StuipidiNews!

• Tornadoes ripped across Alabama and Georgia on Sunday, killing at least 23 in Lee County, Alabama as spring storms are expected to bring heavy winter weather to the Northeast today.
• Donald Trump reportedly ordered former economic adviser Gary Cohn to pressure the Justice Department to block the proposed AT&T/Time Warner merger in order to hurt CNN.
• Chinese tech giant Huawei says it will sue the Trump regime over legislation it says unfairly targets China as the US continues to accuse the company of stealing American corporate secrets.
• UK lawmakers are accusing Prime Minister Theresa May of buying votes for her Brexit deal with a proposed $2.1 billion stimulus package for the poor.
• Federal investigators are looking into a fatal Friday Tesla Model 3 accident in Florida where the driver sheared the top of his car off under a truck trailer to see if the car's autopilot played a part.

Donald's House Of Pain

House Democrats continue to move forward with investigations into the Trump regime, and the new heavy hitter in this game is House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jerrod Nadler.  It's Nadler's committee that would begin any impeachment proceedings against Trump, and Nadler says that process of looking into that begins Monday.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that his committee will be issuing document requests on Monday to “begin the investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power.”

“Tomorrow, we will be issuing document requests to over 60 different people and individuals from the White House to the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, Jr., Allen Weisselberg, to begin the investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power,” Nadler said on “This Week” Sunday.

“Do you think the president obstructed justice?” asked ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos.

“Yes, I do,” Nadler said.

This is super important.  Expect Nadler and the House Judiciary to begin their investigation into Trump tomorrow.  That's on top of Rep. Elijah Cummings and the House Oversight Committee.  That's on top of Rep. Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee.   And that's on top of Rep. Maxine Waters and the House Financial Services Committee.

Expect devastating testimony like Cohen's on a regular basis going forward, in public, televised, and gruesome for Trump and his family.  One of the topics that needs to be thoroughly investigated is Jared Kushner's relationship with Saudi Arabia. Nick Kristoff:

Jared Kushner slipped quietly into Saudi Arabia this week for a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, so the question I’m trying to get the White House to answer is this: Did they discuss American help for a Saudi nuclear program?

Of all the harebrained and unscrupulous dealings of the Trump administration in the last two years, one of the most shocking is a Trump plan to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Even as President Trump is trying to denuclearize North Korea and Iran, he may be helping to nuclearize Saudi Arabia. This is abominable policy tainted by a gargantuan conflict of interest involving Kushner.

Kushner’s family real estate business had been teetering because of a disastrously overpriced acquisition he made of a particular Manhattan property called 666 Fifth Avenue, but last August a company called Brookfield Asset Management rescued the Kushners by taking a 99-year lease of the troubled property — and paying the whole sum of about $1.1 billion up front.

Alarm bells should go off: Brookfield also owns Westinghouse Electric, the nuclear services business trying to sell reactors to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi swamp, meet American swamp.

Looking forward to Jared in the dock.

Sunday Long Read: Ocean's Two

GQ gives us the story of prolific master art thief Stephane Breitwieser, a man whose career in crime has netted him more than a billion in art, sculture, and paintings from around the world, and like most master thieves, he does it for the challenge, and for the love of the art he "collects".

All his life, inanimate objects have had the power to seduce him. “I get smitten,” Breitwieser says. Before artwork, it was stamps and coins and old postcards, which he'd purchased with pocket money. Later it was medieval pottery fragments he'd find near archaeological sites, free for the taking.

When he covets an object, says Breitwieser, he feels the emotional wallop of a coup de coeur—literally, a blow to the heart. There are just things that make him swoon. “Looking at something beautiful,” he explains, “I can't help but weep. There are people who do not understand this, but I can cry for objects.”

His interactions with the world of the living were far less fulfilling. He never really understood his peers, or almost anyone else for that matter. Popular pastimes, like sports and video games, baffled him. He's never had any interest in drinking or drugs. He could happily spend all day alone at a museum—his parents often dropped him off—or touring archaeological sites, of which there are dozens in the area where he grew up, but around others he was sometimes hotheaded and temperamental.

Breitwieser was born in 1971 in the Alsace region of northeastern France, where his family has deep roots. He speaks French and German and a little English. His father was a sales executive in Switzerland, just over the border, and his mother was a nurse. He's an only child. The family, for most of his youth, was well-off, living in a grand house filled with elegant furniture—Louis XV armchairs, from the 1700s; Empire dressers, from the 1800s. His parents had hoped he'd become a lawyer, but he dropped out of university after a couple of years.

His first museum heist came shortly after a family crisis. When he was 22 years old, still living at home, his parents' marriage ended explosively. His father left and took his possessions with him, and Breitwieser and his mother tumbled down the social ladder, re-settling in a smaller place, the antiques replaced by Ikea.

Cushioning the trauma was a woman Breitwieser met through an acquaintance, a fellow archeology buff. Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus was the same age as Breitwieser, and similarly introverted, with a kindred sense of curiosity and adventure. She had a sly smile and an irresistible pixie cut. They shared a passion for museums, thrilled to be immersed in beauty. Breitwieser finally experienced a coup de coeur for an actual person. “I loved her right away,” he says. Soon after Breitwieser's father departed, Kleinklaus moved in.

A few months later, the couple were visiting a museum in the French village of Thann when Breitwieser spotted an antique pistol. His first thought, he recalls, was that he should already own something like this. Breitwieser's father had collected old weapons but had taken them when he'd left the family, not bothering to leave a single piece for his son. The firearm, exhibited in a glass case on the museum's second floor, was hand-carved around 1730. It was far nicer than anything his father had owned.

He felt an urge to possess it. The museum was small, no security guard or alarm system, just a volunteer at the entrance booth. The display case itself, Breitwieser noted, was partially open. He was wearing a backpack and could easily hide the pistol in there.

One must resist temptation, he knew. It even says so in the Bible, not that he was particularly religious. What our heart really wants, we must often deny. Maybe this is why so many people seem conflicted and miserable—we are taught to be at constant war with ourselves. As if that were a virtue.

What would happen, he wondered, if he did not resist temptation? If, instead, he fed temptation and freed himself from society's repressive restraints? He had no desire to physically harm anyone or so much as cause fright. He contemplated the flintlock pistol and whispered a few of these thoughts to his girlfriend.

Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus has never spoken to the media about her relationship with Breitwieser and any possible role in the crimes, and neither has Breitwieser's mother, Mireille Stengel. Though there exist supporting documents and reported accounts, much of this story is based primarily on interviews with Breitwieser. While he was in the museum, in front of the pistol, Kleinklaus's response, the way Breitwieser remembers it, made him believe that they were destined to be together.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Take it.” So he did.

The Ocean's Twelve character of Francois Toulour is based on Breitwieser's history, of course.  But like all great thieves, he eventually gets caught, because he cannot stay away from the game.  It's still a hell of a story though.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Russia's generals are openly bragging at this point that their info ops can bring down any country in the world. After all, they've already owned the US presidency and all but destroyed the UK with Brexit, so why wouldn't they be doing victory laps as they continue to win unabated in Ukraine and Syria?

The chief of Russia’s armed forces endorsed on Saturday the kind of tactics used by his country to intervene abroad, repeating a philosophy of so-called hybrid war that has earned him notoriety in the West, especially among American officials who have accused Russia of election meddling in 2016.

At a conference on the future of Russian military strategy, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, said countries bring a blend of political, economic and military power to bear against adversaries.

The speech outlined what some Western analysts consider the signature strategy of Russia under President Vladimir V. Putin — and what other experts call a simple recognition of modern war and politics.

General Gerasimov said Russia’s armed forces must maintain both “classical” and “asymmetrical” potential, using jargon for the mix of combat, intelligence and propaganda tools that the Kremlin has deployed in conflicts such as Syria and Ukraine.


And he cited the Syrian civil war an example of successful Russian intervention abroad. The combination of a small expeditionary force with “information” operations had provided lessons that could be expanded to “defend and advance national interests beyond the borders of Russia,” he said.

The speech was noteworthy for echoing themes General Gerasimov laid out in an article published in 2013 in The Military-Industrial Courier, a Russian army journal, and which many now see as a foreshadowing of the country’s embrace of “hybrid war” in Ukraine, where Russia has backed separatist rebels and used soldiers in unmarked uniforms to seize Crimea.

Though definitions of the term vary, some analysts see a progression from the blend of subversion and propaganda used in Ukraine to the tactics later directed against Western nations, including the United States, where Russia’s military intelligence agency hacked into Democratic Party computers during the 2016 election. Russia denies interfering in the election.

An American interagency report on the Russian election meddling blamed the intelligence agency, known as the G.R.U. and at least formally subordinate to General Gerasimov, for hacking the Democratic National Committee servers and releasing documents to damage the campaign of Hillary Clinton and support her opponent, Donald J. Trump.

They're basically telling us that they will strike again in 2020, and that Donald Trump will make sure that they are allowed to, he's all but thrown the doors wide open and publicly stated that he trusts Putin more than our own intelligence agencies.

Trump is just as much a danger to America as Putin is.

Trump Cards, Con't

The annual CPAC gathering of conservative grifters is this week outside DC, and the capstone was Donald Trump's screaming, explicit two-hour tirade against his enemies list, giving his rank-and-file supporters marching orders about what to do when the Mueller report hits.

President Donald Trump on Saturday delivered a scorched-earth speech to conservative activists, calling the Russia investigation "bullshit," adopting a southern accent to mock his former attorney general, and asserting that some members of Congress "hate our country."

The rollicking two-hour-plus appearance at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland offered the president a brief respite from an otherwise miserable week in which his much-touted summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un ended in failure and his former personal lawyer delivered explosive testimony to Congress.

Trump, basking in the adoration of the crowd, largely glossed over the North Korea summit's collapse, instead reviving several of his greatest hits, from rehashing the 2016 election to obsessing over the crowd size at his inauguration.

The speech amounted to a boatload of red meat for conservatives, with Trump promising he’ll protect them from undocumented immigrants, socialism and liberal Democrats he claims are dead set on bankrupting the country with proposals like the Green New Deal.

“You know I’m totally off script right now,” Trump said at the beginning of his speech. As his meandering speech continued, it became clear that his assessment was an understatement.

At one point, Trump regaled the crowd with a story about a general he said was named "Raisin Caine" (it wasn't immediately clear who he was referring to). He said he always sits with the pilots when airplanes are landing: "They know what we’re doing." He said he has good eyesight and later added, "I don’t have white hair." He derided a Hawaii senator as a "crazy person." And he accused Hollywood of discriminating against conservatives.

He even revisited his campaign kickoff speech from June 2015. "From day one, I mentioned the word rape. If you look at that first speech, that was very innocent compared to what’s happening," Trump said. Trump came under fire for his 2015 comments, which appeared to broadly assert that Mexicans were rapists.

Throughout, Trump revealed himself to be a president deeply scorned by what he views as unfair media coverage and a lack of recognition from many in Washington. "I get no credit," he said multiple times throughout the lengthy speech.

But the crowd gave him credit.  It was a malignant narcissist's wet dream, Trump basking in the adoration of his hateful fans while he pumped them full of vitriol, screaming about how he has been persecuted and by inference, all of his voters.

And he dared them to get out there and to stop his enemies, promising he would force colleges to give conservative "free speech" or lose all federal funding, declaring Democrats to be enemies of the country who hate America, attacking Robert Mueller as a traitor, and worse, declaring America is "one people, one family and one nation."

This was a disturbing, demented, and dangerous speech.  We've now reached the point where Trump knows he's not going to make it to a second term, and he's going to see this country and millions burn on the way down.

E pluribus Unum went right out the window. Trump's America is what Dear Leader Donald says it is.  And anyone else will be dealt with...

Enemies Of The People

The Republican Party knows it lost the House in 2018 because of Trump, so now it is trying to demonize House Democrats by whatever means necessary in order to enrage its base to take action against them.  The GOP will tell you of course that the action they prefer is "voting" but, you know, whatever works to stop the Democratic party.

The reverberations of an anti-Muslim poster on display at the West Virginia Capitol rotunda continue, with the House Sergeant at Arms resigning and talk of possible discipline against a lawmaker who allegedly injured a doorkeeper Friday.

Sgt. at Arms Anne Lieberman resigned Friday afternoon after delegates accused her of using an anti-Muslim slur. "The sergeant of arms of this body had the nerve to say to us 'all Muslims are terrorists' that's beyond shameful and that's beyond freedom of speech," Del. Michael Angelucci, D-Marion, said.

The poster that sparked the controversy consisted of two photos. The upper photo was a picture of the World Trade Center towers during the 9/11 attack. A caption read, "'NEVER FORGET' - YOU SAID.."

Below it was a photo of Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, wearing a hijab. Omar is Muslim, and was one of two Muslim women elected to Congress. That picture's caption said, "I AM PROOF - YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN."

The anti-Muslim display was outside the House of Delegates chamber as part of a “Republicans Take the Rotunda” event.

A lawmaker told us Friday evening that the House Rules Committee will meet at 8 a.m. Saturday to decide if Del. Mike Caputo, D-Marion, will face repercussions for allegedly injuring a doorkeeper during an angry outburst regarding the poster. Caputo is the minority whip in the House.

Caputo admitted to kicking the door because he wanted to get into the chamber and he said he was being blocked. "We have created an anger that I have never witnessed in 23 years in this body and it sickens me. It absolutely sickens me. So yeah, I kicked the door open I'll own it," Caputo said. The doorkeeper was taken to the hospital for evaluation.

Democrats in the House spoke out against the poster, saying it is the second hateful event to happen in that legislative body during this session. They referred back to when Del. Eric Porterfield, R-Mercer, compared the LGBTQ community to the Ku Klux Klan.

West Virginia Republicans essentially accusing Rep. Ilhan Omar and American Muslims of causing 9/11 is just expressing the vile hatred in their hearts.  They know that in the era of Trump they don't have to hide it anymore, they can freely post Facebook memes as recruitment posters for their two-minute hate sessions.

And if something happened to Rep. Omar, not a one of them would lose a wink of sleep.

America, this is your Republican party.

Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

Kentucky is the latest state to embrace the gun death culture as apparently our elected officials here feel we need to get rid of the background check, training, and permit fee for concealed carry.

Kentucky lawmakers sided with a powerful gun-rights organization Friday in approving a bill to let people carry a concealed handgun without a permit or training.

The measure, backed by the National Rifle Association, sparked impassioned debate in the House that veered between gun ownership rights and fears of more gun violence. The bill won final passage on a 60-37 vote and goes to Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.

"This comes down to a constitutional right. We have a right in this country to own and bear arms," Republican Rep. John Blanton said in supporting the measure.

Under the legislation, Kentuckians able to lawfully possess a firearm could conceal their weapons without a license. A gun-carrying permit in the state now carries a fee and a gun safety training requirement. Objections from opponents included dropping the training requirement as a condition for carrying concealed weapons.

"The right to carry a weapon in our society — as with all rights — comes with responsibility," Democratic Rep. Maria Sorolis said. "And this bill provides no protection for responsibility by gun owners to know their weapon, to be able to use them well."

Bevin's office did not immediately respond to an email asking if the governor will sign it into law. Bevin, a staunch conservative, is seeking re-election this year.

If Senate Bill 150 becomes law, Kentucky would become the 16th state to allow adults statewide to carry concealed firearms without permits, according to the NRA.

Kentucky now requires people to get a permit before they can carry a concealed firearm in the state. To do that, they have to undergo a background check, complete some gun safety training and pay a $60 fee.

The legislation would allow people who are at least 21 years old and meet other legal requirements for gun ownership to carry a concealed firearm without a permit.

Supporters said the measure makes no changes regarding where and when people can possess concealed weapons.

The bill sailed through the Republican-led Senate on a 29-8 vote last month.

Kentucky is already an open carry state on top of all this, but again, it's up to Matt Bevin.  This didn't pass the General Assembly by a veto-proof margin, although it was close.  Bevin I'm sure will sign the bill, he loses re-election for sure if he doesn't.

There will be consequences though, and those consequences will be deadly.

Last Call For Another Hat Lands In The Ring, Con't

As a new study is out this week tying climate change to a major loss of ocean fish worldwide, the governor of one of America's largest fishing states is entering the 2020 Democratic presidential race.

Fish populations are declining as oceans warm, putting a key source of food and income at risk for millions of people around the world, according to new research published Thursday.

The study found that the amount of seafood that humans could sustainably harvest from a wide range of species shrank by 4.1 percent from 1930 to 2010, a casualty of human-caused climate change.

“That 4 percent decline sounds small, but it’s 1.4 million metric tons of fish from 1930 to 2010,” said Chris Free, the lead author of the study, which appears in the journal Science.

Scientists have warned that global warming will put pressure on the world’s food supplies in coming decades. But the new findings — which separate the effects of warming waters from other factors, like overfishing — suggest that climate change is already having a serious impact on seafood.
Fish make up 17 percent of the global population’s intake of protein, and as much as 70 percent for people living in some coastal and island countries, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

“Fish provide a vital source of protein for over half of the global population, and some 56 million people worldwide are supported in some way by marine fisheries,” Dr. Free said.

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee announced he is entering the race this morning and is running on fighting climate change as the number one issue for America.

Inslee, who is the chief executive in Washington state, served as the chair of the Democratic Governors Association during the 2018 midterms. In a field where the biggest names are almost all US senators, Inslee is planning to lean heavily on his executive experience and talk about how progressive politics can turn states like his into economic juggernauts.

“We are, according to CNBC, the best place to do business this year. And the reasons for that in part are because of our progressive policies,” Inslee told Vox last year. “We welcome computer scientists and geneticists who are helping to cure cancer instead of denying them because they’re Muslim. We have policies that protect our environment so we have a great place to live, clean water and clean air; as a result, it’s a great way to recruit people to come here.”

Inslee is making climate change his No. 1 priority, but he doesn’t want to be a single-issue candidate. Instead, Inslee is treating climate change like an umbrella issue under which other issues like the economy, health care, and national security also fit.

The Washington state governor plans to tie each issue to the broader theme of using the power of the presidency to dramatically lower America’s carbon output and scale up renewable energy.

“He’s going to use the full power of the presidency to defeat climate change,” an Inslee aide told Vox. “This is different than saying you support the Green New Deal.

Inslee is originally from Seattle and has lived in Washington for much of his life. He’s held a number of roles in politics, serving in the Washington state legislature and a brief term in the US House in the early 1990s. After a failed run for governor in 1996, he served as a regional director for President Bill Clinton’s Department of Health and Human Services.

Inslee returned to the US House late in that decade, where he served until he was elected governor in 2012. He’s presided over a time of economic growth; Washington is consistently in the top 10 state economies, according to rankings from US News & World Report and USA Today.

Washington’s governor has argued the progressive policies he’s embraced have had a big hand in attracting people to his state. That’s been especially prescient during the Trump administration, where the federal government has made its opposition to transgender people, Latinos, and Muslim immigrants well-known. Inslee has made it a point to push back against Trump’s policies and underscore that his state is a welcoming place for all.

“A lot of people over the years have argued that environmental laws or laws involving equity and who you can marry are inimical,” Inslee said. “In fact, they’re actually crucial to economic development. Some of the hottest economies are places with these progressive policies.”

It's a good idea.  Inslee's argument is that climate change is so important that it affects every other major Democratic platform plank: racial equality, criminal justice reform, women's rights,  LGBTQ equality, national security, jobs and the economy, public infrastructure, universal health care, child care, affordable housing, sustainable agriculture, public education, you name it, and he's got a solid point.

Climate change is going to make all of these other issues more difficult and more expensive because it will be hurting everyone, adding a growing cost to everything the federal government tries to do. Therefore, Inslee argues, the federal government should be doing everything it can in a way to fight back as it's the only sensible and moral course of action.

It's a strong argument.  How well it will resonate with an American populace where half of us have been trained for decades to laugh at climate change, I don't know.

Jared, The Galleria Of Crime, Con't

So turns out Donald Trump's worthless son-in-law Jared Kushner only got a top-secret security clearance after Trump ordered by then White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to give him one, because Kushner essentially failed every single possible red flag check to get it.

President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.

The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner — including by the C.I.A. — and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance.

The disclosure of the memos contradicts statements made by the president, who told The New York Times in January in an Oval Office interview that he had no role in his son-in-law receiving his clearance.

Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell, also said at the time the clearance was granted last year that his client went through a standard process. Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter and Mr. Kushner’s wife, said the same thing three weeks ago.

Asked on Thursday about the memos contradicting the president’s account, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said, “We don’t comment on security clearances.”

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Mr. Lowell, said on Thursday, “In 2018, White House and security clearance officials affirmed that Mr. Kushner’s security clearance was handled in the regular process with no pressure from anyone. That was conveyed to the media at the time, and new stories, if accurate, do not change what was affirmed at the time.”

The decision last year to grant Mr. Kushner a top-secret clearance upgraded him from earlier temporary and interim status. He never received a higher-level designation that would have given him access to need-to-know intelligence known as sensitive compartmented information.

It is not known precisely what factors led to the problems with Mr. Kushner’s security clearance. Officials had raised questions about his own and his family’s real estate business’s ties to foreign governments and investors, and about initially unreported contacts he had with foreigners. The issue also generated criticism of Mr. Trump for having two family members serve in official capacities in the West Wing.

Bet it had everything to do with Kushner being in bed with Russian, Saudi, and Emirate real estate deals and owing these governments tens of millions, if not more.  That's leverage, leverage to be used against him, and all indications are that this has already happened, particularly the Saudis.

The Washington Post backs up the NY Times story, with the addition that House Democrats remain very interested in how Kushner got his clearance.

Congressional Democrats said Thursday that they plan to aggressively scrutinize the role Trump played in securing Kushner’s clearance. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, noted that his commitee has already launched an investigation into the White House security clearance process and has yet to receive a response to its request for documents.

“The Committee expects full compliance with its requests as soon as possible, or it may become necessary to consider alternative means to compel compliance,” Cummings said in a statement.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement late Thursday that his panel, as well as the House Oversight Committee, will continue in their investigation of the White House’s security clearance process.

“The revelation that President Trump personally intervened to overrule White House security officials and the Intelligence Community to grant a Top Secret security clearance to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is the latest indicator of the President’s utter disregard for our national security and for the men and women who sacrifice so much every day to keep us safe,” Schiff said. “There is no nepotism exception for background investigations.”

Sadly, I'm not sure how much Democrats can actually do here.  Presidents have full authority to grant clearances to whomever they wish.  That fact is being abused here, and Trump lied about it, even though it was legal.

That tells you everything you need to know about Trump and his son-in-law.

The Third Party Screw Job

With news that billionaire Michael Bloomberg is getting serious about entering the 2020 race as an independent, and with former Starbucks CEO and billionaire Howard Schultz still lurking in the shadows, it's time for a sobering reminder from my old friend Steve M that a Ross Perot-style independent run in 2020 would all but assure a second Trump term.

Dr. Rachel Bitecofer, a pollster and political science professor, published a New York Times op-ed last month called "Why Trump Will Lose in 2020" -- but that was before Howard Schultz began making noises about running as an independent. Dr. Bitecofer, who conducts polls for the Wason Center for Public Policy, alerts us to the results of Wason's latest survey, which suggests that a third-party run could turn a Democratic blowout into a Trump win.

The Wason Center survey of likely 2020 voters shows that, in a conventional two-party race, the Democratic Party nominee holds an 11-point advantage over Trump, 48%-37%, well outside the +/- 3.2 margin of error. However, when respondents are offered the option of an Independent candidate, a far different picture emerges. Under this scenario, the race becomes a statistical tie between Trump (34%) and the Democrat (32%). Fully 16% of likely voters indicate they would vote for the Independent candidate and another 16% report being undecided — up from 9% in the two-way contest.

... the Democrat loses five times more voters than Trump (16 points vs. 3 points). That is, for every voter who switches from Donald Trump to the Independent, five voters switch from the Democrat to the Independent. 

It's just one poll, but the numbers are bad.

The dropoff is quite extraordinary. In a two-person race, Trump gets 86% of the Republican vote; with an independent in the race, he's down to 78% -- an 8-point drop. The drop among Democratic voters, by contrast, is 23 points -- the Democratic candidate goes from 95% to 72%.

With no independent in the race, men go for Trump 44%-38%; add an independent and the numbers are 44%-20% (with 23% going independent) -- Trump doesn't lose any men, while the Democrat loses nearly half of his or her male supporters. And oddly, this isn't primarily a white phenomenon -- non-white support for the Democrat drops from 70% to 43% with an independent in the race.

And why wouldn't this be the case? The Democratic Party has a terrible brand. For years, Republicans have nationalized every election, portraying each contest as a one between pure evil -- the Democrats, along with their putative support network of radical college professors, Hollyweird celebrities, and effete soy boys -- and pure good. Democrats, by contrast, run against their opponents, or against the president of the United States when he's a Republican, but they never run against the Republican Party. And they don't run with pride in being Democrats -- swing-district 2018 House candidates downplayed their party affiliation; Bernie Sanders allied himself with the Democrats in 2016 only long enough to run for president, and is doing the same thing agin this year. Even Democrats mock the Democrats. I mock the Democrats. So it makes sense that a significant percentage of anti-Trump voters would blow off the Democratic Party if given an alternative. 

Again, this is one poll, but it would be a disaster for Democrats if either Schultz or Bloomberg ran (or god help us, both).  Both men have to be aware.  Both men have to see that their stated goal of getting rid of Trump would only be destroyed by entering the race.

I expect ego will drive one of them, if not both, to enter anyway.

StupidiNews!

• After more than 20 years and $400 billion in research, development and construction, the US Navy has finally signed off on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft for use aboard aircraft carriers.
• A white nationalist convicted of shooting into a crowd of protesters and the University of Florida in 2017 has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for aggravated assault and firearms charges.
• Tesla says it will not be profitable in the first quarter, cutting its Model 3 price to $35,000 with plans to close most of its US showrooms and move to online-only global sales.
• Workers in Washington DC now have the most expensive commutes in the US, with Charles County, MD commuters spending an average of nearly 400 hours a year in traffic.
• European Union officials say big tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter aren't living up to voluntary EU standards on stopping fake news, and new legislation may be coming.

Last Call For Kim's Inconvenience

Donald Trump's dog and pony show in Vietnam collapsed completely as he walked away from the summit table with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un having earned nothing.

President Trump and Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, abruptly ended their second summit meeting on Thursday after talks collapsed with the two leaders failing to agree on any steps toward nuclear disarmament or measures to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

“Sometimes you have to walk,” Mr. Trump said at an afternoon news conference in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.

He said Mr. Kim had offered to dismantle the North’s most important nuclear facility if the United States lifted the harsh sanctions imposed on his nation — but would not commit to do the same for other elements of its weapons program. That, Mr. Trump said, was a dealbreaker.

“It was about the sanctions,” Mr. Trump said. “Basically they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, but we couldn’t do that.”

The premature end to the negotiations leaves the unusual rapprochement between the United States and North Korea that has unfolded for most of a year at a deadlock, with the North retaining both its nuclear arsenal and facilities believed to be producing additional fissile material for warheads.

It also represents a major setback at a difficult political moment for Mr. Trump, who has long presented himself as a tough negotiator capable of bringing adversaries into a deal and had made North Korea the signature diplomatic initiative of his presidency.

Even as the talks began, Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, was delivering dramatic and damaging testimony in Congress, accusing him of an expansive pattern of lies and criminality.

There's that.  Trump ran away because he had to get back to Washington and deal with the absolute disaster that the Cohen testimony was for him and his family.  They are all going to prison and for a very long time.

Trump will still spin this as a victory, his rabid fanbase will call him brilliant for being "brave" and walking away from a summit that he never could have made an agreement on, but even Trump appeared deflated on this.

He knows he has a much, much bigger problem to deal with back home.

Bibi Busted Big Time, Con't

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing three major bribery and corruption cases, and with early national elections that he called for just 40 days away, Bibi figured any possible indictments for a sitting PM would never come as he could say they were a direct effort to interfere in an election.  He figured he had another term as Prime Minister in the bag.

Today he found out just how wrong he was.

Israel's attorney general announced Thursday that his office had indicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges after a two-year investigation.

The prime minister faces one count of bribery and two counts of fraud and breach of trust.

Police have previously recommended indicting Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three different cases.

Police recommended an indictment in the case based on evidence collected that confidants of Netanyahu promoted regulatory changes worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Bezeq. In exchange, they believe Netanyahu used his connections with Elovitch to receive positive press coverage on Bezeq's popular subsidiary news site, Walla. Police have said their investigation concluded that Netanyahu and Elovitch engaged in a "bribe-based relationship."

Police also recommended charges be brought against Elovitch, members of his family and members of his Bezeq management team.

Police have previously recommended indicting Netanyahu on corruption charges in two other cases. One involves accepting gifts from billionaire friends, and the second revolves around alleged offers of advantageous legislation for a major newspaper in return for favorable coverage.

Netanyahu, 69, who is serving his third consecutive term as prime minister and his fourth overall, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and called the various allegations against him a witch hunt aimed at removing him from office.

The attorney general's decision to publish his conclusions 39 days prior to the general election on April 9 is raising questions about what impact it can have on the outcome of the vote.

Israeli media reported Thursday that with just hours to go before Mandelblit's anticipated decision to indict Netanyahu, his Likud Party filed a petition to the Supreme Court to stop the announcement from happening before the election on the grounds that it would unfairly impact on Netanyahu's prospects of re-election. However, the court's spokesperson confirmed later in the afternoon that the petition was rejected.

The indictment marks the first time in Israeli history that a sitting prime minister has been charged with a crime.

It'll be years before the case will be heard, of course.  But an indicted politician running for leader of Israel is probably not going to be very successful.  This puts the future of Israel very much up in the air.  There's no way Bibi resigns, he's too much of an ass.

Where does Israel go from here?  We'll see.  Uncharted territory for sure.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The Michel Cohen show on Wednesday delivered all that was promised and then some, as Donald Trump's former fixer implicated him in multiple criminal activities while in the White House, activities that are definitely being investigated by the Southern District of New York federal investigation into the Trump Organization.

Even if those watching didn't believe anything else he said, Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, left no doubt that he is working closely with prosecutors in Manhattan's Southern District in criminal investigations that could end up roiling the Trump presidency. Unlike the special counsel, those prosecutors have no specific mandate — they can investigate any crime that comes to their attention.

"Is there any other wrongdoing or illegal act that you are aware of regarding Donald Trump that we haven't yet discussed today?" Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois asked Cohen, in the middle of the seven-and-and-a-half hour hearing full of stunning, ugly allegations.

Cohen replied: "Yes and again those are a part of the investigation that's currently being looked at by the Southern District of New York." 

It wasn't even the day's biggest headline. Cohen, who once said he would take a bullet for Trump, attacked his former boss in deeply personal terms, painting a picture of racism, deceit and immorality. He spoke about hush money payments, lies about a real estate project in Russia, an overheard phone call between Trump and Roger Stone, and potential tax and bank fraud.

But Cohen's comments about the Southern District investigations may be what figure as the most important of the hearing a year from now.

In an answer sure to be seized on by the president and his allies, Cohen said he knew of no evidence that Trump or anyone around him colluded with the Russian election interference effort. He also testified he had never been to Prague or met with Russians in Europe, refuting a key allegation by a former British intelligence officer whose dossier sketched out a Trump-Russian conspiracy.

But even as Cohen poured water on the Russia collusion narrative, he fueled the idea that Trump's biggest legal problems have to do with his real estate business, his taxes, his bank statements, and the secret payments he made to women.

The disbarred lawyer, scheduled to report for a three-year prison sentence in May, came to the hearing with a $35,000 check written to him by Trump, dated Aug. 2017, seven months into the Trump presidency. That was part of the payback, Cohen said, for the illegal campaign contribution he made by paying $130,000 to the porn star known as Stormy Daniels.

Cohen had already testified Trump ordered him to commit a felony; now he was showing that Trump participated in the alleged scheme while occupying the Oval Office.

Asked after the hearing if he believed Cohen established that the president had committed a crime while in office, House oversight chairman Elijah Cummings answered, "It appears that he did."

I don't know very much about Cohen in Prague, that seemed a bit too neat to me, but there still more than enough here to have Trump and his kids sweating.  They're going to prison.  It may not be Mueller that lowers the hammer, but the SDNY folks aren't screwing around and there's nothing Trump can do to stop them.

StupidiNews!

• In a 5-3 Supreme Court decision, Chief Justice Roberts sided with the court's four liberals to stay the execution of an Alabama inmate who can no longer remember his crimes after muliple strokes.
• The House voted 240-190 to require universal background checks for firearms purchases, Senate Republicans vow the measure will never pass, and the White House says Trump will veto the bill.
• The White House has barred multiple reporters from covering Donald Trump's summit dinner with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam, over questions asked preceding the summit.
• The US is drafting a UN Security Council resolution for possible military action in Venezuela in order to safeguard humanitarian aid, the measure faces a near-certain Russian veto.
• A team of German and US researchers say a way to commercially produce cheap hydrogen fuel cells could be ready within the next decade using wind farms to power the process.