It's Mueller Time, Con't

House Democrats like Nancy Pelosi at least understand what's at stake here with Attorney General Bill Barr's obvious cover-up attempts.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday accused Attorney General William Barr of committing a crime by lying to Congress, blasting him in a closed-door meeting and later at a news conference.

“We saw [Barr] commit a crime when he answered your question,” Pelosi told Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) during a private caucus meeting Thursday morning, according to two sources present for the gathering.

“He lied to Congress. He lied to Congress,” Pelosi said soon after at a news conference. “And if anybody else did that, it would be considered a crime. Nobody is above the law. Not the president of the United States, and not the attorney general.“

The allegation comes as Democrats have intensified their criticisms of the attorney general over his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, his refusal to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, and the Justice Department’s unwillingness to comply with a subpoena for the full unredacted report.

Pelosi’s comments were an apparent reference to Barr’s response to Crist last month during a House Appropriations Committee hearing, when the attorney general said he was not aware of any concerns that Mueller’s investigators might have expressed about his four-page summary of Mueller’s findings.

Barr’s response appeared to contradict the revelation earlier this week that Mueller himself wrote to the attorney general saying he was worried that Barr’s summary “threatens to undermine ... public confidence” in the Russia probe. Mueller also said Barr’s memo “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the investigation.

So let's get going with those impeachment hearings against Barr at the very minimum, guys. 

It's time to play hardball.  Mocking Barr is one thing.  Arresting him is another.

Giving It Up To Mitch

High-profile Democratic challengers for Senate Republicans are in fact passing on Senate runs, leaving Mitch McConnell free and clear to block any and every cabinet, agency, and federal judge nominee in 2021 of a Democratic president, and I'm disappointed across the board.  Stacey Abrams doesn't want anything to do with David Perdue's seat in Georgia,and now both Beto O'Rourke and Julian Castro are bailing on John Cornyn's seat in Texas, with O'Rourke running for President instead.

All this means Democrats are in serious trouble in the Senate in 2020.

Senate Democrats' bid to take back the majority is running into a big roadblock: Some of their most coveted recruiting targets are refusing to run.

After straining to defend seats in bright-red states in 2018, Democrats are focused on picking off Republicans to claim the Senate majority in 2020. But, so far, a number of the party’s high-profile recruits have said no to Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the party’s campaign arm.

Stacey Abrams, a rising star in the party after nearly winning the Georgia governor’s race last year, passed on a Senate run Tuesday despite a sustained and public recruitment that included multiple meetings with Schumer. Hours later, Rep. Cindy Axne, who flipped a swing district last year, confirmed she was running for the House again — and not challenging Iowa's first-term Republican senator, Joni Ernst.

Democrats haven’t struck out everywhere: Former astronaut Mark Kelly in Arizona was a huge get in a critical battleground state. But three Democrats in other key states have passed on Senate bids to run for president despite the crowded field, and the party has missed out on its top recruits in Georgia and North Carolina.

“The Senate is not an appealing place for smart, talented candidates because it’s a broken institution. And Democrats have not yet offered a vision for how to fix it, aside from wringing their hands and wishing things were different,” said Adam Jentleson, a longtime aide to former Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “What’s the pitch? 'Come here, do nothing and let Mitch McConnell eat your lunch every day?'”

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, denied she and Schumer had blown it. Democrats need to flip only a handful of seats, and they'll be in a position to get them, she said.

“We don’t need all of these states to take back the majority. We just need three or four. And we’re going to do really well,” Cortez Masto said. “Just because we don’t get somebody that you’re aware of doesn’t mean we’re not going to have somebody that can beat those Republican incumbents.”

Schumer declined to say whether Abrams’ decision was a personal rejection of him but said the party will find a strong candidate to take on freshman Sen. David Perdue.

“We’re going to win in Georgia. And we have lots of good candidates in many different states, including Georgia,” Schumer said.

At this point Chuck Schumer and Catherine Cortez Masto are one for six with Commander Kelly running in Arizona against Martha McSally.  If Dems don't win back the Senate, I guarantee you McConnell will block everything.  Nothing the new Democratic president wants to do will get done.  It won't get passed.  It won't get a vote.  Mitch will block it, period.

And Democrats don't seem to give a damn.

StupidiNews!

Charlotte police are calling UNCC shooting victim Riley Howell a "hero", the 21-year-old student tackled a gunman Tuesday and stopped his rampage but was shot and killed at point blank range.
Asylum officials in Texas say a 16-year-old from Guatemala died in DHS custody over the weekend, the teenager was being held in Brownsville and died after an unknown illness.
A political stalemate in Venezuela continues as opposition leader Juan Guaido's call for an uprising has not yet resulted in the toppling of President Nicolas Maduro.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn are hinting at a compromise Brexit plan in the works that could be revealed as early as next week.
A new research study on drought and climate change finds man-made factors contributing to lack of water as far back as 1950.

Last Call For The Map To Victory

Long-time Political Wire prognosticator Taegan Goddard is out with his preliminary 2020 electoral map site, based on early numbers, and it makes a lot of sense to me.

If the Dems keep this map and win the rust belt states from 2016 (PA, MI, and WI) then they win the White House.  Even with NC and Florida, Trump can't win in that scenario.

I'll update this as it goes.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Brian Beutler sums up the Democrats' failures in the post-Mueller report era pretty succinctly in his latest Crooked Media article.  I know "failures" here is a strong word, but given two plus years of lies and perfidy, Democrats are still acting like this all can be fixed with a goddamn handshake over bourbon.

Democrats have allowed their fear of taking a lonely stand to metastasize into the complete collapse of the last-remaining mechanism of presidential accountability. They are also apparently willing to sidestep a debate over this decision by executing a Trump-like pivot to infrastructure, but in a manner that seems destined to provide Trump a political boost. What president wouldn’t salivate over the prospect of having $2 trillion at his disposal to rebuild the country’s failing infrastructure during an election year?

It didn’t have to be this way. Instead of preemptively abdicating the impeachment power, Democrats could have announced that they would not allow Republicans to quietly nullify it to protect Trump from accountability. Instead of conceding that, absent bipartisanship, “there will be no impeachment, no matter how high the crime or serious the misdemeanor,” they could have lamented that in a polarized time, when the right wing is drowning in propaganda, impeachment might have to be deployed as a partisan tool—a means of collective accountability for the high crimes and misdemeanors of a derelict president whose party has enabled him. Republicans might keep Trump in power, but they would have to vote on the proposition that his obstruction of justice, his felonious conduct, his betrayal and looting of the country is acceptable behavior in a president.

It bears repeating that there’s no consequence-free way for Democrats to take impeachment off the table. This is what the post-election panic about “normalization” was all about. Responding to his historic depredations with the ordinary tools of congressional oversight doesn’t just look weak, betray the anti-Trump resistance, and invite Democrats to make fatal diversionary missteps. It also invites a terrifying moral hazard into our political system. Trump’s opportunities to obstruct justice weren’t and aren’t limited to the Russia investigation—there are many more Trump-related investigations, including several under the supervision of an attorney general who has already asserted that Trump’s obstructive acts aren’t criminal. The Democratic bias toward inaction invites Trump to sabotage all of them.

It also invites Trump and his surrogates to solicit foreign autocrats and oligarchs to commit more computer crimes against his Democratic opponent. It invites Republicans in Congress to help Trump complete his coverup and enable his corruption, while they treat him as a righteous victim and (laughable as it sounds) lay claim to the mantle of ethical governance.

The combined effect of all this will be a cacophony of Benghazi-like propaganda hearings about SPYGATE and the Deep State, staged with the complete cooperation of William Barr, that drowns out Democrats as they waste months in court trying to enforce the subpoenas he and Trump proudly flout.

The last best hope for avoiding this nightmare scenario is for Democrats to find an onramp to impeachment in spite of their misgivings. Between their anti- and pro-impeachment poles, some Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, have allowed that Trump’s stonewalling tactics might leave Democrats no choice but to begin an impeachment process reluctantly.

To be clear, the reluctance is unwarranted and the delay is harmful. The Democrats’ palpable impeachment panic, set against the GOP’s unwavering claims of vindication and lust for revenge, has moved public opinion away from impeachment, and that view will harden in the very districts Democrats think they’re protecting. Likewise, if Democrats move to impeach Trump on the basis of his stonewalling alone, it will convey a petty lack of principle and a sense that his documented misconduct is not itself the problem. But it would at least bring us into the realm of appropriate recourse—into an arena where we can learn that Robert Mueller has accused William Barr of sabotage, and the question of what to do about it has an obvious answer. 

Mueller's response in his letters today made this all very clear.  Barr's response in Senate hearings today was 100% predictable: No crimes were committed by Donald Trump,  and he set the stage once again for the coming months of hearings and investigations into the FBI itself, into the Steele Dossier, and of course into Hillary Clinton.

I guarantee you Beutler is right about this.  Dems are almost out of time.  If they don't announce impeachment proceedings before Barr starts announcing new investigations, impeachment is effectively off the table, and the rest of 2019 will be defined by LOCK HER UP.

I know that rushing into this incorrectly will be devastating, but waiting too long will also be a catastrophe.

Senate Democrats are putting the brakes on impeachment chatter in the House, cautioning that lawmakers need to do more work before even thinking about moving forward on the issue.

A number of steps should be taken before there can be a serious discussion about impeaching President Trump, including hearing testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller, say several Senate Democrats.

They also want the House to review the unredacted version of his report and its underlying documentation.

“We ought to get the full report unredacted, get the underlying documentation, have Mueller come testify, and then we can make decisions on where to go,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday.

“We need to see the whole truth. Then we’ll make decisions on impeachment,” he added.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who are both running for president, have come out in favor of starting impeachment proceedings, but they’re alone among Senate Democrats so far.

And soon we'll be buried in HER EMAIL hearings.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Attorney General Bill Barr is expected to testify today before House Democrats on his redactions and characterization that there was no funny business, and that Robert Mueller supported the conclusions in his letter last month.  But last night somebody in the DoJ hung him out to dry as it turns out Robert Mueller sent Bill Barr a letter very plainly saying that Barr's "summary" was bullshit, ans somebody leaked that letter to the Washington Post.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III wrote a letter in late March complaining to Attorney General William P. Barr that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s work, according to a copy of the letter reviewed Tuesday by The Washington Post.

The letter and a subsequent phone call between the two men reveal the degree to which the longtime colleagues and friends disagreed as they handled the legally and politically fraught task of investigating the president. Democrats in Congress are likely to scrutinize Mueller’s complaints to Barr as they contemplate the prospect of opening impeachment proceedings and mull how hard to press for Mueller himself to testify publicly.

At the time Mueller’s letter was sent to Barr on March 27, Barr had days prior announced that Mueller did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In his memo to Congress, Barr also said that Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but that Barr reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to support such a charge.

Days after Barr’s announcement, Mueller wrote the previously undisclosed private letter to the Justice Department, laying out his concerns in stark terms that shocked senior Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.

“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

Remember, Barr testified earlier this month to the Senate that he had no indication that Mueller disagreed with his summary.  Indeed, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi and others made it a central tenet of their Trump exoneration argument that if Mueller had disagreed with Barr's summary, he would have said something about it.

Mueller did say something about it over a month ago.

The Justice Department covered that fact up.

And Bill Barr lied about it to Congress.

So why doesn't Mueller testify to this fact?  He can't.  He's still a Justice Department employee at this juncture, and the Trump regime is refusing to let him testify because of that.

House Democrats tell The Daily Beast they’ve been told Special Counsel Robert Mueller is willing to testify before them about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election but that the Department of Justice has been unwilling to set a date for it to happen.

The impasse comes as lawmakers have grown increasingly frustrated over Attorney General Bill Barr’s handling of the release of the Mueller probe and as other Trump World figures have declined to appear before congressional committees.

Shortly after it was reported on Tuesday night that Mueller had written and called Barr to complain that he not fully represented his findings, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) sent out a statement demanding both appear before his committee and revealing that he had been stonewalled so far.

“The Attorney General has expressed some reluctance to appear before the House Judiciary Committee this Thursday,” Nadler said. “These reports make it that much more important for him to appear and answer our questions. The Department of Justice has also been reluctant to confirm a date for Special Counsel Mueller to testify.”

Nadler had sent a letter to DOJ following the department’s release of the Mueller report asking that Mueller appear for questioning no later than May 23. Two sources familiar with the conversations said the Judiciary Committee has been in regular contact with DOJ about setting a date for that Mueller’s testimony and that those conversations were ongoing as of this week. Committee sources said that it was their impression that Mueller was willing to testify to discuss his findings though it was unclear whether that would take place in public or behind closed doors.

But the DOJ has, according to multiple sources, not agreed to a date, citing Mueller’s continued status as a department employee—since the Special Counsel serves under the attorney general.
A Department of Justice spokesperson did not return request for comment.

To recap, Bill Barr lied to Congress under oath.  That's a felony.  Mueller is being blocked from testifying on his own report.  That's obstruction of justice.  Barr should be facing impeachment.  This whole mess just got untenable for Trump.

Democrats have to act, and now.

StupidiNews!

• Two people are dead and four injured as a gunman opened fire at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte campus Tuesday evening, the suspect was disarmed and is in custody.
• New York Attorney General Latisha James has confirmed that investigations have been opened into Donald Trump's family finances, the Trumps are suing to keep the information secret.
• A former Minneapolis police officer was found guilty of murder for the fatal shooting of an Australian woman in 2017, the officer faces more than 16 years in prison if convicted.
• The Trump regime is preparing to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group at the request of Egyptian President Sisi, the designation could affect millions around the globe.
• NASA's planned 2024 moon landing may never happen as the agency hasn't been given the money, and is not expected to be able to get funding past conservative Republicans in the Senate.

Last Call For The Drums of War, Con't

The Venezuela problem has not gone away, despite Putin stepping in to prop up President Nicolas Maduro. A few weeks ago I mentioned that Putin was now running the timetable in Caracas, and that Trump would agree to whatever plan Putin came up with for the country.  

What's Trump going to do, exactly?  At this point Trump has trashed NATO so hard that they're not going to lift a finger to help the US in Caracas.  No, Putin is holding all the cards here, and all of them have Donald Trump's big dumb orange face on them.

No, I was dead wrong about Trump and John Bolton invading Venezuela. I freely admit that.  That ship has sailed.

But brother, the reality is going to be much worse. 

Today we saw the beginning of that plan in action as opposition leader Juan Guiado all but declared a coup and the "final phase" of the uprising against Maduro.

Violent clashes erupted across Venezuela on Tuesday after opposition leader Juan Guaidó launched what appeared to be a military-backed challenge to President Nicolás Maduro, summoning thousands of people to the streets to demonstrate against the socialist leader.

It was a high-risk gamble for Guaidó, the leader of the National Assembly who declared himself interim president in January. And by late Tuesday, it was unclear whether it would succeed.

Dozens of people were injured by rubber bullets, tear gas and live ammunition in melees across Venezuela, according to local observers and hospital officials. An armored vehicle ran into a cluster of Guaidó supporters. A group of hooded men in a pro-government militia — the feared colectivos — fired live ammunition into a crowd of protesters, witnesses said. And a colonel loyal to Maduro was shot in the neck, the defense minister said, but the extent of his injuries was unclear.

President Trump accused Cuban “troops and militia” of conducting military operations in Venezuela to cause “death and destruction to the Constitution of Venezuela.” If the alleged activities didn’t immediately stop, Trump tweeted, his administration would impose a “full and complete embargo, together with the highest-level sanctions” on Cuba.
There were protests across the nation, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Conflicts, with violent clashes in at least five states. At least 25 people were detained Tuesday, according to Foro Penal, a local organization that tracks political detentions.

Guaidó opened the day with a surprise appearance at a military base in eastern Caracas, where he was surrounded by armed men in military uniforms. He urged other troops to join what he called the final stage of “Operation Liberty” to force Maduro from power.

“People of Venezuela, the end of usurpation has arrived,” Guaidó said. “At this moment, I am with the main military units of our armed forces, starting the final phase of Operation Liberty. People of Venezuela, we will go to the street with the armed forces to continue taking the streets until we consolidate the end of usurpation, which is already irreversible.”

Two observations: First, The Zandar Coup Rule finds Maduro with zero for five.  It's all a puppet show, and Putin is pulling both Trump and Guaido's strings.

Second, now, where did Cuba come into all this?  It's not Cuban troops that in Venezuela, it's Russian troops.  But Russia has to be the bad guy somehow, right?

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Tuesday that embattled Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro was preparing to leave the country for Cuba, but was talked out of it by Russia. 

"We've watched throughout the day, it's been a long time since anyone's seen Maduro," Pompeo said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room." 

"He had an airplane on the tarmac, he was ready to leave this morning as we understand it and the Russians indicated he should stay." 

"He was headed for Havana," Pompeo said.

All this is very interesting.  We're seeing the opening act of a Broadway play here for American consumption.  Putin knows Trump needs a major distraction to save him from House Democrats, and Putin has to help out his puppet.  The result: a coup made for TV.

Stay tuned, true believers.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Joe Biden is correct when he says that if the Trump regime doesn't cooperate with House Democratic investigations of the issues raised in the Mueller report then impeachment proceedings have to begin.

Former vice president Joe Biden said in an interview broadcast Tuesday that Congress would have “no alternative” but to impeach President Trump if his administration seeks to block its investigations of issues raised in the special counsel’s report on Russian election interference.

Appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Biden said that the report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III left several unanswered questions related to whether Trump obstructed the nearly two-year probe, and he argued that Congress should follow up.

“What the Congress should do and they are doing is investigate that,” Biden said. “And if in fact they block the investigation, they have no alternative to go to the only other constitutional resort they have: impeachment.”

“My job in the meantime is to make sure he’s not back as president of the United States of America,” added Biden, who formally launched his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination last week.

Biden’s comments came during a wide-ranging interview in which he also continued to grapple with controversies over his affectionate, physical style with women and his handling of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s 1991 Senate confirmation hearing. He also declined to say whether he would pick a woman as his running mate.

Frustration has been building among House Democrats as the Trump administration refuses to cooperate with an array of congressional inquiries, including several related to the Russia report. Attorney General William P. Barr has threatened not to show up at a scheduled Thursday hearing in the House to address how he handled Mueller’s findings.

Biden continues to have his own baggage: his failure on Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, his stance on the Clinton crime bill, an obnoxious tendency towards bipartisanship with a party of traitors and thieves, and a lifetime of Senate votes that are difficult (if not utterly impossible) to defend in 2019. Regardless, he's the front-runner right now.  Until he's not.

But he's right on this one.  Democrats have to call Trump's bluff on stonewalling, or he immediately wins by default.  The problem is I don't think Democrats are ready to go to the mattresses on this.  They'd better be: it's becoming painfully clear that the only way to compel Trump regime lackeys to testify is to impeach.

We'll see if they do, but Trump has already made it clear that he expects to win on this, and history says that he probably will.

Dirty Deeds Done Relatively Inexpensively Online

Expect another year plus of rotten fake news like this as Republican sleazebags invent misinformation to destroy Democratic candidates for 2020.

A pair of right-wing provocateurs are being accused of attempting to recruit young Republican men to level false allegations of sexual assault against Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

The details of the operatives’ attempt emerged as one man suddenly surfaced with a vague and uncorroborated allegation that Buttigieg had assaulted him. The claim was retracted hours later on a Facebook page appearing to belong to the man.

A Republican source told The Daily Beast that lobbyist Jack Burkman and internet troll Jacob Wohl approached him last week to try to convince him to falsely accuse Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, of engaging him sexually while he was too drunk to consent.

The source who spoke to The Daily Beast said Burkman and Wohl made clear that their goal was to kneecap Buttigieg’s momentum in the 2020 presidential race. The man asked to remain anonymous out of a concern that the resulting publicity might imperil his employment, and because he said Wohl and Burkman have a reputation for vindictiveness.

But the source provided The Daily Beast with a surreptitious audio recording of the meeting, which corroborates his account. In it, Wohl appears to refer to Buttigieg as a “terminal threat” to President Donald Trump’s reelection next year.

Neither Burkman nor Wohl responded to repeated requests for comment on this story. But after The Daily Beast contacted them last week, traces of the scheme disappeared from the web and social media.

And of course, right-wing sites immediately ran the fake news as real.  Jacob Wohl is performing criminal acts here, and the Buttigieg campaign should sue at the minimum.

But a lot more of this is coming, and it won't be just garden-variety social media hucksters like Wohl, but calculated Russian disinformation ops designed to wreck any semblance of trust in the media.

2020's big lies and criminal collusion will make 2016 look like a cookout.

StupidiNews!

• Deputy US Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has finally set a date for his long-expected resignation of May 11, Rosenstein in his letter thanked President Trump.
• The Justice Department announced the arrest of a 26-year-old Army veteran on terrorism charges for plotting to detonate an IED at a white nationalist rally.
• Japan's Emperor Akihito will abdicate this throne Tuesday as Crown Prince Naruhito will take the throne at the dawn of the country's new Reiwa era.
• The Trump regime's trade war has dropped US farmer income to its lowest point since 2016 as the agricultural sector losses are mounting due to trade wars.
• Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson has been disinvited from Microsoft's 10th anniversary celebration of his iconic game over his online conduct since selling his game.

Last Call For Trump Street

Wall Street corporate Democratic donors are horrified at this year's crop of presidential candidates, and apparently if Dems don't lay off the "Socialism" soon, those billions are going to just have to go to Trump for a second term.

One night in early April, roughly 20 of the Democratic Party’s highest-profile donors from the financial industry sat down over dinner to discuss how exactly they were feeling about the 2020 presidential race. For the most part, it wasn’t great.

Convened by two veterans of liberal fund-raising — investors Steven Rattner and Blair Effron — the group had no hard-and-fast agenda except to share notes on the overflowing field of candidates. The crowd of Democratic heavyweights, including Clinton-administration Treasury secretary and Goldman Sachs and Citi alum Robert Rubin, former ambassador to France Jane Hartley, and venture capitalist Deven Parekh, knew most of the contenders well. But coming to some kind of consensus, picking a plausible candidate they felt they could all live with and throw their considerable money behind — that was a far-fetched proposition.
“There’s tremendous fear,” said one banker who was there. The candidates who had long cultivated relationships with Wall Street — such as Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand — were struggling to gain traction and had grown more hostile to finance as their party had, too. Joe Biden, leading in early polls, had a comforting history in the Obama White House and a reputation as an Establishment Democrat but had never, until a few months ago, maintained any meaningful relationship with Wall Street, hadn’t even announced his candidacy yet, and struck many bankers as a dubious bet to beat Donald Trump. Nearly everyone else in the field, the financiers felt, was being pulled leftward by Bernie Sanders (the preposterously well-funded contender they considered too crazy to even imagine in the White House) and Elizabeth Warren (less crazy, Democrats on Wall Street think, and way more competent). “She would torture them,” one banker told me. “Warren strikes fear in their hearts,” explained a New York executive close to banking leaders from both parties — so much fear that such investors often speak of the U.S. senator from Massachusetts, a former law professor and consumer advocate, as a co-front-runner with Sanders. “How do we come up with an alternative?” asked one person at the dinner.

There were a few options, none perfect. Beto O’Rourke had recently launched his campaign, and his congressional record was essentially a centrist-shaped blank slate. Pete Buttigieg was a McKinsey alum who came from the Rust Belt but talked like a Silicon Valley exec or an Obama Treasury official, but no one, yet, took him seriously.

Kamala Harris was a favorite of many in the room. The U.S. senator from California now describes herself as a populist and highlighted a past confrontation with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon over foreclosures in her pre-campaign book, but in 2012, as California’s attorney general, she passed on prosecuting OneWest and its CEO, Steven Mnuchin. In this cycle, she has been the Democrat perhaps most active in seeking Wall Street money (Citi vice-chairman Ray McGuire and Pine Street partner Brian Mathis are helping with her Wall Street outreach, and she recently headlined a fund-raiser hosted by LionTree CEO Aryeh Bourkoff) and occasionally its advice (BlackRock’s Michael Pyle, an Obama-administration alum, is advising her on economics). “People are generally in search of a candidate who has the right set of views, has the right character, but also can win,” Rattner told me later. “Right now, it is very hard to see who checks all three boxes.”

There was no agreement. By evening’s end, multiple donors walked away planning to write checks to three or four or five candidates — hoping they stay relatively moderate — rather than going all in on any one. Among the committed Democrats on Wall Street, this wait-and-see, as-long-as-it’s-not-Bernie-or-Elizabeth posture has become the norm. “This is like venture investing. You really don’t know who’s going to break out, but your hope is you have a good portfolio and that one of these investments breaks out,” Bruce Heyman, a former Goldman managing director and ambassador to Canada, told me.

Of course, these longtime donors are more committed to the Democrats than the average guy on Wall Street. Two years ago, Trump seemed noxious enough that Democrats (reasonably) hoped to continue growing their considerable advantage over Republicans in the New York finance set. But one GOP-driven tax cut and one leftward shift in the Democratic Party later, a worried handful of bankers is considering turning that story on its head. “They’re too far left! They’re too far left!” said Alex Sanchez, CEO of the Florida Bankers Association. “I mean, honestly, if it’s Bernie versus Trump, I have no fucking idea what I’m going to do,” one Democratic hedge funder told me. “Maybe I won’t vote.”

Democratic donors aren’t especially worried about policy; few have sussed out where candidates stand on Dodd-Frank or the carried-interest tax loophole, and few believe that, aside from Sanders or Warren, any contenders are likely to make an aggressive new push for regulation as president. What agitates them instead is — in a replay of the alienation they felt during the Obama presidency thanks to a few stray “fat cats” comments — how Democratic rhetoric threatens their sense of status. No moment crystallized the new reality more than when former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper — a centrist candidate who was a prominent business owner in Denver before entering politics — refused to even call himself a capitalist in a Morning Joe interview in March.

Before Trump won, Hillary Clinton had outraised him by a margin of more than four to one among the financial crowd, which had long regarded him as a pariah because of his shady record and bankruptcies. Now? “The anti-corporate, anti–Wall Street direction of the Democratic Party is driving Democrats into the Trump camp, which is, in most cases, the last place they want to be,” said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, the business group that counts among its members all of the city’s major financial institutions. “The fact that he’s raised as much money as he has is a reflection of how many Democrats are holding their nose and supporting him because they feel demonized by the Democrats.” In mid-April, Trump’s team revealed it had raised over $30 million in the first quarter of 2019, slightly more than the top two Democratic candidates combined. If you add up all the Democrats’ dollars, the challengers are way ahead — but among donors, and indeed among the candidates themselves, the perception remains that the president is accumulating a real edge. Meanwhile, Goldman released its 2020 outlook: Trump, the firm concluded, now has a “narrow advantage.” Even Paul Singer, the GOP hedge-fund magnate who backed efforts to defeat Trump in 2016 — and who funds the Washington Free Beacon, which first paid for the anti-Trump research that later became “the dossier” — stopped by a small Trump fund-raising roundtable in New York late last year. “Well, we must be doing well now that Paul’s here,” Trump said.

“Wall Street for Trump is the reverse Bradley effect,” said hedge-fund manager Anthony Scaramucci, the Republican fund-raiser who (very) briefly served as Trump’s White House communications director, referring to the theory that voters overstate their support for nonwhite candidates in polls. “They all secretly love him, but because of their clients and the polarity, they don’t want to say it out loud.”

Over coffee recently in midtown, an investment pro with a long history in Democratic politics described the struggle to resist the unexpected pull of Trump. “What matters more?” he asked, looking up at me. “My social values or my paycheck?”

This story makes Liz Warren look like the person Wall Street is most afraid of, and Harris the least.  That's very good for Warren in my book, not so good for Harris.

The real problem is Wall Street wants to keep him. 

Maybe we don't need Wall Street?

Just an idea, Dems.

You're Not Alone In The No Phone Zone

Our smartphones are literally killing us, and if there's any advantage at all to the prohibitive cost of the newest models these days, it's that fewer Americans will have them.

If you’re like many people, you may have decided that you want to spend less time staring at your phone.

It’s a good idea: an increasing body of evidence suggests that the time we spend on our smartphones is interfering with our sleep, self-esteem, relationships, memory, attention spans, creativity, productivity and problem-solving and decision-making skills.

But there is another reason for us to rethink our relationships with our devices. By chronically raising levels of cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, our phones may be threatening our health and shortening our lives.

Until now, most discussions of phones’ biochemical effects have focused on dopamine, a brain chemical that helps us form habits — and addictions. Like slot machines, smartphones and apps are explicitly designed to trigger dopamine’s release, with the goal of making our devices difficult to put down.

This manipulation of our dopamine systems is why many experts believe that we are developing behavioral addictions to our phones. But our phones’ effects on cortisol are potentially even more alarming.

Cortisol is our primary fight-or-flight hormone. Its release triggers physiological changes, such as spikes in blood pressure, heart rate and blood sugar, that help us react to and survive acute physical threats.

These effects can be lifesaving if you are actually in physical danger — like, say, you’re being charged by a bull. But our bodies also release cortisol in response to emotional stressors where an increased heart rate isn’t going to do much good, such as checking your phone to find an angry email from your boss.

If they happened only occasionally, phone-induced cortisol spikes might not matter. But the average American spends four hours a day staring at their smartphone and keeps it within arm’s reach nearly all the time, according to a tracking app called Moment. The result, as Google has noted in a report, is that “mobile devices loaded with social media, email and news apps” create “a constant sense of obligation, generating unintended personal stress.”

“Your cortisol levels are elevated when your phone is in sight or nearby, or when you hear it or even think you hear it,” says David Greenfield, professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction. “It’s a stress response, and it feels unpleasant, and the body’s natural response is to want to check the phone to make the stress go away.”

But while doing so might soothe you for a second, it probably will make things worse in the long run. Any time you check your phone, you’re likely to find something else stressful waiting for you, leading to another spike in cortisol and another craving to check your phone to make your anxiety go away. This cycle, when continuously reinforced, leads to chronically elevated cortisol levels.

And chronically elevated cortisol levels have been tied to an increased risk of serious health problems, including depression, obesity, metabolic syndrome, Type 2 diabetes, fertility issues, high blood pressure, heart attack, dementia and stroke.

“Every chronic disease we know of is exacerbated by stress,” says Dr. Robert Lustig, emeritus professor in pediatric endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of “The Hacking of the American Mind.” “And our phones are absolutely contributing to this.”

Put them down, folks.  Put them in another room.  Be very careful with the kids having them.  Especially in today's day and age, anything you see on a smartphone screen is only going to cause you more stress in life.

It's killing us.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The Trump regime's refusal to cooperate with House Democrats is now total, and nobody can hold them accountable because the Trump regime has all the state's enforcement power at its command.  Josh Marshall:

Attorney General Bill Barr has dramatically escalated his Mueller Report coverup and effort to effectively end independent oversight of his Department by Congress. According to this report, he is refusing to show up to testify this week before the House Judiciary Committee unless he is accorded a veto right over the questioning format.

As the fight over the Congress’s oversight rights has heated up, it’s been increasingly clear that the committees should either designate one or two committee members experienced in questioning or have a committee counsel do the questioning. Absent that approach, you get what we’ve seen in other recent hearings. The members have a great range of issue knowledge and questioning abilities. Even to the extent that they’re pursuing good lines of questioning, they each get five minutes. So the person testifying can pretty easily run out the clock with non-answers. For really effective questioning you need a solid and knowledgable questioner who has a sustained period of time to pursue lines of questioning. The other approach is fine for garden variety testimony where there’s some degree of good faith give and take. It doesn’t work here.

For just this reason, Chairman Nadler has proposed having one round of questioning where every member gets their five minutes – basically the normal routine. Then he has a second round in which both sides’ committee counsels get thirty minutes of time in alternating five minute segments. (Nadler is also proposing that the committee go into closed session to discuss the redacted parts of the report.) Neither of these decisions are remotely controversial or unprecedented, especially when the subject matter is of great moment. But Barr is saying he may not show up if Nadler doesn’t change to what Barr considers a more friendly questioning format.

A window of good faith negotiation about format is not unprecedented or wrong in itself. But we’re far past that. Barr is pretty clearly trying to exercise a veto right over how the Judiciary Committee conducts its hearings, which are a bedrock constitutional function with respect to the Attorney General and the Department of Justice. In this sense, Barr’s antics are part of President Trump’s strategy of massive resistance to any congressional oversight whatsoever.

How Nadler responds to this will be important to watch. For all the talk about impeachment, stand-offs like this are where power and brakes on the President’s power will be determined. If you want to do things to stiffen Democrats’ spines, these are the standoffs where it counts. As I was writing this, CNN updated its story. Nadler apparently told CNN that if Barr won’t comply he’ll move to subpoena him. “The witness is not going to tell the committee how to conduct its hearing, period.”

A lot hangs on this.

If Barr is subpoenaed, if any member of the Trump regime is subpoenaed, then what?

What actually happens then?

My guess is nothing, because if Jerry Nadler or Elijah Cummings actually try to enforce this, Trump will simply refuse.

Who will make Trump comply?  It sure isn't American voters.

As House Democrats return this week to Washington after a two-week recess, they will find a Capitol consumed by the report of Mr. Mueller, the special counsel. A private meeting of the House Democratic caucus on Tuesday promises to be heated, as do Senate and House hearings on Wednesday and Thursday with Attorney General William P. Barr.

But rank-and-file Democrats are not being propelled by their constituents into a headlong confrontation over impeaching the president. In town hall-style meetings and meet-and-greets across the country last week, constituents bemoaned Mr. Trump’s policies, groaned at his refusal to heed congressional subpoenas and fretted over what they saw as an erosion of the rule of law.

There were few signs of an uprising to demand a quick judgment that the misdeeds laid out in the special counsel’s report constituted the kinds of “high crimes and misdemeanors” worthy of trying to remove the president from office.

“It’s not a top half-dozen. It may be down at the No. 12 spot” in terms of priorities, said Ms. Porter, a freshman Democrat of California, who hears far more from her Orange County constituents that dissatisfaction with Mr. Trump should be channeled into voting him out of office in 2020.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Friday appeared to underscore Democrats’ dilemma. It found that roughly six in 10 Democrats supported beginning impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump, most of them strongly. But almost nine in 10 Republicans and six in 10 independents, whom Democrats need to defeat Mr. Trump, opposed the idea.

Democratic leaders in the House have pledged a series of hearings intended to ferret out the details of Mr. Mueller’s investigation and air the testimony of key witnesses. Rather than jump to conclusions — and there are some liberal lawmakers arguing in favor of prompt impeachment — party leaders say they want to build a case on live television before the public and see where that leads.

The future of America as a country under rule of law depends on that answer, but the fact is these hearing will almost certainly lead nowhere.

And then what?

Better figure that out, or Trump wins it all, and America is gone.

StupidiNews!

• At least one person is dead and six injured after a shooting at a Sunday Baltimore family cookout, police are searching for a suspect and more potential victims.
• The mayor of Poway, California is calling Saturday's synagogue shooting "a hate crime" and "that it will not stand" as police have charged a suspect with one count of first-degree murder.
• Tens of thousands of protesters took to Hong Kong's streets on Sunday over proposed extradition laws allowing accused criminals to be sent to mainland China for trial.
• Spain's Socialist Party has prevailed in weekend elections, but Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will almost certainly need the help of Basque separatists to form a government.
• New models of Antartica's melting glaciers shows that exposed bedrock may help slow ice loss, but there won't be enough bedrock exposed until next century to make a difference.