Last Call For The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Some good news as the Manafort/Cohen mess is now clearly benefiting the Democrats in the polls as we head into the last 60 days of the 2018 campaign, with a new WaPo/ABC News poll finding Dems with a whopping 14-point generic ballot lead, their biggest lead in this poll since 2006.

Two months ahead of the midterm elections, Democrats hold a clear advantage over Republicans in congressional vote support, with antipathy toward President Trump fueling Democratic enthusiasm, even among those in the party who stayed home four years ago, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

The survey also points to broad unrest and frustration with the political system generally. More than 6 in 10 Americans say Trump and the Republican Party are out of touch with most people in the country. While Democrats fare better, a narrower 51 percent majority also judged them out of touch.

Registered voters say they favor the Democratic candidate over the Republican candidate in their district by 52 percent to 38 percent. That is a marked increase from the four-point edge in an April Post-ABC poll but similar to the 12-point advantage Democrats enjoyed in January.

The models I've seen put the Dems at a 70-75% chance of winning the House, but that was where Clinton was in September of 2016, too.  Take nothing for granted.

The poll says that 75% of registered voters are certain to vote, and we know for a fact that in a midterm year, that percentage will be closer to 40%, with 50% being near-record turnout that would get the Dems a blue tsunami.  That could happen, frankly.

But I'm not holding my breath.  Still, get out there, knock on doors, phone bank, meet people where you live and get them to vote.  I know there's not a lot of hope for me to get rid of Thomas Massie anytime soon, but next door in OH-1, sending GOP Rep. Steve Chabot back to the bench is absolutely doable with Democrat Aftab Pureval.

Where you live, help people vote blue.

Trump Cards, Con't

Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward's book on the Trump regime will be out next week, and the excerpts of it are heart-stopping.  Donald Trump is so singularly unfit for office that replacing the congressional supporters has to be our top priority in 2018 and if that's not enough, replacing Trump in 2020.

A near-constant subject of withering presidential attacks was Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump told Porter that Sessions was a “traitor” for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, Woodward writes. Mocking Sessions’s accent, Trump added, “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner. … He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.”

At a dinner with Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others, Trump lashed out at a vocal critic, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He falsely suggested that the former Navy pilot had been a coward for taking early release from a prisoner-of-war camp in Vietnam because of his father’s military rank and leaving others behind.

Mattis swiftly corrected his boss: “No, Mr. President, I think you’ve got it reversed.” The defense secretary explained that McCain, who died Aug. 25, had in fact turned down early release and was brutally tortured during his five years at the Hanoi Hilton.

“Oh, okay,” Trump replied, according to Woodward’s account.

With Trump’s rage and defiance impossible to contain, Cabinet members and other senior officials learned to act discreetly. Woodward describes an alliance among Trump’s traditionalists — including Mattis and Gary Cohn, the president’s former top economic adviser — to stymie what they considered dangerous acts.

“It felt like we were walking along the edge of the cliff perpetually,” Porter is quoted as saying. “Other times, we would fall over the edge, and an action would be taken.”

After Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate the dictator. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump said, according to Woodward.

Mattis told the president that he would get right on it. But after hanging up the phone, he told a senior aide: “We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.” The national security team developed options for the more conventional airstrike that Trump ultimately ordered.

I mean, Trump wanted to assassinate Bashar Al-Assad.  Mattis didn't do it.

One of them needs to resign before the week is out, and both of them should.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

I've previously talked about the three aspects of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russian probe into the Trump regime: the Trump campaign working with benefit of Russian help, Trump's long history of money laundering, and the obstruction of justice to cover both up.  Today we're talking about the second aspect, specifically Russia's money laundering ties to international banks.

I've previously mentioned Cyprus as a long-time haven for Russian money laundering operations and the sordid history of Trump's Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, who was the former Vice Chairman of the Bank of Cyprus.  But now we've discovered another major Russian money laundering outlet, this time through Denmark by way of Estonia.

An independent investigation into the money-laundering scandal at Danske Bank found that as much as $30bn of Russian and ex-Soviet money flowed through its Estonian branch in a single year.

The findings, contained in a draft report commissioned by Denmark’s largest bank and seen by the Financial Times, raises questions for Danske’s leadership about who knew, and when, about the sheer volume of foreign money passing through its small Estonian branch.

The report by Promontory Financial, the consultancy, found that up to $30bn was parked in Danske’s Estonian branch by non-residents in 2013, the peak year of a scandal that lasted from 2007 until 2015.

“NRP [non-resident portfolio] transaction volume peaked in 2013 with the number of transactions approaching 80,000 that year, and the transaction volume approaching $30bn,” the independent findings, seen by the Financial Times, stated.

One person close to the investigation said: “It’s a truly breathtaking amount for such a small branch. You can’t have that amount flowing through without it raising questions.”

And Danske Bank has been totally flat-footed by this.  They're on the hook for billions in fines, and they don't have the money to pay for it.

Danske Bank A/S says it hasn’t put any money aside to cover potential fines, or other losses, linked to its alleged role in the laundering of billions of dollars over several years.

“We can never tell for sure, obviously, but what we can tell is that we’ve made the assessment and that we’ve concluded there is no basis for making any provisions,” Morten Mosegaard, interim chief financial officer and chief of staff at Denmark’s biggest bank, said in an interview.

The Copenhagen-based lender is the target of criminal investigations for laundering in Denmark and Estonia amid allegations that more than $9 billion in illicit funds from Russia, Azerbaijan and Moldova flowed through its office in Tallinn. Danske has earmarked about 1.5 billion kroner, or $230 million, as what it’s calling a donation to society in an effort to address public indignation.

“We have been pretty precise in letting the market know that this is the full scope of gross income [from the Estonian unit] and then we’re making the assessment at this point in time,” Mosegaard said. “We can’t comment on that until we get to the point where we can make a general disclosure.”

You'd better believe that Robert Mueller's team and the NY Attorney General's office are taking a long, hard look at Danske Bank and its Russian clients.

And possibly some American clients as well.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• Confirmation hearings get underway today in the Senate for Donald Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh as Trump faces increasing pressure from Democrats and Mueller.
• A man who stabbed two American tourists in Amsterdam last week said in court today that his motivation was anti-Islamic Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders.
• French President Emmanuel Macron has appointed Green party lawmaker Francois de Rugy as his new environment minister in an effort to boost his coalition after a tough summer.
• Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is headlining Nike's 30th anniversary "Just Do It" campaign, but the move is already generating a backlash by right-wing Trump supporters.
• The FCC wants to end the Lifeline reseller program for mobile phones, a move that would end inexpensive cell service for millions of Americans.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

Immigrants, both documented and undocumented, are fleeing federal food programs like SNAP and WIC in droves because they know the Trump regime will start targeting them using that information.

Immigrants are turning down government help to buy infant formula and healthy food for their young children because they’re afraid the Trump administration could bar them from getting a green card if they take federal aid.

Local health providers say they’ve received panicked phone calls from both documented and undocumented immigrant families demanding to be dropped from the rolls of WIC, a federal nutrition program aimed at pregnant women and children, after news reports that the White House is potentially planning to deny legal status to immigrants who’ve used public benefits. Agencies in at least 18 states say they’ve seen drops of up to 20 percent in enrollment, and they attribute the change largely to fears about the immigration policy.

The Trump administration hasn’t officially put the policy in place yet, but even without a formal rule, families are already being scared away from using services, health providers say.

“It’s a stealth regulation,” said Kathleen Campbell Walker, an immigration attorney at Dickinson Wright in El Paso, Texas. “It doesn’t really exist, but it’s being applied subliminally.”

There's no doubt that this is all about fear.  Immigrants who don't use these programs save the government money, after all. But mostly it's about getting rid of the next generation of immigrants and slowing down or even reversing the browning of America, while feeding fresh, raw meat to Trump's base.  Taking food out of the mouths of "anchor babies" is exactly what the Trump camp wants.

The immigration proposal, which White House officials are working on ahead of the midterms as a way to energize the Republican base, would primarily affect legal immigrants already in the U.S. who are seeking a green card and people applying for legal admission to the U.S. It could also affect undocumented immigrants if they want to seek legal permanent residency in the future — a change that would represent a substantial expansion of the definition of public charge.

Under a provision known as public charge, U.S. immigration law has for more than a century allowed officials to reject admission to the country on the grounds that potential immigrants or visitors might become overly reliant on the government. But until now, officials have looked narrowly at whether someone would need cash benefits such as welfare or long-term institutional care. Immigration hawks in the Trump administration are pushing to consider would-be immigrants’ use of a much broader array of services, including non-cash assistance like food stamps, Head Start, Medicaid and WIC, according to versions of the proposed rule that were obtained by news organizations earlier this year.

Undocumented immigrants do not qualify for most government aid programs, but such an expansion of public charge could apply to the whole family. In the past, if a mom was applying for a green card her own use of public benefits might be examined. Under the proposed change, her child’s enrollment in Medicaid or Head Start would weighed as a negative factor, even if that child is a U.S. citizen.

The end of immigration into the US is coming, along with mass deportations of "undesirables".  We have one chance to stem the tide in November.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

We've finally reached the point where, as predicted, the Trump regime's state news organ is now officially pushing that Dear Leader was framed for his many crimes. 

Fox News host Jeanine Pirro said Sunday that she believes various forces in Washington have conspired to “frame” President Trump and bog down his administration with scandal and controversy.

“Nobody is looking at the corruption. It’s all one-sided, the corruption on the part of the Democrats," Pirro told radio host John Catsimatidis in an interview on AM 970 New York. "This president was framed. It’s that simple.”

“I’ve been in law enforcement for over three decades. This guy was framed," Pirro continued. "The crisscrossing and the incestuous nature of our government in an attempt to prevent the outsider president that we wanted from getting elected is frightening.”

Pirro, a former judge and ardent supporter of Trump, echoed claims the president has made before that he was framed "for crimes he didn't commit."

In May, Trump tweeted an unverified claim that the FBI placed a mole in his campaign team and suggested that the agency was attempting to "frame" him for alleged wrongdoings associated with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia. 

I'm moderately surprised that it wasn't Hannity broaching the subject, but Jeanine Pirro has now escalated this to an extremely dangerous new level.  It's one thing for Trump himself to babble about witch hunts, but if FOX News hosts are now going to start accusing the Justice Department of a massive conspiracy to frame him, then there's no limit as to what they will justify doing in order to defend Trump as Mueller closes in.

You'll know the fix is in when Republicans in Congress and candidates running for midterm elections give non-committal answers to "Do you believe Trump is being framed by Mueller?" instead of anything other than a hard no, and that Pirro is ridiculous and that the Mueller probe has their full support.

Stay tuned on this one.  It's going to get a lot uglier.

Solving A Micro Mystery

Medical scientists in the US have come to the conclusion that the spate of unexplained illnesses among US diplomats in Cuba and China can be explained by repeated attacks from microwave weapons.

During the Cold War, Washington feared that Moscow was seeking to turnmicrowave radiation into covert weapons of mind control.

More recently, the American military itself sought to develop microwave arms that could invisibly beam painfully loud booms and even spoken words into people’s heads. The aims were to disable attackers and wage psychological warfare.

Now, doctors and scientists say such unconventional weapons may have caused the baffling symptoms and ailments that, starting in late 2016, hit more than three dozen American diplomats and family members in Cuba and China. The Cuban incidents resulted in a diplomatic rupture between Havana and Washington.

The medical team that examined 21 affected diplomats from Cuba made no mention of microwaves in its detailed report published in JAMA in March. But Douglas H. Smith, the study’s lead author and director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a recent interview that microwaves were now considered a main suspect and that the team was increasingly sure the diplomats had suffered brain injury.

“Everybody was relatively skeptical at first,” he said, “and everyone now agrees there’s something there.” Dr. Smith remarked that the diplomats and doctors jokingly refer to the trauma as the immaculate concussion.

Strikes with microwaves, some experts now argue, more plausibly explain reports of painful sounds, ills and traumas than do other possible culprits — sonic attacks, viral infections and contagious anxiety.

In particular, a growing number of analysts cite an eerie phenomenon known as the Frey effect, named after Allan H. Frey, an American scientist. Long ago, he found that microwaves can trick the brain into perceiving what seem to be ordinary sounds.

If that's true, then suddenly there's a real problem.  Deploying these against US diplomats would be, you know, an act of terrorism...or an act of war.

The microwave idea teems with unanswered questions. Who fired the beams? The Russian government? The Cuban government? A rogue Cuban faction sympathetic to Moscow? And, if so, where did the attackers get the unconventional arms?

At his home outside Washington, Mr. Frey, the scientist who uncovered the neural phenomenon, said federal investigators have questioned him on the diplomatic riddle and that microwave radiation is considered a possible cause.

Mr. Frey, now 83, has traveled widely and long served as a contractor and a consultant to a number of federal agencies. He speculated that Cubans aligned with Russia, the nation’s longtime ally, might have launched microwave strikes in attempts to undermine developing ties between Cuba and the United States.

“It’s a possibility,” he said at his kitchen table. “In dictatorships, you often have factions that think nothing of going against the general policy if it suits their needs. I think that’s a perfectly viable explanation.”

We'll see where this goes.

Last Call For The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Less than a week into the Florida gubernatorial contest between Trump-loving GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis and Democratic Mayor of Tallahassee Andrew Gillum, who would be Florida's first black governor, and we've now had three "Southern Strategy" moments that would have made Lee Atwater proud.

On Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the winning in Florida's Tuesday primaries, DeSantis called Gillum "articulate" and warned Florida voters not to "monkey this up" by voting for his opponent.

DeSantis, whose rise to national prominence was bolstered by his frequent appearances on the network, praised Gillum on Fox News on Wednesday as “an articulate spokesman” for those holding “far-left views” but warned that he would be damaging to the state.

“The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state,” DeSantis said. “That is not going to work. That’s not going to be good for Florida.”

The use of language seen as containing coded racism prompted an extraordinary rebuke from the network.

DeSantis pulled a "who, me?" and walked the comments back, sort of, but then on Thursday white supremacists bought robocalls in Florida with an unmistakably racist message.

Racist robocalls targeting Andrew Gillum, the first black nominee for Florida governor from a major party, have been placed to residents from an out-of-state white supremacist entity.

Mr. Gillum, 39, the Tallahassee mayor and a progressive candidate who won an upset victory in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, will face Representative Ron DeSantis, 39, a Republican who embraced the style and policies of President Trump, in the November election.

In the audio of one robocall placed on Friday and obtained by The New York Times, a man pretending to be Mr. Gillum can be heard talking in the exaggerated accent of a minstrel performer. “Well hello there,” it begins, “I is Andrew Gillum.” He then talks for a little over a minute about mud huts and unfair policing practices, and asks repeatedly for the listener’s vote. In the background are the sounds of drums and monkeys.

The recording, reported on Friday by The Tallahassee Democrat, ends with a man saying that the message was paid for by the Road to Power, an Idaho-based website and podcast with white supremacist and anti-Semitic content.

It is unclear how many people received the robocalls, but Mr. Gillum’s campaign spokesman, Geoff Burgan, said that multiple people had reported them to the campaign. He called the message “reprehensible” and said it “could only have come from someone with intentions to fuel hatred and seek publicity.”

Now DeSantis, in an interview today, wasted no time going after Gillum again, accusing Gillum of being a "far-left fringe socialist" who will "turn Florida into Venezuela". 

DeSantis told host John Catsimatidis in an interview airing Sunday on AM 970 in New York that Gillum, who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and advocates for more left-leaning proposals such as "Medicare for all" and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is an "untraditional" opponent.

"I would say it's very untraditional for Florida, [though] not anything to do with me, I'm a solid conservative in the Reagan tradition and I've been supportive of the president's agenda," DeSantis said.

"This Andrew Gillum, he's on the far-left socialist fringe," DeSantis continued. "He's a Bernie Sanders, [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez type candidate."

"If you have a guy like this enacting a socialist agenda it's going to absolutely destroy all the progress that Florida has made," he added. "He wants to turn Florida in to Venezuela."

It hasn't even been a week yet, and we already have three ear-splitting racist dog-whistles in the race, one from actual card-carrying white supremacists in support of Ron DeSantis, a race which is now 100% about Gillum being black.

And we still have two months to go.

It's About Suppression, Con't

The Secretary of State for Kansas, and now gubernatorial candidate for November, our old vote-suppressing friend Kris Kobach, will imminently be under grand jury investigation for dereliction of duty in purposely failing to register voters in the 2016 election.

Douglas County will have to summon a citizen-initiated grand jury to investigate allegations that Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office mishandled voter registration information during the 2016 election, the Kansas Supreme Court said Friday.

In a one-page order signed by Chief Justice Lawton Nuss, the court denied Kobach’s request to review a Kansas Court of Appeals decision in June that said Lawrence resident Steven Davis had met the legal requirement for circulating petitions to summon a grand jury.

The Supreme Court did not provide any further explanation of its decision.

Davis, a Lawrence resident who ran unsuccessfully for the Kansas House in the 2016 and 2018 Democratic primaries, circulated petitions following the 2016 elections, calling for a grand jury to investigate whether Kobach or others in his office had engaged in “destroying, obstructing, or failing to deliver online voter registration,” as well as possessing falsely made or altered registration books, preventing qualified electors from voting, and “being grossly neglectful with respect to their election duties.”

Kobach’s office has rejected the allegations, saying they relate to a short period of time in 2016 when certain online voter registration systems were malfunctioning and that those problems have since been resolved.

Kobach himself, who is now the Republican nominee for governor, has dismissed the allegations as politically motivated.

Initially, Douglas County Judge Peggy Kittel dismissed Davis’ petition, saying he had not made specific enough allegations to suggest that crimes had been committed.

But in June, a three-judge panel of the Kansas Court of Appeals reversed that decision, saying Kansas statutes only require general allegations that, if proven to be true, would constitute crimes.

While the case was pending at the Court of Appeals, Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s office withdrew the state as a party to the case.

Once the Court of Appeals ruled, Kobach asked the Kansas Supreme Court to review the matter, and he filed a motion to intervene, saying neither he nor his staff had been adequately represented in the Court of Appeals decision.

On Friday, though, the Supreme Court declined to review the matter, and in a separate order it denied Kobach’s motion to intervene as moot.

A spokeswoman for the Office of Judicial Administration said the grand jury will have to be summoned once the Court of Appeals issues what is called a “final mandate” in the case, but it was not immediately clear how long the appellate court has to do that.

These accusations are enormous, as they directly accuse Republican Secretary of State, Kansas's highest election official, of failing to register Democratic voters.  The fact that there's enough evidence to open a grand jury investigation at all should be the death knell for Kobach's run for governor, and for his entire political career.

And these are criminal acts, mind you.  Kobach could be headed for prison over this.  Granted, the grand jury investigation would take months and the following criminal case months as well, but it would be a sitting Governor under possible criminal investigation.  Like Missouri's criminal former GOP governor Eric Greitens, he'd have to resign.

Of course, even with a full indictment, Republicans can still be favored to win.  Just ask California GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter, under fraud and campaign finance charges, a man almost certainly headed for expulsion from the House and prison, but almost certainly headed for reelection first.

The corrupt GOP remains as long as we allow them to remain.

Sunday Long Read: Ten Years After The Nightmare

As we enter September, this month marks the ten-year anniversary of the housing collapse.  I started this blog as a result of that mess, moving from BooMan Tribune to my own place once it became clear that documenting the atrocities was going to be a part-time job in 2008.

Now in 2018, most Americans still haven't recovered from the financial disaster, and a second housing crisis now looms very large on the horizon.  We're still in the same mess we were, and at every turn, corporate and Republican forces have worked to keep us in the hole. Our Sunday Long Read at the Penny Hoarder goes over the details.

Heather and Rick Little learned in court that they would have to leave their home by Dec. 10 — just two weeks before Christmas.

The Littles knew the foreclosure was coming before the October 2008 hearing.

The bank was relentless with calls and notices and big fat envelopes, Heather remembers. She called and begged for help, but there was nothing the bank could do. “Nothing they would do,” she said.

She stopped trying to stall the foreclosure.

The day of the hearing, the Littles wheeled their daughter, Emma, then 19 months old, into the Manatee County, Florida, courthouse in her stroller. Their son, John, was in kindergarten that day.

The judge was sympathetic, Heather recalls. He asked them how much time they needed to pack up and move. The hearing took less than 15 minutes.

“There was no one around, thankfully,” she said, “because I fell apart.”

Their house became one of the 9 million homes that would go into foreclosure nationwide between 2007 and 2010.

The Littles went from hosting barbecues in their backyard with a swimming pool and outdoor kitchen to taking whatever they could get from local food banks.

A decade after the height of the Great Recession in 2008, people who lost homes and careers are still recovering.

For the Littles, life is more stable now, but the swimming pool and outdoor kitchen are long gone.

Today, the family’s backyard holds plastic pots where Heather grows fruits and vegetables — signs she still remembers what it felt like to question where their next meal would come from.

“We had nothing extra at the end of every month,” Heather said of the years after their foreclosure. “Nothing. Not even a dollar.”

Trillions in wealth was destroyed, and the recovery vastly favored those who already had wealth after 2008.  They got exponentially more wealthy, while the rest of us have put the American dream of homeownership and passing on a family place to our kids aside.

We're just trying to make the next rent payment.

President Obama did what he could, but it simply wasn't enough.  And after 2010, we hung him out to dry in favor of the "populist" GOP.  That mistake sealed the deal and left us in the lurch where we are now, ten years later.

And now Trump is in charge, and the reality is unless we break the GOP's hold on government in 2018, we're going to collapse again, and this time, America's not coming back.

The Old Pilot's Final Sendoff

Chuck Pierce notes that Sen. John McCain's funeral on Saturday was one final, gigantic, worldwide screw-you to one Donald John Trump, and nobody deserved the mass shunning more.

In the magnificent, lordly church-house, there were speeches and prayers. There were songs and hymns. There were bands and pipers and choirs and soloists. John McCain was given a national send-off in a National Cathedral and there was a great gathering of emotion that was almost frightening in its intensity because you knew that it was aimed at a solitary, angry, unbalanced man left back at the White House, at someone who nonetheless is the president* of the United States, with all the powers inherent to his office, a man who has created a situation in which he is an object of dislike and disrespect, because that is all that he's given to the world in return.

It was said almost immediately after the conclusion of the funeral ceremonies on Saturday that, for a few hours anyway, we were back in a familiar country with familiar customs and manners and norms, a country with institutions built to last. That may well be true. I felt it, too. But in back of that is the realization that all of us, including the deceased, had taken those customs, manners, norms, and institutions terribly for granted. We thought they could withstand anything, even a renegade president* in the pocket of a distant authoritarian goon. We let the customs, manners, norms and institutions weaken through neglect and now we are in open conflict with an elected president and, make no mistake about it, John McCain's funeral was a council of war, and it was a council of war because that's what John McCain meant it to be.

He deliberately made known to people that the president* was not welcome at any of the services. He deliberately chose the previous two presidents to deliver the formal eulogies. He deliberately created that scene in the Capitol rotunda at which Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Mike Pence, an unholy trio of Trumpist quislings, had to choke down their own cowardice and say how much they loved him and his irascibility. He deliberately created a mirror in which, if they still have an ounce of self-awareness, they could see the rot that has set in on their souls. Even at the end, John McCain knew what he was doing and he was a fearsome opponent. He wanted a pageant of everything this administration* has trashed and put up for sale, and that's what he got Saturday—a morality play shot through with Shakespearian portent and foreshadowing, a pageant of democracy's vengeance.

This is not to minimize the genuine affection and love that was on display. John McCain was a beloved figure to many of the people who came to bid him farewell. But there was so much subtext under the proceedings that the mantle shattered, and subtext became text, plain as the rain that fell and passed while the service continued. This was a funeral with more than one purpose—to celebrate the passing of John McCain and to summon a rebirth of politics that did not so much reek of grift and vodka. 

John McCain, a man better loved by Democrats than Republicans currently, was no saint.  I've said my piece about the man and his myriad failures, especially in the last ten years.   But in the end, for one day, he got to tell Donald Trump to go screw himself.

It was petty as hell, and Donald Trump understands the motivations of pettiness better than anyone on earth.  He went golfing instead, and everyone laughed at him.

Last Call For Supreme Misgivings

The White House isn't even pretending about Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh, he's there to be rubber-stamped by 50 GOP senators, plus John McCain's replacement in order to give the Republicans the final vote they need to dismantle 80 years of classic liberalism permanently, and they're not even feigning that his odious record as a jurist matters in the least anymore.

The Trump administration is withholding more than 100,000 pages of Brett Kavanaugh’s records from the Bush White House on the basis of presidential privilege ahead of the Supreme Court nominee’s confirmation hearing.

The Senate Judiciary Committee was notified of the action Friday. George W. Bush’s attorney Bill Burck told the panel it had essentially completed its work compiling documents, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. Bush directed them to err “on the side of transparency and disclosure, and we believe we have done so.”

But the current administration is also able to review the records, and the Trump White House “has directed that we not provide these documents,” the letter says.

In all, 267,000 pages of Kavanaugh documents from his Bush years are being made public.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called it “a Friday night document massacre.”

Schumer said the decision to withhold the documents “has all the makings of a cover-up. ... What are they trying so desperately to hide?”

What does it matter, Chuck?  You already made your deal with the GOP devils, and you'll fold on Kavanaugh too.

A sudden deal made by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on a set of judicial nominees has made Democratic activists livid.

With Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing looming next week, Schumer reached an agreement late Tuesday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to fast-track the confirmations of 15 Trump-nominated judicial picks. Seven federal district court judges were confirmed that day, and eight were put on the docket for confirmation next week.

A Senate Democratic aide says that the majority of the nominees greenlit as part of this deal were uncontroversial anyway — and emphasizes that Schumer’s efforts enable Democrats to hit the campaign trail, giving red-state Democrats a few extra days in their home states before coming back for Sen. John McCain’s memorial services this week.

But Democratic activists aren’t buying it — and many were concerned that this move showed weakness, especially going into the high-stakes Kavanaugh hearing.

“Mitch McConnell is in the middle of stealing the federal courts for conservatives, and Democrats continue to bring a butter knife to a gunfight,” said Brian Fallon, the head of activist group Demand Justice, which is leading opposition efforts against Kavanaugh, in a statement. “Democrats should be resisting Trump’s judge picks at every turn, not agreeing to fast-track them, as happened this week. It is hard to think of a more pathetic surrender heading into the Kavanaugh hearings.”

In the end I expect Kavanaugh to be confirmed with more than 55 votes, if not 60.   And when he's the fifth vote that gives Trump the power he needs to shut down the Mueller probe and start with full autocracy, maybe we'll remember.

The inevitability of Kavanaugh isn't thanks to 51 Republicans, but 49 cowards.

Trump In The Bunker, Con't

As Greg Sargent at the Washington Post notes, this week marked a notable, frightening, and dangerous shift in Trump's rhetoric at rallies as the Mueller investigation closes in on the Trump regime.  He's no longer campaigning for Republicans or rallying the base, he's naming enemies and expecting his supporters to take action regarding them.

At his rally on Thursday night in Indiana, President Trump unleashed his usual attacks on the news media, but he also added a refrain that should set off loud, clanging alarm bells. Trump didn’t simply castigate “fake news.” He also suggested the media is allied with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe — an alliance, he claimed, that is conspiring not just against Trump but also against his supporters.

“Today’s Democrat Party is held hostage by left-wing haters, angry mobs, deep-state radicals, establishment cronies and their fake-news allies,” Trump railed. “Our biggest obstacle and their greatest ally actually is the media.”

In case there is any doubt about what Trump meant by the “deep state” that is supposedly allied with the news media, Trump also lashed out at the FBI and the Justice Department, claiming that “people are angry” and threatening to personally “get involved.”

Robert D. Chain, who was arrested this week for allegedly threatening to murder journalists at the Boston Globe while mimicking Trump’s language, also connected Mueller’s investigation to the media. “You’re the enemy of the people, and we’re going to kill every f–––ing one of you,” Chain snarled into one employee’s voicemail, according to FBI documents. “Why don’t you call Mueller, maybe he can help you out.”

Trump surely knew about this arrest when he repeated his attacks on the news media Thursday night — and when he connected the media to the Mueller investigation as part of a grand conspiracy against him and his voters.

Periodically in this country, whenever there is violence with a political cast, or whenever political rhetoric strays into something more menacing than usual, we hold debates about the tone of our politics and their capacity for incitement. Whether rhetorical excess can be blamed for violence or the threat of it is a complicated topic with no easy answers. But even so, in most or all of these cases, whichever side is culpable, most of our elected leaders on both sides have used their prominence to calm passions in hopes of averting future horrors.

This time, something different is happening. At this point, there is no longer any denying that Trump continues to direct incendiary attacks against working members of the free press even though his own language is being cited by clearly unhinged people making horrifying death threats against them.

That a raging Donald Trump was going to incite more violence against journalists was a given, and bad enough given the fact more journalists will be killed as a result of his violent, eliminationist rhetoric.  But now he's extending the "Enemies of the People" category to those investigating him, and to those politically opposing them.

This week, Trump marked them for violence too.

It's only a matter of time before somebody takes him up on the offer.

Lundergan in Trouble Again

Looks like the feds have finally dropped the hammer on both the Lundergans, Dem party boss Jerry and his daughter, current KY Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, over major campaign finance violations.

Longtime Kentucky Democratic operatives Jerry Lundergan and Dale Emmons were indicted by a federal grand jury in Lexington Friday for allegedly making illegal contributions to the 2014 U.S. Senate campaign of Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes and then conspiring to cover them up.

Emmons was indicted on six counts and Lundergan was indicted on 10 counts after investigators found they “willingly and knowingly” made corporate contributions of more than $25,000 to Grimes’ campaign and then worked to make false entries in the campaign’s financial records to cover up the contributions.

The indictment alleges that Lundergan and an employee of his company approached campaign consultants and vendors and told them to bill S.R. Holding Co. for work they did for his daughter’s campaign. He then did not seek reimbursement from Grimes’ campaign and only sought partial reimbursement after a grand jury subpoenaed records from Lundergan.

It also alleges that Emmons provided political consulting to the campaign, but billed Lundergan and S.R. Holding instead of the campaign, and was paid with corporate funds. When vendors billed Emmons’ business for campaign services, he was allegedly reimbursed by Lundergan and not the campaign.

The indictment says Lundergan and Emmons concealed the scheme from the campaign, causing them to file false reports with the Federal Elections Commission.

The indictments strike at the heart of the Democratic establishment in Kentucky and raise serious questions about the political future of Lundergan’s daughter, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. Grimes is considering a run for either attorney general or governor in 2019.

Lundergan, 71, has for years led a faction of the Kentucky Democratic Party, taking control of the entire party as its chairman twice: once between June and August of 1988 and again from 2005 to 2007. He later would serve as the architect behind his daughter’s campaigns for secretary of state and U.S. Senate.

Emmons, 66, is a close friend of the Lundergan family and has worked on numerous statewide and legislative campaigns as a political consultant, including Grimes’ 2014 Senate campaign.

At this point the question has to be asked about how much Alison Grimes knew.  And I hate to say it, but compared to Jack Conway and Andy Beshear, Grimes was our best shot at taking down Matt Bevin in 2019.

Bevin jumped into the race last weekend. Before, there was serious speculation as to if he would even bother running earlier in August after this spring's teachers' strike, seeing how unpopular he taking away Medicaid from 10% of the state's population is and how Grimes was in a great position to kick his ass.  She responded yesterday:

Grimes is out with a statement on Facebook: pic.twitter.com/J55rKn1vyk

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 31, 2018

Now that's in the toilet, and I have to say I'm betting Bevin suddenly threw his hat into the ring because he knew this hammer was about to fall.  Kentucky Republicans are already demanding that Grimes all but resign:

.@KYGOP spox calls for Grimes “to recuse herself and her office from any and all election related activities this election cycle and cede control of this fall’s elections to the other 6 members of the State Board of Elections.”

— Joe Sonka 😐 (@joesonka) August 31, 2018

That pressure won't let up, either.  I'm sure Bevin will direct AG Andy Beshear to investigate Grimes well into 2019. Either way, I'm tired of dynastic Democrats losing in this state, and losing for increasingly stupid reasons.  This state can't take another four years of Bevin.  Lives are literally on the line here.

It's infuriating.

The Cracks Are Finally Getting Big Enough To Notice

If this month's Washington Post/ABC News poll is accurate, it marks the first real time we've seen Trump lose support from his base as his total disapproval rating is now 60%, a majority believe he has obstructed the Mueller probe, and a plurality now favors impeachment.

President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a high point of 60 percent, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that also finds that clear majorities of Americans support the special counsel’s Russia investigation and say the president should not fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

At the dawn of the fall campaign sprint to the midterm elections, which will determine whether Democrats retake control of Congress, the poll finds a majority of the public has turned against Trump and is on guard against his efforts to influence the Justice Department and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s wide-ranging probe.

Nearly half of Americans, 49 percent, say Congress should begin impeachment proceedings that could lead to Trump being removed from office, while 46 percent say Congress should not.

And a narrow majority — 53 percent — say they think Trump has tried to interfere with Mueller’s investigation in a way that amounts to obstruction of justice; 35 percent say they do not think the president has tried to interfere.

Overall, 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance, with 36 percent approving, according to the poll. This is only a slight shift from the last Post-ABC survey, in April, which measured Trump’s rating at 56 percent disapproval and 40 percent approval.

The new poll was conducted Aug. 26 to 29, in the week after former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted of federal tax and bank fraud and after former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty and implicated the president in illegal payments to silence women who alleged sexual encounters with Trump.

The four-month gap between Post-ABC polls makes it difficult to attribute the modest uptick in disapproval of Trump to specific events. Other public polls have shown Trump’s disapproval rating in the low- to mid-50s and have not tracked a rise since the Manafort conviction and Cohen guilty plea. 

Here's the real problem for Trump however:

You catch that?  His approval rating among Independents is down to 35%, and among his own party it's now under 80%.  Trump's approval rating among Republicans has been very high, in July it was a whopping 87%.  It hasn't been this low since January and the tax/budget mess in this poll.

However, the prospects for Trump's news getting better were much higher in January, and from January to July, Trump's numbers got significantly better.  He's given all that back now, and he's back in the hole again.

We'll see if he stays there.