Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

As the Senate GOP cult careens towards the dark blessing of the autocracy of Donald Trump with acquittal in the middle of the night, and the very real possibility that the acquittal will forever have the word "bipartisan" in front of it as the ultimate smokescreen, another round of leaks from John Bolton's book reveals Trump called him in on the plan to pressure Ukraine into fabricating an investigation of Hunter Biden all the way back in May of 2019.

More than two months before he asked Ukraine’s president to investigate his political opponents, President Trump directed John R. Bolton, then his national security adviser, to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Trump gave the instruction, Mr. Bolton wrote, during an Oval Office conversation in early May that included the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, who is now leading the president’s impeachment defense.

Mr. Trump told Mr. Bolton to call Volodymyr Zelensky, who had recently won election as president of Ukraine, to ensure Mr. Zelensky would meet with Mr. Giuliani, who was planning a trip to Ukraine to discuss the investigations that the president sought, in Mr. Bolton’s account. Mr. Bolton never made the call, he wrote.

The previously undisclosed directive that Mr. Bolton describes would be the earliest known instance of Mr. Trump seeking to harness the power of the United States government to advance his pressure campaign against Ukraine, as he later did on the July call with Mr. Zelensky that triggered a whistle-blower complaint and impeachment proceedings. House Democrats have accused him of abusing his authority and are arguing their case before senators in the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump, whose lawyers have said he did nothing wrong.

The account in Mr. Bolton’s manuscript portrays the most senior White House advisers as early witnesses in the effort that they have sought to distance the president from. And disclosure of the meeting underscores the kind of information Democrats were looking for in seeking testimony from his top advisers in their impeachment investigation, including Mr. Bolton and Mr. Mulvaney, only to be blocked by the White House.

In a brief interview, Mr. Giuliani denied that the conversation took place and said those discussions with the president were always kept separate. He was adamant that Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Mulvaney were never involved in meetings related to Ukraine.

“It is absolutely, categorically untrue,” he said.

Neither Mr. Bolton nor a representative for Mr. Mulvaney responded to requests for comment. A White House spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Bolton described the roughly 10-minute conversation in drafts of his book, a memoir of his time as national security adviser that is to go on sale in March. Over several pages, Mr. Bolton laid out Mr. Trump’s fixation on Ukraine and the president’s belief, based on a mix of scattershot events, assertions and outright conspiracy theories, that Ukraine tried to undermine his chances of winning the presidency in 2016.

As he began to realize the extent and aims of the pressure campaign, Mr. Bolton began to object, he wrote in the book, affirming the testimony of a former National Security Council aide, Fiona Hill, who had said that Mr. Bolton warned that Mr. Giuliani was “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”

Mr. Trump also repeatedly made national security decisions contrary to American interests, Mr. Bolton wrote, describing a pervasive sense of alarm among top advisers about the president’s choices. Mr. Bolton expressed concern to others in the administration that the president was effectively granting favors to autocratic leaders like Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Xi Jinping of China.

To recap, Donald Trump's impeachment defense lawyer was a material witness to Trump's criminal acts, who lied about that fact for the last week on the Senate floor.

It's just so darkly comical that I can't take much more.

And yet we know there will be much, much more.  The truth will come out, but at this point does it even matter anymore?

If the answer is no, then we are in an autocracy and America is lost.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

Maybe this weekend will finally disabuse the Democrats of the notion that there are still good Republicans out there.  There are none left, because they are all gone.

For nearly two weeks, Democrats took to the floor of the Senate in the hopes that GOP lawmakers would support the call for additional witnesses as part of impeachment proceedings of President Donald Trump.

To a person, party members believed that the evidence they gathered and case they presented was compelling and nearly flawless in its execution. Their convictions only hardened after several rounds of massive news breaks—from audio recordings of the president to seeming confirmation from his former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, that Trump sought a quid-pro-quo with Ukraine.

But as the days rolled by and Republican after Republican publicly declared they’d heard enough, a sense of dismay has begun to set in. Increasingly, Democrats believe and concede, there was simply no argument they could have made that would have moved the needle.

“The arguments that have been asserted by the White House are nonsense,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA). “There's plenty of evidence to move anyone who's listening. But I think what we're seeing is there is no amount of evidence that will move the Senate Republicans in this political environment. I think we expected that if they followed their constitutional oath, they would actually have a real trial. I think it's really just a failure of courage.”

Asked whether there was any frustration in the Democratic ranks about the lack of movement to call witnesses, Scanlon joked, “What? I don’t sound frustrated?”

A final vote on whether to hear new evidence or witnesses is set for Friday. Publicly, Democrats on both sides of the Capitol had held out hope that four GOP senators will side with them on, among other things, a need to call Bolton as a witness.

Increasingly, however, Democrats acknowledge that their efforts are likely to fail and that the impeachment proceedings will be wrapped up shortly thereafter. An announcement late Thursday night from Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) that he would vote against calling more evidence basically sealed the deal, leaving no path for a prolonged trial.

“It’s more than frustrating—it's pathetic,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO). “If you had any regard at all for the prerogatives of the legislative branch, to allow the White House to stonewall the House of Representatives in a completely unprecedented way, and then accept a set of rules … that are just a cover up for what the President has done, I think demonstrates a complete lack of regard for what this institution is supposed to be about.”

So my friends, it is now up to us to fix the problem.

It always was up to us as Americans.  We had a chance in 2016 and failed.

The problem is as Americans, as a people, as a body politic, we created this problem in the first place.

Not all of us are going to make it out to the other side, either.

What comes next remains up to us, but do we have the will to do what is necessary to correct the problem?

America has ended up in worse places before. Slavery. Civil war. Internment of citizens. assassinations and riots.  But his feels fundamentally different.

This feels like it won't get better.

StupidiNews!

• The US State Department is now advising Americans to avoid traveling to China due to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak as the World Health Organization has declared an official emergency.
• With Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexandar announcing his opposition to calling witnesses, White House officials are expecting a swift end to impeachment proceedings on Friday.
• The Trump regime is expected to dismantle Obama-era restrictions on landmines as arms control groups are swiftly denouncing the move.
• UK PM Boris Johnson is calling for national unity and for Britain to "level up" as Brexit goes into effect today.
• Amazon's 2019 4th quarter earning beat expectations catapulting the company's stock valuation over the $1 trillion mark again and making CEO Jeff Bezos more than $10 billion richer.

Last Call For Impeachment Reached, Con't

Here in sixty seconds, Adam Schiff sums up the absolute ridiculousness of the Trump defense team.

SCHIFF: "While we've been debating whether POTUS can be impeached for bogus claims of privilege, the DOJ is resisting subpoenas in court today... the judge says 'if Congress can't enforce its subpoenas, what remedy is there,' & DOJ's response is impeachment! You can't make it up" pic.twitter.com/Tim1HHDgBO

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2020

The almost inevitable outcome is that by this time tomorrow we will live in a country where there is no longer any direct check on the Executive branch, with a lawless despot who will issue whatever executive orders to do an end run around Congress, and who will ignore direct federal court orders, because enough members of the Judicial and Legislative are content to let this unitary monstrosity continue in order to reshape the country for generations.

There will be no witnesses, Trump will not be convicted and removed for his crimes, and the brutal oppression of those who tried to stop him will begin in earnest.

There is no reason to believe that Trump will leave office if he loses the election in November, let alone there being any reason to believe the election itself will be either free or fair.

January 31 is looking like the day we go over the cliff, folks.

Coming back from this will take decades, if if ever happens, and history assures us that in no way will that journey back to where we were even five years ago be peaceful.

The bad guys are about to win.

I don't know what happens next.

That should terrify all of us.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Georgia is shaping up to be an opportunity for not one, but two Democratic pickups for the Senate as Team Blue already has their sights set on David Perdue's seat, and the fight over the special election for retiring Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson's seat is heating up on the GOP side.  The damage could put both seats in play as Republicans have to split their resources to defend two Senate seats in the same state on the same day.

The conservative Club for Growth plans to air a massive ad campaign attacking Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), adding fuel to the intraparty battle that kicked off after the GOP congressman launched a Senate campaign this week.

Collins announced Wednesday he is challenging Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who was sworn in this month to replace Sen. Johnny Isakson after he resigned due to health issues. Collins is a top ally to President Donald Trump, but his decision to run for Senate sparked significant blowback among some Republicans who expressed concern it could jeopardize their hold on the seat and cause problems elsewhere on the Senate map.

The Club for Growth is the first group to launch an ad war aiming to knock down Collins' image as he gears up for the statewide run. The anti-tax organization plans to spend $3 million on TV, starting next week, with issue-based ads going after Collins' record. The flight will run for five weeks, according to details shared first with POLITICO. Content for the planned ads was not yet available.

"Over the next month, Club for Growth will educate Georgia voters about Doug Collins’ record on economic issues and demand that he change his ways," David McIntosh, the Club's president, said in a statement.
The advertising blitz comes after the Club publicly chastised Collins for having a 57 percent score on their legislative scorecard last year, though he has an 80 percent lifetime score with the Club.

Along with the Club, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and several top allies to Republican leadership, including a super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, rallied around Loeffler and panned Collins' run as a selfish move that was harmful to the party.

Collins pushed back against the NRSC response on Twitter and brushed off any concerns about creating an intraparty rift when he announced his bid in an interview on "Fox and Friends" Wednesday morning.

"I think we fought for the president, we fought for our state and we fought for this country," Collins said. "And we're going to continue to do that. I look forward to a good exchange of ideas and look forward to this election."

While Loeffler has significant support from Senate Republicans, Collins' campaign has some clear signs of strength. An internal poll conducted in December showed him leading Loeffler by 21 percentage points in the all-party race in November, holding a significant edge among Republican voters. He also had a positive image among all voters statewide — and an overwhelmingly positive image among Trump supporters, according to the poll.

Republicans spending millions to attack each other in Georgia can only help the Democrats in an increasingly purple state.   Mitch and the GOP establishment want Loeffler to remain, but Collins wants that Senate seat and he's willing to burn down anyone in his way to get it.

Bring the popcorn.  I predict things will get so ugly in the Peach State for Republicans that Dems might surprise everyone come November.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

US Attorney General Bill Barr continues to be the clean-up man for the Mueller indictments, and it looks like the fix is in for Michael Flynn now that Mueller's gone.

Attorney General William Barr on Thursday named Timothy Shea, one of his closest advisers, to be the next top prosecutor in the nation’s capital.

Shea will lead the largest U.S. attorney’s office in the country, which has been historically responsible for some of the most significant and politically sensitive cases the Justice Department brings in the U.S.

He is a senior counselor to the attorney general and was Barr’s right-hand man helping institute reforms at the federal Bureau of Prisons after Jeffrey Epstein’s death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.

As the U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, Shea would oversee some of the lingering cases from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, along with a number of politically charged investigations. The office is also generally responsible for handling potential prosecutions if Congress finds a witness in contempt.
“Tim brings to this role extensive knowledge and expertise in law enforcement matters as well as an unwavering dedication to public service, reflected in his long and distinguished career in state and federal government,” Barr said in a statement. “His reputation as a fair prosecutor, skillful litigator, and excellent manager is second-to-none, and his commitment to fighting violent crime and the drug epidemic will greatly benefit the city of Washington.”

Prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office had been investigating former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s wrath, and the prospect of charges seemed likely in the fall after his lawyers failed to persuade senior Justice Department officials that he didn’t intentionally lie to internal investigators. Little has been said about the case in recent months.

Shea is replacing Jessie Liu, who oversaw the case against Michael Flynn.  And wouldn't you know it, the same week a new US Attorney is named, the case against Flynn and his guilty plea suddenly turns into a slap on the wrist.

Just hours after former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn argued in a court filing that prosecutorial misconduct in his case had been so egregious that it warranted dismissing the case entirely, prosecutors backed away from the harsh language they’d used in months past and said probation would be a “reasonable” sentence for Flynn.
Still, they maintained, sentencing guidelines allowed for the former Trump official to serve up to 6 months in prison for lying to the FBI.

It was just the latest bizarre back-and-forth in the government’s years-long effort to pin Flynn for lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States just before the Trump administration began. Flynn’s turn against prosecutors has been fueled by his new defense team, hired last June and led by the prominent critic of Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, Sidney Powell.

In a lengthy set of filings Wedensday, Powell argued that prosecutors as well as Flynn’s old lawyers had hopelessly biased the case against him. The only answer, she said, was for Judge Emmett Sullivan to throw out the case entirely.

That followed another motion, earlier this month, to withdraw Flynn’s guilty plea. (Judge Sullivan, as it happens, has not been especially sympathetic to Flynn’s antagonistic and at times conspiratorial accusations against the government.)

In its sentencing memo Wednesday, prosecutors acknowledged Flynn’s motion to withdraw his plea — though they noted the several times in writing and in court that he had acknowledged his guilt — and said they would respond to it in a separate filing of their own.
“The task at hand is to impose an appropriate sentence for the defendant’s criminal conduct in lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador,” they said.

On that front, the sentencing memo was slightly different than the memo prosecutors filed earlier this month.

”In that filing, they pointed to other cases of defendants who had lied to the FBI and served prison sentences. No mention was made of a potential probation sentence. And though they mentioned Flynn’s extensive record of public service, that was followed by the caveat that Flynn’s national security past “should have made him particularly aware of the harm caused by providing false statements to the government.

Again just a few weeks ago, Flynn was facing serious prison time for his guilty plea.  Now he's facing probation if anything, and the very real possibility that the Barr Justice Department will drop the case entirely.

And this is going on while Trump's impeachment trial is happening.

If you think this rotten mess is bad now, wait until next week when a fully unleashed Trump starts taking open revenge and committing open acts of corruption in a nation that no longer has a guaranteed way to contain him.

A Supreme Balancing Act

There's the very reasonable chance that a vote in the Senate impeachment trial on Friday dealing with whether or not to call witnesses, which witnesses to call, and whether to move to dismiss the articles against Donald Trump outright could result in a 50-50 tie, with presiding Chief Justice Roberts as the tiebreaker.

Ahead of a tight vote on whether to hear new witnesses in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, the Senate is preparing for the possibility that this crucial roll call has an asterisk in the history books: It ends in a tie.

And it's a scenario that would suddenly put a spotlight on Chief Justice John Roberts. 

For weeks, Republicans and Democrats alike have been confident that Roberts would not break a tie vote during Trump’s impeachment trial, citing past precedent, the Constitution and their own gut feelings about how it would play in a polarized nation.

But ahead of Friday's widely anticipated showdown over whether to call new witnesses and with GOP leaders moving to lock down on-the-fence Republicans, the Senate is newly abuzz over the uncertainty of what happens if the chamber deadlocks and what Roberts might do in the event of a stalemate.

“That is a great unknown. There’s no way to know procedurally what he would do. Or if he’ll do” anything, said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.).

Some Democrats are beginning to opine that Roberts could save the Senate from itself and force consideration of witnesses if there's a tie. As Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) put it: “If he wants a fair, impartial trial and get the evidence out, I think there’s a fair shot he would vote for witnesses.”
It's a hypothetical that Democratic leaders have privately considered for months, as soon as it became clear the House was going to send impeachment articles over to the Senate, according to Democratic aides. They have sought guidance from the Senate parliamentarian's office on the issue, although so far, that hasn't been forthcoming as it hasn't formally arisen during the Trump trial.

Yet the smart money is still on Roberts staying out of it, or GOP leaders muscling through a 51-49 vote that avoids placing responsibility for the course of the trial on Roberts. Because if the vote is tied, no matter what the chief justice does, it will be hotly debated for years to come.

“It would go down as a historical anomaly and ultimately he would be remembered as declining to break a tie. It’s the safer course in the short term to avoid intervening,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) predicted. Breaking a tie “would be a pretty daring and brave thing to do. And I think history would judge him well. But in the short term there would be a lot of blowback.”

In the short term there would be volcanic rage from the right, rage that would certainly call for Trump to remove him from office, or court-packing, or something worse.  Certainly the GOP counter-stroke would involve a flood of witnesses, the Bidens, the whistleblower, Adam Schiff, who knows.

I don't think Roberts has the courage to weather this kind of hatred, hatred that he'll have to live with for decades.  My guess is that he'll decline the deadlock and that witnesses won't be called.

It would be nice if he was willing, but there's no evidence to the contrary that he plans to interfere.

StupidiNews!

• A new report finds the maternal death rate among black women three times higher than white and Hispanic women.
• The global death toll from the Wuhan coronavirus is expected to surpass the recorded number of SARS deaths from 20 years ago as the virus's spread continues.
• CalTech has won a $1.1 billion patent lawsuit against Apple and Broadcom over a 2016 case involving wi-fi technology in Apple iPhones.
• The EU Parliament has approved the UK's Brexit deal as PM Boris Johnson prepares for the country to officially leave the EU on Friday.
• Credit-card skimming machines at some 850 Wawa convenience store locations on the East Coast could have compromised over 30 million accounts over nine months last year.

Last Call For Buying The Black Vote

Trump's people are trying to buy the urban black vote with literal cash giveaways, because at this point nothing's illegal or immoral in service of Dear Leader.

Allies of Donald Trump have begun holding events in black communities where organizers lavish praise on the president as they hand out tens of thousands of dollars to lucky attendees.

The first giveaway took place last month in Cleveland, where recipients whose winning tickets were drawn from a bin landed cash gifts in increments of several hundred dollars, stuffed into envelopes. A second giveaway scheduled for this month in Virginia has been postponed, and more are said to be in the works.

The tour comes as Trump’s campaign has been investing its own money to make inroads with black voters and erode Democrats’ overwhelming advantage with them. But the cash giveaways are organized under the auspices of an outside charity, the Urban Revitalization Coalition, permitting donors to remain anonymous and make tax-deductible contributions.

The organizers say the events are run by the book and intended to promote economic development in inner cities. But the group behind the cash giveaways is registered as a 501(c)3 charitable organization. One leading legal expert on nonprofit law said the arrangement raises questions about the group’s tax-exempt status, because it does not appear to be vetting the recipients of its money for legitimate charitable need.

"Charities are required to spend their money on charitable and educational activities,” said Marcus Owens, a former director of the Exempt Organizations Division at the Internal Revenue Service who is now in private practice at the law firm Loeb & Loeb. “It's not immediately clear to me how simply giving money away to people at an event is a charitable act.”

Asked about the legality of the giveaways in a brief phone interview, the Urban Revitalization Coalition’s CEO, Darrell Scott, said that most gifts were between $300 and $500, and that the group mandates that anyone who receives over $600 fills out a W-9 form in order to ensure compliance with tax law. He did not respond to follow-up questions about how the giveaways were structured and whether they met the legal standard for a charitable act.

Scott declined to name the donors funding the effort. "I'd rather not,” he said. “They prefer to remain anonymous."

Scott, a Cleveland-based pastor, has been one of Trump’s closest and most prominent black supporters. He struck up a relationship with the real estate mogul in the years before Trump’s presidential run, and — along with Trump’s former lieutenant Michael Cohen — co-founded the National Diversity Coalition for Trump to promote that run.

Where do I even begin to unpack this?

That belief that black voters are wholly motivated by money?  The hypocrisy in making voting and registering to vote more difficult for black voters but still needing us?  The systemic racism that creates black poverty in the first place being used to contain us? Using black pastors to front this operation?  The belief that this is fair game because "Democrats have been doing this for years" and of course it's the only way to explain why Republicans haven't gotten the black vote?

It's all of this and more.

The screaming, ear-splitting, banshee wail of racism here is deafening, but in the Trump era everything is permitted.

Trump Trades Blows, Con't

We're going to be constantly reminded in 2020 just how much of Donald Trump's worldview is driven by his insatiable need for petty vengeance against slights both real and perceived, but if Trump wants to take full credit for and invite zero Democrats to his signing of NAFTA 2.0, that's actually a win for the Dems.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed his signature trade deal with Mexico and Canada into law, sealing a big bipartisan win for him during his heavily partisan impeachment trial. 

But the celebration on Wednesday was far from bipartisan, as Trump excluded Democrats from the ceremony despite their key role in securing the final version of the deal that passed with overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate.

Instead, Trump used the signing of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement as a chance to keep ownership of his deal in a White House ceremony with dozens of Republican lawmakers, local officials and business, industry and union leaders present.

“We have replaced a disastrous trade deal,” Trump said in the ceremony on the White House South Lawn. “This is something we really put our heart into.” 

Signing the USMCA into law is a rare legislative achievement for the president going into his reelection campaign. But Trump will not be able to say he fully delivered on his 2016 campaign promise to replace NAFTA until Canada ratifies the deal and all three countries meet many of their obligations — and that could take months. 

Still, Trump will take his USMCA victory lap to Michigan on Thursday, where he will host an event at an auto parts supplier to tout the benefits of the pact. 

Meanwhile, Democrats and many labor unions have also been largely supportive of the deal after they secured changes that make the USMCA one of the most progressive trade agreements ever negotiated by either party.

There really are big wins for labor unions as far as enforceable labor rules to keep jobs from going to Mexico and big pharma got screwed out of their bio-drug sweetheart deal, Nancy Pelosi and House Dems actually did secure some serious concessions.  But Trump wants to make sure the Dems get no credit for those, and given the obnoxious anti-free trade stance by the Democratic purity pony crew, it's probably best that nobody reminds them of USMCA anyway.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

Mitch McConnell figured the Bolton kerfuffle would be over now and the rest of the Senate GOP would fall in line with the Trump acquittal plan for Friday.  It hasn't, so he's put out the call to the Right Wing Noise Machine to bombard Senate GOP offices with angry, angry FOX News State TV viewers to go on the assault.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) indicated in a closed-door meeting with Senate Republicans that he did not yet have enough votes to defeat an effort, expected later this week, to call additional witnesses and evidence in President Trump’s impeachment trial.

Pressure has ramped up to include witnesses after reports that former national security adviser John Bolton says in a book manuscript that Trump directly tied the holdup of nearly $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine to investigations of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

Trump’s defense team argued Tuesday that Democrats are seeking to remove him from office over policy differences as they offered their third and final day of opening arguments in a Senate trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Meanwhile Lindsey Graham is working Democrats in the room to get them to drop it, warning that Bolton will never be allowed to speak and instead the trial will turn into weeks of Joe Biden bashing.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) predicted on Tuesday that if the Senate opens the door to calling new witnesses, Republicans will vote to subpoena President Trump's top targets.

“I'll make a prediction: There will be 51 Republican votes to call Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, the whistleblower and the DNC staffer at a minimum,” Graham told reporters.

His comments come as former national security adviser John Bolton’s claim in his forthcoming memoir that President Trump tied Ukraine aid to the country opening up investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

GOP leadership had hoped to end the trial with no witnesses, but Bolton's accusation, reported by The New York Times, has thrown the ability of the caucus to quickly end the trial into question.

Conservatives are warning that if four Republican senators side with Democrats to call Bolton, then Trump's legal team should get as many witnesses. Since Democrats would not support calling the Bidens or the whistleblower, Republicans would have to provide the 51 votes from their 53 members.

The Senate is expected to vote Friday on whether to call witnesses. If 51 senators support calling witnesses, that would open the door to both sides making motions for specific individuals. The Senate would then vote on those specific individuals.

THe unspoken threat here is that Bolton will be blocked or put in closed door testimony, while Biden and the whistleblower will be raked over the coals.  Sen. Hawley says he will force a vote on Joe Biden and Adam Schiff, too, which may very well pass.

Again, there's a method to Mitch's madness.  He doesn't want any testimony, but if there is, Democrats will pay dearly for it.

StupidiNews!

• A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Jamaica, rattling several Caribbean islands and was felt as far away as Miami.
• Palestinians are rejecting a Israeli/Trump regime "peace plan" that has Israel annex much of the current Palestinian territories in exchange for a much smaller parcel around East Jeruslaem as capital.
• The Justice Department is leveling multiple lawsuits against an accused illegal robocall scam ring that allegedly bilked elderly victims out of "massive financial losses"
• Peruvian opposition leader Keiki Fujimori has returned to face a money laundering trial just months after being freed by Peru's top court on grounds her constitutional rights were violated.
• General Motors is investing more than $2 billion in its Detroit-Hamtramck plant to build electric vehicles starting in 2021.

Last Call For The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins is a key figure in this week's impeachment trial fight, and she's up against a number of Democratic challengers, the strongest is the state's Democratic House Speaker, Sara Gideon, in November.  Gideon still has to win the primary later this spring, but Collins will still be a tough foe with a huge war chest in play. 

Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon’s campaign said Tuesday it raised $3.5 million in the last three months of 2019 in her race against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, though the challenger spent nearly that much over the period and trails the incumbent overall.

It brings Gideon to a total of $7.6 million raised since announcing her candidacy in June, and she has nearly $2.8 million on hand, her campaign said. That was only slightly more than it had after the third quarter of 2019, indicating near-equal spending and fundraising in late 2019.

Gideon, who is backed by Senate Democrats’ campaign arm and other national groups, is one of four Democrats running to unseat Collins. The Republican incumbent raised $8.5 million and had $7.1 million left at the end of 2019’s third quarter and is a top target of national Democrats. Collins has yet to release updated numbers in a race expected to be the most expensive in Maine history.

The House speaker has raised considerably more than other Democrats in the June primary race. Collins has yet to release fourth quarter numbers. Former Google executive Ross LaJeunesse, who jumped into the race in November, raised $600,000 for his bid, though more than half of that was his own money, Politico reported this month.

Lobbyist Betsy Sweet of Hallowell, a 2018 gubernatorial candidate backed by some progressive groups, and lawyer Bre Kidman of Saco haven’t released fundraising figures for the fourth quarter. Sweet raised $183,000 through the end of the third quarter. Kidman raised $14,000.

Green candidate Lisa Savage, a teacher and activist from Solon, raised just shy of $25,000 during the fourth quarter, according to a campaign finance report filed last week. Campaign finance reports for all candidates are due to the Federal Election Commission on Jan. 31.

It's good that Gideon is getting the money to fight.  Collins will certainly have access to tens of millions over the next ten months.  The Senate GOP is going to fight every inch along the way to keep Collins in her seat.  We have to get rid of Trump, but if we don't take the Senate back, Mitch and company will stop whoever wins the Democratic nomination cold.

You should help Sara Gideon out.

The Basic Math Of Trump's Base

I've lived in Kentucky now for 15 years, I grew up in western NC and lived there for 25 years, I've seen, met, worked with, went to school with (and have often been the only black face in a room of) people who gladly consider themselves hillbillies, rednecks, and countrified mountain good 'ol boys. 

My hometown is famous for NASCAR drivers, bootlegging moonshine, the actor who played Roscoe P. Coltrane on the Dukes of Hazzard and being far enough up in the Appalachians where people had the grace to not fight the Civil War there because it was a pain in the ass to get around.  The last time we had a Democrat in the House, Dr. Martin Luther King was still alive. Republican scold Patrick McHenry probably has that job for life.

The point of all this is Trump's base was Trump's base long before it was Trump's base, and CNN doing things like this guarantees it will remain Trump's base for years to come, as Washington Post writer Eugene Scott reports.

President Trump has long argued that CNN’s coverage of him is negative because the organization thinks little of him and his supporters. A recent segment on the cable network seems to be making that case for him.

During a panel discussion about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s tiff with a NPR reporter over her Ukraine reporting, GOP strategist Rick Wilson went from questioning Trump’s foreign affairs intelligence to describing his supporters as uninformed “hillbillies.”

Wilson, a conservative who has long been critical of Trump, referred to the president’s base as “the credulous boomer rube demo” — a bloc of Americans who believe “Donald Trump is the smart one and y’all elitists are dumb.”

In mocking accents, Wilson and CNN contributor Wajahat Ali began imitating how the president’s supporters must criticize journalists and Trump critics as elitists because of their knowledge about foreign affairs and other political matters.

“You elitists with your geography and your maps and your spelling,” Ali said.

“Your math and your reading,” Wilson added.

All the while, Lemon laughed loudly.

Since early in the 2016 election, Trump has been the choice of white working class voters — particularly those who live in rural America. Despite Trump being a New Yorker with an Ivy League pedigree, these Americans have said he understands them in ways other politicians and the elite media do not.

As negative headlines about this administration continue to pile up, Trump’s support with those voters who sent him to the Oval Office remain strong. One of the reasons they continue to stick by him — despite critics’ claims that Trump has failed to keep the promises he made to rural Americans — is that the president and many of these voters share what they perceive as a common enemy: elite media and specifically, CNN. (Disclosure: This reporter worked at CNN.)

Two observations:

One, Scott isn't wrong.  The Trump outrage machine feeds on stuff like this and turns it into votes for Trump and his policies, no matter how racist, hateful, islamophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynist, and economically crippling they are.  The targeting of the press as "enemies of the people" is easy when CNN does things like this.  This segment will be burning up the MAGA base all the way to November.

Two, this is why I don't trust Never Trump republicans.  They curiously end up creating problems for Democratic candidates and making Trump stronger, and Rick Wilson is one of the worst of the bunch.  Never forget that he was Poppy Bush's point man in Florida, a Dick Cheney lackey when the Nameless One was Secretary of Defense, and worked on Rudy Giuliani's campaign for Mayor and then Senate.  The guy is a GOP lifer and gosh, look at the mess he started.

Trump's base aren't morons.  They're smart enough to go to the polls and to vote and they do so willingly, which is more than I can say for some folks on the left who snipe from social media all day but in the end never seem to get around to helping people register or to cast ballots.  They're not all stupid, they're not all racist, they're not all Muslim-haters or Jew-haters, they're not all bigots or sexual assaulters.

They're all people okay with a person in the White House who is all of those things, though. One who has managed to reinvent himself from New York millionaire to salt-of-the-earth defender of the rural voter.  Like I said, it's willingness on everyone's part who is engaged in Trumpism to be there.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

The Bolton's Mustache book bombshell continues to explode through Trump's plans to have the trial wrapped up by Friday, but it looks like the Republicans are going to win anywayw by forcing Democrats to make Hunter Biden into the new Clinton email server of 2020.

Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.), an influential conservative in the Senate, has spoken with several colleagues in recent days about possibly summoning just two witnesses to President Trump’s impeachment trial, with one called by Republicans and one by Democrats, according to three Republican officials.

Toomey has confided to GOP senators that proposing a “one-for-one” deal with Senate Democrats may be necessary at some point, particularly with pressure mounting for witnesses to be called, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. He has argued that such an arrangement could force Democrats to accept a Republican witness against their wishes or else risk having Republicans move ahead to acquit Trump, the officials said.
Toomey has spoken about his idea with Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and others, the officials added.

Toomey’s office declined to comment Monday.

Separately, two Senate GOP aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be frank, said Romney is in touch with Toomey and generally supportive of a witness deal that he believes is fair to the GOP but has not yet signed on to any specific plan.

The proposal also came up in private conversations at Monday’s closed Senate GOP lunch, according to the officials and a Senate aide briefed on the meeting.

Toomey, who is not up for reelection until 2022, is close to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). He is not close with the president or top aides in the White House.

McConnell, however, is so far discouraging Toomey’s suggestion from becoming the party’s position. Instead, he told Senate Republicans during Monday’s lunch to wait on any witness deal proposal until after Trump’s legal team is done making its defense on the Senate floor, underscoring a position he has held for weeks, the officials said.

The plan is still "no witnesses, acquittal on Friday."  But we're playing for November now in a post-acquittal period, and the cost for Bolton to testify is putting Hunter Biden in play as a legitimate scandal. Village outlets can't and won't say anymore than Biden has nothing to do with Ukraine if he testified under oath at Trump's impeachment trial in front of millions, no matter what Joe Biden has to say.

It's a stupid arrangement and there's no way Democrats will agree to it, so Collins and Romney and Murkowski will shrug and vote no, because it will be Democrats who refused the witness deal, not the GOP.  McConnell never wanted it to get this far, but in a lot of ways it's even better for the GOP, enough so that it makes me wonder if Bolton is in on this.

When his book does come out, if there's anything really awful in it (especially if it involves Russia, China, or Iran) you can bet Democrats will be blamed for not taking the deal to sacrifice Hunter Biden when they had the chance.

Whatever Bolton's game is, he'll never testify.  He'll never be deposed.  It'll never happen. Because if it does, Trump is done.  He still may be finished, but it'll happen in November.  If Bolton testifies this week, all bets are off.  That's why it can't happen.  The most likely outcome remains that the vote to allow witnesses falls short.  Collins and Romney say yes, that's only 49.  The vote fails.

GOP Rep. Mark Meadows made this clear yesterday afternoon.

In an interview with "CBS Evening News" anchor Norah O'Donnell, Congressman Mark Meadows said there would be repercussions if Republicans break with President Donald Trump on impeachment. O'Donnell sat down with impeachment defense surrogates Representatives Meadows, Doug Collins, Elise Stefanik and Debbie Lesko.

"Do you think Republican senators face political repercussions if they break with the president?" O'Donnell asked.

"Yeah, I do. I mean listen, I don't wanna speak for my Senate colleagues. But there are always political repercussions for every vote you take. There is no vote that is higher profile than this," Meadows said Monday.
Collins said the question "needs to be flipped."

"Where is a courageous Democrat who will actually look at the facts and vote in favor of not impeaching this president?" Collins asked.

"My question is: Where is a Democrat who will actually look at the facts and not simply follow behind Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff and Chuck Schumer, or their presidential candidates who are sitting in the jury pool, and follow them?"

O'Donnell also asked about Republican senators who may vote to call witnesses, and whether they would face political consequences for doing so.

"I think this witness question... is a very important one," Stefanik said. "Oftentimes, we're asked over 50% of the American people want the-- us to call witness. That doesn't just mean John Bolton. That means the whistleblower. That means Hunter Biden. And it really opens up challenges for the Democrats."

Mitch McConnell saw this coming a mile away.  He's already planned for it. 

The game was always rigged.