Last Call For Trump State TV, Con't

Zandardad texted me yesterday about the impeachment hearings and mentioned he thought that the case against Trump was going to be distorted into sound bites of Republicans yelling and claiming victory over the "dismantled" Democratic argument.

On Fox News Trump State TV, he was right.  CNN's Brian Stetler waded into the crazy weeds.

I wanted to know what President Trump was hearing about day one of the televised impeachment hearings. So I decided to mute all my other TVs and just watch Fox News on Wednesday night. 

I heard White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham say that "today was a joke." I heard Donald Trump Jr. say "it's insanity." I heard Jeff Sessions ask, "Where's the beef?" 

Here's how I would sum up everything I heard from Fox's prime time hosts: Wednesday's hearing was a bust. It was all just hearsay. It was a "disaster" for the Democrats and a "great day" for the Republicans. Impeachment is "stupid." Impeachment is "fake." There's nothing impeachable here. There's no reason to hold hearings. This inquiry needs to stop right now. 

The message was one-sided and overwhelming. Every host and practically every guest said the Republican tribe is winning and the Democrat tribe is losing. I'm sure the president loved watching every minute of it. That's one of the reasons why this right-wing rhetoric matters so much -- because it is reassuring and emboldening Trump. 

I decided to write it all down because of something that CNN's Oliver Darcy wrote earlier in the day. "Don't expect viewers, listeners, and readers of right-wing media to walk away from Wednesday's impeachment hearings with a different opinion of President Trump's behavior," Darcy said. "In fact, it's possible they might be more convinced than ever that Trump did nothing wrong. Why? Because right-wing media has largely -- and unsurprisingly -- focused on the moments in the hearing favorable to its preferred narrative." 

He was right.

If Fox News had existed during Watergate, Nixon would have been re-elected in 1976 in a landslide.

Oliver Darcy writes: All day long, pro-Trump websites hyped clips of GOP stars like Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes "eviscerating" or "destroying" their opponents. THOSE were the moments that generated focus -- not the instances when Taylor or Kent shed new light on the Ukraine scandal. And after the hearings wrapped, Trump's defenders in media dismissed the hearings as "boring" and a bust for the Democrats. If you were watching the hearing through the lens of the right-wing media, you probably didn't see a case against the president being built. You probably walked away thinking the Democrats' case collapsed... 

Which is the point.  Fox News is the last line of defense for Donald Trump's ongoing years of criminality.  He would have never been elected without them, let alone survived the last three years in office without being tossed out on his ass.  Meanwhile the rest of our media was just as broken, as Alternet's Joshua Holland observes.

Yes, the first day of testimony was “consequential.” There was “substance”–new evidence that the President of the United States* personally directed that security aid to a vulnerable ally in the middle of a war be blocked in order to coerce them to pursue widely debunked conspiracy theories about his political rivals–but where was the pizzazz?

Impeachment week featured no sharks whatsoever. No nubile young women bared their breasts during the hearing and nobody in the chamber was injured in an amusing accident like on America’s Funniest Home Videos. No Republican was forced by the overwhelming weight of the evidence to halt his questioning and concede that the leader of their party really is a narcissistic charlatan. Jim Jordan didn’t have a sudden epiphany and tearfully apologize for turning his back on the abused wrestlers he used to coach. It was just some more boring details of high crimes in the Oval Office revealed during the fourth presidential impeachment process in the nation’s history. At least Clinton’s impeachment had some sex to spice up the proceedings.

These kinds of analyses are born of a deep cynicism that pervades so much of the media (I’m often guilty of it myself). It stems from the sense that, in a society as polarized as ours, nothing really matters. Opinions are locked in. Motivated reasoning leads readers and viewers to reject reporting that doesn’t support their worldviews.

The Republican base won’t abandon Trump and Senate Republicans fear primaries more than they do a slide into authoritarianism. Trump isn’t going to be escorted kicking and screaming from the Oval Office by the Marshal of the Supreme Court, so what’s the point? Ambassador Bill Taylor and Deputy Secretary of State George Kent offered gripping some really testimony–there was substance–but we all knew how Tucker Carlson would cover it at 8 pm. Same shit, different day when you really think about it.

That’s not entirely wrong. Investigative reporters sometimes unearth damning stories that bring down a politician or drive an effort for some new legislation, but most reporting doesn’t change people’s minds and won’t change the world. But even if there’s a kernel of truth to it, that cynicism blinds one to the importance of crucial moments in history like the one we’re living through now, and renders one incapable of covering it with the appropriate gravity.

It’s also, at least to a degree, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most people worked yesterday and didn’t catch the hearings live. They rely on the media not only for the facts, but also for cues about how to interpret them. Some of those people woke up this morning to the message that while there was some sort of substance to yesterday’s, nothing interesting happened. There’s nothing to see here. Move along.

Which is exactly what Zandardad feared.

Republicans in the Senate enable Trump.  But Fox News enables them, and it's even more dangerous.  They are going to kill the hearings any way they can for their viewers, and take the country down with them.

But what's worse is our own cynicism about a "doomed" process.

Another Hat Enters The Ring, Con't

Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is entering the Democratic primary today, and Steve M. has the right of the situation.

On the subject of Patrick's Bain Capital ties, Axios's Dan Primack writes: 

There is unconfirmed speculation that Patrick was awakened in his suburban Boston home last night, by the sounds of champagne corks popping at Elizabeth Warren's campaign headquarters. 

Really, plutocrats? You're terrified that Warren might be the nominee, so you urge Mike Bloomberg and Deval Patrick to get in the race -- and you're probably among the "many, many, many people" urging Hillary Clinton to jump in as well? 

This is crazy. It reminds me of the streaming wars -- company after company is announcing a big new video streaming service, and while some are going to thrive, others are sure to bomb. (Will there really be a market for Peacock or Quibi?) 

But this is how top executives think: Why not jump into a crowded field? What's the downside of oversaturating the market? If you're the executive responsible for one of the flops, the worst-case scenario is that you'll lose your job and get an eight-figure golden parachute. So why not? 

That kind of thinking seems to be making the fat cats want to urge every business-friendly Democrat into the race. Good luck with that, guys.

There's no real punishment for spending other people's money on ego runs like this, even for people like Bloomberg who have billions of their own to spend.  I know we talk about the right-wing gravy train, but the left version of it exists as well.  Yeah, some people fall off the tracks or get run over completely (talking to you, Moose Lady) but for the most part, politicians go on to sinecures and rake in big money.

The people out there with 10, 11 figures in their net worth?  They make things happen in politics.

BREAKING The Battle For Bevinstan Is Behind Us

After today's recanvass of the votes from last week didn't change voting totals more than a few ticks, Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin is picking up his ball and going home.

JUST IN: @GovMattBevin says he won't contest #kygov election outcome, @AndyBeshearKY will be next governor: https://t.co/2SJnosKfjB via @courierjournal

— Joe Sonka 😐 (@joesonka) November 14, 2019

And that's the ball game for Bevinstan.

Governor Andy Beshear, you're up.

A Taxing Explanation, Con't

The Trump tax return fight is now headed for SCOTUS on both the House Democratic subpoena and the New York state fronts.

Congress can seek eight years of President Trump’s tax records, according to a federal appeals court order Wednesday that moves the separation-of-powers conflict one step closer to the Supreme Court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit let stand an earlier ruling against the president that affirmed Congress’s investigative authority on a day when the House was holding its first public impeachment inquiry hearing.

Trump’s lawyers have said they are prepared to ask the Supreme Court to intervene in this case and in several other legal battles between the president and Congress.
The D.C. Circuit was responding Wednesday to Trump’s request to have a full panel of judges rehear a three-judge decision from October that rejected the president’s request to block lawmakers from subpoenaing his longtime accounting firm.

The order does not mean Trump’s taxes will be turned over to Congress immediately. The D.C. Circuit previously said it would put any ruling against the president on hold for seven days to give Trump’s attorneys time to ask the Supreme Court to step in.

Trump’s attorneys also are planning to ask the high court as soon as this week to block a similar subpoena for the president’s tax records from the Manhattan district attorney, who is investigating hush-money payments in the lead-up to the 2016 election. The New York-based appeals court ruled against Trump this month and refused to block the subpoena to his accounting firm, Mazars USA.

The D.C. Circuit case centers on a House Oversight Committee subpoena from March for the president’s accounting firm records — issued months before the beginning of its impeachment inquiry, related to Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden.

I'm not 100% sure if SCOTUS will take up both cases, one of the two, or neither.  It's possible SCOTUS will not want to interfere, but I could almost guarantee you that there's four conservative justices who want to take up these cases in order to give Trump blanket immunity, and that means it could be June before we have a decision.

That could be a double-bladed sword however.  Trump's returns would almost certainly be leaked to the press, and Trump would go on a rampage after whoever printed it, right in time for summer campaign season.

Of course, an impeached and removed Trump could make all of this moot, so.

StupidiNews!

• Some 26 dead, including nine civilians, have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza since fighting ignited Tuesday over Islamic Jihad activity in the Palestinian territories.
• Donald Trump hosted Turkish President Recep Erdogan at the White House on Wednesday as the Turkish leader blasted French President Emmanuel Macron's comments on NATO.
• Ousted Bolivian President Evo Morales vows he will return to La Paz from asylum in Mexico as clashes between police and demonstrators continue over the interim government of Jeanine Añez.
• British politicians are braving the cold and the rain to campaign as the nation's first December elections in nearly a century are scheduled next month.
• The FTC is suing a Utah IT provider over multiple hacker breaches discovered only after a server ran out of hard drive space compiling a list of user data to be stolen.

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The big news from today's opening salvo in the impeachment of Donald Trump, the news that Trump himself absolutely tried to bribe Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky with pressure to smear Joe Biden.

In a nationally televised hearing in the House Ways and Means Committee room across from the Capitol, William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, brought to life Democrats’ allegations that Mr. Trump has abused his office by trying to enlist a foreign power to help him in an election. Mr. Taylor testified to the House Intelligence Committee, which is leading the inquiry, that he was told in July that Mr. Trump cared more about “investigations of Biden” than he did about Ukraine.
The revelation, as Congress embarked on only the third set of presidential impeachment hearings in modern times, tied Mr. Trump more directly into what Mr. Taylor described in vivid detail as a “highly irregular” effort to place the president’s political interests at the center of American policy toward Ukraine.

“I don’t think President Trump was trying to end corruption in Ukraine,” said Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, encapsulating Democrats’ case. “I think he was trying to aim corruption in Ukraine at Vice President Biden and at the 2020 election.”

The proceedings pushed into the public gaze an epic clash between Mr. Trump and Democrats over impeachment that has shifted into high gear less than a year before the presidential election. In the first impeachment hearing on Capitol Hill in more than two decades, Mr. Taylor and another veteran diplomat, George P. Kent, sketched out, in testimony by turns cinematic and dry, a tale of foreign policymaking distorted by a president’s political vendettas with a small country facing Russian aggression caught in the middle.

“If this is not impeachable conduct,” demanded Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the committee, “what is?”

Bill Taylor was the star of the show today, and Trump is livid.

Even as the public recitation of facts unfolded in the hearing room, there were signs that Democrats’ investigation was still expanding. Investigators scheduled depositions with David Holmes, an official in the United States Embassy in Kiev, and Mark Sandy of the Office of Management and Budget for Friday and Saturday. According to an official involved in the inquiry, Mr. Holmes was the aide Mr. Taylor referred to in his new testimony, who informed Mr. Taylor about Mr. Trump’s singular interest in investigating the Bidens.

Mr. Taylor said a member of his staff overheard a telephone conversation in which the president mentioned “the investigations” to Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, who told Mr. Trump “that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.” The conversation took place just one day after Mr. Trump personally pressed Ukraine’s new president in a phone call to investigate the Bidens and unproven allegations that Ukraine conspired with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 election.

The reason why David Holmes is being questioned over the weekend?  He's the staff member Bill Taylor mentioned in today's hearing that overheard the phone call from Sondland to Trump about "the investigations".

It's about to get hot in here this week.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Senate Republicans are making it clear already that the inevitable motion to dismiss impeachment charges from the House outright will not have the votes in the Senate.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to Senate Republican leadership, says there are not enough votes in the Senate to immediately dismiss any articles of impeachment passed by the House against President Trump.

Republicans have discussed the possibility of quickly dismissing charges against Trump, which would just require 51 votes. But Cornyn said that would be a difficult hurdle for the GOP, which holds 53 seats in the Senate.

“There’s some people talking about trying to stop the bill, dismiss charges basically as soon as they get over here. I think that’s not going to happen. That would require 51 votes,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday.

“I think it would be hard to find 51 votes to cut the case off before the evidence is presented,” he added.

Cornyn also said it would be better to have a trial in the Senate if the House impeaches Trump.

The veteran GOP senator said “the better course would be to let each side have their say and then have the Senate vote and see if they can meet the two-thirds threshold” to convict the president on impeachment articles.

If Cornyn is saying the votes don't exist for a summary dismissal of the charges, then we're going to have that Senate trial, for better or worse, with Mitch McConnell setting the rules.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

The twin Trump regime Justice Department "reports" on the origins of the Russia probe and the FISA warrants into Carter Page are now being rolled into one giant pile of bullshit to use against Democrats right in the middle of impeachment hearings.

The Justice Department’s watchdog is nearing the release of its report on the early stages of the FBI’s Russia investigation, a document likely to revive debate about a politically charged probe that shadowed President Donald Trump’s administration from the outset.

The inspector general in recent days has invited witnesses and their lawyers who were interviewed for the report to review portions of a draft this week and next, a critical final step toward making the document public, according to multiple people familiar with the process who insisted on anonymity to discuss it.
As part of that process, the people will have opportunities to raise concerns or suggest potential edits, making it unclear precisely when in the coming weeks a final version could be ready for release. Inspector General Michael Horowitz told Congress in a letter last month that he did not expect a lengthy review period and that he intended to make as much of the report public as possible, with minimal redactions.

The release of the report is likely to coincide with House impeachment proceedings scrutinizing the Trump administration’s efforts to press Ukraine into investigating Democratic rival Joe Biden. Any finding of problems by the inspector general in how the FBI gathered and collected evidence in investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia could at least temporarily buoy Trump and other Republican supporters eager to turn the page from the congressional scrutiny now imperiling his White House.

Trump has long insisted that the investigation into his campaign was a “hoax” and “witch hunt,” asserting without evidence or elaboration as recently as last month that law enforcement officials had done “really bad things.”

A key question examined by the inspector general has been the FBI’s process for applying for, and receiving, a secret warrant to monitor the communications of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The warrant was renewed multiple times by judges, but Republican critics of the Russia probe have decried the fact that the FBI relied in part in its application on uncorroborated information obtained by Christopher Steele, a former British spy who had been paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to conduct opposition research.

The government did disclose to the court the political loyalties of the people who hired Steele, according to Democrats on the House intelligence committee who released their own memo last year aimed at countering Republican allegations of law enforcement misconduct.

The FBI opened its investigation in July 2016 after receiving information that a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, had disclosed to an Australian diplomat that Russia had thousands of stolen emails that would be potentially damaging to Clinton, an election opponent. U.S. officials have said the emails were hacked by Russian intelligence operatives and given to WikiLeaks, which released them ahead of the election.

Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign, had learned from a Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud, that Russia had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of the stolen emails. Papadopoulos later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Mifsud.

A spokeswoman for Horowitz declined to comment on Tuesday. Horowitz himself refused to answer questions about the report and its timing at an unrelated news conference last week. The inspector general provided a draft copy to Attorney General William Barr in September, and the Justice Department has since been conducting a classification review.

They've been sitting on it to try to unleash both for maximum effect, probably just after Thanksgiving.  It's going to be the major attack in order to derail impeachment.  We'll see how well it works.

StupidiNews!

• House Democrats have scheduled impeachment hearings next week for eight more witnesses, including EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and NSC Ukraine expert Alexander Vindland.
• Indicted former Trump adviser Roger Stone has rested his defense without calling witnesses, the trial could go to jury by the end of the week.
• The Department of Health and Human Services is looking into possible massive HIPAA violations by Google in its medical record sharing deal with hospital chain Ascension.
• The Trump regime is threatening "substantial" new China tariffs unless Beijing reaches a trade deal with the US soon.
• A federal judge has ruled ICE and Customs random search and seizure of international travelers' electronic devices is unconstitutional, the Trump regime plans to appeal the ruling.

Last Call For Race To The Bottom, Con't

And here we have Trump regime immigration adviser Stephen Miller's own words, proving beyond a doubt that he is a white supremacist who wants to remove all non-white people from America, period, and is willing to use the power of the federal government in order to accomplish turning America into a white nation through any means necessary.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols after Dylann Roof’s murderous rampage, according to leaked emails reviewed by Hatewatch.

The emails, which Miller sent to the conservative website Breitbart News in 2015 and 2016, showcase the extremist, anti-immigrant ideology that undergirds the policies he has helped create as an architect of Donald Trump’s presidency. These policies include reportedly setting arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants, an executive order effectively banning immigration from five Muslim-majority countries and a policy of family separation at refugee resettlement facilities that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General said is causing “intense trauma” in children.

In this, the first of what will be a series about those emails, Hatewatch exposes the racist source material that has influenced Miller’s visions of policy. That source material, as laid out in his emails to Breitbart, includes white nationalist websites, a “white genocide”-themed novel in which Indian men rape white women, xenophobic conspiracy theories and eugenics-era immigration laws that Adolf Hitler lauded in “Mein Kampf.”

Hatewatch reviewed more than 900 previously private emails Miller sent to Breitbart editors from March 4, 2015, to June 27, 2016. Miller does not converse along a wide range of topics in the emails. His focus is strikingly narrow – more than 80 percent of the emails Hatewatch reviewed relate to or appear on threads relating to the subjects of race or immigration. Hatewatch made multiple attempts to reach the White House for a comment from Miller about the content of his emails but did not receive any reply.

Miller’s perspective on race and immigration across the emails is repetitious. When discussing crime, which he does scores of times, Miller focuses on offenses committed by nonwhites. On immigration, he touches solely on the perspective of severely limiting or ending nonwhite immigration to the United States. Hatewatch was unable to find any examples of Miller writing sympathetically or even in neutral tones about any person who is nonwhite or foreign-born.

Miller has gained a reputation for attempting to keep his communications secret: The Washington Post reported in August that Miller “rarely puts anything in writing, eschewing email in favor of phone calls.” The Daily Beast noted in July that Miller has recently “cut off regular contact with most of his allies” outside the Trump administration to limit leaks.

Miller used his government email address as an aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions in the emails Hatewatch reviewed. He sent the majority of the emails Hatewatch examined before he joined Trump’s campaign in January 2016 and while he was still working for Sessions. Miller also used a personal Hotmail.com address in the emails and did so both before and after he started working for Trump. Hatewatch confirmed the authenticity of Miller’s Hotmail.com address through an email sent from his government address in which he lists it as his future point of contact:

“I am excited to announce that I am beginning a new job as Senior Policy Advisor to presidential candidate Donald J. Trump,” Miller wrote from his government email on Jan. 26, 2016, to an undisclosed group of recipients. “Should you need to reach me, my personal email address is [redacted].”

Katie McHugh, who was an editor for Breitbart from April 2014 to June 2017, leaked the emails to Hatewatch in June to review, analyze and disseminate to the public. McHugh was 23 when she started at Breitbart and also became active in the anti-immigrant movement, frequently rubbing shoulders with white nationalists. McHugh was fired from Breitbart in 2017 after posting anti-Muslim tweets. She has since renounced the far right.

McHugh told Hatewatch that Breitbart editors introduced her to Miller in 2015 with an understanding he would influence the direction of her reporting. For that reason, and because Miller would have regarded her as a fellow traveler of the anti-immigrant movement, McHugh sometimes starts conversations with Miller in the emails, seeking his opinion on news stories. Other times, Miller directly suggests story ideas to McHugh, or tells her how to shape Breitbart’s coverage. Periodically, Miller asks McHugh if he can speak to her by phone, taking conversations offline.

“What Stephen Miller sent to me in those emails has become policy at the Trump administration,” McHugh told Hatewatch.

Your friends and neighbors and even some family are planning to vote for Trump. Show them this.  Show them this is what's going to happen to America in a second Trump term.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The latest Republican "defense" of Donald Trump is now "He can't be impeached because bribery and extortion require intent" and I'm too busy laughing to care.

Confronted with a mountain of damaging facts heading into tomorrow's opening of the public phase of impeachment, House Republicans plan to argue that "the President's state of mind" was exculpatory.

The state of play: "To appropriately understand the events in question — and most importantly, assess the President's state of mind during his interaction with [Ukrainian] President Zelensky — context is necessary," says the 18-page staff memo, circulated to committee members last night.

"The evidence gathered does not establish an impeachable offense," the memo concludes.

Why it matters: By focusing their defense on intangibles like impeachability and President Trump's mindset, House Republicans don't depend on undercutting a narrative that has been bolstered by witness after witness. 

Republican senators, who would vote on whether to remove President Trump if the House impeached him, are also thinking this way. 

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told the WashPost 10 days ago: "To me, it all turns on intent, motive. ... Did the president have a culpable state of mind?"
The memo points to "four key pieces of evidence" to try to undermine Democrats' arguments for why the president should be impeached: 

"The July 25 call summary — the best evidence of the conversation — shows no conditionality or evidence of pressure." 

"President Zelensky and President Trump have both said there was no pressure on the call." 

"The Ukrainian government was not aware of a hold on U.S. security assistance at the time of the July 25 call." 

"President Trump met with President Zelensky and U.S. security assistance flowed to Ukraine in September 2019 — both of which occurred without Ukraine investigating President Trump's political rivals."

Between the lines: The memo fails to consider counterarguments that Democratic members have been making for weeks.

And that's the idea.  Republicans are simply going to gaslight this and pretend that Trump's already been exonerated by the evidence, and that Democrats are wasting America's time with a partisan witch hunt.

Sadly, it's the 52 Republican senators who can simply cite that and acquit Trump or even dismiss the charges outright, regardless of evidence.  They only need 34 to acquit, and any Republican senator who does cross Trump will certainly be removed from committees, face credible death threats from crazed Trump voters, be brutally attacked by Trump for months on Twitter, risk their career via immediate primary challenger, or all of the above.

No Republican will do it.  Not a one.  They're all cowards.

Another Hat In The Ring Against Mitch

Amy McGrath isn't the only name running against Mitch McConnell.  Louisville state Representative Charles Booker is considering entering the race and says he'll make a decision by the end of the month.

Booker, 35, a first-term state legislator, told The Courier Journal he filed the paperwork for his committee Monday and plans to launch a statewide listening tour by the end of November before he makes a final decision on whether to run.

"It's clear that Kentuckians are ready for a change and they're ready for a movement," Booker said. "My goal with this process is to make sure that we can build the infrastructure needed to catalyze that."

He said he's tired of McConnell using Kentucky as a "poker chip" to gain power while the Bluegrass State suffers.

"The fact of the matter is: (McConnell) knows how to do something about it. He has the power to and chooses not to," said Booker, who was born a few weeks before McConnell was first elected to the Senate in 1984. "And that's the part that pisses me off, because while he jokes about calling himself the Grim Reaper, we're literally dying."

Booker, who has Type 1 diabetes, said he's had to ration insulin before and "nearly died myself" doing so. McConnell is blocking a bill that House Democrats say would lower drug prices.

"(McConnell) has the tools, he has the ability to help Kentucky. He chooses not to and mocks us while he doesn't," Booker added.

Booker's decision to form an exploratory committee marks a significant step toward potentially running for U.S. Senate. But the state representative previously said that he had an eye on Washington, D.C.

Here's Booker's announcement ad, and it's a good one.



Booker has a real future. We'll see if it goes through McConnell's seat.

StupidiNews!

• Former Bolivian President Evo Morales has accepted political asylum in Mexico, Morales was ousted over the weekend as a military coup rose against his socialist government.
• Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, chair of Maryland's Democratic Party and widow of the late Rep. Elijah Cummings will run for her husband's House seat in 2020.
• Hong Kong police fired tear gas at protesters Tuesday as commuters dealt with disrupted subway lines and roads for a second day after two demonstrators were killed over the weekend.
• Former President Jimmy Carter has been hospitalized for surgery to deal with fluid on the brain after a series of falls in the last several weeks.
• Google may already have access to the medical records of tens of millions of Americans as part of a partnership with the nation's largest Catholic medical network, Ascension.

Last Call For Ama-zoning Laws

As I told you last year, Seattle's city council didn't back down from Amazon's threats to take its HQ and tens of thousands of employees elsewhere if the city didn't kill it new tax on big business.  The Mayor folded, and Amazon responded by spending a massive $1.5 million on ousting Seattle's city council members ahead of elections last week.

The company failed completely, and most were re-elected.

On election night, Amazon’s key political nemesis, Kshama Sawant, originally trailed by 8 percentage points — but over the weekend, she declared victory after ballot counts put her ahead of her Amazon-backed rival by more than 3 percentage points. Election tallies indicate that only two of the seven candidates Amazon backed will win, meaning the company’s efforts will fail to tilt the council in a pro-big-business way that would benefit Amazon.

The win by Sawant, a socialist and former software engineer, is the latest salvo in what has become an increasingly contentious battle between Amazon and its hometown city council. Amazon’s rapid growth in Seattle has helped transform the city into a tech powerhouse, but local politicians blame that growth and the accompanying real estate boom for much of the city’s ills, with a homelessness crisis near the top of the list.

Last year, the city council voted to levy a new tax on large businesses of about $275 per employee — called the “head tax” — to help fund homelessness services and low-income housing. Amazon fiercely opposed the bill, arguing that the city’s problem was not a lack of money to spend but rather ineffective spending of the money it had.

After the tax passed, Amazon and other Seattle businesses continued to fight and eventually succeeded in pushing local leaders to repeal the tax.

But a new, similar tax might now be in play after Amazon-backed candidates’ showing in last week’s election. Amazon supported seven city council candidates via a $1.45 million contribution to a political action committee backed by Seattle’s chamber of commerce in the hope of electing a more business-friendly slate of officials. But it appeared as of Monday that only two of the seven would win election.

The council has nine members in total, but two seats were not up for election this year. Local unions spent about $1 million on the race, according to Reuters.

Since being elected for the first time in 2013, Sawant has been a frequent critic of Amazon, hosting several rallies at the company’s headquarters to protest Amazon’s perceived negative impacts on Seattle.

It’s possible that Amazon’s cash donation aimed at defeating her rallied more voters to her side, with presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both tweeting about Amazon’s opposition to her.

In fact, her opponent, Egan Orion, sounded on election night as though he would have been happier without the Amazon association.

“We didn’t need any more money in this race. I think it was a big distraction that played right into Kshama’s hands,” he said.

Local elections matter, folks.

The Red Retirement Rush Resumes

The latest GOP Congressman to head for the hills, fleeing the disaster of Donald Trump's 2020 run is 28-year veteran Rep. Peter King of New York although there's a twist: he wants his daughter to fill the seat.

King, 75, said he was retiring so he can live full-time in New York and spend more time with his family. 

"This was not an easy decision. But there is a season for everything and Rosemary and I decided that, especially since we are both in good health, it is time to have the flexibility to spend more time with our children and grandchildren," he said, adding that his "daughter's recent move to North Carolina certainly accelerated my thinking." 

A source familiar with King's thinking told CNN on Monday that King "was really holding on" until his daughter, Erin King Sweeney, a former councilwoman in Hempstead, New York, "could run for his seat and win it." 

"Pete is really wonderfully into his kids and grandkids, and hated the idea of seeing them even less if he had to split his time between" DC, New York and North Carolina, the source said. 

King's retirement comes as his party inches closer to an election in which they could lose a number of vulnerable seats in the House, including his own. Earlier this year, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a strategy memo that the New Yorker is "at the top of the retirement watch list" and included his district on a list of "targeted districts." 

Republicans have struggled in suburban districts during President Donald Trump's time in office, a trend recently on display last week in Virginia, where Democrats seized control of the state legislature. 

So far, 16 House Republicans and five Democrats have announced they won't seek reelection next year.

Thing is, Erin King Sweeney moved to NC six weeks ago, but if she's out of state, I guess King has decided he's moving on himself.  King's NY-2 Long Island district is definitely in play though for Democrats, with a Cook PVI of R+3. Without King's gravitational pull keeping this in the GOP column, this one's gonna fall to Team Blue in 2020.

Stay tuned.

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.