Last Call For Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

Bevinstan may be no more.

After a hard-fought race marked by angry rhetoric about teachers and the intervention of national politics, Kentucky voters finally got the chance to make their decision at the ballot box.

In the end, Attorney General Andy Beshear was able to emerge victorious in a gubernatorial race being watched as much for what it says next year's national elections as it does about the direction of the commonwealth.

Both men were with supporters in Louisville on Tuesday night watching as the results came in.

The Democrats -- Beshear and his running mate, Jacqueline Coleman -- placed much of their focus on Kentucky's educators and their anger over moves by the Bevin administration to make changes to their pensions.

"I believe the more Kentuckians that come out, the better our chances are, because people are hungry for a governor that listens more than he talks and solves more problems than he creates," Beshear said earlier Tuesday.

Bevin, a Republican who has polled consistently as among the least popular governors in the nation, highlighted his anti-abortion rights agenda and close ties with President Donald Trump. He switched his lieutenant governor running mate this time out to Ralph Alvardo.

John Hicks and Ann Cormican ran a long-shot race on the Libertarian Party ticket.

On Tuesday after casting his ballot, Bevin said he was feeling good and confident.

“I thought we’d win by 6 to 10 [percentage points]. I still feel very confident in that," he said. "I’d like it to be more like 10 to 12. We’ll see.”
Trump and Vice President Mike Pence made high-profile visits in the final week before the election, including an election eve rally by Trump in downtown Lexington at Rupp Arena.

While Bevin basked in the attention and personal visits from Trump and Pence, Beshear worked to shore up votes and keep voters looking at local issues, including his support for expanded gambling in the state.

The story: turnout.  2015 saw about 970k voters.  Tonight, Kentucky had 1.425 million, a nearly 50% increase.  Beshear's final margin is less than 5,000 votes and Bevin didn't concede citing 'voting irregularities".  But Beshear declared victory tonight anyway.

In the other statewide races, the Democrats didn't do nearly as well.  Beshear will be the last bastion of blue in the Bluegrass for a while now.

But Bevin's still governor for a while, and he can still do some damage.  A recount is coming, maybe more than one.  I don't know.

It's not over yet.

The Drums Of War (On Drugs)

The brutal massacre of an American Mormon missionary family in Mexico by drug cartel soldiers has Donald Trump howling for military action.

At least 10 members of a prominent Mormon family – three mothers and their young children – were killed in a shooting attack relatives suspect might have been a case of mistaken identity by drug cartel gunmen. About a dozen family members remain missing.

The victims were U.S. citizens and members of La Mora, a decades-old settlement in Sonora state founded as part of an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's located about 70 miles south of Douglas, Arizona. 

The mothers were driving from Bavispe to a wedding in LaBaron, another Mormon community in the state of Chihuahua, when their three vehicles loaded with children were attacked by gunfire, causing one of the vehicles to explode in flames. 

Leah Staddon, a relative who grew up in the same Mormon community before moving to Arizona, said her nephew's wife and her four children died in the blaze.

She said her brother discovered the bullet-ridden vehicle still smoldering.
"It's devastating," Staddon said. "It's incomprehensible, the evil. I don’t understand how someone could do that."

The attack happened near Rancho La Mora on the border between Sonora and Chihuahua, the Mexican newspaper El Diario reported.

The vehicle exploded when bullets hit the gas tank, the newspaper said.

Trump hates Mexicans, who he thinks are all drug criminals and child-killers anyway, so actual Mexican criminals killing kids has sent him into paroxysms of rage on Twitter this morning.

President Trump said Tuesday the U.S. is ready to "wage war" on the drug cartels and "wipe them off the face of the earth" after at least 10 members of a prominent Mormon family were killed in an ambush attack near U.S.-Mexico border.

In a series of tweets, Trump said the U.S. was willing to aid Mexico in "cleaning out these monsters" and that "sometimes you need an army to defeat an army." 

"We merely await a call from your great new president!" he said.

Sending in thousands, maybe tens of thousands of US troops into Mexico to kill cartel soldiers would be quite the escalation of the War on Drugs, now in its sixth decade, and would certainly serve to get impeachment off the front page.  Trump is at best unstable but controllable by his inner circle, but this is a rage boner that may not be able to be contained right now.

We'll see if Republicans talk him down or enable him with legislation.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas is flipping on Trump and wants to cooperate with House Democrats, according to his lawyer.

Lev Parnas, an indicted Ukrainian-American businessman who has ties to President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is now prepared to comply with requests for records and testimony from congressional impeachment investigators, his lawyer told Reuters on Monday.

Parnas, who helped Giuliani look for dirt on Trump’s political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, is a key figure in the impeachment inquiry that is examining whether Trump abused his office for personal political gain.

His apparent decision to work with the congressional committees represents a change of heart. Parnas rebuffed a request from three House of Representatives committees last month to provide documents and testimony.

“We will honor and not avoid the committee’s requests to the extent they are legally proper, while scrupulously protecting Mr. Parnas’ privileges including that of the Fifth Amendment,” said the lawyer, Joseph Bondy, referring to his client’s constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.

Giuliani did not immediately respond to requests for comment. On Capitol Hill, the House leadership and a spokesperson for the House Intelligence Committee declined comment.

His previous lawyer, John Dowd, wrote to the committees in early October complaining that their requests for documents were “overly broad and unduly burdensome.”

Parnas pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court last month to being part of a scheme that used a shell company to donate money to a pro-Trump election committee and illegally raise money for a former congressman as part of an effort to have the president remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

The indictment does not address the issues involved in the impeachment inquiry.

Parnas would be a crucial witness if he were to cooperate. He has said he played a key role in connecting Giuliani to Ukrainian officials during Giuliani’s investigation into Biden and his son Hunter.

It gets worse.  House Democrats have released the transcripts of the testimony of former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich, and the full details of her testimony are outright shocking.

Yovanovitch said she first learned in late 2018 that Giuliani had been involved in Ukraine policy when Ukrainian officials alerted her to the former New York mayor’s communications with a former Ukrainian prosecutor general.

She described how Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had urged her to use Twitter to express support for Trump in order to save her job. “He said, you know, you need to go big or go home. You need to, you know, tweet out there that you support the president,” she said.

Several witnesses have said Sondland, a major Trump donor, played a major role in Ukraine policy, despite the country not being part of the European Union. Sondland also testified in the House probe, and his transcript is expected on Tuesday.

Michael McKinley, a former top adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told House investigators that he quit his post after the State Department opted not to defend Yovanovitch from criticism by Trump and his political allies.

She was made a target by Trump himself.

Yovanovitch testified on Oct. 11 that she felt threatened by Trump telling Zelenskiy on the call that she was going to “go through some things.”

“I didn’t know what it meant. I was very concerned,” she said. “I still am.”

She said she was astonished to be featured in a presidential phone call and that Trump would speak about her “or any ambassador in that way to a foreign counterpart.”

When she contacted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to get his support, Pompeo said he would take care of it by contacting FOX News host Sean Hannity.   And that actually worked for a while.

Because our country is corrupt as hell.

StupidiNews, Election Day Edition!

Time to vote for statewide elections here in Kentucky, as well as Louisiana and Mississippi, along with Virginia's state legislature and New Jersey's General Assembly.

Time to kick Matt Bevin to the curb, Kentucky.

Let's go.

Last Call For Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Hey look, another White supremacist neo-Nazi terrorist looking to kill Jews, luckily stopped by the FBI before he could poison or blow up a synagogue possibly killing hundreds.

The FBI says it has prevented what it believes was an attempt to commit a major hate crime in Colorado. A known white supremacist named Richard Holzer arrested late Friday night in an alleged plot to blow up Temple Emanuel in Pueblo, according to newly unsealed federal court documents. 

“Federal law enforcement working in conjunction with the Pueblo Police Department has successfully stopped what we believe to be an imminent threat of domestic terrorism against a Colorado religious institution,” said Jason Dunn, United States Attorney for the District of Colorado. 

“According to the complaint affidavit, Mr. Holzer self-identifies as a skinhead and a white supremacist. During the investigation, FBI agents became aware of racist, anti-Semitic and threatening statements made by Mr. Holzer on social media. Mr. Holzer repeatedly expressed his hatred of Jewish people and his support of a racial holy war,” Dunn said. “(He) indicated that he wanted to do something that would let Jewish people in the Pueblo community know that they are not welcome and that — according to him, they should leave or they will die.” 

An FBI “Online Covert Employee” made contact with Holzer, 27, on Facebook. She said Holzer sent her buttons with swastikas and other items. He reportedly told her he used to be with the Ku Klux Klan. 

In the affidavit, FBI investigators said Holzer, who lives in Pueblo, used several Facebook accounts “to promote white supremacy ideology and acts of violence.”

I'm glad the FBI is finally paying attention to these bastards, but it's hard when they're Trump's most loyal base, and he keeps encouraging them to cause violence and death at his hate rallies.

Still, lives were saved this week from the trifecta of domestic terror, a skinhead, an anti-semite, and a klansman.  Why this guy was walking free until now, well, I guess he nearly blow up a temple before anyone was willing to stop him.

That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

A new Siena College/NY Times poll of six battleground states finds if the other 44 states and DC have the same 2016 results, Donald Trump would lose to Joe Biden 318-220 among likely voters, but he would beat Bernie Sanders 280-248 with Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes a tossup, and would crush Liz Warren with the same results from 2016, minus Arizona as a toss-up.

Despite low national approval ratings and the specter of impeachment, President Trump remains highly competitive in the battleground states likeliest to decide his re-election, according to a set of new surveys from The New York Times Upshot and Siena College.

Across the six closest states that went Republican in 2016, he trails Joe Biden by an average of two points among registered voters but stays within the margin of error.

Mr. Trump leads Elizabeth Warren by two points among registered voters, the same margin as his win over Hillary Clinton in these states three years ago.

The poll showed Bernie Sanders deadlocked with the president among registered voters, but trailing among likely voters.

The results suggest that Ms. Warren, who has emerged as a front-runner for the Democratic nomination, might face a number of obstacles in her pursuit of the presidency. The poll supports concerns among some Democrats that her ideology and gender — including the fraught question of “likability” — could hobble her candidacy among a crucial sliver of the electorate. And not only does she underperform her rivals, but the poll also suggests that the race could be close enough for the difference to be decisive.

In national polls, Mr. Trump’s political standing has appeared to be in grave jeopardy. His approval ratings have long been in the low 40s, and he trails Mr. Biden by almost nine points in a national polling average. But as the 2016 race showed, the story in the battleground states can be quite different. Mr. Trump won the election by sweeping Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina — even while losing the national vote by two points.

Democrats would probably need to win three of the six states to win the White House, assuming other states voted as they did in 2016 — an outcome that is not at all assured.

Having a likely voter model a year away from an election with impeachment in play is an...interesting choice.  But the fact all of these results are within the margin of error shows that Trump is going to get smashed in blue states, but still can play in battleground states.

Here's the big issue:

The major demographic cleavages of the 2016 election also remain intact. Mr. Trump struggles badly among college-educated white voters and nonwhite voters, though there are signs his standing among the latter group has improved modestly since the last presidential election. He counters with a wide lead among white voters who did not graduate from a four-year college.

In contrast to recent national surveys, the Times/Siena polls find that the president’s lead among white, working-class voters nearly matches his decisive advantage from 2016. This group represents nearly half of registered voters in these states, and a majority in the Northern battlegrounds that decided the last election.

The poll offers little evidence that any Democrat, including Mr. Biden, has made substantial progress toward winning back the white working-class voters who defected to the president in 2016, at least so far. All the leading Democratic candidates trail in the precincts or counties that voted for Barack Obama and then flipped to Mr. Trump.

That's the key.  If Trump is keeping non-college white voters, and is actually doing slightly better among non-white voters, then he wins.

Easily.


BUT.  And there's a huge but here...

The other 44 states and DC?  I don't think they're going to be the same as 2016.  I don't think that at all.  I think Trump is in real trouble in Iowa and Georgia.  If the electoral college map follows Trump's state-by-state approval ratings, he loses 358-180, a crushing defeat.

I don't buy this poll's likely voter model.

Not at all.  Two-thirds of Americans say Trump has not personally made their lives better off since being elected.  2016 is not 2020, and pretending it is is stupid.

This poll does precisely that.  Besides, it has Trump getting like 15% of the black vote.

Not happening.  This poll is garbage.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The White House is blocking any more testimony of executive branch officials in House Democratic impeachment depositions, as four scheduled depositions will go ignored today, despite House Democratic subpoena threats.

Four White House officials slated for closed-door depositions Monday are not expected to show up on Capitol Hill despite the threat of subpoena from the committees leading the growing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump related to Ukraine, multiple senior-level sources told ABC News.

House Democrats have a packed schedule this week as depositions continue behind closed doors.

On Monday, Democrats had hoped to hear from four current White House officials, including John Eisenberg, deputy counsel to the president for National Security Affairs; Michael Ellis, senior associate counsel to the president; Robert Blair, a top aide to the chief of staff; and Brian McCormack, an official with the office of management and budget.

Two of those officials, Eisenberg and McCormack, have already been subpoenaed for their respective depositions. Ellis and Blair have only been requested to appear at this time.

The White House has pushed back on permitting current and former officials to comply with requests and subpoenas from Congress in part because White House lawyers have not been permitted inside the closed-door interviews.

Current National Security Council adviser Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and former National Security Council aide Tim Morrison did comply with congressional requests last week, however, they are career officials and not political appointees like the four individuals slated for Monday.

Two of the individuals subpoenaed are filing suits with federal judges to determine who has priority, the White House, citing executive privilege over any testimony, or the House Democratic committee subpoenas.  Those cases aren't expected to be heard until December at the earliest, meaning that the Trump regime efforts to stonewall impeachment proceedings to a complete halt may end up working after all.

It looks like Trump wants any and all testimony from "his employees" to end, permanently.

The anticipated defiance toward impeachment investigators comes as Trump has grown enraged that so many of his “employees,” as he refers to them, are going to Capitol Hill and testifying, said a person who regularly talks with him and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The president has asked for copies of witness statements so he can decide how to criticize them, complained that his lawyers are not doing enough to stop people from talking, and even encouraged members of Congress to question the credibility of people working in his own administration, current and former officials said.

“He is the war room,” press secretary Stephanie Grisham said on Fox News.

We'll see how Democrats react.  Tying up House subpoenas in court for months or years was always going to be part of the plan.  Whether or not Democrats will move ahead anyway, I don't know.

The decision to ignore a congressional subpoena comes with risk. House Democrats could hold Vought and his aides in contempt of Congress or take them to court to try to compel their testimony, as the party has done for former White House counsel Donald McGahn. Democrats have said they will not wait on the courts before they proceed with their impeachment inquiry. But by suing Trump officials, they could force testimony next year, shortly before the presidential election. 

Trump clearly thinks the country will turn on the Democrats the longer he's able to stall.

He's probably right.

StupidiNews!

• McDonald's CEO and president Steve Easterbrook is resigning after admitting to having a consensual relationship with an employee in violation of company policy.
• Protesters in Hong Kong marched for another weekend of demonstrations in defiance of China's latest warning that it would not tolerate any challenge to Hong Kong's current system of governance.
• Saudi Arabia's state oil company, Saudi Aramco, is moving ahead with IPO plans that could see the company valued as much as $1.5 trillion, making it the largest publicly traded company on Earth.
• UK PM Boris Johnson is apologizing to voters for missing his own hard Brexit deadline of Oct. 31 as Britain now enters its third general election in four years, scheduled for December 12.
• The Trump regime may be backing off efforts to reverse Obama-era fuel efficiency standards with efforts to require modest yearly increases in efficiency rather than freezing them at 2020 levels.

Last Call For Wild Fired Up

As California burns, Dear Leader is now threatening to end federal aid for wildfires unless Democrats in the state play ball, starting with getting rid of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

President Donald Trump is threatening to cut U.S. funding to California for aid during wildfires that have burned across the state during dry winds this fall. 

Trump tweeted Sunday that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has done a “terrible job of forest management.” He tweeted that when fires rage, the governor comes to the federal government for help. “No more,” he said. 

Newsom replied with a tweet: “You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation.” 

The state controls a small percentage of forest land. The federal government manages most of it. 

Last year Trump made a similar threat amid California fires — accusing the state of “gross mismanagement” of forests. 

At the time Newsom defended wildfire prevention efforts while criticizing the federal government for not doing enough.

This is why Republicans keep cutting National Park Service and National Forest Service funds. Trump proposed cutting half a billion from national parks in May.  So far Republicans haven't agreed to that, especially Western Republicans in mountain states.  But hey, now a government shutdown is coming up.  Maybe National Park cuts, especially for California, will be Trump's price.

Who knows with this unstable lunatic?

Shutdown Countdown, Impeachment Edition

The government goes into shutdown mode on November 21 without a spending bill, but Nancy Pelosi believes that Trump will sign one in the next few weeks.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday said she doubts President Donald Trump would respond to the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry by forcing a confrontation over funding that might trigger a government shutdown later this month.

“They don’t care about shutdowns because they don’t believe in government, however I do think that they learned a lesson from the last shutdown since it didn’t do them very well,” she said of the White House during a roundtable with Bloomberg reporters and editors.

The government is operating on a temporary funding measure that expires Nov. 21. As lawmakers haggle over a spending plan, congressional Democrats and the White House are at odds over the same issue -- Trump’s demand for border wall spending -- that was at the root of a 35-day government earlier this year. That ended with the Trump administration agreeing to a funding bill without the extra money he sought.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer this week said he was concerned that Trump would create a standoff over funding because of the House impeachment inquiry. “He always likes to create diversions,” Schumer said.

Pelosi said that she and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are trying to come to an agreement on the full-year spending bills, including how to resolve the border wall spending.

“Let’s see what we can get accomplished,” she said.

Lawmakers from both parties involved in negotiating a spending plan have suggested passing a stopgap bill into January or February in order to move spending discussions past the House impeachment process, which is set to drag out into December.

On the one hand, Trump has already lost this fight once and the GOP passed legislation without his wall funding. His people may tell him he'll lose the support he needs if he's closing national parks right before Thanksgiving.

On the other hand, Trump needs impeachment off the front pages and a convenient government shutdown he can blame on the "witch hunters" seems tailor-made for his brand of bullshittery. He may just go to the mat on this.

On the gripping hand, enough lawmakers may just say "screw it, I don't need this right now" and a veto-proof continuing resolution spending bill lands on Trump's desk and he's got no choice, taking the weapon out of his hands.

We'll see what happens soon.

Sunday Long Read: Home Is Where You Hang Your Scam

Our Sunday Long Read this week comes from Vice's Allie Conti, who followed up on getting ripped off by an Airbnb rental and ended up uncovering a massive, systemic bait-and-switch fraud scam that the company almost actually encourages because it gets paid either way.

The call came about 10 minutes before we were set to check into the Airbnb. I was sitting at a brewery just around the corner from the rental on North Wood Street in Chicago when the man on the other end of the line said that our planned visit wouldn’t be possible. A previous guest had flushed something down the toilet, which had left the unit flooded with water, he explained. Apologetic, he promised to let us stay in another property he managed until he could call a plumber.

I had flown with two friends to the city in hopes of a relaxing end-of-summer getaway. We had purchased tickets to attend the September music festival Riot Fest, where Blink-182 and Taking Back Sunday were scheduled to perform. The trip had gotten off to a rough start even before the call. Around a month before, a first Airbnb host had already canceled, leaving us with little time to figure out alternative housing. While scrambling to find something else, I stumbled upon a local Airbnb rental listed by a couple, Becky and Andrew. Sure, the house looked a little basic in the photos online, but it was nice enough, especially considering the time crunch—light-filled, spacious, and close to the Blue Line.

Now, we were facing our second potential disaster in 30 days, and I couldn’t help but feel slightly suspicious of the man on the phone, who had called me from a number with a Los Angeles area code. Hoping to talk in person, I asked him if he was in the area. He said that he was at work and didn’t really have time to chat. Then he added that I needed to decide immediately if I was willing to change my reservation.

As if he could hear me calculating in my head how much of a hassle it would be to find a hotel instead, he then added something else to his pitch.

“It’s about three times bigger,” the man said. “That’s the good news.”

The bad news, which went unstated, was that I had unknowingly stumbled into a nationwide web of deception that appeared to span eight cities and nearly 100 property listings—an undetected scam created by some person or organization that had figured out just how easy it is to exploit Airbnb’s poorly written rules in order to collect thousands of dollars through phony listings, fake reviews, and, when necessary, intimidation. Considering Airbnb’s lax enforcement of its own policies, who could blame the scammers for taking advantage of the new world of short-term rental platforms? They had every reason to believe they could do so with impunity.

I've sworn off Airbnb because of their systemic racism problems built into a platform that really has no way of enforcing state anti-discrimination and innkeeper laws, especially when it's people renting out their own homes, but of course bait-and-switch scams are pretty bad for everyone, except for the fact that Airbnb isn't really doing anything about scammers either because they get paid for cancellations too.

So yeah, there's that inherent gig economy libertarian tech bullshit again, it's cheaper because it gets around the increased overhead of all that 'being legal and non-discriminatory" and offers itself as an alternative, and it works great as long as you're a white guy in a system that doesn't penalize you for not being a white guy.

I know picking on it is low-hanging, practically gravid fruit, but that's the whole point.

I Want My Trump State TV

The line between FOX News and Trump White House propaganda continues to disintegrate as the cable "news" network is now the exclusive home of White House "press briefings" with press secretary Stephanie Grisham.

Since becoming White House press secretary on July 1, Stephanie Grisham has held zero press briefings. Instead, Grisham has found the time to grant interviews to some of President Donald Trump’s favorite current and former Fox News hosts.

It is not new that Grisham appears on Fox News, or that Grisham tells pro-Trump lies. Sarah Sanders certainly did both quite a bit while she held the office.

But it is new that Grisham appears virtually only on Fox News.

Grisham's particular innovation is to move the entire office of White House press secretary into the world of Fox News and Fox-adjacent media. After giving her first TV interview to Sinclair’s Eric Bolling (who was fired by Fox for sending unsolicited explicit photos to coworkers), Grisham did three interviews on Fox & Friends, and one each on Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs Tonight, Watters’ World, and Outnumbered Overtime with Harris Faulkner. She has also done a subsequent interview with Bolling. Instead of actually briefing the press at the White House, Grisham treats her duties as press secretary as complaining to pro-Trump pundits about how unfair everyone else is to the president.

During her first Fox & Friends appearance as White House press secretary, Grisham defended Trump’s decision to suspend press briefings because they “had become a lot of theater,” and many reporters were “getting famous off of this presidency” and “weren’t being good to his people.”

The same day, Grisham also appeared on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, where she complained that the media is unfair to Donald and Melania Trump and asserted that she doesn’t need to do press briefings because Trump is “the most accessible president in history.” Grisham claimed her “job is to talk about what he’s doing and communicate his policies, and I can do that in an array of ways, which -- that’s what we’re doing and it’s just working out fine.” 

In the Trump era, reporters don't ask questions, they shout things at Trump when he feels like talking, getting on or off Marine One to make trips to Andrews Air Force base so he can golf or fundraise or hold a Klan rally, and maybe he answers.  Meanwhile, his press flack is merely a stenographer who goes on state TV to give the regime's view, unchallenged.

That's how autocracies work, gang.

Last Call For Border Line Insanity, Con't

Mexican coyotes and drug cartels are sawing through Trump's stupid "impenetrable" billion-dollar border wall with power tools from Home Depot and I cannot stop laughing.

Smuggling gangs in Mexico have repeatedly sawed through new sections of President Trump’s border wall in recent months by using commercially available power tools, opening gaps large enough for people and drug loads to pass through, according to U.S. agents and officials with knowledge of the damage.

The breaches have been made using a popular cordless household tool known as a reciprocating saw that retails at hardware stores for as little as $100. When fitted with specialized blades, the saws can slice through one of the barrier’s steel-and-concrete bollards in a matter of minutes, according to the agents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the barrier-defeating techniques.

After cutting through the base of a single bollard, smugglers can push the steel out of the way, allowing an adult to fit through the gap. Because the bollards are so tall — and are attached only to a panel at the very top — their length makes them easier to push aside once they have been cut and are left dangling, according to engineers consulted by The Washington Post.

The taxpayer-funded barrier — so far coming with a $10 billion price tag — was a central theme of Trump’s 2016 campaign, and he has made the project a physical symbol of his presidency, touting its construction progress in speeches, ads and tweets. Trump has increasingly boasted to crowds in recent weeks about the superlative properties of the barrier, calling it “virtually impenetrable” and likening the structure to a “Rolls-Royce” that border-crossers cannot get over, under or through.

The smuggling crews have been using other techniques, such as building makeshift ladders to scale and overtop the barriers, especially in the popular smuggling areas in and around San Diego, according to nearly a dozen U.S. agents and current and former administration officials.

Mexican criminal organizations, which generate billions of dollars in smuggling profits, have enormous incentive to adapt their operations at the border to new obstacles and enforcement methods, officials say.

The U.S. government has not disclosed the cutting incidents and breaches, and it is unclear how many times they have occurred. U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to provide information about the number of breaches, the location of the incidents and the process for repairing them. Matt Leas, a spokesman for the agency, declined to comment, and CBP has not yet fulfilled a Freedom of Information Act request seeking data about the breaches and repairs. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the private contractors building the barrier, referred inquires to CBP.

Only costing us billions and there's still thousands of miles of border without any barriers, but Trump's building the wall to protect America.  A ten billion dollar wall versus a $100 reciprocating saw, and the saw wins.

If that isn't the perfect metaphor for the Trump era, I don't know what is.

It's Mueller Time Once Again

BuzzFeed News reporter Jason Leopold and his team sued the Justice Department over Mueller probe documents, specifically the FBI note, search warrants, and subpoenas that the Mueller squad used, and a federal judge agreed, with the first set of 500 documents out today.

Beginning last April, BuzzFeed News has pursued five separate Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to pry loose all the subpoenas and search warrants that Mueller’s team executed, as well as all the emails, memos, letters, talking points, legal opinions, and interview transcripts it generated. In short, we asked for all the communications of any kind that passed through the special counsel’s office. We also requested all of the documents that would reveal the discussions among Attorney General Bill Barr, former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, and other high-ranking officials about whether to charge President Donald Trump with obstruction.

Justice Department lawyers said the volume of records at issue could total 18 billion pages and could take centuries to produce.

At a hearing earlier this month, US District Court Judge Reggie Walton was not sympathetic. “It shouldn’t fall on the backs of the citizens to wait years to find out what the government is up to,” he said. If the Justice Department couldn’t handle the request in a more timely fashion, he added, it should ask Congress for money to hire more help.

Today, in response to a court order, the Justice Department has released the first installment of documents: 500 pages of summaries of FBI interviews with witnesses, available here for the first time. Another installment will be released every month for at least the next eight years.

Known as “302 reports,” these summaries of interviews — which have been conducted with people such as former White House counsel Don McGahn, former attorney general Jeff Sessions, and Trump’s former fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen — are some of the most important and highly sought-after documents from Mueller’s investigation. They reveal what key players in the campaign told FBI agents about Russia, Trump, his business dealings, and his attempts to impede the special counsel’s investigation.

Matt Topic, the lawyer who argued these cases for BuzzFeed News, said the controversies surrounding Mueller’s report made the fight for these documents particularly urgent. “The reason we have a Freedom of Information Act is to make sure that the government is accountable to the people,” he said. Without it, people are powerless “to determine whether the government is telling us the truth or lying to us, whether it is playing favorites or playing fair, whether, as the president claims, the Justice Department engaged in an illegal, treasonous witch hunt or, as others have claimed, the president engaged in obstruction of justice and was given a free pass by the attorney general.”

After years of speculation and accusation, these documents offer a chance for everyone to view a key function of American democracy. That opportunity — hard-won, but enshrined anew with each additional FOIA release — commences today. It will last long after all the players have departed.

The first batch of documents are posted here online, and while there's no bombshell level stuff yet, there are some very interesting new wrinkles, such as Bannon though Manafort should be "avoided like the plague" and that he though Michael Cohen was "the kind of guy who thought it was a good idea to send $130,000 to Stormy Daniels".

It's the gift that keeps on giving...

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Before hearing a single word of information presented at a Senate trial, Republican senators are of course already signaling that Donald Trump will be acquitted.

A growing number of Senate Republicans are ready to acknowledge that President Trump used U.S. military aid as leverage to force Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his family as the president repeatedly denies a quid pro quo.

In this shift in strategy to defend Trump, these Republicans are insisting that the president’s action was not illegal and does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense as the Democratic-led House moves forward with the open phase of its probe.

But the shift among Senate Republicans could complicate the message coming from Trump as he furiously fights the claim that he had withheld U.S. aid from Ukraine to pressure it to dig up dirt on a political rival, even as an increasing number of Republicans wonder how long they can continue to argue that no quid pro quo was at play in the matter.

The pivot was the main topic during a private Senate GOP lunch on Wednesday, according to multiple people familiar with the session who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the meeting. Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) argued that there may have been a quid pro quo but said that the U.S. government often attaches conditions to foreign aid and that nothing was amiss in Trump’s doing so in the case of aid to Ukraine, these individuals said.

Inside the lunch, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who ran against Trump in 2016, said a quid pro quo is not illegal unless there is “corrupt intent” and echoed Kennedy’s argument that such conditions are a tool of foreign policy.

“To me, this entire issue is gonna come down to, why did the president ask for an investigation,” Kennedy, who worked as a lawyer, said in an interview. “To me, it all turns on intent, motive. ... Did the president have a culpable state of mind? … Based on the evidence that I see, that I’ve been allowed to see, the president does not have a culpable state of mind.”

The discussion underscores the dilemma for congressional Republicans as a cadre of current and former Trump administration officials paint a consistent picture of a president wiling to use foreign policy to undercut a potential domestic political adversary. On Thursday, Trump appointee and longtime Republican aide-turned-National Security Council adviser Tim Morrison became the latest official to testify that nearly $400 million of congressionally appropriated military aid for Ukraine was frozen to increase pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden, a 2020 presidential contender.

And with the House Democrats voting Thursday to open the closed-door impeachment investigation, undermining the GOP’s complaints about a secretive process, Republicans are frantically seeking a new strategy and talking points to defend the president.

The talking points are now "He did it, he's guilty, but so what?"

That's it, guys.  That's the entire GOP strategy, the talking points, the framing, the unified message.

He did it, but it doesn't matter one bit.