markets do fluctuate in the short term," but it stressed that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

Now, where have we heard that phrase before?


Oh, right.  The 30 seconds where John McCain lost the 2008 election.

A Republican giving a speech about how good the economy is while the Dow loses several percentage points while that Republican is talking.

Why, that happened to Trump today.  As he spoke here in Cincinnati, the Dow lost nearly 600 points.  He was oblivious to it too.

You can bet voters weren't oblivious, either.  Why, this all feels very familiar to ten years ago, something I've been warning readers about for some time now.

The Dow has lost 1,700 points in two days, erasing all 2018 gains so far.  And America is realizing that the guy in charge of fixing this mess is Donald Trump.

Here we go.  Things get very, very bad from here.

Trump Is The Symptom Of A Far Worse Disease

Just a reminder this morning that the racism, hatred and bigotry of the GOP is the defining feature of the party in 2018 and of the people perfectly happy to vote for them, not an aberration or fluke. 

Arthur Jones — an outspoken Holocaust denier, activist anti-Semite and white supremacist — is poised to become the Republican nominee for an Illinois congressional seat representing parts of Chicago and nearby suburbs.

“Well first of all, I’m running for Congress not the chancellor of Germany. All right. To me the Holocaust is what I said it is: It’s an international extortion racket,” Jones told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Indeed, Jones’ website for his latest congressional run includes a section titled “The ‘Holocaust Racket’” where he calls the genocide carried out by the German Nazi regime and collaborators in other nations “the biggest blackest lie in history.”

Jones, 70, a retired insurance agent who lives in suburban Lyons, has unsuccessfully run for elected offices in the Chicago area and Milwaukee since the 1970s.

He ran for Milwaukee mayor in 1976 and 13th Ward alderman on Chicago’s Southwest Side in 1987.

Since the 1990s to 2016, Jones has jumped in the GOP 3rd Congressional District primary seven times, never even close to becoming a viable contender.

The outcome will be different for Jones in the Illinois primary on March 20, 2018.

To Jones’ own amazement, he is the only one on the Republican ballot.

No more "This isn't America, this isn't us" garbage.  This is exactly how America has worked for 400 years, and only through taking power away from the racists and the bigots does the country grudgingly improve.

Any Republican in Chicago could have run against Arthur Jones.  Nobody chose to.  Not this year.   Not that the seat was even in trouble as Democrat Dan Lipinski has represented the 3rd since 2013, the last time a Republican won in this district was literally before I was born.

But Jones is the GOP candidate.  He represents the Republican party there by choice.

That's who the GOP is in 2018.  Trump was the outcome, not the cause.

There Goes Traffic For The Day

Donald Trump will be in Cincinnati today pushing the GOP tax plan and causing traffic snarls all afternoon as he visits a hydraulic cylinder plant in Blue Ash.

President Trump is coming to Cincinnati on Monday to pitch his new tax law as a boon for America’s economy.

Polls show the nation has warmed to the law since Republicans approved it in December, but Trump still has some work to do. A majority of Americans remain skeptical the tax overhaul will help them or the broader economy, recent surveys say.

The effort to turn public opinion is crucial because Trump and his fellow Republicans have made the law the cornerstone of their campaign to hold on to power after the November midterm elections.

The president expects to find a friendly audience here, just as he did when he held rallies in Greater Cincinnati during and after the presidential campaign in 2016. He won Ohio by 8 percentage points.

After flying into Cincinnati, Trump plans to visit Sheffer Corp. in Blue Ash, which makes industrial cylinders. Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, also a Republican, laid the groundwork for the visit in January when he toured the plant to tout the tax law.

At the time, Portman said Sheffer had given its employees $1,000 bonuses in December as a result of the tax law.

Trump is expected to deliver a speech at the plant sometime after the tour. It’s not known whether he will make any other stops while he’s in town.

The stakes are high for Trump and Republicans as they travel the country making their case for the tax law in advance of the midterm elections. The GOP has a razor-thin 51-49 majority in the Senate, and both parties are bracing for a dogfight for control of the House.

Republicans pushed the tax law through Congress with little public discussion and passed it with no Democratic support. The law slashes corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 21 percent and also cuts individual rates for most Americans.

Those admissions by Dan Horn of the Enquirer in the story that the GOP is responsible for the tax plan and not "Congress" are downright miraculous for that paper.  The protest against Trump will be down the street.

It seems the public Trump so desperately wants to win over will be locked out of Trump's visit to the plant.

Even in Trump-friendly Cincy.

Go figure.

StupidiNews!

• The Philadelphia Eagles and quarterback Nick Foles held off a late charge by Tom Brady and New England Patriots to win Super Bowl LII 41-33 to win the franchise's first Super Bowl title.
• The TSA says it found nearly 4,000 firearms at airports across America last year, five in six of them were loaded at the time.
• Convicted Samsung Group heir Jay Lee is out of jail after Seoul's High Court reduced his sentence for bribery and embezzlement ahead of the country's Winter Olympics this weekend.
• The House and Senate return to Washington this week facing a Thursday night deadline to keep the government open as another shutdown looms over Trump ending protections for Dreamers.
• Former Donkey Kong world record holder Billy Mitchell's recent high scores have been vacated after evidence of fakery, a new world record has been set by Robbie Lakeman.

Last Call For Leave Them Alone

To say that women dislike Trump is an understatement.  White women, who preferred Trump by 9 points in November 2016, now prefer Democrats by more than double-digit margins.  To try to win them back, Ivanka Trump and Marco Rubio are going to make promises as empty as they come, bleating about family leave legislation that will never make it past the GOP House.

Marco Rubio is starting to strategize with Ivanka Trump to win over skeptical Republicans on a traditionally Democratic issue: paid family leave. 

Capitalizing on President Donald Trump’s endorsement of the idea in his State of the Union address, Rubio is trying to marshal Republicans behind a plan that would neither impose a mandate on employers nor raise taxes to pay for it — two hurdles that have long halted the GOP from embracing paid family leave. 

“We still have to work on members of my own party,” Rubio said in an extended interview with POLITICO about his effort. “I think there will be significant initial resistance to it, because it’s just not an issue that’s been identified with the Republican Party.”

No kidding.  But even this will come at at massive cost to America's parents. With Republicans, there's always a cost, and it's always on the individual.

Rubio has barely started crafting a paid leave bill, much less a broader legislative strategy. But he envisions an idea that has recently gained traction in conservative circles: allowing people to draw Social Security benefits when they want to take time off for a new baby or other family-related matters, and then delay their checks when they hit retirement age.

Want to take time off to raise a kid?  It'll push back your retirement age for months, maybe years.  And trying to pay for a new baby or a family medical emergency on a couple hundred a month?  Good luck with that, especially since Republicans just gutted Medicare, Medicaid, and raised insurance premiums and wrecked maternity coverage on medical plans as part of their tax overhaul.

As is everything else with the GOP, it's a 100% scam designed to hurt American  workers.  Will white women fall for it again?

Who knows?  They already did with Trump before.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

As I said yesterday, the Nunes memo was a massive dud to the point where the GOP can't possibly use it for cover for Trump to fire special counsel Robert Mueller or his boss Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Trump/Russia investigation as Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself.

That's not going to stop the Trump regime and the GOP from trying to salvage their attack, and Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass gives away the game this weekend as to where the GOP will now be parking the Mueller firing goalposts.

What we’re looking at is politics.

It was politics when the political left loved WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange, back when he released sensitive information, even though it undercut American foreign policy. He was a hero then. But he was hated later, when his work involved Democratic National Committee emails. Then Republicans loved him.

Republicans were once adamantly in support of the FBI, the CIA and some of the other shadowy agencies with great powers to watch us and to monitor our phones, to listen to what we say in the interests of security and to ignore or avoid the Fourth Amendment. And Democrats were once adamantly opposed to even suspected abuses by federal police and the intelligence agencies — what is now called “the Deep State” — and they railed against those who’d step on American civil liberties in a political hunt.

But now, Democrats are the champions of shadow warriors in the CIA and the FBI, arguing that we must not challenge these agencies at the risk of national security. And Republicans hammer at the FBI — whose leadership they once respected — including former FBI director Robert Mueller.

Now that he’s special prosecutor investigating Trump, his final report could provide a political basis for Democrats to impeach Trump, should they gain control of Congress in the 2018 midterm elections.

So we’re in the Upside Down now. You see how this goes. You can see where it’s going.

The best thing to do in this business of the president and the investigation and the memo is to have everything released, all the information, and hope that the American people actually care enough about their country to read it, rather than accept the spin by some that it’s a nothing burger, and the spin by others that it’s a book of revelations.

Americans should read the Republican memo, and also read the complete rebuttal from the Democrats that is sure to come.

And also read the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report that is being compiled about this matter, and is reportedly digging into any FBI political bias in favor of Hillary Clinton when she was under investigation for tens of thousands of emails, some classified, on her private server.

What would be best is if we could all read the FBI’s FISA application used against Trump, which Republicans allege was based on opposition research done for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

If this is, in fact, true, then it is an outrage and an assault on our freedom. If it is not, we best know it quickly.

Getting all this out in the open is preferable to relying on whispers and leaks from shielded investigators to political hacks.

And while the partisans are either pro-Trump or anti-Trump, there’s something else that may be even more important.

It’s the argument — once offered by big-government Republicans and now cleaved to by big-government Democrats — that we shouldn’t challenge the huge federal bureaucracies that spy on us, and watch us.

The only branch of our government to have proper oversight is Congress. And the only real answer is sunshine, so we may see to make up our own minds about how our country is governed.

Kass neatly lines up where the GOP is going:

1. Trump should somehow declassify information crucial to the ongoing investigation of Trump himself, a novel approach that assumes somehow the GOP is smart enough to obfuscate the "mysterious sausage-making process" without actually giving away the dirt on Trump.  This will never happen, but Republicans will say that Trump's refusal to do this is proof the FBI is corrupt.  Or something.
2. Same goes with the FISA process, which after renewing said process only a few weeks ago as part of the regular renewal of Patriot Act surveillance legislation, suddenly now the GOP objects to it. Or something.
3. Also the only branch that matters isn't actually Trump but Congress, which the GOP controls totally, so do we really need Mueller at all when we have the House and Senate investigations which as sure to be fair and impartial? Or something.

Anyway, this is how the rest of the Mueller investigation will play out.  He's not going anywhere, but if the GOP can shout loudly enough that HEY THIS IS NOT BEING DONE OUT IN THE OPEN AND PUBLIC WHERE WE CAN SEE IT like all criminal investigations are never, ever done even then Mueller will be...discredited...somehow...look I don't know, I didn't say it was a good plan, I said this is where they are going with it, and let's face it these guys are terrible at this whole nonsense.

I mean...look at Carter Page.

Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page referred to himself as an “advisor to the staff of the Kremlin” in a 2013 letter to an academic publisher, Time reported Saturday.

The publication reported that it had obtained the 2013 letter sent during a dispute about edits on a manuscript Page had written. 

“Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” Page wrote, according to Time.

Come on.

Sunday Long Read: The Big Game

The Philadelphia Eagles will try to defy all odds today taking on Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII later today.  The Eagles are one of 13 NFL franchises to have never brought home the Lombardi Trophy (two more being my hometown Carolina Panthers and the local guys, the Cincinnati Bengals, both of whom have blown it in the big game.)

Another of those frustrated fanbases belong to the Arizona Cardinals, and author Kevin Sampsell ruminates on the Cards' long decades of coming up short in both St. Louis and Phoenix.

The last time I cried about a football game was in 2009.

When I was a kid, though — oh man! The waterworks from the coiled frustration and utter heartbreak of losing a game, or ending a season with a sad thud, was often too much for me. I’m not sure what is considered normal blood pressure for junior high and high school dudes, but mine was probably pretty high.

If you’re a sports fan, you don’t need me to tell you that watching a game can elicit conflicting emotions. Some times it’s dull, others, exhilarating. It can run the gamut from mildly stressful to utterly exasperating. We tell ourselves it’s fun to watch games — whether it’s the lightning-fast college basketball Final Four, a tense knuckle-biting World Series, or even the high drama of an Olympics figure skating face-off. But is it really fun? Is watching a game, especially football with its rash of injuries and hyper-macho façade, truly enjoyable in the moment? Or do we just endure it so we can process the positive highlights later?

As a sports kid who eventually blossomed into a book nerd, I surprise a lot of people with my unflagging loyalty to a game that is often seen as barbaric, anti-intellectual, and sponsored by horrible right-wing corporations. For a long time, whenever I’d meet someone new, I wouldn’t reveal the fact that I’m a football fan right away. It was like a weird secret. I’d talk about more “intellectual” subjects: poetry, indie films, twee British music, or collage art. Often I would be looking for clues in these conversations, maybe a word or a name mentioned that would reveal that they knew what a linebacker was, or an onside kick. If I found out someone was a football fan, they would often become my new best friend, at least for a while.

I find it utterly refreshing to meet another man or woman “of arts and letters” who admires the sport like I do, and I glow inside with that feeling of camaraderie. Often though, if I slip up and admit that many of my Sundays are spent worshipping guys in full pads and helmets groping and tackling each other while rich old men tally their bank accounts in their executive suites, I am met with pained expressions and confusion. I counter that surprise by trying to illuminate my humanistic connection to the game — my love for discovering the players’ personal stories of overcoming adversity; the bonding community of fandom; the sheer unpredictable nature of all sports; and yes, indeed, the amazing beauty and skill of what these players are able to do on the field. I can still remember plays that happened decades ago and recall them as precisely as my favorite songs.

I did the math recently and figured out that I’ve been a football fan since 1975, when I chose the St. Louis Cardinals as my favorite team. Like most other 8-year-old boys, I picked my team mainly because I thought their helmet looked cool and partly because they were an exciting team to watch. Their star quarterback, Jim Hart, liked to throw long, and the team was nicknamed the “Cardiac Cards” because they won so many games in the final minute. But the Cardinals were also an underdog in a decade that saw the Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Miami Dolphins hogging the Super Bowl limelight.

Two years later, the team started to crumble and missed the playoffs for the second straight season. Following your team was drastically different in those days. Unless your team was playing on television, you’d have to wait for score updates to come up on screen about every fifteen minutes, or wait for the halftime highlights. The TV networks hadn’t introduced the scrolling game updates across the bottom of the screen yet. Of course, there was no internet either. I had to watch whatever game was on network television and make sure I didn’t take my eyes off the screen if I wanted to know how the Cardinals were doing. This was an excruciating experience, especially for a young fanatic.

I remember one time when a Cardinals game was on and they lost on the last play. I was crushed, and my stomach felt like a hard pit of sadness. It took a few minutes to sink in before I could believe they’d lost. I fantasized that after the end-of-game TV commercials, they’d go back to the game and the referees would be announcing that there was a penalty, or that there had been something wrong with the game clock, and the last seconds would have to be replayed — and the Cardinals would actually win!

Yeah, I know — the ’70s were a long time ago. It’s been over 40 years of fandom, but let me cut to the chase and hold up one finger to show you how many times my Cardinals have been to the Super Bowl. Now, let me put that finger away to show you how many times they’ve won it. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Why am I still holding out hope for this team, you might reasonably ask. The answer to that question is an infinite mystery. Sure, I’ve enjoyed other teams, other players. But when Sunday comes around, I can’t pull my focus away from those dang red birds — even during their worst years.

I can relate, as I said.   The Panthers lost arguably one of the best Super Bowls in history 15 years ago to Brady and these same Patriots, so if the Eagles win and Tom Brady accidentally gets launched into the sun, I'll call it a win.  One of these days the Panthers will pull it off, I'm sure.

Of course, Cards fans have been saying that since this whole things started five decades and change ago.

At least they're not the Browns though.

The Drums Of War, Con't

The Trump regime continues to indicate that war with North Korea is coming, and soon.

The White House has grown frustrated in recent weeks by what it considers the Pentagon’s reluctance to provide President Trump with options for a military strike against North Korea, according to officials, the latest sign of a deepening split in the administration over how to confront the nuclear-armed regime of Kim Jong-un. 

The national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, believes that for Mr. Trump’s warnings to North Korea to be credible, the United States must have well-developed military plans, according to those officials. 

But the Pentagon, they say, is worried that the White House is moving too hastily toward military action on the Korean Peninsula that could escalate catastrophically. Giving the president too many options, the officials said, could increase the odds that he will act. 

Just so everyone understands what's going on here, our military leaders are convinced that if they work up more tactical plans for striking North Korea, Trump will use one of them, because the outcome will be the strategic mistake of a shooting war with North Korea that will kill millions on the Korean peninsula and will almost certainly threaten Japan, and draw China in as well.

The tensions bubbled to the surface this week with the disclosure that the White House had abandoned plans to nominate a prominent Korea expert, Victor D. Cha, as ambassador to South Korea. Mr. Cha suggested that he was sidelined because he warned administration officials against a “preventive” military strike, which, he later wrote, could spiral “into a war that would likely kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Americans.”

But the divisions go back months, officials said. When North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in July that experts concluded was capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States, the National Security Council convened a conference call that included Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson.

After General McMaster left the room, Mr. Mattis and Mr. Tillerson continued to speak, not realizing that other participants were still on the line. The officials familiar with the matter overheard them complaining about a series of meetings that the National Security Council had set up to consider options for North Korea — signs, Mr. Tillerson said, that it was becoming overly aggressive. 

For now, the frustration at the White House appears to be limited to senior officials rather than Mr. Trump himself. But the president has shown impatience with his military leaders on other issues, notably the debate over whether to deploy additional American troops to Afghanistan.

Trump is a raging child with nuclear weapons.  The Pentagon doesn't want to give him any more access to their toys, because they're afraid he'll order their use.

But before you feel sorry for the men and women in uniform fielding Trump's questions, remember this country has been giving our military roughly half-trillion dollars every year for decades, all while American conservatives kept saying we're broke.

Meanwhile, if this report from South Korean news outlet Hankyoreh is to be believed, we're already deep into "wag the dog" territory.  Josh Marshall:

I’d say we need to know more about. Quickly.

From a South Korean paper, flagged on Twitter by The Washington Post’s Tokyo Bureau Chief …

Indeed, White House National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs Matthew Pottinger was reported as saying in a recent closed-door meeting with US experts on Korean Peninsula issues that a limited strike on the North “might help in the midterm elections.”
The Post’s Anna Fifield identifies the paper Hankyoreh as “left-wing” and that it is the only paper currently reporting it. I don’t know more about the source. But this sounds like something we need to know more about very quickly. The report suggests Trump may see such a move not simply in the context of the standard efforts to help in a midterm election but to ward offer facing the prospect of impeachment or actual investigations under a Democratic congress.

I mean it's so obviously knuckle-headedly belligerent that it strains credibility that the Trumpies would actually say this, but at this point maybe this is the kind of thing they do say, and this is a diplomatic leak to try to get the people of South Korea some help before a couple million of them get shelled into oblivion.

Hell, maybe the quote is manufactured completely, but the fact is it's not implausible that this administration has diplomats and advisers who would say this, and this is a last-ditch effort to try to get somebody to put the brakes on the Tangerine Tyrant before the butcher's bill comes in at seven figures.  I'm not sure which is more terrifying, that this actually happened, or that South Korea is scared enough to make this up.

Either way, we need to have a serious discussion about what's coming down the pike here.

Last Call For The Science Of Lying

Although there's seemingly no end to the number of professional climate change deniers employed by the Trump regime, the basic job requirements of any administration climate "expert" position is "smart enough not to make Trump look bad at their confirmation hearing", something Kathleen Hartnett White failed miserably at three months ago at her confirmation hearing for heading the federal government's Council on Environmental Quality.  As such, the Trump regime has been forced to withdraw her nomination.

The White House plans to withdraw its controversial nominee to head the Council on Environmental Quality, Kathleen Hartnett White, according to two administration officials briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the decision has not been announced yet.

One of the officials briefed on Hartnett White’s plans said that her nomination had failed to gather momentum even as some of the administration’s other senior environmental policy picks had won approval, with some Senate Republicans raising questions about her expertise.

Hartnett White, who once headed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and now serves as a fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, has stirred controversy because of her statements on climate change. Testifying last fall before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, she said that while humans probably contribute to current warming, “the extent to which, I think, is very uncertain.”

Her comments, which echoed some other appointees of President Trump, contradicts the conclusion of an overwhelming number of scientific experts and the findings of the federal government. Leading scientific assessments have repeatedly found that climate change is fueled largely by human greenhouse gas emissions.

“I’m not a scientist, but in my personal capacity, I have many questions that remain unanswered by current climate policy,” Hartnett White said at her confirmation hearing. “I think we indeed need to have more precise explanations of the human role and the natural role.”

Just days before she testified the federal government released its Climate Science Special Report, a collaboration among more than a dozen agencies that found “no convincing alternative explanation” other than human influence for the warming the world has experienced in the past 70 years.

“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the document stated.

When asked during her hearing by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) what portion of the heat trapped in Earth’s atmosphere is absorbed by the world’s oceans — the majority of it is stored there — Hartnett White responded, “I don’t have numbers like that.”

“But I believe that there are differences of opinions on that, that there’s not one right answer,” she added.

Whitehouse later tweeted that Harnett White “outright rejects basic science.”

Remember, the only person in the Trump regime allowed to have basic facts of science this wrong is Trump himself.  When you're such a bad nominee that even congressional Republicans think you're unqualified to serve in this administration, you've really blown it.

 

It's (Still) Mueller Time

The Nunes memo arrived with all the fanfare of an incontinent warthog loose at the Louvre, and it stank just as badly.  

The main argument that this odious GOP-doctored summary of the House Intelligence Committee's info made is that somehow, those super-crafty Democrats tricked four separate FISA judges into extending surveillance on suspected foreign agent and Trump campaign staffer Carter Page by omitting that the "primary source" of the info on Page was the "paid-for-by-Democrats" Steele dossier, which is "compromised by partisanship". 

However, the Nunes memo can't prove any of this, because the memo's sources remain classified, so you just have to take Devin Nunes's word for it.  This is basically your drunken estranged uncle telling you that Bigfoot exists man, but the CIA has the proof in a file cabinet somewhere in a top secret mountain bunker in Virginia but you have to believe me, I'm not crazy.

The main assumption to bolster the argument the Nunes memo makes is that FISA court judges are dumber than a box of rusty hammers at the bottom of the Everglades, which apparently didn't sit too well with people who know FISA court judges.

The court that approved surveillance of a former campaign adviser to President Trump was aware that some of the information underpinning the warrant request was paid for by a political entity, although the application did not specifically name the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

A now-declassified Republican memo alleged that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was duped into approving the wiretap request by a politicized FBI and Justice Department. The memo was written by House Intelligence Committee Republicans and alleged a “troubling breakdown of legal processes” flowing from the government’s wiretapping of former Trump aide Carter Page.

But its central allegation — that the government failed to disclose a source’s political bias — is baseless, the officials said.

The Justice Department made “ample disclosure of relevant, material facts” to the court that revealed “the research was being paid for by a political entity,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

“No thinking person who read any of these applications would come to any other conclusion but that” the work was being undertaken “at the behest of people with a partisan aim and that it was being done in opposition to Trump,” the official said.

Former senior Justice Department officials who handled applications for wiretap warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) say that such applications typically include dozens of pages and undergo rigorous vetting.

“We didn’t put in every fact, but we put in enough facts to allow the court to judge bias and motive and credibility of the sourcing,” said Matthew G. Olsen, former deputy assistant attorney general for national security who oversaw the Justice Department’s FISA program from 2006 to 2009.

The Republican memo, he said, “is unconvincing and one-sided. It raises more questions than it answers.”

If the FISA application to surveil Page referred to funding by political opponents “or included similar references that revealed a motivation against then-candidate Trump, even if they did not name the DNC . . . then the FISA applications would be fine,” said David Kris, a FISA expert who led the Justice Department’s National Security Division from 2009 to 2011.

It's patently clear that there are other intelligence sources besides the Steele Dossier that were followed up on.  The last paragraph of the Nunes memo even says so.

The Page FISA application also mentions information regarding fellow Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, but there is no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos. The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok. Strzok was reassigned by the Special Counsel's Office to FBI Human Resources for improper text messages with his mistress, FBI Attorney Lisa Page (no known relation to Carter Page), where they both demonstrated a clear bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton, Whom Strzok had also investigated. The Strzok/Lisa Page texts also refect extensive discussions about the investigation, orchestrating leaks to the media, and include a meeting with Deputy Director McCabe to discuss an "insurance" policy against President Trump's election.

Everything but the bolded sentence in that entire memo is Nunes trying to hide that bolded sentence.  Why he included it I don't know, because instead of pointing the blame at FBI agent Peter Strzok, it just proves that there's other intel sources besides the Steele Dossier that started the FISA warrant process in the first place.

Anyway, the game's still afoot.

 

Trump's Captive Audience

The Trump regime's private prison profit scam is now fully rolling ahead into its intended purpose: deportation internment camps for the millions ICE will be rounding up over the coming months and years.

Prison companies that backed Donald Trump during the presidential campaign and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to his inaugural committee just got another boost from his administration. The Bureau of Prisons will now transfer more inmates from government-run lockups to private facilities, according to a memo sent to department staffers last week, as the agency prepares to cut federal correctional jobs.

The memo, published by Government Executive on Thursday, orders federal prisons to identify eligible inmates for the transfers by targeting low-security, male immigrants who are serving time for crimes. According to the directive, the move is intended to alleviate overcrowding at government facilities and “to maximize the effectiveness of the private contracts.” Currently, 11 private prisons contract with the BOP, and most hold immigrants convicted of crimes.

Under President Barack Obama, the Justice Department started phasing out its use of private prisons after the inspector general found them to be less safe than publicly run facilities. But when President Trump took office, the department switched course: Last February, Attorney General Jeff Sessions described private prisons as essential for meeting “the future needs of the federal correctional system.” Stock prices for prison industry giants like CoreCivic and GEO Group soared soon after.

Speaking to investors last summer, executives from both companies highlighted BOP plans for a “capacity realignment” to avoid overcrowding in publicly run prisons and ensure, as CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger put it, that low-security inmates “are being housed in the most cost effective facilities.” While the latest directive targets immigrants serving time, prison executives have suggested that other inmates may soon be transferred too. “You’ll see the bureau evaluate U.S. citizens as they have previously evaluated criminal aliens,” J. Dave Donahue, president of GEO Group’s US corrections operations, told investors on an August call. 

At the federal level, the biggest client for these prison companies is the Department of Homeland Security, which contracts with them to detain undocumented immigrants who face deportation. Still, the Bureau of Prisons is an important partner for CoreCivic and GEO Group, which collectively run 9 of the agency’s 11 private contract facilities.

And now with Trump ordering additional steep cuts in federal prison staffing, shipping detained immigrants to private prisons will be the new norm as more corporations who literally make money by locking people up get into the game.   Private prisons need inmates to make money, and the Trump regime will make sure that America never runs out of black or brown bodies to incarcerate.

This was always the GOP plan, and it's going to get even more brutal soon.  Remember, Trump keeps screaming about how his political enemies need to be locked up.  There will be plenty of room to fill those private prisons with activists, protesters, and resisters.

We tried to warn you this would be the result. 

But her emails.

Trump Cards, Con't

The Washington Post editorial board wastes little time pinning the blame for the Nunes memo fiasco on the proper parties: mainly House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has all the leadership qualities of bread mold.

“WHAT THIS is not is an indictment of our institutions, of our justice system,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday about the now infamous “Nunes memo.” “It does not impugn the Mueller investigation or the deputy attorney general,” the speaker insisted. Is this cynicism or naivete?

Discrediting law enforcement is the memo’s transparent purpose and why it has been embraced by President Trump. Written mainly by the staff of Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the loose-cannon chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the memo reportedly makes the case that the FBI abused spying authorities as it sought permission to surveil a former Trump adviser. The Justice Department called its potential release, which Mr. Trump reportedly intends to approve, “extraordinarily reckless.” The FBI released its own startling public statement citing “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” Adam Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, wrote in a Post op-ed that the Nunes memo “cherry-picks facts, ignores others and smears the FBI and the Justice Department.”

As we’ve said before, we are not in the business of opposing the release of information of potential public value. But if the Nunes memo were truly about fair congressional oversight of law enforcement, as Mr. Ryan claims, Republicans would allow the simultaneous release of a Democratic memo on the same subject. But they are not, though Mr. Ryan’s staff says the speaker supports releasing the Democratic memo after giving it more scrutiny. That leaves only unsettling possibilities for why Mr. Nunes, a longtime Trump ally, is pushing to disseminate his version as the president’s ire about the Russia investigation crests and speculation swirls about his desire to fire senior law enforcement officials, including special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. CNN reported Thursday that Mr. Trump believes the Nunes memo “could discredit the agency” by exposing “bias within the FBI’s top ranks.”

Mr. Ryan bears full responsibility for the deterioration of congressional oversight of intelligence operations. Once a bipartisan responsibility that lawmakers treated soberly — as they still do in the Senate — oversight under Mr. Nunes has become another front in Mr. Trump’s assault on the law enforcement institutions investigating the president and his associates. House Republicans are poisoning the committee’s relationship with the intelligence community and distracting from real issues demanding attention. 

It's nice of WaPo to notice what anyone with a modicum of sentience would have picked up on.  As I've been saying for months now on the subject of the Mueller investigation, the question was never about Trump's guilt, the question was what the congressional GOP's response to Trump's cartoonishly obvious malfeasance would be. 

The answer is clearly "nothing, also did you know Hillary Clinton's a real bitch?"

The idea that the GOP in Congress would keep Trump's worst autocratic impulses in check rather than openly aiding and abetting him was laughable 15 months ago and remains a dark comedy today. The "Never Trump" movement of "principled Republican opposition" to Trump was always a joke, and too many American's fell for it.

Too bad we're all the punchline.

StupidiNews!

• More than 900 gold miners in South Africa have been rescued from a mine shaft after a power outage cut off access to the mine for more than 24 hours.
• Cuban state media confirms that Fidel Castro Jr., the son of the late dictator, took his own life on Thursday after a battle with "deep depression".
• The Trump regime is expected to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan in order to end a civil war after repeated cease-fire violations since 2016.
• Bitcoin has lost more than half its peak value in six weeks as world regulators and major heists involving the cryptocurrency are causing a massive crash in the industry.
• Researchers studying women's urinary tract health have discovered viruses that are designed to infect and destroy bacteria as a defense, which could be employed for medical advances.