Last Call For That Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing

America crept closer to the fateful showdown over Robert Mueller this week as the number 3 official at the DoJ, Rachel Brand, announced her resignation. I agree with Vox's Alex Ward that this makes Trump's attempt to fire Special Counsel Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein a lot easier, as now Trump can appoint his own headhunter.

Here’s why: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is currently in charge of overseeing the Mueller probe. Rosenstein has said that he won’t fire Mueller without good cause.

But if Trump were to fire Rosenstein, or if he were to recuse himself from the investigation or quit outright, the responsibility for overseeing the probe would go to the next in line: Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand.

Which means that whoever Trump picks to replace Brand could potentially end up in charge of the Mueller investigation. Technically, the next in line is Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who is now serving in Brand’s role in an acting capacity. But legal experts told me that Trump has the authority to name anyone he wants to replace Brand.

And here’s the scary thing: That person might follow Trump’s order to dismiss the special counsel.
That can only happen if Rosenstein no longer oversees Mueller — and that’s still a distinct possibility for three reasons.

First, Rosenstein could recuse himself from overseeing Mueller because he had a hand in firing former FBI Director James Comey. Mueller became the special counsel becauseTrump may have let go Comey go in order to obstruct the Russia investigation. So if Rosenstein recuses himself — legal experts, like Jack Goldsmith at Lawfare think he should — then Mueller’s boss becomes whomever Trump may soon name.

Second, Trump could simply fire Rosenstein — and there’s reason to think he might. Trump allies expected last week’s release of the memo from Rep. Devin Nunes would prompt Rosenstein’s dismissal. Trump has consistently made his displeasure with Rosensteinknown, at one point claiming he’s “a Democrat” even though Rosenstein is a lifelong Republican.

And finally, Rosenstein could resign if Trump ordered him to fire Mueller. Rosenstein has reiterated time and time again that he has yet to see any reason to fire Mueller. So if Trump does ask Rosenstein to let Mueller go — and Rosenstein declines — Trump could fire Rosenstein. And so, again, Trump’s hand-picked successor would oversee Mueller — and then possibly fire him.

Trump can search more carefully for somebody willing to fire Mueller now with Brand gone, that is if he doesn't already have somebody in mind.  My guess is that Brand was asked if she would do it, or knew that she very soon would be, and decided to leave rather than be a part of it.  Her departure is a thundering alarm that Trump is moving sooner rather than later on this.

Pay very, very close attention to whomever Trump appoints to fill Brand's shoes, because that person will be expected to swing the axe.

Israeli A Problem Now

Things just got very serious in Syria this weekend as Israel carried out a major air attack on a Syrian base after Israeli claims of an Iranian drone entering Israeli airspace from Syria.

Israel says it launched a “large-scale” aerial attack inside Syria on Saturday after one of its jets was downed under Syrian antiaircraft fire, in a series of cross-border incidents that threatened to destabilize the volatile region between the two countries.

Israel says the situation started with an Iranian drone crossing into its territory from Syria at around 4:30 a.m. It was shot down by an Israeli attack helicopter.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahran Qasemi, however, described the Israeli claim as “ridiculous.”

Israel later dispatched eight fighter jets to bomb the T4 military base near the Syrian city of Palmyra, from where it says the drone was dispatched and controlled. Syria responded with “substantial Syrian antiaircraft fire” under which two Israeli pilots ejected from their F-16, which crashed inside Israel, according to the Israeli military. One of the pilots was severely injured, it said.

“The Syrians are playing with fire that they are allowing the Iranians to attack Israel from their soil,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. “The IDF is ready and capable to inflict a heavy price on anyone that attacks us. This is a severe attack and a breach of Israeli sovereignty perpetrated by Iran.”

There's more than a bit of "wag the dog" here as the bribery scandal closing in on Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has reached the stage where indictments against him are imminent.

According to Israeli media reports, the police team investigating Netanyahu, nominally headed by Alsheikh, has concluded that Netanyahu should be indicted for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in "Case 1000," which involves the allegations that Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, inappropriately accepted expensive gifts.

One of the businessmen is believed to be Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, an Israeli citizen for whom Netanyahu reportedly pressured then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry for a green card.The police have reportedly not made a firm recommendation regarding "Case 2000," in which Netanyahu is also suspected of having negotiated a quid pro quo with the publisher of Israel's most widely distributed tabloid newspaper. According to recordings held by the police, Netanyahu negotiated for favorable coverage in exchange for a law that would have weakened Israel Hayom, a free daily owned by Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Netanyahu is a central figure, but not a suspect, in "Case 3000," a police inquiry into Israel's questionable multibillion-dollar procurement of German-made naval vessels and submarines. Numerous close associates, including senior aides and his personal lawyer and cousin, have been questioned or arrested.

In a rare television appearance, Alsheikh, the police chief, said that his senior detectives had been pursued by "private investigators collecting information against police officers involved in ongoing investigations into the prime minister."

"We're not talking about a conspiratorial mind here," Alsheikh said, "these are facts." He said the private investigators had been hired by "powerful figures."

In response, the prime minister uploaded a Facebook post denouncing the police chief, who is a Netanyahu appointee. Netanyahu said he was shocked by the "outlandish and false claim," adding that "every decent person will ask himself how can people saying such outlandish things regarding the prime minister then question him objectively and be impartial when it is time to reach a decision about him?"

"A dark shadow has been cast over the police investigations and recommendations," Netanyahu added, calling for "an immediate and objective inquiry into the matter."

If this all sounds very familiar, like, say, a defiant Trump, there's a reason for that.

Netanyahu aides recently implied that he is likely to do what none of his predecessors has done: Remain in office even if indicted. Noting that Netanyahu is unlikely to resign "after what happened to Olmert," Rahat said that "by law, he can remain prime minister until he is convicted of a crime, and even then parliament has to vote him out."

Such a circumstance, he added, would cause an unprecedented legal crisis in Israel.

Indeed it would.  And less than 24 hours after it became clear Netanyahu was going to be indicted, we now have a major military escalation between Syria and Israel that could lead to open war.

Go figure.

Austerity Hysteria, Con't

The GOP austerity regime has real-life consequences in America, folks.  The GOP tax scam bill is going to remove trillions from state budgets over the next decade and states are going to be expected to pick up the tab. Should you want to see the future if the Republicans continue to control the House and Senate in 2019, you have to look no further than Oklahoma, now drowning in red ink to the point where lawmakers have gutted schools to the point where they are only open four days out of the week now.

FORTY miles from Tulsa, sometimes along unpaved roads, sits Wagoner High School, with its 650 pupils, championship-calibre football team and show barn—a seemingly ordinary small-town school. But unlike most high schools, Wagoner is closed on Mondays. The reason, a severe reduction in state funds, has pushed 90 other school districts in Oklahoma to do the same. Teacher pay is the third-lowest in the country and has triggered a statewide shortage, as teachers flee to neighbouring states like Arkansas and Texas or to private schools. “Most of our teachers work second jobs,” says Darlene Adair, Wagoner’s principal. “A lot of them work at Walmart on nights and weekends, or in local restaurants.” Ms Adair hopes that Walmart does not offer her teachers a full-time job, which would be a pay rise for many. 

The roots of the fiasco are not hard to determine. As in Oklahoma’s northern neighbour, Kansas, deep tax cuts have wrecked the state’s finances. During the shale boom, lawmakers gave a sweetheart deal to its oilmen, costing $470m in a single year, by slashing the gross production tax on horizontal drilling from 7% to 1%. North Dakota, by contrast, taxes production at 11.5%. The crash in global oil prices in 2014 did not help state coffers either. Oklahoma has also cut income taxes, first under Democrats desperate to maintain control over a state that was trending Republican, and then under Republicans, who swept to power anyway. Mary Fallin, the Republican governor, came to office pledging to eliminate the income tax altogether. Since 2008 general state funds for K-12 education in Oklahoma have been slashed by 28.2%—the biggest cut in the country. Property taxes, which might have made up the difference, are constitutionally limited. 

Other state agencies are broke, too. Highway patrolmen are told not to fill their petrol tanks to save money. Those caught drunk-driving are able to keep their licences because there are no bureaucrats to revoke them. Prisons are dangerously overcrowded, to the point that the state’s director of corrections publicly says that “something is going to pop”. But unlike Kansas, whose Republican legislature eventually rebelled and reversed the tax cuts over the governor’s veto, Oklahoma will find its troubling experiment much more difficult to undo. Because of a referendum passed in 1992, any bill that seeks to raise taxes must be approved by three-quarters of the legislature. 

No fact embarrasses Oklahomans more, or repels prospective businesses more, than the number of cash-strapped districts that have gone to four-day weeks. Yet even such a radical change may not help finances much. Paul Hill, a professor of education at the University of Washington, Bothell, estimates that the savings are “in the 1 or 2% range at most”. That sliver is still important to Kent Holbrook, superintendent of public schools in Inola (the self-styled “Hay Capital of the World”). “In my mind, that’s five or six teachers,” says Mr Holbrook. Already, from 2008 to 2016, he has lost 11 teachers from a corps that once numbered 100. He has also had to reduce Spanish classes and, for the tenth year running, delay buying new textbooks. 

This is what the Tea Party movement has wrought in red state Midwest: states that literally can't afford to keep schools open five days a week anymore and haven't been able to buy new textbooks in over a decade because it would take a 75% vote from both chambers in the state legislature to raise a dime of new taxes to pay for basic services.

And mysteriously, those tax cuts went to big oil who walked away with the money and left the people of Oklahoma holding the bag.

There are only budget cuts now.  And every year they get worse.  It's hard to imagine a state that has cut education spending over the last decade more than Kansas of Kentucky, but there Oklahoma is, a state where Wal-Mart employees now make more than the people who teach their kids.

They decided government was the problem, it was the enemy, it had to be destroyed.  Now they wonder who will keep the schools open, the roads open, put gas in State Patrol cars.

And they answer, very soon, will be "nobody".

Oklahoma is far from the only red state trapped and squeezed by Republicans until no more blood can come from the stone.  West Virginia's GOP governor, billionaire coal magnate Jim Justice, is following the lead of Kentucky and Indiana and wants to add work requirements to pretty much all government assistance programs with the goal of driving people off the rolls.

Months after rejecting a Kentucky-style work requirement for Medicaid in West Virginia, Gov. Jim Justice (R) now seems to be moving in the opposite direction — with assistance from the conservative Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) ally and an affiliate of the Koch-funded State Policy Network. 

The apparent switch is nothing new for Justice, who made a leap into politics when he ran for governor of West Virginia as a Democrat in 2016. Nine months after winning, Justice — the richest man in West Virginia and the state’s only billionaire — announced at a Trump rally that he was switching to the Republican party. 

Today, Justice’s Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) is pushing a series of bureaucratic barriers to public assistance, including: three-month time limits for unemployed and part-time workers receiving food assistance (SNAP); a $2,250 limit on cash and assets that would penalize families receiving food assistance for modest savings; and a hefty contract for a private corporation to determine the assets of every member of a recipient family. 

DHHR has already awarded Optum with a contract of $300 million over 10 years to verify eligibility for Temporary Assistance (income assistance for families with children), food assistance, Medicaid, and other programs — even as a bill that would create such a system is still under consideration in the state legislature. That legislation would incentivize the corporation to kick people off of these programs — requiring it to demonstrate greater savings than the cost of the contract in the first year. (A spokesperson for DHHR confirmed the 10-year contract with Optum worth more than $308 million, but denied that there is a savings requirement. The spokesperson said the state will “save approximately $55 million over 10 years while reducing its existing system cost.”) 

The DHHR’s own study suggests that strict time limits on food assistance for people who are unemployed or underemployed is flawed. Its pilot project in nine counties with the best local economies in the state terminated SNAP for more than 5,400 jobless people. The agency’s nearly 14,000 job referrals led to just 259 people gaining employment. According to the DHHR, “Our best data does not suggest that the program has had a significant impact on the employment figures for the [targeted] population in the 9 counties.” 

That didn’t come as a surprise to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy (WVCBP), which noted that the people most affected by the time limits tend to be “very poor and most have a high school education or less.” Unemployed and part-time workers terminated due to the limit typically have barriers to employment such as “a lack of transportation or driver’s license, mental or physical limitation, felony conviction, or were recently dismissed from a job.” 

What the pilot project did have a significant impact on was federal dollars leaving the state to the tune of $13 million due to reduced SNAP caseloads, and an increased demand for assistance at local food banks and pantries that the providers couldn’t keep pace with. 

“There was a 30 percent rise in meals served during the study,” said Seth DiStefano, policy outreach coordinator at the WVCBP. “You can see the exact point that people were thrown off SNAP — by July 2016 people had to be turned away by our churches, food banks, and missions. There is no reason to think it will do anything but get worse if we expand this policy.”

And remember, these austerity cuts to social programs are being made while the overall economy is good.  When it starts turning bad again, and the warning signs of another impending recession are already here, these programs won't be able to handle the need.

At that point, things are going to get very bad, very fast in America.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

A very weird Friday News Dump in the ongoing Russian investigation of Trump, today we learned that the CIA was trying to buy information from a Russian seller who (thanks to Ed Snowden!) had possession of NSA cybersecurity tools.  Instead, the Russian seller offered the CIA dirt on Trump, and they pulled the plug on the deal out of fear it was a setup.

After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump, according to American and European intelligence officials.

The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to American officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was struggling to get a full inventory of what was missing.

Several American intelligence officials said they made clear that they did not want the Trump material from the Russian — who was suspected of having murky ties to Russian intelligence and to Eastern European cybercriminals. He claimed the information would link the president and his associates to Russia. But instead of providing the hacking tools, the Russian produced unverified and possibly fabricated information involving Mr. Trump and others, including bank records, emails and purported Russian intelligence data.

The United States intelligence officials said they cut off the deal because they were wary of being entangled in a Russian operation to create discord inside the American government. They were also fearful of political fallout in Washington if they were seen to be buying scurrilous information on the president.

The Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment on the negotiations with the Russian seller. The N.S.A., which produced the bulk of the hacking tools that the Americans sought to recover, said only that “all N.S.A. employees have a lifetime obligation to protect classified information.”

The negotiations in Europe last year were described by American and European intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a clandestine operation, and the Russian. The United States officials worked through an intermediary — an American businessman based in Germany — to preserve deniability. There were meetings in provincial German towns where John le Carré set his early spy novels, and data handoffs in five-star Berlin hotels. American intelligence agencies spent months tracking the Russian’s flights to Berlin, his rendezvous with a mistress in Vienna and his trips home to St. Petersburg, the officials said. 

The N.S.A. even used its official Twitter account nearly a dozen times to send coded messages to the Russian.

The episode ended earlier this year with American spies chasing the Russian out of Western Europe, warning him not to return if he valued his freedom, the American businessman said. The alleged Trump material was left with the American, who has secured it in Europe.

Good ol' fashioned spycraft, and nobody does it like the Russians.  The real issue is though that the CIA and the NSA ra screaming from info on Trump.  The setup excuse if convenient, the reality is that nobody wanted to be the guy who brought in dirt on a sitting chief executive, that's instant career death.

Information that harms Trump disappears.

President Trump blocked on Friday the release of a classified Democratic memo rebutting Republican claims that top federal law enforcement officials had abused their surveillance powers in spying on a former Trump campaign aide, raising the specter of a potential showdown with Congress.

Donald F. McGahn II, the president’s lawyer, said in a letter to the House Intelligence Committee that the memorandum “contains numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages.” He said the president would again consider the release of the memo to the public if the committee revised the memo to “mitigate the risks.”

Under the obscure rule invoked by the House Intelligence Committee to initiate the document’s release, the committee could choose to make those changes, or could decide whether to seek a vote of the full House of Representatives to try to override Mr. Trump’s decision.

Democrats are certain to be outraged by the action, given that last week the president declassified the contents of a rival Republican memo drafted by committee staff and drawn from the same underlying documents over the objections of his own Justice Department and F.B.I.

Mr. McGahn said Mr. Trump is “inclined to declassify” the Democratic memorandum and encouraged the committee to make the changes that he said the Department of Justice had identified as important for “national security and law enforcement interests.”

While many Republicans said their memo showed evidence of political bias present in the early stages of the Russia investigation, Mr. Trump went farther, claiming, incorrectly, that the Republican memo “totally vindicates” him from the investigation.

The full House can vote to release the memo.  My guess it won't even get a vote.  Down into the memory hole it goes, unless it's leaked, of course.

The General Needs To Go

Now that Steve Bannon is gone, the job of Donald Trump's enabler-in-chief has fallen to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.  As Vox's Dylan Matthews reminds us, there are several reasons why Kelly should have been booted from the job months ago.

I can’t tell you the exact moment it became clear that retired Gen. John F. Kelly had to resign his position as White House chief of staff.

Perhaps it was in October, when he lied and smeared Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL). Kelly claimed that during a dedication ceremony for a new FBI office in Miami, a ceremony where he and others were focused on the heroism of the two slain FBI agents after whom the office was named, Wilson “stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building.”

Video of the event confirmed that Kelly was lying — Wilson didn’t take credit for getting the funding. She graciously extended credit to her colleagues, including Republican Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Mario Díaz-Balart, and devoted much of her speech to honoring the two agents for whom the office was named. Kelly was lying to smear her for criticizing President Trump — indeed, for criticizing Trump’s treatment of a war widow.

Compounding the issue was White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders telling reporters it was ”highly inappropriate” to call Kelly on his lies — because he’s a retired general. It was a shocking statement, one that undermined norms of civilian control of and oversight over the military. Kelly should have at least told the press he disagreed with Sanders, that he does not believe he is above scrutiny because of his military record. He did not.

Or maybe his time was up when he praised Robert E. Lee, who committed treason to defend the institution of slavery and the subjugation of black Americans, as an “honorable” man and blamed the Civil War on a “lack of compromise.” Or perhaps it was when he decried some DREAMers who failed to secure protection from deportation (in some cases because they feared that if they told the federal government they were undocumented, they could be deported) as “too lazy to get off their asses.” It was a shocking insult to more than a million Americans, who have lived here almost all their lives and contributed time and again to their communities and their nation.

But it became extremely, abundantly clear that Kelly had to go when he went to bat for White House staff secretary Rob Porter.

Let's be perfectly clear about the Porter story: neither Rob Porter nor John Kelly are the victims here. Porter's ex-wives, Colbie Holderness and  Jennifer Willoughby, were beaten, terrorized, abused, and irreparably harmed by this monster.  They came forward to stop this brutish lout from being involved in our nation's executive branch.

John Kelly knew about it for months and promoted Porter anyway, as did White House Chief Legal Counsel Don McGahn.

Kelly knew all of this. Both Holderness and Willoughby were interviewed by the FBI in January 2017 as part of the hiring process for Porter, and White House counsel Don McGahn learned of the allegations the same month. McGahn took no action, nor did he take any action when the ex-girlfriend contacted him in November. The FBI told the White House about the abuse in June 2017, and by the fall it was clear the allegations were preventing Porter from getting a security clearance.

“When McGahn informed Kelly this fall about the reason for the security clearance holdup, he agreed that Porter should remain and said he was surprised to learn that the 40-year-old had ex-wives,” the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey and Beth Reinhard report. “Kelly handed Porter more responsibilities to control the flow of information to the president.”

A few weeks ago, Kelly was informed by the FBI that they were recommending that Porter be denied full security clearance, and recommended the same about a number of other White House aides who, like Porter, had been working on interim clearances. “The White House chief-of-staff told confidants in recent weeks that he had decided to fire anyone who had been denied a clearance — but had yet to act on that plan before the Porter allegations were first reported this week,” Politico’s Eliana Johnson reports.

After all that, and even after the scandal broke in the news media, Kelly was still pushing within the White House to keep Porter on board. Axios’s Jonathan Swan reported that Kelly wanted Porter to “stay and fight.” Publicly, while Kelly said he was “shocked by the new allegations” and proclaimed, “There is no place for domestic violence in our society,” he reiterated, “I believe every individual deserves the right to defend their reputation.” When the scandal broke, he told the Daily Mail that Porter was “a man of true integrity and honor, and I can’t say enough good things about him.”

Again, these allegations against Porter were known from day one.  Not only was Porter hired, he was promoted to a sensitive position like White House Staff Secretary where he could read classified information without a security clearance.

And just think, there's dozens of other Trump staffers who should have security clearance but do not.

Just to top it all off, Porter was dating another member of Trump's staff, Hope Hicks. He was her boss.  And guess who Trump blames for this mess?

Hope Hicks. 

All of these clowns need to go, starting with Trump.

Budget Buster Blues

Well, if there was still any doubt out there that 2009-2017 was simply one long GOP exercise in punishing America for daring to elect a black president twice after Republicans simply forgot what all their complaints about the deficit and national debt were with a tax bill that will add $1.5 trillion in debt when we couldn't afford a jobs bill or a bridge bill or you know anything when Obama was in charge, this morning's budget bill proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The budget deal lawmakers have agreed to would increase discretionary spending above and beyond repeal of the sequester and the caps set in law under the Budget Control Act, in addition to a Christmas list of other items they desire. This deal comes with a hefty price tag of $320 billion over ten years according to the Congressional Budget Office, despite the fact that most of the deal is only temporary. It would push the deficit in 2019 clearly above $1 trillion to $1.2 trillion.

That $320 billion mostly reflects near-term costs, however. If temporary provisions in the bill were made permanent, the ultimate cost could increase to $1.7 trillion, or $2.1 trillion including interest, and increase debt to 105 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2027. Coming on the heels of the $1.5 trillion tax cut in December, this deal would be another huge blow to fiscal responsibility.

The largest expense in the budget deal is a plan to increase defense caps by $165 billion over two years and non-defense discretionary caps by $131 billion. But the legislation also allocates $89 billion of new budget authority on disaster relief and includes additional spending and tax cuts by repealing the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), extending tax measures that expired at the end of 2016, and funding community health centers.

These $419 billion of increases are offset by just $100 billion of spending cuts, with a third coming from extending the sequester on mandatory spending for an extra two years beyond 2025; another third from various changes and reforms to Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs; and the rest from selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, extending various customs and visa fees, and further limiting Federal Reserve remittances.

GOP think tanks are appalled.  They shouldn't be.  Dick Chaney famously said "Deficits don't matter" as long as the guy in charge isn't Obama.

We can afford trillion-dollar deficits as long as the money is going to corporations and the richest 0.1% I guess.

StupidiNews!

• After a government shutdown prompted by Sen. Rand Paul blocking a Senate budget deal past midnight, both the House and Senate voted early this morning to reopen the government.
• Donald Trump is expected to sign the legislation to reopen the government later today as the deal reached by Congress included $3 billion for construction of a border wall with Mexico.
• VP Mike Pence avoided any encounter with the North Korea delegation as the Winter Games begin today in Pyeongchang, South Korea days after calling for tough new sanctions.
• A former Credit Suisse wealth manager has been sentenced to five years in prison and a $150 million fine after defrauding clients out of hundreds of millions of dollars over 8 years.
• NASA has officially confirmed its lost IMAGE satellite from 2000 found by an amateur astronomer is operational, NASA is now working on getting the satellite running again.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

It shouldn't come as a surprise at this point that Russian penetration into American voting systems was much more thorough than previously suspected, as former Obama Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson warned, but it also shouldn't come as a surprise that several of the 21 targeted states are even afraid to admit their systems were compromised, let alone start working to protect their systems from intruders in 2018 elections.

The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said she couldn't talk about classified information publicly, but in 2016, "We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated."

Jeh Johnson, who was DHS secretary during the Russian intrusions, said, "2016 was a wake-up call and now it's incumbent upon states and the Feds to do something about it before our democracy is attacked again."

That's the part we knew.  What we didn't know is that states still haven't done anything about it.

NBC News reached out to the 21 states that were targeted. Five states, including Texas and California, said they were never attacked.

Manfra said she stands by the list, but also called it a "snapshot in time with the visibility that the department had at that time."

Many of the states complained the federal government did not provide specific threat details, saying that information was classified and state officials did not have proper clearances. Manfra told us those clearances are now being processed

Other states that NBC contacted said they were still waiting for cybersecurity help from the federal government. Manfra said there was no waiting list and that DHS will get to everyone.

Some state officials had opposed Johnson's designation of electoral systems as critical infrastructure, viewing it a federal intrusion. Johnson said that any state officials who don't believe the federal government should be providing help are being "naïve" and "irresponsible to the people that [they're] supposed to serve."

Any state election official who admits their state's elections were compromised is basically done for.  We're still playing CYA games more than a year later, and time is running out ahead of November's elections.  Primaries are only a few months away in some cases.

But states are still pointing fingers.  We're in so much trouble it makes my head hurt.  The Russians can basically do whatever they want to our election systems at this point, and will.

Bye-Bye Bibi, Probably

The corruption and bribery case against Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu just got very, very real as it now looks like indictments could now be on the way.

Israeli police chiefs will recommend to the country's attorney general that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted on corruption charges, according to reports in local media. 

The Times of Israel reported Wednesday that police chiefs, including the general commissioner of Israel's police force, were in "unanimous agreement" that Netanyahu should be indicted for allegedly accepting bribes and receiving lavish gifts from wealthy benefactors, including Israeli-born Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. 

Any recommendation for an indictment would be sent to Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who will decide whether to indict the prime minister.

In a Facebook video Netanyahu acknowledged that the police would likely move to recommend his indictment, but dismissed the allegations against him and predicted Mandelblit would not move to press charges. 

"The State of Israel is a state of law. The law says that the one to determine whether there is evidence against the prime minister is the attorney general and he consults with the state attorney. The state prosecutor recently said in the Knesset that about half of the police's recommendations end with nothing," Netanyahu said Wednesday. 

"So do not be nervous ... I am sure that at the end of the day the competent legal bodies will come to one conclusion, to the simple truth: There is nothing," he added.

I don't know too much about Israel's Attorney General, but I would have to assume that a unanimous recommendation from the country's cops would weigh in as a major factor.  If charges are filed, look out.

Also, I can't say this won't make a certain orange leader of the free world rather nervous.

StupidiNews!

• House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke for 8 hours on DACA recipients as the Senate will take up a 2-year budget vote today that does not address Dreamers.
• The FBI says there was no foul play found so far in the death of a Border Patrol agent in November, Republicans have seized on the agent's death to push Trump's anti-immigration agenda.
• North Korea says it has no plans to meet with US officials during the Winter Games in South Korea starting Friday, VP Mike Pence will also attend the games.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government has reached a deal to keep her in power, but now the new government must be approved by Merkel's own party.
• The newest list of emojis for 2018 includes everything from frozen faces to kangaroos to supervillains and will be released to manufacturers in June.

Last Call For Another One Bites The Dust

It should come as no surprise that the Sexual Assaulter In Chief has folks who work for him who physically abuse women.  The difference is White House staff secretary Rob Porter is not Donald Trump, so Porter doesn't get the protections of the office and has to resign.

A senior White House official announced Wednesday he will resign following allegations by his two ex-wives of physical and emotional abuse.

The official, Rob Porter, served as the staff secretary and often controlled the paper flow to President Trump’s desk, along with his daily schedule. Porter also oversaw the White House’s policy implementation process and worked closely with Chief of Staff John F. Kelly to try to instill discipline in the chaotic West Wing. He often spent hours of the day with Trump and frequently traveled with him on Air Force One. 

“These outrageous allegations are simply false. I took the photos given to the media nearly 15 years ago and the reality behind them is nowhere close to what is being described. I have been transparent and truthful about these vile claims, but I will not further engage publicly with a coordinated smear campaign,” Porter said in a statement. “My commitment to public service speaks for itself. I have always put duty to country first and treated others with respect. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have served in the Trump Administration and will seek to ensure a smooth transition when I leave the White House.” 

The allegations against Porter by his ex-wives were first reported by the DailyMail.com, and senior West Wing aides spent part of Wednesday morning preparing for the fallout from his departure. Many senior officials, including Kelly, urged Porter to stay, according to White House advisers. 

“He was verbally, emotionally and physically abusive, and that is why I left,” Colbie Holderness, his first wife, said in an interview with the DailyMail.com. His second wife said she filed and received an emergency protective order against Porter. The newspaper published what appeared to be a copy of the order, which included a Virginia magistrate’s signature.

The news site on Wednesday also posted pictures of Holderness with a bruised right eye, which she alleges was the result of Porter punching her during a trip to Florence in the early 2000s.

Porter told the DailyMail.com that many of the accusations were false but declined to comment further.

Again, the real enabler here is Trump, but supposed "Adult in the room" WH Chief of Staff John Kelly publicly defended Porter right up until the point where Porter resigned this afternoon.  Let's not forget that Kelly is a screaming racist asshole who keeps wrecking any hope for an immigration deal, too.

By the way, Porter's wife had a restraining order against him back in 2010 which was the main reason he couldn't get a security clearance, yet he was basically Kelly's right hand when dealing with Trump and all the documents that crossed Trump's desk. Figure that one out.

Still, good to see Porter go, but the people who really need to resign are John Kelly and Donald Trump.

A Deal With The Devil

It seems that both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate want to settle this budget mess and get back to the most important task: fundraising for reelection campaigns.

Senate leaders, disregarding President Trump’s threats to shut down the government, struck a far-reaching agreement on Wednesday to set spending levels on military and domestic spending for the next two years, breaking the cycle of fiscal crises that have bedeviled the Capitol since last summer. 

The accord between Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and Chuck Schumer of New York, his Democratic counterpart, would raise strict caps on military and domestic spending that were imposed in 2011 as part of a deal with President Barack Obama that was once seen as a key triumph for Republicans in Congress. 

The deal will cause federal budget deficits to grow even larger, on top of the effects of the sweeping tax overhaul that lawmakers approved in December. 

The deal includes commitments to dedicate billions of dollars to areas like infrastructure, the opioid crisis, V.A. hospitals and health research, according to a person briefed on the agreement. It also includes disaster relief for areas hit by last year’s hurricanes and wildfires.

We'll see if the deal passes, but my guess is Trump blows it up, especially when he hears stuff like this:

The budget deal would be paired with a stopgap spending measure that would keep federal agencies open past Thursday, when the current funding measure is set to expire.
It was not immediately clear if enough Democrats would oppose the bill to imperil its passage in the House, given the likely opposition from at least some fiscal conservatives. If lawmakers cannot pass a temporary funding measure by the end of Thursday — either by itself or tied to a budget pact — the government would shut down for the second time this year. 

The budget agreement would also negate the president’s demands to broadly reorder government with deep cuts to domestic programs like environmental protection, foreign aid, and health research that were to offset large increases in military spending. Mr. Trump is to release his second budget request on Monday, but the deal — sealed by members of his own party — would effectively render many of his demands null and void. 

If the deal passes, lawmakers would put together a long-term spending package over the coming weeks that would fund the government through September, granting a measure of peace to Washington as attention turns to the midterm elections in November. By setting overall spending levels through September 2019, the deal would ease passage of spending bills in the next fiscal year as well.

Trump will never, ever tolerate a bill that can be described as one that "would effectively render many of his demands null and void" either.  It means this bill would not only have to pass the Senate and the House but do so with two-thirds majorities in both chambers to override an assured Trump veto.

That's certainly possible, but it won't be easy.

Also, please note the swiftness with which Republicans are willing to completely blow up their own sequestestration spending cap limits put in place to hamstring Barack Obama, back when the GOP actually gave a damn about "deficits" and stuff.

We'll see.

General Disarray And Major Meltdown

Generalissimo Francisco Cheeto didn't get his Pentagon inaugural military parade through the streets of Washington 13 months ago, so he wants it now to show the world that he's the greatest guy ever, or something.

President Trump’s vision of soldiers marching and tanks rolling down the boulevards of Washington is moving closer to reality in the Pentagon and White House, where officials say they have begun to plan a grand military parade later this year showcasing the might of America’s armed forces.

Trump has long mused publicly and privately about wanting such a parade, but a Jan. 18 meeting between Trump and top generals in the Pentagon’s tank — a room reserved for top-secret discussions — marked a tipping point, according to two officials briefed on the planning.

Surrounded by the military’s highest-ranking officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., Trump’s seemingly abstract desire for a parade was suddenly heard as a presidential directive, the officials said.

“The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France,” said a military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the planning discussions are supposed to remain confidential. “This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”

Shows of military strength are not typical in the United States — and they don’t come cheap. The cost of shipping Abrams tanks and high-tech hardware to Washington could run in the millions, and military officials said it was unclear how they would pay for it.

A White House official familiar with the planning described the discussions as “brainstorming” and said nothing was settled. “Right now, there’s really no meat on the bones,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

Naturally, Trump's militaristic fascist impulses must be fed, because he's Trump.  If Obama had done this, we would have had armed Tea Partiers in the streets lining up to remake that famous Chinese Tiananmen Square picture of the guy in front of a tank. 

Trump does it, it's funny because it makes stoopid libtard heads explode, or something.  But it is a big deal?  Does it even matter and is this worth getting upset over?

Not really.  I agree 100% with Steve M. who says let the child have his toys and move on.

If Trump were smart, he'd be using this to troll liberals. If he were a shrewd, cynical manipulator of public opinion, like the message-shapers of the Reagan administration, he'd be using this to drive a wedge between his critics and heartlanders, who'll take this at face value and embrace it (though probably not as enthusiastically as they might have in the 1980s, when their anger at '60s/'70s critics of America was still raw). If he were an adept totalitarian, he'd use this as a genuine assertion of his power.

But he's Trump, so he'll just spend hundreds of millions of dollars to ship weaponry to the streets of D.C. because he's an overgrown eleven-year-old boy still mentally living in the 1950s, and also because he's a crushingly insecure plutocrat who needs a steady succession of gaudy displays in order to feel that he's adequately demonstrating his own greatness to the world.

This parade won't be part of a grand plan to crush democracy in America -- there won't be roaming goon squads, and a protest will probably be permitted, though at some distance from the main event. Trump might want the parade to intimidate foreign foes, but it won't accomplish that goal, because the military will probably agree to display only weapons our enemies already know about. This will just be a pointless moment of excess, with Trump using weapons the way, in his hotels, he uses gilt.

Steve's right, to say like the SOTU, just don't watch. but my counter-argument would be this:  Trump wants his parade and the right-wing will just scream WHY DO YOU AWFUL TREASONLIBS HATE AMERICA SO MUCH WE SHOULD USE THESE WEAPONS ON YOU HURR DURR anyway. They'll make liberal resentment the story just like they have since 1982, not because Trump is trying to troll people, but because the people surrounding him certainly want to and will do so.

In fact, if I'm a GOP consultant my eyes are lit up like a kid on Christmas because I can't wait to play commercials with marching band music and Trump's parade footage in it against black and white scenes of mean ol' troop-hatin' Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer.  Believe me, it'll play goddamn great in Kentucky and Iowa and North Carolina and Wisconsin.

It doesn't matter if we rise to the bait in the era of Trump.  They'll say we did and that's all that matters.  We've gotten to the point where an event has already accomplished the goal of "pissing off the libs" months before it happens, as an assumed truism, whether it actually happens or not.

Ds and most media will decry this, objecting to the costs. When it happens, many Ds won’t like it because it’s militaristic. But most Americans will eat it up. They’ll love the pomp and will take pride in the show of force/honor of the troops. https://t.co/E53nN1J3bq

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) February 6, 2018

Going after this is a mistake.  There are fights to have, and this isn't one of them, guys.  It's a lose-lose, non-starter, no-brainer level of bad.

On the other hand...maybe FOX News will kill the parade for us.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• As Donald Trump commented on a possible Friday government shutdown being "good for America", the House has passed and sent a bill to the Senate to keep the government open.
• Democrats won a Missouri state legislature special election in Missouri in a district Trump won in 2016 by 28 points, but Republicans won the other three seats to keep their supermajority.
• On a trip to Japan ahead of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, VP Mike Pence says the US will soon announce the "toughest and most aggressive" sanctions on North Korea so far. 
• Billionaire casino mogul Steve Wynn has resigned as CEO of Wynn Resorts after multiple sexual harassment claims by women who worked for him surfaced last month.
• The launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket Tuesday was a major success, with both boosters landing simultaneously on the ground and the payload, a Tesla Roadster, heading into space.

Last Call For The Party Of Fiscal Responsibility

Thanks to Trump and the GOP tax scam giveaway to corporations and the 0.1% richest Americans, we're back into the realm of trillion-dollar deficits.

It was another crazy news week, so it's understandable if you missed a small but important announcement from the Treasury Department: The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year — Trump's first full year in charge of the budget. 

That's almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017.

Here are the exact figures: The U.S. Treasury expects to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, according to a documents released Wednesday. It's the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and a big jump from the $519 billion the federal government borrowed last year. 

Treasury mainly attributed the increase to the “fiscal outlook.” The Congressional Budget Office was more blunt. In a report this week, the CBO said tax receipts are going to be lower because of the new tax law. 

The uptick in borrowing is yet another complication in the heated debates in Congress over whether to spend more money on infrastructure, the military, disaster relief and other domestic programs. The deficit is already up significantly, even before Congress allots more money to any of these areas. 

“We're addicted to debt,” says Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He blames both parties for the situation.

What's particularly jarring is this is the first time borrowing has jumped this much (as a share of GDP) in a non-recession time since Ronald Reagan was president, says Ernie Tedeschi, a former senior adviser to the U.S. Treasury who is now head of fiscal analysis at Evercore ISI. Under Reagan, borrowing spiked because of a buildup in the military, something Trump is advocating again.

Let's not forget that Reagan's profligate tax cuts and military buildup gave us the 1987 recession where he tripled the national debt in eight years and continued into Poppy Bush's 1990 recession and the first Gulf War, something we seem to be heading towards again (that is if we don't bomb North Korea first).

We've been paying for that mess for thirty years now, and Trump and the GOP are looting the treasury one last time before the fuse blows and the economy is made exponentially worse.

Of course by 2020 we'll be blaming the GOP tax cut on Obama anyway, so it doesn't really matter.