Last Call For That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

CNN's Harry Enten points out the polling for Trump has never been as bad for an incumbent 14 months out, and for Trump, his numbers are absolutely dismal.

I went all the way back to World War II era in the Roper Center archive to see how presidents were polling at this point against their eventual challengers. I selected the worst poll for the incumbent if there was more than one poll taken in order to give Trump the most generous comparison. In years in which no polls were taken in August the year before the election (i.e. when the last poll for 2020 was conducted), I chose the poll taken closest to this point. 

What's clear is the vast majority of incumbents were ahead at this point in the campaign: nine of the 11 were ahead. And for the average incumbent, they led their eventual challenger by 12 points at this point. 

Again, Trump trails Biden by 10 points in the average August poll. Trump has not been ahead of Biden in a single national poll taken this entire cycle. 

Only two of 11 incumbents in past years, Jimmy Carter in 1979 and Barack Obama in 2011, were behind at this point. They were down by 4 points and 1 point respectively to their eventual challengers (Ronald Reagan and Mitt Romney). Carter went to lose reelection. Obama went on to win with a small reelection margin -- and there were many polls at this point that had him ahead. (Remember, I'm looking at the worst poll for past incumbents.) 

Put another way, Trump's worst poll against any of the top five Democrats at this point is 5 points worse than the worst poll for any incumbent since World War II against his eventual challenger. It's 12 points worse against his most likely challenger, Biden. 

As I've already mentioned, we don't know if these polls will hold. What is notable, though, is that Trump is not punching above his approval rating right now. Trump's approval rating has been consistently below his disapproval rating, just like he has been consistently been polling behind Biden. That lines up with what occurred in the 2018 midterms: Republican House candidates got the same share of the votes as Trump's approval rating, 45%. 

Trump has time to turn his reelection ship in the right direction. But in the 10 months since the Republicans lost the House in 2018, he's in no better shape. You could even argue he's in a worse position. 

Now factor in the extremely high likelihood of an economic recession between now and November 2020.  Donald Trump is in peril.

Unfortunately, we've never been in a situation where the incumbent has been this lawless, and the opposition has been this unwilling to do anything to stop it.  In a fair election, Trump would be destroyed in 2020 along with the Senate GOP.

There's approximately zero chance the 2020 election will be fair.

Trump Trades Blows, Con't

Today being September 1 means that Trump's tariffs on Chinese imports go into effect, so expect major sticker shock this month as prices go up on just about everything you buy.

President Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs on Chinese imports is likely to deliver a direct hit on many consumers, who were largely spared from higher prices in his previous rounds of import taxes.

Beginning Sunday, the U.S. government will begin collecting 15% tariffs on $112 billion in Chinese imports — items ranging from smartwatches and TVs to shoes, diapers, sporting goods and meat and dairy products. For the first time since Trump launched his trade war, American households face price increases because many U.S. companies say they’ll be forced to pass on to customers the higher prices they’ll pay on Chinese imports.

For more than a year, the world’s two largest economies have been locked in a high-stakes duel marked by Trump’s escalating import taxes on Chinese goods and Beijing’s retaliatory tariffs.

The two sides have held periodic talks that seem to have met little progress despite glimmers of potential breakthroughs. All the while, they’ve imposed tariffs on billions of each other’s products in a rift over what analysts say is Beijing’s predatory tactics in its drive to become the supreme high-tech superpower.

American consumers have so far been spared the worst of it: The Trump administration had left most everyday household items off its tariff list (valued at $250 billion in Chinese products so far) and instead targeted industrial goods.

That’s about to change. “They’re on. They’re on,” Trump said Friday about the new tariffs that are set to kick in at 12:01 a.m. Sunday. Under the new schedule, 69% of the consumer goods Americans buy from China will face his import taxes, up from 29% now.

That isn’t all. Higher tariffs are set to kick in for another batch of Chinese products — $160 billion’ worth — on Dec. 15. By then, roughly 99% of made-in-China consumer goods imported to the United States will be taxed, according to calculations by Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Overall, Trump’s trade war will have raised the average tariff on Chinese imports from 3.1% in 2017, before the hostilities began, to 24.3%.

It's going to be a lousy Christmas for a lot of Americans this year, and it's going to cost American consumers tens of billions of dollars.  And Trump?  He's already blaming American companies.

Sunday Long Read: Judge, Jury, And Executioner

In Texas, county judges are in charge of the machinery of public defender cases. Texas Republicans will tell you that it's the most efficient way to handle people who can't afford their own lawyers and the Supreme Court's ruling that one has to be appointed for them. Judicial reform activists will tell you that the inherent conflict of interest means poor Texans are getting railroaded into prison so judges can get reelected for being tough on crime.  And yes, the man behind this mess was Texas's governor at the time George W. Bush.

Indigent defense in the U.S. is in crisis. More than twenty lawsuits filed in the past decade on behalf of poor plaintiffs—in California, Louisiana, Georgia, and other states—point to this predicament, which has been acknowledged at the highest levels: in 2013, in a speech marking the fiftieth anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright,then–U.S. attorney general Eric Holder bemoaned the number of unjust convictions and sentences borne by the poor. “This is unacceptable,” he declared, “and unworthy of a legal system that stands as an example to all the world.”

The main reason for this crisis is funding. Because the Supreme Court did not, in its 1963 ruling, specify how states should pay for counsel, local policymakers facing other costs—for schools, roads, law enforcement—consistently shortchange indigent defense. This is why public defender’s offices are chronically understaffed. It’s also why court-appointed private lawyers are overloaded: the fees they’re paid are often so low that they are forced to take on a multitude of cases just to make a living. Some overburdened lawyers, in turn, contribute to so-called plea mills, in which, critics say, they encourage defendants to plead guilty because they are either too swamped to investigate claims or incentivized not to (in Travis County, for instance, court-appointed lawyers are paid $600 for a felony case whether they secure a plea deal or get the charge dismissed).

The problem of funding is especially acute in Texas. Since 2001, when the state legislature passed the Fair Defense Act—a law that aimed to overhaul and standardize how the state’s poor received counsel—total spending on indigent defense has increased significantly, from some $91 million in 2001 to roughly $273 million in 2018. But Texas ranks among the states that spend the least per capita: its counties, which shoulder most of the costs, are some of the fastest growing in the country, and what little the Legislature chips in to help—some $30 million last year—does not match demand. This creates a woeful game of numbers on the ground. In 2017, for example, the average court-appointed lawyer in Texas made only $247 per misdemeanor case and $598 per felony.

However, the problem goes beyond money. In Texas, the crisis is exacerbated by a key structural flaw: indigent defense is largely overseen by judges. Contrary to the American Bar Association’s principles of public defense, which call for defense lawyers to be independent of the judiciary, judges in most Texas counties decide which lawyers get cases, how much they are paid, and whether their motions—say, to reduce bail or test DNA—have merit. (Counties do have fee schedules for lawyers, but judges set the schedules and retain discretion over payment.)

Given that judges are elected based, in part, on the efficiency of their courts, this is an inherent conflict of interest. “Whatever the judge wants to do, it’s probably not acquit your client,” said Charlie Gerstein, a lawyer for Civil Rights Corps, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that has spent the past several years challenging criminal justice abuses around the country. “The judge wants to move the docket. The judge wants to get reelected.” (Civil Rights Corps filed the class-action lawsuitagainst the bail system of Harris County in 2016.) Lawyers trying to work a case properly—by devoting more time or requesting an investigator—face a quandary: Why make the effort if a judge can retaliate by appointing them to fewer cases or cutting their pay?

In 1999 Houston Democrat and then–state senator Rodney Ellis introduced a bill that would, among other things, transfer oversight of indigent defense attorneys from judges to county officials. The Lege approved the measure, but judges, lawyers, and prosecutors resisted, writing more than three hundred letters to then-governor George W. Bush. (“The bill inappropriately takes appointment authority away from judges, who are better able to assess the quality of legal representation,” said Bush in his veto proclamation.) Two years later, Ellis helped muscle through the Fair Defense Act, which provided, for the first time, some funding and oversight by the state, in the form of an agency now known as the Texas Indigent Defense Commission. The TIDC was tasked with administering funds, enforcing standards, and responding to violations. But the law was also clear: “Only the judges . . . or the judges’ designee” was allowed “to appoint counsel for indigent defendants in the county.”

For a long time, the combined effect of this judicial control and lack of funding—heavy caseloads, underserved defendants—was hard to quantify. But a surprisingly trailblazing move by the Legislature in 2013 gave Texas something almost no other state that relies on private attorneys has: comprehensive data. That year, lawmakers ordered every county to start reporting to the TIDC the number of indigent cases, and fees, given to lawyers in every court. They also instructed the TIDC to conduct a study on appropriate caseloads, the first of its kind mandated by a state government.

In 2015 the study’s results were released: in any given year, researchers found, a Texas lawyer could reasonably handle 128 felonies or 226 misdemeanors, or a weighted combination of the two. This set a benchmark against which to understand the growing database, which showed lawyers juggling two, three, or even four times that load. Even the director of the TIDC at the time, Jim Bethke, said he hadn’t known “the magnitude of people who were getting run through the system on a super mass conveyor belt.”

Today, the TIDC database is staggering in its reach. With just a few clicks, anyone can look up lawyers by name and see how many indigent cases they took, and in what court, and for how much. Finding the highest-earning attorney, or the most overloaded, takes minutes. Consider just a few names: In Harris County, in fiscal 2017, James Barr earned more than $131,000 for work on 433 indigent felony cases, which all came from the court of Judge Jim Wallace. In the Panhandle, Artie Aguilar won a contract in fiscal 2018 to handle all indigent felony cases in Dawson, Gaines, Garza, and Lynn counties—a total of 322 cases, for a payment of $75,000. T. D. Hammons, who takes cases around Amarillo, was paid $99,450 in fiscal 2017 for work on 129 felonies and dozens of misdemeanors. He reported that these took up less than 60 percent of his time, meaning that the rest of his time was devoted to additional clients.

Astonishingly, few judges—or lawyers or lawmakers—seem to be aware of these figures. Those who are will sometimes argue that caseload limits are unrealistic; it’s too arbitrary, they say, to impose a number when situations vary from county to county, or when judges are faced with too many defendants and too few defense lawyers. But as Texas grows and funding continues to lag, these figures offer a place to start—and one thing they show is that judicial oversight of an indigent defendant’s right to a lawyer is becoming untenable.

The system is broken because it's designed that way.  Nobody wants to grow up and be a public defender in Texas with four times the caseload, working for chump change, when the system rewards speed and not accuracy.  And with Texas, we can see exactly how broken criminal justice in America is.

The Purge Continues

Paranoid Donald Trump continues to turn against his own people out of fear and suspicion, because betrayal is the only way that a relationship with a monster like Trump can ever end.

President Donald Trump’s longtime executive assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, abruptly resigned from the White House on Thursday, after coming under scrutiny for sharing intimate details about the president’s family with reporters, according to two sources familiar with the move. 

In the past six months, Westerhout had tried to expand the boundaries of her job to encompass a broader set of tasks and to include foreign travel, said one adviser close to the White House, who suggested Westerhout had tried to act like a de facto chief of staff.  

This irked several White House officials and Cabinet secretaries who thought she should stick to her primary task of serving as the president’s personal secretary with a desk just outside the Oval Office. 

Westerhout didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The New York Times first reported her departure. 

The White House was buzzing for most of the day on Thursday about her potential departure — especially after officials learned that she had attended an off-the-record dinner with reporters in Bedminster, N.J., where she was said to have shared overly personal details about the president’s life. 

The close White House adviser called this “the final straw” for someone who did not have many allies left in the building.

Everyone and everything Trump touches turns to bubbling, rancid shit.  Anyone who has a relationship with him eventually gets betrayed and disposed of.

Unfortunately thanks to politics, we all have a "relationship" with this monster, and he's in varying stages of screwing each and every one of us over in some way.

Last Call For Trump State TV

Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent makes some excellent points here about Trump's fight with Fox News as State television, but the reality is that this is all the media equivalent of pro wrestling kayfabe to give Fox News plausible deniability as a "real" news outlet, and I'm suprised that Sargent can't see the rope-a-dope here.

For days now, President Trump has been embroiled in a public feud of sorts with Fox News, because he’s angry that the network isn’t functioning dutifully enough as his 24/7 propaganda channel.

This is mostly being discussed as another turn in Trump’s ongoing war on the media, one in which his ire has boomeranged on his media supporters. But the story here is bigger than this: Trump’s battle with Fox illuminates the multi-tentacled manner in which Trump is corrupting our democracy and political system, in a new and interesting way.

On Thursday night, Fox’s Neil Cavuto unleashed a lengthy rebuke to Trump. In it, Cavuto pointedly noted: “Mr. President, we don’t work for you.”

This was a response to Trump’s rage-tweet excoriating the network: “We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!”

Trump is angry, Cavuto argued, because on occasion Fox doesn’t sufficiently whitewash his failures and lies. Cavuto noted that Trump chafes because Fox covers bad economic numbers, market drops and Trump’s ongoing trade disasters, and because Fox has pointed out that Trump lied when he claimed Mexico would pay for his wall, that Russia didn’t interfere in 2016, and that he inherited a recession from Barack Obama.
“To fact check him is to be all but dead to him,” Cavuto said, adding that many Trump supporters had contacted him to tell him that “I am either with him totally, or I am a Never Trumper fully.”

My purpose here is not to defend Fox. Yes, its news anchors sometimes do cover the administration aggressively, but the news coverage also has a heavy pro-Trump tilt, and its opinion hosts regularly traffic in outright pro-Trump agitprop and white nationalist conspiracy theories.

As Margaret Sullivan puts it, Fox writ large and Trump are the “conjoined twins of misinformation.” If anything, Trump’s attacks have given the network a way to hype its largely nonexistent independence from him.

Rather, what’s interesting here is Cavuto’s declaration that many Trump supporters have come to expect and demand from Fox absolute fealty to their leader.

Cavuto deserves some credit. In his rebuke, he exposed many of the false storylines that intertwine in Trump’s preferred narrative of the last few years: Russia never tried to sabotage our political system on his behalf. Trump deserves total credit for what has been good about the economy, having inherited nothing but wreckage from the Obama years. All the recent bad economic news is fake news, as are claims that Trump’s unhinged handling of trade is helping cause it. Trump’s buffoonish vow to subjugate Mexico and force it to pay for his wall has proved to be a mirage.

C'mon Greg, you're being played here.  Give Neil Cavuto some credit?  That's exactly the angle that FOX News and Trump are working here.  Of course FOX is state TV.  The point here in admitting what everybody knows is so it can be countered by liberal columnists saying that FOX News deserves credit for "fighting" Trump. 

You can't say in one breath that FOX News is pushing white supremacy propaganda (which it is) and then say they get credit for standing up to Trump once in a while when even they get tired of coming up with excuses for his lies.

This is all 100% kabuki here and it was planned from the get-go.  FOX News can claim they are objective when it comes to Trump, and Trump can rile up his base with a fight tailor-made for them to watch, it's all a good show.  We're no longer asking if FOX being state TV is good or bad, we're now discussing the reframed fight on whether or not they are sufficiently deferential to Trump.

I honestly am shocked that Sargent doesn't get this soap opera.  This is Trump playing the distraction card 101 and he's falling for it, but media folks stick together.  In the end, they go to the same cocktail parties and their kids go to the same private schools and they know each other professionally and personally and they think it's one big game that each of them really has figured out.

I'm tired of it.

The American Dream Is In Canada

America's middle class is vanishing, millions of us are falling through the cracks every year, but north of the border our Canadian neighbors are finding the opportunities that have permanently passed a generation of Americans by.

Everybody knows that the U.S. version of capitalism is rougher and tougher than is the norm in other affluent countries. The rich are richer here, the poor poorer and the welfare state less exhaustive. Not surprisingly, the U.S. scores poorly versus other rich nations in terms of health outcomes, education levels and other such metrics.

Defenders of the U.S. approach can point, though, to the fact that per-capita gross domestic product has remained higher in the U.S. than in all but a few small nations with unique characteristics (Qatar, Luxembourg, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, etc.) — so much higher that even with the less-equal income distribution here, most Americans continue to have higher incomes than their peers in other large, affluent countries.

Times may be changing, though, and international income comparisons are definitely getting more precise. Five years ago, David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy of the New York Times showed using numbers from the Luxembourg Income Study Database that the median income in Canada had caught up with that of the U.S. as of 2010, and speculated that Canada had probably passed the U.S. since. (The median is the income of a person in the middle of the income distribution, with as many people earning more as earning less.)

Now there’s more evidence. A report released this summer by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, an Ottawa nonprofit, contends that as of 2016 Canada had in fact pulled ahead of the U.S. in median household income, with a $59,438 to $58,849 advantage in U.S. dollars if (and this is a reasonably big if) you use the Canadian government statistical agency’s formula for converting Canadian dollars into U.S. ones. The study also compares incomes in every percentile of the income distribution, and finds that up through the 56th percentile Canadians are better off than their U.S. counterparts.

Canada's middle class is growing.  America's is shrinking.  And it's not just Canada who has caught up to us.

It’s not just in Canada that those in the middle of the income distribution have been gaining on their American peers. From 1990 through 2018, according to the World Bank, per-capita real gross domestic product grew at the same 1.5% annual rate in the U.S., the European Union and the OECD, which counts 36 affluent democracies on five continents as members. 1 In other words, the rough-and-tough U.S. approach to capitalism hasn’t delivered faster per-capita growth, and because growth in the U.S. has been concentrated at the very top of the income distribution, that means Americans in the middle and the bottom have been losing ground to their counterparts in other countries.

As of the mid-1980s, according to Luxembourg Income Study data originally compiled for the Times’ 2014 article, those in the bottom 20% of the income distribution in Canada and at least five European countries were on average better off than the bottom 20% in the U.S., but by the fourth decile (30th percentile to 40th percentile), average U.S. incomes were higher than all but Luxembourg’s. By 2010, U.S. fourth-decilers had also fallen behind Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Canada.

Given the excruciatingly slow pace of economic growth in Europe after 2010, I would guess that the continent’s catch-up march has slowed or stalled since then. My reading of another data source, the World Inequality Database created by French economist Thomas Piketty and several collaborators, 2 is that the middle 40% of the income distribution (the 30th percentile to the 70th percentile) in the Netherlands passed the U.S. middle 40% in 2007, then fell behind again in 2013. Still, the long-run trend is important.

The bottom line: When it comes to improving the lives of the middle class, other rich countries have been doing a better job than the United States.

Obama did what he could considering the massive recession Bush 43 handed him, but America's middle class destruction has only gotten worse in the age of Trump.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Donald Trump continues to be the most infamous Russian asset in US history, and his performance at last weekend's G-7 summit in France made it clear to the world that America now works solely to help Moscow.

Trump's attendance at the G7 summit was peppered with controversy, but none was more notable than his fervent defense of Russia's military and cyber aggression around the world, and its violation of international law in Ukraine.

Trump repeatedly refused to hold Russia accountable for annexing Crimea in 2014, blamed former President Barack Obama for Russia's move to annex it, expressed sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and castigated other G7 members for not giving the country a seat at the table.

John Sipher, a former CIA clandestine operative who spent 28 years at the agency, told Insider of Trump's G7 attendance, "If it weren't for his constant shocking behavior and comments that have dulled our senses, this would register as one of the worst diplomatic blunders in years."
Since being booted from the G8 after annexing Crimea, Russia's done little to make up for its actions. In fact, by many accounts, it's stepped up its aggression.

In addition to continuing to encroach on Ukraine, the Russian government interfered in the 2016 US election and was behind the attempted assassination of a former Russian spy in the UK. US officials also warn that as the 2020 election looms, the Russians are stepping up their cyberactivities against the US and have repeatedly tried to attack US power grids.

"What in God's name made Trump think it would be a good idea to ask to bring Russia back to the table?" the FBI agent told Insider. "How does this serve US national-security interests?"

Trump's advocacy for Russia is renewing concerns among intelligence veterans that Trump may be a Russian "asset" who can be manipulated or influenced to serve Russian interests, although some also speculate that Trump could just be currying favor for future business deals.

A former senior Justice Department official, who worked closely with the former special counsel Robert Mueller when he was FBI director, didn't mince words when reacting to Trump's performance at the G7 summit: "We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office." 

Putin, the former GRU spymaster, treats Trump like an asset to be handled.  It's worked to the point of fulfilling Putin's wildest dreams.  Trump continues to be manipulated on a weekly basis by his regular contact with Putin, and in turn Trump makes Putin's case for him on the international stage.

It's obvious to anyone watching, and just as obvious that Putin in 100% in control of the man in the Oval Office.

And we do nothing about it.

Welcome To Bevinstan, Donny Jr.

Donald Trump Jr. came to Kentucky this week to stump for GOP Gov. Matt Bevin, and basically nobody cared.

Donald Trump Jr. spoke to a mostly-empty arena in Pikeville Thursday afternoon, hoping to muster support within a historically Democratic county for the reelection of Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.

Like much of Eastern Kentucky, Pike County has long been a Democratic stronghold, but swung to the right during the last presidential election in a landslide victory for President Donald Trump.

Bevin won Pike County four years ago with 54.8% of the vote, but he narrowly lost Pike County and many other Eastern Kentucky counties to a lesser-known opponent during the 2019 Republican primary. He received fewer votes in Floyd, Johnson and Pike counties than Democrat Rocky Adkins, the most popular candidate within the region. Adkins lost to Attorney General Andy Beshear statewide.

As Bevin ramps up his reelection efforts, Trump Jr.’s visit illustrates his attempt to lean on President Trump’s popularity as he attempts to win over Registered Democrats who voted for Trump.

During the rally, Trump Jr. acknowledged this dichotomy to the crowd, saying he understood the cultural implications of the region’s historic alliance with Democrats, but that “this is not your grandfather’s Democratic Party.”

Trump Jr. spoke mostly about the successes of his father as president. He railed against Hillary Clinton and the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election by Robert Mueller, and against the media’s perceived bias against Trump.

In an area ravaged by the continuous decline of coal production, Trump Jr. also touted his father’s attempts to bolster economic growth within the manufacturing and energy sectors. He complimented Bevin for similar efforts within Kentucky.

“Bevin is selling Kentucky and bringing jobs here,” Trump Jr. said.

Matt Bevin of course remains the most unpopular governor in America and all the polls show him losing substantially to Andy Beshear in nine weeks, but we'll see.  As Bevin keeps reminding everyone who will listen, the polls showed him losing to Jack Conway four years ago, right up until the polls were off by 14 points.

It was a far cry from the Trump Senior campaign event with Bevin in Louisville last weekend but nobody seems pretty keen on Bevin winning right now.

Bevin's a loser, and Trump doesn't like losers.

Last Call For Score One For The Fake News Scolds

MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell messed up pretty badly this week, and the Trump regime will ride his stupidity for months, if not years to come.

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday retracted a story that alleged that Russian billionaires “close to Vladimir Putin” had co-signed a loan that was given to President Trump by a foreign bank. The brief report, which O’Donnell credited to a single source when it aired Tuesday night, led to the threat of a lawsuit by the president.

On Wednesday, O’Donnell opened “Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” by saying his reporting had not gone through the network’s verification and standards process and he was wrong to repeat the allegations on air and for posting it on Twitter.

The previous night, O’Donnell had stressed that the report was unverified, noting that it would be a big deal “if true.” “I have not seen any documentation from Deutsche Bank that supports this and verifies this. This is just a single source who has revealed that to me,” he said.

He later noted that it was not confirmed by news reporters at MSNBC’s parent company, NBC. The next night, he said “saying if true” was “simply not good enough.”

“Tonight we are retracting the story,” he said Wednesday. “We don’t know whether the information is inaccurate but the fact is we do know it wasn’t ready for broadcast and for that I apologize.”

Now, the fact that Trump went bugnuts on this should have news organizations hounding this Deutsche Bank story like terriers at a rat convention, but nobody will touch it now because Larry here had to blow his wad.

It's far from the first time it's happened too.  Eager to get an exclusive, we've had people jump the gun: Rachel Maddow on Trump's 2005 tax returns (which for all intents and purposes looked like a trap by Trump that Maddow fell for hook, line and sinker) is just the most recent prior example of this, but the O'Donnell screw-up is just bad journalism, period.

The anti-Trump side has to do and be better, and right now it's failing all of us.

Buzz Lightyear Of Spaced Command

Space.

The final frontier of grifting and resource exploitation, and taking it over is a top priority of the Trump regime.

President Donald Trump on Thursday formally established a new military headquarters for space operations as part of his efforts to ensure the Pentagon maintains an edge over potential adversaries like Russia and China.

The U.S. Space Command will be responsible for defending military satellites and other space systems and will draw on troops from other branches of the military as well as Trump's proposed Space Force, which is awaiting approval from Congress.

"It will ensure that America’s dominance in space is never questioned and never threatened because we know the best way to prevent conflict is to prepare for victory,” Trump said during a Rose Garden ceremony with his top national security team.

He added that the move "will soon be followed very importantly by the establishment of the United States Space Force as the sixth branch of the United States armed forces. That’s really something, when you think about it."

The new Space Command will be on par with other military headquarters that are responsible for different geographic regions of the world or have distinct missions such as cyber operations.

Gen. John Raymond, the current head of the Air Force Space Command who has also been tapped to run the new outfit, told reporters at the Pentagon earlier that a top priority will be to build new alliances with other militaries that similarly view space as a potential conflict zone.

“Historically, we haven’t needed allies in space," he said. "It was a benign domain. We absolutely are open for new partnerships.”

The Pentagon decided to reestablish the U.S. Space Command, which existed in another form between 1985 and 2002, after a review concluded the military's increasing reliance on space technologies required a dedicated "combatant command" due to advances in weaponry by China and Russia that could destroy satellites in orbit or disable them through other means such as cyberattacks.

Trump so badly wants to be remembered for US Space Force that it physically pains him that it'll never happen, but reestablishing Space Command to keep an eye on all the satellite junk in Earth orbit is useful up to a point, I guess.

Of course, considering how the Trump regime is more than happy to leave the door open to cyberattacks from Russia, one has to wonder what the point of Space Command actually is going to be, other than a cosmic joke.

Time To Whittle Down The Field

ABC News has announced the ten Democrats who have qualified for September's presidential primary debate.

Only 10 Democrats have qualified for the next presidential debate. They are:

🗣 Biden
🗣 Booker
🗣 Buttigieg
🗣 Castro
🗣 Harris
🗣 Klobuchar
🗣 O'Rourke
🗣 Sanders
🗣 Warren
🗣 Yang pic.twitter.com/ujvFlmhP5e

— NPR (@NPR) August 29, 2019

Anyone still in the race not on this list?

Time to drop out.  Jay Inslee and Kirsten Gillibrand have already done the right thing.  I don't expect Tulsi Gabbard or Marianne Williamson to do so anytime soon, because neither of them are actually in the race to do anything other than to directly help Donald Trump.

But Bill de Blasio?  Tim Ryan?  Steve Bullock?  Michael Bennet?

Door's that way.  Hit the showers.  You're done.

Thanks.

StupidiNews!

• Hurricane Dorian's path now takes it over the warm waters of the Atlantic, meaning it could be a 130 MPH Category 4 monster by the time it slams into Florida's east central coast on Labor Day.
• The Trump DHS wants to start DNA testing of all migrants to see if they are "truly related" in order to determine if families should be kept together or separated in detention camps.
• Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong is among three arrested by police ahead of planned protests in the city, Wong was released from a five-week detention before being immediately arrested.
• A federal judge has denied House Democrats' request to fast-track the case to subpoena Donald Trump's tax returns, the case is still expected to begin with filings next month.
• The Trump regime says it will end 2016 Obama-era EPA limits on methane emissions for oil and gas industry sources, claiming industry savings would exceed expected damage to the environment.

Last Call For It's All About Revenge Now, Con't

The Barr "Justice" Department has finally crapped out that special inspector general report on James Comey's misconduct, and Trumpistas are still calling for the former FBI Director's crucifixion.

Former FBI Director James B. Comey violated FBI policies in how he handled memos that detailed his controversial interactions with President Trump, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog found in a report released Thursday, both in engineering the release of their contents to the press and storing them at his home without telling the FBI.

The inspector general found that the memos — which described, among other things, how Trump had pressed Comey for loyalty and asked him about letting go an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn — were official records, and as such, Comey’s treatment of them broke the rules.

The former FBI director gave one of the memos — which included information the inspector general called “sensitive,” but unclassified — to a friend and authorized him to share its contents. He also stored four of the documents in a safe in his personal home and provided copies to his personal attorneys without FBI authorization, the inspector general found.

One of those memos shared with the attorneys was later determined to contain information, such as the names of foreign countries being discussed by Trump, that was classified as confidential, the lowest level of secrecy, the inspector general wrote.

On Twitter, Comey noted that the inspector general found “no evidence” that he or his attorneys released any classified information to the media.

“I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a ‘sorry we lied about you’ would be nice,” he wrote. “And to all those who’ve spent two years talking about me ‘going to jail’ or being a ‘liar and a leaker’—ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president.”

The report is the second time Inspector General Michael Horowitz has criticized Comey for how he handled FBI business during his abbreviated tenure in charge of the bureau. Last summer, Horowitz lambasted Comey for his leadership of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, accusing him of insubordination and flouting Justice Department policies in deciding only he had the authority and credibility to make key decisions on the case and speak about it publicly.

And yet all of this is sturm und drang because we know back from the first of the month that not even Bill Barr was going to try to prosecute a former FBI Director.

Senior Justice Department officials have concluded that former FBI director James B. Comey should not be charged in connection with his handling of memos documenting conversations with President Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

The determination comes amid ongoing internal reviews focused on federal authorities’ investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is conducting one of the reviews, is unlikely to produce a final report on that subject for at least a month, but one aspect of his work is largely complete, these people say: Comey’s handling of the memos.

Deciding not to charge the former FBI director, who has become an outspoken critic of President Trump since Trump fired him in May 2017, was “not a close call,” said a person who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In other words, nothing about this is new information.  The decision was made weeks ago not to prosecute, but Republicans are trying to work the refs on this anyway despite the fact the information was made clear four weeks ago.

Having said that, James Comey is still a shitbird grande whose interference in the 2016 race absolutely helped Trump, and if Trump ordered Bill Barr to abuse his powers as Attorney General, prosecuted Comey for mishandling classified info, and then chucked Comey in prison for a decade or so, I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep.

Deportation Nation, Con't

The Trump regime is already redefining who qualifies for US citizenship in a dangerous move involving children of US military and government employees, and we should expect more and more people to be excluded from automatic citizenship from now on.

Children born to U.S. service members and government employees overseas will no longer be automatically considered citizens of the United States, according to a policy alert issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Wednesday.

Previously, children born to U.S. citizen parents were considered to be "residing in the United States," and therefore would be automatically given citizenship under Immigration and Nationality Act 320. Now, children born to U.S. service members and government employees, such as those born in U.S. military hospitals or diplomatic facilities, will not be considered as residing in the U.S., changing the way that they potentially receive citizenship.

The change in policy was first reported by San Francisco Chronicle reporter Tal Kopan.

According to USCIS, previous legislation also explicitly said that spouses of service members who were living outside the U.S. because of their spouses were considered residing in the U.S., but "that no similar provision was included for children of U.S. armed forces members in the acquisition of citizenship context is significant."

That is one of the reasons why USCIS has now decided that those children are not considered to be residing in the U.S., and therefore will not be automatically given citizenship. Instead, they will fall under INA 322, which considers them to be residing outside the U.S. and requires them to apply for naturalization.

They will be allowed to complete all naturalization proceedings while living abroad, the new policy says.

"The policy change explains that we will not consider children who live abroad with their parents to be residing in the United States even if their parents are U.S. government employees or U.S. service members stationed outside of the United States and, as a result, these children will no longer be considered to have acquired citizenship automatically," USCIS spokesperson Meredith Parker told Task & Purpose.

"For them to obtain a Certificate of Citizenship, their U.S. citizen parent must apply for citizenship on their behalf."The process under INA 322 must be completed before the child's 18th birthday.

While children of service members will be allowed to complete the citizenship process outside of the U.S., Parker added, children of government employees "must enter the U.S. lawfully with an immigrant or nonimmigrant visa and be in lawful status when they take the Oath of Allegiance."  

Let's recap.

As of today, if you are a US citizen, and your child is born outside of the US, your child is not a US citizen.  You have to apply for the child's citizenship.  That citizenship can now be denied. That's wholly up to the Trump regime now.

Now, this lays the basis for denying US citizenship to a whole host of people. The Fourteenth Amendment means what Trump says it means. If the courts agree that the Trump regime can carve out exceptions for who gets citizenship when they are born, then a whole lot of people can be denied.

Think Puerto Rico or Guam.

Once you introduce the idea that US citizenship is not automatic, then you introduce the idea that citizenship can be revoked based on those exceptions.

Then the mass detainment and deportations of undocumented become mass detainment and deportations of undesirable citizens.

History tells us exactly where that leads to.

Boris Versus The Clock

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday asked the Queen to suspend Parliament for five out of the nine weeks left between now and the October 31 deadline for a Brexit deal, and the Queen has agreed.  Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn is furious, calling the move a "coup" and saying Johnson will face a vote of no-confidence before the suspension starts.

Parliament will be suspended just days after MPs return to work in September - and only a few weeks before the Brexit deadline.
Boris Johnson said a Queen's Speech would take place after the suspension, on 14 October, to outline his "very exciting agenda".

But it means the time MPs have to pass laws to stop a no-deal Brexit on 31 October would be cut.

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said it was a "constitutional outrage".

The Speaker, who does not traditionally comment on political announcements, continued: "However it is dressed up, it is blindingly obvious that the purpose of [suspending Parliament] now would be to stop [MPs] debating Brexit and performing its duty in shaping a course for the country."

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "Suspending Parliament is not acceptable, it is not on. What the prime minister is doing is a smash and grab on our democracy to force through a no deal," he said.

He said when MPs return to the Commons next Tuesday, "the first thing we'll do is attempt legislation to prevent what [the PM] is doing", followed by a vote of no confidence "at some point".

And this is apparently only the beginning of Johnson's bag of dirty tricks to run out the Brexit clock and force a worst-case disaster scenario which would of course require emergency powers for his office to be granted in order to steer the country through the mess.

BuzzFeed News has learned that in the last few days, Johnson’s senior team — led by his chief of staff Dominic Cummings and director of legislative affairs Nikki da Costa — has explored a number of increasingly controversial proposals it could deploy depending on the success of rebel attempts to thwart Brexit. The ideas under consideration include the following:

• Attempting to disrupt a Commons debate on Northern Ireland power-sharing due on Sept. 9, a day which could be used by rebels to attempt to delay Brexit. It is described by Johnson allies as a “time bomb” set for them in the final weeks of Theresa May’s premiership.
• Determining whether Johnson would be breaking the law by ignoring any successful rebel legislation or refusing to resign in the event he lost a vote of no confidence.
• Using a variety of mechanisms, including a potential budget, to create new Commons debates and further reduce time for rebels to act.
• Using the prorogation of Parliament to “kill the bill” by rebel MPs and force them to table it again after the Queen’s Speech on Oct. 14.
• Creating new bank holidays to prevent the House of Commons from being recalled during the prorogation period.
• Filibustering any bill by rebel MPs attempting to force Johnson to delay Brexit when it reaches the House of Lords.
• Ennobling new pro-Brexit peers as a last resort to kill any such bill in the Lords.
• Exploring what the consequences would be if Johnson advised the Queen not to give royal assent to any legislation passed by Parliament delaying Brexit.

The measures were devised by the prime minister’s senior aides who have spent the summer in their Downing Street bunker war-gaming how to respond to potential parliamentary manoeuvres by MPs determined to block no deal. The rebels, by contrast, spent the August holidays debating whether they would back Ken Clarke as a potential caretaker prime minister in an unlikely government of national unity.

Number 10's prorogation plan was ready to go and be put into action on Tuesday evening, just hours after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn agreed to a pact with the so-called Remainer “rebel alliance” seeking to prevent a no-deal Brexit.

Downing Street’s official line is that it is not preventing MPs from debating Brexit policy, that it is routine for a new administration to hold a Queen’s Speech and for Parliament to be prorogued in the run-up, and that MPs will have sufficient time to scrutinise plans before and after the Commons is suspended.

But privately, Johnson allies admit their principal aim in the next two months is to reduce the number of days when MPs can act to stop no deal, in order to give the government the best-possible negotiating hand ahead of the European Council on Oct. 17, where it hopes to strike a new Brexit deal with the EU.

“Every sitting day, there is a risk of something going wrong,” a government source said.

One senior Brexiteer equated Downing Street’s strategy to a football team wasting time at the end of a match. “We are into the final 10 minutes, and we are holding the ball by the corner flag,” they said.

The European Union has made it painfully clear that Johnson's not going to get another extension or a better deal on October 17, but apparently his plan is "If the United Kingdom is literally on fire, the EU will give in."

So at this point the UK is barrelling down the "worst-case scenario" path at record speed, and the crash could leave the country unable to function come November.  At that point, I'd expect emergency powers to come into play, and at that point, the UK ceases to be a Western Democracy and becomes something I'd expect Donald Trump would very much like to see here in the States 15 months from now.

Here there be dragons, guys.  Big ones.