Is It Time For New Blood?

A new poll finds that among Democrats, it's a dead even split as to whether Rep. Nancy Pelosi should remain the Democratic leader in the House in 2019.  As for Republicans and independents, well, they are heavily against her.

Only 27 percent of people surveyed in a new poll think Democrats should keep Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as their leader in the House, with nearly half of Democrats surveyed saying the caucus should pick a new chief.

The new American Barometer poll released Thursday by Hill.TV and HarrisX found that just 51 percent of Democrats surveyed think that House Democrats should keep Pelosi as their leader. Forty-nine percent said the caucus should pick a new leader.

Seventy-nine percent of independents said that Pelosi should be replaced, while 91 percent of Republicans said House Democrats should pick a new leader.

The dismal figures come as a number of Democratic candidates and incumbent members of the House refuse to say they will support Pelosi in a vote for the House Speakership.

In June, Politico reported that more than 20 Democratic House candidates have said they would not vote to elect Pelosi to be their party’s leader.

The declarations have raised real questions about whether Pelosi could secure the 218 votes needed on the House floor to become Speaker.

I don't buy that last part, but we also have a number of Democratic House candidates who have said that they will not vote for Pelosi as Leader or as Speaker next year.   It was 20 in June.  It's 50 now.

As Democrats battle to retake control of Congress in November, their leader — Nancy Pelosi — could also be facing a coming fight of her own.

Fifty Democrats running for the House say they won't support the California lawmaker for speaker, according to an NBC News survey of candidates and their public statements.

At least 41 of the party's nominees for House seats have declared they will not back Pelosi and nine incumbent Democratic lawmakers are on the record opposing her.

The most recent voice to the chorus came Thursday, when Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib, who is on track to become the first Muslim woman in Congress, said she would "probably not" support Pelosi because "she doesn't speak about the issues that are important to the families of the 13th congressional district, and they are a priority for me."

An additional 34 Democratic nominees are neither for nor against Pelosi, who has led her party in Congress since 2003.

The significant opposition is a sign of the movement for a generational change in Democratic leadership on the Hill — some believe that Pelosi should step aside so younger members of the party can move up in its ranks. The majority are Democrats running in Republican voting areas, where the minority leader is despised by the GOP. And some of it stems from the ascendant progressive movement, which wants to promote different policies and take a more aggressive approach in Congress to the Republicans and to President Donald Trump.

Frankly, Nancy Pelosi is the one Democrat over the last fifteen years who demonstrably has been good at her job, but if she can't get the 218 votes in January, then Democrats need to figure out who can and fast.  I suspect she has things under control and will throw her support behind a candidate for leadership, but the village can't resist DEMS IN DISARRAY stories.

We'll see.

Last Call For Counting Coup

Our old friend Kris Kobach is in a razor-thin primary fight for Governor of Kansas with current Governor Jeff Colyer, and with fewer than 100 votes now separating him from his opponent, keep in mind that Kobach has not recused himself as Secretary of State yet, meaning he's technically overseeing his own vote counting and an inevitable recount.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s lead over Gov. Jeff Colyer in the Republican primary has shrunk to only 91 votes after election officials discovered a mistake in the listing for one county’s results in the state’s tally of votes.

The lead is minuscule when compared with the 311,000 votes cast.

The final, unofficial results posted on the secretary of state’s website show Kobach winning Thomas County in northwest Kansas, with 466 votes to Colyer’s 422. But the tally posted by the Thomas County clerk’s office shows Colyer with 522 votes, or 100 votes more, a number the clerk confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday.

Bryan Caskey, state elections director, said county officials pointed out the discrepancy Thursday following a routine request for a post-election check of the numbers to counties by the secretary of state’s office.

County election officials have yet to finish counting late-arriving mail-in ballots or provisional ballots provided to voters at the polls when their eligibility wasn’t clear.

“This is a routine part of the process,” Caskey said. “This is why we emphasize that election-night results are unofficial.”

Thomas County Clerk Shelly Harms said it’s possible that her handwriting on the tally sheet faxed to the secretary of state’s office was bad enough in the rush of primary-night business that the number for Colyer wasn’t clear.

“They just misread it,” she told The Associated Press.

Colyer’s campaign said Thursday that it had set up a “voting integrity” telephone hotline after it had received “countless” reports of voters experiencing issues at the polls.

Kobach is the state’s chief elections officers and told reporters Wednesday that he knew of no reports of irregularities outside of a long delay in the reporting of results from Johnson County, the state’s most populous county, because of issues with its new machines.

“We’ll certainly be going through the results county by county,” Colyer spokesman Kendall Marr said.

No matter how you look at it, for the most vocal critic of voting procedures in the US, a man who screamed about "massive widespread voting fraud" for years and did everything he could to remove as many Democrats as possible from the voter rolls to be in charge of his own vote count is insane.

But that's the GOP for you.  Anything that actually would be even remotely humbling like this, they could not give less of a crap about.

When Colyer manages to lose, I wonder what he'll do?

I know what Kansas should do, and that's vote for the Democrat in the race, Laura Kelly.

The Mask Slips Once Again, Con't

The mask slips, and a Republican accidentally tells the truth.

Hard-line conservative Republicans in the House recently hit a roadblock in their effort to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein when Speaker Paul Ryan opposed the move. But one of those conservatives, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., gave a different explanation to donors recently when asked why the impeachment effort had stalled.

He said it's because an impeachment would delay the Senate's confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, made the statement in an audio recording surreptitiously made by a member of a progressive group who attended a Republican fundraiser on July 30 in Spokane, Washington. The recording was obtained by The Rachel Maddow Show and was played on MSNBC on Wednesday night.

Asked about the the impeachment plans, Nunes told a questioner that "it's a bit complicated" because "we only have so many months left."

"So if we actually vote to impeach, OK, what that does is that triggers the Senate then has to take it up," he said on the recording. "Well, and you have to decide what you want right now because the Senate only has so much time.”

He continued: "Do you want them to drop everything and not confirm the Supreme Court justice, the new Supreme Court justice?"

"The Senate would have to drop everything they're doing ... and start with impeachment on Rosenstein. And then take the risk of not getting Kavanaugh confirmed," Nunes said. "So it's not a matter that any of us like Rosenstein. It's a matter of, it's a matter of timing."

Conservative lawmakers have accused Rosenstein of trying to stymie congressional oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of alleged interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

The audio of the Spokane fundraiser was obtained by the Maddow show from a member of the "Fuse Washington" progressive group who paid the $250 entry fee to attend the dinner. The event was a fundraiser for Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. A spokesperson for her campaign had no comment on the recording and Nunes' office didn't return calls for comment.

This is the real reason why Rosenstein was never going to be impeached.  The clock is ticking and confirming Kavanaugh has to be done before Mueller drops the hammer on Trump and company, if only to make sure Trump has five SCOTUS votes to dodge uncomfortable questions, the answers to which could very well implicate other Republicans like Nunes. 

No, as I told you weeks ago, impeaching Rosenstein was at best, fundraising fodder for House Freedom Caucus leaders like Reps. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, and at worst, cover for Trump to fire him.  The clock is ticking fast and Republicans are increasingly looking like the bill for their massive corruption is coming due.

The entire Trump era has been a festering pit of barely disguised ongoing corruption. But the whole sordid era has not had a 24-hour period quite like the orgy of criminality which we have just experienced. The events of the last day alone include:

(1) The trial of Paul Manafort, which has featured the accusation that President Trump’s campaign manager had embezzled funds, failed to report income, and falsified documents. His partner and fellow Trump campaign aide, Rick Gates, confessed to participating in all these crimes, as well as to stealing from Manafort.

(2) Yesterday, Forbes reported that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross may have stolen $120 million from his partners and customers. Meanwhile Ross has maintained foreign holdings in his investment portfolio that present a major conflict of interest with his public office. (The “Don’t worry, Wilbur Ross would never do anything unethical just to pad his bottom line” defense is likely to be, uh, unconvincing to the many people filing suit against Ross for allegedly doing exactly that.)

(3) Also yesterday, ProPublica reported that the Department of Veterans Affairs is being effectively run by three Trump cronies, none of whom have any official government title or public accountability. The three, reports the story, have “used their influence in ways that could benefit their private interests.”

(4) And then, this morning, Representative Chris Collins was arrested for insider trading. Collins had been known to openly boast about making millions of dollars for his colleagues with his insider knowledge. He is charged with learning of an adverse FDA trial, and immediately calling his son — from the White House! — urging him to sell his holdings.

It has been, in sum, quite a day.

A lot of people are going to jail, and they are going to need Trump around to pardon them.  For that to happen, the GOP needs Kavanaugh confirmed as quickly as possible.  Every route the GOP sees out of the Mueller investigation goes through Kavanaugh being the fifth vote immunizing Trump from anything and everything short of actual impeachment.

Keep that in the back of your mind.

StupidiNews!

• One of the several California wildfires currently causing mass evacuations was deliberately set according to CalFire officials, a suspect has been arrested in connection with the Holy Fire.
• The Trump regime is finally admitting that Russia was behind the nerve agent attack earlier this year in the UK, new US sanctions will be imposed that go into effect August 22.
• The Red Cross is saying that air strikes by the Saudi-led Arab coalition in Yemen killed dozens of civilians, including children, as a bus was hit in the Saada region, at least 63 were wounded.
• The Trump regime pushed Energy Department scientists to play up the benefits of coal power in a government report on last January's "bomb cyclone" blizzard deep freeze.
• NYC becomes the first city to impose a cap on the number of ride-sharing cars as Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new City Council ordinance restricting Uber and Lyft on Wednesday.

Last Call For The GOP Race To The Bottom, Con't

When I say the Republican party is the party of racism and bigotry and treason, I mean that quite literally they nominate people for federal office who praised the Confederacy and intimate that we need a Second American Revolution today in order to bring those policies back.

Corey Stewart, the Republican nominee for a US Senate seat for Virginia, praised in a speech last year Virginia's decision in 1861 to secede from the Union, putting it on par with rebellions during the American Revolution and today. 

The Virginia Republican made the comments in April 2017 at an event in South Boston, Virginia, hosted by an unapologetic secessionist. A video of his remarks, given during his failed 2017 gubernatorial run, was posted on his Facebook account. 

He is challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, a strong favorite to keep his seat, and national Republicans are worried that Stewart's candidacy will turn off some GOP voters, potentially hurting Republican's ballot races. 

"When you say you're from Virginia, when you travel outside of this state and somebody asks where you're from, you say with pride, 'I am from Virginia. I'm very, very proud of it,'" Stewart said. "You're very, very proud of it. And why is it? It's because of our history, folks. It's because of our history. This is the state of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and James Monroe. It's a state of the founders. It's the state of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. 

"But it's also the state of Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson, and J.E.B. Stuart. Because, at the base of it, Virginians, we think for ourselves," he continued. "And if the established order is wrong, we rebel. We did that in the Revolution, we did it in the Civil War, and we're doing it today. We're doing it today because they're trying to rob us of everything that we hold dear: our history, our heritage, our culture."

Hey guys?  The Confederacy was actual treason, there was no "heritage" there other than slavery and misery and states and people so entirely dedicated to the idea of keeping black people as slaves that they went to actual war over it, and a significant percentage of the people in this country died as a result.

This is what "history" Corey Stewart sees himself as carrying on.  If you're defending this as heritage or history, if you're proud of this like Stewart, you need to take a good long look at your heart, and a history book.  It's not okay.  It's not romantic.  It's not misunderstood or misinterpreted.  It's human slavery, guys, point blank.

Stewart, whose defense of Confederate symbols became a staple of his unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign, defined the established order earlier in the speech as the mainstream media, liberals, Democrats and establishment Republicans "trying to convince us that there's something wrong with our heritage in Virginia." 

In response to a comment request from CNN, Stewart released the following statement: "Unlike Wimpy Tim Kaine, Virginians have a warrior spirit and a rebel heart." 

Stewart has continually tried to downplay his past ties and praise of white nationalist figures like Jason Kessler, an organizer of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and Paul Nehlen, the anti-Semitic Republican congressional candidate who took on Paul Ryan in 2016. 

According to records from Virginia's Department of Elections, the event in which he praised secession was paid for by avowed secessionist George Randall. Stewart was introduced by Randall's wife, Donna, who also promoted the event on Facebook. 

Randall is an unapologetic secessionist, telling The New York Times, "I'm a secessionist because the federal government is anti-Christian and we're different culturally."

And yes, these traitors are actually still very much with us, and we have the Republican party happily running candidates for Senate -- and currently in the White House, I might add -- who are okay with this because it means they get political benefit from it.  And next week, these same white supremacists are going to be in Virginia, in Charlottesville for the one-year anniversary of their little cross-burning party.  And Corey Stewart?  He'll be supporting these guys.

So let me make this plain, folks.

The. Republican. Party. Is. The. Party. Of. White Supremacists.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Another Republican goes down in flames, this time New York Congressman Chris Collins was picked up by the FBI for insider trading and fraud leaving the door wide open for his Democratic challenger, Nate McMurray.

Rep. Chris Collins, R-New York, was arrested Wednesday and charged with insider trading relating to an Australian biotechnology company, according to federal prosecutors.

The Buffalo-area congressman, who also served on the board of directors of the company Innate Immunotherapeutics and was the first member of Congress to endorse President Donald Trump's White House bid in 2016, is charged with passing nonpublic information about a multiple sclerosis drug to his son, Cameron, who shared it with his future father-in-law.

While the drug failed testing tanked the company's share price by 92 percent, Collins' tip allowed all three men to avoid nearly $800,000 in losses, according to the indictment.

Attorneys for Collins said they would "mount a vigorous defense to clear his good name."

"We are confident he will be completely vindicated and exonerated," they said in a statement.

The House Ethics Committee had been investigating the allegations against Collins since August of 2017. The Office of Congressional Ethics, in its report to the Ethics Committee found "substantial reason to believe" that Collins "shared material nonpublic information in purchasing stock" of Innate Immunotherapeutics, in violation of House rules, standards and federal law.

Collins, a vocal Trump ally, worked closely with the administration during the presidential transition, serving as the point of contact between lawmakers and the Trump transition team.

Needless to say, Collins's opponent, Nate McMurray, just had Christmas arrive in August.  Both had an easy time of winning their respective primaries five weeks ago as they were unopposed, so McMurray has been going after Trump's tight relationship with Trump for some time now. 

Still, this seat was entirely off the radar for the Dems, Cook Political Report has the district (which consists of the Niagara/Genesee farmland between Buffalo and Rochester) weighted as R+11 and even then Collins won in 2016 by almost 35 points, his support for Trump certainly didn't hurt him then.

Being in prison on the other hand might.

We'll see.

(Red) Meat The Press

We're not too far now from where a majority of Trump's fascist supporters will be comfortable with calling for the regime to take CNN, MSNBC, and other Trump critics off the air, as a new Ipsos poll for the Daily Beast finds 43% of Republicans want Trump to have final authority over which news outlets are allowed to operate in the US.

Freedom of the press may be guaranteed in the Constitution. But a plurality of Republicans want to give President Trump the authority to close down certain news outlets, according to a new public opinion survey conducted by Ipsos and provided exclusively to The Daily Beast.

The findings present a sobering picture for the fourth estate, with respondents showing diminished trust in the media and increased support for punitive measures against its members. They also illustrate the extent to which Trump’s anti-press drumbeat has shaped public opinion about the role the media plays in covering his administration.

All told, 43 percent of self-identified Republicans said that they believed “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.” Only 36 percent disagreed with that statement. When asked if Trump should close down specific outlets, including CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, nearly a quarter of Republicans (23 percent) agreed and 49 percent disagreed.

Republicans were far more likely to take a negative view of the media. Forty-eight percent of them said they believed “the news media is the enemy of the American people” (just 28 percent disagreed) while nearly four out of every five (79 percent) said that they believed “the mainstream media treats President Trump unfairly.”

But of course, it's not just Republicans.

But swaths of self-identified Democrats and Independents supported anti-press positions as well. According to the survey, 12 percent of Democrats and 21 percent of Independents agreed that “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior” (74 percent and 55 percent, respectively, disagreed). Additionally, 12 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of Independents agreed that “the news media is the enemy of the American people” (74 percent and 50 percent, respectively, disagreed)

The concept of an enemy press corps has become a staple of Trump’s tweets and public utterances in recent months. Much of it appears prompted by stories about internal frictions within the White House and a growing fear over the state of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

Members of the press, as well as top officials at some of the nation’s leading publications, have objected to the phrase, arguing that it is both wildly inaccurate and deeply dangerous. They have pointed to mob-like treatment of the media by Trump supporters at various rallies as evidence for their fears. Offered the opportunity, Trump’s spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, declined to denounce the phrase. Other Trump supports have insisted that he was merely referring to those outlets that spread false information.

It's depressing, really.  Still, 85% of people in the survey agreed that freedom of the press is "essential for American democracy".  That's something, but we're not far off from when that freedom is sharply curtailed, both by corporate pressure and by Trump.

StupidiNews!

• Tuesday's House special election in OH-12 is too close to call this morning and looks to be headed for a state-mandated recount in a district that has been reliably red for decades.
• California says it will keep strict Obama-era auto emissions limits despite Trump regime plans to strip states of the power to set auto pollution standards.
• Iran says that the Trump regime will not stop the country's oil exports despite threats of US action against countries that buy Iranian oil as Washington resumed sanctions against Tehran this week.
• Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted yesterday that he could choose to take the electric car company private by buying out $82 billion in stock using his own money.
• FCC Chairman Ajit Pai admitted Monday that the agency lied about a denial-of-service attack taking down public comments on net neutrality, but is blaming the Obama administration anyway.

Last Call For Immigration Nation, Con't

I've been saying for months now that the Trump regime's true goal on immigration was never to stop at "build the wall", but to reverse more than 50 years of immigration and citizenship in the country and to reduce the number of citizens -- and eligible voters -- in the US by tens of millions by building a demographic rampart to white nationalism.  

It's a three-part plan: end undocumented immigration and refugees, end legal immigration and citizenship, and mass deportation of immigrants.  The third part is coming, but right now we have to worry about the other two parts of the plan, especially the second part where legal immigrants start losing all paths to citizenship.

The Trump administration is expected to issue a proposal in coming weeks that would make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare, four sources with knowledge of the plan told NBC News.

The move, which would not need congressional approval, is part of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller's plan to limit the number of migrants who obtain legal status in the U.S. each year.

Details of the rulemaking proposal are still being finalized, but based on a recent draft seen last week and described to NBC News, immigrants living legally in the U.S. who have ever used or whose household members have ever used Obamacare, children's health insurance, food stamps and other benefits could be hindered from obtaining legal status in the U.S.

Immigration lawyers and advocates and public health researchers say it would be the biggest change to the legal immigration system in decades and estimate that more than 20 million immigrants could be affected. They say it would fall particularly hard on immigrants working jobs that don't pay enough to support their families.

Many are like Louis Charles, a Haitian green-card holder seeking citizenship who, despite working up to 80 hours a week as a nursing assistant, has had to use public programs to support his disabled adult daughter.

Using some public benefits like Social Security Insurance has already hindered immigrants from obtaining legal status in the past, but the programs included in the recent draft plan could mean that immigrant households earning as much as 250 percent of the poverty level could be rejected.

A version of the plan has been sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget, the sources said, the final step before publishing a rule in the federal register. Reuters first reported that the White House was considering such a plan in February.

And if they can never become citizens, they become much easier to deport when we get to stage three, right?

In all serious, all this along with gutting civil rights, voting rights, and "reinterpreting" the Fourteenth Amendment is the path we're heading down, and the right to vote will be massively restricted in the years to come unless we stop the GOP here in 2018.

If we don't, it may be too late.

A Supreme Scandal In West Virginia

I haven't been following the story of West Virginia's state Supreme Court about to be impeached, and yes, I mean the entire court over a spending scandal, but it seems like it has just become a very important national story.  One of the five justices has retired, one is facing a number of federal charges, and the other three are are also in trouble after investigation by the state House of Delegates.

The articles of impeachment were introduced against the remaining four justices this morning.

The West Virginia House of Delegates Judiciary Committee has drafted 14 articles of impeachment against the four sitting justices on the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.

The articles were presented to the committee at about 9:25 a.m. Tuesday morning with mention of all four justices – Margaret Workman, Robin Jean Davis, Allen Loughry and Beth Walker.

Justice Loughry faces six charges, and Chief Justice Margaret Workman faces five charges.

Justices Robin Jean Davis and Beth Walker each face six charges.

Some of the articles charge more than one justice at a time with a given impeachable offense.

Each justice is charged with “unnecessary and lavish” spending of state dollars to renovate their offices in the East Wing of the Capitol.

Loughry faces additional charges related to his use of state vehicles for personal travel, having state furniture and computers in his home, and for handing down an administrative order authorizing payments of senior status judges in excess of what is allowable in state law.

Davis and Workman are charged with actually signing documents authorizing that senior status judges be paid in excess of what’s allowable in state law.

Additionally, Beth Walker is charged with unnecessarily allowing the state to pay $10,000 to a contractor to write an opinion in a case in 2017. Current Supreme Court Interim Administrator Barbara Allen, who was not an employee of the court at the time, authored the opinion.

Workman also is charged with facilitating the employment of an unnecessary employee to do I.T. work for the court in 2014. That employee worked on Workman’s campaign prior to working for the court.

The committee met in executive session for about five hours Monday night, when the articles were drafted.

Members of the committee are considering each article one-by-one.

If the committee approves any or all of the articles, the articles will be presented to the full House of Delegates.

A simple majority, or 51 members, of the House will have to approve the articles for them to advance to the Senate.

In the Senate, two-thirds of the elected members, or 23 senators, will have to approve the articles. If they approve the articles, the Senate will be responsible for facilitating an impeachment trial.

Anyone found "guilty" of committing an impeachable offense by the Senate will be removed from office and permanently banned from seeking public office in the state.

Basically this has never been attempted before in West Virginia for one justice, let alone all five.  It's widely unprecedented, and both parties seem to be working together on getting this done.  I'm not sure if there's a larger game here afoot or what, but I do know that impeachment and removal of a state's highest court isn't something that should ever be considered lightly.

I'll definitely keep an eye on this.

ZVTS Turns Ten

I can't believe I made it this far, but here we are.  After a decade, I'm still a dirty hippie lefty blogger, and believe it or not people are still paying attention to what I say.

There are a lot of people I'd like to thank for the last ten years in no particular order:

Bon Tindle:  A dear friend and activist who I've known for over a decade now, and was here to help me get started.  It's always a pleasure to have her grace my place with her presence, and I learn so much from her even today.  She's still fighting the good fight in Springfield, Missouri and still kicking ass.

Martin Longman:  I got my start blogging over at BooMan Tribune, and enough people liked my work there on the 2007-2008 financial crisis that I decided to get my own place about ten years ago.  Martin's community is still going strong, and you can find him writing for several places.

Imani Gandy:  The world-famous Angry Black Lady herself, Imani is senior legal analyst over at ReWire News these days, fighting for repro rights and blocking fools on social media.  I went from a scrub nobody to my D-List status today because of her help, she's still an awesome friend and I've met so many other great people because of her.

John Cole:  The old man at Balloon Juice, where I got my big break as a contributor all those many years ago.  I haven't written for the Juice in a while, they still have a strong staff and several of you are avid readers over there.  I did write for them for years frankly, and should again.  John is a reformed wingnut who always reminds me people can change for the better (even if they hate all life on earth.)

Elon James White:  The force behind This Week In Blackness, the man turned a website into a podcast empire and then TV,  major news sites, and has a wonderful wife and daughter to boot.  He too gave me a shot, one I should have taken more advantage of, but he proved to me that being black on the internet is a good thing.

Steve M:  The man behind the legendary blog No More Mister Nice Blog, it was Steve who saw in my somebody who wasn't terrible at this gig, and gave me the opportunity to guest write for his place on a number of occasions.

Betty Cracker:  The anti-Florida Man herself, I've known Betty since her jolly days at Rumproast and now Balloon Juice, and she's always been outstanding to read, sticking it to Florida politics the way I do with Ohio and Kentucky.

Ian Boudreau: My favorite misanthropic freelance games writer, Ian is a die-hard Crusader Kings II fan, cat owner, former ground pounder and reminds me most of the time not to be too much of an ass on Twitter.  He's a good guy overall, even if that really is his haircut.

There are a lot of other people I know and want to thank too: the delightfully foul-mouthed Minna Hong, librarian goddess Emily Hauser, Chicago sports master Dave von Ebers, the best bloggers in Michigan, Chris Savage and LOLGOP, giant art and science nerd and author Tom Levenson, MRE-fan Soonergrunt, and most of all?

You, the readers of ZVTS and sticking with me for ten years.

Thanks for that.  Seriously.  I never thought I'd be writing this piece.  Or at all.

From the bottom of my heart, I want you all to know how much I appreciate all of you.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Con't

The Paul Manafort trial officially got to the good part today, where two career criminals turn on each other like pit bulls when it became clear that the tax evasion and bank fraud is the chump change compared to the whole "party to treason against the United States" thing.

Rick Gates, a longtime business associate of U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, on Monday testified at trial that he helped Manafort file false tax returns and did not disclose foreign bank accounts.

Gates was expected to be a star witness in the government’s case against Manafort having pleaded guilty in February and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors under a deal that could lead to a reduced sentence.

“We did not submit the required form designating he had control over an offshore account,” Gates told the jury in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on the fifth day of the trial. 

When prosecutor Greg Andres asked why, Gates replied: “At Mr. Manafort’s direction.” 

Gates also testified he and Manafort knew it was a crime because they had been notified by Manafort’s accountants in emails.

Manafort’s attorneys have signaled they will seek to blame Gates and have accused him of embezzling millions of dollars from Manafort. Gates and Manafort have known each other for two decades and ran a multimillion-dollar political consulting business. Gates also worked for the Trump election campaign. 

Manafort has pleaded not guilty to 18 counts of bank and tax fraud and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. The charges largely predate his five months on the Trump campaign but were the first to go to trial arising from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

There is no chance that Manafort gets acquitted.  The only question now is how much he tells Mueller about Trump.  But the clock on that offer only will last as long as Manafort's next trial date.

To understand how far Manafort is willing to go for Trump, look at the far more interesting court activity happening across the Potomac. In Washington, D.C., Manafort stands accused of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government, of failure to register as a foreign lobbyist, and of obstruction of justice, among other charges — and that alongside a mysterious co-defendant, Konstantin Kilimnik. Earlier this year, Mueller disclosed in court documents that this wingman possessed “ties to Russian intelligence service,” which persisted during the presidential campaign. That case is still on schedule to go to trial in September, despite Manafort’s best efforts to delay it.

But there’s more. Just as jury selection was underway in Alexandria on Tuesday, the chief judge of the federal courthouse in Washington issued a 92-page ruling ordering an aide for Roger Stone, the irreverent Trump confidant and longtime Manafort pal, to testify before a grand jury. The decision was categorical, the third affirming the authority and legality of the special counsel investigation. But this one came with a bit of extra oomph. U.S. Chief Judge Beryl Howell, its author, may also be overseeing the secret grand-jury proceedings unfolding in the nation’s capital — a task that would place her at the center of nearly every pre-prosecution aspect of every public case so far initiated by the special counsel. More than anyone, she’d know that the Mueller probe is no hoax.

“The scope of the Special Counsel’s power falls well within the boundaries the Constitution permits, as the Special Counsel is supervised by an official who is himself accountable to the elected President,” wrote Howell. She also gave Mueller a boost last year in a similar, pre-indictment dispute with a Manafort lawyer who was wanted for testimony before the grand jury.

This is all tough news for Manafort. For months now, he has mounted similar Hail Marys attempting to delegitimize the Mueller probe. Both Ellis and U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson have rejected separate motions to dismiss the two active cases against him. So far, all Manafort’s efforts have been for naught, as has his bid to stand trial at liberty rather than behind bars. On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit affirmed Jackson’s order to revoke Manafort’s home detention over allegations that he was tampering with witnesses — a new crime that, if proved, would only add to his legal woes. So there’s little doubt he’ll sit in jail through the duration of both trials.

We’re not done. Jackson this week sided with a special counsel request to not allow Manafort’s lawyers to game the clock on the Washington trial involving Kilimnik, which for months has been set for September. All along, Mueller’s team has been doing its due diligence — turning over certain pretrial materials to the defense in good faith, hoping the other side will do the same as the two adversaries prepare their cases-in-chief. But Manafort’s side hasn’t turned over anything. “The defense has made no showing whatsoever for its requested four-week extension, and to grant it would unfairly prejudice the government,” Mueller’s lawyers charged in a court filing that accused Manafort’s legal team of “gamesmanship.” Jackson ruled later that same day that she’s “opposed” to any attempts to delay the Washington trial.

That’s where the real action will be, and where talk of election interference and Russian conspiracy may be inevitable. With Manafort hanging on by the skin of his teeth, and Mueller refusing to make it any easier for him, patience through all these trials and tribulations may just be the price he has to pay as he hopes that maybe, just maybe, President Trump will throw him a lifeline.

But Trump pardoning Manafort comes with a clock of its own, and that one goes off the first week of November.

The War On Fake News

Finally, the major social media tech players have taken conspiracy theorist and lunatic asshole Alex Jones off the air for good, and are permanently banning him from their platforms after all.

YouTube has removed Alex Jones' page, following bans earlier Monday from Apple and Facebook. 

The Alex Jones Channel, which counts 2.4 million subscribers, still appeared in YouTube search results by midday Monday, but presented only a take-down notice when users clicked in. 

"This account has been terminated for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines," the notice says. 

Google had previously declined to comment on the InfoWars host's standing, but said in a statement to CNBC in response to the removal of the page: "All users agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines when they sign up to use YouTube. When users violate these policies repeatedly, like our policies against hate speech and harassment or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement measures, we terminate their accounts." 

YouTube counts "strikes" against pages for posts that violate the company's policies. Jones received a strike in July when he posted four videos that violated YouTube policies against child endangerment and hate speech, the company said in a statement to CNBC.
A page with one strike against it is suspended from live streaming for 90 days, YouTube said, but Jones attempted to circumvent the suspension by live streaming on other channels. As a result, his page was terminated, the company said. 

The InfoWars YouTube page, which has significantly fewer subscribers, was still live as of noon ET. 

Jones and his controversial radio show have for several weeks been at the center of a debate around fake news and misinformation on digital platforms. Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg drew criticism last month for declining to remove the InfoWars page.
Music streaming service Spotify removed InfoWars podcasts last week, and Apple and Facebook each cited violations of company policies regarding hate speech in banning Jones on Monday.

And it's that 2.4 million subscribers figure that YouTube and Twitter and Facebook didn't want to antagonize.  Like it or no, that is a big chunk of ad revenue to lose, not to mention the backlash from Jones's followers.

But Jones was the guy yelling fire in a crowded theater every day.  He is one of the major reasons why Russian attacks on democracy in 2016 worked, because of the pervasive rot that Jones brought to our democracy.  He is the fake news we need to get rid of.

And it looks like he's taken a major hit.  It's something that should have happened years ago, frankly.  Looking the other way on their own terms of service violations is what tech companies specialize in when you get enough followers.

See ya, Alex.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

The final special House election before the 2018 midterms is upon us in OH-12 as Democratic candidate Danny O'Connor takes on Republican Troy Balderson for GOP Rep. Pat Tiberi's old seat.  

This has long been Columbus's reddest suburban area, after 17 years, Tiberi left Congress in January to cash in the GOP tax bill he helped write, and it was John Kasich's House seat for another 18 years before that.  In fact, outside Bob Shamansky's two years in the Reagan era (he got gerrymandered out in '82) this seat has been blood red since FDR.

That could come to an end tomorrow as panicking Republicans now face a dead heat race in an R+7 district.

The entire Republican Party machinery has converged on this suburban Columbus district for a furious eleventh-hour campaign aimed at saving a conservative House seat and averting another special election disaster.

But in the final days ahead of Tuesday's election, signs were everywhere that Democrats are surging — from recent polling to the private and public statements of many Republicans, including the GOP candidate himself. The district has been reliably red for more than three decades, but the sheer size of the Republican cavalry made clear how worried the party is about losing it.

At a Saturday evening rally, President Donald Trump tried to juice conservative excitement for mild-mannered Republican candidate Troy Balderson while foisting a Trumpian nickname upon 31-year-old Democratic hopeful Danny O’Connor: “Danny boy.” Earlier in the week, Vice President Mike Pence made the trek, while Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. recorded a robocall, and Gov. John Kasich endorsed Balderson in a TV ad.

The Republican National Committee has opened two offices in the district, launched a $500,000-plus get-out-the-vote effort, and dispatched one of its top officials, Bob Paduchik, who ran Trump’s 2016 Ohio campaign. And outside conservative groups, led by a super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, have dumped more than $3.5 million onto the TV airwaves, far outpacing Democrats.

The all-out push underscores the GOP’s trepidation about the final special election before the midterms. A loss, following startling Republican defeats in Pennsylvania and Alabama, would offer more evidence that a blue wave is on the horizon. And it would further fuel fears of what’s becoming evident: that Democrats are simply more amped up, even in areas that have long been safely Republican.

As he addressed volunteers gathered in a campaign office on Friday afternoon, Balderson, a 56-year-old state legislator, hinted at the enthusiasm deficit that was plaguing his party. A Monmouth University poll last week had him ahead of O'Connor by a single percentage point, 44 to 43.

“You all know, it’s a tight race. And everybody wants to know, why is it tight? Why is it tight?” he said. “Because this race is all about turnout.”

He's not wrong, but the fact that the entire Trump regime machine is coming to Balderson's defense is very telling.  Republicans know they are in dire trouble.  They know the clock is ticking on the midterms and the reckoning for Trump's collusion, which he all but admitted to yesterday. 

We'll see what happens tomorrow, but my gut tells me O'Connor wins by 3 or 4.  If you're a ZVTS reader in OH-12, let's make that happen.

StupidiNews!

• More than 90 are reported dead in a 6.9 magnitude earthquake in Bali, Indonesia, as officials say many more casualties are expected, it's the second magnitude 6-plus tremor in a week here.
• Four demonstrators in Portland were arrested Saturday as police separated right-wing white nationalists from anti-fascist counter-protesters, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets.
• New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern has returned to Parliament after maternity leave for the birth of her daughter Neve, Ardern is only the second elected world leader to give birth in office.
• Saudi Arabia has suspended diplomatic ties with Canada after Ottawa's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland criticized the arrest of a Canadian women's rights activist by Riyadh last week.
• For the first time in almost eight years, NASA has announced new all-American spaceflight crews as the agency prepares for SpaceX Dragon and Boeing Starliner flights in 2019.