Last Call For Another #MeToo Moment

Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown was attacked six years ago by Republican state auditor Josh Mandel over domestic violence allegations that supposedly led to Brown's then 26-year-old divorce.  Mandel lost by a significant margin and Brown has gone on to be one of the Senate better Democratic liberal voices.

But now, Brown is up against GOP Rep. Jim Renacci, and Brown is now facing assault accusations from a number of women brought forward by the Republican who says Brown not only needs to drop out of the race, but as with Al Franken, needs to retire from the Senate immediately.

Earlier this week, Republican Senate candidate and Congressman Jim Renacci revealed to The Enquirer "multiple women" contacted him with allegations they were abused by his Democratic opponent and veteran U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Renacci wouldn't reveal who they were. Late Thursday night, an attorney released a statement on behalf of one of the women.

In the statement, Canton, Ohio area attorney Laura Mills described a sexual encounter her client had with Brown in the late 1980s. Brown was Ohio's Secretary of State at the time and the unnamed woman had met Brown in the course of her work.

According to Mills, Brown pushed her client up against a wall.

"She described an unexpected, uninvited, unwanted, and sudden advance, roughly pushing her up against a wall," Mills said in the statement. "It did stop after she expressed dismay and very firmly pulled away, explaining that was not her style nor why she was there. He then said he remembered what she had on the day they had met some time earlier and that he had been attracted to her."

Mills, who has served as Renacci's lawyer and has donated to his campaigns, said her client wants to remain anonymous. She was able to "defuse the situation" but was shaken up by it, Mills said in the statement.

Brown's campaign on Thursday sent a cease and desist letter to Renacci, demanding he stop "false and libelous statements."

"At the very least you were acting with reckless disregard to the truth, as you must have been aware that the statements you were making had no basis in fact," Brown's attorney Marc Erik Elias wrote in the email.

Brown's campaign spokesman, Preston Maddock, in a statement, pointed out Mills is a former business partner of Renacci. The campaign plans on pursuing "all legal means" against Renacci.

Renacci has been attacking Brown over the now 32-year-old domestic violence allegations, which Brown's ex-wife, Larke Recchie, denies.  Renacci has been trailing Brown for the entire race, but that's before this week's allegations has come forward.

Brown now has a problem, and a potentially very serious one.  His response has been to completely deny the allegations, but I'm not sure if that's going to hold up here in a post-Kavanaugh America.

We'll see.

The Drums of War, Con't

The Trump regime grows ever closer to the bad old days of the Cold War, as both Trump and Putin have decided that the 80's-era bilateral treaty on mid-range nukes no longer works with an ascendant China in the picture.

The Trump administration is preparing to tell Russian leaders next week that it is planning to exit the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, in part to enable the United States to counter a Chinese arms buildup in the Pacific, according to American officials and foreign diplomats.

President Trump has been moving toward scrapping the three-decade-old treaty, which grew out of President Ronald Reagan’s historic meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986. While the treaty was seen as effective for years, Russia has been violating it at least since 2014 in an effort to menace other nations.

But the pact has also constrained the United States from deploying new weapons to respond to China’s efforts to cement a dominant position in the Western Pacific and to keep American naval forces at bay. Because China was not a signatory to the treaty, it has faced no limits on developing intermediate-range nuclear missiles, which can travel thousands of miles.

The White House said that no official decision had been made to leave the treaty, known as I.N.F., which at the time of its signing was considered a critical step in defusing Cold War tensions. But in the coming weeks, Mr. Trump is expected to sign off on the decision, which would mark the first time he has scrapped an arms control treaty, the American officials said.

Now that the treaty is largely in tatters, the question is whether the decision to leave it will accelerate the increasingly Cold War-like behavior among the three superpowers: the United States, Russia and China.

As Russia has flown bombers over Europe and has conducted troop exercises on its borders with former Soviet states, the United States and its NATO allies have been rotating forces through countries under threat. Ukraine has become a low-level battleground, with ground skirmishes and a daily cyberconflict. China and the United States are jostling for position around reefs in the South China Sea that Beijing has turned into military bases, and they are both preparing for any possibility of war in space.

It's absolutely true that Russia walked away from the INF treaty in 2014, but the EU, particularly Germany, didn't want another European arms race.  However, John Bolton's Mustache has prevailed, and the treaty will be scrapped soon, and as Russia plays both the US and China against the middle, it's Putin who will get the last laugh.

Hell, he might be the only around to laugh when the fallout stops.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The Justice Department on Friday brought charges against a Putin ally in a Russian plot to interfere in the 2018 elections.  This is not a drill, this is the DoJ charging Russians with trying to mess with our elections right now.

Russians working for a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin engaged in an elaborate campaign of “information warfare” to interfere with the midterm elections, federal prosecutors said on Friday in announcing they had charged one of them in the plot.

The woman, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, was involved in an effort “to spread distrust towards candidates for U.S. political office and the U.S. political system,” prosecutors said.

Ms. Khusyaynova managed millions of dollars for a company owned by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch who was previously indicted on charges of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, to finance foreign influence activities directed at the United States. Some of the money was spent on advertising on social media in the United States, buying internet domain names and “promoting news postings on social networks.”

The conspirators seized on divisions in American politics, prosecutors said, including immigration, guns, race relations, women and even the debate over the protests by National Football League players during the national anthem. They adopted a variety of ideological perspectives, writing on varied topics and from opposing views, prosecutors said. No one was named in court papers besides Ms. Khusyaynova.

The conspirators “took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists,” prosecutors wrote.

Russian bots are purposely making our divisive society worse by picking fights, and them amplifying those fights using social media. And let's not forget that for the last two years, the Trump regime has been not only actively denying that this was happening, but going out of their way to make our elections more vulnerable.

The bigger issue is that these attacks are going on and Trump is doing nothing to stop them.  It's good then that the FBI is working to try to defend the country, but they sure aren't going to get any help and any support from Trump.  Remember, for two years, Russian meddling in the elections has been "fake news".

Now we have federal charges filed that not only say that it's not fake news, but that it's happening now, in real time, and most likely is still happening.

The Russians are attacking our elections now.  Right now.  Openly.

And Ms. Khusyaynova here?  The accountant paying for all of this.

Prosecutors said Khusyaynova is the chief accountant for a Russian umbrella effort called Project Lakhta, funded by a Russian oligarch whose Concord companies were named in the July indictment brought by Mueller involving attempted meddling in the 2016 election.

Concord Management is owned by Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, also known as "Putin's chef," who is closely linked to the Russian president. It provides food services at the Kremlin.

Mueller has indicted Prighozin as part of his probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Mueller's office indicted Prighozin and 12 other Russian nationals in February on charges including interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In June, Mueller said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that the government believes foreign "individuals and entities" are continuing to "engage in interference operations like those charged in the present indictment." The filing sought to protect evidence requested by Prighozin's company.

Follow the money, and you'll find Vlad behind it, I guarantee.

Stay tuned.

I Dunno, Alaska If I Get The Chance, Con't

A few days ago I noted that the nation's only independent governor, Bill Walker of Alaska, had his Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott resign over "inappropriate comments to women" almost overnight.  This was odd enough with three weeks to go in the race, but I noted these comments in the story that were actually far more interesting.

Walker campaign manager, John-Henry Heckendorn, told the Associated Press that the campaign has been in conversations with Begich's campaign for several days about a "path forward for Alaska." He declined to go into details, but he said the conversations were prompted by concerns about Dunleavy and the dynamics of a three-way race. The talks so far have been "inconclusive" but will continue, Heckendorn said.

The polls showed the Republican in the race, former state Senator Mike Dunleavy, was ahead in the three-way contest with both Walker and Begich, with Dunleavy in the upper 40's and both Walker and Begich splitting the rest, which would make Dunleavy the easy winner.

But it looks like Walker realized he has no chance to win...and Friday he dropped out of the race to support Begich.

“I believe we cannot win a three-way race,” said Mr. Walker, a former Republican who left his party to win election as an independent in 2014. Mr. Walker said he had concluded that former United States Senator Mark Begich, a Democrat, “has a better chance of running a competitive race” against their Republican opponent, Mike J. Dunleavy, a well-financed Republican former state senator.

“Alaskans deserve a choice other than Mike Dunleavy,” Mr. Walker said. He urged his followers to vote for Mr. Begich even though his own name will still be on the ballot.

And not only is Walker dropping out of the race, he's wrecking any chance of going back to the Alaska Republican party.

As governor, Mr. Walker was careful not to burn bridges with Republicans in trying to get legislation passed. But in his statement to Alaskans on Friday, he went ahead and lit the flames. Mr. Walker made it clear, in a point-by-point analysis of Mr. Dunleavy’s record and statements on campaign trail, his view that Mr. Dunleavy was a wrong choice for the state on everything from taxes to health care.

“On balance, it is my belief that despite my many differences with Mark Begich, his stance on the important issues I have listed above more closely align with my priorities for Alaska,” Mr. Walker said.

There's more there, a lot more.   I wonder what it is, but Walker tossing a Molotov cocktail over his shoulder on the way out the door like this makes me think a hell of a lot is going on where there's more to this story.

Stay tuned.

And go Mark Begich...

Last Call For Meat The Press, Con't

The Saudis are apparently going ahead with their...umm..."explanation" of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi's "unfortunate death" and Donald Trump shrugs and says he finds the tale credible.

Saudi Arabia said Saturday that Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident Saudi journalist who disappeared more than two weeks ago, died after an argument and fistfight with unidentified men inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Eighteen Saudi men have been arrested and are being investigated in the case, Saudi state-run media reported without identifying any of them.

State media also reported that Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, the deputy director of Saudi intelligence, and other high-ranking intelligence officials had been dismissed. They did not say whether the men’s firing had a connection to the Khashoggi case or whether they were being investigated for playing a role in it.

Saudi Arabia has offered various, changing explanations for Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance — initially claiming that he had left the consulate alive.

But international outrage mounted as Turkish officials leaked lurid details from their own investigation suggesting that he was murdered inside the consulate and dismembered by a team of 15 Saudi agents who flew in specifically to kill him.

The case has battered the international reputation of the kingdom and its 33-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who has sought to sell himself to the world as a young reformer shaking off his country’s conservative past. But suspicions that such a complicated foreign operation could not have been launched without at least his tacit approval have driven away many of his staunchest foreign supporters.

The Trump administration had built strong ties with Crown Prince Mohammed, seeing him as a strong partner in its ambitions to counter Iran, forge a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, and reconfigure the Middle East.

In a statement, the White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the United States “acknowledges” the announcement from Saudi Arabia “and that it has taken action against the suspects it has identified so far.”

“We will continue to closely follow the international investigations into the tragic incident and advocate for justice that is timely, transparent and in accordance with all due process,” the statement said. 

So now we get to see if the Saudis get away with this.

Every indication of course is that they will.  The EU won't do anything, Congress will eventually go supine, and the Saudis will spread some money around to lobby for forgiveness.  By January things will be back to normal and it will be because "wise" King Salman has stepped in to "contain" his son.

So grave is the fallout from the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi that King Salman has felt compelled to intervene, five sources with links to the Saudi royal family said.

Last Thursday, Oct. 11, the king dispatched his most trusted aide, Prince Khaled al-Faisal, governor of Mecca, to Istanbul to try to defuse the crisis.

World leaders were demanding an explanation and concern was growing in parts of the royal court that the king’s son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to whom he has delegated vast powers, was struggling to contain the fallout, the sources said.

During Prince Khaled’s visit, Turkey and Saudi Arabia agreed to form a joint working group to investigate Khashoggi’s disappearance. The king subsequently ordered the Saudi public prosecutor to open an inquiry based on its findings.

“The selection of Khaled, a senior royal with high status, is telling as he is the king’s personal adviser, his right hand man and has had very strong ties and a friendship with (Turkish President) Erdogan,” said a Saudi source with links to government circles.

And so everything will be back to normal.

Until the next journalist is killed. 

But then, of course, that will be the new normal.

It's About Suppression, Con't

I said back in June that the Supreme Court decision that found Ohio's voter purges to be legal meant that red states were going to continually disenfranchise millions of black and Latino voters and black and Latino votes, every election cycle, every time, until they are stopped.  

North Carolina is doing it, eliminating early voting by making it as prohibitive as possible, and only recently was stopped from purging millions of voters through a loophole by a federal judge.

Georgia too has voter purge laws that remove voters for a host of reasons, possibly the worst ones in the nation, and GOP Secretary of State Brian Kemp is using every one of them to disenfranchise as many black voters as he can so he can win his race for governor against Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Georgia officials removed an estimated 107,000 people from voter rolls because they decided not to vote in prior elections, according to a new report.

An APM Reports analysis found the voters were removed under the state's "use it or lose it" law, which starts a process for removing people from voter rolls if they fail to vote, respond to a notice or make contact with election officials over a three-year period.

After that three-year span, those who don't vote or make contact with authorities in two elections can be purged from the voter rolls under the Georgia law.

Such laws, generally enacted by GOP governments, have been growing more common, with at least nine states now having them, according to APM Reports.

And of course, the overwhelming majority of these purged voters were black and registered as Democrats

Kemp is Georgia's secretary of state, and his office oversees elections. Abrams has argued that Georgia laws and Kemp's office have acted to suppress the votes of African-Americans in the state. Kemp says his office is following Georgia law and that he has acted to prevent voter fraud.

The two are locked in a tight race that could be decided by a relatively small number of voters.

The APM investigation concluded that many people struck from voter rolls under "use it or lose it" laws do not know that they have been dropped and are likely to be surprised if they are turned away from the polls on Nov. 6.

 Surprise!  You have to fill out a provisional ballot, which means Kemp's office will find a way not to count it, since he's still in charge of counting all the votes for the contest.

That's right.  Kemp has yet to resign or recuse himself from overseeing his own election.
Oh, but it gets worse.  Unless your absentee ballot signature perfectly matches that of your voter registration form in the judgment of Kemp's office, your vote is thrown away.

Say you live in Georgia. You’re eager to vote in this year’s election—a tight race between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Trump acolyteBrian Kemp—so you fill out an absentee ballot and mail it in. Then, days or weeks after the election, you receive a notice in the mail. The signature on your absentee ballot, it explains, looked different from the signature on your voter-registration card. So an election official threw out your ballot. There is nothing you can do. Your vote has been voided.

If Georgia’s signature-mismatch law remains in effect through the November election, this fate will befall thousands of would-be voters. The statute directs elections officials to apply amateur handwriting analysis to voters’ signatures and reject any potential “mismatch.” Nearly 500 ballots in Gwinnett County alone have already been rejected for mismatch, a disproportionate number of them cast by minority voters. Now the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia is suing, demanding that the state give all citizens an opportunity to cure ballots rejected for mismatch. Its suit will help determine how successfully Georgia will suppress minority votes in the upcoming race.

And Kemp's office is definitely targeting black voters in Atlanta for this methodology of disenfranchisement.

That’s the case in Georgia. The epicenter of the current mismatch crisis is Gwinnett County, the most diverse county in the state. While Gwinnett has just 12 percent of the state’s total mail-in ballots, it’s already responsible for 40 percent of statewide rejections this election cycle. Voters who cast absentee ballots very early may receive their rejection letters before Election Day, which allows them to try again by voting in person. But there is no requirement that the state send these letters speedily, so many receive them far too late. And even worse, there is no procedure by which a voter can cure her ballot—by, say, verifying her identity to an election official. If she wants to cast a ballot that counts, she must start from the beginning. And if the election is over, she has no ability to exercise her right to vote.

The ACLU argues that this scheme violates due process. It’s well established that qualified voters have a liberty interest in casting a ballot that counts, and so the government must provide some process before depriving citizens of that right. Georgia grants them none. Under long-standing Supreme Court precedent, courts must decide “what process is due” by weighing the interests at stake, the risk of violating those interests, the value of additional safeguards, and the burdens they will impose on the government.

The ACLU should win this suit.  But guess who gets the final say?

The Supreme Court.

Stay tuned.

The Problem Child

With just weeks to go before the 2018 midterms, I've noticed, this week especially, a number of articles describing the "Hillary Clinton problem" that Democrats have.  Daily Beast columnist Liz Mair makes it very clear that she wants Clinton not only gone from the spotlight, but from gone from Democratic politics altogether.

Hillary remains caught up in the delusion that the only reason she lost in 2016 was because of Russian interference. She does not seem to have fully processed the fact that she lost the electoral college, the only vote that counts. She touts the fact that she got nearly three million more votes than Trump while conveniently leaving out that her tally of the vote still fell well below 50 percent.

Both of the major party nominees in 2016 were so unlikable, flawed and—let’s be candid—unethical that lots of us just couldn’t pull the lever for her even if we couldn’t stand Trump. According to a study from American National Election Studies, the words most associated by voters with Hillary in 2016 were “experienced liar.” Is it logical that she’d want to rehab her image, given all this? Perhaps. Is it possible? No. Do we need to watch her try? Definitely, definitely, definitely not.

That might be especially the case if you’re a Democrat.

Hillary’s continual pursuit of limelight and headlines ensures that the image of the Democratic Party remains an outdated, outmoded, and frankly despicable for far too many voters. This comes at a time when leading Democrats are attempting to focus voters’ attention on the future—2020, and beating Trump—and jostling for the role as the new party leader.

It also undercuts Democrats’ positioning as the only party that really cares about #MeToo and that will fight for survivors, a contrast Dems are only too keen to spotlight in the wake of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court and ongoing allegations about President Trump’s treatment of women. Only sheer partisan convenience could allow someone to insist that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony is credible while downplaying the numerous allegations of mistreatment (and worse) made by women against Bill Clinton.

For the Democratic Party, about the best that can come of this latest Clinton revival is that no matter how unpalatable any of its leading lights—Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Sen. Cory Booker, or others—are individually, they’ll look like downright appealing the longer Hillary hangs about.

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus is somewhat less aggressive towards Clinton, but she still wants her gone.

Speaking of Bill Clinton, there was his wife on CBS’s “Sunday Morning,” being asked about workplace conduct in the clarifying light of the #MeToo movement. “In retrospect, do you think Bill should’ve resigned in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal?” asked correspondent Tony Dokoupil.

Clinton, without hesitation: “Absolutely not.”

Dokoupil: “It wasn’t an abuse of power?”

Clinton: “No, no.”

Dokoupil: “There are people who look at the incidents of the ’90s and they say, ‘A president of the United States cannot have a consensual relationship with an intern, the power imbalance is too great.’ ”

Clinton, interjecting mid-sentence: “Who was an adult. But let me ask you this: Where’s the investigation of the current incumbent against whom numerous allegations have been made and which he dismisses, denies and ridicules?”

Who was an adult . How can she say that, as if that is relevant in any way? Lewinsky’s technical adulthood is no defense for Bill Clinton’s behavior — in the workplace, as her superior (not to mention president), as a man old enough to be her father. And whatever the reasons for Hillary Clinton’s instinctive defense of her husband’s behavior then, her summary dismissal of it now diminishes her claim to feminism.

Would it not be possible for her to choke out something like: “We’ve all had some time to think about this and, yes, this was unacceptable workplace behavior. I don’t think a president who was elected by the country should have resigned over it, but I also think this conduct was seriously wrong.”

But this is not, it never has been, in Hillary Clinton’s emotional repertoire. She does not cede a millimeter; like Trump, she is allergic to apology. Like Trump, she is prone to whataboutism. If what Bill Clinton did was wrong, why does it matter if what Trump has done is wronger, if indeed it was? Whataboutism is an argument for losers, whichever side deploys it.

And so we are left with this depressing juxtaposition: a president who never hesitates to stoop in demeaning women. And a should’ve-been-president who is a champion for women, except those mistreated by her husband. If Trump never fails to infuriate, Clinton consistently disappoints.

NY Times op-ed board member Michelle Cottie says Democrats cannot bury Clinton quickly enough to get her out of the midterm picture.

This is the sort of moral arrogance and self-justification that has long troubled even many Democrats about Mrs. Clinton. The former first lady, turned senator, turned secretary of state may have been one of the most qualified nominees ever to run for president. But widespread ambivalence about her among not only swing voters but also her own base set the stage for her to lose the presidency to arguably the least qualified individual ever to hold that office.

Two years since that loss, Mrs. Clinton remains broadly unpopular. As of late September, her favorability rating still hovered at 36 percent, down several points from where it was at the time of the election.

Mrs. Clinton remains a singular obsession of Mr. Trump and his followers. The higher her profile, the more Republican leaders can use her as a rallying point for their voters. Months ago, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee boasted of his party’s plan to hang her around Democrats’ neck in the midterms: “We’re going to make them own her.”

Hillary Clinton is a woman of extraordinary achievement who has earned the right to share her views on whatever topic she sees fit. But this close to Election Day, discussing hot-button issues in national interviews is nothing but problematic for her party — and, ultimately, her own legacy. She and Mr. Clinton are set to begin a series of joint speaking appearances soon after the elections. Perhaps she could save her more incendiary observations for then.

Politico's Annie Karni goes so far as to describe "the Clinton problem" for Democrats and to ask if anybody has the "courage" to stand up to her and intervene.  They want her fundraising abilities...but not her.

The strange position Clinton currently occupies is perhaps best illustrated by her relationship with the Andrew Gillum campaign. On election night, Hillary and Bill Clinton both called the Tallahassee mayor, who is seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party and who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, to congratulate him and offer themselves as surrogates for anything he needed in his gubernatorial campaign, a source familiar with the call said. Since then, the Gillum campaign hasn’t invited Bill Clinton to do anything—closed- or open-door. And the campaign experienced some blowback from liberals for announcing that Hillary Clinton would campaign for Gillum.

“Even Hillary voters don’t want to see or hear from her again,” Miami filmmaker Billy Corben tweeted.

Clinton was widely reported to be joining Gillum on the trail. But a spokesman for the Gillum campaign clarified that she was only supporting the candidate through closed-door fundraisers. It was not clear whether the plans had changed.

Most of the incoming requests for Clinton are to raise money, said one former adviser familiar with her plans. She’s been working closely with Gov. Howard Dean, who has partnered with her on her PAC, Onward Together.

“The real future in this party is under 35, and that’s what we’re funding,” Dean said in an interview. “She’s the best fundraiser in the Democratic Party, and she’s pretty far-sighted. We’ve been working together to connect her donor base to all these young groups. What you’re seeing is that we’re facilitating the takeover of the Democratic Party by people who are under 35 years old. This is a big piece of what she is doing politically.”

But despite being the first woman to clinch her party’s presidential nomination, Clinton is seen as a discordant fit to publicly stump for many young, progressive female candidates. She has received some requests to campaign, in places where she is seen as a surrogate who can move suburban women to come out and vote. Earlier this month, for instance, she participated in a roundtable event with J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic candidate for governor in Illinois.

In 2020, however, it remains to be seen who wants to campaign with her, and how much.

“If I was running, I could see certain circumstances in which she could be helpful, from a rally perspective, in certain locations, on a limited basis,” said Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who has shot to fame representing porn star Stormy Daniels and who is considering a presidential bid of his own. He added: “I think there’s still a lot of people that support her, and for that reason she could certainly play a positive role in some capacity in 2020.”

Personally, the reaction to Clinton getting involved by the Village media, who has literally despised her and wanted to destroy her politically for well over two decades, is way over the top and only making things worse.  Like it or not, she is who the Democratic voters chose in the primaries. I do not understand the incandescent hatred for her.

Having said that...having said that.

Perhaps this isn't the best time for her to be picking fights.

StupidiNews!

• Under heavy pressure from voting rights groups, and in the wake of a lawsuit four years ago, Florida is easing voting registration requirements for counties affected by Hurricane Michael.
• The Trump regime is once again asking a federal court to toss a 2015 lawsuit by 21 young climate change activists, the lawsuit is set to go to trial at the end of month unless blocked.
• Taliban militants in Afghanistan are taking credit for the assassinations of the country's top police commander and a local intelligence chief, a US general present in the area was not harmed.
• Donald Trump is once again warming Saudi Arabia of "severe" consequences as US Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin will not attend next week's Saudi investors' conference.
• Scotland's Orkney Islands could be the initial deployment grounds for short-range small electric passenger planes, Scottish airline Loganair say it plans to make 10 inter-island routes all electric.

Last Call For Meat The Press, Con't

You know things have gotten bad when the NY Times fully admits in the headline that the Saudis are trial ballooning the naming of a Saudi intelligence official to take the fall for the state-sanctioned murder of Washington Post journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi.

The rulers of Saudi Arabia are considering blaming a top intelligence official close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, three people with knowledge of the Saudi plans said Thursday.

The plan to assign blame to Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, a high-ranking adviser to the crown prince, would be an extraordinary recognition of the magnitude of international backlash to hit the kingdom since the death of Mr. Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi dissident. A resident of Virginia and contributor to The Washington Post, Mr. Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.

Blaming General Assiri could also provide a plausible explanation for the killing and help deflect blame from the crown prince, who American intelligence agencies are increasingly convinced was behind Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance.

Turkish officials have said they possess evidence showing that 15 Saudi agents assassinated and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi in the consulate.

After two weeks of blanket denials and mounting pressure from Turkey and Washington, Saudi Arabia said it would conduct its own investigation to determine who was responsible. 

But even with the investigation still ostensibly underway, the Saudis are already pointing to General Assiri as the culprit, according to the three people familiar with the Saudi plans. People close to the White House have already been briefed and given General Assiri’s name.

Whether that move will be enough to calm the international crisis and what it may mean for Prince Mohammed, the kingdom’s day-to-day ruler, remain to be seen.

It's not going to be, not with coverage like this in full view.  And let's not forget that four of the members of the team that allegedly killed Khashoggi are part of the Crown Prince's security detail.  Of course, the real issue is why Trump is helping cover up the murder, and the answer is that his son-in-law Jared Kushner is neck deep in the mess.

Jared Kushner reportedly told President Donald Trump to stand by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — despite mounting evidence that the royal was involved in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi two weeks ago.

Kushner’s reasoning? International outrage over other incidents, like Saudi Arabia’s bombing of innocent children in Yemen and kidnapping of Lebanon’s prime minister, decreased with time. The scandal over the disappearance of Khashoggi, a US resident and Washington Post writer, would similarly go away, he argued.

Nice guy, huh.  Again, Kushner is convinced that Trump can make this blow over.  Why does he want that so badly?

To a certain extent, Kushner is correct — public attention did shift from the recent Yemen tragedy and Saad Hariri’s kidnapping, although they have since informed the realization that Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, is a reckless autocrat. But what’s notable here is that Kushner doesn’t want the US to respond to Khashoggi’s alleged murder in any way. He simply wants America to forget the incident ever happened.

That’s perhaps not so surprising. Kushner has cultivated a personal relationship with MBS while serving as senior White House adviser for Middle East affairs. He and the crown prince even text on WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging app. Because of his close ties to the Saudi royal, Kushner has purposely stayed out of the spotlight during the scandal.

But for MBS, the news is another reason to stay in close contact with Trump’s son-in-law. The royal once bragged that Kushner was “in his pocket,” and the New York Times story will likely only add to that perception.

Not a good look for either one of them.  The other person who has a lot of exposure here to the Crown Prince is another Prince...in this case, our old merc friend, Erik, whose plans to privatize the Afghanistan permawar were sunk by the Afghans themselves right after Khashoggi's disappearance.

It's almost like they knew a man best known for running one of the biggest private merc outfits on earth had done something wrong that ended any hope of negotiations, when we later find out a team of Saudi mercs magically appeared in Turkey to mulch a journalist.

So no, Trump was never going to lay a finger on the Saudis over this, and they'll get the green light to murder more dissidents, because America is ruled by an autocrat.

The Swift-Planing Of Amy McGrath

Whenever a Democratic military veteran runs for federal public office, odds are very good their service record is going to be attacked by Republican liars, especially if the GOP candidate hasn't even done so much as to own a Swiss Army knife.  

It cost John Kerry the White House, and Republicans know it works, so it should come as no surprise that here in Kentucky, retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath, trying to unseat Republican Rep. Andy Barr, is running into attacks that outright lie about her time in the military. 

Democratic congressional candidate Amy McGrath’s military background has been one of her greatest assets in her campaign to represent Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District.

It was a major feature in her campaign announcement video, which went viral and caught the attention of national donors. It has helped her connect with conservative Democrats in the district. And it’s an attribute she frequently highlights to hammer home her pledge to put country over political party.

But as Election Day nears in her nationally-watched race against U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, some veterans in the 19-county district are accusing McGrath of misrepresenting her role in combat missions as she speaks to voters.

Jim Lucas, an Army veteran from Berea, said he and a group of about six veterans plan to petition the Kentucky Aviation Hall of Fame to have her removed for allegedly misrepresenting her military record in campaign commercials. In particular, Lucas accused McGrath of “stolen valor” for creating the false impression that she piloted F-18 fighter jets into combat.

“We’re not doing this as a political thing,” said Lucas, a registered Republican. “We’re going to continue whether she gets elected or not.”

McGrath, though, has been consistent about her role in the military and careful to say she was the first woman Marine to fly in an F-18 into combat. She served as the back-seat weapons system operator during her 89 combat missions, not as the front-seat pilot. She did later become a front-seat pilot, but never steered an F-18 during a combat mission.

A Herald-Leader review of McGrath’s commercials and many of her public comments found no evidence that she has ever claimed to have piloted an F-18 during combat, though some political groups supporting her and some media reports have gotten it wrong.

“I just think it’s part of this climate where you have to try to tear somebody down and make them seem like someone you can’t trust,” McGrath said Thursday when asked about Lucas’ claims. “I’ve never tried to embellish my record, ever.”

Michael Estorer, who served with McGrath and now lives in Lexington, said everything the McGrath campaign has said about her military service is accurate.

“It is a little bit of a smear campaign,” Estorer said. “People are taking little facts and attacking them to misrepresent her service.”

Perhaps it's because McGrath and Barr are running a dead heat here in the Bluegrass State that would explain this sudden "stolen valor" idiocy, while Barr can claim plausible deniability and say he has nothing to do with the false attacks.

And let's remember, these assholes don't just want to McGrath to lose next month, they want to drive her out of politics for good, they want her erased from the Kentucky Aviation Hall of Fame, and they want to charge her and imprison her under stolen valor laws.

They want her gone, permanently, for daring to challenge Andy Barr.  They want to use her as a warning shot against Democratic military veterans in 2020: if we can do this to the first female Marine fighter pilot, we can do this to anyone.

The Revenge Of The Son Of Austerity Hysteria, Con't

As I predicted time and again, after it became clear that the 2017 GOP tax cut scam was going to skyrocket the deficit and add trillions of the national debt over ten years to give tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest one percent, Republicans were going to insist Democrats had to cut Social Security and Medicare, and Medicaid and make them take 100% of the blame for it.

We've reached that stage of the con now.

Republicans have removed all doubt: When it comes to the federal deficit, the problem is Medicare and Social Security — not their own tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.

Fresh off the news that the deficit is increasing under President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Bloomberg News that Congress should target Social Security and Medicare for cuts to address the growing federal debt.

The federal deficit grew by nearly $800 billion over the first fiscal year of Trump’s presidency, during which the Republican Congress passed a tax cut targeted mostly to corporations and the wealthy, which is projected to add more than $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years.

The White House and GOP leaders promised that despite all projections to the contrary, the tax cuts would pay for themselves. That hasn’t materialized so far.

But, of course, a growing federal deficit hasn’t caused Republican leaders to reconsider their tax policy. Instead, they argue that entitlement reform — Republican-speak for cuts to popular social safety net programs — is what’s really needed to address the federal deficit.

From McConnell’s interview with Bloomberg this week:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blamed rising federal deficits and debt on a bipartisan unwillingness to contain spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and said he sees little chance of a major deficit reduction deal while Republicans control Congress and the White House.

“It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem,” McConnell said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg News when asked about the rising deficits and debt. “It’s a bipartisan problem: unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future.”

Republicans were actually signaling during the tax debate, before the bill ever passed, that this was their strategy: pass a deficit-exploding tax cut and then argue that the real problem is federal spending on health and retirement benefits.

Massive, massive cuts are coming, and Republicans are going to blame Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats when they come. The fact that the GOP tax scam bill exploded the deficit?  Irrelevant, it only serves as proof that Democrats aren't serious about budgets when they refuse to cut spending, and our media will play dumb like they always do.

Even worse, Republicans will simply say "Democrats will raise taxes on tens of millions of middle-class Americans" unless they go along, setting up Trump for his key issue in 2020.  And should the Dems be dumb enough to capitulate, they'll take 100% of the blame, and the Myth of the Fiscally Responsible GOP will continue to be the truth for the majority of voters and pundits.

We've seen this game before, we saw it coming for over a year, and Dems still don't know how to counter it.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Con't

It is indeed, finally, after 18 months, almost Mueller Time.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is expected to issue findings on core aspects of his Russia probe soon after the November midterm elections as he faces intensifying pressure to produce more indictments or shut down his investigation, according to two U.S. officials.

Specifically, Mueller is close to rendering judgment on two of the most explosive aspects of his inquiry: whether there were clear incidents of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and whether the president took any actions that constitute obstruction of justice, according to one of the officials, who asked not to be identified speaking about the investigation.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Mueller’s findings would be made public if he doesn’t secure unsealed indictments. The regulations governing Mueller’s probe stipulate that he can present his findings only to his boss, who is currently Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The regulations give a special counsel’s supervisor some discretion in deciding what is relayed to Congress and what is publicly released.

The question of timing is critical. Mueller’s work won’t be concluded ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections, when Democrats hope to take control of the House and end Trump’s one-party hold on Washington.

But this timeline also raises questions about the future of the probe itself. Trump has signaled he may replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the election, a move that could bring in a new boss for Mueller. Rosenstein also might resign or be fired by Trump after the election.

Rosenstein has made it clear that he wants Mueller to wrap up the investigation as expeditiously as possible, another U.S. official said. The officials gave no indications about the details of Mueller’s conclusions. Mueller’s office declined to comment for this story.

Here's what I expect to happen between midterm elections and January, and very little of it depends on whether or not Democrats prevail in those elections in less than 3 weeks:

• The Trump regime "leaks" that the Mueller report completely exonerates Trump before the report is even delivered to Rosenstein. 
• Rosenstein determines that the report will not be released publicly, otherwise Trump immediately has the excuse to fire him OR Sessions quits and his replacement orders Rosenstein not to release the report.
• Either way the report is leaked immediately and Trump/Sessions's replacement fires Rosenstein as a result.  Mueller is also "done" because his report has been delivered.
• Trump rolls out the pardon train to fix any issues resulting from possible indictments by Mueller.
• Kavanaugh is the fifth vote on SCOTUS to let him get away with it. 

All this has to happen before Democrats take control of the House in January.   Remember, SCOTUS stepped in on Bush v Gore on December 12, 2000, only five weeks after the 2000 election, and just five days after the second Florida recount, so they can move relatively quickly on such a vital Constitutional question if necessary.

After that, well, that's the real question now, isn't it?

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

When I say Republicans are the party of white supremacists, don't just take my word for it, it's the actual white supremacists happily admitting that's exactly what the goal is.

Patrick Casey blended in easily with the buttoned-up crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference held outside Washington D.C. earlier this year.

His boyish face was clean-shaven. His brown hair was close-cropped. And he shuffled between the networking breakfasts and panel discussions wearing a maroon sweater, matching collared shirt and crisp khaki pants.

But despite all outward appearances, Casey, 29, wasn’t like all of the other Republicans at CPAC, the largest annual gathering of conservative activists in the U.S.

He wasn’t there only to champion conservative causes. Casey had ulterior motives: to covertly spread the message of the white nationalist group he leads.

As the executive director of Identity Evropa, Casey is on a bold mission. “To take over the GOP as much as possible,” he told NBC News.

Casey and his roughly 800 fellow members believe ethnic diversity damages the country. Emboldened by President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on race and immigration, they advocate for allowing only Caucasians to immigrate to the U.S. in order to maintain a “white supermajority.”
In Casey’s perfect world, whites would live among whites in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and South Africa, blacks would live among blacks in Africa, Asians in Asia, and Hispanics in Latin America. “Ethnic diversity has been proven time and time again in many studies to be very detrimental for social cohesion, social capital, and it's just not a good model for society,” he said.

Identity Evropa gained notoriety last year when it helped organize the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. The gathering of white supremacists ended with a white nationalist plowing his car into a group of counter protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

Casey now sees politics rather than protests as the prime vehicle to carry his brand of white identity politics into the mainstream.

Casey wants Identity Evropa candidates to get elected on the GOP ticket so they can implement these policies.  There are millions, if not tens of millions of Republican voters out there that would like to see that happen.

And frankly, let's not forget that there's plenty of other Republicans, both candidates and those actively in Congress and in state legislatures...and the White House...who want to "maintain a white supermajority" as well.  That's where the GOP is in 2018: the party of white identity.

That's been the goal since Atwater and well before, and there's no reason to think they'll stop playing that game now.  In fact, that's pretty much all they have left.  The only difference now is that they feel safe enough to have people like Casey boldly proclaim that this is the plan.

Unfortunately, as with so many times in America's past, it's working.  They've got the culture part down, they're working on the psuedo-science part of the takeover now as advances in genetic testing are leading to a new era of science being co-opted for eugenics, and the political part is coming along nicely for them.

We're already facing the imminent end of the civil rights era.  After that, history tells us, comes the cleansing.

I Dunno, Alaska If I Get The Chance

Something really weird is going on in Alaska politics has Lt. Gov. Byron Mallot as abruptly resigned his post three weeks before the state's gubernatorial election, where Independent Gov. Bill Walker is up against former Dem Sen. Mark Begich and Republican Mike Dunleavy in a three-way race.

Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott abruptly resigned from office Tuesday following disclosure of recent "inappropriate comments," complicating what was already a difficult re-election for Gov. Bill Walker. Details about what Mallott said or to whom were not immediately clear.

A new lieutenant governor, Alaska Health and Social Services Commissioner Valerie Nurr'araaluk Davidson, was immediately sworn in. In a brief statement, she said she was "profoundly disappointed" by Mallott's conduct, adding "respect for women, and the dignity of all Alaskans, is our responsibility."

Walker, in a written statement that he later read in a brief news conference in Anchorage, said, "Byron recently made inappropriate comments that do not reflect the sterling level of behavior required in his role as lieutenant governor. I learned of the incident last night. Byron has taken full responsibility for his actions and has resigned."

Mallott's resignation comes three weeks before Election Day. Walker, elected as an independent, faces Democrat Mark Begich and Republican Mike Dunleavy.

Walker campaign manager, John-Henry Heckendorn, told the Associated Press that the campaign has been in conversations with Begich's campaign for several days about a "path forward for Alaska." He declined to go into details, but he said the conversations were prompted by concerns about Dunleavy and the dynamics of a three-way race. The talks so far have been "inconclusive" but will continue, Heckendorn said.

The heck is going on here?

Mallott's resignation is odd is hell, but this talk of Begich in talks with Walker about the "dynamics of a three-way race" with 3 weeks before the election is hinky as hell.

More as we find out, I guess, but this is just bonkers.

StupidiNews!

• The death toll from Hurricane Michael has risen to 29 overall, 19 in Florida alone as search and recovery teams continue combing through housing and building debris.
• Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins received a letter at her home that included a note saying the envelope contained the poison ricin, FBI officials say they are testing the letter.
• Former California GOP Rep. Mary Bono has resigned as interim USA Gymnastics head after tweeting criticism of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick's Nike campaign.
• Netflix added nearly seven million new subscribers in Q3, two million more than predicted, as the streaming giant recovered from a sluggish first half of 2018.
• Humans and AI drivers will work together in a proposed Formula E Roborace motorsports series, a successful test race in Berlin means the racing cars will have the green light for a 2019 season.