Last Call For The Dark Side Of History

When leaders of democracies do things like "invoke emergency powers to undertake domestic policies as an end run around existing systems" then nothing good happens, see the bulk of the last 80 years.

President Donald Trump said Frday he is considering declaring a national emergency to help pay for his long-desired border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The president, when asked by ABC News' senior national correspondent Terry Moran during a press conference, acknowledged that he would consider declaring a national emergency to help get funds to build the wall "for the security of our country".

Trump did not elaborate on the details of such a process.

Earlier Friday, multiple sources familiar with the ongoing discussion told ABC News that options could include reprogramming funds from the Department of Defense and elsewhere – a move which would circumvent Congress.

Sources tell ABC News the discussions are still on the "working level" adding that there's a range of legal mechanisms that are being considered before such a decision is announced.

The discussions have intensified as the president is now 14 days into a partial government shutdown, facing newly empowered House Democrats who are refusing to budge issue of wall funding. "We are not doing a wall," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday, calling the proposed structure an "immorality."

If you think Donald Trump would stop at "just building a wall" when it comes to invoking emergency powers, history is full of autocrats that indicate otherwise.

She Said A Wordy Dird

Newly-minted Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib said what we've all been thinking for the last two years, and this has Serious People Upset At The Democrats.

Newly elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on Friday shied away from moving forward with impeachment at this time, calling it a "divisive" option. But she said that a colleague's use of an expletive to describe President Donald Trump was no "worse" than some of the language the president himself has used.

"I do think that we want to be unified and bring people together. Impeachment is a very divisive approach to take and we shouldn’t take it ... without the facts," Pelosi said during an MSNBC town hall at Trinity University in Washington, her alma mater.

Her comments came the morning after a newly elected member of Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., told a progressive audience that Democrats are going to "impeach the motherf---er."

Pelosi said, "Generationally, that would not be language I would use, but nonetheless, I don’t think we should make a big deal of it."

Pelosi also said that what Tlaib said was "nothing worse than the president has said," and that the episode "consolidates his base, but I don’t think they need much consolidation."

She added that while she was "not in the censorship business ... I don't like that language, I wouldn't use that language, but I wouldn't establish language standards for my colleagues."

Good for Nancy Pelosi to defuse this manufactured outrage, but of course CNN's Chris Cillizza is Very Concerned™!

The point here is simple: Trump didn't win because voters thought he was a great guy. They knew he wasn't. Many of them disapproved of the way he ran his campaign -- and the way he acted in his life. They just decided that other things, namely that he represented radical change in Washington, mattered more. 

Calling Trump names -- even explicit ones -- isn't going to convince people who are on the fence about him in 2020 to cast their vote for a Democrat. Remember that Hillary Clinton's general election campaign was largely based on this flawed premise: We're not going to elect someone like this guy as president, are we? 

People did. And so it looks -- at least to me -- like the height of folly for Democrats to pursue a strategy over the next two years built around the idea of lowering themselves to Trump's rhetorical level.

And Jonathan Turley is Rather Upset™!

Tlaib quoted her son telling her, “Look mama you won. Bullies don’t win.” Tlaib reportedly replied, “You’re right, they don’t. And we’re gonna go in and impeach the motherf**ker.”

There may or may not be grounds for impeachment in the Mueller report expected. However, being a bully is not one of them. More importantly, the glee expressed by Tlaib is concerning enough but there also seems a lack of concern over the actual proof of a high crime and misdemeanor under the constitutional standard. Impeachment is not meant to be a partisan tool or some cathartic act. That might be a better — and less profane — lesson to share with one’s son.

Other Democrats are Livid And Furious™!

“Mueller hasn’t even produced his report yet!” said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. “People should cool their jets a little bit, let the prosecutors do their job and finish the investigation.”

“Inappropriate,” added Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.). “As elected officials I think we should be expected to set a high bar… It’s not helpful.”

Even Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who introduced an impeachment resolution earlier this week, was shocked. His eyes bulged in disbelief when a reporter read him Tlaib’s comments and he was speechless for several seconds.

After he regained his composure, Sherman said that kind of language is detrimental to the cause: “That’s not language I would use … I think the office of the presidency should be treated with respect.”

Party elders also sought to calm talk of impeachment without criticizing Tlaib directly. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the new chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, called Talib’s comments “inappropriate” and said, “We need to be patient.”

“You can’t accomplish very much of anything unless you have civility and show respect for your colleagues,” Cummings said. “Those kind of comments do not take us in the right direction.”

Maybe Rep. Tlaib should sound less like DOnald Trump.

Of course, maybe Donald Trump should sound less like Donald Trump, and not be doing the things Donald Trump is currently doing, and maybe we should all be far more concerned with that.

Just saying.

Already Looking For The Exits

Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts is the second GOP senator to bail on 2020 after Tennessee's Lamar Alexander.

Sen. Pat Roberts, the blunt-speaking Kansas Republican who worked closely with Democrats on helping the nation’s farmers and protecting food stamps for millions of low-income Americans, announced Friday that he would not seek reelection in 2020.

“I am announcing I will serve the remainder of this term as your senator, fighting for Kansas in these troubled times. However, I will not be a candidate in 2020 for a fifth Senate term,” said an emotional Roberts, his wife, Franki, by his side.

Roberts’s plans to retire comes just a few weeks after Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, another longtime GOP senator known for bipartisanship, said he would not seek reelection.

Roberts recently shepherded an $867 billion farm bill into law, with the measure securing the backing of all Senate Democrats, a remarkable feat in a fractious Congress. The legislation allocates billions of dollars in subsidies to American farmers, legalizes hemp, bolsters farmers markets and rejects stricter limits on food stamps pushed by House Republicans.

Conservatives were unhappy with the bill’s provisions on food stamps, and the Trump administration had signaled its intention to cut them without approval from Congress.

Roberts alluded to his bipartisan work at a news conference in Manhattan, Kan., where he announced his decision.

“I have a lot of trust and faith in Senator [Debbie] Stabenow,” Roberts said of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s ranking Democrat as he boasted about passing his eighth farm bill. He also called the panel “the least partisan committee in Washington.”

Roberts, 82, said he spoke to former senator Bob Dole before making his announcement and the 95-year-old Dole joked about seeking the open Senate seat.

Republicans will be favored to hold Roberts’s seat; Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in Kansas since 1932.

Republicans close to Senate leaders expressed strong interest Friday in the prospect of trying to persuade Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to run for the open seat. As a former congressman from Kansas and a staunch ally of President Trump, the Republicans reasoned, Pompeo would have the potential to clear the GOP field and spare the party a potentially messy primary fight. 

I bet they have a real shot in 2020, just saying.   And it's not like Mike Pompeo has covered himself in glory working for Donald Trump, either.

I understand that Dems picking up 4 seats is going to be tough, but Colorado and Maine are definitely in play and don't count out David Perdue's seat in Georgia, Joni Ernst's seat in Iowa, Thom Tillis in NC and hey, Lindsey Graham in SC.

Dems on the other hand will have to defend Doug Jones's seat, and that's going to be a long haul.

It's doable though.

StupidiNews!

• House Democrats passed bills to reopen the government for their first acts in the new Congress as Senate Republicans vowed to refuse to bring the measures up for a vote.
• Donald Trump is considering former Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb as Defense Secretary, Webb was former Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan.
• Canada says that more than a dozen Canadian citizens have been arrested in China since the CFO of Chinese cell phone giant Huawei was arrested in Vancouver last December.
• US states like Texas and North Carolina as well as Puerto Rico say the Trump regime is sitting on $16 billion in disaster mitigation funds because the White House has no plans to release the money.
• After seven months, the Senate has approved a second Democrat to join the FCC's three Republicans, but the commission is now furloughed due to the government shutdown.

Last Call For Shutdown Meltdown

And the first crack in, well, the GOP wall, emerge as Colorado GOP Sen. Cory Gardner immediately finds himself in the 2020 hotseat.

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), who faces a potentially tough reelection in 2020, says Congress should re-open the federal government, even without a deal on funding President Trump’s border wall.

Gardner is the first Senate Republican to call for ending the partial shutdown even without a deal on Trump’s demand for $5 billion to fund a border wall.

“I think we should pass a continuing resolution to get the government back open. The Senate has done it last Congress, we should do it again today,” he said.

Gardner says the onus will then be on Democrats to explain why they don’t support more money for border security after they voted to spend an additional $46 billion on the border in 2013.

All but five Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee last year voted for a homeland security funding bill that allocated $1.6 billion for border fencing. Democratic leaders have since retrenched their offer, proposing $1.3 billion — the same amount Congress appropriated for fiscal 2018 — for border fencing.

“We can pass legislation that has the appropriations number in it while we continue to get more but we should continue to do our jobs and get the government open,” Gardner said, referring to the funding number for border fencing that Democrats have already agreed to.

Between Gardner and Mitt Romney, with Rand Paul's usual antics thrown in, it's important to remember that Republicans can only afford three defections in the 116th Senate.  That means Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are going to have some competition, especially Collins, who like Gardener, has a tough re-election fight ahead in 2020.

Just saying, any Republicans who want to stop Donald Trump in the Senate can.  They won't, of course.

But they could.

Meet The New Boss, Same As A Couple Of Bosses Ago

Have a nice day, Donny.

A Hat Lands In The Ring, Con't

Another Democrat has signaled getting into the 2020 race, this time it's Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, running on the greenest of green platforms.

Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington state, is running for president with a single-issue focus on climate change.

The governor’s intention to compete for the Democratic nomination was announced in an article published Wednesday in The Atlantic.

Inslee has served as governor of the state since 2012. One of focuses has been environmental concerns in the state, including reducing the use of fossil fuels while pushing alternative energy development and boosting green jobs, according to his bio.

As governor, he also has pushed for investments in education, creating jobs, supporting workers and boosting the state’s transparency, his official bio said.

He is co-chair and co-founder of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan group of 17 governors who seek to implement the policy goals of the Paris Agreement.

It’s a strong contrast to President Donald Trump, who supports fossil fuels and has questioned his own administration’s dire report on climate change published in November, saying “As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it," he told The Washington Post.

Trump announced his intention to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement in June 2017.

Inslee said of climate change: “We have two existential threats right now: one is to our natural systems, and one is to our economic systems.”

He previously served in Congress, representing Washington from 1998 until he was elected governor in 2012.

Inslee's point is that unlike Republicans (and more than a few Democrats, looking at you Joe Manchin), he's actually done a lot about climate change.

As he did in Washington State, Inslee would propose a mix of government investments and incentives to spur other investment, restrictions on power plants and emissions, and programs to promote R&D and job growth. An endless number of jobs can be created in the climate arena, Inslee says. It’s the way to make a real dent in income inequality and have the Democratic Party bring tangible solutions to communities in rural America that have been left behind. With his inaction, President Donald Trump—Inslee calls him “the commander in chief of delusion”—is engaged in a “disgusting selling-out of the country,” a “crime” against the aspirational optimism of America.

Inslee is lining up donors and adding them to the political-action committee he launched in December. An official presidential exploratory committee is next. Aides note that he’s attracted new supporters and fans after serving as the Democratic Governors Association chair last year; with Inslee at the helm, Democrats in November picked up seven governorships. He’s put together an email list of 200,000 climate advocates, which could become a beachhead of support around the country. Friends have offered to move to Iowa for him.

His campaign, such as it is, seems a lot more seat-of-the-pants than the machines Senators Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris have slowly assembled. For now, he seems to be counting on being able to stand out on his record—and preparing for future battles with Trump by testing out zingers like “I wish nothing but the best for Donald Trump, including having the top bunk.”

Inslee has been in politics for 30 years. He started off in the Washington State legislature and served for more than a decade in Congress. He was elected governor in 2012 and has, without much national notice, pursued arguably the most progressive and greenest agenda in the country, with fields of solar panels, fleets of electric buses, and massive job growth to show for it. And years before anyone was tweeting about the “Green New Deal,” Inslee wrote a climate-change book while he was in Congress: Apollo’s Fire, a 2007 blueprint for how much economic and entrepreneurial opportunity there is in saving the planet.

Here's my issue with Inslee however: the Dems can't afford a single-issue candidate, because the America that elected Trump is fundamentally broken.  There's a lot to fix, and climate change and the Green New Deal is only a small part of a much larger social, racial, economic, and educational problem in America today.

What I'm worried about is Inslee is burying the issue of race in America under green instead of class, and it's Bernie Sanders all over again, a "kinder, gentler" progressivism that ignores all those "feel-bad" issues of bigotry and prejudice in favor of wining over suburban white voters.

That cannot work in 2020, and from what I'm seeing of Inslee, while he'll make a great Interior Secretary under a Democratic President, that's the limit of his aspirations.

StupidiNews!

• As Nancy Pelosi takes the reins of the House as Speaker today, congressional Democrats confirm that Donald Trump will get "nothing for the wall" in any spending bills.
• North Carolina Republicans are refusing to participate in Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's efforts to create an interim Board of Elections, leaving the fate of NC-9 in limbo.
• The US Senate Judiciary Committee will take up confirmation hearings for Attorney General nominee William Barr on January 15 and 16, Barr is expected to pass the committee on a party-line vote.
• Donald Trump has referred to the recent bear market as a "little glitch" noting that stock markets are still up by nearly 30% since he was elected in 2016.
• Pharmaceutical giants jacked up drug prices on January 1 by an average of 6.5%, with several companies and drugs seeing double-digit price increases for 2019.

Last Call For Brazil Nuts, Con't

And on his first day on the job, Brazil's new leader Jair Bolsonaro goes straight to step seven on the Genocide Watch chart and begins singling out Brazil's indigenous, Afro-Brazilians, and the LGBTQ community for persecution.

Newly installed President Jair Bolsonaro issued executive orders targeting Brazil’s indigenous groups, descendants of slaves and the LGBT community in the first hours of his administration, moving quickly after a campaign in which the far-right leader said he would radically overhaul many aspects of life in Latin America’s largest nation.

One of the orders issued late Tuesday, hours after his inauguration, likely will make it all but impossible for new lands to be identified and demarcated for indigenous communities. Areas set aside for “Quilombolas,” as descendants of former slaves are known, are also affected by the decision.

Another order removed the concerns of the LGBT community from consideration by the new human rights ministry.

In a move favorable to his allies in agribusiness, which have criticized giving large swaths of lands to the indigenous, Bolsonaro transferred the responsibilities for delineating indigenous territories from the Justice Ministry to the Agriculture Ministry. The new agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina, is part of the agribusiness caucus in Brazil’s lower house and has opposed requests from native communities.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain and longtime congressman, said during his presidential campaign that he would stop making what he calls concessions to native Brazilians and quilombolas.

“Less than one million people live in those places isolated from the real Brazil,” Bolsonaro tweeted Wednesday. “They are explored and manipulated by nonprofits. Together we will integrate those citizens and give value to all Brazilians.”

The Justice Ministry previously handled demarcation of indigenous lands through the FUNAI agency, which also oversees other initiatives for indigenous communities such as health care, housing and language preservation. Bolsonaro’s order is raising uncertainties about FUNAI by shifting it to a new ministry for family, women and human rights that is headed by an ultraconservative evangelical pastor.

Observatorio do Clima, a network of 45 Brazilian civil society groups, said in a statement to The Associated Press that the executive orders “are only the first step on meeting Bolsonaro’s campaign promises of dismantling environmental governance, stripping indigenous peoples of their rights and opening up indigenous lands for business.”

“The attack on FUNAI goes beyond the wildest dreams of the rural caucus, who had tried for years to pass a constitutional amendment transferring the demarcation of indigenous lands from the president to Congress,” the nonprofit said. “Bolsonaro solved the problem by transferring them directly to farmers. Not even the military dictatorship, whose treatment of indigenous peoples was ghastly, went that far.”

So these groups are about to lose their rights and their lands, and the next step, history tells us, will be losing their lives.  It's something Donald Trump will be paying very close attention to.

Made In Taiwan

Since wolrd powers are back to using threats and force now, there's no reason why China should be any different.  President Xi Jinping made it very clear today in his response to Taiwan's recent overtures on peaceful reunification that the "lost province" should prepare to rejoin Mother China or else.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, warned Taiwan that unification must be the ultimate goal of any talks over its future and that efforts to assert full independence could be met by armed force, laying out an unyielding position on Wednesday in his first major speech about the contested island democracy.

Mr. Xi outlined his stance one day after Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, urged China to peacefully settle disputes over the island, whose 23 million people, she said, want to preserve their self-rule. But Beijing treats Taiwan as an illegitimate breakaway from Chinese rule, and Mr. Xi said unification was unstoppable as China rose.

“The country is growing strong, the nation is rejuvenating and unification between the two sides of the strait is the great trend of history,” Mr. Xi told officials, military officers and guests in the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing.

China would respect the Taiwanese people’s religious and legal freedoms in a unified “one country, two systems” framework, Mr. Xi said. But he warned that the profound political differences between Taiwan, a vibrant democracy, and China, a highly authoritarian government, were no excuse to reject unification.

“Different systems are not an obstacle to unification, and even less are they an excuse for separatism,” Mr. Xi said. “The private property, religious beliefs and legitimate rights and interests of Taiwanese compatriots will be fully assured.”

Mr. Xi also accompanied his offer of talks with a warning — one implicitly also aimed at the United States, which provides Taiwan with military equipment and the possibility of support in a crisis.

“We make no promise to abandon the use of force, and retain the option of taking all necessary measures,” Mr. Xi said in a section of the speech that drew rousing applause. Those options, he said, could be used against “intervention by external forces.”

The diverging positions staked out by Mr. Xi and Ms. Tsai have brought into focus how the disputed future of Taiwan remains a volatile question that could erupt into crisis, especially if either side misjudges the intentions of the other — or of the United States, a key ally that has strengthened support for Taiwan.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which handles relations with China, said it did not have an immediate comment on Mr. Xi’s speech.

Since misjudgement is the key feature of the Trump regime, should Washington get involved in this dispute, I almost guarantee it's going to get ugly.  It may get ugly anyway, as Xi has been playing hardball in the China Sea and in Africa during his term and there's no reason to believe that he'll settle for anything less than "reunification".

Add this to the world's potential hotspots in an era of America's influence in freefall.

Introducing The New Romney 3.0

America's favorite failed Uncanny Valley experiment and Trumpian punching bag Mitt Romney will be Utah's junior Republican senator in a few days, and by gum he has a newspaper opinion involving Donald Trump, beep boop.

The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December. The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a “sucker” in world affairs all defined his presidency down.

It is well known that Donald Trump was not my choice for the Republican presidential nomination. After he became the nominee, I hoped his campaign would refrain from resentment and name-calling. It did not. When he won the election, I hoped he would rise to the occasion. His early appointments of Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, Nikki Haley, Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster, Kelly and Mattis were encouraging. But, on balance, his conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions thismonth, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.

It is not that all of the president’s policies have been misguided. He was right to align U.S. corporate taxes with those of global competitors, to strip out excessive regulations, to crack down on China’s unfair trade practices, to reform criminal justice and to appoint conservative judges. These are policies mainstream Republicans have promoted for years. But policies and appointments are only a part of a presidency.

To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.

The world is also watching. America has long been looked to for leadership. Our economic and military strength was part of that, of course, but our enduring commitment to principled conduct in foreign relations, and to the rights of all people to freedom and equal justice, was even more esteemed. Trump’s words and actions have caused dismay around the world. In a 2016 Pew Research Center poll, 84 percent of people in Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Sweden believed the American president would “do the right thing in world affairs.” One year later, that number had fallen to 16 percent.

This comes at a very unfortunate time. Several allies in Europe are experiencing political upheaval. Several former Soviet satellite states are rethinking their commitment to democracy. Some Asian nations, such as the Philippines, lean increasingly toward China, which advances to rival our economy and our military. The alternative to U.S. world leadership offered by China and Russia is autocratic, corrupt and brutal.

The world needs American leadership, and it is in America’s interest to provide it. A world led by authoritarian regimes is a world — and an America — with less prosperity, less freedom, less peace.

To reassume our leadership in world politics, we must repair failings in our politics at home. That project begins, of course, with the highest office once again acting to inspire and unite us. It includes political parties promoting policies that strengthen us rather than promote tribalism by exploiting fear and resentment. Our leaders must defend our vital institutions despite their inevitable failings: a free press, the rule of law, strong churches, and responsible corporations and unions.

Welcome to early 2017, I guess, Mitt.  Meanwhile, remember this?

Mitt's soul left his body several years ago anyway.  Oh, and he apparently still wants a balanced budget.

Good luck with that.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump has invited congressional leaders from both parties to the White House to discuss the current partial government shutdown today.
• Four people were injured in the German town of Bothhrop when a German man drove his car into a group of Syrian citizens, police believe race may have been a motive.
• House Democrats are expected to vote Thursday on a spending bill that does not include money for Donald Trump's wall, an identical bill passed the Senate in December.
• Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has now assumed duties from fired Gen. James Mattis, Shanahan's first order of business was to praise Donald Trump.
• An Australian mining company says its fully autonomous train system has now logged one million kilometers and is "the largest robot in the world".

Brazil Nuts, Con't

If you want to know where Trump's America is headed, pay close attention to where Brazil's new President Jair Bolsonaro is going as he takes office today.

Brazilians signaled a desire for a radical shift in the country’s course when they elected the far-right lawmaker Jair Bolsonaro as their next president in October.

It didn’t take long for profound changes to start taking hold.

In the weeks leading up to Mr. Bolsonaro’s swearing-in on Tuesday, his embrace of a conservative movement that rejects discussion of gender or sexual orientation in schools thrust classrooms to the front lines of culture wars.

Under his direction, Brazil pulled out of hosting the 2019 United Nations summit meeting on climate change and began backtracking from its role as a global exemplar of environmentally sustainable development.

And on the foreign policy front, Mr. Bolsonaro courted the United States and picked a fight with Cuba, which responded by rescinding a program that had sent Cuban doctors to remote corners of Brazil since 2013.

There is considerable uncertainty about how closely President Bolsonaro will resemble the gruff, indignant and uncompromising candidate who ran as a political outsider and pulled off a long-shot victory by promising to dismantle a culture of corruption and use draconian means to restore security.

All of this should sound very familiar.

“I would rather they murder 200,000 thugs,” the future president is seen saying about the police in a clip that is part of the expletive-laden video.

Over the weekend, Mr. Bolsonaro announced he would issue an executive order allowing civilians without a criminal record to purchase weapons to keep at home or work for self-protection.

The policy would mark a significant departure from Brazil’s onerous rules for gun ownership, and experts said it would probably exacerbate carnage in the country, which last year had a record 63,880 killings. A poll released on Sunday by the research firm Datafolha found that 61 percent of Brazilians were opposed to relaxing gun ownership rules.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s promises to ease weapons regulations have already meant brisk business for gun ranges as aficionados sign up for practice. They also boosted the stock price of Taurus Armas, Brazil’s main gun manufacturer.

Very familiar.

The image captured the high hopes Mr. Bolsonaro and his team have for closer ties with the United States: After Mr. Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo Bolsonaro wrapped up meetings at the White House during a November trip designed to lay the groundwork for a relationship, the president’s son wore a “Trump 2020” campaign hat.

The Trump administration has returned the praise, calling Mr. Bolsonaro a “like-minded” leader on whom Washington hopes to rely as it tries to curb China’s growing influence in the region and put more pressure on Venezuela’s authoritarian government.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will lead the American delegation at Mr. Bolsonaro’s swearing-in ceremony in Brasília.

That should tell you everything you need to know right there.  Trump showed Bolsonaro how to get to the top, now Bolsonaro will show Trump how to bring his enemies to the bottom.   Fascism is on the rise across the world, and America is on the wrong side of history.

So is Brazil.

Blackmail At The Speed Of Light

Companies still refuse to take cybersecurity seriously heading into 2019, and the results are exactly what you'd expect to happen.

On Monday, New Year’s Eve, a hacker group announced it had breached a law firm handling cases related to the September 11 attacks, and threatened to publicly release a large cache of related internal files unless their ransom demands were met.

The news is the latest public extortion attempt from the group known as The Dark Overlord, which has previously targeted a production studio working for Netflix, as well as a host of medical centres and private businessesacross the United States. The announcement also signals a slight evolution in The Dark Overlord’s strategy, which has expanded on leveraging the mediato exert pressure on victims, to now distributing its threats and stolen data in a wider fashion.

In its announcement published on Pastebin, The Dark Overlord points to several different insurers and legal firms, claiming specifically that it hacked Hiscox Syndicates Ltd, Lloyds of London, and Silverstein Properties.

“Hiscox Syndicates Ltd and Lloyds of London are some of the biggest insurers on the planet insuring everything from the smallest policies to some of the largest policies on the planet, and who even insured structures such as the World Trade Centers,” the announcement reads.

It is unclear what exact files the group has stolen, but it is trying to capitalize on conspiracy theories around the 9/11 attacks.

“We'll be providing many answers about 9.11 conspiracies through our 18.000 secret documents leak,” the group tweeted on Monday.

If there's one thing the Trump era has taught us, it's that the lawyers know everything, so if you need blackmail material, they're always a good place to start.

The hacking group published a small set of letters, emails and other documents that mention various law firms, as well as the Transport Security Administration (TSA) and Federal Aviation Administration (The TSA could not provide a statement in time for publication, and the FAA told Motherboard in an email it was investigating.) Those documents themselves appear to be fairly innocuous, but the group says it may release more.

In its extortion note, The Dark Overlord included a link for a 10GB archive of files it allegedly stole. The group also provided a link to this archive to Motherboard before publishing its announcement. The cache is encrypted, but the hackers are threatening to release the relevant decryption keys, unlocking different sets of files at a time, unless the victims pay the hackers an undisclosed ransom fee in Bitcoin.

“Pay the fuck up, or we're going to bury you with this. If you continue to fail us, we'll escalate these releases by releasing the keys, each time a Layer is opened, a new wave of liability will fall upon you,” the extortion note reads.

The Dark Overlord is also claiming to be offering to sell the data on a dark web hacking forum, and is attempting to blackmail individuals who may be included in the documents themselves.

“If you're one of the dozens of solicitor firms who was involved in the litigation, a politician who was involved in the case, a law enforcement agency who was involved in the investigations, a property management firm, an investment bank, a client of a client, a reference of a reference, a global insurer, or whoever else, you're welcome to contact our e-mail below and make a request to formally have your documents and materials withdrawn from any eventual public release of the materials. However, you'll be paying us,” the group’s post reads.

Good luck catching them, too.   Nothing has made internet crime more viable than the rise of cryptocurrency over the last five years.  Frankly, anyone enabling the spread of it basically deserves what will happen next.

A New Year Dawns, The Same Old Problems

And here we are in 2019.

This, my friends, is where things get bad.

The last two years of Trumpism has been neatly summed up by Adam Serwer in The Cruelty Is The Point.

We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border-patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant childrenseparated from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists when he mocked a child with Down syndrome who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president encouraged them to abuse suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting to Senator Jeff Flake, the women who said the president had sexually assaulted them, and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting. There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by the police, the women of the #MeToo movement who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.

Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.

The laughter undergirds the daily spectacle of insincerity, as the president and his aides pledge fealty to bedrock democratic principles they have no intention of respecting. The president who demanded the execution of five black and Latino teenagers for a crime they didn’t commit decrying “false accusations,” when his Supreme Court nominee stands accused; his supporters who fancy themselves champions of free speech meet references to Hillary Clinton or a woman whose only crime was coming forward to offer her own story of abuse with screams of “Lock her up!” The political movement that elected a president who wanted to ban immigration by adherents of an entire religion, who encourages police to brutalize suspects, and who has destroyed thousands of immigrant families for violations of the law less serious than those of which he and his coterie stand accused, now laments the state of due process.

This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only the president and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process.

We've seen that daily cruelty so far.

Now imagine America deep in the throes of another 2008-style Great Recession, and the Trump brain trust in charge of trying to fix it. 

The cruelty has been breathtaking up until this point, I agree.

Now I fear it will become exponentially worse.  Someone will have to "pay" when things start going very badly wrong in the lives of Trump supporters, when they feel the effects of the cruel reality that for the last two years have only been reserved for those people.

When the farms and ranches go under due to tariffs, and healthcare becomes completely unaffordable, and even the low-paying jobs start going away, then things get dangerous.

The rampaging id of the Trump voter has been largely contained.  But in an economic recession that we're heading into, all bets are off.

2019 is going to be the Year of Living Dangerously.