Last Call For The Darkest Sequel

MSNBC's Steve Kornacki lays out the scenario: a rich businessman runs for President of the United States because of America's massive debt, promising to operate the country like a business. The establishment is corrupt, and middle-class white America is suffering from a recent recession. The voters are angry at the last president and want to throw all the bums out.

It should definitely sound familiar today, but the year was 1992.  The billionaire in question was Texan Ross Perot.

Despite what his critics say is a Perot predilection for falsehoods and conspiracy theories, millions of voters believed he was the only candidate telling them the truth about their country -- and they have a point. No other politician in this era has vaulted to prominence by insisting that the nation must swallow such horrid medicines as he has prescribed -- higher taxes for everybody and drastic reductions in popular government programs. 

John Jay Hooker, a Perot friend with whom the billionaire has frequently discussed political plans, said Perot has stated many times his intention to keep banging away on issues of the deficit and the economy's long-term decline.

"He'll never give up on this," said Hooker, a liberal former newspaper publisher from Nashville. "He believes the country's problems are malignant, so how can he go home and twiddle his thumbs?" 

People around Perot have discussed a number of ways he could stay active. One is for him to act as spokesman, and for his supporters to act as a permanent pressure group, urging reduction of the $4 trillion national debt. 

Perot most likely will take on the guise of a business-minded Jesse L. Jackson, a critic without portfolio. He could join retiring Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) and former senator Paul E. Tsongas (D-Mass.) in raising the deficit issue. But his supporters are unlikely to stay together unless Perot commits himself to keeping the coalition permanent. 

Unlike, say, the evangelical movement, his is a movement without a set of bedrock principles. His supporters are from the left, the right, from both parties -- they agree only that Perot is their leader. 

He has refused to answer whether he would run again in 1996. While he appeared to relish the adulation he received campaigning, he hated being questioned by the press. It was all new to him.

He had never run for office before and, in fact, he had said many times he is "temperamentally unfit" for government.

We dodged a bullet 25 years ago.  Last year we were not so lucky.  We failed to learn the lessons of Perot's 1992 and 1996 runs, or rather, the Democrats did.  The Republicans learned the lessons of Perot's outsider run all too well.

This year saw the kinds of tough economic times, and Perot led the kind of spontaneous and combustible movement, that under different circumstances might have given itself to a ghastly demagoguery or a politics of racial division.

Jim Squires, who served as Perot's spokesman in the first aborted phase of the campaign, said the nation is fortunate that the man who became the lightning rod for much of America's discontent this year was Perot -- and not a demagogue who would play on racial fears or other divisive antipathies.

"The next time the man on the white horse comes, he may not be so benign," Squires said. "He could be a real racial hater or a divider of people."

And so here we are today. Welcome to the nightmare sequel Squires warned us about.

The Blue Wave Builds, Con't

While Democrats have come up short picking up congressional special election seats in deep red districts created by Trump's cabinet picks in 2017, the good news is at the state level Team Blue continues to make gains in places that nobody thought they would ever be able to, places like, say, blood-red suburban Oklahoma.

Democrats have flipped another statehouse seat in deeply conservative Oklahoma amid growing frustration over years of state budget shortfalls and recent scandals that led to the resignation of Republican incumbents. 

Democrat Allison Ikley-Freeman defeated Republican Brian O’Hara in Tuesday’s special election for a state Senate seat representing parts of Tulsa. Complete but unofficial election results show that Ikley-Freeman, who is a therapist at a nonprofit mental health agency, won by 31 votes. 

That seat was vacated after Republican Sen. Dan Newberry said he would step down early to focus on his career in banking. 

Ikley-Freeman’s win marks the fourth pickup for state Democrats in special elections this year in Oklahoma, where Republicans have dominated state politics in recent years.

It's only a matter of time before the Democrats get wins in the House and Senate, as long-time Republicans see the coming Trump train wreck and are bailing in massive numbers ahead of near-certain midterm defeat.

A retirement wave has hit House Republicans, emboldening Democrats who have become increasingly bullish about their prospects of winning back a majority in 2018.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) on Thursday became the latest Republican to announce he would not seek another term.

The 13-term Virginian followed Reps. Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), both of whom announced Tuesday — hours before Republicans suffered sweeping losses at the polls — that they’d retire from Congress. 

All told, 29 Republicans will not seek reelection to their House seats, compared to only 11 for Democrats. Fifteen Republicans are retiring outright, rather than seeking other political offices or positions. Only two Democrats are doing the same. 

“Anybody who has a pair of eyes and ears knows that the House is in play and at risk,” Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who heads a moderate GOP caucus and is not seeking reelection next year, told The Hill. “And I’m sure that fact enters into the calculation of many members who are contemplating their futures."

“Do you really want to go through another year like the last one?” Dent asked.

Republicans are terrified.  We'll see what happens, but these aren't just GOP freshmen and Tea Party era Republicans retiring, these are long-time committee chairs and multi-term conservatives who easily survived the last blue wave in 2006.

Republicans have near total power in the government right now and they can't quit fast enough.

From Harare To Eternity, Con't

As I mentioned last night, the military coup in Zimbabwe to remove strongman Robert Mugabe from power has been successful.  The military, led by the commander of the nation's armed forces, Constantine Chiwenga, is now in charge of the capital Harare and has Mugabe under house arrest.

Zimbabwe’s military seized power and detained 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe in a struggle over the succession of the only leader the nation has ever known.

Mugabe told President Jacob Zuma by phone that he’s being confined to his home and is fine, the South African presidency said in a statement. Zimbabwe Defense Forces spokesman Major-General Sibusiso Moyo said in a televised address that the military action wasn’t a coup and was aimed at only “targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes.”

Troops took control of the state-owned broadcaster and sealed off parliament and the central bank’s offices, while armored vehicles were stationed in the center of the capital, Harare.

The military takeover comes at a delicate moment for Zimbabwe, where an estimated 95 percent of the workforce is jobless and as many as 3 million Zimbabweans have gone into exile. With an economy that has halved in size since 2000 and relies mainly on the dollar because it has no currency of its own, a severe cash shortage is choking businesses and forces some people to sleep in the streets near banks to ensure they can make withdrawals.

Zuma called for calm and urged the military to maintain the peace, while western governments including the U.S. urged their citizens in Zimbabwe to remain indoors.

The action came a day after armed forces commander Constantine Chiwenga announced that the military would stop “those bent on hijacking the revolution.”

Remember your five A's, Chiwenga had them in his pocket early.  It helped that he started out with Armed Forces as head of the country's military, which made getting the other four much easier.  He took the country's Airports and Airwaves, got the Asshole in charge in Mugabe, and has rounded up nearly all of Mugabe's Allies.

What sparked the coup? Mugabe made a fatal miscalculation by firing his vice-president in favor of his own wife, Grace.  That was apparently too much to bear for Chiwenga and the military.

The military intervention followed a week-long political crisis sparked by Mugabe’s decision to fire his long-time ally Emmerson Mnangagwa as vice president in a move that paved the way for his wife Grace, 52, and her supporters to gain effective control over the ruling party. Nicknamed “Gucci Grace” in Zimbabwe for her extravagant lifestyle, she said on Nov. 5 that she would be prepared to succeed her husband.

People involved in the “purge” of liberation war veterans from the government will be arrested and charged, according to a senior official involved in the army action, who asked not to be named as the information isn’t public.

Despite the armed forces’s denial of a coup, the country is now under military rule, said Alex Magaisa, a Zimbabwean law lecturer who is based in the U.K. and helped design Zimbabwe’s 2013 constitution.

“When you see a man in uniform reading news on national television, you know it’s done,” he said in a text message. “There are no more questions. Authority is now in the hands of the military.”

As far as Mugabe himself is concerned, South Africa's News24 is reporting that there's a growing political movement to offer him political asylum in that country in order to keep regional peace.

It looks to be all over but the clean-up.  What comes next?  We'll see if the country holds new elections, or if the junta stays in power.  After all, that plan worked for Mugabe for nearly 40 years. Many of these are the bloodied hands that kept Mugabe in power since 1980, so there's no reason to believe they will either relinquish power to new elections or be any better than the "Grand Old Man" of Africa.

Meet the new boss...

StupidiNews!

• A gunman in Northern California killed four before being killed, Tehama County Sheriff's officials say the gunman tried to enter an elementary school but the school was locked down.
• An unpublicized meeting of some of the nation's top cops and GOP donors took place over the weekend at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
• Sen. Rand Paul has an amendment for the GOP tax plan that would repeal Obamacare's individual mandate, costing 15 million Americans health coverage next year if passed.
• The fifth round of NAFTA trade talks will resume in Mexico City today as negotiators from the US, Mexico and Canada try to reach a deal before US and Mexican elections in 2018.
• Tech startup Arrivo will bring a second Hyperloop test center and track to Colorado as the company, made up of former Hyperloop One employees, will test alternate ideas.

Last Call For From Harare To Eternity

A possible coup in Zimbabwe is going down.

Soldiers deployed across the Zimbabwe capital Harare and seized the state broadcaster on Wednesday after 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party accused the head of the military of treason, prompting frenzied speculation of a coup. 

Just 24 hours after military chief General Constantino Chiwenga threatened to intervene to end a purge of his allies in Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, a Reuters reporter saw armored personnel carriers on main roads around the capital.

Aggressive soldiers told passing cars to keep moving through the darkness. “Don’t try anything funny. Just go,” one barked at Reuters on Harare Drive.

Two hours later, soldiers overran the headquarters of the ZBC, Zimbabwe’s state broadcaster and a principal Mugabe mouthpiece, and ordered staff to leave. Several ZBC workers were manhandled, two members of staff and a human rights activist said.

Shortly afterwards, three explosions rocked the center of the southern African nation’s capital, Reuters witnesses said.

Despite the troops stationed at locations across Harare, there was no word from the military as to the fate of Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s leader of the last 37 years and the self-styled ‘Grand Old Man’ of African politics.

In contrast to his elevated status on the continent, Mugabe is reviled in the West as a despot whose disastrous handling of the economy and willingness to resort to violence to maintain power destroyed one of Africa’s most promising states.

In the only official word from the government, Isaac Moyo, Zimbabwe’s ambassador to neighboring South Africa, earlier dismissed talk of a coup, saying the government was “intact” and blaming social media for spreading false information.

“There’s nothing really happening. They are just social media claims,” Moyo told Reuters.

The Southern African nation has been on edge since Monday when Chiwenga, Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, said he was prepared to “step in” to end a purge of supporters of sacked vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Only a few months ago, Mnangagwa, a former security chief nicknamed “The Crocodile”, was favorite to succeed his life-long political patron but was ousted a week ago to pave the way for Mugabe’s 52-year-old wife Grace to succeed him.

Remember the five A's of proper coup execution have to be in hand:

• Armed forces
• Airwaves
• Airports
• Allies
• and the Asshole in charge you're trying to overthrow.

It looks like, unlike the completely failed military coup in Turkey in July 2016, Chiwenga and his forces now have at least three and by some reports possibly all five of the A's in his possession.  We'll see how things shake out over the next 24 hours, but at this point remember that Mugabe is 93 years old.

We'll see what the sun brings.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

So, turns out planning to commit illegal campaign collusion by receiving stolen data is a bad thing, especially when you're Julian Assange and WikiLeaks working with Donald Trump Jr. to get the goods you know they have because the goddamn Russians told you.

Just before the stroke of midnight on September 20, 2016, at the height of last year’s presidential election, the WikiLeaks Twitter account sent a private direct message to Donald Trump Jr., the Republican nominee’s oldest son and campaign surrogate. “A PAC run anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” WikiLeaks wrote. “The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC. We have guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump.’ See ‘About’ for who is behind it. Any comments?” (The site, which has since become a joint project with Mother Jones, was founded by Rob Glaser, a tech entrepreneur, and was funded by Progress for USA Political Action Committee.)

The next morning, about 12 hours later, Trump Jr. responded to WikiLeaks. “Off the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around,” he wrote on September 21, 2016. “Thanks.”

The messages, obtained by The Atlantic, were also turned over by Trump Jr.’s lawyers to congressional investigators. They are part of a long—and largely one-sided—correspondence between WikiLeaks and the president’s son that continued until at least July 2017. The messages show WikiLeaks, a radical transparency organization that the American intelligence community believes was chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it had hacked, actively soliciting Trump Jr.’s cooperation. WikiLeaks made a series of increasingly bold requests, including asking for Trump’s tax returns, urging the Trump campaign on Election Day to reject the results of the election as rigged, and requesting that the president-elect tell Australia to appoint Julian Assange ambassador to the United States.
“Over the last several months, we have worked cooperatively with each of the committees and have voluntarily turned over thousands of documents in response to their requests,” said Alan Futerfas, an attorney for Donald Trump Jr. “Putting aside the question as to why or by whom such documents, provided to Congress under promises of confidentiality, have been selectively leaked, we can say with confidence that we have no concerns about these documents and any questions raised about them have been easily answered in the appropriate forum.” WikiLeaks did not respond to requests for comment.

The messages were turned over to Congress as part of that body’s various ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. American intelligence services have accused the Kremlin of engaging in a deliberate effort to boost President Donald Trump’s chances while bringing down his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. That effort—and the president’s response to it—has spawned multiple congressional investigations, and a special counsel inquiry that has led to the indictment of Trump’s former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, for financial crimes.

Though Trump Jr. mostly ignored the frequent messages from WikiLeaks, he at times appears to have acted on its requests. When WikiLeaks first reached out to Trump Jr. about putintrump.org, for instance, Trump Jr. followed up on his promise to “ask around.” According to a source familiar with the congressional investigations into Russian interference with the 2016 campaign, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, on the same day that Trump Jr. received the first message from WikiLeaks, he emailed other senior officials with the Trump campaign, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, telling them WikiLeaks had made contact. Kushner then forwarded the email to campaign communications staffer Hope Hicks. At no point during the 10-month correspondence does Trump Jr. rebuff WikiLeaks, which had published stolen documents and was already observed to be releasing information that benefited Russian interests.

WikiLeaks played a pivotal role in the presidential campaign. In July 2016, on the first day of the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks released emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee's servers that spring. The emails showed DNC officials denigrating Bernie Sanders, renewing tensions on the eve of Clinton’s acceptance of the nomination. On October 7, less than an hour after the Washington Post released the Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, Wikileaks released emails that hackers had pilfered from the personal email account of Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta.

The timing of the Podesta emails, specifically designed to drown the Trump Access Hollywood tape, has to me always been the surest sign that WikiLeaks was directly working to help Trump win. Now we know what Assange wanted in return: Ambassadorship to Australia.

And we know Trump Jr. was listening.

In the winter and spring, WikiLeaks went largely silent, only occasionally sending Trump Jr. links. But on July 11, 2017, three days after The New York Times broke the story about Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with connections to Russia’s powerful prosecutor general, WikiLeaks got in touch again.

“Hi Don. Sorry to hear about your problems,” WikiLeaks wrote. “We have an idea that may help a little. We are VERY interested in confidentially obtaining and publishing a copy of the email(s) cited in the New York Times today,” citing a reference in the paper to emails Trump Jr had exchanged with Rob Goldstone, a publicist who had helped set up the meeting. “We think this is strongly in your interest,” WikiLeaks went on. It then reprised many of the same arguments it made in trying to convince Trump Jr. to turn over his father’s tax returns, including the argument that Trump’s enemies in the press were using the emails to spin an unfavorable narrative of the meeting. “Us publishing not only deprives them of this ability but is beautifully confounding.”

The message was sent at 9:29 am on July 11. Trump Jr. did not respond, but just hours later, he posted the emails himself, on his own Twitter feed.

The Russians have been using WikiLeaks and Assange for quite some time now.   We know Donald Trump Jr. is neck deep in this mess too.  And we know Mueller is waiting to pounce. Remember, this is all part of a larger operation by the Russians to compromise the Trump regime.

A series of meetings between Russians and three Trump campaign advisers in a six-week span last year provide the strongest evidence yet that the Kremlin had mounted an intelligence operation aimed at infiltrating the campaign, according to former intelligence officials and experts. 

The recent acknowledgments by advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos that they talked with Russians and Russian officials around the same time that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Kremlin advocate indicates a coordinated effort to recruit Trump associates, possibly for eliciting information and conveying messages, intelligence experts told BuzzFeed News. 

“I don’t think there can be any doubt now that the Russians were targeting the Trump campaign, and there were members of the Trump campaign who were receptive to those approaches,” said Asha Rangappa, a former FBI counterintelligence agent in New York who now lectures at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. 

The failure of both Trump Jr. and Papadopoulos to inform US authorities that their Russian contacts said they had incriminating information about Hillary Clinton would have emboldened Russian intelligence to continue reaching out to Trump associates, the experts told BuzzFeed News. 

“Their overtures weren't rejected, and there was presumably no reporting of the [Trump Jr.] meeting by the Trump side to the appropriate authorities. They would have felt confident they weren't dealing with a reluctant partner,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who was a CIA intelligence officer for 23 years and director of intelligence and counterintelligence at the US Energy Department. 

The contacts illustrate the overlooked role in the 2016 election of Russian intelligence, which has flourished under Putin, a former spy. While President Donald Trump continues to say he's skeptical that Russia interfered in the election and denies that there was any collusion between his campaign and Russian authorities, outside experts say they believe there can now be little doubt that the Russian government was trying to penetrate the campaign.

And that campaign by the Russians has sloppy, gloppy fingerprints all over it.

On Aug. 3 of last year, just as the US presidential election was entering its final, heated phase, the Russian foreign ministry sent nearly $30,000 to its embassy in Washington. The wire transfer, which came from a Kremlin-backed Russian bank, landed in one of the embassy’s Citibank accounts and contained a remarkable memo line: “to finance election campaign of 2016.” 

That wire transfer is one of more than 60 now being scrutinized by the FBI and other federal agencies investigating Russian involvement in the US election. The transactions, which moved through Citibank accounts and totaled more than $380,000, each came from the Russian foreign ministry and most contained a memo line referencing the financing of the 2016 election. 

The money wound up at Russian embassies in almost 60 countries from Afghanistan to Nigeria between Aug. 3 and Sept. 20, 2016. It is not clear how the funds were used. At least one transaction that came into the US originated with VTB Bank, a financial institution that is majority-owned by the Kremlin.

We're rapidly approaching the point where Trump's hand will be forced, and with it, the GOP.  Stay tuned.

The Revenge Sessions

We've come to a nexus point on three things so far in the era of Trump, and they have produced one of the all-time bad decisions on the part of Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

First, the Mueller investigation is closing in on the Trump regime in general and specifically, Jeff Sessions himself.  He's been linked to the now-infamous March 2016 meeting of Trump's foreign policy team where George Papadopoulos floated arranging a meeting with Putin, while Sessions himself has stated multiple times under oath that he knew nothing of such attempts to arrange meetings with Russian nationals. He faces testimony today in front of the House Judiciary, at a time when a regular oversight meeting such as this is bound to be very bad for him.

Second, Republican patience with Sessions after his recusal from all things involving the 2016 campaign investigation has evaporated. Trump has been angry at Sessions for months for not protecting him from Mueller by firing him, and he's floated getting rid of Sessions several times. Refusal to prosecute Hillary Clinton has been a particular sticking point, we all remember the chants of "lock her up!" at Trump rallies both before and after the inauguration.

Third, the opportunity for Trump to rid himself of Sessions has now revealed itself through the disastrous mess that is Roy Moore's Senate campaign in Alabama's special election.  Multiple Senate Republicans have dropped their endorsements of Moore as now five women have come forward to accuse Moore of sexual assault when the victims were at the time ranging from ages 14 to 18.  The option of a write-in has come up, and while current placeholder Sen. Luther Strange is mentioned as the champion of that strategy since Alabama law precludes removing Moore from the ballot, or as the beneficiary of a move where Moore wins and then is pressured to resign and GOP Gov. Kay Ivey names a replacement (again), this used to be Jeff Sessions's Senate seat.  Ivey could name Sessions as the replacement and suddenly the post of AG is vacant.

It's a complicated and complex mess to be sure, but all three of these factors have combined to force Sessions to play his hand, and last night he did just that.

He's going after Clinton after all.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is entertaining the idea of appointing a second special counsel to investigate a host of Republican concerns — including alleged wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation and the controversial sale of a uranium company to Russia — and has directed senior federal prosecutors to explore at least some of the matters and report back to him and his top deputy, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post.

The revelation came in a response by the Justice Department to an inquiry from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who in July and again in September called for Sessions to appoint a second special counsel to investigate concerns he had related to the 2016 election and its aftermath.

The list of matters he wanted probed was wide ranging but included the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, various dealings of the Clinton Foundation and several matters connected to the purchase of the Canadian mining company Uranium One by Russia’s nuclear energy agency. Goodlatte took particular aim at former FBI director James B. Comey, asking for the second special counsel to evaluate the leaks he directed about his conversations with President Trump, among other things.

In response, Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd wrote that Sessions had “directed senior federal prosecutors to evaluate certain issues raised in your letters,” and that those prosecutors would “report directly to the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, as appropriate, and will make recommendations as to whether any matters not currently under investigation should be opened, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources, or whether any matters merit the appointment of a Special Counsel.”

Trump has repeatedly criticized his Justice Department for not aggressively probing a variety of conservative concerns. He said recently that officials there “should be looking at the Democrats” and that it was “very discouraging” they were not “going after Hillary Clinton.” On the campaign trail, Trump’s supporters frequently chanted “Lock her up!” at the mention of Clinton’s name.

“Hopefully they are doing something, and at some point, maybe we are going to all have it out,” Trump said recently.

So in order to save his own ass, Sessions is destroying the last shred of his credibility to raise the possibility of prosecuting Trump's political enemies.  Frankly, I expected this earlier, but it seems that Sessions is now painfully aware of how precarious his position is.  For him to even consider this as he is, the hammer must be close to falling on him.  Whether that hammer is wielded by Trump or by Mueller, take your pick.

The larger problem is of course the end of the era of rule of law in the executive branch of the US federal government.  Should a second special counsel be appointed by somebody as compromised as Sessions is now, then the impartiality of the Justice Department will be forever ruined. We're deep in authoritarian regime territory on this one, folks.  Trump has only been in office ten months and we're facing the very real possibility of not making it out of this one as even a cursory democracy.

The notion that there's anything to investigate regarding the Clintons is ridiculous.  The Uranium One story is fully fabricated by the right and is a distraction, period.  No wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation has also been found, it's ethically lousy but legal.  To raise a special counsel over these issues is complete nonsense, and Sessions knows it.  This is an outright witch hunt, like Benghazi.

Still, at this stage I fully expect now for Robert Mueller to be fired.  The rest is timing.  If Sessions and the GOP are going this far, there's no reason for them not to dismiss Mueller and end his investigation into them. The indictments have got them terrified, and at this point it's all over but the justification.  There's still a chance that Mueller will be allowed to finish his investigation, but that probability just took a massive dip in the last 24 hours.  The one thing going in our favor right now is that the Mueller probe is robust enough to be self-sustaining if it's reached the "indictments and cooperating with the Feds" phase.  There's still much that will come out even if Mueller is dismissed.

Even with that information in hand as a hedge against lawlessness by Trump, this is still all kinds of bad, folks.  And I don't see a way out that doesn't involve extreme peril for the country.  America has certainly seen worse moments, but not in the last couple of generations. I don't honestly know how this ends, and anyone who tells you that they do is lying.  If Sessions does follow through with this (and if this is a bluff, it's a revolting one) all bets are off.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• A fifth woman has publicly come forward to accuse Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexually assaulting her when she was 16.
• Attorney General Jeff Sessions will face questions on Capitol Hill as he testifies before the House Judiciary Committee about recent revelations about meetings with Russian nationals.
• The US and Russia remain at odds over a UN inquiry into use of chemical weapons by Syria's Assad regime, Russia had initially vetoed a UN Security Council resolution but talks continue.
• Senate Republicans looking to pass tax legislation face the Byrd Rule, where a measure that adds to the federal deficit in its first decade cannot be passed by simple majority.
• Analysis by MIT finds that odds of torrential rains from storms like Hurricane Harvey will be far more likely by the end of the century in the US.

Last Call For Thirty-Eight, Twenty, And Zero

Don't look now kids, but Republicans are getting closer to their goal of a Constitutional Convention to rewrite the laws of the land and institute a balanced budget requirement that would cripple the country's economy for good.  Wisconsin now makes the 28th state to do this, and should the GOP get to 38, the game ends...and so does America.

Wisconsin became the 28th state to call for a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution, with a 19-14 vote Tuesday in the Republican-led state Senate.

Lawmakers also approved measures to limit the scope of the convention to the passage of an amendment requiring a balanced federal budget and to determine who would represent the state at such a convention. The first two resolutions do not require Gov. Scott Walker's signature to take effect; the third does.

Walker tweeted Tuesday morning that he supports the measures, which were approved by the Assembly in June.

Senate President Roger Roth, R-Appleton, joined Democrats in opposing the proposals. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, had previously voiced hesitations about the effort, but said the members of his caucus ultimately lined up to support it.

Supporters say they would use the opportunity only to get the federal government's finances in order — in particular, the country's $20 trillion national debt.

"The founders put this in place specifically for times when the federal government was not taking action when there is severe risk," said Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, the bill's Senate author.

Ahh, but of course those restrictions to limit the proceedings to "just a balanced budget" amendment would be unenforceable hogwash.

Critics of the effort fear a convention would open the door to major constitutional revisions in a "runaway convention," since delegates would not be required to abide by proposed limitations.

"To turn around and open that document up to a convention of people, I think, is extremely risky and dangerous," said Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison.

Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, cited the current political climate, rife with disagreements between political parties and within them, as he argued the time is not right to open the Constitution.

"Do you want to leave the fate of our country in the hands of people on both sides right now who are more full of rage than they are of acceptance?" Erpenbach asked.

Asked later whether he believes restrictions on the scope of the convention can be enforced, Fitzgerald said "it should be a concern."

"It always should be a concern when you have something that could be wide open," Fitzgerald said. "It's just hard to really forecast that right now."

So Republicans need just six more states to agree in order to rewrite the Constitution as they see fit.  Trump, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell all aside, the very, very real threat to America at this point remains Republicans at the state level.  Republicans now have more than a majority of states on record calling for the Constitution to be rewritten.  Should they get to that three-fourths super-majority, all bets are off on America's continued existence.

This is why we need to take states back in 2018.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

With all indications that Robert Mueller is closing in on former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and his son Michael Jr. and that either indictments could be handed down very soon or that Flynn is already cooperating with Mueller in his investigation, the guesswork goes to where Mueller may be headed next by looking at what his all-star team of prosecutors is doing.

His most experienced attorneys have discrete targets, such as former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and current White House aides. Mueller’s longtime chief of staff is coordinating all the lawyers, including some who cover multiple topics. Select FBI special agents have been tapped to question witnesses. 

Spearheading the criminal case against Manafort and his longtime deputy Rick Gates are three prosecutors schooled in money laundering, fraud, foreign bribery and organized crime: Andrew Weissmann, Greg Andres and Kyle Freeny. 

And at the center of the investigation into Flynn is Jeannie Rhee, a former Obama-era deputy assistant attorney general who most recently worked with Mueller at the WilmerHale law firm — and whose name has so far appeared only on publicly available court documents relating to the guilty plea of former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. Assisting Rhee on the Flynn case is Zainab Ahmad, an assistant U.S. attorney from New York with a specialty in prosecuting and collecting evidence in international criminal and terrorism cases — and whose name hasn’t yet appeared in Russia-related court filings at all. 

Mueller’s org chart pulls back the curtain on how the special counsel’s relatively small team is handling an array of investigative targets ranging from campaign contacts with Russian operatives to possibly Trump himself. 

“Division of labor is essential here,” said Samuel Buell, a Duke University law professor and former assistant U.S. attorney who worked with Weissmann in the prosecution of Enron executives in the early 2000s. “There’s got to be some carving up of this thing into nests of facts.” 

Mueller’s investigation began with a focus on Russia’s role in the 2016 election, but he’s free to pursue any crimes he finds. Former Justice officials said the special counsel’s team needs to be flexible as it scrutinizes Trump aides’ contacts with Russians, Manafort’s overseas lobbying, Flynn’s firing due to his failure to disclose conversations with Russian officials, and the president’s decision to oust FBI Director James Comey. They could cast a still wider net; Trump and his lawyers have warned Mueller to stay away from the president’s real estate deals. 

One lawyer in Mueller’s office has indicated publicly that the different parts of the special counsel’s work are interconnected. During Papadopoulos’ plea agreement hearing in October, Mueller prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky urged the federal judge to restrict Freedom of Information Act access to the court files because “there’s a large-scale ongoing investigation of which this case is a small part.”

Flynn is a keystone to this whole mess, as was made clear over the weekend as reports that consulting firm Cambridge Analytica sought out stolen DNC emails from WikiLeaks after joining the Trump campaign as data analysts in 2016.

During that same time period, Republican operative Peter W. Smith tried to obtain the Clinton State Department emails. In his search for the emails, he said he was working on behalf of Michael Flynn, a Trump campaign adviser. One of the cyberexperts Smith met, a man named Matt Tait, told Smith that his mission would entail trafficking in stolen emails obtained by Russia. Smith made clear this didn’t bother him. “Smith and I talked several times about the DNC hack, and I expressed my view that the hack had likely been orchestrated by Russia and that the Kremlin was using the stolen documents as part of an influence campaign against the United States,” recounted Tait. Despite impressing upon them the ethical and legal dangers of cooperating with a probable Russian intelligence plot, “Smith, however, didn’t seem to care.” 

The Journal also reported last summer that American investigators “have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary.” 

Flynn also worked as a consultant to Cambridge Analytica — a fact he failed to disclose until this last August. We don’t have proof that all these figures were acting together. But it certainly appears that Cambridge Analytica was heavily involved with trying to get Clinton’s stolen emails, and was aware that Russia had engineered their theft, and played an important role facilitating cooperation between Russia and the Trump campaign.

The road to Mueller recommending charges against Donald Trump will continue to be a long one, but Mueller has the right people for the job, and that road leads through Michael Flynn.  The issue has always been whether or not the GOP-led House would impeach, or that the Senate would conduct a trial and actually remove a chief executive, or if things would take a Nixonian path and Trump would resign before it got that far.

I'm sure Mueller will have those recommended charges at some point ready to go. I'm far, far less sanguine about believing that Trump or the GOP will actually give a damn, and that's where we get into the truly ugly scenarios.

Part of that remains whether or not the investigation is completed before the 2018 midterm elections come around.  I would suspect that we'll find out the answer to that next summer or sooner.  A GOP facing charges against Trump saying "we refuse to hold an impeachment vote" may run into some issue with the voters next November, just saying.

We'll see.

The Tale Of A Lesser More, Con't

One one hand, accused pedophile and GOP Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore is suddenly starting to fall behind in the polls to Democrat Doug Jones for next month's special election.

Democrat Doug Jones is leading Republican Roy Moore in Alabama's Senate race in the wake of explosive accusations of sexual misconduct against Moore, according to a new poll released Sunday.

Forty-six percent of likely voters polled said they would vote for Jones, while 42 percent said they would vote for Moore, according to the Louisiana-based JMC Analytics and Polling.

The survey was conducted on Nov. 9 and Nov. 11, after The Washington Post reported that a woman said Moore had initiated a sexual encounter with her in 1979, when she was 14 years old and he was 32.

In RealClearPolitics's average of polls, Moore was leading by 6 points prior to the Post report. A Friday poll, the first following the scandal, found Moore and Jones tied.

On the other hand, enthusiasm for the special election among Moore supporters is on the rise.

On Friday, Moore called the allegations "false, false, [and] misleading" and at a Veterans' Day event on Saturday, the Republican candidate said, "Everybody on this room, every person watching on these cameras, should ask theirselves, 'Isn't it strange that after 40 years of constant investigation people have waited until four weeks prior to the general election to bring their complaints?'"

Moore finds his defenders back home while the climate is less hospitable in Washington, where GOP senators, as well as the White House, have called on the conservative firebrand to drop out of the race if the report is true.

Of more than 15 Republican voters in Alabama interviewed by NBC News, none said their support for Moore would change.
Most said they didn't believe the allegations and some said even if they are true, that wouldn't sway their vote for him next month because they think Moore is a good man, should be forgiven and they could never bring themselves to vote for a Democrat anyway. Several attacked the media.

On the gripping hand, as Jerry Pournelle used to write, Steve Bannon's odious crew is now doing everything they can to victimize the women who came forward to denounce Moore a second time. Jon Swan at Politico 2.0:

Steve Bannon has sent two of Breitbart News' top reporters, Matt Boyle and Aaron Klein, to Alabama. Their mission: to discredit the Washington Post's reporting on Roy Moore's alleged sexual misconduct with teenagers.

Bottom line: This story is about to get even uglier, if that's imaginable. I expect more counter-attacks will play out in Breitbart News and other outlets over the coming days.

A story that popped today — splashed over the Breitbart homepage — contains what the website claims is a major hole in the account of Leigh Corfman, who says Alabama Senate candidate, Moore, made sexual advances on her when she was 14 years old.

Klein reports from Birmingham, Alabama: "Speaking by phone to Breitbart News on Saturday, Corfman's mother, Nancy Wells, 71, says that her daughter did not have a phone in her bedroom during the period that Moore is reported to have allegedly called Corfman – purportedly on Corfman's bedroom phone – to arrange at least one encounter."

Why this matters: It's quite a head-scratcher as to why Breitbart thinks this bedroom phone detail matters. As Corfman's mother told Breitbart "the phone in the house could get through to her easily." Wells stands by her daughter's allegations. But the fact Breitbart is running stories like this shows the extremes to which it may go to discredit Moore's accusers.
Another hard truth: Many Alabama voters hold the mainstream media in such low regard that they've dismissed the Washington Post's reporting entirely.

I still remained convinced that Bannon will be able to rally enough anger and hatred to put Moore in office.  Moore may not win by double digits, but he'll win.  It doesn't matter what you and I think, it matter what Alabama voters think.  "All politics is local" is hoary old saw for a good reason, and Alabama Republicans will elect Moore just to piss off the rest of the country.

Watch.

StupidiNews!

• Iranian state TV is reporting some 300 dead and 4,000 injured as a magnitude 7.3 quake shook the Iran-Iraq border late Sunday, nearly all of the casualties are on the Iranian side.
• Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte met with Donald Trump in Manila on the last leg of Trump's Asia trip, protesters were broken up by police with water cannons and batons.
• A majority of Spaniards want early national elections as a chance to weigh in or Catalan's failed independence bid as the region has been ordered to hold new elections on December 21.
• Rumors that Saudi King Salman will abdicate the throne in favor of his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are completely untrue according to Saudi officials.
• SpaceX competitor Sierra Nevada has successfully tested its Dream Chaser space plane, on track for a 2019 launch as a NASA cargo transport for the International Space Station.

Last Call For Doing The Electric Slide

Turns out that Whitefish Energy was all set to bilk Puerto Rico out of tens of millions for getting the lights back on, and they couldn't even do that right.

The small energy outfit from Montana that won a $300 million contract to help rebuild Puerto Rico’s tattered power grid had few employees of its own, so it did what the Puerto Rican authorities could have done: It turned to Florida for workers.

For their trouble, the six electrical workers from Kissimmee are earning $42 an hour, plus overtime. The senior power linemen from Lakeland are earning $63 an hour working in Puerto Rico, the Florida utility said. Their 40 co-workers from Jacksonville, also linemen, are making up to $100 earning double time, public records show.

But the Montana company that hired the workers, Whitefish Energy Holdings, had a contract that allowed it to bill the Puerto Rican public power company, known as Prepa, $319 an hour for linemen, a rate that industry experts said was far above the norm even for emergency work — and almost 17 times the average salary of their counterparts in Puerto Rico.

A spokesman for Whitefish, Chris Chiames, defended the costs, saying that “simply looking at the rate differential does not take into account Whitefish’s overhead costs,” which were built into the rate.

“We have to pay a premium to entice the labor to come to Puerto Rico to work,” Mr. Chiames said. Many workers are paid overtime for all the time they work. Overtime pay varies by type of worker, union membership, mainland utility company and many other factors.

The markup is among the reasons that federal officials are scrutinizing all other contracts involving Puerto Rico. The control board that oversees Puerto Rico’s finances is seeking more authority over the billions headed the island’s way, including the power to review big contracts and randomly inspect smaller ones.

Two weeks after Prepa abruptly withdrew the contract from Whitefish following strong criticism by federal and congressional officials of the company’s expected ability to perform the work needed, more questions are being raised about the deal, including how much it will actually cost. Whitefish will keep repairing power lines until Nov. 30.

As the Trump administration prepares to spend billions of dollars on rebuilding Puerto Rico’s infrastructure, the Whitefish deal — hatched in a dim powerless room six days after a storm packing winds of nearly 150 miles an hour knocked down thousands of power poles and lines — has served as a cautionary note about the potential for soaring costs that are common in the wake of disasters.

The Whitefish Energy contract is not serving as a "cautionary note" at all. As Naomi Klein warned us about some ten years ago with Dubya, it's serving as an instruction manual for the Trump regime.  The entire year of 2017 has been the GOP's brutal application of Klein's "Shock Doctrine" theory in action.

It will only get worse. They're not hiding it anymore because they don't have to.

The Return Of The 50-State Strategy

DNC Chair Tom Perez makes the strong argument that in the Trump Era, all GOP seats should be considered "in-play" and that Democrats should leave no federal or state seat uncontested.

"Democrats can compete and win everywhere," Perez told "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatzin an interview Sunday. "That's what we showed last week not just in New Jersey and Virginia, but in mayor's races and state senate races."

Democrats won governorships in Virginia, with the victory of Ralph Northam, and New Jersey, where Phil Murphy came out on top.

Perez said it is the first time since 2005 that Democrats won the governor's office in both states.

It's about time, too. Dems can and should fight on the issues, and if they do, they win.

Raddatz asked the DNC chair about a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll showing that 61 percent of Americans say Democratic leaders are mainly criticizing Trump, not presenting alternatives.

Perez countered that the party's candidates led with "our values" in the 2017 elections.

"We were leading with our values in Virginia and elsewhere. We talked about health care a lot because health care is a right for all, not a privilege," he said. "The number one issue for voters in Virginia was health care. They understand that the Republicans are trying to take their health care away.”

We already know what the Democratic alternative to Trump is, we saw eight years of it and Trump is doing his dead-level best to eliminate it.   For Democrats to take back the House and Senate, that means candidates who can win in redder districts, and that means backing military veterans.

"There's no doubt that veterans have unique qualifications and experiences that give them important credibility with Democrats, independents and Republican voters alike," Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Tyler Law told ABC News.

Party officials acknowledge that when they were looking for strong recruits to replenish the Democratic party bench this year, their teams often sought candidates with military experience. But, they argue, veterans have also stepped up in droves and decided to run on their own since the presidential election last year.

The DCCC expects 30 or 40 of its candidates next year will be veterans, a major uptick from recent cycles.

VoteVets, an organization that supports Democratic candidates, told ABC News they recently hired additional staff to handle the increased number of calls from veterans who are thinking about running for office. The group’s co-founder, Jon Soltz, said the DCCC reached out to his group early on, despite the fact that the two organizations have not always seen eye to eye. In 2014, VoteVets backed Rep. Seth Moulton’s, D-Mass., campaign against a sitting Democratic incumbent. This year, though, the two teams are meeting monthly to review the status of veteran candidates’ campaigns.

“This was an equation that worked for Democrats in 2006,” Soltz told ABC News, referring to the last time the Democrats won back the majority in the House. “People trust a veteran as a messenger. They are running because they want to continue to serve their country. They can talk to working class Americans where the Democratic party is struggling.”

You have only to see how Donald Trump treats the US military -- as his personal plaything -- to see why veterans are stepping up to run against the GOP.  Here in Kentucky that means folks like Lt. Col. Amy McGrath.

McGrath offers a pretty standard Democratic response to GOP tax cuts (“fiscally irresponsible and in my opinion just morally wrong”) and attacks on the Affordable Care Act (from which Kentucky has benefitedimmensely). But she packs some surprises, too.

The most important may be McGrath’s unusually positive message on American government. As a Marine, she toured the world (“except for the nice places”), living in tents in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Kyrgyzstan. After looking around, she thinks American democracy isn’t as swampy, dysfunctional and broken as it's advertised to be.

“The concern I have is this constant bashing of our institutions, of our principles, bashing the government itself,” she said. “Trust me, I’ve been to countries where there’s no government. And our government’s pretty damned good.”

We can make American governing institutions better, she said, "but we can’t make them better if nobody wants to go into them because we’re bashing them.”

She’s similarly concerned that core American principles are being undermined by attacks and indifference. “Our constitutional principles, which you can say, ‘Well, they’re on a paper and they’ll never be taken away.’ Folks, we have to fight for those every day. Freedom of the press -- you think that can’t go away? OK. Maybe.”

McGrath is mounting her first campaign systematically, pragmatically, balancing fundraising against other concerns. She has kept her distance from Emily's List, the financial engine that powers the campaigns of many Democratic pro-choice women. I thought that might suggest unorthodox Democratic views on abortion; I was wrong.

“I’m one-hundred percent pro-choice. I align with everything Emily's List aligns with,” she told me.

Then why isn’t she raking in the pro-choice dough?

“I don’t want to be tied to a litmus test,” McGrath said. “I don’t want to be tied to any national interest like that, where people can say, you’re just a puppet.”

I wish she was running here in KY-4 against Thomas Massie, but I'll take her winning KY-6 back. Like it or not, being the Emily's List candidate in Kentucky isn't a good thing.  We have to have Dems that can win so we can get the majority in order to make policy if we're going to have any hope of redeeming the government after Trump.

We need more of this.  A lot more.  And I'm glad we're getting it.

Sunday Long Read: You Can Lead White Voters To Water...

...but you can't make them think.

Pam Schilling is the reason Donald Trump is the president. 

Schilling’s personal story is in poignant miniature the story of this area of western Pennsylvania as a whole—one of the long-forgotten, woebegone spots in the middle of the country that gave Trump his unexpected victory last fall. She grew up in nearby Nanty Glo, the daughter and granddaughter of coal miners. She once had a union job packing meat at a grocery store, and then had to settle for less money at Walmart. Now she’s 60 and retired, and last year, in April, as Trump’s shocking political ascent became impossible to ignore, Schilling’s 32-year-old son died of a heroin overdose. She found needles in the pockets of the clothes he wore to work in the mines before he got laid off.

Desperate for change, Schilling, like so many other once reliable Democrats in these parts, responded enthusiastically to what Trump was saying—building a wall on the Mexican border, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, bringing back jobs in steel and coal. That’s what Trump told them. At a raucous rally in late October, right downtown in their minor-league hockey arena, he vowed to restore the mines and the mills that had been the lifeblood of the region until they started closing some 40 years ago, triggering the “American carnage” Trump would talk about in his inaugural address: massive population loss, shrinking tax rolls, communal hopelessness and ultimately a raging opioid epidemic. When Trump won, people here were ecstatic. But they’d heard generations of politicians make big promises before, and they were also impatient for him to deliver. 

“Six months to a year,” catering company owner Joey Del Signore told me when we met days after the election. “A couple months,” retired nurse Maggie Frear said, before saying it might take a couple years. “He’s just got to follow through with what he said he was going to do,” Schilling said last November. Back then, there was an all-but-audible “or else.” 

A year later, the local unemployment rate has ticked down, and activity in a few coal mines has ticked up. Beyond that, though, not much has changed—at least not for the better. Johnstown and the surrounding region are struggling in the same ways and for the same reasons. The drug problem is just as bad. “There’s nothing good in the area,” Schilling said the other day in her living room. “I don’t have anything good to say about anything in this area. It’s sad.” Even so, her backing for Trump is utterly undiminished: “I’m a supporter of him, 100 percent.” 

What I heard from Schilling is overwhelmingly what I heard in my follow-up conversations with people here that I talked to last year as well. Over the course of three rainy, dreary days last week, I revisited and shook hands with the president’s base—that thirtysomething percent of the electorate who resolutely approve of the job he is doing, the segment of voters who share his view that the Russia investigation is a “witch hunt” that “has nothing to do with him,” and who applaud his judicial nominees and his determination to gut the federal regulatory apparatus. But what I wasn’t prepared for was how readily these same people had abandoned the contract he had made with them. Their satisfaction with Trump now seems untethered to the things they once said mattered to them the most. 

“I don’t know that he has done a lot to help,” Frear told me. Last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for him again if he didn’t do what he said he was going to do. Last week, she matter-of-factly stated that she would. “Support Trump? Sure,” she said. “I like him.”

It never mattered what Trump actually did otherwise, as long as he followed through on his promise to make those people miserable again after 2008.

When I asked Del Signore about the past year here, he said he “didn’t see any change because we got a new president.” He nonetheless remains an ardent proponent. “He’s our answer.” 

I asked Schilling what would happen if the next three years go the way the last one has.
“I’m not going to blame him,” Schilling said. “Absolutely not.” 

Is there anything that could change her mind about Trump? 

“Nope,” she said.

White Trump voters are proudly and unrepentantly racist, until the end.  Trump made that acceptable, and they will love him forever for it.

Period.

Stop chasing them, Dems.  They are lost to you.  The rest of us will have to carry on in spite of them.

They will turn out to re-elect Trump in 2020.  Better make sure there's a lot more of us than them, especially in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Here endeth the lesson.