Bitter Ingredients, Bitter Nazis, Papa John's

Papa John's Pizza is based here in Kentucky (Louisville is home to both it and competitor Yum! Brands and Pizza Hut, go figure we're the capital of greasy food) and CEO and founder John Schnatter made headlines last week complaining that the pizza delivery chain's 2017 financial woes were directly the problem of people boycotting the NFL over Black Lives Matter and Colin Kaepernick.

Papa John's is reevaluating its NFL sponsorship after controversyinvolving players' protests during the national anthem engulfed the chain.

"If the viewership decline continues, we will need to shift into things that work more effectively for us," Papa John’s President and Chief Operating Officer Steve Ritchie told the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

On Wednesday, Papa John's CEO and founder John Schnatter slammed the NFL, blaming the league's "poor leadership" and declining ratings on the pizza chain's sales slump. According to Schnatter, controversy surrounding players' protests had played a role in ratings decline.

Makes sense, ratings are down, pizza sales are down, so it must be black peoples' fault!

The problem is Schnatter now has a much, much bigger issue on his hands: the neo-Nazis have latched onto him as not only the official pizza of the NFL, but the "official pizza of white supremacy".

Neo-Nazis and white supremacists have always been distasteful, but now it turns out their taste in pizza is terrible, too. 

The white supremacist website the Daily Stormer announced Thursday that Papa John’s pizza is the official pie of the alt-right, posting a picture of a pizza with a swastika fashioned from pepperoni slices. The caption reads, "Papa John: Official pizza of the alt-right?"

That had Schnatter scrambling for clean-up over the weekend trying to desperately distance his pizza chain from actual Nazis.

But after the Nazi pizza fiasco, Papa Johns issued a clear message to neo-Nazis and other hate groups, warning them off their products. 

Peter Collins, the senior director of public relations at Papa Johns, said in a statement: “We condemn racism in all forms and any and all hate groups that support it.” 

“We do not want these individuals or groups to buy our pizza,” he added. 

Papa Johns CEO John Schnatter’s comments about the NFL were widely criticized, after he suggested he would be pulling advertising from the league over the police brutality protests.

You don't get much more of a confirmation that your CEO's comments on Black Lives Matter protests in the NFL were stupidly racist than actual Nazis publicly agreeing with you and telling other Nazis to buy your company's product, guys.  That's pretty much the max level on that one.

I kind of feel a bit sorry for Peter Collins here, this is one hell of a shitshow and he's probably going to get fired because the guy he works for put out such a series of dog whistle racist comments that Nazis showed up to applaud it.  As a PR professional, that's about as bad as it gets.

By the way, I stopped eating Papa John's more than once every couple of months because there's much better pizza in Cincinnati, Schnatter's always been an asshole, and I used to work there in college so I know what goes in the pies.

Don't eat there.  Trust me.

The Fulcrum Crumbles In Riyadh, Con't

I talked earlier this week about the precipitous events in Saudi Arabia over the weekend as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has locked down power in the kingdom by convincing his father, King Salman, to appoint him as head of an anti-corruption commission where he promptly took out dozens of his own family members in a coup.

Meanwhile, MBS is the man behind the Saudi military intervention in Yemen, which has now led to a larger humanitarian crisis than Syria by a factor of millions more displaced.  MBS is a religious and cultural moderate, but a massive military hawk and autocrat who sees himself as the benevolent leader that the Saudis must have to make it in a future without oil.  Saudi Arabia has already made moves on Qatar and Lebanon, blockading the former through a botched coup attempt and crushing the latter in a vice as that country's former PM resigned and fled to Riyadh over the weekend as well.

But MBS's true goal is to go after Iran, as this conflict is as old as the Shi'a/Sunni split is Islam. So far it's been a bloody proxy war.  But in the Trump era, that's turning into the distinct possibility of a more direct conflict.  Tuesday, Saudi Arabia upped the ante big time.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has accused Iran of an act of "direct military aggression" by supplying missiles to rebels in Yemen. 

This "may be considered an act of war", state media quoted the prince as telling UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in a telephone conversation. 

On Saturday, a ballistic missile was intercepted near the Saudi capital. 

Iran denies arming the Houthi movement, which has fought a Saudi-led coalition backing Yemen's government since 2015. 

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the prince's claim was "dangerous". 

Houthi-aligned media reported that the rebels had fired a Burkan H2 ballistic missile at King Khaled International Airport, which is 850km (530 miles) from the Yemeni border and 11km north-east of Riyadh. Saudi missile defences intercepted the missile in flight, but some fragments fell inside the airport area. 

Human Rights Watch said the launch of an indiscriminate missile at a predominantly civilian airport was an apparent war crime.

There's no doubt that both the Trump regime in Washington and the Netanyahu government in Israel, both rocked by domestic scandals, would want a welcome distraction backing the Saudis in a fight against Tehran.

Stay tuned.

The Lessons Of Tuesday Night

Why did Ralph Northam win Virginia's gubernatorial last night by nearly ten points?  Black, Asian, and Latinx voters, and especially black women.

Gillespie won both white men and...surprise!...white women (Nobody should be surprised by this, actually.)  It wasn't women who gave Ralph Northam the win, it was women of color who gave him the win. Among white voters, who still made up two-thirds of voters last night, Gillespie had a cake walk and won going away.

Enough black voters turned out to not only stop Gillespie cold, but to pick up the seats they needed in order to, along with Northam's win and Democrat Justin Fairfax's win as the state's new black Lt. Governor, take control of the state's House of Delegates in a 50-50 split by picking up a whopping 16 seats.

Northam has about an 8.5% win.  That's pretty much the exact margin black women gave him overall.  Without black women, this is a tie race.  With them, Northam won easily.

Oh, and with Dems winning the Washington State Senate special election and New Jersey's gubernatorial race, that's three states last night that went from split to Democratic control.

Maine too voted to expand Medicaid.  Overwhelmingly.

Thanks, Donny!

The lesson is when black voters show up, Democrats win and win BIG. We know this. What I don't know why we're trying to worry about winning back white men who voted for Republicans by a 27 point margin.  Get more black votes out.  Fight voter suppression.  Jesus, it's not multi-variable calculus, guys.

Republicans know this lesson well and have been trying to disenfranchise black voters for decades exactly because they know black voters win election for Dems because we vote for Dems. Duh.

Why some Democrats still yet don't understand this, I'll never know.

StupidiNews!

• Democrats had a huge election night with wins in Virginia and New Jersey, including Virginia electing the nation's first openly transgender woman to serve in a state legislature. 
• Former Phillies and Blue Jays pitching ace Roy Halliday was killed Tuesday when his small plane crashed off the coast of Florida Tuesday afternoon.
• Business and environmental groups are pushing House Republicans to act on federal flood insurance renewal legislation before the program expires on December 8th.
• House GOP lawmakers are looking to plug a $74 revenue hole in the party's proposed tax plan by repealing Obamacare's individual mandate.
• Twitter has officially doubled the character limit on tweets to 280 characters, but says testing shows the vast majorities of users and tweets won't need or use the space.

Last Call For Making The Case

The FOX-ification of the American political landscape has so poisoned the country to the very idea that government can ever work, that even a year into the Trump era, the Democrats have their worst brand polling since Reagan/Bush.

Favorable views of the Democratic Party have dropped to their lowest mark in more than a quarter century of polling, according to new numbers from a CNN poll conducted by SSRS. 

Only 37% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Democrats, down from 44% in March of this year. A majority, 54%, have an unfavorable view, matching their highest mark in polls from CNN and SSRS, CNN/ORC and CNN/USA Today/Gallup stretching back to 1992. 

The rating includes low favorable ratings from some core Democratic groups, including nonwhites (48%) and people under 35 years old (33%). The numbers come amid recent feuds and divisions in the Democratic Party, as former interim chair Donna Brazile's new book has unveiled new questions about infighting during the 2016 presidential campaign.
But the Republican Party isn't doing any better, with just 30% of Americans holding a favorable view. That's essentially the same as September, when the rating hit its lowest point in polling back to 1992, but down from 42% in March. A broad 6 in 10, 61%, have an unfavorable opinion. 

This means both parties sit at or near rock bottom as voters go to the polls across the country on Tuesday, most prominently in governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey, as well as dozens of local and mayoral races nationwide. 

A substantial 33% of liberals and 41% of conservatives have unfavorable views of the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. Plus, 4 in 10 independents, 42%, say they have an unfavorable view of both parties vs. only 8% who say they have a favorable view of both. 

Indeed, a bare majority of Americans, 51%, say it's bad for the country that the Republican Party is in control of Congress. Only 38% say GOP control is good for the nation. That's worse than at any point in CNN's polling on the Democratic majority in Congress between 2007 and 2010.

Democratic approval isn't going to get better anytime soon either, not with Millennials polling the Dems at 33%.  America's younger voters have essentially given up on the two-party system as is after Obama.  They're done with both parties, the Republicans come in at a worse 28% among Millennials.

But frankly, Ralph Northam just whipped Ed Gillespie's ass tonight ANYWAY.

We won.  BIG.

Dems in 2018.

The Other Races Today

Virginia's gubernatorial race today has gotten a lot of coverage, but as Matt Yglesias reminds us, other state issues and several mayoral races will have a major impact on 2018 and 2020 politics.

National media coverage of Tuesday’s elections has focused fairly overwhelmingly on the governor’s race in Virginia, which seems to be close and features some interesting storylines about Ed Gillespie’s race-baiting electioneering tactics, which, if successful, will likely prove to be a model for Republicans nationwide. 

But the policy stakes outside Virginia — in the not-so-close gubernatorial election in New Jersey, a Washington state Senate special election, and a Maine ballot initiative to expand Medicaid — are equally high. These other races haven’t attracted as much attention because they’re less interesting from a horse-race perspective. The New Jersey race looks set to be a Democratic blowout, the state Senate special in the suburbs of Seattle is lightly polled but also seems to clearly favor Democrats, and the paucity of polling in Maine makes it hard to construct any kind of narrative. 

Yet Democratic victories in these three races have huge effects. An expected Democratic win in New Jersey would create a Democratic trifecta in a blue state — potentially unleashing a wave of progressive policymaking that’s been stifled by eight years of Chris Christie. Flipping Washington’s state Senate from a one-vote GOP majority to a one-vote Democratic majority will also create a Democratic trifecta; a narrow legislative margin but one that creates new opportunities when combined with Washington state’s stronger fiscal position. Medicaid expansion in Maine would be a huge deal for the estimated 70,000 Mainers newly qualified for the program and a shot in the arm to rural hospitals.

And this is big news because Dems getting full control of New Jersey and Washington State back means they'll be much better equipped to battle Trump regime nonsense going into next year and in 2020 when redistricting and the White House are both on the line.  Dems need all the help they can get.

Not to mention tens of thousands of Mainers getting access to health care, in a state that has been badly abused by the racist austerity idiocy of GOP Gov. Paul LePage.  A vote to expand Medicaid in the Trump era would send shockwaves through all 50 states, period.

Here's hoping that I have good news to report tomorrow as well.

The Smarmy Army Of Harvey

Ronan Farrow, the one-time MSNBC wunderkind host unceremoniously booted out for low ratings, has redeemed himself with breaking the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault file wide open.  But Farrow isn't done with Weinstein's awful legacy just yet, dropping yet another New Yorker bombshell on how the disgraced media mogul turned to ex-Mossad agents for hire in order to run his own intelligence operation against the women he had assaulted.

In the fall of 2016, Harvey Weinstein set out to suppress allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted numerous women. He began to hire private security agencies to collect information on the women and the journalists trying to expose the allegations. According to dozens of pages of documents, and seven people directly involved in the effort, the firms that Weinstein hired included Kroll, which is one of the world’s largest corporate-intelligence companies, and Black Cube, an enterprise run largely by former officers of Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies. Black Cube, which has branches in Tel Aviv, London, and Paris, offers its clients the skills of operatives “highly experienced and trained in Israel’s elite military and governmental intelligence units,” according to its literature. 

Two private investigators from Black Cube, using false identities, met with the actress Rose McGowan, who eventually publicly accused Weinstein of rape, to extract information from her. One of the investigators pretended to be a women’s-rights advocate and secretly recorded at least four meetings with McGowan. The same operative, using a different false identity and implying that she had an allegation against Weinstein, met twice with a journalist to find out which women were talking to the press. In other cases, journalists directed by Weinstein or the private investigators interviewed women and reported back the details. 

The explicit goal of the investigations, laid out in one contract with Black Cube, signed in July, was to stop the publication of the abuse allegations against Weinstein that eventually emerged in the New York Times and The New Yorker. Over the course of a year, Weinstein had the agencies “target,” or collect information on, dozens of individuals, and compile psychological profiles that sometimes focussed on their personal or sexual histories. Weinstein monitored the progress of the investigations personally. He also enlisted former employees from his film enterprises to join in the effort, collecting names and placing calls that, according to some sources who received them, felt intimidating. 

In some cases, the investigative effort was run through Weinstein’s lawyers, including David Boies, a celebrated attorney who represented Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential-election dispute and argued for marriage equality before the U.S. Supreme Court. Boies personally signed the contract directing Black Cube to attempt to uncover information that would stop the publication of a Times story about Weinstein’s abuses, while his firm was also representing the Times, including in a libel case. 

Boies confirmed that his firm contracted with and paid two of the agencies and that investigators from one of them sent him reports, which were then passed on to Weinstein. He said that he did not select the firms or direct the investigators’ work. He also denied that the work regarding the Times story represented a conflict of interest. Boies said that his firm’s involvement with the investigators was a mistake. “We should not have been contracting with and paying investigators that we did not select and direct,” he told me. “At the time, it seemed a reasonable accommodation for a client, but it was not thought through, and that was my mistake. It was a mistake at the time.” 

Techniques like the ones used by the agencies on Weinstein’s behalf are almost always kept secret, and, because such relationships are often run through law firms, the investigations are theoretically protected by attorney-client privilege, which could prevent them from being disclosed in court. The documents and sources reveal the tools and tactics available to powerful individuals to suppress negative stories and, in some cases, forestall criminal investigations. 

In a statement, Weinstein’s spokesperson, Sallie Hofmeister, said, “It is a fiction to suggest that any individuals were targeted or suppressed at any time.”

In other words, Weinstein had a paid, world-class intelligence network at his disposal with the express intent of gaining leverage over anyone who might have spilled his story into the public spotlight.  He also had his former employees working for him, intimidated into being his eyes and ears.

In the end, it failed and Farrow was able to break the original story as well as this one.

Maybe the kid actually knows what he's doing.

StupidiNews!

• In South Korea, Donald Trump says diplomatic pressure to stop North Korea from gaining nuclear weapons is working, but repeated warnings that military force may be necessary.
• Attorney General Jeff Sessions will face tough questions before the House Judiciary Committee next week as an oversight meeting now takes on added importance over Russia.
• NATO will send 3,000 more troops to Afghanistan to assist in the training mission there, with half the troops coming from the United States.
• Voters in Virginia and New Jersey go to the polls today to elect governors, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Seattle and Cincinnati all elect mayors.
• A flaw exposing millions of high-end digital encryption keys reported last month is easier to exploit than first though, prompting Estonia to suspend thousands of digital ID cards.

Last Call For That Poll-Asked Look

Ahead of tomorrow's gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats are looking they best they have since, well, the last time we got stuck with an incompetently criminal/criminally incompetent GOP government.

Voters say they prefer Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives over Republicans by the widest margin in over a decade, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll — a fresh sign of trouble for the GOP majority one year before the midterm elections.

But Democrats’ effort to convert widespread disapproval of President Trump into victories in 2018 could be undercut by lower turnout, with Republicans expressing just as much motivation to vote in next year’s elections.

A slim 51 percent majority of registered voters say that if the election were held today, they would vote for or lean toward the Democratic candidate in their congressional district, while 40 percent say they would choose the Republican.

That’s the biggest spread in a Post-ABC survey since October 2006, just weeks before a midterm in which Democrats won back control of the House and Senate amid deep dissatisfaction with then-President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. 

In recent history, regardless of the political climate, Democrats have tended to hold an advantage on this “generic ballot” question, which does not name specific candidates. On the eve of the 2014 and 2010 midterms, both banner elections for the GOP, Post-ABC surveys found Republicans trailed Democrats by three and five percentage points among registered voters, respectively. Those margins flipped in Republicans’ favor among the smaller population of likely voters who were more motivated to turn out. The latest Post-ABC survey does not measure likely voters given that the election is still a year away.
Still, an edge of 11 points, even among registered voters, is an encouraging sign for Democrats a year before Trump’s first midterm — an election cycle that historically has been unkind to the sitting president’s party. 

The findings come as congressional Republicans are trying to rehabilitate their brand after months of infighting and a failure to produce any major legislative achievements despite controlling the House, Senate and White House.

Sadly, an eleven-point lead is pretty much what we need to start to be competitive in House races given the GOP's massive advantage in midterm turnout, gerrymandering, and voter suppression..and that's just to get us to the point where we can talk about maybe taking the House back.  The reality is that it would take something like a 14- or 15-point generic ballot lead to get us up to a 50-50 proposition or so.

It's not impossible, but it would take far more turnout than we've seen in 2010 or the abysmally low 2014 to get it done, and the Trumpista cult will definitely be out to vote.

We've got to turn people out to vote.  Another 2014-level performance and the GOP will end up with the 34 state legislatures they need to call a Constitutional Convention, something they've long wanted to do.

Tomorrow is just as important, by the way.  An Ed Gillespie win in Virginia would give the GOP complete control of 27 states and gerrymandering rights in Richmond, and should they get currently split Colorado or Maine in 2018 on top of that, it's over.

And then everything goes straight to hell.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

I've talked about Trump Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross before, and his ties to Russian money laundering when he was Vice Chairman of Cyprus's largest bank, Bank of Cyprus (always a fun Russian money laundering destination!)  Now that the floodgates have opened on the Mueller probe, we're getting all sorts of new information on Trump regime malfeasance, and Ross is definitely on the list.

A new trove of more than 13 million leaked documents implicates top officials and associates of President Donald Trump—as well as foreign politicians—in shady business relationships tied to offshore financial accounts.

In at least two cases, the documents highlight top administration officials’ previously undisclosed connections to Russia and Kremlin-linked interests.

The so-called Paradise Papers were leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the same publication that obtained the “Panama Papers.” Süddeutsche Zeitung shared the new documents with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which led a global effort of 96 media organizations from 67 countries to pore through the records. The findings were published on Sunday.

The documents show that many of the wealthy individuals Trump brought into his administration have worked to legally store their money in offshore havens where they would be free from taxation in the United States. Trump has promised repeatedly to “drain the swamp,” in condemning the idea that well-connected individuals in Washington, D.C., preserve their own interests at the expense of the rest of the country.

Among the Trump administration officials implicated in the leaks is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who according to the documents concealed his ties to a Russian energy company that is partly owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s judo partner Gennady Timchenko and Putin’s son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov. Through offshore investments, Ross held a stake in Navigator Holdings, which had a close business relationship with the Russian firm. Ross did not disclose that connection during his confirmation process on Capitol Hill.

“In concealing his interest in these shipping companies—and his ongoing financial relationship with Russian oligarchs—Secretary Ross misled me, the Senate Commerce Committee, and the American people,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said in a statement on Sunday. He characterized Ross’ financial disclosures as a “Russian nesting doll, with blatant conflicts of interest carefully hidden within seemingly innocuous companies.”

Ross has been linked to Russian interests before; in 2014, he poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Bank of Cyprus, an institution regarded by financial watchdogs as a haven for Russian money laundering. Ross became a vice chair of the bank, along with a reported former KGB official. Ross was joined in his investment by the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. Former Deutsche Bank executive Josef Ackermann was installed as chairman. Deutsche Bank—one of Trump’s biggest creditors—subsequently paid hundreds of millions to settle disputes that it shipped $10 billion or more to Russia in suspect loans.

Ahh, but Ross isn't alone.

Top White House adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is also implicated. The documents reveal that Russian tech leader Yuri Milner invested $850,000 in a startup called Cadre that Kushner co-founded in 2014.

Milner has long had a reputation in Silicon Valley as a big-league investor; his firm at one point owned major chunks of both Facebook and Twitter. But Milner was never considered particularly Kremlin-connected. These new documents call that reputation into question. The investing arm of Gazprom, the state-backed energy company, financed a share of Facebook worth up to $1 billion; A Kremlin-owned bank invested $191 million into a Milner firm, and some of that money was then injected into Twitter.

Despite Milner’s investment in his startup, Kushner said in July that he told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed-door meeting that he never “relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector.”

Representatives for Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Mark Warner (D-VA), the chairman and vice chairman of the committee, did not immediately return requests for comment. Kushner, who still has a stake in Cadre, did not previously disclose the firm’s other business ties.

So to recap, both Trump's Commerce Secretary and, you know, his son-in-law, are neck deep in Russian money laundering.  No big deal.

But I guarantee you Mueller's been on this trail for months.  Kushner, Ross, the Flynns, Sessions...lots of perjurt, lots of lies to Senate committees, lots of straight up criminal activity.

I still think the Flynns are either cooperating or will soon be.  As to who's next, things get really interesting when we eventually get to Kushner.  That's when Trump will make his move.

Of course, that move could come a lot sooner if it's Trump's own son in the dock.

A Russian lawyer who met with President Donald Trump’s oldest son last year says he indicated that a law targeting Russia could be re-examined if his father won the election and asked her for written evidence that illegal proceeds went to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, said in a two-and-a-half-hour interview in Moscow that she would tell these and other things to the Senate Judiciary Committee on condition that her answers be made public, something it hasn’t agreed to. She has received scores of questions from the committee, which is investigating possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Veselnitskaya said she’s also ready -- if asked -- to testify to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Her June 9, 2016 encounter with Donald Trump Jr., President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and then campaign manager Paul Manafort in New York plays a key role in allegations that the campaign worked with Russia to defeat Clinton.

Veselnitskaya said she went to New York to show Trump campaign officials that major Democratic donors had evaded U.S. taxes and to lobby against the so-called Magnitsky law that punishes Russian officials for the murder of a Russian tax accountant who accused the Kremlin of corruption.

Vladimir isn't getting what he wants right now.  He wants sanctions from the Magintsky Act gone and doesn't understand why Trump can't deliver on his promises...so maybe it's time to put some serious pressure on him ahead of the expected Putin-Trump meeting in Vietnam later this week at the Asia-Pacific Economic Council summit.

Having one of his agents saying she will fully cooperate with Mueller on Donny Jr's collusion is about as "pressure" as it gets.

Keep in mind that there's plenty of other Moscow connections to Trump's businesses being investigated too.

Documents released last week as part of Papadopoulos’s guilty plea show that Mueller’s team is deeply interested in the Trump campaign’s operations, including possible links to Moscow, at even the lowest levels. And Mueller’s interest in Russian contacts may extend to Trump’s business, as well, with the special counsel’s office recently asking for records related to a failed 2015 proposal for a Moscow Trump Tower, according to a person familiar with the request.

A key question in the investigation — and one that hangs over Trump’s presidency — is whether these instances add up to a concerted Russian government effort to probe and infiltrate the Trump campaign, or whether they were isolated coincidences and, therefore, inconsequential. Ultimately, Mueller must decide whether anyone in Trump’s orbit coordinated with the Russians, and, if so, if such actions were illegal or just unseemly. Collusion itself is not a crime.

The new court filings, along with recent interviews and other documents reviewed by The Washington Post, reveal more details than were previously known about the extent to which Trump’s campaign became a magnet for people who believed U.S. policy toward Russia should be retooled — and for Russians who agreed.

In all, documents and interviews show there are at least nine Trump associates who had contacts with Russians during the campaign or presidential transition. Some are well-known, and others, such as Papadopoulos, have been more on the periphery. 

We'll see what Mueller, Congress, and America does with this information.  Again, anything directly implicating Trump's family (Kushner or Trump Jr.) forces him to try to make his move to fire Mueller, that's when the real fight begins.  That's coming soon, trust me.

And it's when we decide whether or not we're still in what's left of a representative democracy or a proto-fascist authoritarian regime.

Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

Kentucky GOP House Speaker Jeff Hoover stepped down after Democrats and Republicans alike called for his resignation over news of a sexual harassment settlement with a staffer that broke Friday.

Jeff Hoover resigned his post as speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives Sunday, a day after defiantly rejecting calls to step down by Gov. Matt Bevin and others who said they were disgusted by allegations of sexual harassment against Hoover and three other GOP lawmakers.

A tearful Hoover, with family members looking on, acknowledged that he had “engaged in inappropriate text messages” with a legislative staffer in his office and asked the people of Kentucky “to forgive me for my actions.”

A Jamestown attorney who has been in the House since 1997, Hoover said he never engaged in “unwelcome or unwanted conduct” and “at no time were there ever any sexual relations of any kind.”

Hoover, who was elected in January as the first Republican House speaker since 1921, said that he and the three other lawmakers “absolutely and expressly denied that any sexual harassment had taken place.”

He said he would stay on as representative of the 83rd House District, which includes Clinton, Cumberland, Russell and part of Pulaski counties.

A joint statement from the other House GOP leaders said House Speaker Pro Tem David Osborne of Prospect will assume “operational control” of the House.

The House Republican leadership team said it will meet with legal counsel Monday to assess staff members mentioned in the sexual harassment scandal.

“This is an unfolding situation and no one in the Capitol has all the facts” said the leadership team.

The team also thanked Hoover for his service as speaker and for agreeing to resign.

“A protracted fight among the leaders of the Republican Party, entrusted by the voters to govern this state, is not in the best interest of our commonwealth,” it said.

There was no immediate comment from Bevin.

Louisville attorney Thomas Clay, who represented the legislative staffer who complained against Hoover, confirmed Sunday that she had entered into mediation with Hoover’s attorney and was satisfied with the outcome. He did not elaborate.

I would have liked to see Hoover lose his job altogether, but that will be up to Kentuckians in his district next November.

Also, the three other GOP state lawmakers mentioned were all three committee chairs, they will be relieved of their chairmanships pending a formal House investigation.

It also means any chance of a special legislative session for Bevin's pension grab plan is now super, super dead.  Kentucky Democrats responded strongly:


It's good to see Kentucky Dems stand up for the actual victims here, the women Hoover and his gang harassed. I don't feel sorry for Hoover for one bit.

It's too much to hope for jail time, but I'd settle for these men never holding office again.

StupidiNews!

• At least 26 people were killed as a gunman opened fire in a Texas church service in the small town of Sutherland Springs, the gunman fled and was later killed by police.
• The US Navy's "Fat Leonard" bribery scandal has now expanded to include 440 active-duty and retired Navy personnel, including 60 current and former admirals.
• The death toll in Vietnam from Typhoon Damfrey has risen to 49 and more deaths are expected from storm flooding, just days before Donald Trump arrives for the APEC summit in Danang.
• The House GOP tax bill goes to committee this week, where GOP House Ways and Means chair Rep. Kevin Brady says he will be making substantial changes to the legislation.
• The Trump regime wants to reopen the possibility of new uranium mining on National Forest land by overturning a 2012 Obama directive to protect Grand Canyon lands.

Last Call For Neighbors: The Movie, Con't

So it wasn't just a small altercation Rand Paul got into with his neighbor on Friday, it was a beating that resulted in Paul ending up with five broken ribs.

A senior adviser for Rand Paul says the U.S. senator is recovering from five broken ribs following an assault at his home.

Doug Stafford said it is unclear when Paul will return to work since he is in considerable pain and has difficulty getting around, including flying. Stafford said Sunday that the broken ribs include three displaced fractures, which can lead to life-threatening injuries. The severe pain can last for weeks or months.

Police arrested 59-year-old Rene Boucher on Saturday and charged him with misdemeanor fourth-degree assault with a minor injury. Boucher is accused of attacking Paul on Friday, but officials have not released a motive.

Boucher lives next door to Paul and his wife, according to Warren County property records.

Boucher was released from jail on Saturday. He has not returned a call seeking comment.

Violence in politics is nothing new, but dear god, five broken ribs?  What did Boucher do, hit him with a baseball bat?  This could have killed the guy.  I hate Rand Paul with a passion but the guy doesn't deserve broken ribs.

The hell is wrong with you, Bowling Green?

It's Mueller Time, Con't

NBC News is all but reporting that former Trump NSA Michael Flynn and his son Michael Jr. are the next targets in the ongoing Russia probe, and that the evidence is there for charges to be filed.

Federal investigators have gathered enough evidence to bring charges in their investigation of President Donald Trump's former national security adviser and his son as part of the probe into Russia's intervention in the 2016 election, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation.

Michael T. Flynn, who was fired after just 24 days on the job, was one of the first Trump associates to come under scrutiny in the federal probe now led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

Mueller is applying renewed pressure on Flynn following his indictment of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, three sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News.

The investigators are speaking to multiple witnesses in coming days to gain more information surrounding Flynn's lobbying work, including whether he laundered money or lied to federal agents about his overseas contacts, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.

Mueller's team is also examining whether Flynn attempted to orchestrate the removal of a chief rival of Turkish President Recep Erdogan from the U.S. to Turkey in exchange for millions of dollars, two officials said.

A spokesperson for the special counsel had no comment.

Flynn's son, Michael G. Flynn, who worked closely with his father, accompanied him during the campaign and briefly worked on the presidential transition, could be indicted separately or at the same time as his father, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.

If the elder Flynn is willing to cooperate with investigators in order to help his son, two of the sources said, it could also change his own fate, potentially limiting any legal consequences.

The pressure on Flynn is the latest signal that Mueller is moving at a rapid, and steady, pace in his investigation. Last week, investigators unsealed indictments of Manafort and Manafort's business partner Rick Gates. They pleaded not guilty.

Once again, Mueller has a lot to work with and a lot of people to get even more information from.  If Michael Flynn is willing to cooperate in order to save his son from prison, that could bring new information that he had access to as National Security Adviser, mainly involving Trump's relationship with Russia and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

Other sources are reporting that Flynn is already cooperating and has been for some time (which is why Manafort and Gates were charged before either of the Flynns, who were more germane to the Russia case than Manafort.)  If that's true, then things are moving even faster than I expected.  News on Flynn's fate may even come as early as this week.

Stay tuned.  It could be Mueller Time again very soon.

Sunday Long Read: A Drity River Runs Through It

I've talked about Portland before, America's whitest major city by a mile with a 72% white populace and one of the most segregated cities in America.  Now the city is trying to fix its long history of racism by starting with environmental justice and cleaning up the badly polluted Willamette River.

When Wilma Alcock was young, she fished the Willamette River nearly every weekend. Her favorite spot was Mock’s Bottom—a crescent of land that lies at the base of the steep bluffs along Willamette Boulevard. It has since been swallowed up by the Swan Island Industrial Park, but back then it was just marshy riverbank.

On warm summer evenings and crisp fall days, Alcock clambered down to the water to dip her line in the lazy current. She caught bluegills, ring-tail perch, and crappie—a tasty black and white speckled sunfish. “We used to catch them plentiful,” Alcock recalls. Now seventy-nine and retired after a career in nursing and childcare, she has an infectious laugh, short white hair, and smooth skin that belies her age.

Alcock grew up fishing, like many people of her generation in Portland’s African American community. She learned from her father, who always called her Bill. “You know, Wilma, William, Bill,” she explains. She got a cane pole at age eight and baited her first worm not long after. That’s when, she says, the “first little bit of callousness” came into her life. She knew how to cast by ten and has fished ever since.

But Alcock stopped fishing the Willamette in the 1970s. Part of the reason was that she was busy raising her four children. But it was also because the river had become so polluted that her catch was visibly unhealthy. “You didn’t need nobody to tell you not to eat the fish,” Alcock says.

Signs warning against eating fish from the Willamette eventually went up in 2004, four years after the Environmental Protection Agency declared the Portland Harbor a federal Superfund site—a ten-mile reach from the Broadway Bridge to Sauvie Island. While salmon and other migratory fish are safe to eat, the Oregon Health Authority advises healthy adults to eat a maximum of one meal of resident fish per month. For children and pregnant or nursing women, that number is zero.

The EPA has now released a plan to clean up the river after sixteen years of environmental studies. Three million cubic yards of contaminated sediments will be dredged from the river and more will be either removed from the banks or sealed in place. The cleanup will take thirteen years and cost polluters at least a billion dollars, but it will make the fish safer to eat and hasten the recovery of the river’s ecosystem.

Environmental justice advocates also see the cleanup effort as an opportunity to do right by those who have suffered the most from the pollution. Although the contamination has affected everyone who uses the Willamette, the impacts have fallen disproportionately on those who tend to fish the most: tribal members, people of color, low-income residents, and those from other marginalized groups who rely on the river for food.

Organizations like the Portland Harbor Community Coalition, an alliance of individuals and associations representing Native American, African American, immigrant, refugee, and homeless communities, are trying to ensure that people from impacted groups get access to jobs associated with the billion-dollar project. They also want community members to have a role in monitoring progress and deciding how riverfront real estate should be used after it’s restored.

“We have a chance to actually do something different here,” says Donovan Smith, an African American artist and journalist who serves as PHCC’s media coordinator. (Smith is also a contributor to Oregon Humanities' This Land project.)

Many in Portland’s Black community say the cleanup offers a way to reclaim a connection to the Willamette River. That connection began with World War II shipyards and continued over decades spent living along the water and fishing. But the bond suffered as pollution made the fish unsafe and economic changes pushed many African Americans out of neighborhoods near the river. Many say the connection has been lost.

“It all kind of just blends together with all the displacement, the gentrification,” says Alcock, a PHCC member with deep ties to the river. “All of it is just one big old ball.”

It's a start, and there are plenty of old wounds in Portland and in Oregon in general, a state founded by white supremacists and a city that had racial exclusion laws worse than any Jim Crow Southern state.

But it's a start.  Portland still has a long, long way to go.