Russian To Judgment, Con't

Not to be outdone by the NY Times this weekend with their story on the FBI's investigation into Donald Trump as a Russian asset, the Bezos Post brings us Greg Miller's story on Trump's insanely suspicious acts of trying to completely avoid his own people when it comes to what he's discussed with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, current and former U.S. officials said.

Trump did so after a meeting with Putin in 2017 in Hamburg that was also attended by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. U.S. officials learned of Trump’s actions when a White House adviser and a senior State Department official sought information from the interpreter beyond a readout shared by Tillerson.

The constraints that Trump imposed are part of a broader pattern by the president of shielding his communications with Putin from public scrutiny and preventing even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States’ main adversaries.

As a result, U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years. Such a gap would be unusual in any presidency, let alone one that Russia sought to install through what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as an unprecedented campaign of election interference.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is thought to be in the final stages of an investigation that has focused largely on whether Trump or his associates conspired with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign. The new details about Trump’s continued secrecy underscore the extent to which little is known about his communications with Putin since becoming president. 

Former U.S. officials said that Trump’s behavior is at odds with the known practices of previous presidents, who have relied on senior aides to witness meetings and take comprehensive notes then shared with other officials and departments.

Trump’s secrecy surrounding Putin “is not only unusual by historical standards, it is outrageous,” said Strobe Talbott, a former deputy secretary of state now at the Brookings Institution, who participated in more than a dozen meetings between President Bill Clinton and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. “It handicaps the U.S. government — the experts and advisers and Cabinet officers who are there to serve [the president] — and it certainly gives Putin much more scope to manipulate Trump.”

A White House spokesman disputed that characterization and said that the Trump administration has sought to “improve the relationship with Russia” after the Obama administration “pursued a flawed ‘reset’ policy that sought engagement for the sake of engagement.”

So not one, but two red alert level stories this weekend on Trump very possibly being a Russian asset makes me believe very very much that Mueller's report includes evidence that Donald Trump is being manipulated by Russians if not by Putin himself, and that Moscow has direct leverage over a compromised leader of the US.

Remember that yesterday, we found out that NY Times story on the FBI investigation, as Charles Pierce points out, deliberately uses the word "publicly" to describe the evidence so far against Trump.  That's a brutal caveat.

This is not a word chosen idly, not in a piece as judiciously written as this one. Clearly, the Times printed pretty much all it was given by its sources, but the implication of that "publicly" is that investigators likely know far more than what appeared in the newspaper.

Otherwise, "publicly" is empty verbiage. To have written simply that, "No evidence has emerged that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government official," would have sufficed for the purposes of journalistic balance. But by dropping that fatal "publicly" in there, the Times and its sources likely are giving us a preview of coming attractions. (Judging by his manic episode on the electric Twitter machine on Saturday morning, the president* knows this, too.) And the one thing about which we can all be sure is that is whole megillah is nowhere near as weird as it's going to get.

If that's really where Mueller's report is going, then things are going to get very serious, and very soon.  The groundwork is being laid at this point, and I honestly think Trump is so terrified of being exposed as a Russian asset that he's completely invested now in this shutdown as a way to seed as much chaos as possible in the workings of government bureaucracy, as well as serving as a warning to everyone detailing just how much damage he can do to the country and its people.

Maybe Trump will go down.  But the country will burn along with him.  If he can't remain the man in the Oval Office, then maybe there won't be a country to be leader of.  Either way, both pieces taken together plus the recent behavior of Trump himself, indicate to me that something catastrophic for the Trump regime is coming and with a quickness.

Here there be dragons.

Last Call For Privatizing Privates

Meanwhile, the Trump regime is ready to capitalize on their plan to make healthcare for veterans so terrible that they can get away with privatizing VA healthcare, thus ensuring that the cost of nearly two decades of war injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan becomes borne by veterans and their families.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is preparing to shift billions of dollars from government-run veterans’ hospitals to private health care providers, setting the stage for the biggest transformation of the veterans’ medical system in a generation.

Under proposed guidelines, it would be easier for veterans to receive care in privately run hospitals and have the government pay for it. Veterans would also be allowed access to a system of proposed walk-in clinics, which would serve as a bridge between V.A. emergency rooms and private providers, and would require co-pays for treatment.

Veterans’ hospitals, which treat seven million patients annually, have struggled to see patients on time in recent years, hit by a double crush of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and aging Vietnam veterans. A scandal over hidden waiting lists in 2014 sent Congress searching for fixes, and in the years since, Republicans have pushed to send veterans to the private sector, while Democrats have favored increasing the number of doctors in the V.A.

If put into effect, the proposed rules — many of whose details remain unclear as they are negotiated within the Trump administration — would be a win for the once-obscure Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy group funded by the network founded by the billionaire industrialists Charles G. and David H. Koch, which has long championed increasing the use of private sector health care for veterans.

For individual veterans, private care could mean shorter waits, more choices and fewer requirements for co-pays — and could prove popular. But some health care experts and veterans’ groups say the change, which has no separate source of funding, would redirect money that the current veterans’ health care system — the largest in the nation — uses to provide specialty care.

Critics have also warned that switching vast numbers of veterans to private hospitals would strain care in the private sector and that costs for taxpayers could skyrocket. In addition, they say it could threaten the future of traditional veterans’ hospitals, some of which are already under review for consolidation or closing.

Considering the catastrophic damage Trump has already done to the nation's hospital system, gutting the nation's VA hospitals would only make things worse.  The big winners here are the massive private hospital chains and insurance giants, who will get the money, while America's hospitals get more crowded with fewer medical care professionals.

If you have hundreds of thousands of dollars, American hospital care is second to none.  If you don't, and the Trump regime is assuring that tens of millions of us have no affordable access, well, hope you have a wide network of friends for your crowdfunding efforts, otherwise it's into the poorhouse you go...or worse, into the graveyard.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The media, specifically the NY Times, still has a lot to answer for as far as their absolute failure in coverage of Trump's perfidy ahead of the 2016 election, while ruthlessly attacking Hillary Clinton and helping to cost her the election.  Now the Times comes clean on just how much of a total collapse of any real investigation into Trump was for them, with a story admitting that the FBI opened an investigation into Trump actively being an Russian agent.

In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.

Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. But the president’s activities before and after Mr. Comey’s firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said.

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, took over the inquiry into Mr. Trump when he was appointed, days after F.B.I. officials opened it. That inquiry is part of Mr. Mueller’s broader examination of how Russian operatives interfered in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired with them. It is unclear whether Mr. Mueller is still pursuing the counterintelligence matter, and some former law enforcement officials outside the investigation have questioned whether agents overstepped in opening it.

The criminal and counterintelligence elements were coupled together into one investigation, former law enforcement officials said in interviews in recent weeks, because if Mr. Trump had ousted the head of the F.B.I. to impede or even end the Russia investigation, that was both a possible crime and a national security concern. The F.B.I.’s counterintelligence division handles national security matters.

If the president had fired Mr. Comey to stop the Russia investigation, the action would have been a national security issue because it naturally would have hurt the bureau’s effort to learn how Moscow interfered in the 2016 election and whether any Americans were involved, according to James A. Baker, who served as F.B.I. general counsel until late 2017. He privately testified in October before House investigators who were examining the F.B.I.’s handling of the full Russia inquiry.

I'm glad that Robert Mueller has this information now, but this is information America should have been told in 2017, not 2019.   It also means that as Lawfare's Ben Wittes points out, the if Trump fired James Comey in order to throw a wrench into the Russia investigation, that itself could be the collusion.

Put simply, I don’t believe the FBI, having an open counterintelligence investigation, simply opened a new criminal investigation of obstruction in the wake of the Comey firing. I think there likely was—and still is—one umbrella investigation with a number of different threads. That one investigation was (and is) about Russia. And it had (and still has), as a subsidiary matter, a number of subsidiary files open about people on the U.S. side who had links to Russian government activity. Each of these files had (and still has) all of the counterintelligence and criminal tools available to the U.S. government at its disposal.

So when the president sought to impair the investigation, having declared both in the draft letter dismissing Comey and to Lester Holt that his action was connected in some way to the Russia investigation, that raised both potential criminal questions and major counterintelligence questions—questions that could only have been reinforced when Trump later announced to senior Russian government officials that he had relieved pressure on himself by acting as he did. It did so both because it threatened the investigation itself and because it fit directly into a pattern of interface between Trump campaign officials and Russian government actors that they were already investigating.

Remember that the standards of predication are quite low. To open an investigation, the FBI doesn’t need proof of a crime, or even probable cause of criminal activity. It need only see evidence that “An activity constituting a federal crime or a threat to the national security has or may have occurred, is or may be occurring, or will or may occur and the investigation may obtain information relating to the activity or the involvement or role of an individual, group, or organization in such activity” (emphasis added). “May” is a very flexible word. So ask yourself this: If you were the FBI and already investigating Russian activity and you saw the president’s actions in May 2017, would you believe that it “may” constitute a criminal offense or “may” constitute a threat to national security or both?

What is the significance of all of this? I have two big takeaways.

First, if this analysis is correct, it mostly—though not entirely—answers the question of the legal basis of the obstruction investigation. The president’s lawyers, Barr in his memo, and any number of conservative commentators have all argued that Mueller cannot reasonably be investigating obstruction offenses based on the president’s actions within his Article II powers in firing Comey; such actions, they contend, cannot possibly violate the obstruction laws. While this position is disputed, a great many other commentators, including me, have scratched their heads about Mueller’s obstruction theory.

But if the predicate for the investigation was rooted in substantial part in counterintelligence authorities—that is, if the theory was not just that the president may have violated the criminal law but also that he acted in a fashion that may constitute a threat to national security—that particular legal puzzle goes away. After all, the FBI doesn’t need a possible criminal violation to open a national security investigation.

The problem does not entirely go away, because as the Times reports, the probe was partly predicated as a criminal matter as well. So the question of Mueller’s criminal theory is still there. But the weight on it is dramatically less.

This possibility, of course, raises a different legal puzzle, which is whether and under what circumstances the president can be a national security investigative subject of his own FBI given that it is ultimately he who defines national security threats for the executive branch. But that’s a question for another day.

Second, if it is correct that the FBI’s principal interest in obstruction was not as a discrete criminal fact pattern but as a national security threat, this significantly blurs the distinction between the obstruction and collusion aspects of the investigation. In this construction, obstruction was not a problem distinct from collusion, as has been generally imagined. Rather, in this construction, obstruction was the collusion, or at least part of it. The obstruction of justice statutes become, in this understanding, merely one set of statutes investigators might think about using to deal with a national security risk—specifically, the risk of a person on the U.S. side coordinating with or supporting Russian activity by shutting down the investigation.

It was about Russia. It was always about Russia. Full stop.

People keep forgetting this.  It was always about Russia damaging our country as much as possible, and to that end they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

A Hat Lands In The Ring, Con't

And surprisingly enough, it's a Democratic candidacy that virtually nobody asked for.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said Friday she will run for president in 2020. 

"I have decided to run and will be making a formal announcement within the next week," the Hawaii Democrat told CNN's Van Jones during an interview slated to air at 7 p.m. Saturday on CNN's "The Van Jones Show." 

Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, currently serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She is the first American Samoan and the first Hindu member of Congress. 

"There are a lot of reasons for me to make this decision. There are a lot of challenges that are facing the American people that I'm concerned about and that I want to help solve," she said, listing health care access, criminal justice reform and climate change as key platform issues. 

"There is one main issue that is central to the rest, and that is the issue of war and peace," Gabbard added. "I look forward to being able to get into this and to talk about it in depth when we make our announcement." 

Rania Batrice, who was a deputy campaign manager for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and is now a top aide to Gabbard, will be the campaign manager, Batrice says. 

In 2015, Gabbard, then a vice-chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, was sharply critical of its then-chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for scheduling just six presidential debates during the 2016 primary election cycle. She later resigned her post as DNC vice chair to become one of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' highest-profile supporters, aligning herself with his populist economic message. 

Gabbard has staked out anti-interventionist foreign policy positions in Congress. Her 2017 meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad drew widespread criticism. "Initially, I hadn't planned on meeting him," Gabbard told CNN's Jake Tapper in January of 2017. 

"When the opportunity arose to meet with him, I did so because I felt it's important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we've got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we could achieve peace, and that's exactly what we talked about." 

Gabbard joins a quickly growing field of Democrats eager to take on President Donald Trump for the presidency.

I guess somebody has to represent all the "Obama framed Assad!" Democrats that Jill Stein somehow hasn't been able to reach.

Look, I'm all for Democrats being the diverse party of multiple viewpoints, but Gabbard is only slightly above Jill Stein in my book of third-party rattus rattus coitus experts.  Her meeting with Assad and hanging out with the Russia Today/Intercept/People Too Crusty Even For Bernie crowd means I trust her about as far as she can throw me.

Of course with all Democrats, if she's the nominee, I will still vote for her over Trump, no questions asked.  But frankly, I hope Gabbard drops out soon, she's only in the race to make trouble.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom

Just in case you've been under a rock for the last half-century or so, Republicans are screaming racists who go out of their way to selectively enforce laws to punish black and brown people.  GOP Rep. Steve King still doesn't understand what's so bad about white supremacy, and said as much this week.

Rep. Steve King addressed the controversy surrounding his statements about white nationalism and white supremacy in a New York Times article on the U.S. House floor Friday.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, yielded his time to the Iowa Republican as the House debated the southern border wall funding impasse. King used the time to say he "made a freshman mistake" talking with a New York Times reporter without recording the interview.

"But one phrase in that long article has created an unnecessary controversy," King said. "That was my mistake."

The quote that King said sparked "heartburn" appeared in the article published Thursday about King's role in the U.S.-Mexico border wall discussion and President Donald Trump's immigration policy.

“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King told the Times reporter. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

On the House floor, King said the quote was taken out of context. King argued he was saying terms like white supremacist, white nationalist and Nazi were "almost always unjustly labeling otherwise innocent people."

"It was about how those words got plugged into our dialogue, not when the words became offensive, which is what the technical interpretation of it is," King said. "It's how did that offensive language get injected into our political dialogue."

I mean we've heard this before, it's standard white supremacist garbage to say things like this and then scream about context, political correctness and false accusations.  Giving King the benefit of the doubt when his own state's top newspaper has documented multiple racist statements he's made in office is pointless.

So the GOP's lone black lawmaker in Congress, Sen. Tim Scott, is concerned.

When people with opinions similar to King’s open their mouths, they damage not only the Republican Party and the conservative brand but also our nation as a whole. They want to be treated with fairness for some perceived slights but refuse to return the favor to those on the other side.

Some in our party wonder why Republicans are constantly accused of racism — it is because of our silence when things like this are said. Immigration is the perfect example, in which somehow our affection for the rule of law has become conflated with a perceived racism against brown and black people.

I do support border security not because I want to keep certain ethnicities out of our nation, but because I support enforcing our laws. I do not care if you come from Canada, France or Honduras, if you break our laws, there should be consequences. But it has become almost impossible to have a reasonable conversation along those lines. That’s in part why I laid out my agenda on civility, fairness and opportunity on Thursday on the floor of the Senate.

King’s comments are not conservative views but separate views that should be ridiculed at every turn possible. Conservative principles mean equal opportunity for all to succeed, regardless of what you look like or where you are from. It is maddening to see so many folks who believe this and have only good intentions in their hearts tarnished by these radical perspectives.

That is why silence is no longer acceptable. It is tempting to write King — or other extremists on race issues, such as black-nationalist Louis Farrakhan — as lonely voices in the wilderness, but they are far more dangerous than that. They continue to rip at the fabric of our nation, a country built on hope, strength and diversity. It is the opposite of civility and fairness and will lead only to more pain and suffering.

We have made significant progress in our nation, and while there is still work to do, we cannot let these intolerant and hateful views hold us back. This is a uniquely fractured time in our nation’s history, not our worst but far from our best, and it is only together that we will rebuild the trust we seem to have lost in each other.

Which would be funny if Tim Scott hadn't voted with Donald Trump 96% of the time over the last two years.

How Steve King is able to remain in Congress is because people like Tim Scott, when given the chance to act against racism and oppose the white supremacy that has taken over the party, still choose to side with the white supremacists.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

With former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen now set to testify publicly before House Democrats next month, the Trump regime is in full panic mode over the Mueller probe over the impending Mueller final report.  Rudy Giuliani is demanding that the White House be able to "correct" Mueller's findings before the report can be released.

Rudy Giuliani says President Trump’s legal team should be allowed to “correct” special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report before Congress or the American people get the chance to read it.

The claim, made in a telephone interview with The Hill on Thursday evening, goes further than the president’s legal advisers have ever gone before in arguing they have a right to review the conclusions of Mueller’s probe, which is now in its 20th month.

“As a matter of fairness, they should show it to you — so we can correct it if they’re wrong,” said the former New York City mayor, who is a member of Trump's personal legal team. “They’re not God, after all. They could be wrong.”

The special counsel's office declined to comment.

As ridiculous as that is, it's important to remember that there's a very good chance we'll never see Muller's final report.  David Corn:

The Justice Department guidelines under which Mueller is operating note that his final report explaining his prosecution decisions is confidential and gets delivered only to the attorney general. If the attorney general has recused himself in this matter, as former Attorney General Jeff Sessions did, then the report goes to the deputy attorney general, a position now occupied by Rod Rosenstein (who reportedly may soon leave the Justice Department). With the attorney general nomination of William Barr now pending, it’s unclear who will be in the Justice Department’s top chair—and who will be responsible for overseeing the Trump-Russia investigation—when Mueller is finished. But that’s the official who will get the report—whether it is a short roundup of the prosecutions or something more comprehensive—and he will not have to show it to the public. If the Justice Department does try to sit on the report, House Democrats will no doubt demand a copy. And it’s not difficult to envision a subsequent dust-up that could reach the Supreme Court. (The regulations, though, do note that if the attorney general at any time prevented the special counsel from pursuing an action because he believed it was “inappropriate or unwarranted under established Departmental practices,” the A.G. must report that to Congress at the end of the investigation.)

There is another possible—or parallel—scenario. Mueller has been investigating whether Trump obstructed justice. It remains a matter of legal debate whether a president can be indicted for a federal offense while in office. Justice Department policy says a president cannot be charged. Some legal scholars disagree. For instance, Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general contends that “generic DOJ opinions about whether a sitting President could be indicted do not create an ‘established Departmental practice’ about whether an individual could be indicted for successfully cheating in a Presidential election.” The courts have never settled this question. So what might Mueller do if he gathers information that supports a charge of obstruction related to Trump?

Mueller conceivably could submit his findings to Congress. In 1998, Starr did not indict President Bill Clinton. Instead, he handed a thick report to the House of Representatives. It was full of salacious details about Clinton’s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky and outlined grounds for impeachment. The GOP-controlled House quickly voted to present the report to the public. (This move backfired for the Republicans, who faced a backlash over their drive for impeachment and their release of Starr’s X-rated report.) Should Mueller decide that Trump may have committed obstruction of justice andthat the president cannot (or ought not) be indicted, he might follow Starr’s example and give a report on Trump’s alleged obstruction to the House Judiciary Committee for possible consideration of impeachment. (Could the Trump Justice Department block such a move? Hmmm.) It would then be up to House Democrats to decide whether to make such a report public. In other words, here it comes.

At this point, there are no indications whether there will be an explosive final report (or reports) or something minimal and narrow—and whether any report will reach the public. Peter Carr, Mueller’s spokesman, will only say, “All I can point you to is what the regulations say.”

These regulations do not guarantee the public will receive a full accounting. Providing the citizenry a complete account of the Trump-Russia scandal is actually the responsibility of Congress. But the Republicans on the House intelligence committee put on a clown-show investigation, and the Senate intelligence committee investigation is still underway with no signs of what it will ultimately yield. Neither of these committees have held a series of public hearings that such a subject warrants. (The Democrats who now control the House have signaled they will revive portions of the Russia investigation and will be mounting hearings.) House and Senate Republicans also blocked the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Russian assault on the election and to produce a public report.

So now many people are turning to Mueller to supply the full rundown on what happened. His primary mission, though, has been to search for crimes and prosecute those cases for which he believes he can win a guilty verdict. His job is not to inform the public. Mueller is a veteran G-Man looking to serve and deliver justice. A critical question is, can he also serve and deliver the truth?

Should the Roberts Court decide that publicly releasing the report would do terminal harm to the office of chief executive, then no, we will never see Mueller's report.

Unless he gives it to House Democrats...

Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

With Mitch McConnell adjourning the Senate for the weekend and refusing to allow any votes on House Democratic bills to reopen the government, this will now be the longest government shutdown in US history, and there doesn't seem to be any way out.  Exasperated Senate Republicans are starting to give in to Trump's emergency declaration scheme.

South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham issued a statement Thursday calling for President Donald Trump to invoke national emergency powers to fund his border wall. 

"Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi's refusal to negotiate on funding for a border wall/barrier -- even if the government were to be reopened -- virtually ends the congressional path to funding for a border wall/barrier," Graham said in a statement. "It is time for President Trump to use emergency powers to fund the construction of a border wall/barrier." 

The statement from the key Trump ally came shortly after Graham said efforts to forge a deal with congressional Democrats had fallen flat. 

GOP senators gathered in Graham's office a day prior to discuss a deal that would bring an end to the ongoing government shutdown while securing money for Trump's proposed border with Mexico.

Trump killed that plan, and if anything, all indications are that his national emergency stupidity is going to happen, and soon.

President Donald Trump has been briefed on a plan that would use the Army Corps of Engineers and a portion of $13.9 billion of Army Corps funding to build 315 miles of barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the briefing.

The money was set aside to fund projects all over the country including storm-damaged areas of Puerto Rico through fiscal year 2020, but the checks have not been written yet and, under an emergency declaration, the president could take the money from these civil works projects and use it to build the border wall, said officials familiar with the briefing and two congressional sources.

The plan could be implemented if Trump declares a national emergency in order to build the wall and would use more money and build more miles than the administration has requested from Congress. The president had requested $5.7 billion for a wall stretching 234 miles.

Under the proposal, the officials said, Trump could dip into the $2.4 billion allocated to projects in California, including flood prevention and protection projects along the Yuba River Basin and the Folsom Dam, as well as the $2.5 billion set aside for reconstruction projects in Puerto Rico, which is still recovering from Hurricane Maria.

Taking money from California and Puerto Rico disaster reconstruction to build a section of the wall and declare victory seems like the most Trumpian plan ever.  After all, his supporters are furious that the shutdown isn't "hurting the people he needs to be hurting."  By pulling disaster relief money from those people he can accomplish both.

Expect this to happen soon, if not imminently.

StupidiNews!

• Scottish tennis champion Andy Murray says he will retire this year at age 31 after hip surgery, Murray became the first UK men's Wimbledon champion in more than 70 years in 2013.
• A new study by a Chinese research team find the Earth's ocans are heating up at a more rapid pace than previously thought, exacerbating the problem of violent storms from global warming.
• Canadian Treasury Board President Scott Brison is quitting the Trudeau government ahead of October elections, Brison is Canada's first openly gay cabinet minister.
• Menswear mainstay Calvin Klein is closing its NYC flagship store this spring, parent company PVH Corp. says the brand is looking to shift to more digital sales worldwide.
• The Justice Department announced a $305 million settlement with Fiat Chrysler over diesel software cheating scandals, Chrysler is also expected to offer software upgrades for 100,000 vehicles.

Last Call For The House That Ruth Built

The Trump Regime needs a win quite badly right now, and nothing would cause Republicans and Trump's rabid base to forget everything more quickly than should Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg be unable to continue on the Supreme Court.

The White House is reaching out to political allies and conservative activist groups to prepare for an ailing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s possible death or departure from the Supreme Court — an event that would trigger the second bitter confirmation battle of President Donald Trump’s tenure.

The outreach began after Ginsburg, 85, on Monday missed oral arguments at the courtfor the first time in her 25 years on the bench. The justice, who was nominated to the court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, announced in late December that she underwent a surgical procedure to remove two cancerous growths from her lungs.

The White House "is taking the temperature on possible short-list candidates, reaching out to key stakeholders, and just making sure that people are informed on the process," said a source familiar with those conversations, who spoke on background given the delicate nature of the subject. "They're doing it very quietly, of course, because the idea is not to be opportunistic, but just to be prepared so we aren't caught flat-footed."

Ginsburg had a pulmonary lobectomy, the Supreme Court said in a statement, and her doctors said that post-surgery there was “no evidence of any remaining disease.” She has also recovered from several past health scares. But her departure from the Court would allow Trump to nominate a third Supreme Court justice — the most in one presidential term since President Ronald Reagan placed three judges on the highest court during his second term.

The nine-member court is currently divided 5-4 between its conservative and liberal wings. Ginsburg’s departure would allow Trump to create the Court’s strongest conservative majority in decades, a scenario sure to bring intense opposition from Democrats and liberal activists still furious over the October confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Needless to say, a 6-3 conservative majority would be the utter end of classic liberalism in America and assure the country's descent into theocratic Christian Dominionism, if not full-on white supremacy as a government imperative.

But the ghouls couldn't slaver any harder from their gaping maws.

Sears No Bucks

Sears, one of America's greatest retail legends, most notable for its commitment to serve black customers through the era of Jim Crow with its mail catalog, was facing imminent liquidation this morning, but this afternoon it appears to have been spared heading for history's scrap heap.

Sears was facing the possibility of shutting down, until it reached an 11th-hour deal Tuesday to stay open, at least for now. 

After two long delays at a morning hearing in bankruptcy court, attorneys for Sears announced it had accepted a revised bid from a hedge fund controlled by Eddie Lampert, the chairman and former CEO of Sears. The deal would keep 425 of the stores open. 

Lampert's $4.4 billion offer does not complete the sale, but rather starts an auction that is due to be completed on January 14. It is still possible that those wishing to shutdown the company will bid more for the assets than Lampert is offering. 

Judge Robert Drain still needs to approve the agreement, but called the deal "a good development." 

It gives Sears a chance to survive, which appeared to be slipping way heading into the hearing. 

Lampert submitted a bid on December 28 and Sears had until Friday to accept it, but the company didn't comment before Tuesday's hearing. That's because attorneys were working feverishly to get it done. 

The deal was reached after days of "virtually round-the-clock negotiations," Sears attorney Ray Schrock told the court. 

The talks continued into Tuesday. A hearing planned for 10 a.m. didn't actually get underway until after 1 p.m. because attorneys were huddled to discuss details of the bid. 

In the end, greed wrecked Sears, it will eventually be pillaged, and 50,000 jobs and 125 years of history will sacrificed on the altar of Wall Street.  JC Penney's is almost certainly next.

Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

Trump's primetime speech Tuesday night was supposed to "win" him the shutdown and bring Democrats crawling on their knees to beg him to reopen the government the next morning.  In reality, Trump threw a hissy fit and stormed out of his own office, because he's a tantrum baby.

Democrats came out of the latest government shutdown talks at the White House on Wednesday claiming that President Donald Trump walked out in a "temper tantrum" when they again refused to meet his demand that they agree to fund his border wall.

After the meeting ended, the president tweeted that the negotiations were "a total waste of time."

Standing outside the West Wing, Republican and Democratic leaders described a meeting in the Situation Room that was dysfunctional, frustrating, and brief, lasting just 14 minutes.

"It’s cold out here and the temperature wasn't much warmer inside the Situation Room," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the talks quickly broke down after Trump asked Democrats if they would agree to fund his proposed border wall.

"We saw a temper tantrum because he couldn't get his way and he just walked out of the meeting," Schumer said, calling the president's decision to not reopen the government without border wall funding "cruel" and "callous" as federal workers will not get their first scheduled paycheck of the shutdown on Friday.

"He sort of slammed the table and when Leader Pelosi said she didn't agree with the wall, he just walked out and said, 'We have nothing to discuss.' So he said it was a waste of his time. That is sad and unfortunate," Schumer said, describing the meeting.

America is now reduced to the capricious whims of a whiny-ass septuagenarian buffoon.  Now, House Republicans are beginning to panic along with their Senate colleagues, to the point where they're starting to vote for Democratic bills to reopen the government.

The House passed a bill Wednesday evening that would reopen the Treasury Department and ensure that the IRS would remain funded.

The measure passed on a 240 to 188 vote, with eight Republicans breaking ranks to vote in favor of the bill. A handful of Republicans also joined Democrats last week in voting for the measure as part of a broader package.

The legislation has no current path to passage. Trump has said he will not sign legislation reopening the government unless it includes taxpayer funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — and both Trump and Vice President Pence have visited the Capitol this week urging GOP lawmakers to vote down any such Democratic proposals. 

Something's got to give, and soon.

StupidiNews!

• House Democrats have passed legislation defending the Affordable Care Act, but the bill has no future in the GOP-controlled Senate.
• California investigators using DNA evidence have cleared the Golden State Killer of a 1975 murder, prosecutors remain confident that the man that was convicted was the correct culprit.
• Senate Finance Committee Chair Republican Chuck Grassley says that Donald Trump will not receive expanded tariff authority as requested by the White House.
• Tech giant Oracle has bought the naming rights to San Francisco's Giants Stadium for more than $200 million as AT&T will not renew its current deal with the baseball team.
• Walmart is testing autonomous delivery van service for customers in Phoenix, the retail chain is partnering with automated driving startup Udelv.

Last Call For Food For Thought(lessness)

As we come up on the end of Week 3 of the Trump shutdown, please keep in mind that FDA food inspections aren't considered government-essential services and right now most food is not being inspected at all, so hey, I hope you haven't eaten anything in January.

The furloughing of hundreds of Food and Drug Administration inspectors has sharply reduced inspections of the nation’s food supply — one of the many repercussions of the partial government shutdown that are making Americans potentially less safe.

The agency, which oversees 80 percent of the food supply, has suspended all routine inspections of domestic food-processing facilities, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in an interview. He is working on a plan to bring inspectors back as early as next week to inspect facilities considered high-risk because they handle sensitive items such as seafood, soft cheese and vegetables, or have a history of problems.

“We are doing what we can to mitigate any risk to consumers through the shutdown,” Gottlieb said.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit advocacy group, described the inspection reductions as unacceptable.

“That puts our food supply at risk,” said Sarah Sorscher, deputy director of regulatory affairs at the group. “Regular inspections, which help stop foodborne illness before people get sick, are vital.”

Foodborne illnesses are a major problem in the United States, sickening 48 million people each year and killing 3,000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.

Food inspections are just one of the public health and safety efforts that have been cut or curtailed during the shutdown, now deep into its third week. The federal government also keeps airplanes from colliding, inspects pharmaceutical drugs, pursues criminals and defends against possible terrorist and cyberattacks. It is a 24-7-365 effort to make Americans safer.

But a shutdown upends the calculus of risk management as agencies including the FBI, Coast Guard, Secret Service, FDA, Federal Aviation Administration and Agriculture Department face drastically reduced resources.

Again, Trump thinks this is a hostage situation where he can win by making Democrats fold through attrition, and once again the cruelty is the point.  A national outbreak of E. coli or the FAA shutting down all flights because of downed systems will start getting people's attention, I guess.

Worth noting that a government already wrecked when it was operation is now broken, and even if people got back to work tomorrow, it would be quite some time before we got back to even nominal 2018 levels of Trump regime "broken on purpose" government-run disaster.

That Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein is now expected to leave the Justice Department to make way for the expected confirmation of Attorney General William Barr.

Rosenstein has communicated to President Donald Trump and White House officials his plan to depart the administration around the time William Barr, Trump's nominee for attorney general, would take office following a Senate confirmation.

Sources told ABC News Rosenstein wants to ensure a smooth transition to his successor and would accommodate the needs of Barr, should he be confirmed.

Rosenstein apparently had long been thinking he would serve about two years, and there was no indication that he was being forced out at this moment by the president.

Upon the termination of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, speculation mounted that Rosenstein would depart shortly thereafter, yet he's remained in his post as Matt Whitaker has served as acting Attorney General since late November.

Rosenstein oversaw special counsel Robert Mueller's probe for more than a year, after Sessions had recused from the matter over his role in Trump's presidential campaign.

Like other senior leaders within the Justice Department, Rosenstein became a frequent target of Trump's on Twitter, with the president recently re-posting an image of Rosenstein and others behind bars.

As far as the Mueller probe goes, Rosenstein is no longer Mueller's boss anyway with the summary firing of Jeff Sessions, acting AG Matt Whitaker is. Whitaker hasn't so far chosen to interfere overtly in the Mueller probe yet, that may be up to William Barr after he's confirmed by the Senate GOP.

Still, it looks like to me with the Mueller probe and his expected report coming in the next several weeks, Rosenstein realized that he's not going to be able to stay past Barr's confirmation.  Of course, the part about the Trump regime not forcing him out is probably a lie too.

What effect this will have on the Mueller probe, we may not know for a while.

Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

Trump's propaganda dog and pony show last night wasn't worth covering, so I won't.  He spent the bulk of the time lying about the border, immigration in general, and the Democratic party.  The American people aren't falling for it, either.

A growing proportion of Americans blame President Donald Trump for a partial government shutdown that will cut off paychecks to federal workers this week, though Republicans mostly support his refusal to approve a budget without taxpayer dollars for the U.S.-Mexico border wall, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday.

The national opinion poll, which ran from Jan. 1 to Jan. 7, found that 51 percent of adults believe Trump “deserves most of the blame” for the shutdown, which entered its 18th day on Tuesday. That is up 4 percentage points from a similar poll that ran from Dec. 21 to 25.

Another 32 percent blame congressional Democrats for the shutdown and 7 percent blame congressional Republicans, according to the poll. Those percentages are mostly unchanged from the previous poll.

A majority now blame Trump, nearly 60% blame Republicans in general.  Not good numbers for the GOP, and they are well aware of the peril they are in.

Republicans face a tooth-and-nail struggle to keep their Senate majority in 2020 under the best of circumstances. But the prolonged government shutdown has gotten them off to a rough start, exploiting party divisions on immigration and giving Democrats fodder to attack Republican incumbents out of the gate.

Though the shutdown is likely to be long forgotten by November 2020, it’s already laid bare the schism incumbent senators will have to navigate — between President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration backers and independent voters who polling shows oppose the shutdown and the president’s border wall.

Two of the most vulnerable Republicans on the ballot next year, Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado and Susan Collins of Maine, have already broken with Trump and called for the government to reopen even without an agreement on the border wall. Other Republican senators haven’t gone there yet but are growing increasingly frustrated by the impasse.

“It hurts all of us and everybody that’s looking from the outside. They’re like: What is wrong with you? Why can’t you find a solution?” said Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, one of the Republicans up for reelection next year.

I don't think America is going to forget the shutdown between now and 2020.  I think this is going to stick for a while.  We'll see.