The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Yet another House Republican crashes and burns due to scandal as the House GOP caucus continues to disintegrate amid the blue wave.

Rep. Thomas Garrett (R-Va.) announced Monday that he is struggling with alcoholism and will abandon his run for a second term in Congress so he can focus on recovery and his family.

Garrett, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, is the 48th Republican to retire or announce they will not seek reelection to the House this year, according to a list maintainedby the House Press Gallery.

Many are leaving in anticipation of a strong Democratic performance in congressional races this fall and out of frustration with partisan politics in Washington.

Garrett, 46, was facing a robust challenge from his Democratic opponent, journalist and author Leslie Cockburn, who had raised more money and had more cash on hand than he had. In recent days, unnamed former staffers had accused him and his wife of mistreating staff who worked in his congressional office.

But in a videotaped statement, Garrett, a former Virginia state senator, said his departure from politics was spurred by his addiction.

“Any person — Republican, Democrat or independent — who has known me for any period of time and has any integrity knows two things: I am a good man and I’m an alcoholic,” Garrett said, fighting back tears. “This is the hardest statement that I have ever publicly made by far. It’s also the truth.”

His announcement caps a week of turmoil in Garrett’s Washington office, marked by the resignation of his chief of staff, Jimmy Keady; an online news report that Garrett was thinking about dropping his reelection bid; and a news conference Thursday in which he insisted he was running.

On Friday, a Politico report quoted four unidentified former staffers who accused Garrett and his wife, Flanna, of ordering staff to walk their dog, carry groceries or perform other personal tasks for the couple — a practice prohibited by House ethics rules.

We're coming up on a full fifth of the House GOP retiring this year in the wake of Trump.   And I'm convinced the majority of those now open seats will be going to Democrats in November.

The only way we start getting accountability for Trump is to win control of the House and Senate back.  Both would be excellent, but if we don't win at least one chamber, Trump is going to skate and most likely win re-election.

Should Republicans keep both chambers, Mueller and Rosenstein will be gone before Thanksgiving.  If anything, we have to win to force some semblance of oversight.  That means getting Millennials to vote, and that means Millennials running for office.

When Colin Allred, a 35-year-old former NFL linebacker-turned-congressional candidate, addressed two dozen student volunteers at a rooftop restaurant last week, he promised them that he knows millennials are more than avocado toast-eating social media obsessives.

“People think millennials just tweet … and complain, but you all are living proof that that’s not true,” Allred said. “You are the best part of this party.”

Allred — the newly minted Democratic nominee for a competitive House seat here— is part of a swell of young Democratic House candidates hoping to inspire higher turnout among fellow millennials in the midterm elections, when youth voting rates typically decline. At least 20 millennial Democratic candidates are running in battleground districts, a leap over previous cycles that could remake the party’s generational divide.

“I don’t recall a cycle with anything close to this number of younger candidates in recent times,” said Ian Russell, a Democratic consultant who served as the deputy executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Notably, younger candidates who actually have a good shot at winning – raising money, running professional campaigns.”

Currently, the average age of a member of 115th Congress — nearly 58 years old in the House and nearly 62 years old in the Senate — is among the oldest of any Congress in recent history, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. The youngest member of Congress, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), will turn 34 in July.

Stefanik was first elected at age 30. No woman has ever been elected to Congress in her 20s, but two 20-something Democrats — Sara Jacobs in Southern California and Abby Finkenauer in eastern Iowa — are serious contenders running in competitive districts. Illinois' Lauren Underwood, 31, and Ohio's Aftab Pureval, 35, have already won primaries to take on sitting GOP incumbents this fall.

“In my almost-decade as a pollster, I’ve had almost no clients younger than me," said Zac McCrary, a 37-year-old Democratic consultant. "Now I’ve got several this cycle."

“Right now, the instinct is to look for the antithesis of [President] Donald Trump, and so Democratic primary voters are defaulting toward women, younger rather than older,” McCrary added. “And those young candidates are more difficult targets because they don’t have decades’ worth of opposition research racked up.”

2018 and 2020 marks the torch being passed where more Millennials will be eligible to vote than Boomers.  Nothing was ever going to improve until Millennials got involved enough to vote.  It happened in 2006 and 2008 but hasn't happened since.  I hope it's a wake-up call.

Aftab Pureval is running here in Cincy to oust Republican Steve Chabot, and he has a real chance to win.  If America is going to break out of the Trump Era, it's going to start with Millennials going to the polls and winning primaries.

StupidiNews!

• Subtropical Storm Alberto is dropping heavy rain through Georgia and Tennessee, two journalists from Greenville, SC were killed when the storm dropped a tree on their SUV.
• British PM Theresa May is facing calls to relax Northern Ireland's strict abortion laws after neighboring Ireland overwhelmingly voted to legalize abortion last week.
• Diplomatic activity from North Korea and the US suggests some sort of meeting may still be in the cards in Singapore next month despite Donald Trump pulling out of the summit last week.
• Political instability in both Spain and Italy is roiling the European Union as Spanish PM Mario Rajoy faces a no-confidence vote and new Italian PM Carlo Cottarelli can't seem to form a government.
• New figures finds Google Home is now outselling Amazon Echo in the smart speaker arena as Google has caught up to Amazon after just two years.

Last Call For We're All Working Poor Now

Now that corporate America has gotten their trillions in tax savings, they don't have to pretend any longer that the American workers matter in the least anymore.

Very few Americans have enjoyed steadily rising pay beyond inflation over the last couple of decades, a shift from prior years in which the working and middle classes enjoyed broad-based wage gains as the economy expanded.

Why it matters: Now, executives of big U.S. companies suggest that the days of most people getting a pay raise are over, and that they also plan to reduce their work forces further.

Quick take: This was rare, candid and bracing talk from executives atop corporate America, made at a conference Thursday at the Dallas Fed. The message is that Americans should stop waiting for across-the-board pay hikes coinciding with higher corporate profit; to cash in, workers will need to shift to higher-skilled jobs that command more income.

Troy Taylor, CEO of the Coke franchise for Florida, said he is currently adding employees with the idea of later reducing the staff over time "as we invest in automation." Those being hired: technically-skilled people. "It's highly technical just being a driver," he said.

The moderator asked the panel whether there would be broad-based wage gains again. "It's just not going to happen," Taylor said. The gains would go mostly to technically-skilled employees, he said. As for a general raise? "Absolutely not in my business," he said.

Stagnating wages, steep cuts in employees as unskilled workers are replaced with AI, and a massive reduction in standard of living for most Americans from even a few years ago: that's what we're facing in the next ten to twenty years.  Steve M breaks it down:

I hope politics can mitigate this, but I fear it may be too late for a political solution -- the rich have too much money and too much power, and democracy is unresponsive to the rest of us. The non-rich are urged to fight among ourselves -- white vs. non-white, native-born vs. immigrant, union vs. non-union, Fox viewer vs. "cultural elitist" -- when we should recognize a common enemy and act accordingly. At this point I can't see a significant reordering of the way things are without violent social unrest, and I see no sign that that will happen anytime soon. For now, massive inequality is here to stay.

Long term, Steve is right. The GOP tax scam package will see to that.

Short term, as long as Trump can convince his base that "those people" still have things that Trump can take from them, that will remain the case.  Should however people get tired of the con, either through Trump's political power being broken by Mueller or by a economic recession on Trump's watch (both being very probable) then all bets are off.

Trump Cards, Con't

Just a friendly reminder that while Donald Trump, his two sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner are all crooked and headed for a reckoning with the Mueller probe, Trump's daughter Ivanka is just as corrupt and dirty as dear old dad.

China this month awarded Ivanka Trump seven new trademarks across a broad collection of businesses, including books, housewares and cushions.

At around the same time, President Trump vowed to find a way to prevent a major Chinese telecommunications company from going bust, even though the company has a history of violating American limits on doing business with countries like Iran and North Korea.

Coincidence? Well, probably.

Still, the remarkable timing is raising familiar questions about the Trump family’s businesses and its patriarch’s status as commander in chief. Even as Mr. Trump contends with Beijing on issues like security and trade, his family and the company that bears his name are trying to make money off their brand in China’s flush and potentially promising market.

The most recent slew of trademarks appear to have been granted along the same timeline as Ms. Trump’s previous requests, experts said. But more broadly, they said, Ms. Trump’s growing portfolio of trademarks in China and the family’s business interests there raises questions about whether Chinese officials are giving the Trump family extra consideration that they otherwise might not get.

These critics say the foreign governments that do business with Ms. Trump know they are dealing with the president’s daughter — a person who also works in the White House.

“Some countries will no doubt see this as a way to curry favor with President Trump,” wrote Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, and Norman Eisen, chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, two nonprofit watchdog groups. Mr. Eisen’s group reported on the trademarks on Saturday.

Trump's side deals, personally being enriched by foreign countries who wish to do business with the US, has been the play since the 2016 election, and the Trump family's business practices have been dirty for decades prior.  It's no wonder then that Ivanka follows in her father's footsteps, gaining new frontiers for the Trump Organization (that of course none of them are supposed to be involved in) while also running the executive branch of the US.

Graft and grift at its finest, while Americans continue to struggle paycheck to paycheck.

Economic Anxiety Watch 2018, Con't

The racism and intolerance at the core of Trump popularity has always been a case of his implicit and explicit promises to hurt black, Latinx and Asian folks in America and to make (white) America great again at our expense, and it should come as no surprise that much of white America is jumping at the chance to take advantage.

Since the founding of the United States, politicians and pundits have warned that partisanship is a danger to democracy. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, worried that political parties, or factions, could "allow cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men" to rise to power and subvert democracy. More recently, many political observers are concerned that increasing political polarization on left and right makes compromise impossible, and leads to the destruction of democratic norms and institutions.

A new study, however, suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.

Miller and Davis used information from the World Values Survey, a research project organized by a worldwide network of social scientists which polls individuals in numerous countries on a wide range of beliefs and values. Based on surveys from the United States, the authors found that white people who did not want to have immigrants or people of different races living next door to them were more likely to be supportive of authoritarianism. For instance, people who said they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race were more supportive of the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results.

The World Values Survey data used is from the period 1995 to 2011 — well before Donald Trump's 2016 run for president. It suggests, though, that Trump's bigotry and his authoritarianism are not separate problems, but are intertwined. When Trump calls Mexicans "rapists," and when he praises authoritarian leaders, he is appealing to the same voters.

Miller and Davis' paper quotes alt right, neo-fascist leader Richard Spencer, who in a 2013 speech declared: "We need an ethno-state so that our people can ‘come home again’… We must give up the false dreams of equality and democracy." Ethnic cleansing is impossible as long as marginalized people have enough votes to stop it. But this roadblock disappears if you get rid of democracy. Spencer understands that white rule in the current era essentially requires totalitarianism. That's the logic of fascism.

Why anyone would be surprised that a country that was founded on slavery and created internment camps for Japanese-Americans is rapidly gravitating towards fascism under authoritarian rule is beyond me, but this path for America isn't new by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it's very much part of our country's history and obvious to anyone who has been paying attention.

Trump's rise is often presented as a major break with the past, and as a repudiation of American values and democratic commitments. But in an email, Miller pointed out that white intolerance has long served as an excuse for, and a spark for, authoritarian measures.

"People are fond of the Framers’ grand vision of liberty and equality for all," Miller says, "but the beauty of the Federalist papers can’t paper over the real measures of exclusion that were baked into their understanding of a limited franchise."

Black people, Asians, Native Americans and women were prevented from voting for significant stretches of American history. America's tradition of democracy (for some) exists alongside a tradition of authoritarianism (for some). The survey data doesn't show people rejecting American traditions, then, Miller says, so much as it shows "a preference for the sort of white-ethnocentrism that imbued much of the functional form of democracy for the better part of two centuries."

New era, new technology, same old story.  And at the end of this road is always the mass destruction of black and brown lives.

Last Call For The Ministry Of Truth

It's a race to see what happens first, whether a news organization will use the word "lie" to describe Donald Trump's actions, or whether Trump starts putting reporters in jail.

President Trump falsely accused The New York Times on Saturday of making up a source in an article about North Korea, even though the source was in fact a senior White House official speaking to a large group of reporters in the White House briefing room.

The president was referring to an article about the on-again, off-again summit meeting between Mr. Trump and Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, which Mr. Trump had canceled Thursday.

The article, headlined, “Trump Says North Korea Summit May Be Rescheduled,” said that the United States was “back in touch with North Korea” and that the meeting might yet happen.

Mr. Trump posted on Twitter to denounce part of the article, which reported in the 10th paragraph that “a senior White House official told reporters that even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.”

In a tweet, the president took issue with that sentence, saying, “WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.”

Except all the journalists were on the same WH press conference call.  They all heard the same thing. Trump says it never happened. And our Village betters, terrified of losing access, continue to make excuses.

It is not clear whether the president was simply unaware of the actions of his own senior staff or if he knowingly ignored the truth. The source of that sentence was a White House official who held a briefing on Thursday afternoon in the White House briefing room that was attended by about 50 reporters, with about 200 or so more on a conference call.

Reporters often request such briefings to be on the record, which would allow the official to be named. But, in this case, the rules of the briefing imposed by the White House required that the official be referred to only as a “senior White House official.” The Times is continuing to abide by that agreement.

In the course of the briefing, the official was asked about the possibility that the summit meeting could be held on June 12, despite the president’s decision to cancel it a day earlier. The discussion was prompted by earlier statements from the president suggesting that the meeting might still happen.

The official noted that “there’s really not a lot of time — we’ve lost quite a bit of time that we would need” to prepare for the summit meeting.

“June 12 is in 10 minutes,” the official said.

The Village follows the rules, and they get attacked as enemies of the state anyway.  I guess it's going to take a reporter getting put either in prison, the hospital or the morgue before the WH press corps wakes up to their own complicity.

At least one of those is going to happen soon.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Another puzzle piece in the Trump/Russia collusion story falls into place as the FBI has evidence that Donald Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., met with Russian crooks during the 2016 NRA National Convention in Louisville.

The FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with U.S. lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., in May 2016, a top Spanish prosecutor said Friday.

José Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said that bureau officials in recent months requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps, Romanov refers to Torshin as “El Padrino,” the godfather.

“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” Grinda said in response to a question from Yahoo News during a talk he gave at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Asked if he was concerned about Torshin’s meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.”

The comments by Grinda were the first clear sign that the FBI may be investigating Torshin, possibly as a part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Torshin — a close political ally of Vladimir Putin — had multiple contacts with conservative activists in the United States during the election, seeking to set up a summit between the Russian president and then candidate Trump. Although the summit never transpired, Torshin did meet briefly with the president’s son at a private dinner in Louisville during the May 2016 annual convention of the NRA. A member of the NRA since 2012, Torshin has been a regular attendee of the group’s conventions in recent years and hosted senior members of the group in Moscow.

Grinda said that the FBI, in its request for the evidence to the Guardia Civil, the Spanish National Police, provided no explanation as to why it was interested in the material and he didn’t ask for one. “I don’t have to ask them why they want this information,” he said. But Grinda added that if Mueller or any other U.S. prosecutor seeks to use the material as part of a court case, they would have to make a second, more formal request to do so to the Spanish government.

Spokesmen for the FBI and Mueller’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Jr., said he was in a meeting and was unable to comment when contacted by Yahoo News.

It's looking more and more like the NRA's contributions to Trump were part of a Russian money laundering scheme to put cash from Putin's circle of oligarchs directly into the Trumps' pockets.  The regime has been for sale to foreign powers since the campaign started, and Trump was taking dirty money for decades before.

These guys are so dirty that everything's pitch black, and they're hiding as long as they can.

The tell that this is getting serious, Mueller is getting close, and that Trump will move sooner rather than later to end the Russian investigation?

It's exactly what Putin wants.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that investigations swirling around President Trump are interfering with improved relations with Moscow, noting he has had little contact with the U.S. president.

“We are hostages to this internal strife in the United States,” Putin said at an economic forum in St. Petersburg. “I hope that it will end some day and the objective need for the development of Russian-American relationships will prevail.”

The sunlight is coming, but there's so much darkness out there that we still have to endure.

Sunday Long Read: One Hell Of A Racket

You might not think Minnesota would be the capital of high school badminton, but St. Paul Johnson High is home of the Governors, one of the most dominant sports dynasties in America today, and it's all about the Twin Cities' Hmong community and a 40-year reign of shuttlecock superiority.

Kevin Anderson, reporter, blogger, historian, and director of the Minnesota state badminton tournament, knows a lot about high school badminton in the state. Records about its start as a high school sport are scant, but apparently Minneapolis city schools first held a tournament in 1975, while St. Paul high schools held their own city tournament starting in 1978. According to those bare-bones records, Johnson High School has won 24 St. Paul city championships since 1978. (Neighboring Harding High has the second-most wins at 11.) The late-1970s timing indicates badminton was likely introduced to comply with Title IX; it’s a sport that can be played indoors in the spring when there’s less demand for gym space, and one that requires little investment in facilities or equipment.

“Since I’ve been around, badminton in St. Paul has been dominated by Hmong players. The St. Paul city conference generally has the best players and the best teams in the state,” Anderson said. “It’s serious business in St. Paul. Middle schoolers have hours of training before they even get to high school, and they probably play more in the off season. Their parents have either played or know of it, so it’s a more familiar sport than, say, basketball or track and field. For a lot of the girls on the C squad, badminton is the only sport they participate in.”

Hmong, an ethnic group that lived in the mountains of Laos and assisted the U.S. in fighting its “secret war” in the country during the 1960s and 70s, started arriving in Minnesota in 1975, the same year that badminton was introduced to high schools. Badminton enjoys great popularity in Asia, and Hmong refugees brought that enthusiasm with them. There are now more than 66,000 Hmong in Minnesota, the largest community in the U.S., concentrated in the Twin Cities metro area.

Many Hmong lived as farmers in Laos; some were illiterate in their native language. In 1990, only 19 percent of Hmong women in the U.S. had a high school diploma, and 44 percent of Hmong men. At that time, an estimated 65 percent of Hmong lived in poverty. Hmong women traditionally married young and had large families, limiting their educational and economic outlook. But as of 2010, more Hmong women than men earned bachelor’s degrees, and poverty in the Hmong community dropped to 31 percent (still staggering in real numbers). In 1991, Choua Lee was elected to the St. Paul School Board, the first Hmong elected to any public office in the United States.

Like their east St. Paul neighborhood, Johnson High School’s demographics do not speak to a gilded pathway: Thirty-one percent of students are English learners, and 82 percent are on free or reduced lunch. Fifty-four percent of students are Asian American, 24 percent African American, 10 percent Hispanic, 10 percent white. But 60 percent of this year’s 1,302 students took part in early college programs.

The top badminton players are also strong students—the varsity team includes three of Johnson’s top 10 academically. They’re involved in other sports and clubs, often holding down a part-time job on top of everything else. Unlike some other high-school sports stars, though, private coaches and expensive training camps are not part of these girls’ lives.

This is a pretty good story, and I remember hearing about badminton in the Twin Cities when I lived up there 15 years ago, but I had no idea it was at this level, and it's good to see.

Dems Bungle In The Cali Jungle

California's top-two "jungle" primary system was put in by Democrats years ago as a way to maintain party power.  The top two candidates in a primary are put on the ballot, regardless of primary.  Democrats were okay with it because it meant that in heavily blue districts, two Dems could run against each other, while in more competitive districts, Republicans would still more often than not get on the ballot in November, even in moderately blue districts, where they could get behind a single candidate and dominate like they have in the Orange County.

But California politics have now reached the point where so many Democratic primary candidates are running against vulnerable Republicans that the Dems could very well end up taking each other out, splitting the vote to the point where two Republicans could come out on top in June primaries and essentially lock Dems out of multiple House districts completely.

With so many Democrats running, the party’s fear is that the vote will be splintered, allowing Republicans — who have fewer candidates — to dominate some primaries. The party and allied groups are spending more than $4 million on just three campaigns, intervening in one contest to prop up a favored candidate; attacking a Republican from the right in another; and even reminding people not to waste their votes on “ghost candidates” who have dropped out yet remain on the ballot.

As any progressive activist will explain through gnashed teeth, the head-snapping scramble is because of the state’s “top two” open primary system, which allows the two leading vote-getters — regardless of political parties — to advance to the general election.

The “top two” system was meant to create incentives for political moderation in a state where about a quarter of the voters are independents, but it has created immense stakes for Democrats: They need to win 23 seats to take back the House, and party officials believe the path runs through the seven competitive California districts, all of which Hillary Clinton carried in 2016.

“It’s a disaster,” Gail Reisman, a retired gerontologist and Toronto native who lives in Representative Dana Rohrabacher’s district, said after attending a candidate forum Tuesday. “If we have two Republicans running I think I’m going back to Canada.”

The situation would be your standard comically "inept Democrats stupidly blowing it at the national party level" that's happened in almost every election I've been alive for if it wasn't the whole "threatening to keep Russian-bought traitors like GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in the House" part.

Nowhere is the danger more acute than in a pair of contiguous districts that stretch from Orange County’s Seal Beach down the Pacific coastline to the cliffs of La Jolla.

It is here where national Democrats, deeply concerned their voters are scattered among little-known House candidates, are staging a rescue mission to ensure they are not locked out this fall in Mr. Rohrabacher’s district and the one farther south held by Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican who is retiring.

Opposition research and hard-edge direct mail pieces are flying between candidates, too, some of them tinged with accusations of #metoo impropriety. But surveys show many of the candidates bunched together in the teens and few operatives have a firm grasp for what will unfold.

Actual policy issues are largely secondary: The differences between the Democratic hopefuls are a matter of degree, with all of them vowing a progressive agenda on health care, the environment and gun control while taking aim at Mr. Trump. The Republicans are focused on gains in the economy, a gas tax repeal measure and warning the largely moderate and center-right voters in the districts that Democrats are turning sharply to the left.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s arm in House races, is most concerned that two Republicans might prevail in the primary for Mr. Rohrabacher’s seat. The committee has broken with the state Democratic Party to endorse a candidate, Harley Rouda.

Meanwhile, the main House Democratic “super PAC” is pouring over $600,000 into commercials in the Los Angeles market, which reaches 27 congressional districts, to try to drive down Republican candidate Scott Baugh’s share of the vote against Mr. Rohrabacher, in hopes that a Democrat can finish in the top two and face the incumbent in November.

And the national campaign committee is supplementing the air attacks with a ground game that includes alerting voters about five “ghost candidates” who remain on the 16-person ballot.

What worries Democrats in a primary season where female candidates are having great success, though, is that two of the former candidates are women and could draw latent support from voters eager to support them. So paid canvassers are handing out pamphlets that cross out the names of some of the candidates who have withdrawn while noting two of them have endorsed Mr. Rouda.

It's a train wreck, and with the primary just ten days away,  there's a good chance that Democrats will find a way to lose both these districts to Trump and the GOP through their own massive, massive incompetence.

There's a reason I've switched a decade ago to making individual donations to candidates in specific races and never to national Democrats, especially the DCCC, and this is a prime example of why.

Dems should have anticipated and adjusted for this contingency, and instead they're just making things worse.  What a surprise, right?

Russian To Judgment, Con't

I hear and read the argument from Trump regime supporters that if there were any actual evidence of collusion that we would have heard about it by now, but I guess that at this point, now that we have evidence of Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen meeting with one of Putin's oligarchs in Trump Tower a week and a half before the inauguration it won't matter to them.  Especially the part where Cohen then later received a million-dollar consulting contract after the inauguration, that's totally innocent and everything's fine and what about that Hillary botch though, right?

Eleven days before the presidential inauguration last year, a billionaire Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin visited Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet with Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, according to video footage and another person who attended the meeting. 

In Mr. Cohen’s office on the 26th floor, he and the oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, discussed a mutual desire to strengthen Russia’s relations with the United States under President Trump, according to Andrew Intrater, an American businessman who attended the meeting and invests money for Mr. Vekselberg. The men also arranged to see one another during the inauguration festivities, the second of their three meetings, Mr. Intrater said. 

Days after the inauguration, Mr. Intrater’s private equity firm, Columbus Nova, awarded Mr. Cohen a $1 million consulting contract, a deal that has drawn the attention of federal authorities investigating Mr. Cohen, according to people briefed on the inquiry.

Mr. Intrater said in an interview that Mr. Vekselberg, his cousin and biggest client, had no role in Columbus Nova’s decision to hire Mr. Cohen as a consultant. When asked about the meeting at Trump Tower during the presidential transition, Mr. Intrater described it as a brief and impromptu discussion, and said that Mr. Vekselberg had not originally planned to attend. 

“Obviously, if I’d known in January 2017 that I was about to hire this high-profile guy who’d wind up in this big mess, I wouldn’t have introduced him to my biggest client, and wouldn’t have hired him at all,” Mr. Intrater said. He agreed to be interviewed about his dealings with Mr. Cohen, he said, because he had done nothing wrong. 

The disclosure sheds additional light on the intersection between Mr. Trump’s inner circle and Russians with ties to the Kremlin. The meeting came months after Mr. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., met at Trump Tower during the campaign with a Kremlin-linked lawyer claiming to have damaging information on his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and a former campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, met with Russian intermediaries in Europe. During the campaign, Mr. Cohen himself was pursuing a deal to build a Trump high-rise in Moscow, which did not come to fruition. 

Mr. Cohen’s meeting with Mr. Vekselberg happened during his final days as a Trump Organization employee, at a time when his position in Mr. Trump’s orbit seemed uncertain. Although Mr. Cohen told some associates that he expected a high-level White House job, that role never materialized, and he instead struck out on his own to drum up business from companies that wanted advice and access to the Trump administration, including AT&T and Novartis.

Cohen was selling access to Donald Trump's White house, plain and simple.

He was selling that access to multiple parties, including Vladimir Putin's inner circle.

This alone should warrant impeachment and removal from office of Trump, but this is actually a drop in the bucket of both the global corruption of the Trump Orgnaization and of Russian influence in Trump winning the election, something that former National Intelligence Director James Clapper has admitted happened.

Russians not only affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election — they decided it, says James Clapper, who served as the director of national intelligence in the Obama administration, and during the 2016 vote. 

“To me, it just exceeds logic and credulity that they didn’t affect the election, and it’s my belief they actually turned it,” he told the PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff on Wednesday. 

Clapper, who chronicles his life and career in his new book, “Facts and Fears: Hard Truths From a Life in Intelligence,” said Russians are “are bent on undermining our fundamental system here. And when a foreign nation, particularly an adversary nation, gets involved as much as they did in our political process, that’s a real danger to this country.”

Trump sold us out before the election, during the election, and after the election to the Russians.  He is not a legitimate president and he never will be. The Trump regime continues to sell access to a number of foreign countries, not just the Russians.

China’s second-largest state-owned bank offered wealthy clients the opportunity to have dinner with the American president for $150,000 a ticket, spurring a complaint from Donald Trump’s re-election campaign to the U.S. Department of Justice.

A branch of China Construction Bank Corp. invited high-net-worth clients willing to pay the ticket price to a May 31 dinner in Dallas, according to an invitation seen by Bloomberg News and confirmed with bank staff. Chinese participants would have the opportunity to communicate with U.S. “tycoons,” take photos with Trump and get his autograph, according to the invitation.

While Trump was expected to host a $50,000-a-head fund-raising dinner with the Republican National Committee in Dallas that night, it’s illegal for U.S. political campaigns to accept donations from foreign nationals or from corporations. That means only the Chinese bank’s customers with U.S. passports would be eligible to attend.

Officials with Trump’s campaign and the RNC said they had no knowledge of the Chinese bank’s advertisement before Bloomberg News asked about it. The campaign alerted U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ office about the solicitation, said a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing a potential law enforcement matter.

Do we finally understand, people? 

Soccer It To Me, Cincy, Con't

With all the political craziness going on in the world, it looks like in local Cincy/NKY news that Major League Soccer will be coming to Cincinnati after all, despite the West End stadium deal sill being very much up in the air. Pat Brennan at the Enquirer:

Major League Soccer is coming to Cincinnati next week, and league officials are likely bringing with them an invitation for Futbol Club Cincinnati to join their ranks. 

Sources confirmed to The Enquirer that a major club announcement is coming Tuesday at Fountain Square and MLS commissioner Don Garber will be in attendance.

Team and league officials declined to comment further on the nature of the announcement. 

Perhaps there's nothing for officials to add, though, as Garber's presence for an announcement in Cincinnati points an invitation for FC Cincinnati to join MLS. 

"Major soccer announcement" was the phrasing used as a not-so-subtle heads up prior to the December expansion announcement in Nashville.

The announcement is expected Tuesday afternoon and the club is expected to start playing next season using the U of Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium until their own venue can be built.  I guess things with keeping the Columbus Crew just an hour and change up the interstate must be going far worse than previously thought for MLS to cave like this to Cincy without a specific venue deal in place.

The stadium deal, as I said, is still in the proposal stage.

FC Cincinnati last week signed a benefits agreement with a group representing West End residents, paving the way for a soccer stadium in the neighborhood. But exactly what's in it? 

Right now, there is no single document spelling out the details of the community benefits agreement (CBA). 

A final document is being worked on between the lawyers of all the parties, but officials said it would not be complete for at least another week. So The Enquirer compared both documents to get a full list of promises and arrangements, to see what additional benefits the neighborhood got after nine hours of negotiations. 

The big question: How much will FC Cincinnati spend in West End? A total of $6,170,000 over the 30-year deal. Here's how it breaks down:

• $100,000 annually for a West End Youth Soccer Program
• $100,000 annually for West End community building initiatives
• $100,000 one-time payment for a housing study
• $50,000 one-time payment for a communication consultant related to affordable housing
• $20,000 one-time payment support entrepreneurship training for West End residents

I guess the CBA agreement was enough for the MLS. A 30-year deal makes me laugh, because neither the team nor MLS will be around in 30 years the way things are going in this country right now (hell, *I* might not be around in 30 years.)

My prediction:  neither the Columbus Crew nor an FC Cincinnati stadium groundbreaking will be in Ohio by Election Day 2020, but a lot of pissed off voters will be.

We'll see.

Last Call For The Friday Night News Dump™

That three day holiday weekend when America is heading to the beach or that summer cookout is the perfect time for the Trump regime to crap out bad news, and they didn't disappoint this Memorial Day weekend.  First up, Trump attacks federal workers' unions, something not even they would do on Labor Day weekend, I guess.

The Trump administration unveiled a set of executive orders late Friday afternoon aimed at weakening unions that represent federal workers and making it easier for agencies across the government to fire their employees.

Senior administration officials told reporters on a call Friday afternoon that the executive orders will do the following: 

• Shorten the length of time federal workers have to improve their performance after receiving a bad review, from 120 days to just 30.
• Encourage federal agencies to terminate poor performers rather than suspending them.
• Direct federal agencies to renegotiate their union contracts, and make those contracts publicly available online “so American people can see them.”
• Encouraging agencies to conclude labor negotiations in less than a year.
• Severely restrict the use of federal worker unions’ “official time”— which elected shop stewards currently use to mediate workplace grievances. Going forward, federal workers can spend no more that 25 percent of their time on union or other non-agency business.
• Charge unions rent for the use of federal office space for that “official time” work.

Andrew Bremberg, the director of Trump’s Domestic Policy Council, said the changes would “advance merit system principles and accountability” and “make it easier for agencies to remove poor performing employees and ensure taxpayer dollars are more efficiently used.” He and other White House officials claimed the rule changes would save taxpayers at least $100 million each year.

But Jacque Simon, the political director of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), warned that the new rules weaken the ability of federal workers to protect themselves from politicized employment decisions.

“When you do this, you open the door to a situation where, if you don’t toe the party line, you’re out the door,” she told TPM. “Ultimately, these agencies are run by political appointees, and if employees don’t have these rights and the opportunity to defend themselves, then anybody is at risk who is questioning the administration’s denial of climate change, or the health benefits of a particular drug, whatever the hell else these people come up with next.”

Citing an uptick in reports of politically-motivated firings and reassignments at the State Department, Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency and other federal offices, Simon said the new executive orders will make it easier for managers to make decisions based on “political loyalty.”

“Do you want scientists at the EPA who are providing objective data and information about the air we breathe or do we want political hacks?” she asked. “If you’re not with the program, if you’re not cooperating with the political agenda, you’re out the door. Out you go.”

I'm honestly surprised they FND'ed this one.  You figure Trump would be proud of this, except for the part where the vast majority of federal workers affected by this will be Virginia and Maryland voters who would on a normal news weekday be in range of a DC news crew looking for a reaction.

Second, the Trump regime is no longer hiding the whole "obstruction of justice" thing.

President Donald Trump’s legal team wants a briefing on the classified information shared with lawmakers about the origins of the FBI investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election and may take it to the Justice Department as part of an effort to scuttle the ongoing special counsel probe.

Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s attorneys, told The Associated Press on Friday that the White House hopes to get a readout of the information next week, particularly about the use of a longtime government informant who approached members of Trump’s campaign in a possible bid to glean intelligence on Russian efforts to sway the election. Trump has made unproven claims of FBI misconduct and political bias and has denounced the asset as “a spy.”

“If the spying was inappropriate, that means we may have an entirely illegitimate investigation,” Giuliani said of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. He then invoked the material compiled by former FBI Director James Comey before he was fired.

“Coupled with Comey’s illegally leaked memos, this means the whole thing was a mistake and should never have happened,” Giuliani said. “We’d urge the Justice Department to re-evaluate, to acknowledge they made a mistake. It’s a waste of $20 million of the taxpayers’ money. The whole thing is already a waste of money.”

Rudy publicly calling for the Justice Department to end the Mueller probe is a big, big step.  Up until now Mitch McConnell could use the "nobody's calling for the end of the Mueller investigation" excuse to not do anything.

Now the White House is openly calling for it to end.

The move against Mueller has been staved off a couple times, but this time, I expect will be different.  We've gone in just a couple weeks from "We expect the investigation to wrap up" to "This never should have happened and the DoJ should end it." all while Trump is screaming lies about spies in his camp.

I'm not saying the Saturday Night Massacre is coming this weekend, but don't be surprised if it does.

The Enemy Of My Enemy Is A Useful Idiot

I'm pretty sure worthless "Never Trump but we support 99% of his policies" Republicans and "bi-partisan but really we're Republicans" Third Way Democrats deserve each other in the Trump era, so it's no wonder then that both groups are joining forces to make sure the GOP obtains total power in 2018.

Since Donald J. Trump began dominating American politics more than two years ago, Democrats concerned about his policies and behavior have taken solace in a group of influential Republicans who have consistently assailed the president as anathema to the values of their party, and the country more broadly. 

In the past year, however, influential liberal donors and operatives have gone from cheering these so-called Never Trump Republicans to quietly working with — and even funding — them. Through invitation-only emails and private, off-the-record meetings, they have formed a loose network of cross-partisan alliances aimed at helping neutralize President Trump, and preventing others from capitalizing on weaknesses in the political system that they say he has exploited. 

While this network has mostly eschewed electoral politics, some involved see the potential for it to help form an ideological — and possibly financial — platform to back candidates, including a centrist challenge to Mr. Trump in 2020, possibly from within the G.O.P. or even a third party. 

The network — composed of overlapping groups led by Democrats such as the donor Rachel Pritzker and several veteran Obama administration operatives, as well as leading Never Trump Republicans like Evan McMullin, Mindy Finn and William Kristol — aims to chart a middle path between a Republican base falling in line behind Mr. Trump and a liberal resistance trying to pull the Democratic Party left.

“If you’re a Republican who is concerned about the health of the liberal order and alarmed over the destruction of the norms of American democracy, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be willing to work with a Democrat who is equally concerned about those same matters,” said Jerry Taylor, a Republican who is president of the Niskanen Center, a moderate think tank that grew out of the libertarian Cato Institute.

"Trump is a bad man yes, but I'm not sure that those dirty liberals who want health care, criminal justice reform, affordable housing and schools not getting shot up are a real answer either!" is a hell of a position to take while Rome is burning, but OK.

Let's face it, a "centrist third-party challenger" is exactly what these assholes want, splitting the resistance to Trump to the point where he just so happens to get 400 electoral votes and a second term "mandate" despite getting 40-45% of the popular vote.

If that happens (I fully expect the Mueller probe to have been dismantled or otherwise politically neutralized by the end of 2018) then we're done, and that's if we're not in the middle of a shooting war with North Korea or Iran or goddamn Mexico or something by November 2020.

Ugh, I can't with these guys today, I really can't.

First They Came For The Undocumented Kids

The Trump regime's immigration brownshirts at ICE continue to find ways to reach new lows, as if that's even possible, but here we are in America in 2018 being Germany in 1938.

Alma Jacinto covered her eyes with her hands as tears streamed down her cheeks.

The 36-year-old from Guatemala was led out of the federal courtroom without an answer to the question that brought her to tears: When would she see her boys again?

Jacinto wore a yellow bracelet on her left wrist, which defense lawyers said identifies parents who are arrested with their children and prosecuted in Operation Streamline, a fast-track program for illegal border crossers.

Moments earlier, her public defender asked the magistrate judge when Jacinto would be reunited with her sons, ages 8 and 11. There was no clear answer for Jacinto, who was sentenced to time served on an illegal-entry charge after crossing the border with her sons near Lukeville on May 14.

Parents who cross the border illegally with their children may face criminal charges as federal prosecutors in Tucson follow through on a recent directive from Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prosecute all valid cases, said U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Cosme Lopez.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection started referring families caught crossing illegally for prosecution several weeks ago, Lopez said. Those prosecutions unfold both in Streamline cases and through individual prosecutions.

On Thursday, Efrain Chun Carlos, also from Guatemala, received more information than Jacinto when he asked Magistrate Judge Lynnette C. Kimmins about his child during Streamline proceedings.

“I only wanted to ask about the whereabouts of my child in this country,” Chun said.

Kimmins responded she didn’t know where his child was and suggested he ask officials at the facility where he will be detained.

Christopher Lewis, the federal prosecutor at the hearing, told Kimmins that children from countries that are not contiguous to the United States will be placed in foster care with the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

“When they will be reunited, I cannot say because that’s an immigration matter,” Lewis said.

The yellow bracelet is a nice historical touch, right?  It's not a dehumanized chattel processing plant where parents are forcibly split from their children possibly forever, it's a fun, all-inclusive club where you get this cool wristband and can go on all the rides and enjoy all the food and entertainment for one low price!

And let's remember that the Trump regime doesn't exactly have a sterling record when it comes to actually keeping track of those children separated from their parents by the Immigration Gestapo, either.

A top official with the Department of Health and Human Services told members of Congress on Thursday that the agency had lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children it placed with sponsors in the United States, raising concerns they could end up in the hands of human traffickers or be used as laborers by people posing as relatives.

That was in April, and a month later, we still don't know where those 1,500 kids are. Nobody in this regime seems to give a damn, either.

If you ever wondered how you would react to the rise of European fascism 80 years ago, look in a mirror.   Are we the baddies?



At this point?  Yeah.  Yeah, we are.

StupidiNews!

• Ontario police say 15 people were injured, 3 critically after two men detonated an explosive device at an Indian restaurant in Mississauga, near Toronto, police are still searching for two suspects.  
• An international team of investigators believe the Russian military fired the missile that downed Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014, Moscow has immediately rejected the finding.
• Former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is expected to surrender to authorities in NYC today in connection with a months-long investigation into alleged sexual assault of several women.
• Spain's largest opposition party is set to hold a vote of no-confidence against PM Mariano Rajoy after two former Rajoy aides were convicted earlier this week on corruption charges.
• Critics of the proposed Comcast-Fox merger say the combined company would control cable coverage of 59 out of 82 total NBA, MLB, and NHL teams in the US.