Last Call For Supreme Misgivings, Con't

Republicans have been doing everything possible to hide the judicial record of Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, from scrutiny.  They've sat on literally one million such documents, and only released about 45,000 of them the night before the Senate Judiciary hearings got underway on Tuesday.  

When Democrats objected to such nonsense, chair Sen. Chuck Grassley assured the Democrats that his office had reviewed every document, and that it was Democrats who were not doing due diligence.

Cory Booker then went off, daring Grassley to cesure him by releasing these documents himself.

Still, that meant hundreds of thousands of documents were being blocked under executive privilege from Kavanaugh's time working as White House counsel for George W. Bush. and it was only a matter of time before the nastier documents on Kavanaugh's judicial views leaked to the press.

As a White House lawyer in the Bush administration, Judge Brett Kavanaugh challenged the accuracy of deeming the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision to be “settled law of the land,” according to a secret email obtained by The New York Times.

The email, written in March 2003, is one of thousands of documents that a lawyer for President George W. Bush turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Supreme Court nominee but deemed “committee confidential,” meaning it could not be made public or discussed by Democrats in questioning him in hearings this week. It was among several an unknown person provided to The New York Times late Wednesday.

Judge Kavanaugh was considering a draft opinion piece that supporters of one of Mr. Bush’s conservative appeals court nominees hoped they could persuade anti-abortion women to submit under their names. It stated that “it is widely accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land.”

Judge Kavanaugh proposed deleting that line, writing: “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.”

[Read the e-mail.]

He was presumably referring to then-Justices William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, along with Justice Clarence Thomas, conservatives who had dissented in a 1992 case that reaffirmed Roe, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The court now has four conservative justices who may be willing to overturn Roe — Justices Thomas and John C. Roberts Jr., Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — and if he is confirmed, Judge Kavanaugh could provide the decisive fifth vote.

Still, his email stops short of saying whether he personally believed that the abortion rights precedent should be considered a settled legal issue.

This alone should have disqualified Kavanaugh, clearly he's going to overturn Roe and allow states to decide whether or not abortion is legal.

What Democrats are going to do to stop him, I don't know, but the charade is clearly over.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Just A Few Miles Away

America's mass shooting epidemic came to Cincinnati this morning, with four people killed, including the gunman, when a man opened fire in the lobby of the Fifth Third Center building downtown on Fountain Square.

Gunshots and chaos erupted in the heart of Cincinnati's downtown Thursday morning when a man opened fire in the lobby of Fifth Third Center, killing three people and wounding two others.

Dozens of police officers rushed to the scene and exchanged gunfire with the suspect as a crowd of people who had been on their way to work scattered across Fountain Square to safety.

Police said the gunman, who has not been identified, is dead.

The four fatalities, including the gunman, make this one of the deadliest mass shootings in Greater Cincinnati in years.

"There was definitely a lot of blood," said Zach Fritzhand, who saw police taking victims out of the building.

When the shots first rang out at 9:10 a.m., people ran or took over where they stood. Many were getting their morning coffee or a donut before work when they heard gunshots and screams.

Michael Richardson was smoking in front of the building when he saw a man open fire in the lobby.

"A bunch of cops were coming in with guns," he said. "I saw a lady down. A Cincinnati police officer dragged her out of the bank. She was talking. She was bleeding. Her shirt was red."

Leonard Cain said he saw a woman wearing headphones get shot as she entered the building. He said she dropped to the ground, and everyone else started running.

City Councilman Wendell Young said during Thursday's City Council session he was told the shooter had more than 500 rounds of ammunition.

If that's true, Young said, the body count would have been much higher “if not for the brave intervention of our first responders.”

Mayor John Cranley also praised the quick response from police and said he regretted Cincinnati had joined the growing list of American cities that have experienced mass shootings in the past year.

"There's something deeply sick at work here and we as a country need to work on it," Cranley said.

So now the area where I live now has to deal with America's most deadly disease, questions will be asked, and maybe Mayor Cranley and the City Council will try to take action, but Ohio statehouse Republicans have made it clear that home rule gun safety measures will not be tolerated.  A federal judge blocked the city's bump stock ban six weeks ago after a similar ban in Columbus was struck down, and Cincinnati was sued.

Can't wait until metal detectors start appearing in all downtown buildings and City Hall, because that's coming before the end of the year, but it won't help.

Sigh.

The Greatest Coward In Modern Political History

The self-serving "anonymous" Trump regime official who penned this NY Times op-ed trying to be the hero and keep enabling Trump to do what Republicans want is my definition of the very problem in modern American politics today.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The Times is tight-lipped about the true identity of the author, but the smart money is on Vice Dictator Mike Pence (who would have the most to gain from the existence of such a piece under both Occam's Razor and cui bono plus the clout to get the NYT to agree to run it), Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats (who is smart enough to make the piece sound like Pence wrote it but is a total desk weenie coward with Senate connections and is from Indiana, close enough to Pence to serve as his proxy), or Attorney General Jeff Sessions (who has the least to lose by writing such a piece as he's on his way out, and is crafty enough to crib Pence's speech notes, and who also has Senate connections).

Long shot: Jim Mattis, who is also on the way out.

Whoever the author is, they're a complete and utter coward, however. LA Times columnist Jessica Roy sums it up very well.

The truth is, Republicans don't want Trump out of office. They're clearly pleased with this “two-track” arrangement. They're advancing the right-wing economic agenda that President Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz would have been championing while preserving their popularity with Trump's base.

If you're reading this, senior White House official, know this: You are not resisting Donald Trump. You are enabling him for your own benefit. That doesn't make you an unsung hero. It makes you a coward.

It's this that makes me believe it's one of these three people.  Trump had an afternoon-long Twitter screaming fit, demanding the NY Times reveal the author's identity for "national security" but I'm willing to bet I'm right on this.

Still, Trump has his "fake news witch hunt conspiracy" to rally the base, and the author can come forward when the time is right to be the hero and claim Trump's head (which is why I think it's Pence, if I had to hang my hat on one of the three).  If they play it right, they have a lot to gain, but remember, whoever they are, they're a manipulative coward. Adam Serwer in the Atlantic this morning:

The biggest open secret in Washington is that Donald Trump is unfit to be president. His staff knows it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell knows it. House Speaker Paul Ryan knows it. Everyone who works for the president, including his attorneys, knows it. But they all want something, whether it’s upper-income tax cuts, starving the social safety net, or solidifying a right-wing federal judiciary. The Constitution provides for the removal of a president who is dangerously unfit, but those who have the power to remove him will not do so not out of respect for democracy, but because Trump is a means to get what they want. The officials who enable the Trump administration to maintain some veneer of normalcy, rather than resigning and loudly proclaiming that the president is unfit, are not “resisters.” They are enablers.

The anonymous Times op-ed writer is no different. While claiming that they and other officials are “thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses,” the op-ed provides few examples of this, and the author must know that the mere existence of their piece will only inflame those impulses. Already Trump has declared that “the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!” If the president ever decides to issue unconstitutional orders to the Justice Department or the Pentagon, he and his supporters will point to this op-ed and claim that drastic action was necessary to “protect democracy.”

As I have said time and time again, Trump is the symptom, the real problem has been the "gutless" Republican cowards enabling him, and whoever wrote that NYT op-ed is my Exhibits A through ZZ supporting that theory.

Bottom line:

The op-ed is an attempt to take out an insurance policy for the GOP and conservatism if and when things get much much worse. It's a very public hedge meant to preserve the reputation of the GOP's entire political and governing class.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 5, 2018

This is one of Trump's chief enablers covering the ass of the Republican party.  It's part of a larger plan going forward.  Part of that plan is for the writer to reveal themselves, and very soon. Count on that.

But for right now, they're buying time so that Brett Kavanaugh can be confirmed to the Supreme Court at record speed.  Once that's done, all bets are off.

StupidiNews!

• As the remnants of Tropical Storm Gordon dump rain on the Ohio Valley, Hurricane Florence has reached Category 4 strength and could threaten the East Coast  next week.
• One person is confirmed dead and 32 missing after a magnitude 6.7 quake near the Japanese island of Hokkaido knocked out power to millions and triggered landslides slowing rescue and recovery.
• North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is now saying he wants to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula "during Trump's first term" according to South Korean officials.
• Hong Kong has surpassed New York City as the home to the most individuals worth $30 million or more as Chinese millionaires are on the rise and returning from overseas.
• Amazon has joined Apple as the first two US companies to reach the $1 trillion mark as the retail shipping giant continues to grow and expand.

Last Call For The Anti-Social Network, Con't

Facebook and Twitter execs faced tough questions on Capitol Hill today over failure to stop Russian propaganda operations and white supremacist users (Google didn't even bother to show up apparently) and it did not go well for any of them, especially when Alex Jones showed up as a guest.

The Senate Intelligence committee's hearing on election interference on social media Wednesday swiftly turned into unconventional political theater, complete with a conspicuously empty chair set aside to highlight Google's absence and a notable cameo from InfoWars host Alex Jones.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg fielded questions for nearly three hours on their companies' efforts to combat online disinformation and foreign influence operations ahead of the midterm elections. Lawmakers also pressed the executives on an array of issues including data privacy, hate speech and doing business China.

But it was Jones, who claims he's being silenced by the tech giants, who grabbed attention outside the hearing room, where a scrum of reporters huddled around him as he pontificated on the wrongs he said the industry has done him. The far-right provocateur, known for spreading baseless conspiracy theories, at times took a seat in the front row of the hearing room as Dorsey and Sandberg testified.

No wonder then that new numbers from Pew Research finds Americans are dumping Facebook like toxic waste (along with Trump having the same effect on Twitter) and that the primary social media networks of this decade may not even make it into the next.

Just over half of Facebook users ages 18 and older (54%) say they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Around four-in-ten (42%) say they have taken a break from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more, while around a quarter (26%) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their cellphone. All told, some 74% of Facebook users say they have taken at least one of these three actions in the past year.

The findings come from a survey of U.S. adults conducted May 29-June 11, following revelations that the former consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had collected data on tens of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge.

Facebook has separately faced scrutiny from conservative lawmakers and pundits over allegations that it suppresses conservative voices. The Center found that the vast majority of Republicans think that social platforms in general censor political speech they find objectionable. Despite these concerns, the poll found that nearly identical shares of Democrats and Republicans (including political independents who lean toward either party) use Facebook. Republicans are no more likely than Democrats to have taken a break from Facebook or deleted the app from their phone in the past year.

There are, however, age differences in the share of Facebook users who have recently taken some of these actions. Most notably, 44% of younger users (those ages 18 to 29) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their phone in the past year, nearly four times the share of users ages 65 and older (12%) who have done so. Similarly, older users are much less likely to say they have adjusted their Facebook privacy settings in the past 12 months: Only a third of Facebook users 65 and older have done this, compared with 64% of younger users. In earlier research, Pew Research Center has found that a larger share of younger than older adults use Facebook. Still, similar shares of older and younger users have taken a break from Facebook for a period of several weeks or more. 

It's Millennials who are abandoning Facebook, and without them, the network is done. Generation Z won't even have Facebook around to get into at this rate.  Google is in the best position of the three, but that's not saying much.

Couldn't happen to a nicer group of privacy-abusing assholes.

The End Of The Session(s), Con't

Last week I talked about Donald Trump all but firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, with both Sens. Lindsay Graham and Chuck Grassley giving Trump tacit permissions to fire him after the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was wrapped up. But it seems Trump's true cabinet -- FOX News hosts and right-wing pundit sites -- want Sessions's head on a pike now, and are telling Trump that he needs to make his move as soon as possible.

“It’s clear Jeff Sessions is more concerned with his career than the good of America. That said, it’s high time President Trump fires his ineffective Attorney General,” Eric Bolling, a close Trump friend and a former Fox News personality, told The Daily Beast on Monday. “I would NOT, however, fire [special counsel Robert] Mueller. For no other reason than political optics.”

He was hardly the only one calling for Sessions’ head for his alleged failure to protect Trump due to the attorney general’s recusal from the Russia probe. According to several people who speak regularly to Trump, the president still keeps polling his inner circle and allies for their take on what he should do about Sessions, all the while highlighting what he views as Sessions’ weaknesses, failings, and annoying qualities.

And nowhere is Trump’s fury on this better reflected and projected than on his preferred conservative media behemoth.

For her Labor Day weekend episode of Justice With Judge Jeanine, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro dedicated her opening monologue to personally and professionally trashing Trump’s attorney general as a witless “shill” and as a pathetic enabler of supposed “corruption by the Democrats.”

Her overarching message to Sessions was: Nobody likes you, nerd.

“What don’t you get? Have you no self-esteem, self-regard, self-respect? Where is your dignity? Why would you stay in a job where you’re not wanted?… And why do you continue to stay?” Pirro said in her lengthy “Opening Statement” on the program. “You’re so clueless you don’t even know you’re being used. You don’t even know you’re nothing but a shill. In fact, the only constituency that wants you is the ‘Deep State’… Are you proud of yourself?”

“Are you kidding? All of America knows the DOJ continues to be to be influenced by politics," she added. "You need to do one of two things: Resign immediately, because you are not wanted. Or put on your big boy pants and be a real attorney general.”

Pirro is a longtime friend and ally of Trump’s, and she had even been interviewedduring the Trump presidential transition for the job of deputy attorney general. The president watches her weekend show routinely, and Pirro stands in the same Trumpworld echelon as someone like Sean Hannity, another Fox star who doubles as a confidant and top outside adviser to Trump.

This seems to me to be a coordinated move in order to get Sessions to resign, by application of a hint fired out of railgun.  The plan of course is to neuter the Mueller probe, and make sure its conclusions never reach the light of day.  Rudy Giuliani gave away that game on Monday.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said that the administration may claim executive privilege to block Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein from releasing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report when the investigation is finished, according to a New Yorker report.

Giuliani claims that President Donald Trump’s original legal team—which has undergone many mutations since—cut a deal with Mueller that that the White House can object to public dissemination of information from the probe on the grounds of executive privilege.

When asked if the White House is likely to invoke this clause, Giuliani was frank: “I’m sure we will.”

And with Kavanaugh as the fifth vote on SCOTUS even if the Democrats with back the House, Trump then buries the report permanently, the GOP in Congress does nothing, and the investigation vanishes.

Greg Sargent says this is all part of the plan to bury the Mueller report.

Could this work? On Tuesday, I spoke to Andrew Kent, a professor at Fordham University School of Law. The short answer is: Probably not, but there are scenarios under which it could have some success, and a lot may turn on whether Democrats win back one or both chambers of Congress.

Under the special counsel regulations, Mueller is supposed to provide a “confidential” report explaining his conclusions to the attorney general — or, in this case, to Rosenstein, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself. Rosenstein, not Mueller, is then supposed to provide the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate judiciary committees with an “explanation” for the Justice Department’s decision to conclude the investigation.

This explanation can be released publicly if the Justice Department official overseeing the probe decides it would be “in the public interest.” In this scenario, Rosenstein would have a great deal of discretion to decide how much to put in that report — he could keep it very brief, or supply a lot of detail.

Kent tells me the White House could try to override the regulations and stop the report’s release to Congress — or at least part of it — by claiming executive privilege covers certain information in it. Kent says most of the information in the report probably would not plausibly be covered by any such claim, but that Trump might try to assert that much of it is, anyway.

And should Rosenstein object, he's fired or replaced, and the new overseer of the Mueller probe refuses to release the report at all.  The only way it happens is if Congress subpoenas the report, which will never happen unless the Dems can take back the House or Senate in November.

It's possible then, very possible in fact, that Trump may not actually fire Robert Mueller, but simply erase the report.  Either way, Jeff Sessions will not be Attorney General in 2019, that's a 100% certainty at this point.

He may not be Attorney General by the end of the month.

Stay tuned.

Battering Rahm, Or Replacing An Emanuel Transmission

There will be no third term for Chicago's Democratic Mayor and former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, as his utter failure in the police killing of Laquan McDonald four years ago has now grown into a millstone large enough to drown him in the Chicago River. Vox's German Lopez:

The primary cause: Emanuel and his office played key roles in delaying the release of video of the 2014 police shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black 17-year-old.

The footage, which was released more than a year after the shooting, revealed that police had lied about what happened. Instead of lunging at police, as officers said, the teenager appeared to stumble around and move away from the officers when he was shot. The video, autopsy, and other forensic evidence also indicated that the officer who shot McDonald did so for as long as 15 seconds straight, with most of the shots seemingly fired after McDonald fell to the ground.

The release of the video led to heavy protests — as the shooting became part of the broader Black Lives Matter movement, which protests racial disparities in policing and particularly police use of force. Much of the criticism fell on Emanuel and other city officials, who in court resisted calls to release the video earlier, citing an ongoing investigation. A judge forced the release of the video despite the mayor’s resistance.

The video led to an investigation of the Chicago Police Department by the US Department of Justice, then led by President Barack Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The subsequent report found that Chicago police often treat people in minority communities “as animals or subhuman,” resulting in widespread racial discrimination and excessive use of force. The report was a huge political blow for Emanuel (who was White House chief of staff under Obama): As mayor he oversees the city’s police force.

The officer who shot McDonald, Jason Van Dyke, is now on trial over the shooting, facing first-degree murder charges.

It says something that Rahm bailed on his $10 million campaign war chest before the verdict in McDonald shooting (he was done either way, frankly) but the guy has been a complete failure across the board as Mayor.

Emanuel tried to recover in the aftermath of the video’s release and Justice Department report — naming a new police superintendent and carrying out some policing reforms, including the adoption of body cameras and new training. “Nothing less than complete and total reform of the system and the culture that it breeds will meet the standard we have set for ourselves as a city,” he told the City Council, according to the New York Times.

But the efforts were widely seen as too little, too late. As the Times noted, “Mr. Emanuel’s seven and a half years as Chicago mayor can be separated into periods: pre-Laquan and post-Laquan” — with the post-Laquan period marking a downturn for Emanuel as critics demanded his resignation for what they saw as a cover-up in the McDonald police shooting.

There were other problems as well. Gun violence was a big one — leading to big protests across Chicago last month, in which demonstrators demanded that Emanuel resign and other efforts be taken up to clean up the streets and provide new economic and education opportunities in the city’s worst-off neighborhoods. The Tribune also reported that Emanuel “had drawn the ire of some voters for record property taxes he instituted to shore up the city’s woefully underfunded police employee pensions and for closing 50 schools in 2013.”

I'm not sorry to see him go in the least.  There are Democrats who are unremittingly awful human beings who need to be driven out of politics for good, and Rahm Emanuel is one of them.

Door, ass, way out.

StupidiNews!

• Ten-term Dem incumbent Rep. Mike Capuano lost in a massive, historic primary upset to Ayanna Pressley last night, 58-41% as she would become the state's first black female Congresswoman.
• For the first time, Japanese officials are acknowledging that a Tokyo Electric Power worker died after being exposed to radiation by the 2011 tsunami at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
• UK officials have named two Russian suspects in the attempted murder of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia by military-grade nerve agent.
• Donald Trump will meet with Republican leaders in Congress to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month, Trump has threatened a "good shutdown" to get border wall funding.
• A company that makes lidar laser sensors for driverless cars has figured out how to turn them into cameras as well, a move that could put the startup on the map in the driverless car tech race.

Last Call For The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Some good news as the Manafort/Cohen mess is now clearly benefiting the Democrats in the polls as we head into the last 60 days of the 2018 campaign, with a new WaPo/ABC News poll finding Dems with a whopping 14-point generic ballot lead, their biggest lead in this poll since 2006.

Two months ahead of the midterm elections, Democrats hold a clear advantage over Republicans in congressional vote support, with antipathy toward President Trump fueling Democratic enthusiasm, even among those in the party who stayed home four years ago, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

The survey also points to broad unrest and frustration with the political system generally. More than 6 in 10 Americans say Trump and the Republican Party are out of touch with most people in the country. While Democrats fare better, a narrower 51 percent majority also judged them out of touch.

Registered voters say they favor the Democratic candidate over the Republican candidate in their district by 52 percent to 38 percent. That is a marked increase from the four-point edge in an April Post-ABC poll but similar to the 12-point advantage Democrats enjoyed in January.

The models I've seen put the Dems at a 70-75% chance of winning the House, but that was where Clinton was in September of 2016, too.  Take nothing for granted.

The poll says that 75% of registered voters are certain to vote, and we know for a fact that in a midterm year, that percentage will be closer to 40%, with 50% being near-record turnout that would get the Dems a blue tsunami.  That could happen, frankly.

But I'm not holding my breath.  Still, get out there, knock on doors, phone bank, meet people where you live and get them to vote.  I know there's not a lot of hope for me to get rid of Thomas Massie anytime soon, but next door in OH-1, sending GOP Rep. Steve Chabot back to the bench is absolutely doable with Democrat Aftab Pureval.

Where you live, help people vote blue.

Trump Cards, Con't

Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward's book on the Trump regime will be out next week, and the excerpts of it are heart-stopping.  Donald Trump is so singularly unfit for office that replacing the congressional supporters has to be our top priority in 2018 and if that's not enough, replacing Trump in 2020.

A near-constant subject of withering presidential attacks was Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump told Porter that Sessions was a “traitor” for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, Woodward writes. Mocking Sessions’s accent, Trump added, “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner. … He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.”

At a dinner with Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others, Trump lashed out at a vocal critic, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He falsely suggested that the former Navy pilot had been a coward for taking early release from a prisoner-of-war camp in Vietnam because of his father’s military rank and leaving others behind.

Mattis swiftly corrected his boss: “No, Mr. President, I think you’ve got it reversed.” The defense secretary explained that McCain, who died Aug. 25, had in fact turned down early release and was brutally tortured during his five years at the Hanoi Hilton.

“Oh, okay,” Trump replied, according to Woodward’s account.

With Trump’s rage and defiance impossible to contain, Cabinet members and other senior officials learned to act discreetly. Woodward describes an alliance among Trump’s traditionalists — including Mattis and Gary Cohn, the president’s former top economic adviser — to stymie what they considered dangerous acts.

“It felt like we were walking along the edge of the cliff perpetually,” Porter is quoted as saying. “Other times, we would fall over the edge, and an action would be taken.”

After Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate the dictator. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump said, according to Woodward.

Mattis told the president that he would get right on it. But after hanging up the phone, he told a senior aide: “We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.” The national security team developed options for the more conventional airstrike that Trump ultimately ordered.

I mean, Trump wanted to assassinate Bashar Al-Assad.  Mattis didn't do it.

One of them needs to resign before the week is out, and both of them should.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

I've previously talked about the three aspects of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russian probe into the Trump regime: the Trump campaign working with benefit of Russian help, Trump's long history of money laundering, and the obstruction of justice to cover both up.  Today we're talking about the second aspect, specifically Russia's money laundering ties to international banks.

I've previously mentioned Cyprus as a long-time haven for Russian money laundering operations and the sordid history of Trump's Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, who was the former Vice Chairman of the Bank of Cyprus.  But now we've discovered another major Russian money laundering outlet, this time through Denmark by way of Estonia.

An independent investigation into the money-laundering scandal at Danske Bank found that as much as $30bn of Russian and ex-Soviet money flowed through its Estonian branch in a single year.

The findings, contained in a draft report commissioned by Denmark’s largest bank and seen by the Financial Times, raises questions for Danske’s leadership about who knew, and when, about the sheer volume of foreign money passing through its small Estonian branch.

The report by Promontory Financial, the consultancy, found that up to $30bn was parked in Danske’s Estonian branch by non-residents in 2013, the peak year of a scandal that lasted from 2007 until 2015.

“NRP [non-resident portfolio] transaction volume peaked in 2013 with the number of transactions approaching 80,000 that year, and the transaction volume approaching $30bn,” the independent findings, seen by the Financial Times, stated.

One person close to the investigation said: “It’s a truly breathtaking amount for such a small branch. You can’t have that amount flowing through without it raising questions.”

And Danske Bank has been totally flat-footed by this.  They're on the hook for billions in fines, and they don't have the money to pay for it.

Danske Bank A/S says it hasn’t put any money aside to cover potential fines, or other losses, linked to its alleged role in the laundering of billions of dollars over several years.

“We can never tell for sure, obviously, but what we can tell is that we’ve made the assessment and that we’ve concluded there is no basis for making any provisions,” Morten Mosegaard, interim chief financial officer and chief of staff at Denmark’s biggest bank, said in an interview.

The Copenhagen-based lender is the target of criminal investigations for laundering in Denmark and Estonia amid allegations that more than $9 billion in illicit funds from Russia, Azerbaijan and Moldova flowed through its office in Tallinn. Danske has earmarked about 1.5 billion kroner, or $230 million, as what it’s calling a donation to society in an effort to address public indignation.

“We have been pretty precise in letting the market know that this is the full scope of gross income [from the Estonian unit] and then we’re making the assessment at this point in time,” Mosegaard said. “We can’t comment on that until we get to the point where we can make a general disclosure.”

You'd better believe that Robert Mueller's team and the NY Attorney General's office are taking a long, hard look at Danske Bank and its Russian clients.

And possibly some American clients as well.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• Confirmation hearings get underway today in the Senate for Donald Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh as Trump faces increasing pressure from Democrats and Mueller.
• A man who stabbed two American tourists in Amsterdam last week said in court today that his motivation was anti-Islamic Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders.
• French President Emmanuel Macron has appointed Green party lawmaker Francois de Rugy as his new environment minister in an effort to boost his coalition after a tough summer.
• Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is headlining Nike's 30th anniversary "Just Do It" campaign, but the move is already generating a backlash by right-wing Trump supporters.
• The FCC wants to end the Lifeline reseller program for mobile phones, a move that would end inexpensive cell service for millions of Americans.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

Immigrants, both documented and undocumented, are fleeing federal food programs like SNAP and WIC in droves because they know the Trump regime will start targeting them using that information.

Immigrants are turning down government help to buy infant formula and healthy food for their young children because they’re afraid the Trump administration could bar them from getting a green card if they take federal aid.

Local health providers say they’ve received panicked phone calls from both documented and undocumented immigrant families demanding to be dropped from the rolls of WIC, a federal nutrition program aimed at pregnant women and children, after news reports that the White House is potentially planning to deny legal status to immigrants who’ve used public benefits. Agencies in at least 18 states say they’ve seen drops of up to 20 percent in enrollment, and they attribute the change largely to fears about the immigration policy.

The Trump administration hasn’t officially put the policy in place yet, but even without a formal rule, families are already being scared away from using services, health providers say.

“It’s a stealth regulation,” said Kathleen Campbell Walker, an immigration attorney at Dickinson Wright in El Paso, Texas. “It doesn’t really exist, but it’s being applied subliminally.”

There's no doubt that this is all about fear.  Immigrants who don't use these programs save the government money, after all. But mostly it's about getting rid of the next generation of immigrants and slowing down or even reversing the browning of America, while feeding fresh, raw meat to Trump's base.  Taking food out of the mouths of "anchor babies" is exactly what the Trump camp wants.

The immigration proposal, which White House officials are working on ahead of the midterms as a way to energize the Republican base, would primarily affect legal immigrants already in the U.S. who are seeking a green card and people applying for legal admission to the U.S. It could also affect undocumented immigrants if they want to seek legal permanent residency in the future — a change that would represent a substantial expansion of the definition of public charge.

Under a provision known as public charge, U.S. immigration law has for more than a century allowed officials to reject admission to the country on the grounds that potential immigrants or visitors might become overly reliant on the government. But until now, officials have looked narrowly at whether someone would need cash benefits such as welfare or long-term institutional care. Immigration hawks in the Trump administration are pushing to consider would-be immigrants’ use of a much broader array of services, including non-cash assistance like food stamps, Head Start, Medicaid and WIC, according to versions of the proposed rule that were obtained by news organizations earlier this year.

Undocumented immigrants do not qualify for most government aid programs, but such an expansion of public charge could apply to the whole family. In the past, if a mom was applying for a green card her own use of public benefits might be examined. Under the proposed change, her child’s enrollment in Medicaid or Head Start would weighed as a negative factor, even if that child is a U.S. citizen.

The end of immigration into the US is coming, along with mass deportations of "undesirables".  We have one chance to stem the tide in November.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

We've finally reached the point where, as predicted, the Trump regime's state news organ is now officially pushing that Dear Leader was framed for his many crimes. 

Fox News host Jeanine Pirro said Sunday that she believes various forces in Washington have conspired to “frame” President Trump and bog down his administration with scandal and controversy.

“Nobody is looking at the corruption. It’s all one-sided, the corruption on the part of the Democrats," Pirro told radio host John Catsimatidis in an interview on AM 970 New York. "This president was framed. It’s that simple.”

“I’ve been in law enforcement for over three decades. This guy was framed," Pirro continued. "The crisscrossing and the incestuous nature of our government in an attempt to prevent the outsider president that we wanted from getting elected is frightening.”

Pirro, a former judge and ardent supporter of Trump, echoed claims the president has made before that he was framed "for crimes he didn't commit."

In May, Trump tweeted an unverified claim that the FBI placed a mole in his campaign team and suggested that the agency was attempting to "frame" him for alleged wrongdoings associated with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia. 

I'm moderately surprised that it wasn't Hannity broaching the subject, but Jeanine Pirro has now escalated this to an extremely dangerous new level.  It's one thing for Trump himself to babble about witch hunts, but if FOX News hosts are now going to start accusing the Justice Department of a massive conspiracy to frame him, then there's no limit as to what they will justify doing in order to defend Trump as Mueller closes in.

You'll know the fix is in when Republicans in Congress and candidates running for midterm elections give non-committal answers to "Do you believe Trump is being framed by Mueller?" instead of anything other than a hard no, and that Pirro is ridiculous and that the Mueller probe has their full support.

Stay tuned on this one.  It's going to get a lot uglier.

Solving A Micro Mystery

Medical scientists in the US have come to the conclusion that the spate of unexplained illnesses among US diplomats in Cuba and China can be explained by repeated attacks from microwave weapons.

During the Cold War, Washington feared that Moscow was seeking to turnmicrowave radiation into covert weapons of mind control.

More recently, the American military itself sought to develop microwave arms that could invisibly beam painfully loud booms and even spoken words into people’s heads. The aims were to disable attackers and wage psychological warfare.

Now, doctors and scientists say such unconventional weapons may have caused the baffling symptoms and ailments that, starting in late 2016, hit more than three dozen American diplomats and family members in Cuba and China. The Cuban incidents resulted in a diplomatic rupture between Havana and Washington.

The medical team that examined 21 affected diplomats from Cuba made no mention of microwaves in its detailed report published in JAMA in March. But Douglas H. Smith, the study’s lead author and director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a recent interview that microwaves were now considered a main suspect and that the team was increasingly sure the diplomats had suffered brain injury.

“Everybody was relatively skeptical at first,” he said, “and everyone now agrees there’s something there.” Dr. Smith remarked that the diplomats and doctors jokingly refer to the trauma as the immaculate concussion.

Strikes with microwaves, some experts now argue, more plausibly explain reports of painful sounds, ills and traumas than do other possible culprits — sonic attacks, viral infections and contagious anxiety.

In particular, a growing number of analysts cite an eerie phenomenon known as the Frey effect, named after Allan H. Frey, an American scientist. Long ago, he found that microwaves can trick the brain into perceiving what seem to be ordinary sounds.

If that's true, then suddenly there's a real problem.  Deploying these against US diplomats would be, you know, an act of terrorism...or an act of war.

The microwave idea teems with unanswered questions. Who fired the beams? The Russian government? The Cuban government? A rogue Cuban faction sympathetic to Moscow? And, if so, where did the attackers get the unconventional arms?

At his home outside Washington, Mr. Frey, the scientist who uncovered the neural phenomenon, said federal investigators have questioned him on the diplomatic riddle and that microwave radiation is considered a possible cause.

Mr. Frey, now 83, has traveled widely and long served as a contractor and a consultant to a number of federal agencies. He speculated that Cubans aligned with Russia, the nation’s longtime ally, might have launched microwave strikes in attempts to undermine developing ties between Cuba and the United States.

“It’s a possibility,” he said at his kitchen table. “In dictatorships, you often have factions that think nothing of going against the general policy if it suits their needs. I think that’s a perfectly viable explanation.”

We'll see where this goes.

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

Less than a week into the Florida gubernatorial contest between Trump-loving GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis and Democratic Mayor of Tallahassee Andrew Gillum, who would be Florida's first black governor, and we've now had three "Southern Strategy" moments that would have made Lee Atwater proud.

On Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the winning in Florida's Tuesday primaries, DeSantis called Gillum "articulate" and warned Florida voters not to "monkey this up" by voting for his opponent.

DeSantis, whose rise to national prominence was bolstered by his frequent appearances on the network, praised Gillum on Fox News on Wednesday as “an articulate spokesman” for those holding “far-left views” but warned that he would be damaging to the state.

“The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state,” DeSantis said. “That is not going to work. That’s not going to be good for Florida.”

The use of language seen as containing coded racism prompted an extraordinary rebuke from the network.

DeSantis pulled a "who, me?" and walked the comments back, sort of, but then on Thursday white supremacists bought robocalls in Florida with an unmistakably racist message.

Racist robocalls targeting Andrew Gillum, the first black nominee for Florida governor from a major party, have been placed to residents from an out-of-state white supremacist entity.

Mr. Gillum, 39, the Tallahassee mayor and a progressive candidate who won an upset victory in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, will face Representative Ron DeSantis, 39, a Republican who embraced the style and policies of President Trump, in the November election.

In the audio of one robocall placed on Friday and obtained by The New York Times, a man pretending to be Mr. Gillum can be heard talking in the exaggerated accent of a minstrel performer. “Well hello there,” it begins, “I is Andrew Gillum.” He then talks for a little over a minute about mud huts and unfair policing practices, and asks repeatedly for the listener’s vote. In the background are the sounds of drums and monkeys.

The recording, reported on Friday by The Tallahassee Democrat, ends with a man saying that the message was paid for by the Road to Power, an Idaho-based website and podcast with white supremacist and anti-Semitic content.

It is unclear how many people received the robocalls, but Mr. Gillum’s campaign spokesman, Geoff Burgan, said that multiple people had reported them to the campaign. He called the message “reprehensible” and said it “could only have come from someone with intentions to fuel hatred and seek publicity.”

Now DeSantis, in an interview today, wasted no time going after Gillum again, accusing Gillum of being a "far-left fringe socialist" who will "turn Florida into Venezuela". 

DeSantis told host John Catsimatidis in an interview airing Sunday on AM 970 in New York that Gillum, who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and advocates for more left-leaning proposals such as "Medicare for all" and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is an "untraditional" opponent.

"I would say it's very untraditional for Florida, [though] not anything to do with me, I'm a solid conservative in the Reagan tradition and I've been supportive of the president's agenda," DeSantis said.

"This Andrew Gillum, he's on the far-left socialist fringe," DeSantis continued. "He's a Bernie Sanders, [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez type candidate."

"If you have a guy like this enacting a socialist agenda it's going to absolutely destroy all the progress that Florida has made," he added. "He wants to turn Florida in to Venezuela."

It hasn't even been a week yet, and we already have three ear-splitting racist dog-whistles in the race, one from actual card-carrying white supremacists in support of Ron DeSantis, a race which is now 100% about Gillum being black.

And we still have two months to go.

It's About Suppression, Con't

The Secretary of State for Kansas, and now gubernatorial candidate for November, our old vote-suppressing friend Kris Kobach, will imminently be under grand jury investigation for dereliction of duty in purposely failing to register voters in the 2016 election.

Douglas County will have to summon a citizen-initiated grand jury to investigate allegations that Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office mishandled voter registration information during the 2016 election, the Kansas Supreme Court said Friday.

In a one-page order signed by Chief Justice Lawton Nuss, the court denied Kobach’s request to review a Kansas Court of Appeals decision in June that said Lawrence resident Steven Davis had met the legal requirement for circulating petitions to summon a grand jury.

The Supreme Court did not provide any further explanation of its decision.

Davis, a Lawrence resident who ran unsuccessfully for the Kansas House in the 2016 and 2018 Democratic primaries, circulated petitions following the 2016 elections, calling for a grand jury to investigate whether Kobach or others in his office had engaged in “destroying, obstructing, or failing to deliver online voter registration,” as well as possessing falsely made or altered registration books, preventing qualified electors from voting, and “being grossly neglectful with respect to their election duties.”

Kobach’s office has rejected the allegations, saying they relate to a short period of time in 2016 when certain online voter registration systems were malfunctioning and that those problems have since been resolved.

Kobach himself, who is now the Republican nominee for governor, has dismissed the allegations as politically motivated.

Initially, Douglas County Judge Peggy Kittel dismissed Davis’ petition, saying he had not made specific enough allegations to suggest that crimes had been committed.

But in June, a three-judge panel of the Kansas Court of Appeals reversed that decision, saying Kansas statutes only require general allegations that, if proven to be true, would constitute crimes.

While the case was pending at the Court of Appeals, Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s office withdrew the state as a party to the case.

Once the Court of Appeals ruled, Kobach asked the Kansas Supreme Court to review the matter, and he filed a motion to intervene, saying neither he nor his staff had been adequately represented in the Court of Appeals decision.

On Friday, though, the Supreme Court declined to review the matter, and in a separate order it denied Kobach’s motion to intervene as moot.

A spokeswoman for the Office of Judicial Administration said the grand jury will have to be summoned once the Court of Appeals issues what is called a “final mandate” in the case, but it was not immediately clear how long the appellate court has to do that.

These accusations are enormous, as they directly accuse Republican Secretary of State, Kansas's highest election official, of failing to register Democratic voters.  The fact that there's enough evidence to open a grand jury investigation at all should be the death knell for Kobach's run for governor, and for his entire political career.

And these are criminal acts, mind you.  Kobach could be headed for prison over this.  Granted, the grand jury investigation would take months and the following criminal case months as well, but it would be a sitting Governor under possible criminal investigation.  Like Missouri's criminal former GOP governor Eric Greitens, he'd have to resign.

Of course, even with a full indictment, Republicans can still be favored to win.  Just ask California GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter, under fraud and campaign finance charges, a man almost certainly headed for expulsion from the House and prison, but almost certainly headed for reelection first.

The corrupt GOP remains as long as we allow them to remain.

Sunday Long Read: Ten Years After The Nightmare

As we enter September, this month marks the ten-year anniversary of the housing collapse.  I started this blog as a result of that mess, moving from BooMan Tribune to my own place once it became clear that documenting the atrocities was going to be a part-time job in 2008.

Now in 2018, most Americans still haven't recovered from the financial disaster, and a second housing crisis now looms very large on the horizon.  We're still in the same mess we were, and at every turn, corporate and Republican forces have worked to keep us in the hole. Our Sunday Long Read at the Penny Hoarder goes over the details.

Heather and Rick Little learned in court that they would have to leave their home by Dec. 10 — just two weeks before Christmas.

The Littles knew the foreclosure was coming before the October 2008 hearing.

The bank was relentless with calls and notices and big fat envelopes, Heather remembers. She called and begged for help, but there was nothing the bank could do. “Nothing they would do,” she said.

She stopped trying to stall the foreclosure.

The day of the hearing, the Littles wheeled their daughter, Emma, then 19 months old, into the Manatee County, Florida, courthouse in her stroller. Their son, John, was in kindergarten that day.

The judge was sympathetic, Heather recalls. He asked them how much time they needed to pack up and move. The hearing took less than 15 minutes.

“There was no one around, thankfully,” she said, “because I fell apart.”

Their house became one of the 9 million homes that would go into foreclosure nationwide between 2007 and 2010.

The Littles went from hosting barbecues in their backyard with a swimming pool and outdoor kitchen to taking whatever they could get from local food banks.

A decade after the height of the Great Recession in 2008, people who lost homes and careers are still recovering.

For the Littles, life is more stable now, but the swimming pool and outdoor kitchen are long gone.

Today, the family’s backyard holds plastic pots where Heather grows fruits and vegetables — signs she still remembers what it felt like to question where their next meal would come from.

“We had nothing extra at the end of every month,” Heather said of the years after their foreclosure. “Nothing. Not even a dollar.”

Trillions in wealth was destroyed, and the recovery vastly favored those who already had wealth after 2008.  They got exponentially more wealthy, while the rest of us have put the American dream of homeownership and passing on a family place to our kids aside.

We're just trying to make the next rent payment.

President Obama did what he could, but it simply wasn't enough.  And after 2010, we hung him out to dry in favor of the "populist" GOP.  That mistake sealed the deal and left us in the lurch where we are now, ten years later.

And now Trump is in charge, and the reality is unless we break the GOP's hold on government in 2018, we're going to collapse again, and this time, America's not coming back.

The Old Pilot's Final Sendoff

Chuck Pierce notes that Sen. John McCain's funeral on Saturday was one final, gigantic, worldwide screw-you to one Donald John Trump, and nobody deserved the mass shunning more.

In the magnificent, lordly church-house, there were speeches and prayers. There were songs and hymns. There were bands and pipers and choirs and soloists. John McCain was given a national send-off in a National Cathedral and there was a great gathering of emotion that was almost frightening in its intensity because you knew that it was aimed at a solitary, angry, unbalanced man left back at the White House, at someone who nonetheless is the president* of the United States, with all the powers inherent to his office, a man who has created a situation in which he is an object of dislike and disrespect, because that is all that he's given to the world in return.

It was said almost immediately after the conclusion of the funeral ceremonies on Saturday that, for a few hours anyway, we were back in a familiar country with familiar customs and manners and norms, a country with institutions built to last. That may well be true. I felt it, too. But in back of that is the realization that all of us, including the deceased, had taken those customs, manners, norms, and institutions terribly for granted. We thought they could withstand anything, even a renegade president* in the pocket of a distant authoritarian goon. We let the customs, manners, norms and institutions weaken through neglect and now we are in open conflict with an elected president and, make no mistake about it, John McCain's funeral was a council of war, and it was a council of war because that's what John McCain meant it to be.

He deliberately made known to people that the president* was not welcome at any of the services. He deliberately chose the previous two presidents to deliver the formal eulogies. He deliberately created that scene in the Capitol rotunda at which Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Mike Pence, an unholy trio of Trumpist quislings, had to choke down their own cowardice and say how much they loved him and his irascibility. He deliberately created a mirror in which, if they still have an ounce of self-awareness, they could see the rot that has set in on their souls. Even at the end, John McCain knew what he was doing and he was a fearsome opponent. He wanted a pageant of everything this administration* has trashed and put up for sale, and that's what he got Saturday—a morality play shot through with Shakespearian portent and foreshadowing, a pageant of democracy's vengeance.

This is not to minimize the genuine affection and love that was on display. John McCain was a beloved figure to many of the people who came to bid him farewell. But there was so much subtext under the proceedings that the mantle shattered, and subtext became text, plain as the rain that fell and passed while the service continued. This was a funeral with more than one purpose—to celebrate the passing of John McCain and to summon a rebirth of politics that did not so much reek of grift and vodka. 

John McCain, a man better loved by Democrats than Republicans currently, was no saint.  I've said my piece about the man and his myriad failures, especially in the last ten years.   But in the end, for one day, he got to tell Donald Trump to go screw himself.

It was petty as hell, and Donald Trump understands the motivations of pettiness better than anyone on earth.  He went golfing instead, and everyone laughed at him.

Last Call For Supreme Misgivings

The White House isn't even pretending about Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh, he's there to be rubber-stamped by 50 GOP senators, plus John McCain's replacement in order to give the Republicans the final vote they need to dismantle 80 years of classic liberalism permanently, and they're not even feigning that his odious record as a jurist matters in the least anymore.

The Trump administration is withholding more than 100,000 pages of Brett Kavanaugh’s records from the Bush White House on the basis of presidential privilege ahead of the Supreme Court nominee’s confirmation hearing.

The Senate Judiciary Committee was notified of the action Friday. George W. Bush’s attorney Bill Burck told the panel it had essentially completed its work compiling documents, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. Bush directed them to err “on the side of transparency and disclosure, and we believe we have done so.”

But the current administration is also able to review the records, and the Trump White House “has directed that we not provide these documents,” the letter says.

In all, 267,000 pages of Kavanaugh documents from his Bush years are being made public.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called it “a Friday night document massacre.”

Schumer said the decision to withhold the documents “has all the makings of a cover-up. ... What are they trying so desperately to hide?”

What does it matter, Chuck?  You already made your deal with the GOP devils, and you'll fold on Kavanaugh too.

A sudden deal made by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on a set of judicial nominees has made Democratic activists livid.

With Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing looming next week, Schumer reached an agreement late Tuesday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to fast-track the confirmations of 15 Trump-nominated judicial picks. Seven federal district court judges were confirmed that day, and eight were put on the docket for confirmation next week.

A Senate Democratic aide says that the majority of the nominees greenlit as part of this deal were uncontroversial anyway — and emphasizes that Schumer’s efforts enable Democrats to hit the campaign trail, giving red-state Democrats a few extra days in their home states before coming back for Sen. John McCain’s memorial services this week.

But Democratic activists aren’t buying it — and many were concerned that this move showed weakness, especially going into the high-stakes Kavanaugh hearing.

“Mitch McConnell is in the middle of stealing the federal courts for conservatives, and Democrats continue to bring a butter knife to a gunfight,” said Brian Fallon, the head of activist group Demand Justice, which is leading opposition efforts against Kavanaugh, in a statement. “Democrats should be resisting Trump’s judge picks at every turn, not agreeing to fast-track them, as happened this week. It is hard to think of a more pathetic surrender heading into the Kavanaugh hearings.”

In the end I expect Kavanaugh to be confirmed with more than 55 votes, if not 60.   And when he's the fifth vote that gives Trump the power he needs to shut down the Mueller probe and start with full autocracy, maybe we'll remember.

The inevitability of Kavanaugh isn't thanks to 51 Republicans, but 49 cowards.