The Endless Search For Enemies

The White House is preparing orders for antitrust investigations to bring down Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other "enemies of the state" because they allow criticism of Dear Leader, as we grow one step closer to authoritarian control of the internet.

The White House has drafted an executive order for President Donald Trump’s signature that would instruct federal antitrust and law enforcement agencies to open probes into the practices of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc., and other social media companies.

The order is in its preliminary stages and hasn’t yet been run past other government agencies, said a White House official. Bloomberg News obtained a draft of the order.

The document instructs U.S. antitrust authorities to “thoroughly investigate whether any online platform has acted in violation of the antitrust laws.” It instructs other government agencies to recommend within a month after it’s signed, actions that could potentially “protect competition among online platforms and address online platform bias.”

The document doesn’t name any companies. If signed, the order would represent a significant escalation of Trump’s aversion to Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies, whom he’s publicly accused of silencing conservative voices and news sources online.

The press offices of Google, Facebook and Twitter didn’t respond Saturday to emails and telephone calls requesting comment.

No, the document hasn't named any companies, but it doesn't have to in order to intimidate Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon's parent companies and their other businesses, including the Washington Post, to suddenly make sure that their coverage of Trump is a whole lot nicer.

The draft order directs that any actions federal agencies take should be “consistent with other laws” -- an apparent nod to concerns that it could threaten the traditional independence of U.S. law enforcement or conflict with the First Amendment, which protects political views from government regulation.

“Because of their critical role in American society, it is essential that American citizens are protected from anticompetitive acts by dominant online platforms,” the order says. It adds that consumer harm -- a key measure in antitrust investigations -- could come “through the exercise of bias.”

The order’s preliminary status is reflected in the text of the draft, which includes a note in red that the first section could be expanded “if necessary, to provide more detail on role of platforms and the importance of competition.”

Drowning Big Tech in antitrust investigations sure is a good way to crash stock prices.  Whether or not you believe the government should be paying attention to the outsized market share of these companies -- and it should, frankly -- going after them because of political revenge isn't the way to do it.

Keep an eye on this one.  Expect it to go places, especially should the GOP lose control of the House and/or Senate in November.

Trump always needs an enemy to blame...

Supreme Misgivings, Con't

The wheels are now officially coming off the Brett Kavanaugh nomination.

A press adviser helping lead the Senate Judiciary Committee’s response to a sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has stepped down amid evidence he was fired from a previous political job in part because of a sexual harassment allegation against him.

Garrett Ventry, 29, who served as a communications aide to the committee chaired by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, had been helping coordinate the majority party's messaging in the wake of Christine Blasey Ford’s claim that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 36 years ago at a high school party. In a response to NBC News, Ventry denied any past "allegations of misconduct."

After NBC News raised questions about Ventry's employment history and the sexual harassment allegation against him, Judiciary Committee Spokesman Taylor Foy replied in a statement: "While (Ventry) strongly denies allegations of wrongdoing, he decided to resign to avoid causing any distraction from the work of the committee."

Republicans familiar with the situation had been concerned that Ventry, because of his history, could not lead an effective communications response.

Ventry worked as a social media adviser in 2017 in the office of North Carolina House Majority Leader John Bell, who fired Ventry after several months.

“Mr. Ventry did work in my office and he’s no longer there, he moved on,” Bell told NBC News. He refused to discuss the precise nature of the firing.

Ventry did not answer questions about the circumstances of his departure but said, "I deny allegations of misconduct." He also forwarded a letter of resignation he said he sent to Bell, giving two weeks notice. "Thank you for the opportunity to serve on the staff of the North Carolina House Majority leader at the North Carolina General Assembly," it read.

Sources familiar with the situation said Ventry was let go from Bell’s office after parts of his résumé were found to have been embellished, and because he faced an accusation of sexual harassment from a female employee of the North Carolina General Assembly's Republican staff.

Ventry’s termination was described to NBC News as unusually swift for an office with little overall turnover.

Hard to defend the Supreme Court nominee accused of sexual harassment when your media response team is led by a guy accused of sexual harassment.  Or hey, maybe he has relevant experience!

Of course, the main issue is now it's blinding obvious that the GOP is leading a coordinated effort to destroy Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford's life, and right-wing noisemaker Ed Whelen has all but given the game away.

Yesterday, Whelan, the president of the Ethics and & Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank, and an assertive supporter of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, took to Twitter to lay out a Hardy Boys-inspired scenario, suggesting that Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Kavanaugh of attempted rape in high school, might have been mistaken about the identity of her alleged sexual assaulter. Using a mash-up of yearbook photos, Zillow information, Google Maps and Facebook, Whelan laid out a “case” that another man, a former classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Georgetown Prep—whom he named and provided a current photograph of—might have been the person Ford has in mind. After his wild theory received widespread criticism, Whelan deleted the tweets, and tried to walk back the accusation this morning.

But, if it’s false, it’s already too late to protect him against a possible defamation claim.

The common law of defamation isn’t that complicated. To be liable, the defendant must make an intentionally or negligently false statement about the plaintiff that tends to cause reputational harm, and harm must actually ensue.

The requirement that the statements Whelan made about the “mystery man” (whom we’ll not re-identify here) be false might be the most difficult requirement to satisfy. The first question courts ask is whether a reasonable person would think that the defendant was saying something that would be taken as the truth—because a statement can only be “false” if compared to a true one. Generally, opinions are not actionable, if the defendant sets forth the basis for them and doesn’t claim them to be true. Whelan might argue that he himself was publishing an opinion, as one of the last tweets in the storm has this disclaimer: “I have no idea what, if anything, did or did not happen in that bedroom at the top of the stairs.”

But that may not be enough to insulate Whelan, given that he also wrote of “compelling reasons to believe” Kavanaugh’s denial, and then launched into a Twitterstorm examination of what he clearly presents as evidence in support of his “theory.” A reasonable person might well think he was making a claim about what “really” happened. The case he builds reads much more like a series of factual, evidence-based claims than an opinion. The mystery man, though, will have the burden of proving that the statement Whelan made was false, and would be reasonably taken that way.

Whelan retracted everything, but it turns out he was pushed by a GOP PR firm into running with the accusations, the same group behind the now infamous Swift Boat accusations against John Kerry.

The larger problem for Kavanaugh though is that it's looking more and more like both the nominee and the White House knew full well what Whelan was up to, meaning they were in on the smear from the start.  If that's the case, then I don't see how Kavanaugh survives.

Hell, it's getting so bad for the GOP that they can't help themselves and have already created this year's Todd Akin moment.

Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), the GOP Senate nominee, said Friday that giving credence to allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a young woman when they were teenagers is “absurd.”

Cramer sounded off on professor Christine Blasey Ford’s claim that Brett Kavanaugh drunkenly sexually assaulted her when she was 15 and he was 17 during a radio interview, describing them as “even more absurd” than Anita Hill’s accusations that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her because of Kavanaugh’s age at the time and because it was “an attempt or something that never went anywhere.”

“This case is even more absurd because these people were teenagers when this supposed, alleged incident took place. Teenagers. Not a boss, supervisor-subordinate situation as the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill situation was claimed to be,” he said during an appearance on KNOX. “These are teenagers who evidently were drunk according to her own, her own statements. They were drunk when it evidently happened… even by her own accusation. Again, it was supposedly an attempt or something that never went anywhere. So you just have to wonder.”

Congratulations to Heidi Heitkamp for having this dirt clod as an opponent, because she just won re-election.

Everything that the GOP could possibly be doing to drive the massive gender gap higher and to lose women for a generation is happening.

Another #MeToo Moment, Con't

Another woman comes forward, another politician ends their reelection campaign, but the circumstances surrounding Minnesota Republican state Rep. Jim Knoblach here are far more serious.

Republican state Rep. Jim Knoblach abruptly ended his re-election campaign Friday as MPR News prepared to publish detailed accusations from his daughter of inappropriate behavior toward her since childhood.

The announcement came hours after an attorney for Knoblach denied the allegations in an interview.

Knoblach, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, declined to be interviewed after being approached more than a week ago.

In a written statement, Knoblach called the allegations "indescribably hurtful" and said he would work toward healing his family.

"I love my children more than anything, and would never do anything to hurt them. Her allegations are false," Knoblach wrote. "I and other family members have made repeated attempts to reconcile with her in recent years, but she has refused."

The timing of his exit could make his St. Cloud-area seat, already a top target for Democrats, impossible for Republicans to hold, barring some kind of court intervention or a write-in campaign by a substitute candidate. Knoblach was seeking a ninth term and was being challenged by Democratic candidate Dan Wolgamott, also of St. Cloud. Knoblach plans to serve out his term.

Yes America, fathers abuse their daughters (and their sons.)  It happens far more often than you think, because it is kept silent for years, for decades, for lifetimes.

Knoblach's daughter, Laura, alleges that the prominent legislator inappropriately touched her for most of her life, behavior she confided to close friends, family and authority figures at her school and church for more than a decade.

She said she decided to tell her story to MPR News after exhausting other means to hold her father accountable, including a 2017 investigation by local law enforcement. No charges resulted. She provided MPR News with extensive documentation about her attempts to get help.

Laura Knoblach, 23, said she first remembers her father, an eight-term state representative, touching her when she was 9 years old. He came into her room after she'd gone to bed and climbed in and laid down behind her.

"He would put his arm around me and not let me get up or get away and he would lick my neck or bite my ear," she said in an interview with MPR News.

You will never convince me that coming forward like this isn't the definition of bravery, because of this.

Susan Gaertner, Jim Knoblach's attorney, said while her client denied the allegations, he "does not want to drag his family through six weeks of hell."

Gaertner suggested Laura Knoblach disagrees with her father's political beliefs and her actions are politically motivated.

"There have been family conflicts, as is true of any family, some of them have been quite difficult," Gaertner told MPR News. "You add a layer of family conflicts to politics, and that makes the situation even more difficult."

And so it goes.  A woman who has exhausted all other options to make the abuse stop is accused of purposely wrecking her father's political career by another woman, made out to be the villain for daring to come forward now.  I'm sure Laura is already receiving death threats and hate mail, phone calls and shouted insults.

She may have to move from where she lives in Boulder, Colorado, but it won't matter because this will be used to define her for the rest of her life, "Aren't you the woman who turned in her dad in Minnesota for abuse and ended his political career?"

Men reading this, I guarantee you that your wife, your girlfriend, your best friend, your sister, your niece, your female co-worker, your kid's teacher, your friend's wife, your aunt, your mother, your daughter, all have stories that they never told a soul.  They carry it with them every day and you would never, ever know. If you ask, they may not be ready to tell you, even though they trust and love you, even though they've known you for decades.

But that story is there.

Last Call For That Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

As I have long predicted, and as many of you have feared, the Trump Regime is now making its move to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, starting with a clever and calculated leak to the NY Times.

The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.

Mr. Rosenstein made these suggestions in the spring of 2017 when Mr. Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director plunged the White House into turmoil. Over the ensuing days, the president divulgedclassified intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office, and revelations emerged that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Comey to pledge loyalty and end an investigation into a senior aide.

Mr. Rosenstein was just two weeks into his job. He had begun overseeing the Russia investigation and played a key role in the president’s dismissal of Mr. Comey by writing a memo critical of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. But Mr. Rosenstein was caught off guard when Mr. Trump cited the memo in the firing, and he began telling people that hefeared he had been used.

Mr. Rosenstein made the remarks about secretly recording Mr. Trump and about the 25th Amendment in meetings and conversations with other Justice Department and F.B.I. officials. Several people described the episodes, insisting on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by F.B.I. officials, including Andrew G. McCabe, then the acting bureau director, that documented Mr. Rosenstein’s actions and comments.

None of Mr. Rosenstein’s proposals apparently came to fruition. It is not clear how determined he was about seeing them through, though he did tell Mr. McCabe that he might be able to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions and John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security and now the White House chief of staff, to mount an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment.

The extreme suggestions show Mr. Rosenstein’s state of mind in the disorienting days that followed Mr. Comey’s dismissal. Sitting in on Mr. Trump’s interviews with prospective F.B.I. directors and facing attacks for his own role in Mr. Comey’s firing, Mr. Rosenstein had an up-close view of the tumult. Mr. Rosenstein appeared conflicted, regretful and emotional, according to people who spoke with him at the time.

Understand that this story was leaked to set up Rosenstein as the "Deep State" mastermind behind the "coup" against Trump, with the time period of course suggesting that the Mueller probe was part of Rosenstein's "plot".  They are not trying to just undermine the Mueller probe, they are trying to end it.

Hearing Bill Shine rolling out media plan to build public support for Trump to fire Rosenstein

— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) September 21, 2018

The Saturday Night Massacre plan is happening. The fate of our country is now in the balance.  And yes, this is definitely to save the drowning Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination.  They are now that desperate.

Now seeming increasingly likely that NYT 25th Amendment story was planted by Trump camp as pretext to precipitate firing Rosenstein as precursor to firing Muelller.

— Greg Pinelo (@gregpinelo) September 21, 2018

Be ready, guys.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

All sorts of news in our Friday Mueller News Dump™ this week, starting with a complete 180 on Donald Trump's plans to declassify information pertaining to the ongoing Mueller probe.

President Donald Trump on Friday abandoned plans to quickly declassify and release sensitive documents connected to the FBI's Russia investigation, citing a "perceived negative impact" on the probe and concerns raised by "key allies" about dumping the materials.

Trump instead announced that he would defer to a Justice Department watchdog — Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who he once derided as an "Obama guy" — to finish a review of whether anti-Trump bias affected the FBI's handling of its 2016 Russia probe.

"Therefore, the Inspector General ... has been asked to review these documents on an expedited basis," Trump tweeted Friday morning. "I believe he will move quickly on this (and hopefully other things which he is looking at). In the end I can always declassify if it proves necessary. Speed is very important to me — and everyone!"

Trump had sought the release of classified portions of a surveillance warrant application used to track former campaign adviser Carter Page. He also said he wanted to publish the interview notes of a top Justice Department official and the text messages sent by former FBI Director James Comey and other senior bureau officials.

The FBI's early investigation into the Trump campaign's ties with Russia eventually led to special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into whether Trump's aides assisted Moscow in its efforts to influence the 2016 election.

Trump's Friday tweet likely staves off a confrontation between the president and his own intelligence officials, who have publicly and privately warned of the dangers of revealing classified intelligence. Democrats have attacked the initial decision to release the documents as reckless, arguing it could endanger international intelligence partnerships and sources. Trump told the Hill in an interview earlier this week that he had decided to release the documents in part at the urging of conservative Fox News TV hosts.

Gosh, I don't understand, clearly Mighty God-Emperor Trump could destroy the Evil Deep State by doing this but...backed down completely?

It's almost like he hasn't read any of the classified material, and that declassifying it would have been the end of his regime.  Who knew?

Well, Mueller knew. And speaking of what Mueller knows, that brings us to Story #2: BuzzFeed News is reporting that Robert Mueller's team is now looking into millions in suspicious money transfers just days before that now-infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that $3.3 million began moving on June 3 between two of the men who orchestrated the meeting: Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime Agalarov employee once investigated for money laundering.

That money is on top of the more than $20 million that was flagged as suspicious, BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month, after the money ricocheted among the planners and participants of the Trump Tower meeting. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating whether any individuals colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, is examining the suspicious transactions, four federal law enforcement officials said. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.

Although the documents do not directly link the $3.3 million to the meeting, they show that officials at three separate banks raised red flags about the funds. Many of the transfers seemed to have no legitimate purpose, bankers noted. Kaveladze quickly moved money to other accounts he controlled, and appeared to use some of it to make payments on Agalarov’s behalf — including more than $700,000 to pay off American Express charges.

The transfers happened the same day Donald Trump Jr. supposedly signed off on the meeting, June 3, 2016. I've always said that the Russian money laundering angle of this story was connected to the Russian election interference angle, and Mueller is following both.

And speaking of suspicious money trails, that leads us to story #3:  Former Trump lawyer John Dowd apparently directed White House legal defense funds to help Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.

A top lawyer for President Trump this year sought to help pay legal fees for Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, initially trying to divert money from the White House legal defense fund and later soliciting donors and pledging $25,000 of his own.

In both cases, the president’s advisers objected to the lawyer’s actions over concerns it could appear aimed at stopping the two former aides from cooperating with investigators.

John Dowd, who at the time was heading Mr. Trump’s legal team, at the start of the year told associates of the president he wanted to direct money from the legal defense fund set up for White House officials and campaign aides to the lawyers for Messrs. Manafort and Gates, according to people familiar with the matter. The pair had pleaded not guilty to charges of tax, bank and lobbying violations in the fall of 2017.

That idea was rebuffed by ethics advisers in the White House, the people said. The fund had been set up specifically to aid those who faced legal fees stemming from their involvement with the president. While the charges facing Messrs. Manafort and Gates had stemmed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, they pertained to activities that predated the Trump campaign, making the two aides ineligible for those funds.

On Feb. 22, Mr. Dowd told associates of the president in an email that Messrs. Manafort and Gates needed funds immediately, according to people familiar with the matter. He said he planned to donate $25,000 to Mr. Manafort’s legal defense fund the next day.

The next day, Mr. Gates pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with investigators.

Oops.  Guess they didn't need the "defense money" after all, huh.  Totally doesn't look like a last-ditch effort to pay off Gates before he flipped, either.

But Mueller knows.

Mueller knows it all.

And that report is coming.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

The latest Cook Political Report predictions for the Senate are good news for the Democrats, which is good because frankly, there are so many structural obstacles for Democrats to take back the Senate right now that the Republicans have a significantly better chance of holding the House than the Dems do getting the Senate.

It was a long, long shot earlier this month.  Now, it's just a long shot.

As the political environment continues to favor Democrats and likely to rob Republicans of their majority in the U.S. House and a handful of gubernatorial seats, the conventional wisdom is that the fate of the GOP’s Senate majority will rest more on political geography than the way the partisan winds are blowing. Maybe.

The map continues to favor Republicans as Democrats are defending 10 seats in states that President Trump carried, four of which are in the Toss Up column, while two others are in Lean Democratic. In keeping with the notion that geography is destiny this cycle, the one Republican-held seat (Nevada) that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016 is in the Toss Up column. But, Democrats have managed to put three more Republican seats in play: the open seats in Arizona (Trump +4) and Tennessee (Trump +26), and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas (Trump +9) into play. This raises the question as to whether political geography really will dictate the fate of the Senate majority.

Generally, races in the Toss Up column don’t break down the middle; one party tends to win a majority of them. Over the past 10 cycles, no party has won less than 67 percent of all Toss Up races. In 2004, 2006 and 2014, one party won 89 percent of the races in the Toss Up column. The working theory for this cycle has been that if Democrats end up winning a majority of the Toss Up races, then the political environment proved to be the factor driving the election. If, on the other hand, Republicans wind up carrying a majority of the Toss Up contests, then political geography is indeed destiny. But, what if for the first time since we’ve been keeping tabs on the outcome of Toss Up contests, they did break down the middle? Usually, it’s easy to dismiss such an idea. It’s just not as simple this cycle. And, what would it say if the Toss Up races do break down the middle?

At this point, the overall political environment is not likely to change. The President’s approval rating, voter intensity, and the generic congressional ballot test are baked into the proverbial cake. The only real unknown factor is the fate of the Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a teenage girl in the 1980s have stalled the nomination process. There are about a dozen scenarios as to how this will play out and the situation seems to change with each day. Suffice it to say that both parties have made mistakes in their handling of the allegations and both sides are walking a bit of a tightrope.

The parties have very different views of how it will play out at the polls. Democrats believe that it will further energize their base. Republicans say that it is firing up their supporters. They may both be right, but Democrats are already energized, which raises the question of how much more the base can expand. It’s unlikely that Democratic voters can be more enraged than they already are. But, Republican voters haven’t been as energized, largely because many don’t believe that the party is really in danger of losing their majorities in the House and/or Senate, according to a survey Public Opinion Strategies conducted for the Republican National Committee. The fate of the Supreme Court is a huge issue for Republican voters, and they will go to the polls if they feel that Democrats have politicized the allegations against Kavanaugh, even if they believe Christine Blasey Ford's story. Some Democratic strategists say the allegations against Kavanaugh make it easier for most Democrats to vote against his nomination. At the same time, they are concerned about the fallout if the nomination drags on through October.

Which side has the larger obstacles, the Dems and the map, or the GOP and Trump?  We'll find out.  My gut tells me the most likely outcome is Dems pick up one net seat by winning Arizona and Nevada, but losing Indiana or North Dakota.  It could be much better, in that scenario if Dems win Tennessee, they control the Senate.

But to do that and hold on in the half-dozen seats they are in real trouble in, that won't be easy.

Vote.

StupidiNews!

• Police say that a woman who killed 3 and injured 3 more before turning the gun on herself Thursday was a disgruntled employee of a Rite Aid distribution center in Maryland.
• Just days before his murder trial was scheduled to begin Monday, legendary rap producer Suge Knight has plead to manslaughter charges and a 28-year prison sentence.
• The Trump regime has imposed new economic sanctions on China's military for violating a 2016 US law banning arms sales to and from Russia.
• UK PM Theresa May is expected to give a statement later today after EU leaders meeting in Salzburg, Austria this week fully rejected her Brexit proposals.
• Amazon is adding Echo smartspeaker capability to almost a dozen new products in 2019, including hands-free car audio, a wall clock, and even a microwave.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

Democrats are worried about another GOP surprise document dump that could hurt their chances in November, and it looks like that grand plan has already started.

Democratic operatives are growing anxious that Republicans working to undermine the FBI’s Russia probe are teeing up a series of document dumps meant to gin up GOP voters ahead of the midterm elections.

After weeks of hand-wringing, President Donald Trump on Monday ordered the declassification of a slew of documents related to the FBI’s long-running investigation into the Trump campaign’s potential connections to Russia. The move came on the heels of top House Republicans revealing that they may also release documents related to their probes into Trump-Russia ties, as well as anti-Trump bias at the FBI and Justice Department.

The White House and GOP leaders have cited “transparency” as their motive, and Trump has suggested the documents will show anti-Trump bias in the FBI led the bureau to supercharge its 2016 Russia probe based on flimsy evidence.

But Democrats see a more sinister plan: to taint special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing Russia probe, while simultaneously motivating Trump’s political base on the precipice of an election in which Democrats are favored to make gains. To Democrats, the situation has eerie similarities to 2016, when WikiLeaks’ slow-drip daily release of internal Clinton campaign emails hobbled Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and offered regular fodder for Republicans.

“Oh, God,” said Jennifer Palmieri, former communications director for Clinton’s campaign. “Trump could be setting the stage for the same kind of manufactured October surprise designed to help boost his standing and undermine Mueller.”

Sure, that's possible.  But the Trumpies exactly don't have a good post-election track record on competence, as Steve M points out.

It's been reported that Trump hasn't read the material he just ordered released, and we know that Devin Nunes didn't read the FISA application for surveillance of Carter Page before seeking its release. But I'm not sure it matters -- even if they read the documents, they're incapable of imagining how a person who doesn't live in the right-wing bubble will react to them. They just know that the FBI and the Mueller investigation are evil, and everyone they know is equally certain of this, so the only possible reason everyone doesn't know this is that some people just don't have all the facts. All information leads to one conclusion because no other conclusion is possible! So release more information and everyone will agree!

They've tried this before.  It hasn't exactly worked.  Yastreblansky also calls BS.

When that Red Wave doesn't arrive in November, they'll go back to talking about millions of illegal voters, or dead ones, and insist that they "really" won. When Mueller's report comes out, their belief in the conspiracy against our emperor won't be shaken at all—it'll be reinforced ("It's even worse than I thought!"). I'm really hopeful, though, that these paranoids will become more and more marginal as time goes on and retreat into the cells, like the John Birch Society, where they used to hide before the Reagan election brought them into polite society.

It's one thing to fake out Trump voters, who believe all sorts of factually incorrect garbage because it's a cult.  But Dems really shouldn't fall for it.

Not to say there isn't legitimate espionage going on here by Trump's Russian friends.

But I doubt Trump is going to be able to keep the news cycle on what he wants.  The October document dump he should be worried about are the ones coming from his former employees talking to Robert Mueller.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

It's been less than a month since the primaries, and Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis is caught up again in another example of his campaign's endless racism against Democrat Andrew Gillum, this time one of DeSantis's major donors was more than happy to go on a massive racist tirade on Twitter.

A Republican activist who donated more than $20,000 to Ron DeSantis and lined up a speech for him at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club called President Obama a “F---- MUSLIM N----” on Twitter recently, in addition to other inflammatory remarks.

Steven M. Alembik told POLITICO Wednesday he wrote the Obama tweet in anger, that he’s “absolutely not” a racist and that he understood that DeSantis’s campaign for governor would need to distance himself from the comments — which the campaign promptly did.

“We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: we adamantly denounce this sort of disgusting rhetoric,” DeSantis campaign spokesman Stephen Lawson said in a written statement.

The controversy comes after DeSantis sent his campaign into a tailspin the day after the Aug. 28 primary by using the awkward phrase “monkey this up” in describing how the economy could falter under the plans of his opponent, Andrew Gillum, the Florida Democratic Party’s first African-American nominee for governor.

That comment drew harsh criticism for its racist dog whistle connotations — Gillum called it a bullhorn — with the state Democratic Party chairwoman calling the remark "disgusting."

DeSantis denied he had any racial intent in using the phrase. But the pattern of racial controversies, including the Alembik remarks, highlights a problem that is getting harder to overlook in this racially diverse swing state: Despite DeSantis’ denunciations of bigotry, this is the fifth race-related issue concerning the candidate, the campaign or one of its supporters to erupt since the start of the general election campaign.

Five in under a month, guys.  And Steve Alembik here?  He's a real piece of work.

Alembik, a self-employed data and email services provider in Boca Raton who has had some Republican campaign clients, said it was unfair to call DeSantis a racist. Alembik, who has contributed a total of $22,920 over the years to DeSantis, said there was a double standard for white people when it came to using the N-word.

“So somebody like Chris Rock can get up onstage and use the word and there’s no problem? But some white guy says it and he’s a racist? Really?” the 67-year-old Alembik said, noting that what’s considered racially charged language now wasn’t racist when he was a kid. “I grew up in New York in the ‘50s. We were the k----. They were the n------. They were the goyim. And those were the s----.”

I mean I know the joke is that Trump and his party want to take America back to the 1950's before the civil rights era, but this is literally what Alembik is complaining about, that socially it's not the 1950's anymore.

And guess what?  He wants that era back so badly that he's willing to give Ron DeSantis tens of thousands of dollars in order to make it happen in Florida.

Oh, but that's not even the only bigoted DeSantis-related mess his campaign is dealing with THIS WEEK.

As was reported on Monday, just a few months before DeSantis formally announced his candidacy for governor, the then member of Congress attended and spoke at an event organized by the nation’s most vile anti Muslim group: ACT For America. To Muslim Americans like myself, this organization is akin to neo-Nazis who seek to demonize and marginalize blacks and Jews. But in the case of ACT, they target Muslims. 

So what is ACT about? Its leader, Brigitte Gabriel, has made it clear that every Muslim in America is a threat with her infamous remark that Muslims “cannot be loyal citizens of the United States.” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has stated point blank that ACT “is the largest anti-Muslim group in the United States.” 

Gabriel, who has no known expertise in the field of counterterrorism but personally profits from demonizing Muslims, has claimed that 25 percent of all Muslims support violence. And, as the ADL notes, ACT recently “circulated a document in Minnesota featuring Muslim elected officials and a warning about an imminent Muslim takeover.” 

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which also designates ACT as an anti-Muslim hate group, has documented the recent comments of ACT local chapter activists such as one who stated last year, “Islam is a supremacist, totalitarian political ideology masquerading as a religion. It's as dangerous as Nazism or communism and must be eradicated.”

DeSantis is more than happy to get support from people like this, and take their money to further his campaign. But gods above and below, don't actually call the racists "racist" or you'll just motivate them to do more racist things!

The racism was always there.  Trump just made it socially acceptable again.

Supreme Misgivings, Con't

America is still pretty meh on the whole "Brett Kavanaugh for SCOTUS" thing at best, but already weak support has gone notably down since Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward last week with allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years ago.

A growing number of Americans said they opposed President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, as the candidate’s confirmation hearings took place and as he fended off a sexual assault claim, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

The Sept. 11-17 poll found that 36 percent of adults surveyed did not want Kavanaugh in the Supreme Court, up 6 points from a similar poll conducted a month earlier.

Only 31 percent of U.S. adults polled said they were in favor of Kavanaugh’s appointment.

If support for his nomination remains this weak, Trump’s pick would rank among the lowest-supported Supreme Court nominees to later be confirmed, according to historical data from Gallup.

“Not after the sexual charges,” said Jeffrey Schmidt, 56, from Colorado, who opposes President Trump and his policies. “Before the allegations, I was not sure.”

Kavanaugh has denied the claim that he assaulted a woman while in high school in 1982, calling it “completely false.”

Support for Kavanaugh was higher among Republicans, but fewer than two out of three, or 64 percent, said they were in favor of his nomination.

Thirty-five-year-old Karis Reeves, a Republican-leaning professional from Arizona, said he supported Kavanaugh’s nomination, but added he wasn’t “informed enough” and that the timing of the sexual misconduct allegation was “conspicuous.”

More women — 33 percent — opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, up seven percentage points from a month earlier.

“It was already a ‘no’ but now it’s a stronger ‘no,’” said Bonnie Mann, 29, when asked about whether her view of Kavanaugh’s nomination had changed since the allegation.

Still, that means a third of Americans are for him, a third against, and a third don't know or don't care, which at this point is less shocking and more utterly depressing.  Kavanaugh will be setting precedent for thirty years, nominated by a man under investigation, and for anyone, that should be reason enough to give pause.

StupidiNews!

• Legendary journalist Bob Woodward's book on the Trump regime, Fear, debuts this week as Number 1 on the New York Times best sellers list.
• US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says talks next week with North Korea's foreign minister in New York could lead to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula by 2021.
• Damage from Hurricane Florence to North Carolina's Outer Banks is reigniting debate about just how sustainable the region's $2.4 billion tourist economy is in the era of climate change.
• The battle for Britain's Sky TV network will come down to a one-day auction on Saturday as both cable giant Comcast and entertainment juggernaut Disney duke it out.
• The Senate has unanimously passed a major new update to music copyright law, the bill now goes to negotiation with the House version passed earlier this year.

Last Call For The Company Store, Gig Economy Edition

Already more than a third of working Americans are contract/freelancer/temp workers, and we're rapidly approaching the point where the majority of American workers will be freelancers with zero benefits in under a decade. 

If freelancing continues to grow at its current rate, the majority of U.S. workers will be freelancing by 2027, according to projections in the Freelancing in America Survey, released today by the Freelancers Union and the giant freelance platform Upwork. The survey found that 50.9% of the U.S. population will be freelancing in 10 years if a current uptick in freelancing continues at its current pace.

But those American workers still get paid nominally, and that means one of the fastest-growing industries in the US financial sector is payment services.  If you thought payday loan sharks and mortgage giants were predatory parasites, wait until tens of millions of us start getting paychecks in the gig economy through companies like WorkMarket that exist literally solely in order to take a healthy chunk of your income.

“Now for the first time, thanks to Fast Funds Mobile,” as WorkMarket VP Mousa Ackall wrote in January of 2017 when announcing the service, “freelancers can gain instant access to their funds via the WorkMarket mobile app – offering the level of flexibility and effortless mobility that modern workers crave.”

Ah, finally, the level of flexibility and effortless mobility I deserve.

I did not happen to be in dire need of the money right away that particular month, but as a freelancer, there have certainly been times in my life that I might have been tempted to take the devil’s deal. There are no shortage of people in more tenuous financial situations that might not be able to turn it down. In fact, as Jens Audenaert, general manager of WorkMarket explained to me, it’s proven to be an exceptionally popular feature and its use continues to grow. Weird!

Michael Sainato is one of them. He’d written a piece for the Huffington Post about Standing Rock activists in July. After a month of waiting to be paid, he was told to sign up for WorkMarket as well. A couple of weeks later, he got a notification that the $400 he was owed was available to him, but the only clickable option to withdraw the money was on something called FastFunds, something he’d never heard of. Confused and clicking around on the site he said he somehow selected the payment option, and $30 was subtracted from his invoice. He told me that while it was a mistake, he would have taken the cut regardless, because the payment was already exceptionally late and he was hard up for cash that month.

“It’s absolutely predatory,” Sainato told me. “You shouldn't have to be charged to get paid in a reasonable amount of time and HuffPost is well aware that freelancers tend to have financial issues in that they can't push off being paid several more weeks, few people can.”

“No one would reasonably spend $30 or more on [getting paid] unless they were financially put in a position where they couldn't afford not to.”

While the idea of early payment discounts aren’t novel in large industries like construction or manufacturing, where suppliers might arrange to let a company pay less than full price of an invoice if they do so in a prompt fashion, and factoring is a longstanding tradition, in which businesses sell their accounts receivable to a third party in order to facilitate having cash flow on hand more quickly, the concept coming to individual creative industry workers is novel, and yet another example of how media professionals, and freelancers in particular, are being preyed upon.

Ahh, but should you think this is only for freelancers, think again.  The rest of us will be getting these "new payment options" very soon.

The early payment model WorkMarket is using is part of a movement across the economy at large to let workers, often hourly workers, access the money they’ve already earned earlier than usual. Walmart announced last year that its workers would be able to withdraw from their paycheck early up to eight times a year for free through a service provided by PayActiv, one of a fast-growing number of instant-pay apps that look to be the future of hourly employment. PayActiv likens the fees they charge employees accessing their own money ahead of payment schedule as akin to an ATM service charge.

Fifth Third Bank was savaged when it offered the exact same service a few years ago and charged $10 bucks to get $100 early, when you needed the money up front this week to pay a bill, it was cheaper than A) the late fee from missing the bill payment, B) the overdraft fee from the bank for trying to write a check Friday for a deposit that wouldn't clear until Monday.  But the bank was sued when people realized that it was a 200% APR loan with a 35-day period, and payday lenders were pissed that real banks were getting away with their con.

That was during the Obama years.  Now in the Trump era, the wild west of "payment services" to access your own money is here to stay.

And everyone will get their cut before you will ever see a dime.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Democrats may be on their way towards making impressive gains in the House and Senate nationally, and at the state level in winning back several governor's mansions...but true blue Maryland is not going to be one of those states.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan holds a commanding 22-point lead over Democratic challenger Ben Jealous in a new poll that suggests the Republican is consolidating substantial support from groups that traditionally back Democrats in the deep-blue state.

The Goucher Poll, released early Wednesday morning, found likely voters favor Hogan over Jealous by a margin of 54 percent to 32 percent. Undecided voters have dwindled to just 9 percent of the electorate, the poll found, meaning Jealous must win the lion’s share of persuadable voters and bank on dramatically heightened Democratic turnout to have a shot on Election Day.

In addition to Hogan securing his Republican base by large margins, the poll found he had the support of 38 percent of Maryland Democrats, who outnumber GOP voters in the state by more than 2 to 1.

Even though most voters support the issues on which Jealous has campaigned — a $15-an-hour minimum wage, boosting education spending, and Medicare-for-all — they trust Hogan more on education, the economy and health care, the poll found.

“They like the issues, but they haven’t connected them to Jealous,” said Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center at Goucher College in Towson, Md., which surveyed 472 likely voters from Sept. 11 to Sept. 16. “It’s clear that Ben Jealous needs to introduce himself to Marylanders.”

While Hogan and the Republican Governors Association have spent more than $2 million in a sustained advertising blitz in Maryland since June, Jealous launched his first television adMonday, with a modest buy in the Baltimore market. The Goucher poll — the latest to show Hogan with a double-digit lead in the race — was completed the previous day.

A quarter of voters identified the economy and jobs as the most important issue that would determine whom they picked in the governor’s race — more than any other topic. That bodes well for Hogan, since likely voters said they thought he would handle economic development and job creation better than Jealous by 66 percent to 23 percent. 

Ben Jealous has done an abysmal job of campaigning so far.  It's so bad for him that Hogan is getting more than a third of the black vote in the state, and women prefer Hogan by 9 points, 47-38%.  And despite Donald Trump being next door, only 40% think he's a factor in the race at all.  Both Trump and Hogan have ignored each other, and that's fine with both of them.

Jealous is winning with voters under 35.  Millennials prefer him by 20 points.  The problem is voters over 35 prefer Hogan by more than 30 points, and there's a lot more voters over 35 that actually vote in midterms.

If younger voters showed up to the polls in Maryland in record numbers, then yes, Ben Jealous would have a real shot at this race.  Hogan's not terrible for a Republican but in 2018, he still chooses to be a Republican, and that's a disqualifying move as far as I'm concerned.

But since Millennials don't actually vote, and especially, aggressively don't vote in midterms, Hogan will be reelected and win walking away.

There's a lesson here for those who choose to learn it.

Florence And The (Farm) Machine

We're just now starting to get a picture of the billions in dollars of damage to North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia from Hurricane Florence and the record flooding, especially in eastern NC.  The losses in lives are tragic, but there's also the aftermath of thousands of pigs and millions of chickens in Carolina farms that are gone, and with them, the livelihoods of tens of thousands still reeling from Hurricane Andrew two years ago.

The number of hogs and poultry killed in Hurricane Florence flooding is already double the casualties from Matthew in 2016, and the losses are expected to mount this week as new information comes in from farmers as they gain access to their properties.

Meanwhile, the number of hog waste lagoons in North Carolina that are damaged or overflowing continues to increase.

The N.C. Department Agriculture and Consumer Services said Tuesday that so far 3.4 million chickens and turkeys have been killed by Florence, and 5,500 hogs have perished since the storm deluged the state. In preparation for the advancing storm, farmers were moving their swine to higher land, but the intensity of the flooding exceeded all expectations. The N.C. Pork Council said some of the hogs drowned in floor waters, others perished from wind damage barns.

The agriculture agency provided no details as to which counties or farming operations suffered the losses. The only specifics have come from a note to investors issued by Sanderson Farms, saying that flooding claimed 1.7 million broiler chickens out of its 20 million in the state, ranging in age from 6 days to 62 days.

Sanderson Farms said that 60 broiler houses and four feeder houses were flooded. Farmers, who are contracted to Sanderson, could be out of power for as long as three weeks, and are running on emergency diesel fuel. Sanderson Farms noted that about 30 independent farms that supply its chickens are isolated by flood waters and unreachable at this time. Each of the farms houses about 211,000 chickens, totaling more than 6 million birds that can’t be reached with chicken feed.

Perdue Farms said it was largely spared by the storm.

“We experienced minimal impact on our live operations, with partial losses at two farms raising our chickens,” spokesman Joe Forsthoffer said by email. “Our feed mills are operating normally and we’re delivering feed to farms. We moved birds from low-lying farms in advance of the storm.”

During Matthew, which struck in October 2016, the poultry industry lost 1.8 million birds, while 2,800 hogs perished, according to state Department Agriculture. North Carolina farming operations total 819 million head of poultry and 9.3 million hogs.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality said Tuesday that four open air lagoons that store hog waste have structural damage, up from two known pits whose retaining walls were compromised as of Monday.

The environmental agency said 13 lagoons are overflowing from heavy rainfall and 55 are close to the brim and could overflow if water levels continue rising.

If Andrew was a head shot to the economy of the sandhills, Florence was a mortar round right through the window.  The economic, environmental, and consumer impact of the storm will be felt in this area for years to come, and there's every reason to believe that in the years ahead, Atlantic hurricanes will only be more powerful and more common.

StupidiNews!

• Charlotte Bobcats owner and Wilmington native Michael Jordan is donating $2 million to Hurricane Florence relief efforts in the state, the coastal city is still dealing with massive flooding.
• Donald Trump is expected to visit North Carolina as the death toll from Florence reaches 33 as flooding has large portions of Interstates 40 and 95 closed.
• China says it will retaliate against US tariffs beginning Monday with tariffs of its own on $60 billion of US goods ranging from natural gas to frozen vegetables.
• The Justice Department has now opened a criminal probe into Tesla founder Elon Musk's tweets last month to take the company private, a move regulators say could be securities fraud.
• A Russian surveillance plane in Syria was shot down by Assad regime air defenses, but Moscow is blaming Israel directly for the incident.