Last Call For Yankee Go Home, Con't

Iraq is apparently serious about kicking us out of the country, and the Trump regime is doubling down, demanding billions more in cash to convince us to stay and protect them from Iran.

In a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi asked the United States to send a delegation to Iraq to set up a mechanism for U.S. troop withdrawal from the country, a statement from the prime minister's office said Friday.

The request followed a vote by the Iraqi parliament to expel thousands of U.S. troops, a direct consequence of a U.S. drone attack that killed senior Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani and nine companions in Baghdad a week ago.

But in a response Friday, the State Department said that any delegation to Baghdad would not focus on pulling out U.S. troops.

“At this time, any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how to best recommit to our strategic partnership — not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

Ortagus stressed that “America is a force for good in the Middle East” and that the purpose of the U.S. military presence in Iraq is “to continue the fight” against the Islamic State. She did not reference Iraq’s request.

She noted that a NATO delegation is at the State Department on Friday “to discuss increasing NATO’s role in Iraq” in line with President Trump’s “desire for burden sharing.” Ortagus added: “There does, however, need to be a conversation between the U.S. and Iraqi governments not just regarding security, but about our financial, economic, and diplomatic partnership.”

This is State Department speak for "It would be a shame if Iran just rolled in there and took over your country and executed everyone in charge, huh."  Pompeo certainly believes the Iraqi government is bluffing and that the next Iraqi PM will be much more amenable to the US staying and the Iraqis paying.

Time will tell if he's right.

Exit observation: I'm old enough to remember candidate Trump promising to bring America's troops home.  Donald the Dove, Hillary The Hawk our media betters declared, remember?

How's that working out?  It was stupidity 42 months ago and is grossly stupid now.

But hey, her emails.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

"Pelosi knows when to walk away from the table" is the fairest thing I can say, because Senate Dems have made sure she has no choice but to fold on sending over impeachment articles and today she signaled she would do just that.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a letter to colleagues Friday that she will ask House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler to "be prepared to" to name impeachment managers and send the articles of impeachment against President Trump to the Senate next week.

Why it matters: Her decision would potentially end a weeks-long standoff between Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the structure of the Senate trial — specifically whether new documents or witnesses would be allowed.

McConnell yesterday signed onto a resolution by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) seeking to change the rules of the Senate to dismiss articles of impeachment if they are not transmitted within 25 days of their approval — which would be Jan. 12. 

The Senate would require a two-thirds majority in order to change the rules, unless McConnell were to invoke the "nuclear option" and decide the issue by a simple majority vote.

The big picture, via Axios' Jonathan Swan and Margaret Talev: Democrats will have to convince at least four Republican senators to join forces with them in order to demand more disclosures as part of President Trump's trial. 

They're likely to lean on Republican senators like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee to press McConnell to agree to some witnesses and document releases the White House is so far refusing.

So we're back to "maybe GOP senators will do the right thing after all!" and it's Lucy yanking Charlie Brown's football all over again for the hundredth time during the Trump regime.  When precisely none of those four senators agree to call witnesses and the trial is wrapped up in a matter of days, people will still act surprised, too.

Of course, people are still acting surprised at this news as Josh Marshall notes:

A telling passage buried deep down in a Wall Street Journal article about why President Trump authorized the Soleimani killing …

Mr. Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said.

Over time I suspect we’ll learn a lot more about this.

I suspect we will, but whether or not this really was a quid pro quo to get his acquittal or this is Trump making stuff up again in order to bring mutually assured destruction to the Senate GOP, we'll only know the truth long after Trump has been acquitted by the Senate.

More surprise by the media and by Democrats will follow, I'm sure.

But Her Emails, Con't

The Justice Department investigation into Hillary Clinton, which apparently has gone on for almost three years now, has finally ended and of course, nothing was found.

A Justice Department inquiry launched more than two years ago to mollify conservatives clamoring for more investigations of Hillary Clinton has effectively ended with no tangible results, and current and former law enforcement officials said they never expected the effort to produce much of anything.

John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, was tapped in November 2017 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to look into concerns raised by President Trump and his allies in Congress that the FBI had not fully pursued cases of possible corruption at the Clinton Foundation and during Clinton’s time as secretary of state, when the U.S. government decided not to block the sale of a company called Uranium One.

As a part of his review, Huber examined documents and conferred with federal law enforcement officials in Little Rock who were handling a meandering probe into the Clinton Foundation, people familiar with the matter said. Current and former officials said that Huber has largely finished and found nothing worth pursuing — though the assignment has not formally ended and no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department or to lawmakers, these people said.

The effective conclusion of his investigation, with no criminal charges or other known impacts, is likely to roil some in the GOP who had hoped the prosecutor would vindicate their long-held suspicions about a political rival. Trump, though, has largely shifted his focus to a different federal prosecutor tapped to do a separate, special investigation: U.S. attorney in Connecticut John Durham, who Attorney General William P. Barr assigned last year to explore the origins of the FBI’s 2016 probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

That FBI investigation was being supervised by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in late 2017, when Trump and his supporters were pressuring senior law enforcement officials to appoint a second special counsel to pursue Clinton.

“Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary and the Dems,” the president tweeted at the time.

Nothing.

The entire farce was just to harass her.  It was forgotten, and it wrapped up with nothing.  The damage was completely political, and it was done long ago.

This is what abuse of power and misuse of the Justice Department really looks like.

 

StupidiNews!

• The House has voted to limit Donald Trump's ability to attack Iran without direct congressional approval, but the vote is largely symbolic as the White House is promising a veto.
• The UK House of Commons has voted to advance PM Boris Johnson's Brexit bill to the House of Lords with a substantial 330-231 vote margin.
• Federal prosecutors say the video of Jeffrey Epstein's first suicide attempt was permanently deleted "by mistake".
• More than one millions in Puerto Rico are still without power after last week's earthquake, officials say power will be restored to most homes by Monday.
• Facebook is refusing to pull misleading political ads from its social media advertising network, saying the burden of interpreting political ads as true or not rests with users.

Last Call For Lowering The Barr, Con't

I've noted before that US Attorney General Bill Barr's statements outside the Justice Department are extraordinarily disturbing, and indicative of a person who does not see the US Constitution as a guideline or guardrail, but something that must be wielded like a broadsword against the "other". In a largely unprecedented move, the NYC Bar Association has called for Barr to be investigated by Congress on those grounds.

The New York City Bar Association has asked Congress to investigate U.S. Attorney General William Barr, saying his recent actions and statements have positioned the Justice Department and its prosecutors as “political partisans willing to use the levers of government to empower certain groups over others.”

The request disclosed on Thursday appears to be the first time the New York bar or any comparable bar association has asked Congress to investigate a sitting attorney general. Last year, 450 former federal prosecutors from Republican and Democratic administrations signed a statement chastising Barr for his handling of the Mueller report on Russian election interference.

In a letter sent this week to the majority and minority leaders of the U.S. House and Senate, New York City Bar leaders described public statements by the attorney general as troubling for an official whose job is to enforce the law without bias.

“The duties to act impartially, to avoid even the appearance of partiality and impropriety, and to avoid manifesting bias, prejudice or partisanship in the exercise of official responsibilities are bedrock obligations for government lawyers,” according to the letter, which was posted Thursday on the association’s website.

“Mr. Barr has disregarded these fundamental obligations in several public statements during the past few months,” the letter continued.

In an October speech at the University of Notre Dame, the letter said, “Mr. Barr launched a partisan attack against ‘so-called progressives’ for supposedly waging a ‘campaign to destroy the traditional moral order.’” The letter added that in the same speech, “Mr. Barr vowed to place the Department of Justice ‘at the forefront’ of efforts to resist ‘forces of secularization.’”

At a gathering of police officials in New Orleans in December, Barr criticized district attorneys from large cities “who style themselves as ‘social justice’ reformers, who spend their time undercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook, and refusing to enforce the law,” the letter said.

The New York City Bar Association had previously called on Barr to recuse himself from any Justice Department matters involving the Trump administration’s policies toward Ukraine, which is the subject of impeachment proceedings in Congress.

The letter also took issue with the attorney general’s rejection of the findings of an internal investigation into the FBI’s handling of contacts between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian officials.

House Democrats may see a duty here, but that would be up to House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler, or newly-minted House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney.  Both representatives are from NYC, so it's entirely possible this is meant to ignite exactly such an investigation.

We'll see what happens.

The Drums Of War, Con't

The Trump regime is trying to sell the story that the Ukranian jet that crashed after takeoff from Tehran on the night that Iran attacked Iraqi/US bases in Iraq with missiles was accidentally shot down by Iranian missile systems.

Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, a Boeing 737–800 en route from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airpot to Kyiv's Boryspil International Airport, stopped transmitting data Tuesday just minutes after takeoff and not long after Iran launched missiles at military bases housing U.S. and allied forces in neighboring Iraq. The aircraft is believed to have been struck by a Russia-built Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile system, known to NATO as Gauntlet, the three officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, told Newsweek.

One Pentagon and one U.S senior intelligence official told Newsweek that the Pentagon's assessment is that the incident was accidental. Iran's anti-aircraft were likely active following the country's missile attack, which came in response to the U.S. killing last week of Revolutionary Guard Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani, sources said.

U.S. Central Command declined to comment on the matter when contacted by Newsweek. No reply was returned from the National Security Council or State Department.

Of the 176 people on board, 82 were Iranian, 63 were Canadian and 11 were Ukrainian (including nine crewmembers), along with 10 Swedish, seven Afghan and three German nationals. None survived.

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau is vowing to get answers, and Iran is starkly denying that the plane was shot down.

The jetliner, a Boeing 737 operated by Ukrainian International Airlines, went down on the outskirts of Tehran during takeoff just hours after Iran launched a barrage of missiles at U.S. forces. While the timing of the disaster led some aviation experts to wonder whether it was brought down by a missile, Iranian officials disputed any such suggestion and blamed mechanical trouble.

“The rumors about the plane are completely false and no military or political expert has confirmed it,” Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, spokesman for the Iranian armed forces, was quoted by the semiofficial Fars news agency as saying. He said the rumors were “psychological warfare” by the government’s opponents.

In Washington, a Democrat who attended a classified briefing from Trump administration officials on Capitol Hill — including Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and CIA Director Gina Haspel — said the briefers had no intelligence indicating the plane was shot down. The lawmaker spoke on condition of anonymity.

So it wasn't included in the brief yesterday, but all of a sudden today it's Iran's fault.

You'll excuse me if I question this particular administration's record on truthfulness.

Yes, there's no question that the plane went down with all souls aboard, but I will need confirmation from another source before I believe this to be true.  If it is true, Iran killed 176 civilians with military weapons and has to be held accountable.

If it's not true, the Trump regime must be held accountable.

Time will tell who is correct.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

At least a few Senate Democrats want Nancy Pelosi to transmit articles of impeachment to the Senate so that the trial can start, and that there's no benefit to keeping them in the House, so it looks like Senate Dems are throwing in the towel on this fight.  Surprise, right?

A growing number of Democratic senators are saying it's time for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to submit the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate.

"We are reaching a point where the articles of impeachment should be sent," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters Wednesday.

In an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday, Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said he believes "it is time for the speaker to send" the articles.

"I don't think her holding them puts any particular pressure on" Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., King said. "I think the key vote will come in the middle of the trial."

Meanwhile, Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., told CNN on Tuesday in remarks confirmed by NBC News that he is "hoping" Pelosi will soon submit the articles, although he is still concerned about an agreement to hear from witnesses during the Senate trial.

Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Joe Manchin, D-W.V., both told The Washington Post on Tuesday that they believe it's time to transmit the articles.

Manchin told MSNBC on Wednesday, "The sooner we receive this, the sooner we can find out if we're going to have a real trial or not."

So far, Pelosi is standing firm, continuing to withhold the articles until the Senate process is explicitly laid out, though she suggested she could soon submit them.

"Soon, the Senate will have the opportunity to honor its oath to 'do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws,'" Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues Tuesday before arguing that the process proposed by McConnell is unfair.

That's at least five Senate Democrats who want to get on with the process already, and it's not just the obvious red state Dems like Jones and Manchin, either.  If both Connecticut senators and Angus King want this to happen, then Pelosi is out of time.

This is waving the flag.  It's not Pelosi's fault here.  She got the job done.  It's Senate Dems who are folding here.

What happens next I'm not sure, but it's pretty clear that Senate Dems aren't going to use delaying articles of impeachment for leverage any more.

Mitch McConnell has 100% won this battle.  Whether or not he's just won the war remains to be seen, but expecting Senate Republicans to break from him during the middle of the trial in order to call witnesses is not something I'd be willing to bet money on. Sadly, we've bet the future of this country on it, with an increasingly unstable criminal in the White House.

StupidiNews!

• Britain's Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan are "stepping back" from their roles as senior members of the royal family and will be working towards achieving financial independence.
• Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin says congressional Democrats should drop legislation that would disclose how much Donald Trump has spent on travel.
• A UN investigation has found that Yemeni Houthi rebels were not responsible for September's drone attack on Saudi oilfields, bolstering the US claim that Iran was involved.
• University of Sydney researchers say estimates of dead wildlife from months of continuing Australian bushfires has reached one billion animals.
• NYC's new broadband plan calls for 100% fiber optic internet availability, but reaching that goal will require heavy investment from private ISPs.

Last Call For Look For The Union Pixel

The nation's largest tech workers' union is launching a major project to organize one of the most powerless groups of labor professionals out there: video game coders.

The Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE for short) is a new project of the Communications Workers of America aimed specifically at unionizing video game and tech companies.

It grew out of conversations between the CWA and Game Workers Unite, a grass-roots organization that sprang up in 2018 to push for wall-to-wall unionization of the $43-billion video game industry, alongside conversations with organizers across the larger tech industry.

Separate from the new initiative, the Toronto chapter of GWU has also signed a formal partnership agreement with CWA to work on organizing in the area. (CWA is also the parent union of the NewsGuild, which represents workers at the L.A. Times and most major newspapers in the country.)

“We’ve been watching the amazing organizing of workers across the industry,” said Tom Smith, CWA’s lead organizer. “And workers themselves reached out to us while doing that amazing self-organizing, and said, ‘Can we do this in partnership with the CWA?’”
The union declined to specify how much money it was putting behind the new effort, but has put two organizers on payroll to lead the push with support from dozens of CWA staff members across the country.

One of the new staffers, Wes McEnany, comes from a more traditional labor organizing career with Boston-area unions and the labor-backed campaign for a $15 minimum wage. CWA also hired Emma Kinema, who co-founded Game Workers Unite and organized the Los Angeles and Orange County chapters of the group.

The dedicated staff and national ambition set the CODE project apart from other efforts to organize tech workers, such as the United Steelworkers-backed Pittsburgh Assn. of Tech Professionals, which successfully unionized Google subcontractors in September.

“In my experience self-organizing in the game industry, people are very bottlenecked by the lack of resources and lack of legal know-how and a lack of funding — it’s very tough,” Kinema said. “The decades of experience and resources that come from partnering with an organization like CWA can take it to the next level.”

Working conditions in the video game industry have brought the question of unionization to the forefront in recent years. At a 2019 video game developer conference, the industry’s practice of making employees work 100-hour weeks for months on end to finish a game in time for the preset delivery date, often without extra pay — a practice known as “crunch” — came under fire in discussions among workers, as did the rolling layoffs that come when companies staff up and shed jobs to fit cyclical production schedules.
And in the tech industry writ large, workplace actions have extended beyond concerns over bread-and-butter issues such as pay and severance to questions of ethics and culture. The worldwide Google walkouts, and the walkout at Los Angeles game studio Riot Games that followed, grew out of employee demands to end the practice of forcing workers into private arbitration instead of allowing them to sue over claims of sexual harassment and workplace discrimination.

Other actions, such as the walkout at online furniture seller Wayfair and a number of petitions filed by workers at Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce, have pushed back against corporate decisions to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Department of Defense. And Irvine-based Activision Blizzard faced internal and external protests in late 2019 after it punished a professional gamer who made statements supporting the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

The organizers behind the new effort see the push for better working conditions and corporate ethics as one and the same.

“I think it’s a false dichotomy to frame the activism of a lot of tech workers around the impact that the work they do has on society as something other than a fundamental working condition,” Smith said. “For a lot of folks, that’s what led them to do this work in the first place, and people are feeling a disconnect between their personal values and what they’re seeing every day in their working lives.”

This is long, long overdue.  The nation's tech companies are collectively worth trillions, and the game segment of that industry makes tens of billions every year.  80-100 workweeks for "crunch" are the norm, they are expected from game giants like Activision Blizzard, EA, and Ubisoft.  Organizing labor is absolutely needed in 2020, even when you're making video games.

Here's hoping this goes far, fast.

It's About Suppression, Con't

This piece in The Atlantic by American University professor Ibram X. Kendi absolutely captures what I've been trying to say for years: the real swing voter is the young black voter and the young Latino voter who is deciding whether or not the Democratic candidate is worth wading through all the GOP voter suppression and disinformation in order to vote in the first place.

The common conception of the swing voter is one who shifts between voting Republican and voting Democrat. These center-right or center-left voters are typically white and older. Meanwhile, people of color and young people, and especially young people of color, are more likely than white people and older people to swing between voting Democrat and not voting (or voting third party). These are America’s other swing voters. Othered because they are typically young and not-white. Othered because they are hardly recognized at the table of political agency. Othered because they are primarily recognized at the table of political shame when they don’t vote. Othered because Americans refuse to recognize how voter suppression and depression affect their agency. Quietly, though, they are voicing their agency, declaring the Democratic Party irresponsible for the candidate choices it makes, swinging, and deciding elections.

Americans use many names for these other swing voters, other than swing voter. Irregular voter, occasional voter, or other such labels fail to capture how those vacillating between voting Democrat and not voting at all are swinging elections. Nonvoter conflates many distinct groups. There is a profound difference between the nonvoter who doesn’t assess the Democrat (or Republican), because she has no intention of voting, and the other swing voter who assesses the Democrat, dislikes her, and decides not to vote (or votes third party). There is a profound difference between the nonvoter who refuses to vote no matter what, and the other swing voter who ended up not voting, because her original dislike for the Democrat prevented her from overcoming being purged from the voting rolls, the difficulties of registering to vote, the appeals of anti-Democrat Russian trolling, the loss of already low wages, and the long lines on Election Day. 

Among registered black voters, 19 percent who did not cast a ballot in the 2016 election said it’s because they disliked the candidates or their campaign issues, up from 3 percent in 2012, when Obama was on the ballot, according to the Pew Research Center. Disliking the candidates or their campaign issues was also the reason given by 25 percent of those “Hispanic registered voters” who did not cast a ballot in 2016, up from 9 percent in 2012.

As the proportion of white voters and older voters declines in the electorate, and if Democrats continue to lose non-college-educated whites, the other swing voter’s importance will only increase for Democrats in 2020 and beyond. Today, the other swing voter is prototypically young and black. Tomorrow, the other swing voter will probably be prototypically young and Latino.

Democrats are busy debating which candidate is the most electable, meaning which candidate has the best chance to defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Differing forecasts are based on differing autopsies of the 2016 presidential election. Some Democrats say Clinton lost because she lost the swing voter; therefore, Democrats need a candidate who can win back the swing voter (denoting white people). Other Democrats say Clinton lost due to a decline in turnout; therefore, Democrats need a candidate who can turn out the party’s base (denoting people of color). Still other Democrats are urging their party to focus on both, as they search for another candidate like Obama in 2008, who can woo white swing voters outside Philadelphia and also those young black men waving the enormous American flag before my stunned eyes.

I have long advocated for increasing turnout while being uncomfortable with the terminology of this debate. I could not pinpoint a replacement term for turnout until now. I could not pinpoint the source of my discomfort until now. 

White swing voters are largely treated like political free agents who must be persuaded to vote for candidates they like. People of color and young people are treated like political cattle who must be whipped into shape to turn out for candidates they often don’t like. Whoever compels change is politically free. Whoever is compelled to change is politically captive. Candidates and campaigns routinely change their profile—often by moving to the middle—to better attract the white swing voter in the general election. But people of color and young people usually find that the change has come at their expense. 

Don’t get me wrong: I think all Americans should always vote. I think voting is extremely important. But candidates and their policies are more important. In our political environment, young black voters receive lectures on the importance of voting, while white swing voters receive memos on the importance of candidates. In other words, young black voters are encouraged to vote. White swing voters are encouraged to vote for candidates.

In a word, turnout encapsulates the long-standing paternalism of too many Democrats toward people of color, young people, and especially young people of color who don’t always vote. By contrast, talking about the other swing voter restores their political freedom and agency.

This is one of the most vital and important articles I've read in the Trump era.  This is why our media and our pundits are failing us, because to them the "swing voter" is the older white millennial or Gen Xer in the Midwest who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 but is firmly behind Trump now, when the real swing voter is the young black man who voted for the first time in 2008 for Obama and hasn't cast a ballot since because he's been purged from the voter rolls.

I'm hoping that after four years of Trump, getting rid of the guy will be enough to get people to vote, to overcome voter suppression and disenfranchisement.  These are the people we need to reach.  These are the people we need to help.

These are the people we need to give a candidate to.

But so many have fallen before a single primary vote has been cast.

Meanwhile here in Kentucky, the GOP-controlled legislative session is under way and the first order of business is voter suppression through strict photo ID.  It wasn't a problem when Matt Bevin was governor, not until he lost by under 1% of the vote, and they plan to roll it out in time for November, meaning tens of thousands will be disenfranchised.

Republicans want as few people to vote as possible.

Never forget that.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

Mitch McConnell says he has the 51 votes needed to proceed with the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump without any votes or input for Democrats and that the trial will start without witnesses, for now.

The Kentucky Republican said Tuesday he has locked down sufficient backing in his 53-member caucus to pass a blueprint for the trial that leaves the question of seeking witnesses and documents until after opening arguments are made.

That framework would mirror the contours of President Bill Clinton’s trial and ignore Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s demands for witnesses and new evidence at the outset.

“We have the votes once the impeachment trial has begun to pass a resolution essentially the same — very similar — to the 100 to nothing vote in the Clinton trial,” McConnell told reporters. “All we’re doing here is saying we’re going to get started in exactly the same way that 100 senators agreed to 20 years ago.”

The GOP leader added that the Senate will "get around to the discussion of witnesses," but not before the Senate trial begins.

Schumer reiterated his pledge to force votes on witnesses and documents and offered his own warning to Senate Republicans Tuesday afternoon: "You can run but you can't hide."

"Large numbers of Republicans have refused to say whether they are for witnesses and documents and that’s why Leader McConnell came up with this kick-the-can down the road theory," Schumer said. "McConnell will never go for it but will four of his Republican colleagues?"

The move is just the latest exercise of blunt political power by McConnell, who since becoming majority leader has found myriad ways to sideline Democrats and move his agenda with narrow majorities. And the partisan impeachment road isn’t without risk: Republicans are doing little to distance themselves from the president even on process questions, let alone the ultimate decision of whether to remove Trump from office.

Yet Republicans say Democrats offered them little alternative: Most scoffed at the idea that Schumer could determine what evidence is heard in the Senate. And McConnell's strategy has key backing from the handful of Republican swing votes heading into the trial, though many senators, like Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), had hoped Schumer and McConnell could come to an agreement.

“We’ve gotten so snarled up with debate over witnesses that the two leaders haven’t been able to come to terms on this first phase so it looks like we’ll go forward with a Republican [package],” said Murkowski, who said she would support McConnell’s proposal.

So the impasse continues.  Pelosi still hasn't sent over impeachment articles, but McConnell has the votes to proceed anyway.  The second Pelosi does send them over, Democrats lose all leverage, and McConnell can do whatever he can get 51 votes for, including dismissing the charges against Trump outright.

We'll see what happens.

StupidiNews!

• Australian police have accused 24 people of arson as deadly brushfires spread across the nation, police have taken action against nearly 200 people for fire-related crimes since November 8.
• New York's state supreme court has ruled that the defamation lawsuit from former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos can be heard by the New York Court of Appeals.
• Justice Department prosecutors are seeking prison time for convicted former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, saying he "has not learned his lesson" from the Mueller probe.
• A fundraiser for Donald Trump's inaugural committee will plead guilty to obstruction of justice charges in connection with the investigation into Trump 2016 illegal campaign finance charges.
• Facebook says it will ban "deepfake" videos used to impersonate political figures, but the social media network will not automatically ban conventionally doctored videos without reason.

Last Call For The Drums Of War, Con't

We're all but in an open shooting war with Iran as of tonight.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that Iran launched more than a dozen missiles at two Iraqi bases that hold US troops in response to the US airstrike that killed a top Iranian general last week. 

The attack comes days after the US killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in an airstrike in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The administration has sought to cast that strike as an attempt to de-escalate tensions with Iran, but Tehran has vowed revenge for the killing, which it says was an "act of war" and "state terrorism." 

Jonathan Hoffman, a Pentagon spokesperson, said Tuesday evening that Iran launched more than a dozen missiles at the al-Asad airbase, which houses US troops, and American and coalition forces in the town of Erbil. Hoffman said the Pentagon is assessing the damage done by the attacks. 

"In recent days and in response to Iranian threats and actions, the Department of Defense has taken all appropriate measures to safeguard our personnel and partners," Hoffman said in a statement. "These bases have been on high alert due to indications that the Iranian regime planned to attack our forces and interests in the region." 

"As we evaluate the situation and our response, we will take all necessary measures to protect and defend U.S. personnel, partners, and allies in the region." 

Qatri al-Obeidi, a commander in the nearby town of al-Baghdadi, said that the shelling has stopped for now. President Donald Trump visited the base in December 2018 to visit troops after Christmas. Vice President Mike Pence also visited the base in November 2019. The attack follows last week's deadly US drone strike that Trump ordered to kill Soleimani. 

Iranian state TV reported that the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, "has hit U.S. Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq with tens of missiles." The IRGC warned the US of of more "crushing responses in case of new aggression," according to state TV. The IRGC said it will target any regional state that becomes a platform for US aggression, a second banner on state TV read. 

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper's office called the office of the Prime Minister of Iraq at around 7 pm ET on Tuesday, according to a diplomatic source. There were difficulties getting through as it was the middle of the night in Baghdad. Eventually the two offices were able to connect and the source says there has been "communication between the US and Iraqi governments at the highest level."

Iran openly taking credit for the missiles against an Iraqi base with US troops is a big deal, Iranian state TV warning that anyone supporting the US in attacking Iran, like say, Iraq or Saudi Arabia (or possibly Israel, Turkey, Kuwait or Bahrain) will be attacked too is a much, much bigger deal.

Some sort of diplomatic effort right now would be ideal, but if Trump decides to flatten a major chunk of Tehran with a couple score Tomahawks, all bets are off.

The next step after this up the ladder is actual war, guys.  Trump won't give a damn about any AUMF or what Congress thinks.  If he's not reined in right now, tonight, we're going to war.

I hate being right.

Deportation Nation, Con't

Meanwhile, with the last major logistical hurdle stopping the Trump regime's plan for mass deportations of undocumented removed with Guatemala offering itself up to take America's cash in exchange for becoming our dumping ground for undesirables, it looks like the Stephen Miller plan will soon be in full swing.

Mexicans seeking asylum in the United States could be sent to Guatemala under a bilateral agreement signed by the Central American nation last year, according to documents sent to U.S. asylum officers in recent days and seen by Reuters.

In a Jan. 4 email, field office staff at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) were told Mexican nationals will be included in the populations “amenable” to the agreement with Guatemala. 

The agreement, brokered last July between the administration of Republican President Donald Trump and the outgoing Guatemalan government, allows U.S. immigration officials to send migrants requesting asylum at the U.S.-Mexican border to apply for protection in Guatemala instead. 

Mexico objects to the plan, its foreign ministry said in a statement late on Monday, adding that it would be working with authorities to find “better options” for those that could be affected. 

Trump has made clamping down on unlawful migration a top priority of his presidency and a major theme of his 2020 re-election campaign. His administration penned similar deals with Honduras and El Salvador last year. 

U.S. Democrats and pro-migrant groups have opposed the move and contend asylum seekers will face danger in Guatemala, where the murder rate is five times that of the United States, according to 2017 data compiled by the World Bank. The country’s asylum office is tiny and thinly staffed and critics have argued it lacks the capacity to properly vet a significant increase in cases. 

Guatemalan President-elect Alejandro Giammattei, who takes office this month, has said he will review the agreement. 

Acting Deputy U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said in a tweet in December that Mexicans were being considered for inclusion under the agreement.

USCIS referred questions to DHS, which referred to Cuccinelli’s tweet. Mexico’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Deporting Mexicans at the US border to Guatemala is being done on purpose to get Mexico to play ball, and all indications are the President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will give in. Mass deportations of asylum seekers will begin in 2020, followed of course by mass deportations of undocumented in the US, rounded up by ICE.  Sure to be a number of actual US citizens who are going to get one-way trips to Central America, but who in this government will give a damn?

That pipeline is going to start gushing pretty soon.  It's an election year, and should Trump win, it's a flood that won't cease anytime soon.

The Red Rout Resumes, Con't

The first major Trump regime political casualty of the war with Iran is apparently Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's Senate run in Kansas.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday told Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, that he does not plan to run for Senate in 2020, most likely ending Republicans’ hopes of securing a potentially dominant candidate for the open seat in his home state of Kansas, according to four people briefed on the meeting.

Mr. Pompeo, a former congressman from the Wichita area, has quietly explored a campaign for months. But in the aftermath of the military operation last week that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran, Mr. Pompeo has told senior party officials that he is ruling out becoming a candidate, according to several people who have spoken with him directly.

Mr. Pompeo still has time to change his mind. The filing deadline for the primary is not until June. However, administration officials who have spoken with him in recent days said he seemed adamant about not entering the race.

Without Mr. Pompeo in the race, Republicans face an unsettled primary that includes at least one candidate, Kris Kobach, whom party leaders fear could imperil their hold on a crucial open Senate seat. Mr. Kobach, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, is popular with hard-right primary voters but widely disliked among moderate and independent voters in Kansas.

Several other candidates are competing for the Republican nomination, including Representative Roger Marshall. National Democrats have rallied behind Barbara Bollier, a state senator who left the G.O.P. to become a Democrat a little more than a year ago, as their preferred candidate.

Mr. Pompeo’s decision is a setback for Republicans working to retain their Senate majority in the November elections. Mr. McConnell aggressively courted him for months, and also deployed a number of his lieutenants to make the case that the secretary of state should return to Kansas, which he represented in the House until he joined the Trump administration.

There's no way Pompeo would have been able to leave the State Department with his career intact, and he would have been blasted by questions about why he left in the middle of a war to go run for Senate.

There's a very real possibility now that Kobach wins the primary and loses the general to a Democrat, Barbara Bollier, who has endorsements from both US Attorney Barry Grissom and popular former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.  Pompeo was, up until Friday, the GOP's best hope to keep the seat.  It's still going to be a tough sell, but Kobach has already lost the 2018 governor's race, and there isn't anything to make me think he improved anything heading into November.

Could be a big pickup for Team Blue.