Trump Cards, Con't

The Washington Post editorial board wastes little time pinning the blame for the Nunes memo fiasco on the proper parties: mainly House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has all the leadership qualities of bread mold.

“WHAT THIS is not is an indictment of our institutions, of our justice system,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday about the now infamous “Nunes memo.” “It does not impugn the Mueller investigation or the deputy attorney general,” the speaker insisted. Is this cynicism or naivete?

Discrediting law enforcement is the memo’s transparent purpose and why it has been embraced by President Trump. Written mainly by the staff of Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the loose-cannon chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the memo reportedly makes the case that the FBI abused spying authorities as it sought permission to surveil a former Trump adviser. The Justice Department called its potential release, which Mr. Trump reportedly intends to approve, “extraordinarily reckless.” The FBI released its own startling public statement citing “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” Adam Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, wrote in a Post op-ed that the Nunes memo “cherry-picks facts, ignores others and smears the FBI and the Justice Department.”

As we’ve said before, we are not in the business of opposing the release of information of potential public value. But if the Nunes memo were truly about fair congressional oversight of law enforcement, as Mr. Ryan claims, Republicans would allow the simultaneous release of a Democratic memo on the same subject. But they are not, though Mr. Ryan’s staff says the speaker supports releasing the Democratic memo after giving it more scrutiny. That leaves only unsettling possibilities for why Mr. Nunes, a longtime Trump ally, is pushing to disseminate his version as the president’s ire about the Russia investigation crests and speculation swirls about his desire to fire senior law enforcement officials, including special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. CNN reported Thursday that Mr. Trump believes the Nunes memo “could discredit the agency” by exposing “bias within the FBI’s top ranks.”

Mr. Ryan bears full responsibility for the deterioration of congressional oversight of intelligence operations. Once a bipartisan responsibility that lawmakers treated soberly — as they still do in the Senate — oversight under Mr. Nunes has become another front in Mr. Trump’s assault on the law enforcement institutions investigating the president and his associates. House Republicans are poisoning the committee’s relationship with the intelligence community and distracting from real issues demanding attention. 

It's nice of WaPo to notice what anyone with a modicum of sentience would have picked up on.  As I've been saying for months now on the subject of the Mueller investigation, the question was never about Trump's guilt, the question was what the congressional GOP's response to Trump's cartoonishly obvious malfeasance would be. 

The answer is clearly "nothing, also did you know Hillary Clinton's a real bitch?"

The idea that the GOP in Congress would keep Trump's worst autocratic impulses in check rather than openly aiding and abetting him was laughable 15 months ago and remains a dark comedy today. The "Never Trump" movement of "principled Republican opposition" to Trump was always a joke, and too many American's fell for it.

Too bad we're all the punchline.

StupidiNews!

• More than 900 gold miners in South Africa have been rescued from a mine shaft after a power outage cut off access to the mine for more than 24 hours.
• Cuban state media confirms that Fidel Castro Jr., the son of the late dictator, took his own life on Thursday after a battle with "deep depression".
• The Trump regime is expected to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan in order to end a civil war after repeated cease-fire violations since 2016.
• Bitcoin has lost more than half its peak value in six weeks as world regulators and major heists involving the cryptocurrency are causing a massive crash in the industry.
• Researchers studying women's urinary tract health have discovered viruses that are designed to infect and destroy bacteria as a defense, which could be employed for medical advances.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

And so, Trump's Saturday Night Massacre™ plan begins in earnest with the release of the Nunes memo tomorrow.

President Trump is expected to approve the release of a controversial congressional memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI, after the White House agreed to some redactions at the bureau’s request, but the document is unlikely to be made public before Friday, according to senior administration officials. 

The redactions were the result of a review of the memo’s classified contents by White House and intelligence community officials. The memo, which has created a political firestorm, suggests that the early origins of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election were tainted by political bias.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray had opposed its release, citing “grave concerns” about key factual omissions and accuracy. The White House was not convinced that release would compromise national security but agreed to redactions to protect sensitive law enforcement methods, according to the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Trump has read the memo, a White House official said, though it’s unclear whether he has approved its release. Once he does, the White House will transmit the memo back to the House Intelligence Committee, which has the authority to release it to the public.
Staff for the committee’s GOP majority wrote the memo. The panel’s Democrats have accused the chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), of creating a false narrative to undermine Mueller’s probe.

The president has told advisers that he believes the memo is “gaining traction” and could help him convince the public that the probe is a witch hunt.

We'll see what the morrow brings, but I think it's going to be a busy news weekend.  At the very least, we may get the resignation of another FBI Director.

Top White House aides are worried FBI Director Christopher Wray could quit if the highly controversial Republican memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance tools is released, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation tell CNN. 

Wray has made clear he is frustrated that President Donald Trump picked him to lead the FBI after he fired FBI Director James Comey in May, yet his advice on the Nunes memo is being disregarded and cast as part of the purported partisan leadership of the FBI, according to a senior law enforcement official. 

Wray's stance is "raising hell," one source familiar with the matter said. 

Wray has not directly threatened to resign after clashing with Trump over the possible release of the memo, the source added, because that is not his style of dealing with conflict.

At least one Democrat is promising counter-attacks as well.

If this memo comes out, I have a long list of less sensitive, but still classified, information that the American people deserve to see. #secretlaw

— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) January 31, 2018

Gonna be a rough weekend I expect.

Especially Saturday.

Soccer It To Me, Cincy

Things just got a lot more complicated in soccer club FC Cincinnati's bid to join Nashville and Miami in MLS expansion bids as the franchise's plans to put a new stadium in West End  has drawn the attention of the Cincinnati NAACP, and rightfully so.

As FC Cincinnati pursuesland acquisition in the West End for a possible MLS stadium, the Cincinnati chapter of the NAACP is demanding "full transparency and engagement of the community." 

FC President and General Manager Jeff Berding has pledged both, but at a public meeting Tuesday night in which the team secured the right to buy land in the West End no details were given about where a stadium would be located. 

"The West End is a historically African American neighborhood that over the years has seen the fabric of its community strategically and systematically torn apart and gentrified in the name of 'progress' and unfulfilled promises," the group wrote in a press release sent to the media Wednesday morning. 

Berding, in a statement Tuesday night, said that the land FC Cincinnati considering buying from the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority will be used for single-family homes: 

"For the stadium to be a great addition to the neighborhood, this enormous sports facility investment should also bring with it increased density with more housing for new residents, more offices and workers, more retail and entertainment, and of course, more community facilities," the statement said.

He pledged FCC will do "a pro-active community engagement process with residents, stakeholders and those with historic ties to the West End" and that the club and its owners "are fully committed to extensive community engagement, and those activities will be forthcoming soon." 

The CMHA board voted Tuesday to give FC Cincinnati the option to buy 66 parcels of land south of Liberty Street. The team has a year to act on the option. 

The NAACP pointed out CMHA received funding from the federal government in the form of a Hope VI grant that displaced hundreds of residents with the promise they could return when redevelopment was completed. But the development stalled and, the NAACP said, "very few residents had the opportunity to return."

"We are monitoring the developments with serious interest and until a definitive plan is presented, we will reserve comment and judgment," the release said. "However, we demand full transparency and engagement of the community as the conversation develops."

Good for the NAACP putting its foot down here.  The city has jerked several black neighborhoods around on development projects, most recently with the streetcar routes not going anywhere near black neighborhoods (but of course promised for "future expansion" which Mayor Cranley then killed) and in Over-The-Rhine, which has seen serious development but almost no accommodations made for existing resident who were priced out of the housing market.

West End getting a new stadium would be great, but the devil's always in the details and there really isn't too much of a reason why people should trust 3CDC on this. I hope Berding does follow through should the stadium be built here, but frankly my expectations are very low.  3CDC has made a lot of promises that they haven't followed through on.

Also, there's the question of FC Cincinnati getting a new facility at all at this point.  MLS was happy to take Nashville but moved up plans for Miami's team because they were ready to go.  At this point who knows who the other expansion team is going to be, because of the three contenders, (Sacramento, Detroit and Cincy) none of them seem to actually have a plan for a facility right now.

It's all up in the air.  We'll see where this goes.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

There have been a number of additional developments in the Russian collusion investigations of the Trump regime in the last 48 hours as the Republicans trying to place their thumbs on the scales of justice by attacking the FBI's credibility are discovering that trying to take on federal law enforcement when it comes to a leak war to the media is a pretty bad idea.

CNN dropped two major stories last night, first, the revelation that Donald Trump openly asked for the loyalty of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as recently as December.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein visited the White House in December seeking President Donald Trump's help. The top Justice Department official in the Russia investigation wanted Trump's support in fighting off document demands from House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes. 

But the President had other priorities ahead of a key appearance by Rosenstein on the Hill, according to sources familiar with the meeting. Trump wanted to know where the special counsel's Russia investigation was heading. And he wanted to know whether Rosenstein was "on my team." 

The episode is the latest to come to light portraying a President whose inquiries sometimes cross a line that presidents traditionally have tried to avoid when dealing with the Justice Department, for which a measure of independence is key. The exchange could raise further questions about whether Trump was seeking to interfere in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into potential collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia and obstruction of justice by the White House. 

At the December meeting, the deputy attorney general appeared surprised by the President's questions, the sources said. He demurred on the direction of the Russia investigation, which Rosenstein has ultimate authority over now that his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has recused himself. And he responded awkwardly to the President's "team" request, the sources said. 

"Of course, we're all on your team, Mr. President," Rosenstein told Trump, the sources said. It is not clear what Trump meant or how Rosenstein interpreted the comment. 

Again, for Donald Trump to directly ask Rosenstein about the DoJ's investigation of Trump himself is a massive, massive red flag, and given that Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey, pressured former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to quit, and pressured Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the investigation to the point where Sessions recused himself, the fact that Trump now pressured Rosenstein is a clear indication of intent to obstruct the investigation.

The other story from CNN also involves the FBI, and that's the development that the FBI agent who wrote James Comey's first draft of the letter re-opening the Clinton e-mail investigation weeks before the election was the same FBI agent, Peter Strzok, the Republicans say was somehow biased against Trump.

Emails obtained by CNN show the FBI agent at the center of a Capitol Hill storm played a key role in a controversial FBI decision that upended Hillary Clinton's campaign just days before the 2016 election: the letter to Congress by then-FBI Director James Comey announcing the bureau was investigating newly discovered Clinton emails. 

The new revelation about FBI agent Peter Strzok comes as Republicans accuse him of being sympathetic to Clinton while seeking to undermine Donald Trump during the heat of the 2016 campaign season. 

Strzok, who co-wrote what appears to be the first draft that formed the basis of the letter Comey sent to Congress, also supported reopening the Clinton investigation once the emails were discovered on disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop, according to a source familiar with Strzok's thinking. The day after Strzok sent his draft to his colleagues, Comey released the letter to Congress, reigniting the email controversy in the final days of the campaign. 

Strzok did, however, harbor reservations about Comey making a public announcement just days before the election and sent a text message to that effect, two sources said. And Strzok's text messages provided to Congress show him grappling with the fallout of making the letter public, according to a CNN review of his texts. 

So Strzok did what plenty of people do in their careers: perform their job as instructed despite the personal misgivings of the ethics of the action.  He thought it was obviously a move to hurt Clinton, but he did his job anyway. The notion that there's a massive "Deep State Obama/Clinton conspiracy" in the FBI doesn't hold water, considering that Comey's letter almost certainly helped win the election for Trump.

Meanwhile the NY Times got another story, this time on Robert Mueller's continuing hunt into the Trump regime's wrongdoing, as we learn Mueller's obstruction of justice investigation is focusing on Donald Trump's lies about his staff meeting with Russian nationals last summer.  That's not new in an of itself, but what is novel is Mueller's focus on Trump adviser Hope Hicks and the role she may have played in that obstruction.

The latest witness to be called for an interview about the episode was Mark Corallo, who served as a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team before resigning in July. Mr. Corallo received an interview request last week from the special counsel and has agreed to the interview, according to three people with knowledge of the request.

Mr. Corallo is planning to tell Mr. Mueller about a previously undisclosed conference call with Mr. Trump and Hope Hicks, the White House communications director, according to the three people. Mr. Corallo planned to tell investigators that Ms. Hicks said during the call that emails written by Donald Trump Jr. before the Trump Tower meeting — in which the younger Mr. Trump said he was eager to receive political dirt about Mrs. Clinton from the Russians — “will never get out.” That left Mr. Corallo with concerns that Ms. Hicks could be contemplating obstructing justice, the people said.

In a statement on Wednesday, a lawyer for Ms. Hicks strongly denied Mr. Corallo’s allegations.

“As most reporters know, it’s not my practice to comment in response to questions from the media. But this warrants a response,” said the lawyer, Robert P. Trout. “She never said that. And the idea that Hope Hicks ever suggested that emails or other documents would be concealed or destroyed is completely false.”

And thus we have Mueller's real sword of Damocles exposed: Trump's not the only person who can be charged with obstruction of justice, and everyone who's not Donald Trump has considerably fewer legal protections in case they are charged.

Accusations began flying that the botched response made an already bad situation worse. Ms. Hicks called Mr. Corallo, according to three people who relayed his version of events to The Times. She accused him of trafficking in conspiracy theories and drawing more attention to the story.

The conference call with the president, Mr. Corallo and Ms. Hicks took place the next morning, and what transpired on the call is a matter of dispute.

In Mr. Corallo’s account — which he provided contemporaneously to three colleagues who later gave it to The Times — he told both Mr. Trump and Ms. Hicks that the statement drafted aboard Air Force One would backfire because documents would eventually surface showing that the meeting had been set up for the Trump campaign to get political dirt about Mrs. Clinton from the Russians.

According to his account, Ms. Hicks responded that the emails “will never get out” because only a few people had access to them. Mr. Corallo, who worked as a Justice Department spokesman during the George W. Bush administration, told colleagues he was alarmed not only by what Ms. Hicks had said — either she was being naïve or was suggesting that the emails could be withheld from investigators — but also that she had said it in front of the president without a lawyer on the phone and that the conversation could not be protected by attorney-client privilege.

Contacted on Wednesday, Mr. Corallo said he did not dispute any of the account shared by his colleagues but declined to elaborate further.

Even if Mr. Corallo is correct and Ms. Hicks was hinting at an attempt to conceal the emails, doing so would have been nearly impossible. Congress had requested records from Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman; Mr. Kushner; and other Trump campaign officials about meetings with Russians. And lawyers had already copied and stamped the emails for delivery to Capitol Hill.

Ahh, but the salient point with obstruction of justice is the attempt and intent to conceal information, not the success of the attempt itself.

Hope Hicks better lawyer up considerably.  No doubt she already has.  No doubt Mueller already knows of Corallo's statements about her as well, meaning this is a chin music message pitch fastball right at Trump's head.  We've known for some time that Hicks is effectively Trump's gatekeeper and personal assistant.  If she's being directly accused of obstruction, and Mueller has gotten to her...

Well, Trump's going to have some sleepless nights.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• Former US Navy Commander Troy Amundson has plead guilty in the military's "Fat Leonard" bribery investigation that has claimed the careers of several high-ranking officers.
• San Francisco will wipe out marijuana convictions dating back to 1975 as California has now legalized recreational marijuana use.
• Catalan separatist leaders who have been jailed by the Spanish government have formally lodged a protest with the UN over what they say is "unlawful detention".
• Bloomberg estimates that half of the world's buses will be electric in seven years, led by China's plan to have 99% of its buses as electric vehicles. by 2025.
• Embattled GOP Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens is being sued by lawyers in the state for his use of mobile messaging service Confide, in violation of the state's public records law.

Last Call For Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

When I have repeatedly said that the Trump Regime strikes me as cartoonishly evil, it's stories like this that perfectly demonstrate what I mean.

The Trump administration’s top public health official bought shares in a tobacco company one month into her leadership of the agency charged with reducing tobacco use — the leading cause of preventable disease and death and an issue she had long championed. 

The stock was one of about a dozen new investments that Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, made after she took over the agency’s top job, according to documents obtained by POLITICO. Fitzgerald has since come under congressional scrutiny for slow walking divestment from older holdings that government officials said posed potential conflicts of interest.

Buying shares of tobacco companies raises even more flags than Fitzgerald’s trading in drug and food companies because it stands in such stark contrast to the CDC’s mission to persuade smokers to quit and keep children from becoming addicted. Critics say her trading behavior broke with ethical norms for public health officials and was, at best, sloppy. At worst, they say, it was legally problematic if she didn't recuse herself from government activities that could have affected her investments. 

“You don’t buy tobacco stocks when you are the head of the CDC. It’s ridiculous; it gives a terrible appearance,” said Richard Painter, who served as George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007. He described the move as “tone deaf,” given the CDC’s role in leading anti-smoking efforts. 

Even if Fitzgerald, a medical doctor and former Georgia Department of Public Health commissioner, met all of the legal requirements, “it stinks to high heaven,” Painter said.

Dr. Fitzgerald resigned today after this story, because buying tobacco stocks when you're the head of the government health agency is probably a smart idea financially if you plan on, you know, deregulation of the industry as well as trashing the decades of science behind tobacco being a public health crisis. We see how the Trump regime treats science.

Besides, if Fitzgerald hadn't obviously planned to profit off of tobacco stocks, she would have most likely gone down over profiting off medical and biotech stocks instead as she faced nasty questions from Congress about her stock portfolio last month:

After five months in office, President Trump’s new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been unable to divest financial holdings that pose potential conflicts of interest, hindering her ability to fully perform her job. 

Brenda Fitzgerald, 71, who served as the Georgia public health commissioner until her appointment to the CDC post in July, said she has divested from many stock holdings. But she and her husband are legally obligated to maintain other investments in cancer detection and health information technology, according to her ethics agreement, requiring Fitzgerald to pledge to avoid government business that might affect those interests. Fitzgerald provided The Post with a copy of her agreement. 

Last week, Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the senior Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees CDC, wrote that Fitzgerald is raising questions about her ability to function effectively.

“I am concerned that you cannot perform the role of CDC director while being largely recused from matters pertaining to cancer and opioids, two of the most pervasive and urgent health challenges we face as a country,” Murray wrote.

The tobacco stocks made it abundantly clear Fitzgerald took the job to personally cash in, just like the rest of the Trump regime, including the guy at the top.  He might have protections, but Fitzgerald certainly did not.

She was just emulating her boss's boss, guys.

The Drums of War, Con't

Vox's Zach Beauchamp sounds the alarm that Trump taking the time in his State of the Union speech to blast North Korea as a deeply evil, deeply anti-Christian regime that cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons capability is the biggest tell yet that preemptive military action against Pyongyang is coming.  After all, we've seen this before sixteen years ago with Iraq.

“North Korea’s reckless pursuit of nuclear missiles could very soon threaten our homeland,” Trump said. “We need only look at the depraved character of the North Korean regime to understand the nature of the nuclear threat it could pose to America and to our allies.”

If this all sounds familiar, it should. In 2002, President George W. Bush gave what’s now the most infamous State of the Union in modern memory. The speech described Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an “axis of evil” — states that supported terrorists and thus posed a fundamental threat to the United States. We now know that this speech was designed to sell the war in Iraq, to paint Saddam Hussein’s government as an intolerable threat to the United States.

What’s really striking is looking back on the language that Bush used in that speech to discuss Iraq. He made the exact same rhetorical move that Trump did in his story about Ji — painting Saddam’s abuses of his own people as proof that the regime might well turn its fire on innocent Americans:

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.

Trump discussing North Korea in the same way that Bush discussed Saddam is a troubling warning sign. This is how American presidents sell wars absent an imminent threat. They paint the prospective enemy as evil, an enemy of civilization, something that must be defeated both to preserve our own safety and to secure the future of humanity.

You would think that in a case like this we'd want a competent ambassador on the ground with our ally South Korea, something the incompetent Trump still has failed to do for a year, and completely on purpose.  If there was still any doubt over what's coming in 2018, ponder the fact that Trump just got rid of the best choice for Ambassador to South Korea.

Just before Trump’s ominous speech, we learned that Victor Cha, a highly respected North Korea scholar at Georgetown University, had been dismissed from consideration as a possible ambassador to South Korea (a currently unfilled post). This is highly unusual at this stage — Cha had already gone through security checks and been approved by the South Korean government.

The reason, according to reports in the Washington Post and the Financial Times, is that Cha had criticized the administration’s proposed plans for a strike on North Korea in private. Shortly after the news broke, Cha published an op-ed in the Post attacking the proposed plan as too dangerous and unlikely to work.

“I empathize with the hope, espoused by some Trump officials, that a military strike would shock Pyongyang into appreciating U.S. strength, after years of inaction, and force the regime to the denuclearization negotiating table,” Cha wrote. “Yet, there is a point at which hope must give in to logic.”

Cha, it seems, is worried about the Trump administration actually starting a war with North Korea. The State of the Union showed that we should be too.

The main goal of Trump's speech last night was to sell a war with North Korea to the American people.  Expect a lot of this during the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea in a couple weeks.  After the games are over, all bets are off.

Oh, and as an aside, Trump openly called for Congress to give his Cabinet the power to fire federal employees at will last night.

Have a nice day.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

While the Democrats have excellent prospects in taking back the House this November, the Senate map is still a serious problem.  Democrats have 10 senators now defending seats in 2018 in states that Trump won in 2016.  The latest polling shows that in several of those states, Trump's approval ratings remain pretty good.

President Trump heads into his first State of the Union speech with lousy approval numbers across much of the country — but remains fairly popular in a few states with tough Senate races next fall. 

That’s according to a bevy of state-level polling Gallup released Tuesday, combining data the firm collected from surveys conducted throughout the last year.

Trump has majority approval rating in just 12 states — but three of those have Democratic senators up for reelection next fall, including the two states where Trump’s numbers are the best, West Virginia and North Dakota. He’s also above water in Montana, as well as in Tennessee, where Democrats hope they might be able to seriously contest an open Senate seat. 

These numbers are crucial heading into this fall’s midterms. They’re also powering major strategic decisions with huge policy consequences — including how Democrats will handle ongoing negotiations to try to protect undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) led the red-state Democratic charge to end the shutdown by threatening to retire if Senate leaders didn’t back down.

You may hate Joe Manchin, but he's a Democrat who can win Senate races in a state where Trump still has a 61% approval rating.  You'd better hope he wins in November.

There's good news for the Democrats though.  Even a few months ago picking up seats outside of Nevada and Arizona looked like a very tall order.  Then Doug Jones won in Alabama, and that has opened up opportunities to take other Senate seats that were considered off the board completely.

Slightly more people disapprove than approve of Trump’s job performance in Republican-leaning Missouri and Indiana, both of which have top-tier Senate races next fall, and his approval rating is 10 points lower than his disapproval rating in a bevy of states key to Senate control: Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. In Texas, according to Gallup, Trump’s approval rating is at just 39 percent, with 54 percent disapproving, a number that should put a scare into Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as he faces down reelection.

It's going to be a hard, hard slog for Dems to defend all these seats.  But if they can, and pick up seats in states like Texas (imagine that!) then they can win the Senate back in 2018.

And yeah, that means playing defense when needed.

StupidiNews!

• A Virginia Tech student and Chinese national was arrested Monday after police say he bought a rifle and was trying to buy 5,000 rounds of ammunition. 
• The White House tells CNN that firing special counsel Robert Mueller is "still a possibility" as Trump ponders allowing the release of a GOP memo on the FBI this week.
• Trump called for unity in his 80-minute plus State of the Union speech on infrastructure and immigration, but also delivered multiple attacks on immigrants and North Korea.
• German metalworkers will begin three days of rolling strikes after talks broke down this weekend between union members and German manufacturers.
• The Trump regime is now investigating Apple over the company's disclosure last year that its software intentionally slowed performance of older iPhones.

Last Call For Ollivander's Rule, Con't

Donald Trump is following Ollivander's Rule, named for the wand shopkeep in the Harry Potter books as he describes the evil Lord Voldemort:

"After all, He Who Must Not Be Named did great things – terrible, yes, but great.”

As Ezra Klein points out, Trump the president is a massive failure.  Trump the reality show star however is a much different picture.

The secret to Trump’s success, the insight that has separated him from his competitors, is that he has cared less about the nature of the coverage he received than that he received coverage at all. 

“Even a critical story, which may be hurtful personally, can be very valuable to your business,” Trump said in his 1987 book The Art of the Deal. He goes on to recall the lesson he learned being attacked for a particularly gaudy skyscraper he sought to build. 

“The point,” he says, “is that we got a lot of attention, and that alone creates value.”
This is the law by which Trump lives his life. Attention creates value, at least for him. Before Trump, every politician hewed to the same basic rule: You want as much positive coverage, and as little negative coverage, as possible. Trump upended that. 

His rule, his realization, is that you want as much coverage as possible, full stop. If it’s positive coverage, great. If it’s negative coverage, so be it. The point is that it’s coverage — that you’re the story, that you’re squeezing out your competitors, that you’re on people’s minds. 

This was Trump’s true political innovation: He realized that presidential campaigns — and particularly presidential primaries — had become reality shows, and the path to victory was to get the most attention, even if much of that attention was negative. 

In this, Trump either intuited or stumbled into a profound insight about the media: It’s easier to get bad press than good press. There is an old line about the media: We don’t cover the planes that land safely. Most politicians try to get media coverage while landing the plane safely. They stage photo ops at factories, give prepared statements, deliver carefully crafted speeches. The result is dull, predictable, normal — and ignored. 

Trump dominates news cycle after news cycle by crashing planes into Twitter. He is everywhere, seemingly all the time. He says things no national politician in history would have dared say, things that the press covers because they are outrageous, controversial, unnerving, appalling. 

Trump is demanding and receiving our attention, crowding out everything else, accepting that it’s better to be hated than to be ignored.

Eat your heart out, Machiavelli.

So what do we do about the Tangerine Tyrant?  That's just it, no matter how much you despise the man, he's still the guy running the executive branch.

Every so often, someone will suggest that we just ignore Trump’s words, his riffs, his tweets. But Trump controls a nuclear arsenal. His tweets are “considered official statements by the president of the United States,” according to Sean Spicer, who served as Trump’s first press secretary. 

These are words that start wars, that drive deportations, that set policy, that end negotiations, that empower bigots, that reveal scandals, that represent our country. That the president of the United States is acting outrageously, or worryingly, or offensively, is important. As much as Trump might treat his presidency like a reality show, it remains a presidency, and lives are in the balance. 

Yet in owning our attention, in driving the agenda, in setting both the terms and tone of the debate, and in doing so by generating constant negative attention, cultural conflict, and emotional alarm, Trump makes us a little more like him, and politics a little more like the tribal clash he says it is.

This is the real damage Trump is doing to America and will continue to do.

We're Already In A Constitutional Crisis

Just a reminder that the deadline has passed on the legislation Congress overwhelmingly approved last year for new sanctions on Russia, and Donald Trump has simply refused to implement the law.

Lawmakers were blindsided and outraged on Monday after the Trump administration said it would neither announce nor implement new sanctions against Russia. 

After briefing senators in a classified setting, the State Department announced that the sanctions regime currently in place was acting as a “deterrent” against Russian aggression and that, therefore, new measures will “not need to be imposed” as required under the law. 

The announcement caught lawmakers off guard, including those who co-authored the bipartisan Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) last year. That bill passed in large part to punish Russia for its efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election in 2016. That it was put on the backburner left some on Capitol Hill with the impression, once more, that the Trump administration felt indifferent toward the Kremlin’s influence campaign. 

“When the Congress voted for this, the whole point of it was to slap sanctions on these Russian companies that interfered with our election and are doing all kinds of other things,” Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Daily Beast in an interview. “The legislation itself is not a deterrent if you don’t put teeth behind it. And the teeth behind it are the sanctions.” 

Monday’s episode marked the latest chapter in a months-long tug-of-war between Capitol Hill and the White House over a sweeping sanctions law that the administration, critics contend, has refused to fully implement and has dragged its feet in doing so. Congress felt it had forced the president’s hand with the passage of CAATSA by supermajorities in each chamber. A provision of that law required the administration to brief lawmakers on Monday about its efforts to sanction foreign governments and other entities that were continuing to do business with Russian defense and intelligence firms that the State Department publicly named in October. 

On Monday afternoon, administration officials gathered with senators on Capitol Hill to detail their plans for implementing the sanctions. The session was clouded in secrecy, with lawmakers refusing to reveal details that would potentially compromise confidential information.

But as those briefings wrapped up, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert released a statement saying the administration determined that new sanctions were not needed since it was estimated “that foreign governments have abandoned planned or announced purchases of several billion dollars in Russian defense acquisitions.”

So no, Trump will not follow the law, and will not punish his friend Vladimir Putin.  We openly have a Chief Executive who refuses to implement a law as required by Congress, legislation that passed with 98% of the vote, well more than the two-thirds needed to override a veto.

Trump's just refusing to do it.

So what now?  I know we're coming up on a major crisis with the impending firing of Mueller, but with these Russian sanction failures, we're already in one.

2018 is already shaping up to be a horrid year for the Republic...if we can keep it.

New tag, since we've finally gotten that far:  Constitutional Stupidity.

It's Mueller (Crunch) Time

A number of developments in the special counsel investigation of the Trump regime last night has made things pretty uncertain, and almost assures the fateful showdown that I've been predicting for months now (and many of you have been predicting as well).  As I mentioned yesterday, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe stepped down, and all indications he was forced out.  This morning we know why: current FBI Director Chris Wray is all but saying that McCabe was relieved of his post because of the House Intelligence Committee's memo on the DoJ's upcoming Inspector General's report, written by GOP committee chair Devin Nunes.

FBI Director Chris Wray hinted to FBI staff in an all-employee email that a government watchdog investigation played a role in FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's departure Monday, sources who have seen the memo told CNN. 

Wray said in the message he could not comment on the coming inspector general report about the FBI's conduct during the 2016 election and defended himself as not being swayed by politics. 

A source familiar with the matter told CNN that Wray had informed McCabe he is bringing in his own team, which McCabe would not be a part of, and that it was McCabe's decision whether to stay at the FBI or leave. 

The coming inspector general report into the handling of the 2016 Hillary Clinton email investigation has taken on increased scrutiny as President Donald Trump and his allies have railed against FBI officials like McCabe for months over the agency's handling of sensitive political matters and what they argue is political bias.

The Nunes memo relies heavily on the IG report, but cherry-picks the results and condenses it down to four pages.  In order to get out ahead of the report, Republicans have been threatening to release the "classified analysis memo" to the public.  Last weekend's revelations that Donald Trump already tried to fire Robert Mueller in June upped the timetable considerably, and indeed the Republicans in control of the committee voted late last night to release the memo, giving Trump five days to block it.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, disregarding Justice Department warnings that their actions would be “extraordinarily reckless,” voted Monday evening to release a contentious secret memorandum said to accuse the department and the F.B.I. of misusing their authority to obtain a secret surveillance order on a former Trump campaign associate. 

The vote, made along party lines, threw fuel on an already fiery partisan conflict over the investigations into Russia’s brazen meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Republicans invoked a power never before used by the secretive committee to effectively declassify the memo that they had compiled. It was an extraordinary maneuver, cheered on by President Trump, who has repeatedly dismissed the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt” and a sham. 

Committee Republicans said the memo’s release would shed useful light on potential political bias that may have warped the early stages of the Russia investigation without compromising intelligence gathering. Representative K. Michael Conaway of Texas, a senior Republican on the committee, said on Monday that he was confident the Republican memo itself would not present a national security risk and was complete and fair as written. 

Democrats called the three-and-a-half-page document a dangerous effort to build a narrative to undercut the department’s continuing Russia investigation, using cherry-picked facts assembled with little or no context. Speaking to reporters after the closed-door vote, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the committee’s top Democrat, said Republicans had voted “to politicize the intelligence process.”

“Sadly, we expect that the president of the United States will not put the national interest over his own personal interest,” Mr. Schiff said. “But it is a sad day indeed when that is also true of our own committee.”

The memo release now lights the fuse on the time bomb that we all knew was going to come.  The two main targets of the GOP mentioned in the memo are McCabe, now gone from the FBI having taken the fall for the Clinton e-mail investigation not turning up anything as of yesterday since former FBI Director James Comey was fired in May (for the same reason) and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed special counsel Robert Mueller. 

The memo and the IG report will be the basis used to fire Rosenstein and appoint someone who will fire Mueller.  Trump is searching for his Robert Bork.  I agree fully with Charles Pierce that another Saturday Night Massacre is now assured.

That McCabe jumped under pressure seems undeniable, unless you are Sarah Huckabee Sanders, from whom truth fled months ago. The president*, she said, was not part of the process through which McCabe resigned. This, of course, ignores the rather salient fact that there would not have been a “process” at all had not the president* and his people not felt the hot breath of the hounds on their hindquarters almost a year ago. The “process” began when the president* canned James Comey over, in the president*’s own words, the Russian thing.

Nevertheless, the forces are organized and arrayed behind the president* if he wants to crank up the Enola Gay and fire Bob Mueller. (The terrified meeping of Republican senators like Lindsey Graham is of no consequence. Impeachment begins in the House, and that’s where the wild things roam.) They have established within their ranks an excuse that is plausible to the raving lunatics of The Base: that the FBI actively conspired against the president* and in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton because a couple of FBI lovebirds texted each other about the fundamental absurdity of a Trump presidency*. Oh, and because #ReleaseTheMemo—the phantom document prepared by White House congressional doorstop Devin Nunes that purports to demonstrate to the feeble-minded the depths of FBI perfidy. Now for you, me, the lamp post, and anything with the intellectual depth of a handball, this is a ridiculous notion. We, however, are not the conscripted hoplites of this army of dumbasses.

It's no longer a matter of if Trump wants to fire Mueller, but whether or not the Republicans in Congress will allow him to get away with it.  If anything, the House GOP is actively giving Trump the cover he thinks he needs to do it.

The question then becomes "do we allow them to get away with it?"   I know just a month ago that I predicted Mueller would be allowed to finish his report and recommend charges against Trump. I said then that it was a big bet, predicated on Trump not firing Mueller.

We're about to find out if I was wrong.

StupidiNews!

• Several House Democrats plan to boycott tonight's State of the Union address by Donald Trump, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will also not be in attendance.
• CIA Director Mike Pompeo says that Russia will try to target the 2018 midterm elections, but says that America will "push back" to minimize Russian influence.
• The US and Mexico are considering jointly allowing US air marshals on US-Mexico cross-border flights as extra security.
• A Silicon Valley startup called Nuro has launched a fully autonomous delivery vehicle for parcel companies and is looking to partner with Amazon, UPS, and/or FedEx.
• Elon Musk's Boring Company is selling mini-flamethrowers for the low, low price of $499, the model's pre-order has already surpassed 10,000 units.

Last Call For The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Yet another major retirement from the House GOP today ahead of primary season as Republicans cash out from the Big Casino, this time it's House Appropriations chair Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) will retire at the end of his term, he announced Monday, opening up another swing district ahead of the 2018 elections. 

“Today as I announce my retirement at the end of this session of Congress, I want to use the opportunity to strongly encourage the many young people I meet to consider public service,” he said in a Monday statement. “I thank my friends and colleagues with whom I have served.”

Frelinghuysen’s retirement opens up a suburban northern New Jersey seat, boosting Democrats’ chances at winning it in what’s shaping up to be a good year for the party and marking the latest in a string of GOP retirements that have further damaged the party’s chances at holding onto the House. President Trump won the district by just a one-point margin after Mitt Romney carried it by six in 2012, and Democrats had already planned to target it this fall. 

He’s the latest senior Republican to decide to head for the exits — and the eighth GOP committee chairman who’s decided to hang things up. Unlike other powerful committee chairmen, Frelinghuysen just won his chairmanship and could continue to serve as chairman for five more years. That makes his retirement is especially notable — a strong sign that his decision was driven by the political headwinds Republicans face this year. 

A whopping 24 House Republicans have announced their retirements or already resigned this Congress who aren’t running for higher office, compared with just seven Democrats. That retirement rate is even higher than ahead of previous wave elections like 2010, 2006 and 1994.

Frelinghuysen jumping ship is pretty much the biggest tell yet that Republicans know they will lose the House in 2018.  He's one of the last Republicans left who came in riding Newt's Contract With America wave in '94 after his Republican predecessor Dean Gallo died and has since held off all challengers in a comfortably red suburban district in north Jersey...comfortably red until 2016 that is.  Trump won by only a point, Frelinghuysen won 58-39% however.

He's not a stupid guy, he has a lot of clout in the state (especially as Appropriations chair in representing a state like NJ, much like Hal Rogers did prior here in Kentucky) and he knows what a freight train barreling towards him looks like. If he thought he was going to remain Appropriations chair, he would have stayed. You don't just walk out on that spot getting a huge say where the government's money goes in America.

But he's walking out on that spot anyway when he would have probably won reelection by double digits, even in a blue wave scenario. That should tell you how much trouble the GOP is in.  If a numbers guy like Frelinghuysen is out, then the numbers are bad, bad bad.

They're taking the money and running...away, not for office.