Ukraine In The Membrane

Needless to say, given Donald Trump's penchant for retaliation and crucifixion of anyone who dares to challenge him (only while Trump's in a position of power over said person mind you, Putin for instance owns Trump and can challenge him anytime he wants), it's no wonder then that Alexander Vindman, the NSC's top Ukraine expert and key impeachment witness, is being fired from the White House.

On Sunday, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who gave a bombshell testimony in the House impeachment investigation last month on President Donald Trump’s Ukraine scheme, will be removed from his post at the White House National Security Council.

“Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, who has testified under oath, is serving on the National Security Council currently,” CBS News’s “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan said during her interview with O’Brien. “Will he continue to work for you despite testifying against the President?”

“Well look, one of the things that I’ve talked about is that we’re streamlining the National Security Council,” O’Brien replied. “It got bloated to like 236 people up from 100 in the Bush administration under President Obama.”

The national security adviser said Vindman, who currently serves as the council’s Director for European Affairs, will be removed as a part of the White House’s “streamlining” efforts.

“My understanding is he’s–that Colonel Vindman is detailed from the Department of Defense,” O’Brien said. “So everyone who’s detailed at the NSC, people are going to start going back to their own departments and we’ll bring in new folks.”
When Brennan asked O’Brien to confirm that the decision is not retaliation against Vindman, whom Trump has baselessly accused of being a “Never Trumper,” the national security adviser’s response was that he personally had never retaliated against anyone.

“I never retaliated against anyone,” he said. “There- there will be a point for everybody who’s detailed there—that their time, that their detail will come to an end.”

Sure, we getting rid of the Ukraine expert and it's not retaliation, we're just starting with him because Ukraine is at the top of the list.  Did I mention Trump is a coward on top of being a bully and is making O'Brien do this as well as justifying the reason, the laughable excuse that the Trump regime has too many qualified foreign policy experts?

Sure.  And I'm Ivan the Great.

StupidiNews!

• Two people are dead after a speeding Porsche lost control in a New Jersey suburb and crashed into the second-story of a real estate office, killing the driver and passenger. 
• Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has reportedly told his caucus that everyone must come up with their own excuse to defend Donald Trump from impeachment charges.
• Bolivian President Evo Morales has resigned after the military has forced him to leave over a disputed election, protesters have been calling for his resignation for weeks.
• Two Hong Kong protesters were shot by police as demonstrations near the six-month mark, tensions remain high and China is calling for protesters to stand down immediately.
• Sesame Street turns 50 this week, and the show has taught math and science to generations of American schoolchildren.

Last Call For It's A Dam Shame

Two related stories to send off your Sunday, first a new Bloomberg News report finds America's wealth inequality is reaching record levels...

The U.S.’s historic economic expansion has so enriched one-percenters they now hold almost as much wealth as the middle- and upper-middle classes combined.

The top 1% of American households have enjoyed huge returns in the stock market in the past decade, to the point that they now control more than half of the equity in U.S. public and private companies, according to data from the Federal Reserve. Those fat portfolios have America’s elite gobbling up an ever-bigger piece of the pie.

The very richest had assets of about $35.4 trillion in the second quarter, or just shy of the $36.9 trillion held by the tens of millions of people who make up the 50th percentile to the 90th percentile of Americans -- much of the middle and upper-middle classes.

Americans Now Need at Least $500,000 a Year to Enter Top 1%

Chalk up at least part of their good fortune to interest rates, said Stephen Colavito, chief market strategist at Lakeview Capital Partners, an Atlanta-based investment firm for high-net-worth investors. People can’t get much of a return on certificates of deposits and other passive investments, so they’ve pumped money into stocks and propped up the market overall, he said.

In turn, those investments make the wealthy eligible to put money into exclusive hedge funds and private equity funds. Many such funds require $5 million of investments to qualify.

“The wealthier that the wealthy get, the more opportunity they have,” Colavito said.

It may not be long before one-percenters actually surpass the middle and upper-middle classes. Household wealth in the upper-most bracket grew by $650 billion in the second quarter of 2019, while Americans in the 50th to 90th percentiles saw a $210 billion gain.

And it won't be long until the top 1% outclass the bottom 90% in wealth too.  We're at that point.  Meanwhile by making billionaires richer,  we're still in danger of infrastructure collapse, even "fair" dams.

A more than two-year investigation by The Associated Press has found scores of dams nationwide in even worse condition, and in equally dangerous locations. They loom over homes, businesses, highways or entire communities that could face life-threatening floods if the dams don’t hold.

A review of federal data and reports obtained under state open records laws identified 1,688 high-hazard dams rated in poor or unsatisfactory condition as of last year in 44 states and Puerto Rico. The actual number is almost certainly higher: Some states declined to provide condition ratings for their dams, claiming exemptions to public record requests. Others simply haven’t rated all their dams due to lack of funding, staffing or authority to do so.
Deaths from dam failures have declined since a series of catastrophic collapses in the 1970s prompted the federal and state governments to step up their safety efforts. Yet about 1,000 dams have failed over the past four decades, killing 34 people, according to Stanford University’s National Performance of Dams Program.

Built for flood control, irrigation, water supply, hydropower, recreation or industrial waste storage, the nation’s dams are over a half-century old on average. Some are no longer adequate to handle the intense rainfall and floods of a changing climate. Yet they are being relied upon to protect more and more people as housing developments spring up nearby.

“There are thousands of people in this country that are living downstream from dams that are probably considered deficient given current safety standards,” said Mark Ogden, a former Ohio dam safety official who is now a technical specialist with the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

The association estimates it would take more than $70 billion to repair and modernize the nation’s more than 90,000 dams. But unlike much other infrastructure, most U.S. dams are privately owned. That makes it difficult for regulators to require improvements from operators who are unable or unwilling to pay the steep costs.

So $70 billion to fix the dams in the country, and instead we gave ten times that to billionaires for more pocket change.

As I said, related stories.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier gives the correct answer today on the GOP defense of Trump being that Trump's Ukraine scandal doesn't rise to the level of impeachable: "This is a very strong case of bribery", an offense written directly into the Constitution as impeachable.

A Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee defended the Democrats' strategy in the impeachment inquiry and responded on Sunday to the Republican witness requests in an interview on ABC's "This Week."

"This is a very simple, straightforward act. The president broke the law," said Rep. Jackie Speier of California. "He went on a telephone call with the President of Ukraine and said 'I have a favor though' and then proceeded to ask for an investigation of his rival. This is a very strong case of bribery."

The constitution is very clear, treason, bribery or acts of omission," she added. "And in this case it’s clearly one of those."

Republicans are now falling back on "It's all one-sided so it's illegitimate!"

Ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, criticized the inquiry for being partisan, in response to Speier during a separate interview on "This Week."

"I think whatever happens now, there will be a taint to this one-sided partisan approach to impeachment, that is different that has been used before, and so I think there will be intense skepticism about whatever they come up with," he said.

When "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz pressed Thornberry on the substance of the allegations at the center of the impeachment inquiry versus the process, Thornberry said, "I believe that it is inappropriate for a president to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival."

He added, however, "I do not believe it was impeachable."

This is where the country will be headed into hearings later this week.  Everyone agrees he did it, but is it impeachable?

If the answer is no, if bribery isn't impeachable, then we're done as a nation.

Sunday Long Read: The Lee In Washington And Lee

Yes, the Lee in Washington and Lee University is Robert E. Lee, not the most popular guy in American history right now, given the whole "traitor to the country for slavery's sake" turn of events. Our Sunday Long Read this week has Author Abigail Covington details the university's reaction to the Trump era, Charlottesville, and being in charge of the place where Lee is interred.

The president of Washington and Lee University, Will Dudley, understood the depth of his problem the moment he turned on the television and saw hoards of white men in collared shirts and khakis carrying tiki torches as they marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, protesting the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee.

For nearly 150 years, the school over which he presided managed to avoid any controversies related to its namesake and former president. But with the August 2017 white supremicist rallies and riots in Charlottesville, Virginia and the reaction of President Donald Trump — “You also had some very fine people on both sides” — had come new and, in some quarters, unwelcome scrutiny over the enduring presence in the south of memorials to the Lost Cause. And nowhere was that presence more deeply ingrained than in Lexington, Virginia on the campus of Washington and Lee, at whose spiritual core sat the memorial chapel in which lay in eternal repose the remains of one Robert E. Lee. Unlike any of his predecessors, Dudley understood that this time he’d have to deal with the school’s Robert E. Lee problem. He believed he had a path toward a solution, and that it began with Ted DeLaney.

“No one has a more penetrating sense of W&L’s history and character than Professor DeLaney,” wrote the school’s provost Marc Conner in W&L’s official magazine The Columns. Now 75 years old and semi-retired, DeLaney grew up in the black neighborhood of a then heavily-segregated Lexington and has a relationship to W&L unlike any other. He started as a custodian in the early 1960s and spent twenty years as a lab technician in the school’s biology department. He then enrolled as an undergraduate, graduating cum laude in 1985 at the age of 40; he later returned as a professor in the history department where he taught courses on such subjects as Comparative Slavery in the Western Hemisphere, African American history, Civil Rights and Gay and Lesbian history.

President Dudley’s post-Charlottesville plan was to form a commission whose unenviable task would necessitate separating the myths of Robert E. Lee from the facts of his life. It would gather opinions on Lee and his legacy from the W&L community, whose constituents often contradicted each other. “W&L is a fortress of white privilege,” one alumnus would seethe during an open conference call for the school’s graduates hosted by the commission. Another would lay out the stakes in clear and troubling terms: “If the president and the board don’t heed the final recommendations of the Commission, the university will attract tourists like Dylan Roof.”

The commission would have twelve members, drawn from W&L professors, faculty, current students, and alumni. More than examining the connection between Lee and the school, Dudley wanted recommendations on ways of restructuring the Lee narrative in the wake of the nation’s renewed attention to race, history and justice. He asked Ted DeLaney to join it, and DeLaney quickly agreed.

In many ways, DeLaney’s life had been preparing him for this moment. For over thirty years, he’d wandered in the shadows cast by Confederate monuments and statues in his hometown. He’d attended convocations and welcome addresses at Lee Chapel and sat in pews built atop Robert E. Lee’s family crypt. His tolerance had been tested and fortified by each indignity he’d silently suffered and every display of hagiographic admiration he’d witnessed his friends, colleagues and students display toward Robert E. Lee. He was both fired up and exhausted; reluctant and motivated to finally take on the legacy of a Confederate god who’d haunted him all his life.

In a way, W&L was Lee's legacy, the way to ensure his name would be enshrined and that for better or for worse, he would be remembered.

Maybe he shouldn't be, and I'm glad the university that bears his name and frankly its shame is coming to terms with it 150 years later.
 

Trump's Constant Is Represented By The Poop Emote

Donald Trump continues to be awful in every possible way given any possible opportunity to be repugnant, like some sort of amoral version of Planck's constant or Avagadro's number.

While meeting with President Donald Trump, the parents of a British teenager who was killed in a traffic collision with the wife of a U.S. diplomat were offered money from the Treasury by the president, which they refused, according to The Guardian.

Harry Dunn, 19, was riding his motorcycle near the Royal Air Force base in Northamptonshire, England when he was involved in an accident with Anne Sacoolas. Dunn died of his injuries in the hospital while Sacoolas claimed diplomatic immunity and left the United Kingdom. Trump invited Dunn's parents, Tim Dunn and Charlotte Charles, to the White House to discuss the case.

Toward the end of the meeting, Trump intimated that he had Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin "standing by ready to write a check."

"It was almost as if he let it slip out," said family spokesman Radd Seiger. "When he said, 'We've got the driver here', he basically meant we're all going to have a big hug and a kiss and I'll get my Treasury guy to write a check. That's how it was. On the day it just didn't register with me, but the more I think about those words, the more shocking it is."

The asshole thinks the Treasury Secretary is his money guy, and that he can just write a check and make things go away, like he's Logan Roy from HBO's Succession.

Oh wait, that's what he actually did with Stormy Daniels.

Why is this man not in prison?

The Reach To Impeach,.Con't

House Republicans are trying to disrupt next week's public impeachment hearings by spending the entire time demanding the whistleblower and Hunter Biden testify instead.  Luckily, it doesn't really matter what they want.

Republicans and the president have complained that the Democrats’ inquiry is unfairly partisan. When the Democrats deny the witnesses they’ve requested, the Republicans will then present that as evidence of a one-sided process.

Witnesses who testified out of public view have corroborated the crux of the case against Trump — that he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rivals — so the Democrats see no need for the whistleblower, who heard the story secondhand, to testify. Three career State Department officials are returning next week for the public hearings.

Republicans want to publicly question witnesses who would divert the conversation away from questions about Trump’s behavior to allegations only tangentially related to the case, such as unfounded claims that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and that the Bidens acted nefariously in their dealings with Ukraine.

In the request that the anonymous whistleblower be asked to testify publicly, Nunes argued that Trump “should be afforded an opportunity to confront his accusers.” He also asked that all individuals who provided information to the whistleblower be compelled to appear.

Democrats have pushed back on Republicans’ desire to expose the identity of the whistleblower, citing protections afforded to federal employees who anonymously disclose information about government wrongdoing.

In addition to Hunter Biden, the Republicans said they also want to hear from Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, who served with Biden on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company.

Nunes writes that both Biden and Archer’s time with Burisma “can assist the American public in understanding the nature and extent of Ukraine’s pervasive corruption, information that bears directly on President Trump’s long-standing and deeply-held skepticism of the country.”

So why would I care about what Devin Nunes wants, when Devin Nunes literally gets no say in the process?

Because it makes me laugh.  Adam Schiff isn't going to do a damn thing.

In denying the GOP witness list, Schiff will point to parameters he laid out earlier this week limiting the scope of the public hearings to Trump’s actions related to Ukraine.

The narrow guidelines set forth by Schiff center on three fundamental questions:

●Did Trump request a foreign government conduct investigations that would benefit the president’s personal political interests?

●Did Trump, or his aides, use the power of the presidency to apply pressure on Ukraine? 

●Did the Trump administration attempt to obstruct justice by concealing evidence of the president’s actions related to Ukraine?

Keep those three questions in mind as we head into next week.

A Taxing Explanation, Con't

The White House is going all the way to the Supreme Court to keep Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance from seeing Donald Trump's tax returns and it could be a major, precedent-setting case involving Presidential power...if the high court takes it up, which is no guarantee.

President Trump's lawyers intend to petition the U.S. Supreme Court by Nov. 14 to review a lower court ruling requiring the president to turn over eight years of his tax returns to a state grand jury, according to a letter written Friday.

Why it matters: This case would mark the first time the Supreme Court makes a decision on Trump's legal argument — that he is immune from criminal investigation while in office — and could "produce a major statement on the limits of presidential power," the New York Times reports.

Details: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which said on Monday that Trump must turn over his tax returns, dodged Trump's legal arguments that he is exempt from criminal investigations while in the White House. Instead, the court stated the president’s accounting firm is being subpoenaed for the documents — rather than Trump himself. 

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance subpoenaed Trump's tax returns as part of an investigation into hush-money payments allegedly made to Stormy Daniels by by the Trump Organization during the 2016 election.

Background: Trump has filed at least three lawsuits to block the release of his tax returns. The president, his family and his company also filed a lawsuit against Deutsche Bank to block the bank from complying with congressional subpoenas for their business records.

My guess is the court won't touch the case and the narrow scope of the Second Circuit ruling -- that Vance is entitled to the tax returns because Trump's accountants aren't immune to the subpoena -- will stand.  But of course, the returns will be leaked, and we'll find out that Trump has been fast, loose, and comically ugly with his numbers.

It'll be a massive embarrassment to loser Trump, and he will lash out.

On the other hand, we could finally get that republic-ending Supreme Court precedent that the Chief Executive and the entire branch are utterly immune to state legal proceedings.

At this point, who knows?

Last Call For The Battle Of Bevinstan, Con't

Nervous Kentucky Republicans, cognizant of being put in the national spotlight (and not being as evil as NC Republicans apparently) are putting the onus on Matt Bevin to either prove those election irregularities he keeps complaining about or to concede the election to Andy Beshear.

A growing number of Republican lawmakers are urging Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, a fellow Republican, to either provide evidence of the voting “irregularities” he has alleged or concede Tuesday’s election to Gov.-elect Andy Beshear, who defeated him by 5,189 votes.

“The best thing to do, the right thing to do, is for Governor Bevin to concede the election today so we can move on,” said Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Louisville.

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, first raised the possibility of the tight election being decided by the Republican-led legislature Tuesday night when he explained the process that would occur if Bevin decided to challenge the results of the race. Bevin bolstered that speculation Wednesday by claiming that thousands of absentee ballots were counted illegally without presenting any proof to back up his claim.

Republicans in the legislature aren’t buying it.

Nemes said he has not seen much support for an election challenge among his Republican colleagues in the House, largely because the governor has not backed up his claims. None of the lawmakers the Herald-Leader spoke to Thursday said they had seen evidence to support Bevin’s claims.
Rep. John Blanton, R-Salyersville, is a former state police officer who said he has heard rumors of election problems but no hard evidence.

“The last thing anyone wants to do is overturn a constitutional election,” Blanton said. “We want the will of the people to be done.”

House Republicans have had a rocky relationship with Bevin since they gained control of the chamber in 2016. Often, it was the GOP-led House that blocked Bevin’s policy priorities, such as a funding mechanism for charter schools and more aggressive reforms to the pension system.

It's really something that Matt Bevin has managed to piss enough enough Republicans in the KY General Assembly that they're flat out not backing his play in the House. 

Even my own state House member, Republican Adam Koenig, told Bevin to suck it.

“There’s nothing wrong with checking the math,” said state Rep. Adam Koenig, R-Erlanger. “Unless there is a mountain of clear, unambiguous evidence, then he should let it go.”

State Senate leader Rob Stivers is now crawling back from the limb he went out on Tuesday night.

Republican Senate President Robert Stivers believes Gov. Matt Bevin should concede his loss to Democrat Andy Beshear if next week's recanvass doesn't significantly change the vote totals.

“It’s time to call it quits and go home, say he had a good four years and congratulate Gov.-elect Beshear,” Stivers said in a brief Friday interview at the Capitol.

Maybe the loads of bad press have something to do with it.  Also, and I can't stress this enough, Matt Bevin is an asshole.

But Bevin isn't giving up.  Robocalls seeking evidence of "voting irregularities" to be reported are going out now, funded by Bevin supporters who want this fight to go until Beshear's victory is overturned.

Conservative political activist Frank Simon, a longtime supporter of Gov. Matt Bevin, is sending robocalls asking Kentuckians to report suspicious activity or voter fraud to the State Board of Elections before Nov. 14 — the day of Bevin's requested recanvass.

Bevin finished 5,189 votes behind Democrat Andy Beshear in Tuesday's gubernatorial election but has refused to concede the race, requesting a recanvass of the vote, which is essentially a review of the vote totals in each county.

The governor has also made allegations of widespread voting irregularities and fraud on Election Day, but he hasn't provided any evidence to back up those claims.

According to a voicemail of the robocall sent to a Republican in Western Kentucky, Simon says, "If you or anyone you know has information regarding suspicious activity at polling locations, please report suspected voter fraud to the state department of elections by calling 502-573-7100."

He also asked that those calls to the State Board of Elections phone number take place by Nov. 13 — the day before each county board of elections conducts the recanvass.

There is no disclaimer on the call indicating who paid for it, nor is it explained that the call is not coming from the State Board of Elections.

Simon, of Louisville, did not return voicemails and an email asking who paid for the robocall and how many people it went to, or if any other group requested that he make the calls.

The president of the American Family Association of Kentucky, Simon has been known for decades as a socially conservative political activist, most notably for his opposition to Louisville's 1999 ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Battle for Bevinstan is just starting.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The public release of transcripts of State department officials involved in the Trump/Giuliani Ukraine scandal shows came within one CNN interview of total success in destroying Joe Biden's campaign, as the whistleblower story breaking in September spooked CNN's Fareed Zakaria from giving Ukranian President Volodomyr Zelensky the interview necessary to announce the fabricated investigation into Burisma Holdings and Hunter Biden.

It was early September, and Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, faced an agonizing choice: whether to capitulate to President Trump’s demands to publicly announce investigations against his political enemies or to refuse, and lose desperately needed military aid.

Only Mr. Trump could unlock the aid, he had been told by two United States senators, and time was running out. If the money, nearly $400 million, were not unblocked by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, it could be lost in its entirety.

In a flurry of WhatsApp messages and meetings in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, over several days, senior aides debated the point. Avoiding partisan politics in the United States had always been the first rule of Ukrainian foreign policy, but the military aid was vital to the war against Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, a conflict that has cost 13,000 lives since it began in 2014.

By then, however, Mr. Zelensky’s staffers were already conceding to what seemed to be the inevitable, and making plans for a public announcement about the investigations. It was a fateful decision for a fledgling president elected on an anticorruption platform that included putting an end to politically motivated investigations.

Elements of this internal Ukrainian debate have appeared in the Ukrainian news media and seeped into congressional testimony in the United States, as part of an impeachment inquiry undertaken after accusations surfaced of Mr. Trump’s demands.

But interviews in Kiev with government officials, lawmakers and others close to the Zelensky government have revealed new details of how high-level Ukrainian officials ultimately decided to acquiesce to President Trump’s request — and, by a stroke of luck, never had to follow through.

It wasn't luck, it was the whistleblower's story blowing up.

Finally bending to the White House request, Mr. Zelensky’s staff planned for him to make an announcement in an interview on Sept. 13 with Fareed Zakaria, the host of a weekly news show on CNN.
Though plans were in motion to give the White House the public statement it had sought, events in Washington saved the Ukrainian government from any final decision and eliminated the need to make the statement.

Word of the freeze in military aid had leaked out, and Congress was in an uproar. Two days before the scheduled interview, the Trump administration released the assistance and Mr. Zelensky’s office quickly canceled the interview.
Since then, Trump administration officials including the White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, have tried to argue that the security assistance could not have been conditioned on the public statement, because the aid was released without it.

The NY Times first broke the story on August 21, but Adam Schiff's tangle with the Trump White House over the whistleblower complaint, specifically with Acting DNI Joseph Maguire,happened on September 13th.

The day before the interview.

And that was the difference.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

This should be the end of Donald Trump's regime, but of course America is Garbageville: Population Us so who cares, right?

A New York judge on Thursday ordered President Trump to pay $2 million in damages for misusing funds from a tax-exempt charity — taking the charity’s money to pay debts for his for-profit businesses, to boost his 2016 campaign and to buy himself art, according to court documents.

That order, from state judge Saliann Scarpulla, settled a lawsuit filed against Trump last year by the New York attorney general.


The lawsuit — based on information first uncovered by The Washington Post — alleged “persistently illegal conduct” at the Donald J. Trump Foundation, where Trump served as president for 32 years.

As part of the settlement, Trump also agreed to disburse the $1.8 million remaining in the foundation to a set of charities, and to shutter it for good. In a statement signed by Trump’s attorney, the president admitted to poor oversight of the charity and to seven specific instances where its money was misspent.

Again, that should be it.  His resignation from the Oval Office should be effective noon today. It should be a national moment of catharsis and epiphany.  We should be talking about a Pence administration and his involvement in Trump's wrongdoing.

But of course, we're not.

Because Donald Trump covers the world in impeachable offenses like the barn wall behind a horse's ass.

The president admitted, among other things, to improperly arranging for the charity to pay $10,000 for a 6-foot portrait of him. He also agreed to pay back $11,525 in foundation funds that he spent on sports memorabilia and champagne at a charity gala.

Trump also accepted restrictions on his involvement in other charitable organizations. His three eldest children, who were members of the foundation’s board, must undergo mandatory training on the duties of those who run charities.
Charities are barred from getting involved in political campaigns, but in weighing the Iowa fundraiser, Scarpulla gave Trump credit for making good on his pledge to give $2.8 million that his charity raised to veterans’ organizations.

Instead of fining him that amount, as the attorney general’s office wanted, the judge trimmed it to $2 million and rejected a demand for punitive damages and interest.

The Trump Foundation said it was pleased by those decisions, claiming that the judge “recognized that every penny ever raised by the Trump Foundation has gone to help those most in need.”

He lied of course, broke the law, and covered it up, and only the dogged reporting of Washington Post journalist David Farenthold has exposed this criminality.  Today we should be talking about how Farenthold took down the Trump regime.

If the Clinton Foundation had committed a fraction of these offenses and agreed to a settlement with New York state like this, Attorney General Bill Barr would be announcing a Justice Department federal investigation while Trump was screaming LOCK HER UP.

But of course, we're not.

StupidiNews!

• A magnitude 5.8 earthquake rocked northwestern Iran on Friday killing five and injuring more than 100 according to Iranian state TV.
• CIA Director Gina Haspel was in Saudi Arabia Thursday after the Justice Department indicted US Twitter users for espionage on behalf of the kingdom.
• A Hong Kong university student who was injured from a fall in last weekend's protests has died, setting the stage for fresh protests this weekend.
• French President Emanuel Macron is blaming Donald Trump's neglect of NATO allies for the organization's recent economic woes, saying Trump is causing the "brain death" of NATO.
• Members of a US white supremacist group that pulled its web presence two years ago have now been unmasked in a major data leak revealing identities and plans.

Last Call For Too Many Cooks

And former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg is making good on his threat to upend the Democratic 2020 primary by filing to enter the Alabama primary tomorrow.

Michael R. Bloomberg is actively preparing to enter the Democratic presidential primary and is expected to file paperwork this week designating himself as a candidate in at least one state with an early filing deadline, people briefed on Mr. Bloomberg’s plans said.

Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman, has been privately weighing a bid for the White House for weeks and has not yet made a final decision on whether to run, an adviser said. But in the first sign that he is seriously moving toward a campaign, Mr. Bloomberg has dispatched staffers to Alabama to gather signatures to qualify for the primary there. Though Alabama does not hold an early primary, it has a Friday deadline for candidates to formally enter the race.

Should Mr. Bloomberg proceed with a campaign, it could represent a seismic disruption in the Democratic race. With his immense personal wealth, centrist views and close ties to the political establishment, he would present a grave and instantaneous threat to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has been struggling to raise money and assemble a ideologically moderate coalition.

But Mr. Bloomberg could also reshape the race in other ways, intensifying the Democrats’ existing debates about economic inequality and corporate power, and offering fodder to the party’s rising populist wing, led by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who contend that the extremely rich already wield far too much influence in politics. Mr. Bloomberg has repeatedly expressed discomfort with certain policies favored by both Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders.

Howard Wolfson, a close adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, said on Thursday that the former mayor viewed President Trump as an “unprecedented threat to our nation,” and noted Mr. Bloomberg’s heavy spending in the 2018 midterm elections and this week’s off-year races in Virginia. Mr. Bloomberg, he said, has grown uneasy about the existing trajectory of the Democratic primary.

“We now need to finish the job and ensure that Trump is defeated — but Mike is increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned to do that,” Mr. Wolfson said. “If Mike runs he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building a business from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist.”

Once again, Bloomberg has no shot whatsoever:

Mr. Bloomberg will have to move quickly if he is to compete in a serious way for the Democratic nomination. Beyond Alabama, several other states have filing deadlines in quick succession, including New Hampshire, with its crucial early primary. While he has maintained a cluster of high-powered advisers in New York, he would have to build a campaign from zero in the early primary and caucus states, and it may be difficult for him to qualify for the two remaining debates this year.

In a Democratic race, Mr. Bloomberg would face a battery of complicated questions about his political ideology and governing record. He has been a vigorous advocate for core liberal causes, like gun control and battling climate change. But as mayor Mr. Bloomberg also championed police searches that targeted black and Latino men; in an interview last fall, he defended his administration’s stop-and-frisk policing strategy and also expressed skepticism about the #MeToo movement.

He's just there to hurt Biden.

Should He Steyer Should He Go

Democratic presidential candidate and billionaire Tom Steyer is a disaster, and it turns out he should have been shown the door a long time ago.

A top aide to Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer in Iowa has privately offered campaign contributions to local politicians in exchange for endorsing his White House bid, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the conversations.

The overtures from Pat Murphy, a former state House speaker who is serving as a top adviser on Steyer’s Iowa campaign, aren’t illegal — though payments for endorsements would violate campaign finance laws if not disclosed. There’s no evidence that any Iowans accepted the offer or received contributions from Steyer’s campaign as compensation for their backing.
But the proposals could revive criticism that the billionaire Steyer is trying to buy his way into the White House. Several state lawmakers and political candidates said they were surprised Steyer’s campaign would think he could buy their support.

Tom Courtney, a former Democratic state senator from southeastern Iowa who’s running for reelection to his old seat, told The Associated Press the financial offer “left a bad taste in my mouth.”

Murphy didn’t respond to a request for comment. Alberto Lammers, Steyer’s campaign press secretary, said Murphy was not authorized to make the offers and that the campaign leadership outside of Iowa was unaware that he was doing so until the issue was raised by The Associated Press.

Courtney declined to name Murphy as the Steyer aide who made the offer, but several other local politicians said they received similar propositions, and all confirmed the proposal came from Murphy himself. Most requested anonymity to speak freely about the issue. Another, Iowa state Rep. Karin Derry, said Murphy didn’t explicitly offer a specific dollar amount, but made it clear Derry would receive financial support if she backed Steyer.

“It was presented more as, he has provided financial support to other downballot candidates who’ve endorsed him, and could do the same for you,” she said.

Courtney described a similar interaction with Steyer’s campaign.

“Tom, I know you’re running for Senate. I’m working for Tom Steyer,” Courtney recalled hearing from the aide. “Now you know how this works. ...He said, ‘you help them, and they’ll help you.’”

“I said, ‘it wouldn’t matter if you’re talking monetary, there’s no amount,’” Courtney continued. “I don’t do that kind of thing.”

No it's not illegal but Jesus, it's gross and immoral as hell.  But hey, you know what is illegal? Having your aides steal other candidate's mailing lists.

A Tom Steyer campaign staffer accused of stealing voter data from Kamala Harris' campaign has resigned. Steyer's campaign manager, Heather Hargreaves, released a statement explaining that last week, the South Carolina Democratic Party had turned off voter file access to his campaign briefly — and that when it was restored, Steyer staffer Dwane Sims, who had once worked for the state party, "had access to other presidential data."

"Within minutes of realizing this," Hargreaves said, "Sims called the South Carolina Democratic Party to alert them, and the access was turned off by the party authorities."

Steyer's national press secretary Alberto Lammers said that although the campaign wiped all voter data files from Sims' computer, Sims had already deleted the files in question.

Nonetheless, the Steyer campaign said that it put Sims on leave while it investigated. It "wiped Mr. Sims' computer to make sure the data was completely deleted and that there was no access to other campaign data."

The campaign did not overtly admit any wrongdoing, but it did state that "after that internal investigation, [Sims] resigned from the campaign."

The chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party said in a statement that the party "recently learned of a breach by an employee of the Steyer campaign, who obtained access to some of Senator Harris' volunteer data in South Carolina. This was a former SCDP employee, who was off-boarded at the end of September, and as we learned on Friday, maintained a separate user account, which is in clear violation of the VoteBuilder protocol."

"We take this matter very seriously, and that is why we immediately worked with the DNC to disable this employee's access to VoteBuilder," the statement continued. "All data downloaded by this individual was destroyed and was not provided to any third parties. It is critical that the Steyer campaign take immediate action regarding their employee. This user account did not have access to data from any other presidential campaign."

Hargreaves' statement includes an apology to the Harris campaign. "Tom Steyer and the Steyer campaign extend our deepest apology to Senator Kamala Harris and her campaign," Hargreaves wrote.

Oops we accidentally the voter data my bad.  Hitting the black woman's voter list in South Carolina is a nice touch, non?

C'mon Tom, should have stuck with funding state races with your money.  You could have made a difference.  Instead you wasted tens of millions on your ego and oh yeah, you're a cartoon villain and a fool.

Drop out already.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The Washington Post is reporting that Donald Trump wanted Attorney General Bill Barr to put an end to impeachment proceedings by holding a press conference declaring him innocent of any legal wrongdoing, a step that not even Barr would apparently take.  Not yet, at least.

The request from Trump traveled from the president to other White House officials and eventually to the Justice Department. The president has mentioned Barr’s demurral to associates in recent weeks, saying he wished Barr would have held the news conference, Trump advisers say.

In recent weeks, the Justice Department has sought some distance from the White House, particularly on matters relating to the burgeoning controversy over Trump’s dealings on Ukraine and the impeachment inquiry they sparked.

People close to the administration say Barr and Trump remain on good terms. A senior administration official said Trump praised the attorney general publicly and privately Wednesday, and deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement: “The President has nothing but respect for AG Barr and greatly appreciates the work he’s done on behalf of the country — and no amount of shady sources with clear intent to divide, smear, and slander will change that.”

But those close to the administration also concede that the department has made several recent maneuvers putting it at odds with the White House at a particularly precarious time for the president. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the politically fraught situation.

The request for the news conference came sometime around Sept. 25, when the administration released a rough transcript of the president’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The document showed that Trump urged Zelensky to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter — while dangling a possible White House visit for the foreign leader.

By then, a whistleblower complaint about the call had moved congressional Democrats to launch the impeachment inquiry, and the administration was on the defensive. As the rough transcript was released, a Justice Department spokeswoman said officials had evaluated it and the whistleblower complaint to see whether campaign finance laws had been broken, determined that none had been and decided “no further action was warranted.”

It was not immediately clear why Barr would not go beyond that statement with a televised assertion that the president broke no laws, nor was it clear how forcefully the president’s desire was communicated. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. A senior administration official said, “The DOJ did in fact release a statement about the call, and the claim that it resulted in tension because it wasn’t a news conference is completely false.”

From the moment the administration released the rough transcript, Barr made clear that whatever the president was up to, he was not a party to it. 

Though the rough transcript shows Trump offering Zelensky the services of his attorney general to aid investigations of Biden and his son, a Barr spokeswoman said that Barr and Trump had never discussed that.

“The President has not spoken with the Attorney General about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former vice president Biden or his son,” spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement released at the same time as the rough transcript. “The President has not asked the Attorney General to contact Ukraine — on this or any other matter. The Attorney General has not communicated with Ukraine — on this or any other subject.”

Now this could very well be kayfabe rope-a-dope, but it seems to me that Barr is really, really going out of his way to avoid this whole Ukraine thing, and let's remember Trump fired Jeff Sessions because he wouldn't get involved in the Mueller probe.  Barr could pull another stunt but he hasn't yet.

My assumption is that Barr feels he doesn't have to interfere and that Mitch McConnell will "take care" of things for Trump.  But it sure doesn't keep Trump from complaining about "his" Attorney General.

The real reason I think is that Barr is involved in this Ukraine business far more than anyone wants to admit, so if he keeps his mouth shut and lays low, he figures he'll be okay.

Of course, Trump and "keeping his mouth shut" rarely happens.