Last Call For Our Global Domestic Terrorism Problem

The shooters in America this week wrote manifestos about a twisted white supremacist ideology that's been around for centuries, the "Great Replacement".  The Charlottesville neo-Nazis yelled "You will not replace us!" when they marched through the city, Donald Trump of course calling them "Very fine people".  And like all awful white supremacist fascist ideologies, it's making a blood-drenched comeback around the planet in the Era of Trumpism.

“I just had a house raid by the police,” Martin Sellner said last weekend from his apartment in Vienna, where he makes YouTube videos, sometimes in his kitchen, warning about the dangers of multiculturalism and how Muslim immigrants are replacing the white population across Europe.

This wasn’t the first time Austrian authorities have taken an interest in the articulate, engaging 30-year-old activist, known for the “actions” he plots as one of the leaders of an ethno-nationalist movement known as Generation Identity. Its members, believed to number about 10,000, are fighting back against what they consider Europe’s forced “Islamization” and a “dilution” of its original genetic stock.

But last week’s sweep of Sellner’s apartment wasn’t the result of Generation Identity’s usual stunts — like throwing a giant burqa over the head of a 65-foot-high statue of revered Austrian archduchess Maria Theresa with a sign saying “Islamization — No Thanks!” or chartering a boat to hinder rescue vessels from picking up drowning Africans whose dinghies capsized in the Mediterranean.

This raid concerned a donation — a gift of 1,500 euros (over $1,800), one of the biggest in Generation Identity’s seven-year existence. The donor was Brenton Tarrant, accused of opening fire on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, leaving 50 dead. This was the second time police raided Sellner’s apartment to investigate his connections with Tarrant, seizing his phones, cameras and computers. Sellner protests that there aren’t any links — Tarrant was just “a random Australian guy” whom he thanked via email in 2018 for his donation and invited to share a beer if he visited Vienna.

Even if they never met to share a pitcher, Sellner and Tarrant share a controversial belief, one that’s integral to Generation Identity and to scores of extremist groups worldwide: the Great Replacement of white Christians by dark-skinned “invaders,” an idea that is driving right-wing politics in many European countries — and has echoes in the United States, not just in politics, but in terror attacks against minorities and Jews.

Sellner views the Great Replacement as “a mathematical fact,” the result of cultural, political and economic decisions made over recent decades. “Since the ’60s and ’70s, Europe’s population [of indigenous white Europeans] has been shrinking,” he says, largely because white European women, like their American counterparts, were not bearing the 2.1 children considered necessary to maintain a stable population. But Europe’s population is rising — due to the influx of immigrants, or what he calls “replacement migration.”

That part, statistics show, is true at least in some countries: The numbers of incoming immigrants have offset deaths in European nations, such as Germany and Sweden, leading to overall population growth.

The problem is that it's all garbage.

But the Great Replacement theory goes entirely off the rails when proponents, such as Sellner’s group, assert, as they do on the Generation Identity website, that “Low birth rates of German and European people and simultaneous massive Muslim immigration will turn us into minorities in our own countries in a few decades,” leading to “the disappearance of Germans and Europeans in their own countries."

Even given the higher birthrate of immigrants, that’s an unlikely scenario, according to demographer Landis Mackellar of the Population Council and editor of Population and Development Review. “The Great Replacement and statements attributed to Generation Identity distort the demographic and sociological evidence,” he says.

Hélène Ducros, human geographer at Columbia University's Council for European Studies, questions what data the group is using to make such projections. Some European countries, like France, don't ask about ethnicity or religion on their census forms, making statistics unreliable, and many "migrants" into European countries actually come from other European countries. "The reality is that Europe — in the largest sense, not just the EU — has always been a continent where people moved around a lot," she says. "I would say that mobility, and thus intermixing, is what characterizes Europeans across time, not ethnicity."

And it's being used to fuel a new generation of white supremacist violence, this time powered by the internet and real-time coverage of attacks all over the globe.

It's not just the US.

We're just on the side of the bad guys this time around.

Another Week In Gunmerica

Gilroy, California last Sunday, three dead, 12 wounded.

El Paso, Texas yesterday, 20 dead, 26 injured.

and now, Dayton, Ohio early this morning, 9 dead, 26 wounded.

Trump's stochastic terrorism is now producing dead bodies.

These killings are planned, the targets thought out.  A public festival.  A Wal-Mart full of back-to-school shoppers. A city's entertainment district.  The gunmen armed and armored, the El Paso shooter drove all the way from Dallas.  The shooters are radicalized, with the goal of killing as many of those people as they can to stop the invasion of Trump's America.

The president encourages violence towards immigrants and we act surprised when there is. “Shoot them”. pic.twitter.com/sOwhreP8pI

— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) August 4, 2019

Meanwhile, the only people the Republican party are willing to lift a finger to do anything about are imaginary "terrorists" who are "armed" with milkshakes who happen to be critics of Trump.  Oh, and people who buy video games, because no other country on earth plays video games.

And of course since the gunmen were white, it's a "mental health issue" even though Republicans have gutted mental health programs across the country and are actively trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act by declaring the federal government has no possible Constitutional business being in health care.

Just another week in Gunmerica, I guess.

Sunday Long Read: The Devil And The Dersh

Criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz is in real trouble when it comes to the Jeffrey Epstein case, and as the New Yorker's Connie Brusk lays out, Dershowitz seems to end up at the nexus of a hell of a lot of criminal activity and the very profitable art of defending people against it.

"A lie is a lie is a lie,” Whoopi Goldberg said. It was May 2nd, and she was on the set of “The View,” the daytime talk show that she co-hosts. The subject was Attorney General William Barr, who had argued that the special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was not as alarming as it seemed—endorsing Donald Trump’s claim that there had been “no collusion, no obstruction” in the Russia case. Goldberg was incredulous. “Our parents taught us, if you lie, there are consequences,” she said. “When are consequences coming back?”

Her guest, the attorney Alan Dershowitz, offered an answer that combined legal analysis and political handicapping. “They come back in November of 2020, when we all go to the polls and we vote against people that we think lied,” he said. “But it would be a terrible thing”—he held up a finger for emphasis—“to criminalize lies.”

Dershowitz is a frequent guest on shows like “The View”; for decades, he has been a frequent guest just about everywhere. If you are a television producer putting together a segment about a celebrated criminal case, Dershowitz is an ideal booking. Intellectually nimble and supremely confident, he is an emeritus professor at Harvard Law School but also an occasional reader (and subject) of the tabloids. Over the years, he has written thousands of newspaper articles, magazine columns, and Web posts. With help from research assistants, he has published three dozen books—including “The Best Defense,” “Chutzpah,” and “Sexual McCarthyism”—that recount his cases and advance his opinions.

In recent years, as Dershowitz approached the age of eighty, his public presence faded a bit. But Trump’s Presidency has enabled a comeback. Dershowitz, a proponent of civil liberties, has made a specialty of defending people who do outrageous things, and Trump does outrageous things constantly. Media outlets looking for someone to argue Trump’s side have been happy to have Dershowitz on the air, explaining why the President’s critics are putting politics before the law. In May, an editionof the Mueller report, with an introduction by Dershowitz, made the Times best-seller list.

On “The View,” Goldberg promised the audience that she’d hand out copies of the book after the taping. But she remained skeptical of Dershowitz’s defense of Barr. He offered an explanation: lying to Congress or to the F.B.I. was illegal, but misleading the public was not. “The rule of law requires that we distinguish between sins and crimes,” he said. “There’s no federal crime that says that it’s illegal to lie to the media.”

After a commercial, the next segment began, with images of several controversial Dershowitz clients: Claus von Bülow, O. J. Simpson, Mike Tyson. The lineup included Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy money manager who had been accused of sexually abusing underage girls. Starting in 2005, investigators had traced a sex-trafficking operation that extended from mansions in New York and Palm Beach to a Caribbean island, Little St. James, that Epstein owned. As charges became public, press accounts enumerated his famous acquaintances—including Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Kevin Spacey—and described trips to the island on his plane, the so-called Lolita Express. Despite sworn accounts from more than a dozen women, Dershowitz and his team secured a deal in which Epstein pleaded guilty to minor charges and served only a brief sentence. On “The View,” which was hosted by four women, Dershowitz described the experience as fraught: “It’s a case that was very, very difficult, and very, very painful for me, because I saw real victims out there. I’m a very strong supporter of the MeToo movement.” But, he said, an attorney is obligated to defend the rights of the accused: “I think of myself like a doctor or a priest. If they wheel Jeffrey Epstein into the emergency ward, the doctor is going to take care of him.” (Dershowitz put it differently to me, in one of a series of conversations this spring and summer: “Every honest criminal lawyer will tell you that he defends the guilty and the innocent.”)

One of the hosts, Abby Huntsman, pointed out, “It does get more complicated for you in your personal life.” In 2014, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims, stated in a court filing that Epstein lent her out for sex to his friends—Dershowitz among them. Dershowitz has strenuously denied the allegations, and maintained that Giuffre is a near-pathological liar engineering an extortion plot. Giuffre’s claims about him have never been directly tested in court; instead, they have featured as side arguments in civil suits brought by others. Two weeks before the taping, though, Giuffre had sued Dershowitz directly, for defamation.

On the air, Dershowitz said that he welcomed Giuffre’s lawsuit. “I also welcome her coming on this show and accusing me face to face,” he said. “I have been falsely accused,” he went on, more intently. “So I am welcoming this trial.” He rubbed his hands together. “This is the first opportunity I have to conclusively prove my innocence.”

The more I read this piece, the angrier I got.  The man has been in the center of all kinds of messes as long as I can remember, but nothing ever stuck to him personally.

Now he's covered in filth in the era of #MeToo and Epstein.

We knew, we just didn't care.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

It's time for Democratic lawmakers to hear from their constituents on impeachment during the August recess town halls and events.

Freshman Democratic Rep. Andy Kim came face to face with impeachment fervor at a town hall in New Jersey. “Do your job!” shouted one voter.

Several states away, a woman held up a copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and told freshman Rep. Elissa Slotkin at a Michigan town hall she hoped she would “be the person that puts us over the top to start an impeachment inquiry.”

And in Virginia, newcomer Rep. Abigail Spanberger encountered voters with questions, if not resolve, about impeaching President Donald Trump.

“I don’t have blood dripping from my fangs for or against impeachment,” said David Sussan, 70, a retired postal inspector from Chesterfield, who favors starting an inquiry. “I just want the truth to come out.”

It’s these freshman lawmakers, and others like them, who will likely decide when, if ever, House Democrats start formal efforts to impeach the president.

Neither Kim, nor Slotkin, nor Spanberger supports impeachment. But with half the House Democrats now in favor of beginning an inquiry, the pressure will only mount on the holdouts to reach a tipping point. And with lawmakers returning home to voters during the August recess, what happens next may prove pivotal.

The pro-impeachment group Need to Impeach is running television ads. Along with activists from other groups, it’s also fanning out to congressional districts to push lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to move more swiftly toward impeachment proceedings.

The organization’s lead strategist, Kevin Mack, says his counsel to lawmakers, especially those new freshmen who took over formerly Republican-held seats, is to ignore the campaign consultants and party strategists, and “do what you think is right” about Trump.

“You can’t really make the argument he’s the most corrupt president in American history and not hold him accountable,” he said. “Either you think what he’s doing is OK or you hold him accountable.”

For lawmakers, though, the calculus is not so simple. Voters in many of these districts helped elect Trump in 2016, but flipped to give Democrats control of the House in last year’s election. Many of the first-term Democrats already face challengers for 2020 and are trying to balance the divergent views in their districts. While some voters want impeachment, others have different priorities.

It's not simple, but at some point you have to decide to take a stand.

And remember, the inquiry path is already underway.  It's time to get on board.

Last Call For Trump's Queen City Blues

Donald Trump needs Ohio to win in 2020, and he needs Cincinnati and Hamilton County in order to win in Ohio.  Yes, Ohio is a red state right now.  But Trump's worried enough to keep holding rallies here 15 months before Election Day.

When President Trump railed against Baltimore and other diverse American cities as dangerous and “broken” during a campaign rally here this week, supporters cheered Trump's assessment.

“Our city is very chaotic politically,” said Alex Triantafilou, the Republican Party chairman in Hamilton County. “That resonates with people. People are moving a little further out, a little further out, whenever they can.”

But Trump’s rhetoric was also welcomed by David Pepper, the Ohio Democratic Party chairman from Cincinnati, who is heartened by recent polling that shows former vice president Joe Biden currently winning the state over Trump and 2018 midterm data that showed many suburban areas swinging away from the GOP.

“The irony is he is giving his speech here, in a city that is doing well,” Pepper said of Trump. “They are already losing Hamilton County suburbs. To the extent that he brings his rantings and ravings and tweets to town, to the extent that he comes to Cincinnati and Hamilton County, it's a symbol of where he is losing ground and why. We take it as a badge of honor that he and his campaign are coming back every week. They know they’re in trouble.”

Going around and calling Cincinnati a rodent-infested crime hellhole might not help him here, who knew?

Hamilton County is distinctly not Trump country. With about 800,000 people, the county is one of four in Ohio where Trump in 2016 underperformed compared to Mitt Romney four years earlier, losing by nearly 40,000 votes to Hillary Clinton even as he sailed to an eight-point victory statewide. The county has trended toward Democrats since 2008, when it flipped for the first time since 1964 for Barack Obama. Former Ohio governor John Kasich, one of Trump’s few Republican foes, won 60 percent of the county’s vote in 2014.

Trump’s campaign team is eager to buttress his support in places like Hamilton County, particularly given a July Quinnipiac poll that showed Biden beating Trump in the state by 50 percent to 42 percent. Biden was the only Democrat who topped Trump in the state, and some Democrats here said another nominee would struggle to defeat him.

Among the president’s campaign advisers, Ohio is seen as a likely win, though not a guarantee, and they want to compete strongly in places such as the Cincinnati suburbs. His early trip to the county, advisers said, showed how seriously they take the area.

Mike Dawson, the creator of an election statistics website who conducted an analysis of 2016 Ohio voting patterns for The Washington Post, said “the statistics would seem to indicate he's less popular” in the state but that his “significant win” in 2016 will be difficult for Democrats to overcome.

“Hamilton is probably never going to vote Republican again,” Dawson said. “In nonpresidential years, Ohio is clearly a red state. In presidential years, it's not quite so clear.” 

Ohio is red for now, but how red remains to be seen.

Trump's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Donald Trump thinks he can win reelection by picking off black voter support, because I guess he believes black voters like myself are so colossally stupid that "Send her back" is okay because it deals with those blacks and not "the good ones" or something.

Critics may find the timing of the outreach outrageous. But the campaign hopes that if it can shave just a few points off Democrats’ overwhelming support among blacks, it can boost voter turnout in eight or so key states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — each of which Trump won by less than one percentage point.

The campaign’s pitch to African Americans is simple: Ignore the president’s words and instead focus on his policies, like the state of the economy and the low unemployment rate, the passage of criminal justice reform or the creation of Opportunity Zones, which are meant to bolster investment in underserved or poorer cities.

When Trump took office in January 2017, the unemployment rate among blacks was 7.7 percent. Friday’s jobs report pegged it at 6 percent for July.

“Do I think some of his verbal formulations are in artful? Yeah,” said Ken Blackwell, the former mayor of Cincinnati, former Ohio Secretary of State and a top Trump transition official. “But for me, as a domestic policy adviser during the Trump transition, it has been all about the agenda, a set of results and tomorrow. You have to believe his policy agenda flies in the face of the false narrative of the racist-in-charge.”

But for others, the Trump rhetoric cannot be divorced from his record, and critics argue he must take responsibility for that as president. A recent Quinnipiac University National Poll, released on July 30, showed that 80 percent of African American voters surveyed considered Trump racist.

“The idea is that, because of his agenda, his comments on Charlottesville, Baltimore or shithole countries do not matter,” said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and the first African American to serve in that role. “Or that you can say the most racist things in the world, but hey, I got a tax cut. Or you can disparage my homeland, but the unemployment rate is going down.”

Which is the point.  Donald Trump thinks we should be grateful to him. The implied "I could make it a lot worse for you" remains, well, implied.

“I certainly think we should expect more from our political leaders,” Steele said. “I would think they would expect more from us.”

Trump has regularly defended himself by saying “I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world.” He told reporters recently that scores of African Americans have been calling the White House to thank him for his work. “What I’ve done for African Americans, no president, I would say, has done,” Trump said this week from the White House lawn, as he left Washington for an event in Jamestown, Va., that all of the state’s black lawmakers boycotted.
Republicans have struggled for decades to make inroads with African American voters. Trump earned just 8 percent of the black vote in 2016, while Democrat Hillary Clinton won 89 percent. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney performed even worse in 2012, earning just 6 percent of the African American vote against President Barack Obama.

President George W. Bush did the best in recent years. He earned 11 percent of the African American vote in 2004, up from 8 percent in 2000, by appealing to conservative, religious voters.

Granted, going from 8 to 11% of black voters in a state like Georgia or NC or Michigan might be the couple thousand votes he needs to win, true.  But I think it's going to be a lot more likely that he goes from 8% to zero.

Cramer Versus Crazier

North Dakota Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp was one of several red state Democrats who lost in the 2018 elections to Republicans by completely failing to thread the needle between too much Trump love and being called Socialist baby-killing traitors by Trump daily.  She was replaced by Republican Kevin Cramer, your basic frack and drill type.  But this week, the freshman senator got a lesson in "never trust Donald Trump".

A Republican senator held up the confirmation of a White House budget official this week in an attempt to obtain sensitive information about border wall contracts he has been trying to steer to a major donor, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.

The emails show Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) blasting the “arrogance” of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after senior military officials told him the contracts contained sensitive, proprietary information provided by the companies that could not be shared.

In recent months, Cramer has touted his preferred construction firm, North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, and campaign finance records show the senator has received thousands of dollars in contributions from company chief executive Tommy Fisher and his family members.

Cramer put a temporary hold this week on the confirmation of Michael Wooten, a nominee for a senior post at the White House Office of Management and Budget. After Wooten was confirmed Thursday, Cramer lashed out at the Army Corps in private emails when he was told the contracting bids contain sensitive information.

“This is a woefully inadequate response and not what I was promised by the White House as a condition for releasing my hold on the confirmation of the nominee for the Federal Procurement Officer,” Cramer wrote, copying others at OMB, the White House and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“The fact that you all claim secrecy without [citing] statute makes me very suspicious,” he wrote. “I have decided to stay in DC another day and would like to see General Semonite in my office tomorrow.”

Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the top official at the Army Corps, went to Cramer’s office Friday to provide the senator with a private briefing. Cramer’s office released a statement afterward, vowing to hold the military engineers “accountable.”

“We received an update on wall construction and the bidding process, as well as a number of documents and the answers to questions we requested from the Army Corps,” the statement said. “I believe we have their attention and are in a position to succeed.”

Trump has redirected $3.5 billion in Defense Department funds to the border project and promised to build 500 miles of barrier before the 2020 election. Cramer said the president has bestowed him with special responsibilities to oversee progress.

“President Trump deputized Senator Cramer to work with the Army Corps to ensure their process is fair, transparent, and delivers the best possible deal for the American people,” Cramer’s statement read.

So Cramer took Trump at his word that he would be getting those construction contracts for his state, like he was  bribed publicly...I mean "lobbied"...to get.  But that didn't happen.  Cramer then kicked up a fuss and brought in the Washington Post to let everyone know Trump screwed him over.

The question is how far Cramer is willing to take this, because we know how far Trump is.

Here's the kicker.

The North Dakota senator has repeatedly promoted Fisher, and Trump too has joined the effort, pitching the company in meetings at the White House and aboard Air Force One that have troubled military commanders and Department of Homeland Security officials.

They say it is highly unusual for a president to intervene on behalf of a private company seeking billions in federal contracts, and one of the reasons the Army Corps has long managed the procurement process is the military’s reputation for integrity and rectitude.

Well maybe that was true before, but all of you work for Trump now.  Those days are over.

Moscow Mitch And His Corrupt Comrades

Mitch McConnell is really, really pissed off at this whole "Moscow Mitch" nickname, connecting him to Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin. His ties to Oleg Deripaska and the fact the Putin stooge dropped a $200 million investment in aluminum mill in Kentucky are common knowledge around here, but apparently the rest of the country is only just finding this out now, and Mitch and his Russian friends are responding with a full-on PR blitz as Democrats call for McConnell to be investigated.

Braidy Industries, which is developing a new Kentucky aluminum mill partially backed by the Russian aluminum giant Rusal, has hired a firm with ties to Sen. Mitch McConnell (r-Ky.) to give the project a public relations boost as Democrats raise concerns about the initiative.
The firm, RunSwitch PR, was co-founded in 2012 by Scott Jennings — a former McConnell aide and CNN political commentator who ran a super PAC in support of the Senate Majority Leader called Kentuckians for Strong Leadership. Braidy hired RunSwitch in July “following recommendations from fellow business leaders naming them the best statewide media relations agency,” a Braidy spokesman said.

The public relations push comes amid Democratic calls for the Trump administration to review Rusal’s $200 million investment in the aluminum mill project, which was made possible by the Treasury Department’s decision in January to lift sanctions on Rusal and other companies owned by Oleg Deripaska — a Russian oligarch and Kremlin ally accused of facilitating Moscow’s nefarious activities.

“As a rapidly growing business headquartered in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, we engage a number of top-notch advisers and counselors without regard for their political affiliation,” the Braidy spokesman said.

A spokesperson for RunSwitch, where Jennings is a partner, said the firm is “frequently hired by companies with Kentucky projects and interests.”

“We are proud to work with Braidy Industries, a project with widespread bipartisan support that offers economic hope to a region that has taken a number of hits over the last several years,” the spokesperson added. “We believe the scurrilous attacks on Braidy are inaccurate and generated by people who want to see Eastern Kentucky fail if it means scoring political points, which is pretty pathetic.”

Jennings will not be working on the project himself.

The Braidy mill is projected to cost $1.7 billion. According to the company, it will produce aluminum for the food and auto industries and not for the Defense Department, a concern Democrats have raised in their push for a review of the Rusal investment for possible national security implications.

And of course Trump regime sanctions on Deripaska's Rusal corporation have been eliminated.  Senate Democrats would like a word with Braidy and Rusal.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is stepping up calls for a national security review of a Russian aluminum company's plans for a mill in Kentucky, the home state of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R), calling the project "deeply concerning."

“Rusal’s proposed investment in a Kentucky rolling mill is deeply concerning," Wyden said in a statement Wednesday. "The deal was announced just three months after the Senate voted to lift sanctions on Rusal, and now we learn that Majority Leader McConnell’s former staff have been lobbying for the project. The American people need to have confidence that this deal is in the country’s best interest."

Wyden called for a probe by a federal agency which reviews the national security implications of foreign deals in June but is ramping up those calls after a report that two former McConnell staffers lobbied Congress and the Treasury Department on the project.

Hunter Bates and Brendan Dunn, both of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, lobbied on the development by the Russian aluminum company Rusal, Politico reported Wednesday. Akin Gump is retained by Braidy Industries, a Kentucky company, partnering with Rusal on the project. Rusal is owned by a Putin-connected Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska.

"The department needs to take potential harm to national security from Rusal’s proposed investment seriously,” Wyden told Politico in a statement responding to their story.

Deripaska faces U.S. sanctions, but Rusal won sanctions relief from the Treasury Department and it announced in May that its board approved a $200 million investment, The New York Times reported at the time.

The project in Kentucky has brought scrutiny from Democrats, who have been calling on the Trump administration to review Rusal’s investment into the project over concerns about Russian influence.

Mitch is definitely worried about how "Moscow Mitch" will play out over the course of his reelection campaign here in Kentucky, worried enough that he's risking an obvious payola charge to big name PR firms in order to dig himself out of this hole.

He doesn't have a choice, though.  Storming out on to the Senate floor and railing against the Moscow Mitch moniker told every political journalist in America that there's a story here, and a big one.  Even the local boys are daring to ask. Joe Gerth:

McConnell, who has in the past embraced nicknames given him by his opponents — from the “Grim Reaper” to “Darth Vader” to “Cocaine Mitch” — took to the floor of the Senate on Monday and decried those impugning his character.

Why did this upset him so, while he has embraced others?

Maybe it hit too close to home.

Perhaps, he knows our democracy is at risk and he’s not doing enough to protect it. Maybe he knows that his legacy won’t be the conservative judges he puts on the federal bench after all.

Maybe he knows the legacy of “Moscow Mitch” will be that he looked the other way when he thought Russian influence could help him and his party and that he harmed America in the process.

But if he thought the floor speech would make the nickname go away, it was a terrible error in strategy, because it revealed something that can get under the old sphinx's skin.

Memes abound on the internet with McConnell wearing Russian fur hats. The Democratic Party of Kentucky is selling Moscow Mitch shirts.

Throughout our history, our politicians who have stood up to the Russians are the ones who have become heroes. Kennedy. Reagan.

We don't honor those who capitulate.

And if you believe this isn't going to come up repeatedly at Fancy Farm this weekend, I've got some ocean-front property to sell you in Severo-Yeniseysky.

Fancy Farm, the annual candidate forum picnic that's Kentucky's biggest political event of the year, is today.  Kentucky's usually moribund Democratic party is gleefully selling Moscow Mitch gear as a fundraiser and they are raking in thousands.  Bet on this being the story this weekend.

And this ad is now running here in Kentucky.



Moscow Mitch is scared, folks.  Maybe for the first time in his Senate career.

Last Call For Ratted Out And Off A Cliff

Today Donald Trump pulled the nomination of GOP Rep. John Ratcliffe as Director of National Intelligence, not that Trump had a choice after Ratliffe was busted with a fake resume.

President Trump’s choice to lead the nation’s intelligence community often cites a massive roundup of immigrant workers at poultry plants in 2008 as a highlight of his career. Rep. John Ratcliffe claims that as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Texas, he was the leader of the immigration crackdown, describing it as one of the largest cases of its kind.

“As a U.S. Attorney, I arrested over 300 illegal immigrants on a single day,” Rat­cliffe (R-Tex.) says on his congressional website.

But a closer look at the case shows that Ratcliffe’s claims conflict with the court record and the recollections of others who participated in the operation — at a time when he is under fire for embellishing his record.

Ratcliffe played a supporting role in the 2008 sweep, which involved U.S. attorneys’ offices in five states and was led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, according to a Justice Department news release. The effort targeted workers at poultry processor Pilgrim’s Pride who were suspected of using stolen Social Security numbers.

Only 45 workers were charged by prosecutors in Ratcliffe’s office, court documents show. Six of those cases were dismissed, two of them because the suspects turned out to be American citizens. One of those citizens, a 19-year-old woman, was awakened in her home and hauled away by immigration agents, the woman said in an interview.

Two people involved in the planning or execution of the enforcement effort said they could not recall Ratcliffe playing a central role.

Trump announced on Twitter this afternoon that Ratcliffe would not be accepting the nomination.  With Coats stepping down, that leaves Deputy DNI Sue Gordon in charge.  Or it would, except she is not seen as sufficiently loyal to Dear Leader.

The White House is planning to block Sue Gordon, the nation’s No. 2 intelligence official, from rising to the role of acting director of national intelligence when Dan Coats steps down this month, according to people familiar with the Trump administration’s plans.

The decision to circumvent Ms. Gordon, who has served as the principal deputy director in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, will probably upset Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. They have expressed doubts about Representative John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, who is President Trump’s choice to be the next Senate-confirmed leader of the agency.

Mr. Trump did not allow Ms. Gordon to personally deliver a recent intelligence briefing after she arrived at the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of the National Intelligence, Amanda J. Schoch, said Ms. Gordon was not blocked from attending any recent briefing, but she declined to comment about what happened inside the Oval Office.

Opposition in the White House to letting her serve as acting director has raised the question of whether she will be ousted as part of a leadership shuffle at the intelligence director’s office that will be more to Mr. Trump’s liking. 

A federal statute says that if the position of director of national intelligence becomes vacant, the deputy director — currently Ms. Gordon — shall serve as acting director.

But there appears to be a loophole: The law gives the White House much more flexibility in choosing who to appoint as the acting deputy if the No. 2 position is vacant, said Robert M. Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who specializes in national-security legal issues.

Ms. Gordon will retire if told by the White House that Mr. Trump wants someone else in the deputy’s role who could then rise to fill the vacancy created when Mr. Coats departs, according to officials.

So Coats is gone in two weeks, Gordon will be gone shortly, Ratcliffe won't be confirmed so he was pulled, and that means the search is on for a semi-permanent Acting DNI.

The Trump administration is taking inventory of many of America’s top spies, The Daily Beast has learned. The White House recently asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for a list of all its employees at the federal government’s top pay scale who have worked there for 90 days or more, according to two sources familiar with the request.

The request appears to be part of the White House’s search for a temporary director of national intelligence—a prospect that raises concerns in some quarters about political influence over the intelligence community.

The request, which specifically asks for people in ODNI at the GS-15 level (the pay grade for most top government employees, including supervisors) or higher, comes as ODNI’s leadership faces turmoil. Earlier this week, President Trump tweeted that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats will step down on Aug. 15, and that he plans to nominate Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe for the post. But Ratcliffe faces a contentious confirmation process that’s all but certain to stretch past the 15th, and the White House needs someone to take the DNI role in the meantime.

According to federal law, ODNI’s Senate-confirmed second-in-command—the principal deputy director of national intelligence, currently Sue Gordon—steps in if the DNI departs. Gordon, who has spent decades in the intelligence community, is revered there and on Capitol Hill. But as a career intelligence official, she isn’t viewed as Team MAGA. And the White House is reportedly eyeingways to put someone they trust in the top role after Coats departs.

That may not be as easy as it sounds. As Bobby Chesney of the University of Texas School of Law detailed at Lawfare, the law indicates that if both the DNI post and the post Gordon currently holds are vacant, then the president could choose from a fairly wide pool of people to take Gordon’s post and, therefore, become acting DNI. That includes any Senate-confirmed officials in the Executive Branch, and any senior employee who’s been at ODNI for 90 days or more—in other words, anyone on the list the White House just requested from ODNI.

It’s unclear why the White House asked ODNI for that list, but a search to replace Gordon appears to be the most likely explanation. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

So the plan will be the Trump Cabinet Special: oust the insufficiently loyal sap who wouldn't sign off on Trump's authoritarian rule, find a temp who will, let them run the place as long as it takes to find a confirmable yes-man.

And let's remember not even Mitch McConnell could deliver on Ratcliffe's confirmation.

Trump's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Here in Cincinnati last night, we didn't see the return of "Send her back!" chants.  We got threats of violence against the press and actual outright physical violence against people protesting his visit instead. 

Punches were thrown outside U.S. Bank Arena as Trump addressed the crowd, defending his record and attacking Democrats for what he said were their destructive record for inner cities.

Though many of the protests were peaceful, this one turned violent, forcing Cincinnati police to intervene in the 200 block of Broadway Street.

Dallas Frazier, 29, of Georgetown, Kentucky, was arrested on a misdemeanor assault charge and escorted away in handcuffs.

He was taken to the Hamilton County Justice Center, where he was booked and held overnight without bond.

He appeared before a judge Friday afternoon and was granted a $10,000 bond at 10 percent, meaning he only has to pay $1,000 to be released.

“Victim stated suspect exited a vehicle, stated ‘You want some’ then struck the victim multiple times in the face causing visible injuries and breaking victim’s glasses,” Cincinnati police wrote in Frazier’s criminal complaint.

The victim, Matt Alter, went to Christ Hospital to get checked out. After, he told FOX19 NOW he was punched six times in the face.

Alter said he was with anti-Trump protesters and the man who hit him pulled up in a truck, didn’t like what he had to say and started attacking him.

“I was standing with a group of people around and the truck pulled up. He was yelling at people. People yelling back anti Trump stuff whatever, nothing specific and he just started getting violent and I’m like come on guy,” Alter said.

Both men involved in the fight were white.  I'm very thankful that the bastard who jumped out of his truck didn't attack a black protester, because who knows how that would have ended, especially with the police already on scene.

Inside US Bank Arena last night, it wasn't much better.

Open throats, captive minds. Maybe 17,000 of each, deafening in different ways. Joy, fear, love, hate, fellowship. Unbridled, roaring nationalism. Shirts that said “JESUS IS MY SAVIOR, TRUMP IS MY PRESIDENT,” though it was hard to tell the difference here at rally No. 64 of his presidency, on day 923 of his first term.

About 15 minutes into his speech Thursday evening, Donald Trump riffed on one of his favorite topics: American “inner cities,” and how they are utter hellholes.

“We can name one after the other, but I won’t do that,” Trump said. “Because I don’t want to be controversial.” He paused to let the crowd goad him into being controversial. “We want no controversy.” This was his first rally since his pillorying of Baltimore as “infested,” since his last audience chanted “send her back” in reference to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the Somali-American congresswoman.

Would he go there again? Would he go beyond? Would they? How racist was everyone feeling tonight?

When asked earlier in the day about indecent chants, outside the White House, Trump said: “I don’t know that you can stop people.”

Presently, onstage, the president pivoted to his left and looked into the crowd at the U.S. Bank Arena. His followers, reacting as one red-hatted organism, had detected an invasion: a few protesters who had unfurled a small banner that said “IMMIGRANTS BUILT AMERICA.” The organism’s immune system pulsed to life. People snatched at the banner, swarmed the protesters.

Trump sidestepped the microphone and addressed the fans closest to him, just off the stage. “Democrat mayor?” he asked them, hand beside his mouth, perhaps to block his audio. “Democrat mayor. Democrat?” When the slight infection was treated, the capacity crowd chanted “U-S-A.” 

“Cincinnati, do you have a Democrat mayor?” Trump said at the microphone. “Well, that’s what happens.”

Yes, that’s what happens if you vote Democrat, or if a Democrat is in charge, or if anyone is in charge but Donald Trump in 2021: chaos, lawlessness, the slavery of socialism, epidemics of disease and drugs, criminal immigrants pillaging schools and hospitals, the slaughter of newborn babies by abortion doctors, pesky investigations of presidential wrongdoing by men such as Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), congressman from Baltimore and chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

He's talking to you, Mayor Cranley.  You're next.  All Democratic politicians are next.  All Democratic voters are next.

Fever bright Trumpies are everywhere.  They are dangerous.  And they see Trump as God on Earth.

Rewind for a moment, to about two hours before Trump’s entrance. It was the fifth rally for Steve and Tina Callahan, real estate agents from Springfield, Ohio. They were waiting in the first row of the second tier of seating, in attire patterned with the American flag, because they wanted to feel unity, to be around people with “common sense,” to see their hero in the flesh.

“He is sacrificing his life to save America from a new world order,” Tina said.

What if he is not reelected?

“God is real and He’s told many people that Trump is going to serve eight years,” said Tina, a born-again Christian. “And Pence is going to serve eight years. And Pence’s vice president is going to serve eight years.”

Jennifer Heinlein, a patient-services specialist, loves how her 401(k) has swelled. She pays “heavily” for her health insurance, but wants to keep it, and worries that a Democrat would take it away. She pointed to her compatriots moving through the concourse in Trump-branded merchandise. “When I see people wearing all this,” Heinlein said, “it makes me a believer.”
Down on the polished concrete floor of the arena, in the standing VIP section, was a woman named Michelle Sellati, wearing a shirt adorned with the letter “Q.” She was part of a noticeable contingent of rallygoers wearing the symbols of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which at least one FBI field office has identified as a domestic terrorist threat, according to a Yahoo News story published earlier in the day. Besides being a portal to uncertain revelations of a dubious nature, QAnon also helps explain the president’s foibles to those who see him as the author of living scripture.

“I wait for him to misspell or mispronounce something, and then I wait for my Serial Brain to decode,” said Sellati, referring to a YouTube channel that she says analyzes the missing letters in the president’s tweets — and the garbled words in the president’s mouth — for clues to what’s going to happen in the future.

What’s an example of something that’s happened, after a clue?

“The chemtrails,” Sellati said.

The chemtrails.

“The chemtrails are gone. Since July 4. Look at the sky. It’s beautiful.”

Do you think these people are going to accept a Trump loss without catastrophic violence against those who they perceive as responsible for that loss?

“We’re all tired of being called racists,” a 74-year-old bespectacled white man named Richard Haines told me. “You open your mouth, you’re a racist. My daughter is a liberal, and she’s [using the word] all the time. We don’t talk politics; we can’t—all the time she always accuses me of hate.”

Haines, who told me he had just returned to the United States from Thailand, where he had done missionary work for 15 years with impoverished children, said that he knew what real racism looked like—that his father was a “bigot” who “didn’t like black people.”

“Donald is not racist, you know?” Haines said. “He makes a statement, and they take the words out of context and try to twist everything so that he’s a racist. And I think it’s gonna backfire.”

Before the rally began, I sat down on the floor of the arena with two women—Roseanna, 50, and Amy, 48—who felt similarly. (Neither woman was comfortable providing her last name for this story.) Roseanna, who wore a red T-shirt, white shorts, and a MAGA hat adorned with multiple buttons, including one featuring the likeness of Hillary Clinton behind bars, had driven an hour and a half from Lexington, Kentucky. She defended Trump’s statements about Baltimore. “He didn’t say nothing about the color of somebody’s skin,” Roseanna said, yet it seemed like everyone was “wishing him toward ‘He’s a bigot.’

“I’m sick to death of it. I have 13 grandchildren—13,” she continued. “Four of them are biracial, black and white; another two of them are black and white; and another two of them are Singapore and white. You think I’m a racist? I go and I give them kids kisses like nobody’s business.”

When I asked Roseanna and Amy whether they would join in a “Send her back!” chant were it to take place that night, both women said no, but out of deference to Trump. “He apologized for that, so I think us as Trump supporters will respect him for that,” Roseanna said. She then shared her thoughts on the chant’s target, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who came to America as a refugee from Somalia.

“Look, but she is gonna get—you know, I don’t want her stinkin’ Muslim crap in my country,” Roseanna said.

“Sharia law,” Amy chimed in. Her iridescent CoverGirl highlighter glinted under the stadium lights. “Sharia law.”

“That’s not America,” Roseanna said. “She is a Muslim through and through …She wants that all here.” She wondered aloud whether Omar had come to the U.S. illegally. (There is no evidence this is true.)

Should Trump win, they will be justified in their racism.  Should Trump lose, they will not accept it. They will want to do something about it.

And they will.

I am terrified of what may happen in 2020.  I will vote, and I will continue to write, and I will continue to witness.  But I would be lying if I said I didn't expect brutal, historic violence in the wake of a Trump loss.

Return Of The Blue Wave, Con't

The latest high-profile Republican retirement is the lone black member of the GOP in the House, Texas Rep. Will Hurd.

Rep. Will Hurd, the lone black Republican in the House and the rare GOP lawmaker to criticize President Trump at times, will not seek reelection, he told The Washington Post.

Hurd’s retirement is the third by a Texas Republican in the past week and the ninth by a party incumbent, dealing a blow to GOP efforts to regain control of the House in next year’s election.

Hurd barely held the seat last year and Trump lost the congressional district, which covers more than 58,000 square miles between San Antonio and El Paso along the Mexican border, by four percentage points in 2016.

In an interview Thursday with The Post, Hurd criticized Trump’s racist tweets last month in which the president said four Democratic minority congresswomen should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Three of the women are from the United States; a fourth, Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.), is a Somali refu­gee who became a U.S. citizen as a teenager.

“When you imply that because someone doesn’t look like you, in telling them to go back to Africa or wherever, you’re implying that they’re not an American and you’re implying that they have less worth than you,” Hurd said.

But Hurd also repeated his earlier pledge to vote for Trump if he’s the Republican nominee in 2020. He said Hispanics, African Americans and other groups would be receptive to conservative themes if they weren’t drowned in racially charged rhetoric.

More recently, Trump targeted House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) and his city of Baltimore, tweeting that “no human being would want to live” in the “disgusting, rat and rodent infested” city. The remarks prompted widespread accusations of racism, which Trump has denied.

You read that right, Hurd is the third Texas House Republican to retire this week.

The defections are now threatening to become a deluge.  The last remaining Republicans with a shred of dignity left are fleeing the GOP in droves.

Why is Hurd out?  Sick of the GOP's racism, perhaps, but Hurd says he plans to vote for Trump in 2020 and will almost certainly continue to vote with Trump in the House where has has done so 81.3% of the time.

Hurd wants out and into the private sector, the revolving door, because he has calculated that he can't win. He's already advertising his availability as a China expert, border consultant, and cybersecurity czar.

We are in a geopolitical competition with China to have the world’s most important economy. There is a global race to be the leader in artificial intelligence, because whoever dominates AI will rule the world. We face growing cyberattacks every day. Extreme poverty, lack of economic opportunity and violence in Central America is placing unbearable pressure on our borders. While Congress has a role in these issues, so does the private sector and civil society.

But here's the bigger picture that Hurd's retirement reveals, first, that an incumbent who never won any of his three elections by breaking 50% is done, and two:

Texas is now in play, ladies and gentlemen.

StupidiNews!

• Saorise Kennedy Hill, granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, died Thursday of an apparent drug overdose at the Kennedy compound in Massachusetts on Thursday, she was 22.
• Donald Trump is threatening another 10% tariff on Chinese imports, something that could potentially cost American consumers another $30 billion a year.
• Japan's cabinet approved a plan Friday to drop South Korea from Tokyo's most favored trading partner list, a move that South Korea says involves compensation for forced labor during WW II.
• Republicans are furious over the Justice Department's IG report that does not recommend charges for former FBI Director James Comey over leaks to the press.
• The BBC will be moving its online offerings to HBO's new Max streaming service as exclusives, another win for AT&T Time Warner in the content department over rivals Netflix and Amazon.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The pace at which House Democrats have come out in public favor of opening impeachment inquiries into Donald Trump has quickened since Mueller's testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees last month, and today the number of House Democrats in favor of beginning the road to impeachment eclipsed a majority of Nancy Pelosi's caucus.

The impeachment dam has broken.

More than half of House Democrats say they would vote to launch impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, a crucial threshold that backers said will require Speaker Nancy Pelosi to reconsider her steadfast opposition.

Though Pelosi has given no indication that even a significant majority of House Democrats embracing impeachment proceedings would shift her view, supporters of an inquiry argue that crossing the halfway mark among the caucus is a symbolic boost that could shift the political dynamic.

“The president’s repeated abuses have brought American democracy to a perilous crossroads," said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who announced his support on Tuesday. "Following the guidance of the Constitution — which I have sworn to uphold — is the only way to achieve justice."

The number of House Democrats who support impeachment proceedings passed the halfway mark — 118 out of 235 voting members now support the effort — on Thursday when Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida announced his support. Deutch was also the 23rd Democratic lawmaker to support impeachment proceedings in the days after former special counsel Robert Mueller testified to Congress, affirming publicly his damning evidence suggesting Trump attempted to obstruct justice.

Mueller's appearance reignited a push for impeachment proceedings among Democrats, who had been slowly gathering momentum for the effort since April. Though his testimony was at times halting, Mueller confirmed to lawmaker his report’s findings that Trump’s 2016 campaign welcomed Russian assistance and that Trump repeatedly attempted to undermine the investigation into Russia’s hacking and propaganda operation.

Perhaps more significant than the number of Democrats backing an inquiry are the identities of the members themselves. The latest additions include Reps. Mike Levin of California, Jennifer Wexton of Virginia and Jason Crow of Colorado, three freshmen who flipped Republican-held districts in November. Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, a member of Pelosi's leadership team, added her name to the list on Friday.

Engel, a veteran lawmaker from New York City, is also one of six committee chiefs tasked by Pelosi with investigating Trump's conduct. He's the second of those committee leaders, along with Rep. Maxine Waters of California, to publicly demand an impeachment inquiry. Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler has privately advocated for one as well.

So again, it's not just safe blue seats with 30-point margins calling for moving ahead with impeachment, it's swing-district Dems and committee chairs joining in.  And more Dems are joining all the time now.

And in his op-ed at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel today, Rep.Ted Deutch argued that impeachment process is already underway.

In the past, a resolution directing the Judiciary Committee to consider impeachment was needed to grant the committee additional subpoena authority and financial resources. That was the official start of an impeachment inquiry.

But times have changed. In 2015, Republican leaders gave committee chairs broad subpoena powers — powers that Chairman Nadler retains today.

No additional step is required. No magic words need to be uttered on the House floor. No vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry is necessary.

The Judiciary Committee officially started its investigation into the abuse of power by President Trump on March 4, 2019. The stated purpose was to consider all constitutional remedies for presidential misconduct, including impeachment. In every meaningful way, our investigation is an impeachment inquiry. The Judiciary Committee already has the power to refer articles of impeachment to the whole House.

The Trump Administration has taken unprecedented and unconstitutional actions to ignore congressional subpoenas and pressure witnesses not to appear. President Trump has turned the White House into a black box. The Justice Department fabricated a theory of blanket immunity and distorted claims of executive privilege. The Administration wants to silence the witnesses to the President’s obstruction.

But the American people deserve to hear from former White House Counsel Don McGahn, under oath, about when the President ordered him to fire Mueller. And from Corey Lewandowski about when he was asked to narrow the scope of the investigation to protect the President. And from former Attorney General Jeff Sessions about President Trump’s pressure campaign to take back control of the investigation.

If the suggestion that we are already in the midst of an impeachment inquiry sounds farfetched, look to last week’s court filings by the House counsel. To break the administration’s stonewalling, the House lawyers explained that the Constitution gives the House “a constitutional power of the utmost gravity—recommendation of articles of impeachment.” Since Department of Justice policies won’t allow the prosecution of a sitting President, only the House of Representatives can ensure that the President is not above the law.

As we told the court, we already have the power. We don’t need a vote. We need President Trump to stop obstructing.

For better or worse, the impeachment train is leaving the station, and picking up steam.

Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

This is a bit of a long one, lots of information to cover that's all connected.

We start with how last weekend's deadly shooting in Gilroy, California has become just another blip on the radar. Another mass shooting, another young white supremacist terrorist, another body count, another easily-purchased rifle, and an entire executive branch dedicated to gaslighting all of it. The signs were there, and they were again ignored.

Authorities searching the Nevada home of Gilroy Garlic Festival shooter Santino William Legan found extremist materials, according to a law enforcement source.

The discovery came as detectives are trying to determine a motive in the Sunday attack at the famed food festival. The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not provide details about the materials found or whether they provided clues as to a motive.

Detectives have been looking through his social media, electronic devices and computer hardware but are still struggling to understand why he opened fire, killing three and leaving 12 hurt, the sources said.

“Our preeminent and principal concern is motivation, ideological leanings and was he affiliated with anyone or any group,” said Craig Fair, FBI assistant special agent in charge of counterintelligence at the San Francisco office.

At a news conference Tuesday, officials said the attack appears pre-planned but that the motive is still unclear.

“We have no reason to believe at this point he was targeting any protected characteristics or any class,” Fair said. “We continue to try and understand who the shooter is and what motivated him and if he was aligned with any particular ideology.”

During the attack, someone shouted a pivotal question as he unleashed round after round from his AK-47-style assault rifle: Why are you doing this?” He simply replied: “Because I am really angry!”

“Everyone wants to know the answer: Why?” Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said. “If there’s any affiliation with other people, or groups of people, that could potentially pose a threat in the future, that all plays in.”

I don't believe anyone on Earth who has paid attention to mass shootings in the the era of the Stochastic Terrorist-in-Chief is "struggling to understand" the killer's motive.  He shot up a group of people because it was terrorism. He was radicalized by a death cult dedicated to "making America great again" by removing those who are deemed unworthy of inheriting it.

The "Good Guy with a Gun" theory failed as well.  Police were already at the scene because it was a public festival, so there was already a significant law enforcement presence on-site and the officers were able to go after the gunman in under 60 seconds.

The gunman still shot 15 people, killing three, before he was taken out.

Meanwhile, the death cult continues to do things like using Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's face on a billboard to sell firearms.

The sign warns of the “4 Horsemen” — typically a reference to biblical imagery symbolizing the end of the earth: conquest, war, famine and death.

But the North Carolina billboard that went up over the weekend does not depict horsemen. It shows photos of the freshman congresswomen also known as “the Squad”: Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. The billboard calls the progressive Democratic members of Congress “idiots” and is signed by “the Deplorables.”

Cherokee Guns, a Murphy, N.C., gun shop located about a mile away from the sign, took responsibility for the billboard. An image shared to the shop’s Facebook page Sunday went viral this week and drew a sharp rebuke from the women pictured, as well as anti-gun violence advocates. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence on Monday called the billboard “violent rhetoric.”

“Threats against members of Congress, particularly minority members are [trending upward] and it is driven by the president’s racial rhetoric,” the group wrote. “This is dangerous!!!”

For the congresswomen, the menacing billboard is just another high-profile threat — one of many they say has inundated them since they took office in 2018.

“How the hell is this not inciting violence?” Tlaib asked in a Wednesday evening tweet.
In her own tweet, Pressley called out Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), whose district, she noted, houses the shop. She implored Meadows to “do the right thing.”

You would think that Republicans in Congress would be even slightly sensitive to things like this, considering a sick bastard tried to kill Republican Congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana a few years ago at a softball practice.  Scalise was badly injured and a Capitol Police officer was killed.

And nobody has been a larger cheerleader of making rifles easier to purchase than Scalise himself.

Except for maybe Donald Trump.  Tonight he'll be here in Cincinnati spreading his hatred.

President Donald Trump’s latest rally will be a test for both candidate and crowd.

The Cincinnati gathering Thursday night will be Trump’s first since his audience chanted “Send her back!” about a Somali-born congresswoman during a July rally in North Carolina , raising the prospect of a 2020 presidential campaign increasingly fought along racial lines.

The chant about Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota by a roaring Greenville crowd rattled Republicans and left Trump wavering over how to respond. He let the chant roll at the rally, expressed disapproval about it the next day and later retreated from those concerns.

Since then, Trump has pushed ahead with incendiary tweets and a series of attacks on a veteran African-American congressman and his predominantly black district in Baltimore. Heightening the drama, Trump’s Ohio rally will come on the heels of a pair of debates among the Democrats who want to replace him and will take place against a backdrop of simmering racial tension in the host city of Cincinnati.

All eyes will be watching both the Ohio crowd’s behavior — and how Trump reacts. Even his closest advisers seem uncertain as to what may transpire.

“If it happened again, he might make an effort to speak out about it,” Vice President Mike Pence said recently.

Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, who represents a Cincinnati-area district, said Wednesday he hopes the crowd will avoid such chants this time, and he thinks Trump will react more quickly if does happen.

“I would discourage the crowd from doing anything inappropriate and I think saying something like that would be inappropriate,” Chabot said. “I would hope that the president would silence the crowd, tell them, ‘Hey, don’t do that, there’s no place for that. It’s not helpful, it’s not right.’”

Spoilers:  The chant will happen again.  Trump won't stop it.  And it will keep getting worse.

Eleven years ago, here in Cincinnati, I saw candidate Barack Obama and I had hope like I never had before. Tonight, here in Cincinnati, is where Greenville's trial balloon of white supremacy officially becomes the Trump 2020 rally platform.

And that hope is opposed by dread.  But not totally drowned by it, as the FBI is actually paying attention to Trump's stochastic terrorism and now considers it a threat.

The FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat, according to a previously unpublicized document obtained by Yahoo News.
The FBI intelligence bulletin from the bureau’s Phoenix field office, dated May 30, 2019, describes “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,” as a growing threat, and notes that it is the first such report to do so. It lists a number of arrests, including some that haven’t been publicized, related to violent incidents motivated by fringe beliefs.

The document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes in a deep state conspiracy against President Trump, and Pizzagate, the theory that a pedophile ring including Clinton associates was being run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant (which didn’t actually have a basement).
“The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts,” the document states. It also goes on to say the FBI believes conspiracy theory-driven extremists are likely to increase during the 2020 presidential election cycle.

The FBI said another factor driving the intensity of this threat is “the uncovering of real conspiracies or cover-ups involving illegal, harmful, or unconstitutional activities by government officials or leading political figures.” The FBI does not specify which political leaders or which cover-ups it was referring to.

President Trump is mentioned by name briefly in the latest FBI document, which notes that the origins of QAnon is the conspiratorial belief that “Q,” allegedly a government official, “posts classified information online to reveal a covert effort, led by President Trump, to dismantle a conspiracy involving ‘deep state’ actors and global elites allegedly engaged in an international child sex trafficking ring.”

This recent intelligence bulletin comes as the FBI is facing pressure to explain who it considers an extremist, and how the government prosecutes domestic terrorists. In recent weeks the FBI director has addressed domestic terrorism multiple times but did not publicly mention this new conspiracy theorist threat.

And now we're getting into the FBI versus the Trump regime, in a fight for the soul of the nation, over domestic terrorism stoked by the man in the Oval Office.

This will not end well.

How To Jury Rig A Gerrymander

With the Supreme Court killing any court role in stopping gerrymandering, states are turning to redistricting commissions in order to draw less partisan maps. Of course, Michigan Republicans are doing everything they can to kill the state's new redistricting commission, and former GOP Scott Walker is leading the charge.

Republicans are suing to stop Michigan’s new citizen redistricting commission before it begins, alleging the voter-approved amendment is “blatantly unconstitutional” and discriminates against participants based on political service or family ties.

A high-stakes federal lawsuit filed Tuesday morning with the U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids seeks to invalidate Proposal 2, block implementation and prevent the independent commission from drawing new legislative and congressional district maps for the 2022 election cycle.

Instead, whichever political party wins control of the state Legislature next year would lead that process in 2021 but need approval from Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Republicans drew existing lines in 2011 and currently hold majorities in the Michigan House and Senate.

The legal action is backed by the Fair Lines America Foundation, a nonprofit with ties to the National Republican Redistricting Trust. The suit was filed on behalf of 15 Michigan residents who would be excluded from serving on the commission under the new rules.

“Any reform, no matter how poorly conceived, must achieve its goals without infringing on the basic rights guaranteed to all of us by the Constitution,” said Scott Walker, the former Wisconsin governor who is now finance chair for the GOP redistricting group, in a statement.

“Michigan’s new redistricting commission falls short of that standard by punishing the people of Michigan for exercising those rights — or for being related to someone who has.”

The amendment to the Michigan Constitution prohibits service on the commission by anyone who in the last six years was a partisan candidate, elected official, political appointee, lobbyist, campaign consultant and officer or member of the governing body of a political party.

It also excludes a parent, child or spouse of any of those individuals.

It's a stupid lawsuit, under that logic, every single Michigander who's not selected for the commission has a right to sue the state.  But let's not forget what Michigan Republicans managed to accomplish: the most gerrymandered state in the nation.

A Nov. 7 Metro Times tally of unofficial Michigan Secretary of State and Wayne County Clerk's Office vote totals found State House Dem candidates received a total of 2,092,164 votes in the 2018 midterm. Republicans received 1,917,150 votes — an advantage of about 175,000 for Democratic candidates.

Still, Republicans will hold a 58-52 majority in the State House during the next term.

In the State Senate, our preliminary count found Democrats received 2,062,494 votes while Republicans received 1,945,209 — an advantage of about 117,300 for Dems. Still, the GOP will hold a 22-16 majority next term. 

Democrats got 52% of state House votes but won only 47% of seats.  In the state Senate, Democrats got 51% of votes but only 42% of seats.

And Republicans will sue all the way to the Supreme Court in order to keep a permanent redistricting majority they can manipulate decade after decade.