Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Recently-pardoned traitor and spy Michael Flynn has joined the ranks of those calling for Trump to declare martial law and put Democrats and democracy to death.

Lin Wood, an Atlanta-based lawyer who says President Donald Trump asked him to join the effort to challenge Joe Biden’s election victory, is promoting a right-wing group’s call for Trump to declare martial law and use the military to oversee a new election. Retired Gen. Michael Flynn also promoted the call for martial law just a day after the Justice Department released the language of the extremely broad pardon Flynn received from Trump.

We the People Convention, an Ohio group with Tea Party roots, made the call for martial law in a full-page ad in the right-wing Washington Times and a press release distributed Tuesday. As of Tuesday afternoon, the press release had been shared more than 70,000 times online. Wood tweeted a link to the press release, adding his own message:

 

Good morning. 

Our country is headed to civil war. A war created by 3rd party bad actors for their benefit - not for We The People. 

Communist China is leading the nefarious efforts to take away our freedom.  

@realDonaldTrump should declare martial law.

Wood, who is apparently working on his own rather than as an official part of Trump’s legal team, sued unsuccessfully to block certification of Biden’s victory in Georgia. He recently suggested that Georgia voters should hold off voting for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in their runoff election until the senators did more to support Trump’s election challenges. Wood, whose Twitter bio includes the QAnon movement hashtag #WWG1WGA, is scheduled to hold a press conference in Georgia with former Team Trump attorney Sidney Powell Wednesday afternoon.

Wood also represents Kyle Rittenhouse, who has become a right-wing folk hero after being charged with killing anti-racism protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. A recent profile of Wood in the Trump-supporting Pentecostal-oriented media outlet Charisma said that he is “walking in the power of the Holy Sprit as a humble man of faith” and described him this way:

Prayer is the ammunition of Wood’s slingshot, figuratively speaking. He comes to do legal battle for “We The People” in the name of the Lord whose hand is still on America, he said, and he will not allow the enemies of God’s people to take over this nation and transform it into the twisted image of the godless, manipulative, intellectual elite who disdain true Christians.

The ad calling for martial law cites constitutionally suspect actions that Abraham Lincoln took during the Civil War as precedent for Trump to act. “Today, the current threat to our United States by the international and domestic socialist/communist left is much more serious than anything Lincoln or our nation has faced in its history – including the civil war,” the ad reads.

The ad claims that leftist activists, colluding with Big Tech and a corrupt media, are out to destroy the United States, and that their “attempted stealing of these elections” is an act of “rebellion.”

Here are the concluding paragraphs:

We the People must not and WILL NOT cede our exclusive Constitutional right to elect our Representatives to judges, lawyers, courts, Governors, Secretary’s of State, Congress, corrupt election officials and local politicians, the corrupt media – or Leftist threats of violence! It is OUR EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to decide our Representatives not theirs! Therefore, We the People MUST demand a NEW and fair national vote, a vote that all Americans can trust and live by regardless of the winner! Without a fair vote, we fear, with good reason, the threat of a shooting civil war is imminent. Gun sales are at an all time high and 40% are first time gun owners looking to defend themselves, their property, and their rights. Therefore, Mr. President you must act now before there is no peaceful way left to preserve our Union.

When the legislators, courts and/or Congress fail to do their duty under the 12th Amendment, you must be ready Mr. President to immediately declare a limited form of Martial Law, and temporarily suspend the Constitution and civilian control of these federal elections, for the sole purpose of having the military oversee a national re-vote. A vote that assures a fair election in every jurisdiction and reflects the true will of the people. Federal candidates only. Paper ballots. No computers. Hand-counted with both parties watching every vote. Only registered voters. Photo ID to prove residence. Conducted safely with everyone wearing masks and six feet apart, just like we did in Ohio. Only then can the winning candidate be accepted as legitimate by a true majority of We the People who must give our consent to be justly governed! Unfortunately we are at a point where we can only trust our military to do this because our corrupt political class and courts have proven their inability to act fairly and within the law.

You must also act, like Lincoln did, to silence the destructive media’s one-sided propaganda designed and proven to influence the election outcome, and end the unlawful censorship of Big Tech, to restore the confidence of the American People in our electoral process or we cannot continue as a nation. Failure to do so could result in massive violence and destruction on a level not seen since the Civil War. Limited Martial Law is clearly a better option than Civil War!

Many will object to these actions, as they did in Lincoln’s day, but we assure you that We the People understand that no less action will suffice to prevent the loss of our Constitutional right to vote and preserve our Republic. It is time to honor your oath, Mr. President. It is time for you to boldly act to save our nation as Lincoln did. We the People will support a national re-vote. We will also have no other choice but to take matters into our own hands, and defend our rights on our own, if you do not act within your powers to defend us.

 

These folks are quite frankly, openly seditious terrorists.  They are baying for blood. It's easy to dismiss them as blustering cranks and useless idiots who would probably shoot themselves loading an AR-15 more than anyone else.

 

But then again, it only takes a few of these assholes to shoot up a state legislature or three, doesn't it? 

And note: a grand total of zero Republicans in Congress are condemning Flynn for this.

They really do want a Second Civil War at this point, guys.

It won't take much, either.

StupidiNews!

• The US has passed 100,000 total hospitalizations for COVID-19, as well as setting a new record for daily deaths from the disease, topping 2,700.
• Former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has died at age 94, the "modernist" politician elected in 1974 helped to found the idea of the European Union.
• The CDC is hoping that British emergency approval of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine will be followed by similar swift action by the Trump regime. 
• President-elect Joe Biden is expected to name more of his domestic policy Cabinet next week, including picks for US Surgeon General, HHS Secretary, and Interior Secretary.
• The FAA is expected to give approval this weekend to SpaceX in order for the commercial spaceflight company to test its Starship prototype at an altitude of 15km.
  

Last Call For The Galleria Of Crime, Con't

The Trump Crime Family continues to openly discuss blanket pardons for Donald and his rotten kids, but the person who really needs a pardon or they're headed for a lifetime in prison is Jared Kushner.

Sweeping data released by the Small Business Administration on who benefited from pandemic relief programs raises questions about the equitability and distribution of loans intended for small businesses, an initial analysis by NBC News shows.

The analysis found that properties owned by the Trump Organization as well as the Kushner Companies, owned by the family of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, profited from the program.

After months of litigation, the SBA released the dataset Tuesday night on every small business that received a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) or Economic Injury Disaster (EIDL) loan.

The data reveals the most complete accounting to date of the more than $700 billion in forgivable loans Congress and the Trump administration introduced in the spring for allowable expenses, including payroll, rent, utilities and mortgage interest payments.

The analysis by NBC News, one of 11 newsrooms that sued for the release of data, also shows: 

• Over 25 PPP loans worth more than $3.65 million were given to businesses with addresses at Trump and Kushner real estate properties, paying rent to those owners. Fifteen of the properties self-reported that they only kept one job, zero jobs or did not report a number at all.
• The loans to Trump and Kushner properties included a $2,164,543 loan to the Triomphe Restaurant Corp., at the Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York City. The company reported the money didn’t go to keeping any jobs. It later closed.
• A company called LB City Inc, which is at Kushner’s Bungalow Hotel in Long Branch, New Jersey, received a loan for $505,552.50 that it used to keep 155 jobs.
• Two tenants at 725 5th Avenue, Trump Tower, received more than $100,000 and kept only three jobs.
• Four tenants at the Kushner-owned 666 5th Avenue combined received more than $204,000, and retained only six jobs.

There were also some troubling signs of mismanagement revealed in the data. Over 100 loans were made to companies where no business name was listed, were listed as “no name available” or showed potential data entry errors, such as names that appeared to be dates or phone numbers. More than 300 companies appear to have each gotten more than $10 million in loans through their subsidiaries. Businesses were not supposed to receive more than $10 million per entity, except for those in the food, hospitality or hotels industries. 

 

Of course Trump and Kushner used the PPP as their own personal piggy bank, and ripped off American businesses to the tune of millions. They got millions in loans they didn't need, meanwhile, thousands of small businesses across America have now been permanently shuttered.

That's how it worked, and Republicans in Congress made sure of it.

Pardon My Destruction

Pardon me, everyone says to Donald Trump.

 

President Trump has discussed with advisers whether to grant pre-emptive pardons to his children, to his son-in-law and to his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, and talked with Mr. Giuliani about pardoning him as recently as last week, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Trump has told others that he is concerned that a Biden Justice Department might seek retribution against the president by targeting the oldest three of his five children — Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump — as well as Ms. Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, a White House senior adviser.

Donald Trump Jr. had been under investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for contacts that the younger Mr. Trump had had with Russians offering damaging information on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign, but he was never charged. Mr. Kushner provided false information to federal authorities about his contacts with foreigners for his security clearance, but was given one anyway by the president.

The nature of Mr. Trump’s concern about any potential criminal exposure of Eric Trump or Ivanka Trump is unclear, although an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into the Trump Organization has expanded to include tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees by the company, some of which appear to have gone to Ms. Trump.

Presidential pardons, however, do not provide protection against state or local crimes.

Mr. Giuliani’s potential criminal exposure is also unclear, although he was under investigation as recently as this summer by federal prosecutors in Manhattan for his business dealings in Ukraine and his role in ousting the American ambassador there. The plot was at the heart of the impeachment of Mr. Trump.

The speculation about pardon activity at the White House is churning furiously, underscoring how much the Trump administration has been dominated by investigations and criminal prosecutions of people in the president’s orbit. Mr. Trump himself was singled out by federal prosecutors as “Individual 1” in a court filing in the case that sent Michael D. Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer, to prison. 

 

Oh, but it gets much, much worse for the Trump regime. 

The Justice Department is investigating a potential crime related to funneling money to the White House or related political committee in exchange for a presidential pardon, according to court records unsealed Tuesday in federal court. 

The case is the latest legal twist in the waning days of President Donald Trump's administration after several of his top advisers have been convicted of federal criminal charges and as the possibility rises of Trump giving pardons to those who've been loyal to him. 

The disclosure is in 20 pages of partially redacted documents made public by the DC District Court on Tuesday afternoon. The records show Chief Judge Beryl Howell's review in August of a request from prosecutors to access documents obtained in a search as part of a bribery-for-pardon investigation. 

The filings don't reveal a timeline of the alleged scheme, or any names of people potentially involved, except that communications between people including at least one lawyer were seized from an office that was raided sometime before the end of this summer.
No one appears to have been publicly charged with a related crime to date. 

The White House declined to comment on the court filing. CNN has previously reported that associates of the President are making appeals to him in the hopes of obtaining pardons before he leaves office. There is no indication that any of those associates are being investigated by DOJ in relation to Tuesday's filing.

 

So somebody is being investigated for paying Trump for a pardon. And that's the kind of thing that Trump can't pardon himself for.  And also remember that the August timeline means Bill Barr sat on this for the full 90 days Judge Howell gave him to protect Trump during the election.

 

Of course, Trump is pissed that this is all coming out, and he's threatening to fire Barr again.

President Trump and his allies are piling extreme pressure on Attorney General Bill Barr to release a report that Trump believes could hurt perceived Obama-era enemies — and view Barr's designation of John Durham as special counsel as a stall tactic, sources familiar with the conversations tell Axios.

Why it matters: Speculation over Barr's fate grew on Tuesday, with just 49 days remaining in Trump's presidency, after Barr gave an interview to the Associated Press in which he said the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread fraud that could change the election's outcome. 

In the interview, Barr also revealed he'd appointed Durham, a veteran prosecutor, as special counsel on Oct. 19 to continue investigating the origins of the FBI's 2016 probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia no matter who won the presidential election.

Behind the scenes: Within Trump's orbit, sources told Axios, Tuesday's revelation was seen as a smokescreen to forestall the release of the so-called Durham report, which senior administration officials believe is already complete — and which Barr had ruled out issuing before the election. 

Another senior administration official disputed that assessment, saying: “The reason the Attorney General appointed John Durham as Special Counsel is because he’s not finished with his investigation," and that Barr "wanted to ensure that John Durham would be able to continue his work independently and unimpeded.” 

Trump has been ranting about the delay behind the scenes and mused privately about replacing Barr with somebody who will expedite the process. But it’s unclear whether he will follow through with that, per sources familiar with the conversations.

 

They are all corrupt as hell, and as many of them need to go to prison as possible.

The Senate Goes Viral, Con't

As COVID-19 cases now steadily resume their post-Thanksgiving gallows march into December...

 

The United States reported more than 4 million coronavirus cases in November, which is higher than the total number of cases seen all year by any country in the world except India and Brazil. Public health experts are warning that the U.S. will keep seeing record-breaking numbers in the final month of 2020.

Since the pandemic began, the U.S. has seen more than 13.3 million confirmed cases and over 267,000 deaths, by far the highest numbers in the world, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. accounts for nearly 20% of the global death toll.

India has recorded 9.4 million cases and Brazil has 6.3 million, according to Johns Hopkins data. Other nations with the highest case counts — including Russia, France, Spain and the United Kingdom — have between 1.6 million and 2.3 million. There have been a total of 62.8 million confirmed cases and 1.4 million deaths worldwide.

 

Suddenly?

 

Suddenly now that Trump has lost the election and that he's openly sabotaging the Georgia runoffs in his political death throes, Senate Republicans are keenly eager to work on a bipartisan COVID-19 relief package.

A bipartisan group of senators introduced a broad coronavirus aid framework on Tuesday, a significant breakthrough after months of failed negotiation. But it’s just the first step toward Congress finally approving a new round of aid.

The legislation would provide $908 billion in aid and also shield businesses from coronavirus lawsuits for a few months to allow states to develop their own liability reforms. The proposal includes $160 billion in state and local aid, $180 billion in additional unemployment insurance and $288 billion for small businesses. It also has $82 billion for schools as well as $45 billion for transportation, according to a draft reviewed by POLITICO. It also includes money for health care.

It was introduced on Tuesday morning by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Angus King (I-Maine), Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), as well as House members. Separately, some other senators have held bipartisan discussions about a solution.

Still, the newest measure is no lay-up, and several congressional aides said the likeliest route to a new round of aid is through Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Congress has not enacted a new significant round of aid since April.

McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have both called for more coronavirus relief, but GOP senators said if there is an aid package, it’s unlikely to be attached to the spending bill due by Dec. 11. That means it’s still uncertain whether Congress can actually clinch a new law before the end of the lame duck.

 

Suddenly, a bunch of Republican senators realize that they won't be able to blame Trump much longer, and that they will have to face voters after he's gone. Suddenly, having to really negotiate with Democrats becomes something they have to do.

Of course, if McConnell ignores this legislation, and he has every base, crass, and banal political reason to do so by waiting until after January 20, this is all kabuki theater on the part of the GOP and being suckered into helping the GOP again by Senate Dems.

 

And that's exactly what he did. 

Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell said Tuesday he’s largely sticking with a partisan, scaled-back COVID-19 relief bill that has already failed twice this fall, even as Democratic leaders and a bipartisan group of moderates offered concessions in hopes of passing pandemic aid before Congress adjourns for the year.

The Kentucky Republican made the announcement after President-elect Joe Biden called upon lawmakers to pass a downpayment relief bill now with more to come next year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi resumed talks with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about a year-end spending package that could include COVID relief provisions. Key Senate moderates rallied behind a scaled-back framework.

It’s not clear whether the flurry of activity will lead to actual progress. Time is running out on Congress’ lame-duck session and Donald Trump’s presidency, many Republicans won’t even acknowledge that Trump has lost the election and good faith between the two parties remains in short supply.

McConnell said his bill, which only modestly tweaks an earlier plan blocked by Democrats, would be signed by Trump and that additional legislation could pass next year. But his initiative fell flat with Democrats and a key GOP moderate.

“If it’s identical to what (McConnell) brought forth this summer then it’s going to be a partisan bill that is not going to become law,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who joined moderates in unveiling a $908 billion bipartisan package only hours earlier. “And I want a bill that will become law.”

And the losers remain the America people.

But what else would 2020 be like, right?

StupidiNews!

• Under months of pressure of COVID-19 task force head VP Mike Pence, the CDC is changing its coronavirus quarantine guidelines from 14 days to 7-10 days with a negative test.
• The Department of Homeland Security says that it is ready to take on COVID-19 vaccine scammers with the "full power" of the federal government.
• The 57-year-old radio telescope dish at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has partially collapsed, the National Science Foundation determined last month that the dish would have to be demolished.
• Israel may be facing its fourth election in two years as embattled PM Benjamin Netanyahu, facing a bribery trial next spring, is now being abandoned by coalition government partner Benny Gantz.
• Amazon is bringing its warehouse workforce monitoring tools to the manufacturing sector as critics say the technology is easily abused by employers to hurt workers.
  

Last Call For Pepper Canned, Pepper Canned

 Much too fooled to make the grade, Pepper canned, he is gone after millions....

Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper announced Monday that he will step down at the end of the year.

Democrats now have a month to decide the future of their party and who will lead it. The assignment is a tough one: revive the party in rural Ohio, improve on victories in metropolitan counties and raise enough money to unseat Republicans who control every branch of Ohio government.

The uphill climb will start immediately. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Terrace Park, and Gov. Mike DeWine are running for re-election in 2022, and they will need credible, well-funded challengers.

Pepper took over the Ohio Democratic Party in 2015 after the party lost every statewide race in 2014, including Pepper's bid against DeWine for attorney general. Former chairman Chris Redfern resigned after losing his Statehouse seat as well.

Pepper, a former Cincinnati City councilman and Hamilton County commissioner, emphasized building up the party's bench with a diverse group of local candidates. During his tenure, Democrats improved their showing in metropolitan counties, gaining control of the Hamilton County Commission and winning Statehouse seats in Columbus' Franklin County.

Between 2018 and 2020, Democrats re-elected U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and picked up three seats on the Ohio Supreme Court – a push Pepper hopes will help to fend off gerrymandered maps going forward.

 

Pepper's failure wasn't total and complete, in other words, but the guy presided over the absolute death of Ohio Democrats as a going concern. It's not as dire as Kentucky Democrats, who have recently elected Colmon Eldridge, the first Black man to lead the party, or Indiana Democrats, who have already buried themselves along with party chair John Zody, but it's rough being a Democrat out here in the Midwest.

Hopefully Biden will help Dems out here.

Lord knows we need it.

The Coup-Coup Birds Take Flight

No big deal, just people openly calling for the extermination of Joe Biden, the Democratic party and the media like normal.

End Times conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles hopes that Donald Trump and Bill Barr will line Democrats, the news media, leftists, scientists, and professors up against a wall and shoot them "because that's what they deserve." pic.twitter.com/cTw8t5qenu

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) November 30, 2020

 

So yeah, completely normal behavior for the right.

The fun part is when Trump tweets his agreement with this sentiment, or worse, tells his followers that they need to be the ones making this happen.

Also, over the river in Ohio, state Republicans are now going after Republican Gov. Mike DeWine for terrorism charges. No, really.

After failing to impeach Gov. Mike DeWine over his COVID-19 response, Clermont County Republican Rep. John Becker tried – and shortly after failed – to charge him with a slew of criminal offenses, including terrorism, bribery and interfering with civil rights.

Becker accused DeWine of disenfranchising voters, threatening the health of Ohioans by closing hospitals to non-emergency procedures and shuttering businesses in a private citizen affidavit filed with Clermont County Municipal Court on Monday morning.

Clermont County Municipal Court Clerk Tim Rudd sent the request to prosecutor Vince Faris for review, and Faris rejected it shortly after.

"I do not find any basis for the filing of a criminal complaint pursuant to this affidavit," Faris, a Republican, told The Enquirer. Becker's quest ended just hours after it started.

The now-moot affidavit accuses DeWine of several crimes including:

• Engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, a second-degree felony
• Complicity, a second-degree felony
• Terrorism, a third-degree felony
• Making terroristic threats, a third-degree felony
• Inducing panic, third-degree felony
• Conspiracy, a third-degree felony
• Bribery, a fourth-degree felony
• Interfering with civil rights, a first-degree misdemeanor
• Coercion, a second-degree misdemeanor
• Patient abuse or neglect, a second-degree misdemeanor

Asked for comment, DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney replied: "If this were serious, I would have a comment. Because it is patently absurd, I do not."

Becker encouraged others to file their own complaints.

“The governor simply isn’t getting the message that the people’s liberties need to be respected and a governor has no right to assume imperial and dictatorial powers without regard to any alleged emergency,” Becker said in a statement.

 

Again, I hope Ohio state police are ready to deal with the death threats DeWine is almost certainly getting. And when Trump directs his flying monkeys to start violence, I hope America is ready to deal with what's next.

 

It's not going to be pretty, folks.

 

Making It Official, Finally

With both Wisconsin and Arizona both certifying Joe Biden as the winner of last month's presidential election on Monday, the Trump regime is finally coming to an end.

 

The chairwoman of the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Monday certified President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner in Wisconsin, formalizing his narrow victory in a state President Trump narrowly carried four years ago and undermining the quixotic efforts of Mr. Trump and his supporters to portray his decisive national loss as a matter still under dispute.

During a three-minute teleconference Monday afternoon, Ann Jacobs, the elections commission chairwoman, signed a document that declared Mr. Biden to be the winner.

“I am now signing it as the official state determination of the results of the Nov. 3, 2020, election and the canvass,” Ms. Jacobs said, before holding the document up to the camera broadcasting her online.

The Wisconsin certification came a few hours after Arizona officials formalized Mr. Biden’s even narrower victory there.

Monday’s certifications would be an afterthought in any other year. But in an environment where Mr. Trump’s false claims of massive fraud have created an alternate reality among his die-hard backers — in the West Wing and beyond — the results foreclosed his fanciful final path to victory.

Mr. Trump, buoyed by his legal team and supporters in the conservative media, has held out hope that he could somehow prevail in Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia, where Republican officials on Monday firmly refused to challenge Mr. Biden’s win there.

In Arizona, Mr. Biden prevailed by over 10,000 votes, mainly because of his strength in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, which has been trending Democratic in recent elections.

The state will deliver its 11 electoral votes to Mr. Biden when the Electoral College meets next month, a ceremonial conclave that Mr. Trump hopes to flip in his favor despite state laws that forbid electors from defying the will of voters.

The certification in Wisconsin followed the conclusion of recounts, requested and subsidized with $3 million from President Trump’s campaign, in Dane and Milwaukee Counties that resulted in Mr. Biden adding 87 votes to his statewide margin.

Ms. Jacobs, a Milwaukee Democrat, said that certifying the result of the presidential election came at her discretion and that she expected the move to kickstart legal challenges from the Trump campaign.

“The power to do this is vested solely in the chair,” Ms. Jacobs said.

The six-member bipartisan commission is scheduled to meet again Tuesday morning to certify the state’s other election results.

 

So what does certification of the final two "disputed" states mean?

 

It means everything Trump and his people do from this point on is open sedition. 

Yes, I still expect the Hail Mary pass to the Supreme Court. But now I'm more worried about what Trump will do when that, too, fails.

Last Call For The Galleria Of Crime, Con't

Jared Kushner is headed to Saudi Arabia for any number of nefarious purposes in the wake of an Iranian nuclear scientist being assassinated last week.

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner is headed to Saudi Arabia and Qatar this week for talks in a region simmering with tension after the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist.

A senior administration official said on Sunday that Kushner is to meet the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in the Saudi city of Neom, and the emir of Qatar in that country in the coming days. Kushner will be joined by Middle East envoys Avi Berkowitz and Brian Hook and Adam Boehler, chief executive of the US International Development Finance Corporation.

The visits would focus on resolving a dispute between Qatar and a Saudi-led alliance, the Wall Street Journal reported, but a number of issues could be on the agenda.

Kushner and his team helped negotiate normalization deals between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan since August. The official said they would like to advance more such agreements before Donald Trump hands power to president-elect Joe Biden on 20 January.

US officials believe enticing Saudi Arabia into a deal with Israel would prompt other Arab nations to follow suit. But the Saudis do not appear to be on the brink of reaching such a landmark deal and officials in recent weeks have been focusing on other countries, with concern about Iran’s regional influence a uniting factor.

Kushner’s trip comes after the killing on Friday of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Tehran by unidentified assailants. Western and Israeli governments believe Fakhrizadeh was the architect of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Days before the killing, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, travelled to Saudi Arabia and met with Prince Mohammed, an Israeli official said, in what was the first publicly confirmed visit by an Israeli leader. Israeli media said they were joined by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.

 

When I said earlier this month that there's any number of ways that the Trump regime could badly sabotage the incoming Biden administration during the lame duck period, this is exactly what I mean.  Jared's been Trump's bag man in the Middle East for years, and Netanyahu, still facing his own bribery and corruption trial scandal which keeps getting mysteriously delayed, is certainly not going to be a fan of Biden after the way he treated Obama for years.

Some sort of last-minute deal between MBS and Netanyahu that ties Biden's hands is exactly what I expect following this meeting, especially something that involves Iran.

Don't be surprised if Trump hands Biden a new Middle East war to deal with in his first 30 days.

 

Lowering The Barr, Con't

Donald Trump's reality has collapsed so completely in the wake of his election loss to Joe Biden that he's now openly blaming Attorney General Bill Barr for his "Deep State!" conspirator-laden loss.

 

Despite having finally assented to allowing his administration to cooperate with the transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden, President Trump on Sunday continued to spout baseless voter fraud claims in his first interview since Election Day, including suggesting that the FBI and Department of Justice were involved in rigging the election against him.

“This is total fraud,” Trump told host Maria Bartiromo during the interview on Fox Business’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” adding: “And how the FBI and Department of Justice—I don’t know—maybe they’re involved, but how people are getting away with this stuff—it’s unbelievable.”

The president offered no evidence to back up this claim, and then went on to complain at length about how the two agencies had been “missing in action” in investigating his voter fraud claims.

The DOJ and FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Forbes.

The heads of both the FBI and DOJ were picked by President Trump. FBI Director Christopher Wray was appointed by the president in 2017, while Attorney General William Barr was nominated in late 2018. Barr has been criticized for actions that have been perceived as overly partisan toward the president, including recently clearing the DOJ to investigate voting irregularities before the results are certified, a reversal of longstanding guidance to avoid the appearance of federal intervention in elections that prompted the head of the department’s Election Crimes Branch Richard Pilger to step down from his position in protest.

Almost all of the dozens of lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign in battleground states have been dismissed by judges—including GOP appointees. However, on Sunday morning, Trump claimed: “We’re trying to put the evidence in and the judges won’t allow us to do it.”

 

Trump also seems to think he can order Barr to appoint a special prosecutor to go after...everyone.  Including, apparently, Barr himself.

 

“Where is the DOJ and the FBI in all of this, Mr. President?” Bartiromo asked of Trump’s claims of voter fraud. “You have laid out some serious charges here. Shouldn’t this be something that the FBI is investigating? Are they? Is the DOJ investigating?”

“Missing in action. Missing in action. Can’t tell you where they are. I ask, ‘Are they looking at it?’ Everyone says, ‘Yes, they’re looking at it.’ Look, where are they with Comey, McCabe, and all these other people? You know, I said I’ll stay out of it. I wish I didn’t make that statement. There’s no reason, really, why I have to,” Trump said. “But where are they with Comey, with McCabe, with Brennan, with all these people. They lied to Congress. They lied, they leaked, they spied on our campaign. I see Carter Page is bringing a lawsuit, that’s good news. Where are they with all of this stuff? And, you know, what happened to Durham? Where’s Durham?”

Former Trump campaign associate Carter Page filed a lawsuit on Friday against Comey, McCabe, the FBI, the Justice Department, and others seeking $75 million in damages related to the “unjustified and illegal actions” and “unlawful spying” against him.

“Before we leave the subject of Durham, I feel like something happened in September. I don’t know what happened, but we were all expecting Durham to come out and A.G. Barr to be aggressive,” Bartiromo said, adding, “Will you appoint a special counsel to investigate and to continue the investigating into what took place in the 2016 election? You mentioned Jim Comey and Andrew McCabe not facing accountability — will you appoint a special counsel?”

“By the way, Comey, McCabe — that’s the least of it. You talk about the Logan Act, they used the Logan Act on General Flynn, who I was very proud to pardon. But they wanted to use and they did use the Logan Act on General Flynn, and you know where that started. Look, this whole thing is a terrible situation. This should’ve never been allowed to happen,” Trump claimed.

He added, “And yeah, I would consider a special prosecutor. Because you know this is not a ‘counsel’ — it sounds so nice. I went through three years of a special counsel prosecutor — I call it ‘prosecutor’ because it’s a much more accurate term. They spent $48 million, Weissmann and all Trump haters, they spent $48 million. That was the Mueller investigation. They went through taxes, they went through everything — for $48 million you look at everything, and they found no collusion, no nothing.” 

 

Again, it's easy to dismiss Trump's schizoid break as something piteous or sad, but the reality is at some point very soon, probably after the Supreme Court delivers the final blow by (hopefully) refusing to take up any of Trump's ridiculous lawsuits, Trump will openly tell his supporters to take up arms and get him his presidency back by any means necessary, and a non-zero percentage of them will take him up on the offer.

 

Civil wars throughout history have started over less, the kind that end up with hundreds of thousands of casualties.  

You know, on top of the hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths so far this year in America.

What Happened In The House?

Democrats have lost at least a dozen seats in the House, and multiple GOP senators survived what should have been fatal blows, and how Biden won despite this is something WaPo columnist Greg Sargent and Cook Political Report House guru Dave Wasserman discuss.

Greg Sargent: Why did these losses happen?

David Wasserman: Republicans did a complete 180 on recruitment. This year all 12 Republicans who picked up Democratic seats so far were women or minorities. Republicans nominated candidates who looked like their districts, and didn’t necessarily sound like [President] Trump.

Sargent: Wasn’t it in some respects inevitable that turnout would be higher on the Republican side, relative to 2018? In 2018 Democratic turnout was lopsidedly high. And in 2020 it wasn’t, because Republicans also turned out. Right?

Wasserman: That’s true. Trump helped Republicans down-ballot in two ways. He drove out millions of low-propensity conservatives who would never vote for their average Republican Joe in a midterm. But he also allowed Republican candidates to pick up voters who could not stomach Trump.

In 2018, when he wasn’t on the ballot, the only opportunity for independent voters, especially suburban women, to vent their anger at Trump was by voting against a Republican congressional candidate. This time around, those voters could do so directly, but vote for a more conventional Republican down-ballot.

Sargent: The big story that everybody missed was the amount of low-propensity Trump base turnout that Trump would inspire, and how that would impact House races?

Wasserman: Right — even in highly college-educated suburbs.

Sargent: The whole explanation then becomes a lot more structural. The big story is that incredibly juiced-up Trump-base turnout allowed down-ballot Republicans to get lifted by that tide, and pocket all those votes, and then just add Republican-leaning swing voters who voted against Trump but for their Republican congressional candidate.

Wasserman: I couldn’t have said it better.

Sargent: Another narrative is that Democratic down-ballot losses reflect the idea that the non-college White vote spread got even worse for Democrats, as David Shor said to Eric Levitz.

I have trouble squaring that with some data we’re seeing. The New York Times county-by-county analysis showed that Biden added 11 percent to 2016 totals in counties with a lot of non-college Whites, while Trump added 15 percent in those counties relative to 2016. The story I take from that is Biden added blue-collar Whites to the Democratic column, but Trump added some more.

It’s not simply Democrats losing more ground with them; it’s Democrats gaining ground but not as much Trump did. Your thoughts?

Wasserman: I’m in the camp that it’s amazing Biden held the line in those places and didn’t lose vote share relative to Hillary Clinton. Democrats’ trajectory has been downward in these places for quite a while now. The fact that Biden held on to what remains of support for Democrats is a testament to his biography, and the comfort level those voters have with him.

Sargent: It’s not just bio, right? Biden tried to articulate a somewhat more populist line than one would have expected from someone with his centrist past, talking about reshoring jobs and industrial policy, and even moving toward Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren populism in some respects. That had to have played some role.

Wasserman: Definitely. Instead of running a campaign entirely about Trump and his temperament, Biden ran a campaign focused on populist themes. That is marginally more effective in blue-collar America.

Sargent: How does this translate back to the down-ballot losses? The voters we’re talking about that cost Democrats House seats — slightly Republican-leaning, couldn’t stomach Trump, wanted to vote for a conventional Republican down-ballot — those are likely not in the main blue-collar Whites, are they?

Wasserman: I think they’re predominantly suburban. Remember when Trump settled on the message that Biden is a Trojan Horse for the radical left? In retrospect, the message those voters might have taken away was that Biden doesn’t sound that bad, but congressional Democrats are about to drive the country off a socialist cliff.

It’s possible that voters priced that into their choice for Congress.

It could have been that they weren’t hearing enough from Democratic candidates on why they weren’t radical leftists.

A lot of voters have no idea where Democratic candidates stand on police funding. Because Democrats never mentioned it in their ads.

Both Biden and Democratic congressional candidates failed to highlight support from law enforcement.

Sargent: It sounds like the key distinction here is between blaming the losses on the existence of the left and “defund the police” on the one hand, and not rebutting Republican attacks on the other. The first is less of an explanation, and the second is more of one.

Wasserman: This is not a situation where “the Squad” bears responsibility. It’s that Democrats in swing districts didn’t do enough to communicate where they actually stood. And I would put Biden in that category. 

 

So the takeaway is this:

1. Suburban Republicans, particularly college-educated white suburban women, felt much better about splitting their ticket by voting for Biden and then voting for Republican candidates that were not white men.
2. Record turnout helped Joe Biden, but it helped congressional Republicans too.
3. The college/non-college split is real, especially with white voters overall, and Democrats better figure out how to fix it in a way that doesn't give Republicans an immediate opening to attack on.
   
4. Trump's racist messages attacking Black Lives Matter and "rioters" and running on "law and order" didn't save him, but the Congressional Republican message that "We're the only thing between you and Biden's Socialism!" absolutely worked.
5. It worked because Dems didn't want to attack cops and especially police unions.
6. We'll see if all this holds true in Georgia's Senate runoffs in six weeks.

 

And guys, Republican redistricting in 2022 may cost the Democrats the House no matter what the Democrats actually do, so House Dems need to go for broke.

 

 

 

StupidiNews!

 Back into the fray, my friends. Time and history wait for no Zandar.

• President-elect Joe Biden was taken to the doctor's office Sunday afternoon for a twisted ankle he suffered while playing with his dog Major, out of an "abundance of caution".
• San Francisco joins Los Angeles in locking down the city and county as COVID-19 cases continue to spike in California and the nation.
• The US Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Monday on counting undocumented immigrants as part of the Census, the Trump regime is trying to block the count in order to hurt immigrants.
• The Biden team is expected to name former Obama adviser Neera Tanden as Office of Management and Budget chief, with economist Celia Rouse as head of the WH Economic Council.
• The original actor for Darth Vader, British bodybuilder David Prowse, has died from illness at age 85.
  

Turkey Week Sunday Long Read: The Devils Came Up To Michigan

Politico's Tim Alberta documents the atrocities of the Trump regime's attempt to steal the Michigan presidential election, using party cronies and Trump's most powerful weapon -- white resentment of Black Detroit -- to enrage his cultists enough so that the state would actually surrender to him. It didn't because of one young Republican who actually did the right thing.

After five years spent bullying the Republican Party into submission, President Donald Trump finally met his match in Aaron Van Langevelde.

Who?

That’s right. In the end, it wasn’t a senator or a judge or a general who stood up to the leader of the free world. There was no dramatic, made-for-Hollywood collision of cosmic egos. Rather, the death knell of Trump’s presidency was sounded by a baby-faced lawyer, looking over his glasses on a grainy Zoom feed on a gloomy Monday afternoon, reading from a statement that reflected a courage and moral clarity that has gone AWOL from his party, pleading with the tens of thousands of people watching online to understand that some lines can never be uncrossed.

“We must not attempt to exercise power we simply don’t have,” declared Van Langevelde, a member of Michigan’s board of state canvassers, the ministerial body with sole authority to make official Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. “As John Adams once said, 'We are a government of laws, not men.' This board needs to adhere to that principle here today. This board must do its part to uphold the rule of law and comply with our legal duty to certify this election.”

Van Langevelde is a Republican. He works for Republicans in the Statehouse. He gives legal guidance to advance Republican causes and win Republican campaigns. As a Republican, his mandate for Monday’s hearing—handed down from the state party chair, the national party chair and the president himself—was straightforward. They wanted Michigan’s board of canvassers to delay certification of Biden’s victory. Never mind that Trump lost by more than 154,000 votes, or that results were already certified in all 83 counties. The plan was to drag things out, to further muddy the election waters and delegitimize the process, to force the courts to take unprecedented actions that would forever taint Michigan’s process of certifying elections. Not because it was going to help Trump win but because it was going to help Trump cope with a loss. The president was not accepting defeat. That meant no Republican with career ambitions could accept it, either.

Which made Van Langevelde’s vote for certification all the more remarkable. With the other Republican on the four-person board, Norman Shinkle, abstaining on the final vote—a cowardly abdication of duty—the 40-year-old Van Langevelde delivered the verdict on his own. At a low point in his party’s existence, with much of the GOP’s leadership class pre-writing their own political epitaphs by empowering Trump to lay waste to the country’s foundational democratic norms, an obscure lawyer from west Michigan stood on principle. It proved to be the nail in Trump’s coffin: Shortly after Michigan’s vote to certify, the General Services Administration finally commenced the official transition of power and Trump tweeted out a statement affirming the move “in the best interest of our Country.”

Still, the drama in Lansing raised deeper questions about the health of our political system and the sturdiness of American democracy. Why were Republicans who privately admitted Trump’s legitimate defeat publicly alleging massive fraud? Why did it fall to a little-known figure like Van Langevelde to buffer the country from an unprecedented layer of turmoil? Why did the battleground state that dealt Trump his most decisive defeat—by a wide margin—become the epicenter of America’s electoral crisis?

In conversations with more than two dozen Michigan insiders—elected officials, party elders, consultants, activists—it became apparent how the state’s conditions were ripe for this sort of slow-motion disaster. Michigan is home to Detroit, an overwhelmingly majority Black city, that has always been a favorite punching bag of white Republicans. The state had viral episodes of conflict and human error that were easily manipulated and deliberately misconstrued. It drew special attention from the highest levels of the party, and for the president, it had the potential to settle an important score with his adversary, Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Perhaps most important, Trump’s allies in Michigan proved to be more career-obsessed, and therefore more servile to his whims, than GOP officials in any other state he has cultivated during his presidency, willing to indulge his conspiratorial fantasies in ways other Republicans weren’t.

This, Republicans and Democrats here agreed, was the essential difference between Michigan and other states. However sloppy Trump’s team was in contesting the results in places like Georgia and Wisconsin, where the margins were fractional, there was at least some plausible justification of a legal challenge. The same could never be said for Michigan. Strangely liberated by his deficit of 154,000 votes, the president’s efforts here were aimed not at overturning the results, but rather at testing voters’ faith in the ballot box and Republicans’ loyalty to him.

“We have to see this for what it is. It’s a PR strategy to erode public confidence in a very well-run election to achieve political ends,” Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said in an interview last week. “This was not any type of valid legal strategy that had any chance at ultimately succeeding.”

“Anybody can sue anybody for any reason. But winning is a whole different matter. And Trump didn’t have a realistic pathway here,” Brian Calley, the former GOP lieutenant governor, told me prior to the certification vote. “I’m not too worried about the end result in Michigan. I understand the drama. … I know the system looks clunky. But I actually think we’ll look back on this and say, you know, we’ve actually got a very strong system that can stand up to a lot of scrutiny.”

Benson and Calley were right that Trump was never going to succeed at altering the outcome in Michigan—or in any of the other contested states, or in the Electoral College itself. The 45th president’s time in office is drawing to a close. No amount of @realdonaldtrump tweets or wild-eyed allegations from his lawyers or unhinged segments on One America News can change that.

But what they can change—where he can ultimately succeed—is in convincing unprecedented numbers of Americans that their votes didn’t count. Last month, Gallup reported that the public’s confidence in our elections being accurate dropped 11 points since the 2018 midterms, which included a 34-point decrease among Republicans. That was before a daily deluge of dishonest allegations and out-of-context insinuations; before the conservative media’s wall-to-wall coverage of exotic conspiracy theories; before the GOP’s most influential figures winked and nodded at the president of the United States alleging the greatest fraud in U.S. history.

Trump failed to win Michigan. But he succeeded in convincing America that a loss, no matter how conclusive, may never again be conclusive enough.

For now, the guardrails have withstood the crash of our democratic process. When Republicans next try this -- and I guarantee you it will happen again, with a more intelligent, more disciplined autocratic monster -- they may not hold at all. The Trump regime should have been stopped four years ago. Instead it was enabled every step of the way by Republicans who were greedy, hateful, racist, and evil.

By the way, Aaron Van Langevelde is facing death threats and excommunication from the GOP. He should want to leave, frankly. He has a security detail for him and his family now because the death threats are very credible considering these same deranged terrorists tried to kidnap the governor and other state executives in order to execute them on live television.

The Battle of Michigan may be done for now. The war will last the rest of my lifetime.

And yours.

 

Turkey Week: The Georgia Insiders

Never forget that Republicans are corrupt and evil as well as racist, as GOP Sen. David Perdue made millions -- a second time, mind you -- in trading COVID-19 medical stocks just days after a classified briefing on the pandemic's spread from China in January.

 

As the ravages of the novel coronavirus forced millions of people out of work, shuttered businesses and shrank the value of retirement accounts, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged to a three-year low.

But for Sen. David Perdue, a Georgia Republican, the crisis last March signaled something else: a stock buying opportunity.

And for the second time in less than two months, Perdue’s timing was impeccable. He avoided a sharp loss and reaped a stunning gain by selling and then buying the same stock: Cardlytics, an Atlanta-based financial technology company on whose board of directors he once served.

On Jan. 23, as word spread through Congress that the coronavirus posed a major economic and public health threat, Perdue sold off $1 million to $5 million in Cardlytics stock at $86 a share before it plunged, according to congressional disclosures.

Weeks later, in March, after the company’s stock plunged further following an unexpected leadership shakeup and lower-than-forecast earnings, Perdue bought the stock back for $30 a share, investing between $200,000 and $500,000.

Those shares have now quadrupled in value, closing at $121 a share on Tuesday.

The Cardlytics transactions were just a slice of a large number of investment decisions made in the early days of the pandemic by Perdue and other senators. They stirred public outrage after it became clear that some members of Congress had been briefed on the economic and health threat the virus posed. The transactions were mentioned briefly in a story published by the Intercept in May.

Now that Perdue is locked in a pitched battle for reelection in a Jan. 5 runoff, his trades during a public health and economic crisis have become an issue in what already has become a negative, expensive campaign that will determine which party controls the Senate.

There is no evidence that Perdue, who is among the wealthier members of the Senate, acted on information gained as a member of Congress or through his long-standing relationship with company officials. It’s illegal to use nonpublic information gained as a company insider or member of Congress to make investment decisions.

But legal experts say the timing of his sale, the fact that he quickly bought Cardlytics stock back when it had lost two-thirds of its market value and his close ties to company officials all warrant scrutiny.

 

Now Perdue says all of this is legal and he didn't do anything wrong. But the fact remains that wile COVID-19 has ripped the ground out from under tens of millions of Americans, David Perdue profited greatly and made millions, maybe tens of millions, on medical stocks. And then he lied about it to everyone, because it was Perdue himself who made these stock choices after getting "accidentally" emailed by the Cardlytics CEO.

During the campaign, Mr. Perdue disclosed in a televised ad that a “full review of his stock trades” by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission had “cleared him completely,” but made no mention of Cardlytics or the extent of the federal scrutiny.

Mr. Grimes and Mr. Perdue had known each other since at least 2010, when Mr. Perdue joined the board of Cardlytics, then a small and privately held Atlanta start-up. Mr. Perdue resigned his directorship in 2014 after his election to the Senate, but struck an unusual financial arrangement on his way out that paved the way for him to benefit from holding a stake in the company when it went public four years later.

As a senator, Mr. Perdue continued to hold shares of Cardlytics, where executives said he had made valuable contributions to the company, along with scores of other stocks that he traded. In 2019, Mr. Grimes made the maximum donation of $5,600 to Mr. Perdue’s re-election efforts, in what appeared to be his only political contribution of the election cycle.

The email correspondence between the two men began on Jan. 21 and took place just before Mr. Perdue placed the well-timed trades.

“David, I know you are about to do a call with David Evans,” Mr. Grimes wrote from his iPad, according to a copy of the exchange reviewed by The New York Times. “As an FYI, I have not told him about the upcoming changes. Thanks, Scott.”

Mr. Evans, then the chief financial officer of Cardlytics, stepped down from that role six weeks after Mr. Grimes sent the email, at the same time that Mr. Grimes announced plans to assume a new role as executive chairman. Mr. Evans said in July that he was leaving the company.

Mr. Perdue responded to Mr. Grimes’s email by saying he would check with his Senate scheduler but “I don’t know about a call with David or the changes you mentioned.”

Mr. Grimes wrote back the next morning to apologize.

“David, Sorry. That email was not meant for you. Wrong David!” he wrote.

Mr. Perdue then contacted his wealth manager at Goldman Sachs, Robert Hutchinson, and instructed him to sell a little more than $1 million worth of Cardlytics shares, or about 20 percent of his position, three of the people said. One person familiar with the inquiry into Mr. Perdue’s trades said that the conversation was memorialized in an internal Goldman Sachs record later obtained by the F.B.I.

 

And he did this while sitting on his ass and helping Mitch McConnell get away with devastating Georgia's economy, while Atlanta food banks are scrambling to keep up with the newly impoverished.

Even if what Perdue did was legal, it's legal because he helped make the laws so that he could get away with it.

Vote Ossoff and Warnock in January.