Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

The Trump Shutdown is now into its third week with no end in sight as the National Park Service has been reduced to taking the technically illegal step of using entrance fees to pay for cleanup and protection of national monuments and lands.

The National Park Service will take the unprecedented step of tapping entrance fees to pay for expanded operations at its most popular sites, officials said Sunday, as the federal government shutdown threatens to degrade some of the nation’s iconic landmarks.

Under a memorandum signed Saturday by the Interior Department’s acting secretary, David Bernhardt, and obtained by The Washington Post, park managers will be permitted to bring on additional staff to clean restrooms, haul trash, patrol the parks and open areas that have been shut during the more-than-two-week budget impasse. In a statement Sunday, National Park Service Deputy Director P. Daniel Smith acknowledged that the administration’s practice of keeping parks open but understaffed has become unsustainable at some of its most beloved sites.

“As the lapse in appropriations continues, it has become clear that highly visited parks with limited staff have urgent needs that cannot be addressed solely through the generosity of our partners,” Smith said. “We are taking this extraordinary step to ensure that parks are protected, and that visitors can continue to access parks with limited basic services.”

The move, which some critics said could be illegal, shows the extent to which the Trump administration’s decision to keep the national park system open to visitors is straining its capacity and potentially exposing public lands to long-term damage. During such shutdowns under the Clinton and Obama administrations, the Park Service chose to block access to its sites rather than leave them open with a skeleton staff on board. Trump officials chose the opposite course, and as trash has begun to mount and key habitat has been imperiled, the administration is struggling to manage the problems.

Congressional Democrats and some park advocates question whether the park-fee move is legal, because the fees that parks collect under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act are expressly designated to support visitor services instead of operations and basic maintenance. The secretarial order authorizes parks that have “available balances” of these fee funds to spend them on operations that include trash collection and sanitation, road maintenance, campground operations, law enforcement and emergency operations, and entrance staff “as necessary to provide critical safety operations.”

Meanwhile as trash and toilet paper overflow the nation's national parks, the nation's air travel system is now bordering on collapse as the nation's largest airline pilots union rips into Trump.

Delta and United Airlines pilots -- and those of JetBlue and many other airlines -- have had enough.

In a scorchingly fact-based letter to President Trump, the Air Line Pilots Association -- which represents 61,000 pilots -- used simple words.

Its president, Captain Joe DePete wrote:

I am writing to urge you to take the necessary steps to immediately end the shutdown of government agencies that is adversely affecting the safety, security and efficiency of our national airspace system.
DePete explained that the Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland Security operate as both regulators and service providers.

Mechanical inspections, drone oversight and new enhanced communications systems are all threatened.

Worse, air traffic controllers, airspace system maintenance personnel and air marshals are working unpaid.

Moreover, CNN now reports that hundreds of TSA screeners are calling in sick. Could the fact that they're not being paid have an influence?

This, too, says DePete, could jeopardize safety:

The pressure these civil servants are facing at home should not be ignored. At some point, these dedicated federal employees will encounter personal financial damages that will take a long time from which to recover, if at all.

By writing directly to the president -- and merely copying congressional leaders -- the pilots appear to be holding him responsible for the potential dangers flowing from the shutdown.

It's a remarkably forthright approach, one that might make some uncomfortable, given that it has inevitable political overtones.

By saying that only the president can and should take the necessary steps, the pilots seem to recognize that, whatever the merits (or demerits) of a wall, it isn't worth risking airline safety for what some believe is a symbol of power, rather than an effective security measure.

And now we find out that thousands, maybe tens of thousands, will start to be evicted as HUD housing grant programs expired on January 1.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development sent letters to 1,500 landlords Friday as part of a last-minute effort to prevent the eviction of thousands of tenants. A lot of those tenants live in units covered by a HUD program that many agency officials didn’t realize had expired on Jan. 1 and that they are now unable to renew.

The letters instruct the landlords to use their reserve accounts so that no one is evicted, HUD spokesman Jereon Brown said. He said the budget and contract staff are “scouring for money” to figure out how to fund the contracts on an interim basis.

And all of that is now solely on Donald Trump's head.

StupidiNews!

• At least 40 are reported dead in northern Afghanistan after the apparent collapse of a gold mine, ten miners were injured.
• Harold Brown, Defense Secretary under Jimmy Carter, and architect of the failed mission to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980, has passed at age 91.
• There were fresh protests in France over the weekend, once again French President Emanuel Macron is calling for peace after protesters user a forklift to enter a government compound in Paris.
• UK Prime Minister Theresa May is warning of "uncharted territory" if Parliament rejects her Brexit deal this month, May once again stressed that there can be no second referendum on Brexit.
• IBM is being sued over its Weather Channel mobile app for violating data privacy laws, the lawsuit contends that IBM sold location data to third parties for years while claiming it would not do so.

Last Call For A Syria's Reversal

Donald Trump ignored his own Defense Secretary who quit rather than take the heat for withdrawal from Syria, ignored Republicans in his own party, and of course ignored Democrats, who all said pulling out of Syria and leaving it to Iran and Russia was an impending disaster.

And then Benjamin Netanyahu said something, and now Trump has done a 180.

President Trump’s national security adviser sought to reassure allies Sunday that the United States would be methodical about withdrawing troops from Syria, promising that the pullout would not occur until the Islamic State was fully eradicated from the country and Turkey could guarantee the safety of Kurdish fighters who have fought alongside American personnel.

John Bolton’s comments, reported by the Associated Press, contradict Trump’s mid-December promise to bring troops home from Syria “now,” an announcement that surprised allies and advisers, sparked an outcry from lawmakers, and prompted the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. It is also the clearest statement yet from any of the president’s surrogates about how they plan to slow the implementation of his pullout plans.

“There are objectives that we want to accomplish that condition the withdrawal,” Bolton said while speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, on a trip intended to allay Israeli leaders’ concerns about Trump’s announcement. “The timetable flows from the policy decisions that we need to implement.”
Trump touched off global confusion and panic when he announced via Twitter on Dec. 19 that he would order the withdrawal of the 2,000 troops stationed in Syria to help fight the Islamic State. “Our boys, our young women, our men, they’re all coming back and they’re coming back now. We won,” Trump said at thet time.

Days later, while visiting U.S. troops in Iraq after Christmas, Trump told reporters traveling with him that he would deny any request from the military to extend the mission in Syria. “They said again, recently, ‘Can we have more time?’ ” Trump said of U.S. generals. “I said: ‘Nope. You can’t have any more time. You’ve had enough time.’ We’ve knocked them out. We’ve knocked them silly.”

But in statements since then, including remarks to reporters at the White House Sunday, the president has suggested that the pullout would not be completed so quickly, adding to the uncertainty about the timing of his plans.

Both allies and critics of the president warned that a hasty pullout of American forces could upset the balance of power in the Middle East, emboldening Russia and Iran, and threaten what tenuous stability U.S.-aligned forces had been able to achieve in Syria.

Bolton’s comments come amid reports that Trump had agreed to extend his initial 30-day deadline for withdrawal to four months. When asked whether Bolton’s comments would affect that timeline, a senior administration official said that “there is no specific timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, and reports to the contrary are false.”

Nonetheless, the plans and assurances the national security adviser offered in Israel were confirmation that withdrawal plans are on hold until conditions on the ground match the president’s stated assessment of the situation in Syria. As part of his announcement, Trump said the United States had “defeated ISIS” there — a claim that his advisers and political allies have disputed. ISIS is an alternative acronym for the Islamic State.

Russia wanted the US gone, so Trump said withdraw.  Then Israel said no, and we're back to "staying until ISIS is defeated".  At least in this instance, Israel's control of the US is stronger than Russia's.

But what really prompted this move?  Remember that Trump believes he is America's greatest leader, and he wants an historic legacy, to do what Clinton, Bush, and Obama could not.  Trump wants an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, and the sudden pullout in Syria prompted Bibi to pick up his ball and go home.

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said Sunday that the Trump administration's Israeli-Palestinian peace plan - the "deal of the century" - will be presented "within the next several months."

The comments came during National Security Advisor John Bolton's visit to Israel this week. Bolton arrived on Saturday evening, and is scheduled to meet Netanyahu Sunday night. He was last in Israel in August, and this will be his second visit to the country since taking over as National Security Advisor in April. He will travel from Israel to Turkey for talks there expected as well to focus on the situation in Syria.

"It is not clear in which century Trump intends to announce his 'deal of the century,'" Meretz leader Tamar Zandberg said in response to Friedman's announcement Sunday." But we do not need to wait for anyone in order to begin the most important thing for the future of the State of Israel: a peace accord with the Palestinians. Netanyahu has already been negligent for a decade while not starting negotiations, and it is sad that Trump's way to help him in the elections is to delay announcing his plan, instead of accelerating it."

Trump's long-awaited plan has been delayed time after time. With Israel heading toward elections on April 9, a further delay was likely.

On one hand, Trump’s peace team says it cannot be responsible for embarrassing the country, the president or the administration by publishing a plan that falls flat on its face out of the gate. Yet it also refuses to give up, insisting that circumstances will serendipitously change just enough for the world to take the plan seriously.

Trump’s team – led by Jared Kushner, his son-in-law; Jason Greenblatt, his special assistant and envoy to the process; and David Friedman, his ambassador to Israel – have floated trial balloons on some of their proposals. Some have flown and some have not. But no one knows precisely what their initiative entails – many in Washington doubt a full draft actually exists – and so it is fair to say that its contents might still surprise the region and reframe discussion around the peace process in more productive terms.

Bibi has his own issues, facing imminent indictment for bribery and corruption charges, he dissolved the Knesset and called for new elections for April.  Of course that means Jared Kushner's pet project will have to be delayed as well, and that finally got Trump's attention.

So suddenly we're back in Syria for the foreseeable future.  Surprise!

Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

The Trump regime is about to come to a head over the shutdown, and we're headed for a very dark and dangerous place.

President Donald Trump is inclined to declare a national emergency to secure military funding for his long-promised southern border wall if talks between administration officials and top lawmakers from both parties continue to stall, a White House official told CNN on Saturday. 

While not the administration's preferred plan, the use of emergency powers to fund the wall "provides a way out" amid a series of contentious meetings and disagreements among Department of Homeland Security officials and Democratic lawmakers over basic facts related to border security, the official said. 

"We can only stay like this for so long," said the official, who attended both meetings with congressional officials at the White House led by Trump this week, explaining that factual disputes have hung up discussions. 

As the partial government shutdown enters a third week over the funding dispute, Trump has publicly said he would reject any plan that includes less than $5.6 billion for a border wall. The President acknowledged the possibility of using emergency powers to fund the wall during remarks in the Rose Garden on Friday, saying "we can call a national emergency because of the security of our country." 

"I haven't done it. I may do it," Trump said. "We can call a national emergency and build it very quickly."

Three observations, first, in the context of the shutdown itself, this is a bare naked threat.  Every time we ask "Wow, Trump won't really go there, will he?" he does. Especially if the subject is immigration or self-aggrandizement, he absolutely does, so a Great Wall of Trump to keep out those people would be something Trump has to have, and have on his terms.  He's in trouble without it.

Second, history tells us no leader of a country ever declares a national emergency for political reasons, assumes new emergency powers, and then voluntarily gives that power back. And yes, again, I believe Trump will do exactly what he's threatening to do because this is the kind of thing that people resign over when they don't agree with it, and we're already seeing resignations.

Kevin Sweeney has resigned as Pentagon chief of staff after serving the defense secretary for two years. 

"I've decided the time is right to return to the private sector. It has been an honor to serve again alongside the men and women of the Department of Defense," Sweeney said in a short statement posted on the Department of Defense website late Saturday night. 

A knowledgeable source told CNN's Jake Tapper that the White House forced Sweeney out. The source did not provide further information about the reason.

I absolutely guarantee you that the reason Adm. Sweeney resigned involves Trump's national emergency declaration, and to use the military as his own personal ICE force. Trump has always had the goal of not just ending "illegal immigration" and not just even ending all immigration, but in fact to begin mass deportations of refugees and foreign nationals as a signal to his white supremacist base.

Third, Trump believes if the government is shut down, Mueller and the Democrats can't investigate, indict, or impeach him.  He's more than happy to not sign anything right now, wall or not.  He's wrong, of course, but he's terrified.  He also figures that the national emergency would mean he'd be safe from any consequences of the Mueller probe too (also wrong).

Still, that means that there's a method to this madness.  Trump wants to militarize the border, and militarize mass deportations, under a "national emergency" and use that power to block Mueller.

Now I could very well be wrong. Steve M. thinks a national emergency could be a face-saver for Trump and that he'll back off after.

Maybe that's how this stalemate will end: Trump issues his declaration, then signs the bills to reopen the government. The declaration is approved in the Senate on a party-line vote, but it's tied up in the courts for the rest of the year and then into 2020. Trump gets a symbolic victory. Democrats get one too: They approve no wall funding. The wall can is kicked down the road the way the Dreamer can has been kicked down the road by the courts since the last battle over the wall. I don't think will ever give in, so this might be one of the less bad options.

Maybe that's how it shakes out, a national emergency that gets tied up in the courts, especially if it was tied up well past the 2020 election, would let Trump off the hook with his base, he could then campaign on getting a third SCOTUS pick.

I don't think that would be the case because of the immigration and Mueller angles though.

The darkest, bloodiest chapters in world history tell us how it ends from there.

Sunday Long Read: Mueller's First Big Case

Thirty years ago, well before Robert Mueller was Special Counsel investigating the most corrupt individual to ever enter the Oval Office, well before he was FBI Director or even before he was Deputy Attorney General, he was a federal prosecutor assigned to what was at the time the most shocking terror attack in American history: the December 1989 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. 

TEN YEARS AGO last Friday, then FBI director Robert Mueller bundled himself in his tan trench coat against the cold December air in Washington, his scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. Sitting on a small stage at Arlington National Cemetery, he scanned the faces arrayed before him—the victims he’d come to know over years, relatives and friends of husbands and wives who would never grow old, college students who would never graduate, business travelers and flight attendants who would never come home.

Burned into Mueller’s memory were the small items those victims had left behind, items that he’d seen on the shelves of a small wooden warehouse outside Lockerbie, Scotland, a visit he would never forget: A teenager’s single white sneaker, an unworn Syracuse University sweatshirt, the wrapped Christmas gifts that would never be opened, a lonely teddy bear.

A decade before the attacks of 9/11—attacks that came during Mueller’s second week as FBI director, and that awoke the rest of America to the threats of terrorism—the bombing of Pan Am 103 had impressed upon Mueller a new global threat.

It had taught him the complexity of responding to international terror attacks, how unprepared the government was to respond to the needs of victims’ families, and how on the global stage justice would always be intertwined with geopolitics. In the intervening years, he had never lost sight of the Lockerbie bombing—known to the FBI by the codename Scotbom—and he had watched the orphaned children from the bombing grow up over the years.

Nearby in the cemetery stood a memorial cairn made of pink sandstone—a single brick representing each of the victims, the stone mined from a Scottish quarry that the doomed flight passed over just seconds before the bomb ripped its baggage hold apart. The crowd that day had gathered near the cairn in the cold to mark the 20th anniversary of the bombing.

For a man with an affinity for speaking in prose, not poetry, a man whose staff was accustomed to orders given in crisp sentences as if they were Marines on the battlefield or under cross-examination from a prosecutor in a courtroom, Mueller’s remarks that day soared in a way unlike almost any other speech he’d deliver.

“There are those who say that time heals all wounds. But you know that not to be true. At its best, time may dull the deepest wounds; it cannot make them disappear,” Mueller told the assembled mourners. “Yet out of the darkness of this day comes a ray of light. The light of unity, of friendship, and of comfort from those who once were strangers and who are now bonded together by a terrible moment in time. The light of shared memories that bring smiles instead of sadness. And the light of hope for better days to come.”

He talked of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and of inspiration drawn from Lockerbie’s town crest, with its simple motto, “Forward.” He spoke of what was then a two-decade-long quest for justice, of how on windswept Scottish mores and frigid lochs a generation of FBI agents, investigators, and prosecutors had redoubled their dedication to fighting terrorism.

Mueller closed with a promise: “Today, as we stand here together on this, the darkest of days, we renew that bond. We remember the light these individuals brought to each of you here today. We renew our efforts to bring justice down on those who seek to harm us. We renew our efforts to keep our people safe, and to rid the world of terrorism. We will continue to move forward. But we will never forget.”

Hand bells tolled for each of the victims as their names were read aloud, 270 names, 270 sets of bells.

The investigation, though, was not yet closed. Mueller, although he didn’t know it then, wasn’t done with Pan Am 103. Just months after that speech, the case would test his innate sense of justice and morality in a way that few other cases in his career ever have.

The Lockerbie case defined Mueller's career as a prosecutor, only for politics to see justice denied and the man he helped to convict sent back to Libya by Scotland as a peace offering to the Qaddafi regime.

The Lockerbie bombers got away after doing tremendous damage.  Robert Mueller knows full well the cost of politics in justice.

And he will not let Trump get away.

It's About Suppression, Con't

With Democrats now in charge of the House, it's time to talk about the GOP efforts to steal the NC-9 House election, and what Democrats now have the power to do to stop them.

House Democrats are preparing to launch their own investigations into the disputed congressional election in North Carolina, where Republican Mark Harris’ campaign is facing fraud allegations and the state elections board had refused to certify the results. 

Harris’ campaign has sued in state court to be seated in Congress, despite an ongoing investigation by the elections board that suffered a setback when the board was dissolved at the end of 2018. Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in the unofficial vote count, but voters and election workers have filed numerous affidavits detailing irregularities during the election, including reports that McCrae Dowless, a subcontractor for Harris’ campaign consultants, ran an operation that collected and marked voters’ absentee ballots. 

The House Democratic investigations could pave the way for a new election in the district, even if the court orders the board of elections to certify Harris as the winner instead of the board ordering a re-vote itself. The House Administration Committee, now controlled by Democrats, has the authority to call for another election after investigating the 2018 results. 

Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), who is slated to chair an election-focused subcommittee of the House Administration Committee, told POLITICO that the House will intervene if the North Carolina court ordered the election certified for Harris before the state investigation has concluded. Any House member could object to seating Harris and block him, triggering an investigation by Fudge's committee. 

Fudge said that three House panels — the Oversight, Judiciary and Administration committees — have started discussing the situation and will be meeting over the next week “to determine what all of our options are.” 

“It is our hope that the courts in North Carolina would do the right thing,” Fudge said. “If they chose not to the right thing, or if for some reason he brings a certification here, we would challenge the propriety of seating him at that point until such time as there was a proper investigation done by the House.” 

Fudge added that the full House could possibly go so far as to sue the state of North Carolina. If a judge orders that Harris be declared the winner, Fudge said, she is “confident that the House would bring an action against the state of North Carolina." 

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said he could begin requesting documents “like paychecks, any kind of agreements” between Harris’ campaign and Dowless this month. Cummings, who now wields subpoena power in the majority, also threatened to call Dowless to Washington for an interview. 

“It’s quite possible that we’ll want to bring in [Dowless],” Cummings said. “We’re certainly are looking at it very carefully.” 

“When it comes to a state’s electoral process I think we have to be very careful and try to allow that state to provide due process. But at the same time we cannot just turn our heads to alleged voter fraud,” Cummings added. “It would be almost legislative malpractice if we fail to consider at least getting some preliminary information.”

If Harris is smart, he absolutely starts begging for a new election and as soon as he can.  NC Republicans of course will never countenance that, so we're about to find out all of Harris's dirty laundry and to shine a floodlight on the dirty machinery Harris used to steal this election.

And when everything's done, I'm betting Dan McCready is the 41st new House Democrat this Congress, and that Mark Harris is going to jail.

Stay tuned.

Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

With the Bush administration, the question usually was "Are they stupid or evil?" and depending on the policy, you didn't always know if it was staggering ignorance or wanton cruelty.  With the Trump regime however, the answer is always "Why not both!" and the primary example of this so far is the current government shutdown, now entering week three.

Food stamps for 38 million low-income Americans would face severe reductions and more than $140 billion in tax refunds are at risk of being frozen or delayed if the government shutdown stretches into February, widespread disruptions that threaten to hurt the economy.

The Trump administration, which had not anticipated a long-term shutdown, recognized only this week the breadth of the potential impact, several senior administration officials said. The officials said they were focused now on understanding the scope of the consequences and determining whether there is anything they can do to intervene.

Thousands of federal programs are affected by the shutdown, but few intersect with the public as much as the tax system and the Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the current version of food stamps.

The partial shutdown has cut off new funding to the Treasury Department and the USDA, leaving them largely unstaffed and crippling both departments’ ability to fulfill core functions.

The potential cuts to food stamps and suspension of tax refunds illustrate the compounding consequences of leaving large parts of the federal govern­ment unfunded indefinitely — a ­scenario that became more likely Friday when President Trump said he would leave the government shut down for months or even years unless Democrats gave him money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The SNAP program is rare among federal initiatives because it requires annual funding from Congress, even though its existence is automatically renewed. 

Congress has not allocated funding for SNAP beyond January, and the program’s emergency reserves would not cover even two-thirds of February’s payments, according to past disbursements. Last September, the most recent month for which data is available, SNAP disbursed $4.7 billion in benefits to recipients across every U.S. state.

Lawmakers last year appropriated $3 billion into a “contingency” fund for SNAP. USDA officials would not comment on the status of the $3 billion, but if all of that money is still available, it would cover just 64 percent of February’s obligations.

Agency officials have not said how they would address the shortfall, including whether they would prioritize who receives food aid or cut benefits for everyone across the board.

If the shutdown continues through March, there would be no remaining money for benefits.

As I've said in the past, Donald Trump's wall is his chief symbolic covenant with his white supremacist base, representing not only a policy to end illegal immigration, but to end legal immigration as well as making the tenets of white supremacy into government policy.   To put it simply, if he folds on the wall, he's done.  His base will not save him from impeachment and removal, enough of them will walk away that at the very least, he loses in 2020.

At the same time, if the government remains shuttered, he's also going to lose in 2020.  The majority of SNAP beneficiaries are white working class Americans, the one who voted for Trump.  If they can't feed their families, they might blame Democrats, sure.  But some of them are going to start to blame Trump.

I don't know how this will end, other than Donald Trump loses.  The question is how much damage he does on the way out.


 

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.