Last Call For Poor Unfortunate Souls

I confess I don't know what the point of articles like this are.

The opening statement of Bill Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine, is "reverberating" on Capitol Hill among Republicans, according to GOP Hill sources, who told CNN that Taylor's testimony is a game changer in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. 

A senior Republican source on Capitol Hill told CNN that Taylor's statement was so detailed, so specific and that he is so respected that it is having an impact. 

"It points to quid pro quo," the GOP source told CNN. 

There is an ongoing conversation among GOP members on Capitol Hill about the impact of Taylor's testimony, but it remains a question whether it will move Republicans closer to considering impeachment. 

In a closed-door deposition Tuesday, Taylor said he had been told by Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, that "everything" Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted, including a White House meeting and military aid to the country, would be held up until he publicly declared investigations sought by Trump. Taylor's statement undercut the White House's defense that there had been no quid pro quo offered on the call, as well as Sondland's previous testimony to Congress, but it corroborated many of the claims made by the intelligence community whistleblower whose complaint prompted the impeachment inquiry. 

While most Republicans have sided publicly with the President, they've been privately grumbling that they're "fed up and tired" of being asked to defend him in the impeachment investigation. 

Republican sources on Capitol Hill told CNN there's a "growing unease that there is no defense" of the President's actions. 

"How do you defend the indefensible?" one source told CNN. "We can't defend the substance, all we can do is talk about process."

But no Republican wants to come out and say anything.  The one Republican who did, Justin Amash, was run out of the party in under 30 days.  Nobody will follow suit.  Nobody.

Impeachment will still happen.  But I don't get what the Republicans are leaking about.  Trump will crucify any Republican who defies him, Republicans don't have a choice now, they're drowning on the Titanic as it goes down, so who does a leak like this serve?

I have no clue.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

House Democrats are ready to move ahead to the open impeachment hearings phase of the process in two or three weeks, according to the Washington Post.

House Democrats are preparing to move their largely private impeachment inquiry onto a more public stage as soon as mid-November and are already grappling with how best to present the complex Ukraine saga to the American people.

Over the past three weeks, a parade of current and former Trump administration officials have testified behind closed doors, providing House investigators with a compelling narrative of President Trump’s campaign to extract political favors from Ukrainian officials. But on Wednesday, after conservative lawmakers stormed the hearing room and delayed the proceedings for five hours, some Democrats were feeling pressure to advance public hearings in hopes of avoiding further disruptions.

Among the witnesses Democrats hope to question in open session are the acting ambassador to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., and his predecessor, former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. Both are seasoned diplomats who, in earlier House testimony, effectively conveyed outrage over a White House plan to withhold much-needed military aid from Ukraine, a long-standing ally battling pro-Russian separatists.

In testimony Tuesday, Taylor also directly contradicted Trump’s account of his interactions with Ukrainian officials, making clear that Trump demanded that President Volodymyr Zelensky order an investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his family in exchange for the release of nearly $400 million in military aid and a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office.

Another top priority for many Democrats is John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, who made known around the White House his visceral opposition to the campaign to pressure Zelensky, a campaign directed in part by Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Testimony from Bolton could be particularly devastating for the White House, though it was unclear whether Democrats would subpoena him or when. After Bolton resigned last month, he told The Washington Post that he would “have my say in due course.”

Democrats have long been expected to shift to public hearings, which offer the opportunity to build the case against Trump while also building support among American voters.

“It’s going to be the difference between reading a dry transcript and actually hearing the story from the people who were in the room,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “I think the story needs to be told, you know, the story of the abuse of power. . . . People like the various ambassadors who have come to testify need to come tell it."

I'm all for this.  Republicans have been screaming on FOX State TV about "closed-door" hearings and yesterday's ridiculous (and illegal!) SCIF stunt, which should have two dozen plus Republicans cooling their heels in federal prison through next spring, is only a taste of what's coming as the Trump regime faces the music.

The time to get this on TV, 10 hours a day for a couple weeks as Americans gather for the holidays, is very close and it will make all the difference.

Meanwhile in Bevinstan...

Yet another poll shows Matt Bevin has now tied up the Kentucky Governor's race with Andy Beshear with under two weeks to go, and Louisville Courier-Journal columnist Joe Gerth wonders what it's going to take for KY Dems to learn how to close a race they led for months against arguably the most unpopular Governor in America.

Democrats across Kentucky must be banging their heads against the wall and mumbling to themselves, “Not again.”

As has been the case in recent elections, Democrats have fielded a candidate for major statewide office who comes screaming out of the gate with a lead in the polls, only to see it wither away in the final month or so before the election.

Some early internal polls had Attorney General Andy Beshear with nearly a double-digit lead over Gov. Matt Bevin after he dispatched House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins and former state Auditor Adam Edelen in May.

But a Mason Dixon poll released last week has the race as a tie, with momentum clearly on Bevin’s side as we hit the last two weeks before Election Day.

We saw the same phenomena in 2015, when Jack Conway led Bevin in mid-summer polling only to see it turn as brown as the trees by November. Bevin won by nine percentage points.

We saw it in 2014, when Alison Lundergan Grimes had a four-point lead over Sen. Mitch McConnell, according to the Bluegrass Poll, only to see it evaporate. McConnell won by 15 percentage points.

In 2008, Bruce Lunsford pulled within a point of McConnell, only to lose in November by six percentage points.

Democrats say their internals still have Beshear ahead of Bevin, and Republicans say their polls actually have their candidate leading.

Either way, the race has tightened, and we’re seeing the same pattern emerge that has meant doom for Democrats in recent years. That’s not to say Beshear still can’t pull this out, but if he does, he’s going to have to sweat it out on election night.

It ain’t gonna be easy.

Bevin has run the last six weeks on ending abortion in Kentucky and ads about scary MS-13 gang members invading Kentucky from Mexico, and he's probably going to win because of it.

I'm tired of KY Dems blowing leads time and time again.  Another four years of Bevin and Kentucky will be dead last in education, teacher pay, health care, environmental safety, and will become the first state without a single abortion provider.

And my neighbors are either going to stay home or vote for this prick to take everything from us.  It infuriates me to no end.  Bevin straight up lied about Medicaid, he lied about teachers, he lied about everything, and he dumped the state's first black statewide officer off the ticket since Reconstruction because she was a drag with his white supremacist base.

But he's a 50-50 shot to win.

Amazing.

We deserve the destruction this asshole will bring.

StupidiNews!

• Some 25,000 teachers in Chicago remain on strike for a sixth day as Mayor Lori Lightfoot declared "there is no more money" to meet teachers' union demands for more support staff and higher pay.
• A new Washington Post investigation finds the Trump regime charged more than $100,000 for food and drinks for Irish police providing security for Trump's recent trip to Ireland.
• Fire officials in Auckland, New Zealand say a massive blaze that engulfed the city's new half-billion dollar international convention center construction site has been contained after nearly 48 hours.
• Donald Trump says he will veto a House Democratic bill that requires campaigns to report contact with foreign nationals, calling it "overly broad" and warning that will "ensnare" US citizens. 
• A new study finds ant colonies are extraordinarily efficient and organized when it comes to thousands of ants foraging for food to avoid traffic jams and other logistical obstacles.

Last Call For It's All About Revenge Now, Con't

Donald Trump is losing it quickly now, going on a Twitter tirade today calling "Never Trumper" Republicans "human scum" and signaling to his base that's it open season against them as he adds to his extensive enemies' list.

President Trump attacked acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor as a "Never Trumper" in a tweet Wednesday, after Taylor testified to House investigators that Trump had directly linked military aid to Ukraine investigating his political opponents. 

Never Trumper Republican John Bellinger, represents Never Trumper Diplomat Bill Taylor (who I don’t know), in testimony before Congress! Do Nothing Democrats allow Republicans Zero Representation, Zero due process, and Zero Transparency. Does anybody think this is fair? Even though there was no quid pro quo, I’m sure they would like to try. Worse than the Dems!

What they're saying: Earlier Wednesday, Trump tweeted that "Never Trumper Republicans, though on respirators with not many left, are in certain ways worse and more dangerous for our Country than the Do Nothing Democrats. Watch out for them, they are human scum!" 

Indeed, the stage is being set for more stochastic terrorism, and the closer Trump gets to being impeached and possibly removed, the more insane things are going to get.

End Times broadcaster, rabid anti-Semite, and ardent conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles warned on his “TruNews” program last night that if President Donald Trump is removed from office, Trump supporters who “know how to fight” will hunt down Democratic legislators and kill them.

“If they take him out, there is going to be violence in America,” Wiles said. “There are people in this country—veterans, cowboys, mountain men, guys that know how to fight—and they’re going to make a decision that the people that did this to Donald Trump are not going to get away with it and they’re going to hunt them down.”

“I’m serious,” he continued. “If these people in Washington think that they are going to get away with it, it’s not going to happen. The Trump supporters are going to hunt them down. It’s going to happen and this country is going to be plunged into darkness and they brought it upon themselves because they won’t back off.”

Wiles said that Democrats have “waged war” against Trump voters for three years in an effort to undo the 2016 election and Trump supporters “are fed up with it and they know that if they get away with this, there is no country left.”

“They are going to go on a rampage and you’re not going to be able to put it back in the bottle,” Wiles said.

“Once the blood starts flowing, it’s nearly impossible to stop,” added co-host Edward Szall.

I fully expect this message to end up on Hannity before the end of the year, possibly before the end of the month at the clip impeachment is proceeding.  And I don't want to hear that "They won't try anything" because we already have dead journalists and civilians killed by Trump's rabid base.

Violence is going to happen, almost guaranteed.

Longtime major league umpire Rob Drake tweeted that he planned to buy an assault rifle "because if you impeach MY PRESIDENT this way, YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER CIVAL WAR!!! #MAGA2020", according to a copy of the tweet obtained by ESPN.

The tweet, which was deleted soon after it was posted late Tuesday, followed one earlier in the night regarding the House of Representatives' impeachment proceedings with President Donald Trump.

The second tweet, which remains active on Drake's account @thedrake30, says: "You can't do an impeachment inquiry from the basement of Capital Hill without even a vote! What is going on in this country?"

Drake did not return phone and text messages.

A spokesman for Major League Baseball said the league is aware of the tweet and looking into it. Joe West, the president of the Major League Baseball Umpires Association, declined comment when reached by phone.

Yes, a lot of these are sick, disgusting fantasies.  But even if a small fraction act on these fantasies, the Trump impeachment proceedings are going to be blood-soaked.

Eric Metaxas, an author and nationally syndicated religious right talk radio host, told Fox News legal and political analyst Gregg Jarrett that President Donald Trump had been the target of a mass delusion campaign akin to Nazi Germany’s and that unless people wake up to that fact, “it’s the end of America.”

Metaxas interviewed Jarrett in-studio on his show “The Eric Metaxas Radio Show,” and footage of the interview was uploaded to YouTube last week. The two discussed the premise of Jarrett’s new book, “Witch Hunt,” which seeks to convince readers that the intelligence community launched a misinformation campaign to convince Americans that Trump is a traitor to the United States. Throughout the interview, Metaxas praised Jarrett for his writing and appearances on Fox News’ “Hannity” program to promote his narrative, and he expressed his personal agreement with Jarrett’s interpretations.

“People often ask the question, and I’ve written a book about it,” Metaxas said, referring to a book he wrote about a theologian and spy who fought Nazis. “How did the Nazis take over Germany? How did it happen? How did it happen that the Salem witch trials—how do people get crazy, and there’s this mass lemming-like run toward something that’s a chimera, an illusion, and yet it happens over and over in history.”

“And I agree with you in the thesis of your book that there’s no doubt that that is what has just happened, and it’s actually, of course, not over yet,” Metaxas said. “We still have people who, the moment the Mueller report came out, they kept grasping at straws, grasping at straws. When there were no longer straws to grasp, you know, they leaped over to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. They really, they don’t stop.”

Metaxas continued, “And I want to say really bluntly to my audience: You don’t have to like Trump. In fact, you can hate Trump. That’s your right as an American. But when we see this level of corruption happening in our government, when we see journalists abdicate their sacred calling as journalists to follow a narrative, I have to say every American should be scared, because if you do not undo this, if you don’t wake up from the dream, it’s the end of America.”

The shock talk AM radio nutjobs are openly preparing their listeners for armed insurrection.  This was always going to be the result of any effort to remove Trump, by either impeachment or by vote in 2020, and anyone who doesn't see this is burying their head in the sand.

We have to stay the course, but it's going to come at a cost.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Today, we were supposed to have a deposition by Pentagon official Laura Cooper about how Trump delayed military aid to the Ukraine unless President Volodymyr Zelensksy announced a corruption investigation into Hunter Biden. 

Laura Cooper -- the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia -- is set to appear even though the Defense Department told Congress that it would not comply with a House subpoena to provide documents related to the freezing of US security aid to Ukraine. 

Cooper is currently believed to be voluntarily appearing before the three House committees leading the Democratic impeachment inquiry and the Pentagon has not yet sought to block her testimony. She will be accompanied by a personal lawyer, according to defense officials. 

As a top official overseeing US policy towards Ukraine, Cooper would have been involved with overseeing US military assistance to Kiev, assistance such as the $250 million aid package that was frozen by the Trump Administration despite the Pentagon's recommendation that it go forward. 

What motivated the White House to order that freeze has formed a central part of the impeachment inquiry into Trump. 

And I say supposed to hear from Cooper because a couple dozen House Republicans, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, stormed the hearing in a banana republic playbook move ordered by Donald Trump.

A protest by a group of Republican lawmakers temporarily put on hold the impeachment hearing testimony of a Pentagon official who oversaw military assistance to Ukraine.

About two dozen GOP House members, who are objecting to the closed-door hearings led by Democrats, barged into the secure hearing room, some of them “shouting, screaming” at the “injustice being done to the president,” said Democratic Representative Gerald Connolly, a member of the Oversight panel.

“It’s like a protest movement,” said Lacy Clay of Missouri, a Democrat on the Oversight Committee, who likened the protest to a sit-in and said the GOP members remained inside.

Only members of the three House committees -- Democrats and Republicans -- are allowed in the “sensitive compartmented information facility,” known as a SCIF. Access is limited to people with security clearances to discuss classified material that isn’t open to public view.

“We kept demanding they let us in, and they said no,” said Representative Debbie Lesko, an Arizona Republican.

Republicans have repeatedly complained that the closed-door hearings are unfair to Trump. House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has said that following the initial investigation stage, he plans to call some of the witnesses back for public hearings.

Connolly said the Republicans entered the secure area and walked into the room where a Pentagon official, Laura Cooper, was scheduled to testify. The GOP members were carrying electronic devices, which are barred from the secure area, he said.

“That SCIF is used by Congress for a lot of highly classified purposes. To compromise that to make a point is deeply troubling,” said Connolly. “They literally stormed the door when it was open.”

To recap, House Republicans broke the law by doing this.  And of course, Donald Trump blessed the move and coordinated it with House GOP minority leader Kevin McCarthy.
 

Trump had advance knowledge and supported a protest by Republicans who told him they planned to barge into a secure hearing room on Capitol Hill where Democrats are holding impeachment testimonies, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Trump on Tuesday met with about 30 House Republicans at the White House to talk about the situation in Syria and the impeachment inquiry. During a nearly two-hour meeting, which focused mostly on the impeachment inquiry, lawmakers shared their plans to storm into the secure room, the people said. Trump supported the action, saying he wanted the transcripts released because they will exonerate him, the people said.

So Cooper's deposition has been delayed for who knows how long, Trump basically ordered literal obstruction of justice by disrupting legal testimony against him, and Republicans now know they can bring everything to a crashing halt.  And all this happened as Nancy Pelosi was in Baltimore for her older brother Tommy's funeral.

If you had any doubts that yesterday's testimony from Bill Taylor was the smoking impeachment gun, this response proves it was.  Democrats say they will continue the deposition later today, so we'll see what the Insane Clown Caucus does in response.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Yesterday's back-breaking testimony by acting Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor was so utterly daming that even the awful John Podhoretz is freely admitting that Donald Trump's impeachment is now assured.

There were three defenses of Trump following the revelations of the “whistleblower” and the phone-call transcript of the conversation between the presidents of the United States and Ukraine. The first was that he is only interested in investigating corruption relating to the 2016 election. The second is that even though Trump himself said he wanted the Ukranian to do him a favor, there was no quid pro quo. The third is that the only thing Trump was trading for was a White House visit, which is no great shakes. 

There’s no need to talk about the “whistleblower” and his findings any longer, and there’s no need for the whistleblower to be heard any further. We have a veteran U.S. diplomat on the record saying that a Trump intimate told him Trump was holding up Congressionally authorized and appropriated military aid to Ukraine because he wanted a public statement from the Zelensky government that it was investigating Joe Biden’s son. 

Taylor said this of a September 1 phone call with Gordon Sondland, our ambassador to the European Union about the $275 million in U.S. security assistance to Ukraine as well as a possible meeting between Trump and Ukranian president Zelensky: 

“Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelenskyy was dependent on a public announcement of investigations—in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelenskyy ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.” 

So that’s it. Unless Trump and Sondland deny this, and offer evidence that Taylor is wrong or lying, we now have contemporaneous confirmation that the president intended to hold up military aid to the Ukranians to secure domestic political advantage. 

That’s the ballgame. That’s impeachment. In doing this Trump was contravening U.S. law, which does not give the president the right to deny Ukraine the money appropriated by Congress for Ukraine. 

Whether what Trump does obliges the Senate to remove him from the presidency will be up to Republicans in the Senate to decide at the trial that will follow what I think is the now-inevitable impeachment. The fact that the aid to Ukraine has in fact gone through despite Trump’s illegitimate temporary suspension may be the straw the GOP will grasp to prevent his conviction in that trial. But that’s no defense of Trump’s actions. If I’m right, they will, in effect, have to concede the wrongdoing and say it is too minor to lead to such an extreme sanction. So Trump won’t be the first president to be removed from office. He will, however, be the third to be impeached. And, as I said, that will be bad enough.

The shift from "will he be impeached" to "will he leave office" is no small feat, but that's where I think we're at this week, a corner turned and a path now chosen.  If Bill Barr has some surprise sealed indictments of Obama-era intelligence officials up his sleeve, we'll see them soon, I'd reckon.

StupidiNews!

• A new Credit Suisse report finds that for the first time, China's share of the wealthiest ten percent of people on Earth outnumbers that of America.
• The Louvre in Paris is celebrating the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci this week with the largest display of known works by the Italian Renaissance master ever assembled.
• Attorneys General from dozens of US states will be meeting in Colorado next month to discuss the landmark anti-trust case by 48 states and the District of Columbia against Google.
• The UK Parliament has blocked PM Boris Johnson's Brexit plan scheduled for next week, all but assuring an EU Jan. 31 delay date and Johnson following through on his snap elections threat.
• A federal appeals court has ruled that the $35 billion class-action suit against Facebook over facial recognition software and privacy violations can go forward.

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane

Today's impeachment inquiry deposition from Acting US Ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, is the most devastating yet to the Trump regime, and essentially confirms everything we've been discussing here at ZVTS for the last four weeks.

The senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine said Tuesday he was told release of military aid was contingent on public declarations from Ukraine that it would investigate the Bidens and the 2016 election, contradicting President Trump’s denial that he used the money as leverage for political gain.

Acting ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. testified behind closed doors in the House impeachment probe of Trump that he stands by his characterization that it was “crazy” to make the assistance contingent on investigations he found troubling.

Upon arriving in Kyiv last spring he became alarmed by secondary diplomatic channels involving U.S. officials that he called “weird,” Taylor said, according to a copy of his lengthy opening statement obtained by The Washington Post.

Taylor walked lawmakers through a series of conversations he had with other U.S. diplomats who were trying to obtain what one called the “deliverable” of Ukrainian help investigating Trump’s political rivals.

Taylor said he spoke to Ambassador Gordon Sondland, the U.S. envoy to the European Union.

“During that phone call, Amb. Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President [Volodymyr] Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election,” Taylor said in the statement.

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter had been a board member of Burisma, a large Ukrainian gas company. Joe Biden is a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.

“Amb. Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Amb. Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,’” Taylor told House investigators.

“He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.’

Taylor was called to testify before committees considering whether to impeach Trump because he had raised alarms about Trump administration interactions with Zelensky.

“It was just the most damning testimony I’ve heard,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said in an interview partway into Taylor’s testimony.

Donald Trump wanted Ukrainian President Zelensky to publicly announce an investigation into Joe Biden's son in order to get military aid approved by Congress.

Straight up quid pro quo.  Straight up mobster shakedown.  Straight up impeachable.  Giuliani is the side show, the undercard.  This is the acting ambassador to Ukraine saying the quid pro quo was real and demanded by Donald Trump himself.

The NY Times lays it out in six key statements:

1. Taylor described an explicit quid pro quo.
2. The White House had two channels on Ukraine policy: official and unofficial. The unofficial one included Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer.
3. Taylor was told Ukraine had to ‘pay up’ before the president would ‘sign a check.’
4. Taylor said Ukrainians would die at the hands of Russian led-forces as a result of the delay in American military aid.
5. Bolton fought the effort to hijack the policy toward Ukraine and Pompeo did not respond directly to complaints, Taylor said.
6. Demands were made for secrecy and career officials, including Taylor, were left in the dark about key events.

Gordon Sondland?  He's getting the Manafort special after this.  I hope he enjoys a box.  This is an outright engineered conspiracy from step one.  The goal was to get Zelensky to announce Biden was being investigated in order to help Trump win, and it was 100% pay-for-play with the billions in military aid.

And yes, I'm predicting it now after this.

Donald Trump is going to be impeached.

Soon.

Stay tuned.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The Trump regime continues to be breathtakingly, cartoonishly evil from the word go and the country will not survive a second term intact as America.

President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale reportedly discussed using facial recognition technology at Trump’s campaign rallies to analyze reactions from supporters in event crowds, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Parscale discussed the move with political operatives, but he was told by at least one company that the technology is not reliable yet, according to people familiar with the conversations, the Journal reported.

A campaign spokesperson denied that Parscale ever pursued the technology.

The Trump administration has utilized other technology at campaign rallies, including collecting millions of phone numbers, email addresses and other personal information from rally attendants when they register for tickets or sign up for text alerts.

The Trump team reportedly uses the data to look up the rally attendees’ political registrations and the elections in which they have voted. They cross-reference it with the data on the attendee’s consumer habits, which is collected by the Republican Party to forecast how likely each attendee is to vote in 2020 and who they may support campaign officials told the Journal.

That's bad enough, and today's impeachable offense:

The Journal also reported that Trump himself lobbied to bring cabinet members to his June rally in Orlando, Florida. The outlet said that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney warned the president about potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from participating in political activities under their official titles.

Trump responded “I’m in charge of the Hatch Act” in a meeting with top aides and accused Mulvaney of being “weak,” according to the Journal.

"The enforcement of the law is whatever I say it is, and it doesn't apply to me" should again, be the immediate end of this regime, but of course it's normal behavior for the Chief Executive now, isn't it?  Oh, and "weak" Mulvaney is reportedly being replaced soon by either Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin or WH Advisor Kellyanne Conway.

Fun times all around.

The Fight For Oversight Might Be Right Slight

With the death of Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is looking to quickly name a new House Oversight and Reform Committee chair in order to continue the House's work on the Trump impeachment inquiry, but that still means some long-time, powerful Democrats are going to be passed over for arguably the strongest committee gavel in the House.

In any other year, the race to lead the House Oversight and Reform Committee would be a full-out caucus brawl. But amid the Democrats’ impeachment push, it could end up being a coronation.

Passed over for the top Oversight post nearly a decade ago, New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney could soon become the panel’s permanent chairwoman and a leading face of Democrats’ impeachment probe.

Maloney, the panel’s most senior Democrat, was tapped last week as interim head after the unexpected death of the beloved chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.). A handful of other Democrats both on and off the committee have been floated as potential replacements since then, including Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Reps. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Jackie Speier (D-Calif.).

But several House Democrats are quietly signaling they’re hoping to avoid a messy public grab for the chairmanship that would divert attention away from their impeachment probe and spotlight long-festering fissures within the caucus. And that could put Maloney in prime position to assume the gavel, according to lawmakers and aides.

“Obviously, no one is going to be able to fill the shoes of Elijah Cummings,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is in his second term on the panel, said Monday, without expressing support for a specific member. “I think what’s important in the position is that they’re also going to be able to work closely with [House Intelligence Committee Chairman] Adam Schiff and with the speaker.”

Democrats must hold an election for the chairmanship within 30 days of the vacancy, according to the caucus rules. But no public announcements on timing are expected until after Cummings’ funeral services at the end of this week.

The opening on the Oversight panel puts Democrats in a difficult position: multiple lawmakers and aides acknowledge that the committee lacks a deep bench of battle-hardened lawmakers ready to take on Trump.

But most also realize that a caucus-wide contest could expose ugly divisions across generational and racial lines — drowning out the Democratic Party’s message on impeachment in what could be the final weeks of their inquiry.

Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus have privately said they are willing to accept Maloney, even if it means losing one of their five chairmanships. But if anyone else wins the post — jumping over two of their own members — “all hell’s gonna break loose,” one aide said.

We'll see.  Pelosi's pretty shrewd and Maloney is already interim chair, and she thought she had the ranking member position sewn up nine years ago with Charlie Rangel's backing, but the CBC indeed backed Cummings and he won the post.  If Pelosi dumps her, it's going to get nasty.

She won't, though.  Too smart.  Maloney will be fine.

StupidiNews!

• Los Angeles fire officials have ordered the mandatory evacuation of homes in Pacific Palisades as a wildfire is sweeping through the multimillion dollar homes in the neighborhood.
• Facebook says it has shut down four Russian disinformation operations using social media to manipulate 2020 voters, announcing a series of new policies to fight digital propaganda.
• Canadian PM Justin Trudeau will survive as Ottawa's leader after a tough campaign, Trudeau's Liberal Party will have enough seats to form a minority coalition government.
• Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has again failed to form a coalition government, leaving the door open a second time for opposition leader Benny Gantz to become Israel's premier.
• AT&T has hiked prices a second time in 2019, with some lower-end grandfathered plan DirecTV customers seeing a 50% increase in seven months.

Last Call For Trump State TV

As Greg Sargent discusses, FOX News is Trump State TV and his personal propaganda network, and if it was shut down, America would be a much nicer place.

A new study just out from the Public Religion Research Institute sheds light on this dynamic in a remarkable way: It shows that rank-and-file Republicans who watch Fox are far more loyal to Trump than those who do not.

The poll, which surveyed more than 2,000 Americans, finds that an astonishing 55 percent of Republicans who watch Fox News as their primary news source say there is almost nothing Trump could do to lose their approval. By contrast, only 29 percent of Republicans who don’t cite Fox as their primary source say this.

What’s more, 98 percent of Fox-citing Republicans oppose impeaching and removing Trump -- opposition that’s “essentially unanimous,” as PRRI puts it. By contrast, 90 percent of non-Fox-citing Republicans oppose impeaching and removing him -- which is overwhelmingly high, but suggests that among this group, at least, Trump could suffer losses on the margins as the inquiry turns up worse revelations.

And here’s another real doozy: In response to my inquiry, PRRI tells me that 71 percent of Fox-citing Republicans strongly approve of Trump, while only 39 percent of non-Fox-citing Republicans strongly approve of him.

“The numbers show that Republicans who watch Fox News tend to be much more pro-Trump,” Natalie Jackson, the research director for PRRI, told me. “Fox seems to be a powerful vehicle for Trump support.”

Of Republicans overall, 44 percent say Fox is their primary source -- meaning we’re talking about a very large chunk of the GOP base. “What Fox is putting out there is really impacting Republicans’ opinions,” Jackson said.

On impeachment, Fox News figures have put out nonstop disinformation. They regularly claim the inquiry is invalid absent a full House vote (which is baseless); that Trump did nothing wrong in the Ukraine scandal (he pressured a foreign leader to help him rig our election by investigating potential opponent Joe Biden); that the whistleblower has been discredited (his complaint perfectly anticipated what Trump actually did); and that Biden did the same or worse (which is based on a fabricated narrative).

It’s difficult to say whether Republicans watch Fox because they’re already in lockstep with Trump, or whether they’re inclined that way because of what Fox tells them. But these things seem to reinforce one another -- and that may prove a significant factor in keeping GOP lawmakers in line behind him.

“His core constituency seems to be these Fox-watching Republicans,” Jackson told me, adding that such strong numbers among those voters mean that “Republicans in Congress are going to be less likely to turn against Trump.”

Of course, some GOP lawmakers will remain behind Trump because they actively approve of his efforts in this matter. But this is probably related to the Fox effect as well. Trump has adopted the unabashed posture that demanding the sham investigation of Biden is the affirmatively correct thing to do under the circumstances, and some GOP lawmakers are with him on this.

Fox is pushing similar messages -- Trump is absolutely within his authority to call for an investigation of Biden, the truly corrupt figure in this situation; Trump is the real victim here (of the “deep state”). This hermetically sealed off universe has created a space in which Republicans are backing Trump because he’s only done right.

It's a wonder that impeachment has gotten this far, frankly.  Nixon never would have resigned if FOX had been around, and Trump has used it to build an army of racist assholes to keep him in power.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Donald Trump finally found the one criminal, unconstitutional, impeachable act the GOP couldn't enable him on: naming his own Doral resort in Florida as the site for next year's G-7 summit on Thursday.  The move blew up in his face so badly that he abandoned it Saturday night.  The Washington Post:

Trump blamed his G-7 reversal on critics, saying on Twitter that his decision to scrap plans for a summit at the Doral club was “based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility.”

But behind closed doors, several aides and allies said, Trump changed his mind in response to pressure and frustration from his own party.

In the month since Democrats announced their impeachment inquiry, Republicans have struggled to offer a coherent response. With no White House war room, GOP lawmakers have seized on process-related responses.

At the same time, they’re being asked to defend the president’s erratic approach to policymaking, including his abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops and abandon Kurdish fighters in northeastern Syria. That announcement was roundly condemned by Republicans, including some of his staunchest defenders. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), in a rare public rebuke of Trump, wrote a withering op-ed in The Washington Post on Friday, just days after 129 House Republicans backed a resolution criticizing the president’s move.

Trump’s decision to host next year’s G-7 meeting at his private golf club only increased the anxiety among GOP lawmakers, some of whom have grown weary of having to develop new talking points almost daily.

Privately, and occasionally in public, several Republicans said they were not prepared to defend the president from charges that he was engaged in self-dealing on the G-7 site selection.

Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.) said Friday that Trump should avoid even the appearance of impropriety that comes with holding a global summit at his private property. “I think that would be better if he would not use his hotel for this kind of stuff,” he said.

Rooney, who announced his retirement the day after his comments, also said he was considering backing Trump’s impeachment over his handling of Ukraine policy.

Trump has been closely watching Republicans and their comments about impeachment, according to one administration official. The president was told repeatedly his G-7 decision made it more difficult to keep Senate Republicans in a unified front against impeachment proceedings, the official said. Before he changed course, Trump had waved off concerns from advisers who said hosting world leaders at his club would not play well.

The NY Times confirmed the story as well, and the speed at which both papers had these insider accounts by Sunday night tells you just how serious this is.

By late Saturday afternoon, Mr. Trump had made his decision, but he waited to announce the reversal until that night in two tweets that were separated by a break he took to watch the opening of Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News program.

“I thought I was doing something very good for our country by using Trump National Doral, in Miami, for hosting the G-7 leaders,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter before again promoting the resort’s amenities. “But, as usual, the Hostile Media & their Democrat Partners went CRAZY!”

Mr. Trump added, “Therefore, based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility, we will no longer consider Trump National Doral, Miami, as the Host Site for the G-7 in 2020.”

Mr. Trump suggested as a possibility Camp David, the rustic, official presidential retreat that Mr. Mulvaney had denigrated as an option when he announced the choice of Doral. But Mr. Mulvaney said the president was candid in his disappointment.

The president’s reaction “out in the tweet was real,” Mr. Mulvaney said on “Fox News Sunday.” “The president isn’t one for holding back his feelings and his emotions about something. He was honestly surprised at the level of pushback.”

Mr. Trump’s unhappiness may also extend to Mr. Mulvaney, who at his Thursday news conference — whose intended subject was the summit hotel choice — essentially acknowledged that the president had a quid pro quo in mind in discussions with Ukrainian officials.

But advisers to Mr. Trump were stunned. The president has frequently expressed unhappiness with Mr. Mulvaney to others, and he recently reached out to Nick Ayers, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence, to see if he had interest in returning, according to two people close to the president. Mr. Ayers is unlikely to return to Washington, but the conversation speaks to Mr. Trump’s mindset at a time when he is being urged by some advisers to make a change, and several people close to the president said Mr. Mulvaney did not help himself in the past week.

Mr. Mulvaney conceded on Fox News that this was all avoidable. “It’s not lost on me that if we made the decision on Thursday” not to proceed with the Doral, “we wouldn’t have had the news conference on Thursday regarding everything else, but that’s fine,” Mr. Mulvaney said. At another point, he acknowledged his press briefing was not “perfect.”

Other than that unfortunate press conference, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

We've reached the point now where we know that there is a limit to how many Republicans will follow Trump over the cliff.  It took nearly three years and a brazenly impeachable crime committed on live television in order to do it, but there is a limit.  It's the first actual glimmer of hope in a long time, frankly.

Up until now, there was no bottom to the depths of which the GOP would sink to cover for Trump.  Now?  We've found it.  It's covered in rhinoceros crap and under 75 feet of hydrochloric acid, but the bottom is there.

And if there's a bottom, it means that maybe we can finally get rid of the asshole.  Will Bunch:

My rough estimate is that it will ultimately take the involvement of about 50 GOP members of Congress to turn things around and bring this national nightmare to its rightful climax. Right now, a narrow majority of Americans support the president’s impeachment and removal from office, but a real sense of justice and momentum would come from gaining a sliver of Republican votes for impeachment in the House — maybe 30 or so.

Those 30 votes would mean a solid majority for charging Trump — say 260-175 or so — but more importantly that would certainly persuade some Senate Republicans to support removal. How many? If every Democrat backed Trump’s ouster, it would still take 20 Republican senators to reach the necessary 67 votes. That would mean the group that’s so far made only measured critiques of our unworthy president (Romney, Sasse, Murkowski) would need to team up with the politically vulnerable in 2020 (Collins, Ernst, etc.) to oppose the president. But only 66 votes out of 100 and Trump can coolly put the smoking gun back in its holster and strut down Fifth Avenue knowing he got away with it.

There's a theory that if enough GOP senators abstain on the final vote to convict, that the remaining Democrats could be enough to get a two-thirds vote.

This rule could become relevant in a variety of ways. The most significant is the number of Republicans actually required to “jump the fence,” as Democrats hope. Twenty Republicans is a tall order: Even for Republicans who are shielded from reelection in 2020, a vote to convict Trump is obviously hazardous. If a few Republicans didn’t appear, that would reduce the number of Republicans required to vote with Democrats.

There’s also a more stark scenario. Recently, former Senator Jeff Flake speculated that at least 30 Republican senators would cast their vote for impeachment against Trump—but only if it were held on a secret ballot. (Flake went further, suggesting the number might be as high as 35.)

But suppose those 30 senators were seeking a way, as Flake suggested, to remove Trump while avoiding the rage of his base. They might boycott the proceedings—or, when the big day of the vote arrived, mysteriously not show up. With 70 members now present, the number of senators required to convict Trump is no longer 67. It’s 47: exactly the number of seats Democrats and independents currently hold in the Senate. 

It's the longest of shots.  But at this point, it's better than the zero chance of Trump's removal that I would have told you existed even a few weeks ago.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Trump may be running rampant on 2020 Democratic hopefuls with millions in online disinformation ads, but it's coming at the direct expense of House and Senate races.  Any Republican not named Trump is facing extinction in 2020 and both sides know it.  In the House, the GOP has already given up trying to take the chamber back, and even grouchy scold Josh Kraushaar is admitting that Dems can take back the Senate in 2020.

Four Republican senators were outraised by their Democratic challengers in the third fundraising quarter, with three of them representing battleground states (Iowa, Maine, and Arizona) that Republicans will need to win to maintain power. And in North Carolina, Sen. Thom Tillis raised only $1.2 million, an underwhelming sum for a senator facing a credible primary threat and an expensive general election ahead. All four swing-state senators also are viewed unfavorably by their constituents according to new quarterly Morning Consult polling, underscoring the sudden shift in support away from Republicans. 

In Iowa, Sen. Joni Ernst failed even to hit the million-dollar mark in fundraising, a financial baseline of sorts for senators running for reelection. She was outraised by a Democratic outsider, businesswoman Theresa Greenfield, who raised $1.1 million despite facing a contested Democratic primary and refusing donations from corporate PACs. 

As her fundraising has slowed, Ernst’s support back home has also declined. The Morning Consult tracking poll found Ernst with an underwater job-approval rating of 39/43, with more independents viewing her unfavorably than favorably. That’s a shift from her net-positive job approval over the spring, which stood at 42/38. 

Donald Trump comfortably carried her state in 2016, but since then, Iowa farmers have taken a serious hit from the president’s trade war. Both Gallup and Morning Consult have found his support sinking in the state, with a March Des Moines Register poll showing even 28 percent of Iowa Republicans believing the tariffs have hurt the state’s agribusiness. 

These are all major red flags suggesting Iowa is a much bigger battleground than Republicans anticipated at the beginning of the year. 

The GOP’s outlook in Arizona and North Carolina is also looking gloomier. Both Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina are facing nuisance primary challengers, which makes it harder for the incumbents to consolidate their base. But the more they try to protect their right flank, the tougher it becomes to win over the suburban moderates who decide races in these swing states. 

McSally, who lost last year’s election before being appointed to her seat, trailed Democratic challenger Mark Kelly by 5 points, 46 to 41 percent, in a poll taken in August. She’s been outraised in all three of the fundraising quarters by significant margins—an unusual disadvantage for a sitting senator. She already lags Kelly in campaign cash by nearly $4 million. 

Tillis holds the lowest approval rating (33 percent) of any sitting senator, according to the Morning Consult survey. A Democratic poll conducted in September found him trailing his little-known Democratic opponent Cal Cunningham, 45 to 43 percent. But before he even faces Cunningham, he’ll have to get past self-funded businessman Garland Tucker in the primary. Tucker has poured $1.2 million of his own money into the campaign—around the same amount Tillis raised in the last three months. Tucker has already been using that money on anti-Tillis campaign ads, forcing the senator to respond in kind. 

Cunningham wasn’t the Democrats’ top recruit, but this race is turning more into a referendum on Tillis. If Cunningham wins the nomination and runs a competent race, Tillis will face major hurdles in winning a second term.

In Maine, a race that Republicans consider the nation’s biggest bellwether, Sen. Susan Collins is suddenly facing a real fight. State House Speaker Sara Gideon raised a whopping $3.2 million in the third quarter, outpacing Collins by more than $1 million. More significantly, Collins’ once-golden image back home has continued to slip, according to the Morning Consult numbers. Her popularity has hit an all-time low in the tracking survey, down to 43/49 job approval. 

Collins has already gone up with an early advertisement, a sign that her team recognizes this race will be the toughest campaign that the senator has faced. 

Here’s the big picture: If Trump doesn’t win a second term, Democrats need to net only three seats to win back the majority. Assuming they can’t hang onto Sen. Doug Jones’ seat in ruby-red Alabama (but hold Sen. Gary Peters’ seat in traditionally blue Michigan), the magic number is four. And when you add Sen. Cory Gardner’s tough race in Colorado to the toss-up list, they’ve got five promising opportunities to defeat Republican senators.

In other words, Dems are in a prime position to flip the Senate now.  Collins, Tillis, Ernst, McSally and Gardner are all in real, real trouble, and defending Trump to the end as they have may very well be their end as well.

I know I'm acting snakebit on Trump's reelection chances, as underestimating the Democratic party's chances to snatch defeat away from the jaws of victory remains the surest way to end up with a second Trump term, especially if there's a third party spoiler that takes 2-4% of the anti-Trump vote away.

But no matter who the Democratic candidate is, nothing will get done as long as Mitch McConnell remains majority leader, and I'm glad to see the Dems taking flipping the Senate seriously.