Sunday Long Read: Pandemic, The Sequel

The Atlantic's Ed Yong takes us through the a preview of COVID-19 as the Biden years open, and the short version is that we still have several months of hell ahead of us, and a death toll in 2021 that I've already predicted will greatly surpass 2020's 330,000 dead, if not easily triple it.

The influenza pandemic that began in 1918 killed as many as 100 million people over two years. It was one of the deadliest disasters in history, and the one all subsequent pandemics are now compared with.

At the time, The Atlantic did not cover it. In the immediate aftermath, “it really disappeared from the public consciousness,” says Scott Knowles, a disaster historian at Drexel University. “It was swamped by World War I and then the Great Depression. All of that got crushed into one era.” An immense crisis can be lost amid the rush of history, and Knowles wonders if the fracturing of democratic norms or the economic woes that COVID-19 set off might not subsume the current pandemic. “I think we’re in this liminal moment of collectively deciding what we’re going to remember and what we’re going to forget,” says Martha Lincoln, a medical anthropologist at San Francisco State University.

The coronavirus pandemic ignited at the end of 2019 and blazed across 2020. Many countries repeatedly contained it. The United States did not. At least 19 million Americans have been infected. At least 326,000 have died. The first two surges, in the spring and summer, plateaued but never significantly subsided. The third and worst is still ongoing. In December, an average of 2,379 Americans have died every day of COVID-19—comparable to the 2,403 who died in Pearl Harbor and the 2,977 who died in the 9/11 attacks. The virus now has so much momentum that more infection and death are inevitable as the second full year of the pandemic begins. “There will be a whole lot of pain in the first quarter” of 2021, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told me.

But that pain could soon start to recede. Two vaccines have been developed and approved in less time than many experts predicted, and are more effective than they dared hope. Joe Biden, the incoming president, has promised to push for measures that health specialists have championed in vain for months. He has filled his administration and COVID-19 task force with seasoned scientists and medics. His chief of staff, Ron Klain, coordinated America’s response to the Ebola outbreak of 2014. His pick for CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, is a widely respected infectious-disease doctor and skilled communicator. The winter months will still be abyssally dark, but every day promises to bring a little more light.

On the Fourth of July, Ashish Jha wants to host a barbecue at his house in Newton, Massachusetts. By then, the state expects to have rolled out COVID-19 vaccines to anyone who wants one. The process will be bumpy, but Jha is hopeful. He thinks that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will still be spreading within the U.S., but at a simmer rather than this winter’s calamitous boil. He expects to keep all his guests outside, where the risk of transmission is substantially lower. If it starts raining, they could come indoors after putting on masks. “It won’t be normal, but it won’t be like Fourth of July 2020,” says Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. “I think that’s when it’ll start to feel like we’re no longer in a pandemic.”

Many of the 30 epidemiologists, physicians, immunologists, sociologists, and historians whom I interviewed for this piece are cautiously optimistic that the U.S. is headed for a better summer. But they emphasized that such a world, though plausible, is not inevitable. Its realization hinges on successfully executing the most complicated vaccination program in U.S. history, on persuading a frayed and fractured nation to continue using masks and avoiding indoor crowds, on countering the growing quagmire of misinformation, and on successfully monitoring and countering changes in the virus itself. “Think about next summer as a marker for when we might be able to breathe again,” said Loyce Pace, the executive director of a nonprofit called the Global Health Council and a member of Biden’s COVID-19 task force. “But there’s almost a year’s worth of work that needs to happen in those six months.”

The pandemic will end not with a declaration, but with a long, protracted exhalation. Even if everything goes according to plan, which is a significant if, the horrors of 2020 will leave lasting legacies. A pummeled health-care system will be reeling, short-staffed, and facing new surges of people with long-haul symptoms or mental-health problems. Social gaps that were widened will be further torn apart. Grief will turn into trauma. And a nation that has begun to return to normal will have to decide whether to remember that normal led to this. “We’re trying to get through this with a vaccine without truly exploring our soul,” said Mike Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.

 

The damage from the Trump regime is so great that it will take us months just to dig out of the hole they left us in, and we'll be replacing the space in that hole with hundreds of thousands of American dead.

HoliDaze: Orange Meltdown

The Senate GOP is moving on in a world where Mitch McConnell is in charge of the Republican Party, and not Donald Trump.

The Senate on Friday overrode President Donald Trump's veto of a $741 billion defense policy bill, delivering a rare bipartisan rebuke to the commander in chief in his administration's waning days.

Senators voted 81 to 13 to enact the annual National Defense Authorization Act, well above the two-thirds majority needed to overturn the presidential veto. The House voted to override Trump by a wide margin on Monday.

The override is the first of Trump's term, handing the outgoing president a stinging loss in his showdown with Congress. Lawmakers in both parties banded together to defy the White House despite Republicans' wariness of crossing Trump throughout his term — and with many even supporting his efforts to contest the outcome of the election he lost.

"Today’s vote sent a clear message that Congress will not allow President Trump to stand in the way of that support, and I’m relieved the critical bipartisan priorities we fought for will become law," Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), said in a statement after the vote.

Republicans could have torpedoed the bill if enough GOP senators had switched their votes to side with Trump. But no one changed their vote from when the bill was originally passed three weeks ago. Seven Republicans, five Democrats and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders opposed the measure after also voting against it last month.

Trump vetoed the defense measure, H.R. 6395 (116), because it didn’t include his demand to repeal legal protections for social media companies. His 11th hour demand to repeal the liability shield, known as Section 230, was largely sidestepped by lawmakers because it isn't a national security issue.

Trump also opposes several other major provisions in the bill, including a measure that would force the renaming of military bases that honor former Confederate leaders over a three-year period, authored by progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The White House also opposed provisions that would limit his push to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Europe.

Trump has also argued the bill is a gift to China, contradicting many Republican lawmakers who contend it is toughest defense legislation Congress has passed regarding Beijing in years. The bill, for instance, sets aside $2.2 billion for a new Pacific Deterrence Initiative to boost the U.S. military presence and deter China in the Indo-Pacific region.

Several big things there: 

First, the Senate GOP is hanging Trump out to dry in his final, pitiful days as a wannabe tyrant. He no longer commands the party...well, at least not 100% like he did even a few weeks ago. 

Second, as I said, the Senate GOP will mostly still be here in a Biden administration. We'll see if that means Mitch is the majority leader...or minority leader.

Third, the Trump loyalists in the House and Senate can still make things tough on those who voted to override on January 6th. It's going to be a day of ugly, ugly spectacle on Wednesday.

Finally, there's a specific reason Trump vetoed this bill, and it had nothing to do with any of the reasons he's stated.

An historic anti-corruption measure ending anonymous companies in the United States became law on Friday, capping a more than decade-long campaign by transparency advocates, after both Chambers of Congress voted to override the president’s veto of the annual defense bill. The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, which led the organizing effort, praised the enactment of the Corporate Transparency Act, which was included in the National Defense Authorization Act.

Ian Gary, executive director of the FACT Coalition, issued the following statement:

“After more than a decade-long campaign to end the formation of anonymous shell companies that are abused by the criminal and the corrupt, the United States has enacted historic reforms to protect Americans and our financial system from abuse. We applaud Senate and House lawmakers for passing this critical, bipartisan anti-corruption reform by overwhelming margins. We look forward to working with the incoming Biden Administration to ensure the strong and timely implementation of the new law.

“For years, experts routinely ranked anonymous shell companies — where the true, ‘beneficial’ owners are unknown — as the biggest weakness in our anti-money laundering safeguards. Virtually every national security expert, law enforcement official, and human rights advocate that looked at the issue called for an end to anonymous companies. It’s the single most important step we could take to better protect our financial system from abuse.

“For more than a decade, the FACT Coalition and our members have worked tirelessly to assemble a powerful alliance of ideologically-diverse constituencies to back an end to anonymous companies. Supporters of transparency eventually included hundreds of national security experts, police and prosecutors, banks and credit unions, CEOs, the real estate sector, large businesses, small business owners, faith groups, anti-human trafficking groups, human rights organizations, global development NGOs, anti-corruption advocates, labor unions, and conservative and liberal think tanks. The campaign was so successful that the State of Delaware and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — both of which had previously opposed reform — ultimately endorsed transparency.

Now, who do you know who would be massively upset by a new law targeting anonymous shell companies to go after international money-laundering operations in the US, and whose company is already under state investigation for possible tax fraud and financial crimes?

Trump basically has to pardon himself now or he's absolutely going to face the feds hungry to go after him with this new law. He may never be charged by the DoJ (and almost certainly won't be) but it'll expose him as the fraud andster he is to the world, and he can't have that.

Either way though, Trump knows he's in dire trouble and has only days remaining...

HoliDaze: Sedition Edition

House Republicans are apparently planning to make good on their efforts to disrupt the counting of electoral votes on Wednesday, and Senate Republican Josh Hawley of Missouri is going to make his GOP colleagues follow up on it, presenting a gigantic mess for Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence and America.

Two Republican members of the House of Representatives tell CNN that they expect at least 140 of their GOP colleagues in the House to vote against counting the electoral votes on January 6 when Congress is expected to certify President-elect Joe Biden's victory. 

President Donald Trump's Republican allies have virtually zero chance of changing the result, only to delay by a few hours the inevitable affirmation of Biden as the Electoral College winner and the next president. 

There have been no credible allegations of any issues with voting that would have impacted the election, as affirmed by dozens of judges, governors, election officials, the Electoral College, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the US Supreme Court. But Trump is determined to claim he didn't lose -- which he did, significantly -- and many GOP politicians either share his delusion or fear provoking his wrath -- even if that means voting to undermine democracy. 

Both a House member and senator are required to mount an objection when Congress counts the votes. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said Wednesday he will object, which will force lawmakers in both the House and Senate to vote on whether to accept the results of Biden's victory. Other senators -- including incoming ones -- could still join that effort, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has privately urged Republicans not to do. 

Trump has been pushing for Congress to try to overturn the election result as his campaign's attempts to overturn the election through the courts have been repeatedly rejected. 

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse spoke out against that strategy -- and the complicity of some of his GOP colleagues -- in a Facebook post Wednesday night, urging Republicans to "reject" the effort to object to the certification process.

"The president and his allies are playing with fire," he wrote. "They have been asking -- first the courts, then state legislatures, now the Congress -- to overturn the results of a presidential election. They have unsuccessfully called on judges and are now calling on federal officeholders to invalidate millions and millions of votes. If you make big claims, you had better have the evidence. But the president doesn't and neither do the institutional arsonist members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote." 

Let's not forget that these GOP terrorists are aiding and abetting Trump's attempts at sedition and treason, and should be roundly punished as such. The true goal of course is to make Biden's first days and weeks so impossible, with the very real threat of widespread terrorist violence, that for "the good of the nation" Biden asks New York to drop their investigation into Trump, or better yet, to cut Trump a deal that he can immediately blab to the press, guaranteeing a Democratic collapse in 2022 and opening the door to a triumphant Trump "return" in 2024.

It's pretty awful, and there's a very good chance that enough violence will happen that the press will screech at Biden to give in to Trump on everything.

But yeah, that's a topic for next week.

Zandar's 2021 Predictions

It's that time of year again, where I extrapolate the future and mostly get it wrong, only this year the stakes are a lot higher if I'm off.

1) Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on January 20th. I know, this is where I'm starting from, and at this point, this is still an assumption, because I honestly don't know how the next three weeks are going to play out, let alone the next year, but here we are. I gotta start somewhere though, and if I'm somehow wrong on this, well, yeah.

 

2) Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock will win the Georgia runoffs and Mitch McConnell will be relegated to Senate Minority Leader. Look, Kentucky is never getting rid of Mitch, but the other 99 senators maybe we can do something about, if albeit briefly.  Things are not going to get better until Mitch McConnell is no longer in charge of the Senate, so I have to hope that they win.

3) Even if Dems get the Senate back, the filibuster and the current size of SCOTUS will remain. No, I don't have any faith in Schumer to convince anyone on the Dem side that the filibuster needs to go, and Biden will back Schumer up on this. Considering the Dems will almost certainly lose the House in 2022 and probably the Senate again too, Schumer just can't afford it. He won't have the votes anyway.

4) The total US death toll from COVID-19 will surpass 1 million Americans by the end of the year. People aren't going to take this seriously. There will still be tens of millions of Americans who will refuse the vaccine,or masking, or social distancing. The vaccine will be available and I expect it will be ramped up for those who want it, but it's still going to be grim for the first half of the year. And yes, I know I predicting that twice as many people will die from COVID-19 in 2021 as 2020. That is horrific. I still make this forecast.

5) The Roberts Court will allow states to regulate abortion out of existence. I've been predicting this one for a couple of years running now, but there's a reason for it now with the court's 6-3 conservative bent. Come the end of the year, abortion will be not only illegal for clinicians to perform in several red states, but in more than a few states women seeking an abortion will be made into a felony. It's going to be bad, folks. The pressure on Biden will be tremendous, but the Senate won't budge.

6) Donald Trump will not be indicted.  I covered this earlier, but Donald Trump won't be charged and the New York state investigations will conclude without a grand jury indictment. They will have to, because of the very real danger of deadly terrorist violence erupting nationwide if he's arrested. We've already seen one terrorist bombing in Nashville. Imagine that, only worse, in downtown NYC, or downtown small-town America. I don't like it any more than you do, but it's very real. And if you're thinking any of the Trumps are going to jail, well, in America, we don't jail our rich felons, we rehabilitate them in the press. I want to hope again, but hope has been brutally smashed out of me by the last four years.

7) Hunter Biden will be indicted. Yeah, Joe Biden's son is going to face charges related to Ukraine and China, and Republicans will call for Joe Biden to resign. They're going to take advantage of both Bidens and try to destroy them, and by the time the 2022 elections roll around, well...

8)  No movie will break $100 million at the box office in 2021.  Hell, don't be surprised if most theater chains will be out of business by the end of the year. Movies, theater shows, concerts, eating out, we're all looking forward to those again, but the prevalence of COVID in 2021 will make things horrific for the first several months of the year, and the lack of vaccinations will only prolong the pain. The number one film in America this year was Bad Boys For Life, and that made $62 million.

9) The Dow Jones will be under 25,000 by the end of the year. This time, Republicans will have every incentive to destroy the economy and tip us fully into the Trump Depression. Unemployment will be 8% or more, and Biden will get the blame for better or for worse.

10) ZVTS will make it through 2021. You know what, if I could survive this year, everything else should be cream cheese frosting on carrot cake. And I love carrot cake. And as always, you readers will make the difference.

So we begin the journey tomorrow.  See you in 2021.

HoliDaze: Follow The Funny Money, Honey

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance is ratcheting up the NY state investigation into fraud at the Trump Organization, and he's getting ready for the day Trump ends up on his ass outside the White House.

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has retained forensic accounting specialists to aid its criminal investigation of President Trump and his business operations, as prosecutors ramp up their scrutiny of his company's real estate transactions, according to people familiar with the matter.

District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. opened the investigation in 2018 to examine alleged hush-money payments made to two women who, during Trump’s first presidential campaign, claimed to have had affairs with him years earlier. The probe has since expanded, and now includes the Trump Organization's activities more broadly, said the people familiar with the matter. Vance’s office has suggested in court filings that bank, tax and insurance fraud are areas of exploration.

Vance has contracted with FTI Consulting to look for anomalies among a variety of property deals, and to advise the district attorney on whether the president’s company manipulated the value of certain assets to obtain favorable interest rates and tax breaks, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains highly sensitive. The probe is believed to encompass transactions spanning several years.

Spokesmen for Vance and FTI Consulting declined to comment.

Representatives for the Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment. In the past, company officials have rejected the merits of Vance’s investigation, calling it politically motivated.

Headquartered in Washington, FTI provides a range of financial advisory services to clients worldwide in public and corporate sectors. “We provide the industry's most complete range of forensic, investigative, data analytic and litigation services,” according to a corporate brochure, which also noted FTI’s “extensive experience serving leading corporations, governments and law firms around the globe.”

The analysts hired by Vance probably have already reviewed various bank and mortgage records obtained from Trump’s company as part of the ongoing grand jury investigation, and they could be called on to testify about their findings should the district attorney eventually bring criminal charges, said the person familiar with the arrangement.

 

See, Trump going to prison is an imperative, but it'll never happen. His cult won't allow it. 

A significant number of Americans believe misinformation about the origins of the coronavirus and the recent presidential election, as well as conspiracy theories like QAnon, according to a new NPR/Ipsos poll.

Forty percent of respondents said they believe the coronavirus was made in a lab in China even though there is no evidence for this. Scientists say the virus was transmitted to humans from another species.

And one-third of Americans believe that voter fraud helped Joe Biden win the 2020 election, despite the fact that courts, election officials and the Justice Department have found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome.

The poll results add to mounting evidence that misinformation is gaining a foothold in American society and that conspiracy theories are going mainstream, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. This has raised concerns about how to get people to believe in a "baseline reality," said Chris Jackson, a pollster with Ipsos.

"Increasingly, people are willing to say and believe stuff that fits in with their view of how the world should be, even if it doesn't have any basis in reality or fact," Jackson said.

"What this poll really illustrates to me is how willing people are to believe things that are ludicrous because it fits in with a worldview that they want to believe."

 

Trying to send Trump to prison will result in massive, nationwide violence, and Democrats and the American people most likely won't have the stomach for it after the next dozen or so Nashville-style suicide bombings and/or Las Vegas-style shootings.  Biden will be hated and blamed for it, and rightfully so, but the most likely outcome is that Trump will never be charged and the New York state investigations will conclude without charges.

There's nothing to make me think justice exists in America, and being Black in America in 2020, I at least am over the illusion that it ever did.

Hope has been burned out of me. It's survival now, that's victory moving forward.

Zandar's 2020 Prediction Scorecard

Welp, it's that time of year again, where I get to try to console myself with enough half-credit points out of my ten predictions for the year that I can skate by with five or more and not feel like a complete imbecile. And then I'll do it again! 

1) Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump and becomes President.  Yeah, this is a safe guess and a pretty likely outcome, but I think it's what will happen.  Biden has been ahead in the primaries and leading in head-to-head matchups with Trump for all of 2019.  I have to believe that Biden will win, but whether or not Trump concedes in 2021 is a question for 2021. 

 

Got this one, thank Christ.

2) Trump will be acquitted in his Senate trial.  I know, I know, next I'll tell you water is wet and the sun is made of burny stuff that is hot.  But it'll happen, and it'll be a big reason why...

 

Easiest call I made all year.

3) The Democrats will reclaim the Senate in 2020.  Those votes to acquit are going to wreck vulnerable GOP senators like Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Martha McSally and Thom Tillis, and I think they're going to lose. A 50-50 tie with Biden winning means Biden's VP is the tiebreaker and the Dems will prevail...unless Joe Manchin switches parties or something. That's why I'm predicting Dems get 51 or 52 seats with Iowa's Joni Ernst losing, Pat Roberts's open seat in Kansas getting picked up, and Doug Jones holding on.

Hold on this one until next week.

 

4) Democrats keep the House.  Nancy Pelosi continues to outmaneuver the White House and I think high turnout in November will not only assure a Biden win, but a big House gain for Team Blue.

I'll take the win on this one,despite Dems losing a dozen seats.

5) The US Supreme Court will give states sweeping powers in rulings on abortion and discrimination.  I don't want to be right on this one, but I forsee a huge hole being blown in Roe and another in the Civil Rights Act as SCOTUS will come down on the side of letting states make their own rules on abortion clinic access and LGBTQ discrimination, and by January 1, 2021 it's entirely possible that there will be a dozen states with no abortion clinics, and there will be no protections for sexual orientation or gender identity at the federal level.

This has not happened.  Yet.

 

6) US Attorney General Bill Barr will announce indictments for James Comey and John Brennan. Trump has wanted these two heads for ages, and he's going to get them.  The court fights are going to be bad, but Trump rounding up FBI folks for personal revenge will be the last straw for a lot of voters.

Nope, and Barr actually resigned rather than doing this.

7) The Dow Jones will end up under 25,000 by December 31.  I don't think the recession will hit in 2020, but it'll definitely catch up to us next year. The global slowdown will be too much to overcome.

 

Another miss, the Dow did crash to 18K, but has climbed into positive territory for the year thanks to Mitch McConnell $6 trillion "COVID-19" giveaway.

8) Marvel movies will not rule the box office in 2020.  That's not to say parent company Disney won't have an incredible year again, with a pair of Pixar features (Onward, Soul), Harrison Ford starring in Call of the Wild based on the Jack London novel, and live action movies of Mulan and Jungle Cruise.  But of the three Marvel properties, New Mutants, Black Widow, and Eternals, I only see Black Widow breaking half a billion.

 

Only one was released, New Mutants, and it was a dud like everything this year, so yeah, Marvel definitely did not rule the box office in 2020.

9) Trump will finally get around to those pardons.  He'll have nothing to lose once, well, he loses.  Oh wait, he'll be headed for state cases against him and jail time, but in the meantime the pardons will be the least awful thing he does.

Boy did he ever turn pardons into a side business, full-on white-collar crime boss style.

10) And of course, ZVTS will make it through year 12.  It'll be thanks to all of you who have stuck with me since the 2008 primary race and through 4 presidential contests.

 

Yep. And this year was...bad.  But you're all still with me.

So, final score, 6-3 with one left to be determined. Not bad, considering the year we had.

My 2021 predictions will be up later today.

HoliDaze: He'll Always Be Terribly Popular

In a final reminder of how much of a garbage fire America is in 2020, Trump has finally edged out President Barack Obama as Gallup's most admired man.

President Trump has ended former President Obama's 12-year run as the most admired man in America, edging out his predecessor in the annual Gallup survey released Tuesday.

Eighteen percent of the survey's respondents named Trump as their most admired man, compared to 15 percent who named Obama and 6 percent who named President-elect Joe Biden. Three percent named National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, while 2 percent chose Pope Francis.

Rounding out the top 10 were Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James and the Dalai Lama, all of whom received 1 percent.

The sitting U.S. president has been named the pollster’s most-admired man in 60 out of 74 years, including all eight years of Obama’s presidency and every year of George W. Bush’s presidency except for 2008. Trump had finished second to Obama in 2017 and 2018.

The 2020 rankings are the 10th time Trump has ranked among the top 10. Before entering the political sphere, he made the list in 1988, 1989, 1990 and 2011. Biden made only his second appearance in the top 10 after making the list in 2018.

Among Republicans surveyed, 48 percent of respondents named Trump as their most admired man. No other public figure got more than 2 percent Republican support, according to Gallup. Among independents, both Obama and Trump received 11 percent support. Fauci was the choice of 5 percent of Democrats but just 1 percent of Republicans.

 

Imagine being such a hate-filled, racist, ignorant, white supremacist pus-sack boil on humanity's rectum that you believe Donald Fucking Trump is the most "admired" man in the world.

Now imagine being that way for the rest of your life.

That's describing tens of millions of our neighbors, co-workers, and acquaintances, folks.

All happily ready to burn America down in the name of their "God-Emperor".

 

They're willing to give their lives for his beliefs.

 

One Louisiana Republican Congressman-elect already has.

Louisiana Congressman-elect Luke Letlow died Tuesday at Ochsner LSU Health in Shreveport from complications of COVID-19.

Letlow, 41, was transferred from St. Francis Medical Center to the Ochsner LSU Health ICU on Dec. 23 and has been treated there since then.

Letlow is survived by his wife, Julia Barnhill Letlow, and two young children — Jeremiah, 3, and Jacqueline, 11 months.

"The family appreciates the numerous prayers and support over the past days but asks for privacy during this difficult and unexpected time," spokesman Andrew Bautsch said in a statement. "A statement from the family along with funeral arrangements will be announced at a later time."

 

Letlow made a point of campaigning without masks at events, he caught COVID-19, he ended up in the hospital and died from a heart attack brought on by the disease's assault on his body. He leaves two young kids behind.

 

And Republicans already consider him a martyr who died for Trump.

 

 They are a cult now.

 

They are not going anywhere.

HoliDaze: Retribution Execution, Con't

Donald Trump was apparently cajoled, pushed, and dragged kicking and screaming into signing the COVID-19 relief omnibus bill on Sunday. Axios's Mike Allen:

 

Getting a cranky, stubborn President Trump to belatedly sign the COVID relief bill, after unemployment benefits had already lapsed, was like being a hostage negotiator, or defusing a bomb.

Driving the news: The deal was closed on a Sunday afternoon phone call with Trump, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy. "This is good," Trump finally said, an official familiar with the call told me. "I should sign this."

How it happened: Over many days, Mnuchin and McCarthy — aided by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who golfed with Trump in West Palm Beach on Friday — indulged the president's rants, told him there was great stuff in the bill, and gave him "wins" he could announce, even though they didn't change the bill. 

Playing to his vanity, they invoked his legacy, and reminded him he didn't want to hurt people.They convinced the author of "The Art of the Deal" that he had shown himself to be a fighter, and that he had gotten all there was to get.

Trump's sweeteners, from his 8:15 p.m. statement: "[T]he House and Senate have agreed to focus strongly on the very substantial voter fraud which took place in the November 3 Presidential election." 

"The Senate will start the process for a vote that increases checks to $2,000, repeals Section 230, and starts an investigation into voter fraud. Big Tech must not get protections of Section 230! Voter Fraud must be fixed! Much more money is coming. I will never give up my fight for the American people!"

Reality check ... Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who worked hard to understand Trump, told me: "It may be too late. Too late for him, too late for the economy, too late for Covid, and too late for the Georgia senators."

 

 

The most delusional thing about the signing was Trump's usage of rescission statements in the budget bill, basically a 45-day line item hold on anything he doesn't want to spend money on. Congress is free to ignore it once the 45 days are up. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 gave presidents this power generally, Reagan, Bush Senior, and Clinton all used it to hold over funds from previous years that expired anyway, Trump himself used it in 2018 to go after 2017 CHIP funds.

Trump however also signaled that he wants a long-term policy fight over "election fraud", Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and line-item veto power (which was struck down by SCOTUS 6-3 as unconstitutional in 1998.) 

 

Here's the thing though. Trump is leaving office in three weeks, so all of this seems like cardboard castles being built to calm the tantrum baby down for a while. He's acting like somebody who will be continuing these fights into 2021 however.

So what did Republicans promise him for signing this, and will they follow through?

HoliDaze: The Georgia Gambit, Con't

New filings by both Georgia Democratic candidates for Senate reveal that they are well-positioned for the final stretch of the race, out-raising both Republicans by tens of millions of dollars.

The Rev. Raphael G. Warnock and Jon Ossoff, the Democratic challengers in the Senate runoffs in Georgia, have each raised more than $100 million since October — enormous sums that surpassed their Republican opponents by a significant margin and underscored Democrats’ confidence after recent gains the party has made in the state and their hopes that they might capture the Senate.

The contests have drawn a surge of attention and investment from outside of Georgia, given the stakes, and the campaigning has only intensified in the final weeks before the runoff, which is scheduled for Jan. 5.

Senator David Perdue, one of the Republican incumbents, raised $68 million in the period between Oct. 15 and Dec. 16, according to reports to the Federal Election Commission made public on Thursday. Senator Kelly Loeffler, the other Republican, raised close to $64 million during that period.

Mr. Ossoff, who is running against Mr. Perdue, became the best-funded Senate candidate in history after pulling in $106.7 million, according to the filings, and Mr. Warnock, who is challenging Ms. Loeffler, has raised $103.3 million.

The Democrats’ haul was powered in large part by a flurry of smaller donations collected from across the country, filings show, with nearly half of the funds coming from people who donated less than $200.

For Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler, the smaller donations accounted for less than 30 percent of what they raised.

 

Having said this, the hard lessons of Jaime Harrison, Sara Gideon, and Amy McGrath stand: Democrats out-raised their Republican incumbent opponents and were destroyed anyway. They lost by double digits in all three cases,with tens of millions of campaign money left on the table.

 

Still, Ossoff and Warnock say they are actually spending the money, and will need more to counter GOP superPacs airdropping tens of millions into the state in the final week.

Eight days out from Election Day in Georgia's crucial Senate runoff races, Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are "sounding the alarm" about their ability to keep pace with GOP spending, calling for a "significant increase" in grassroots donations to prevent running out of money.

"To win this election in 8 days, we need to continue our historic efforts to turn out every single voter — but we won't be able to do that if our fundraising revenue continues to fall," Warnock campaign manager Jerid Kurtz and Ossoff campaign manager Ellen Foster wrote in a memo obtained by NBC News.

According to financial disclosure forms, Warnock and Ossoff both raised more than $100 million over the past two months, outraising their Republican opponents, Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, by a significant margin. But GOP outside groups are outspending Democratic groups.

"That means our Republican counterparts don't have to spend as much of their precious resources on TV and can invest in the area that is most important at this stage: direct voter contact," the memo states.

I'd say that the polls are looking good, but at this point I no longer believe in state polls.

They are worthless.

If you live in Georgia, vote.

HoliDaze Sunday Long Read: You Can Lead A City To Water

The water in Flint, Michigan has been clean now for almost two years after the state of Michigan spent $1 billion and several years to find a clean water source, replacing pipes to homes, and compensating residents.  And nobody in town will drink the water, because local and state government have lied to the people of Flint for so long that they simply refuse to trust that the water is clean now. After almost a half-dozen years of hell, there's zero reason why they should, either. The lessons of Flint absolutely apply to the COVID-19 vaccine as well.

In a city synonymous for half a decade with disaster, something remarkable happened in February 2019. A team of researchers reported that Flint’s homes—even the ones at the highest risk for undrinkable, lead-poisoned tap water—finally had clean water running through their pipes.

After years of painstaking cleanup and rebuilding, the study’s results were a sparkling capstone. Earlier tests already hinted at good news, and this one confirmed it: In the vast majority of such homes, lead levels were 5 parts per billion or better—far below even the strictest regulations in the country. Local news outlet MLive trumpeted the news, and Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality tacked it to their ongoing list of promising signs that indicated the city’s potable present and future.

But a few weeks later, another, equally remarkable thing happened. As part of a United Nations-sponsored “World Water Day” celebration, the City of Flint parked 12 semitrailers stacked with pallets of bottled water on the city’s street corners, offering them to any city resident who could show an ID. People flocked to the pickup locations. They lined up their cars and popped their trunks to collect cases of water to use in their homes—water in bottles, from somewhere else, that they actually trusted.

The wariness wasn’t out of ignorance. Equally wary was Jim Ananich, a lifelong Flint resident and outgoing leader of the Democratic minority in the Michigan State Senate. Ananich wasn’t in line that day, but he understands why people were.

“I can’t tell somebody they should trust [claims that the water is safe], because I don’t trust them—and I have more information than most people,” said Ananich. “Science and logic would tell me that it should be OK, but people have lied to me.”

For Americans who stopped following the Flint water crisis after its first few gritty chapters, it might come as a surprise how far the city has come: Today, after nearly $400 million in state and federal spending, Flint has secured a clean water source, distributed filters to all residents who want them, and laid modern, safe copper pipes to nearly every home in the city that needed them. Its water is as good as any city’s in Michigan. And to compensate its just under 95,000 people for the damage they’ve suffered—economically, medically and psychologically—the city and state reached a settlement in August that will pay nearly $650 million to Flint residents.

From an outside perspective, it sounds like a happy ending. For people who live in Flint, the story looks very different. After six years of lies, deliberate or not, a revolving door in a disempowered City Hall, and the dysfunction wrought by a high-profile, high-stakes recovery process, they find themselves still unable to trust either their water or the people telling them to drink it.

“The anger, the lack of trust, it’s all justified,” Ananich says.

The breakdown in trust is rooted not only in the water crisis itself, but its domino effect on state and local politics over the following years: a halting pipe-replacement program marked by accusations of graft; a criminal investigation into those responsible for the crisis that mysteriously “rebooted” and dropped charges against state officials; a city government still decimated by post-Great Recession, state-imposed austerity measures; a basic inability to believe what should be neutral facts.

Providing water and appropriating settlement funds are simple compared with the task the city now faces: convincing its residents not only that they have a future, but that they can trust their government to provide for their most basic of needs.

“We just want to live normally, and actually be able to drink the water that comes out of our tap safely, with no concerns,” said Melissa Mays, a vocal Flint water activist. “Like normal people.”

 

The issue is much larger than just Flint, too. In the age of Trump, why should any American trust any local, state, or federal government agency? Not only do we have an entire political party dedicated to breaking government and making it work only for the rich and powerful, the American people keep deliberately voting for this party in the vain hope that they will be included in the lucky few that government is actually allowed to function for, as well as to deliberately punish the people who voted against them.

 

Keep in mind too how Flint was the prime example of environmental racism in America, a symbol of how government is always, always seen as hostile to Black American because it is almost always hostile to Black America.

Government is a weapon now, and even with the heartfelt apologies of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, and the incoming Biden administration, it's going to take a long time before anyone trusts government in America again, for even basic competence.

HoliDaze: Retribution Execution, Shutdown Countdown Edition

Donald Trump has no intention of signing the COVID-19 relief package, or the omnibus spending bill, and if he runs out the clock on signing either, the current Congress expires on January 3rd, meaning we all get to go through this again with a new Congress next year.

Millions of Americans saw their jobless benefits expire on Saturday after U.S. President Donald Trump refused to sign into law a $2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package, protesting that it did not do enough to help everyday people.

Trump stunned Republicans and Democrats alike when he said this week he was unhappy with the massive bill, which provides $892 billion in badly needed coronavirus relief, including extending special unemployment benefits expiring on Dec. 26, and $1.4 trillion for normal government spending.

Without Trump’s signature, about 14 million people could lose those extra benefits, according to Labor Department data. A partial government shutdown will begin on Tuesday unless Congress can agree a stop-gap government funding bill before then.

After months of wrangling, Republicans and Democrats agreed to the package last weekend, with the support of the White House. Trump, who hands over power to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20, did not object to terms of the deal before Congress voted it through on Monday night.

But since then he has complained that the bill gives too much money to special interests, cultural projects and foreign aid, while its one-time $600 stimulus checks to millions of struggling Americans were too small. He has demanded that be raised to $2,000.

“Why would politicians not want to give people $2,000, rather than only $600?...Give our people the money!” the billionaire president tweeted on Christmas Day, much of which he spent golfing at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Many economists agree the bill’s aid is too low but say the immediate support is still welcome and necessary.

A source familiar with the situation said Trump’s objection to the bill caught many White House officials by surprise. While the outgoing president’s strategy for the bill remains unclear, he has not vetoed it and could still sign it in coming days.

Three observations: 

He could sign it, but he's not going to.  I don't think it matters to him anymore if the government shuts down, if people lose unemployment benefits, if eviction moratoriums expire, or if people get zero COVID-19 relief. He's going to make everyone miserable until he gets his way. Even if a new package was passed next week, he would simply move the goalposts again.

No, he wants a deal. At the minimum, he wants a deal that makes him and his family immune to prosecution or even investigation. He wants the NY state cases dropped. He wants Biden to apologize. Hell, he might want Biden to concede and give him that second term. I don't know anymore. Trump has taken hundreds of millions of hostages and he'll sacrifice as many as he has to in order to beat the system and be the best "dealmaker" in American history, the Legend Who Outsmarted The Entire United States. He wants to go down in history as the all-time greatest.

I don't know what Pence or McConnell are going to do. Both of them are cowards and won't dare tempt Trump's wrath. Maybe Biden will have Trump dragged out by the Secret Service. But that's still weeks away, and Trump can cause catastrophic and lasting damage right now. The GOP is terrified of him, and if they don't go along with his delusion, he will have his base crucify them. Pence could step in if he wanted to, but he won't.

 

It's pretty clear as of this morning that Trump believes he has the upper hand.

 

If a Democrat Presidential Candidate had an Election Rigged & Stolen, with proof of such acts at a level never seen before, the Democrat Senators would consider it an act of war, and fight to the death. Mitch & the Republicans do NOTHING, just want to let it pass. NO FIGHT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2020

So I don't know what's going to happen over the next three or four weeks. I really hope I'm writing about the opening days of the Biden administration and how we all started to come out from under the crushing weight of Trump's deliberate abuse when January 23rd rolls around.

My biggest fear is that the nightmare will have only just started.

HoliDaze: Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Animals

Merry Christmas!

 

Also somebody tried to blow up the tallest building in Nashville this morning with an RV.

Police say an explosion in downtown Nashville early Christmas morning that shattered storefronts and left at least three people hospitalized with noncritical injuries “appears to have been an intentional act.”

Authorities were called to the area around 6 a.m. local time to respond to a report of a suspicious vehicle outside the AT&T office building, the tallest skyscraper in the state, Metro Nashville Police Department spokesperson Don Aaron said in a morning news conference

After checking out the vehicle, the officer who responded “had reason to call our hazardous devices unit,” Aaron said.

The blast went off around 6:30 a.m. local time, according to police, smashing windows, signs and garage doors along a block in the city’s Arts District and sending a plume of bright orange flames into the sky.

 

So yeah, we seem to have a little domestic terrorism problem this Christmas, and oh yeah, the guy in the White House has been encouraging violence in his name for years now.  Nobody was killed and all the blast did was mess up the street and take out several signs, but it could have been much worse if the people who set the bomb had any clue.

 

But if there's any hopeful sign this Christmas that America is headed for a better place, it's the fact that fully half of the country thinks Trump is an absolute failure and are glad to be rid of him.

President Donald Trump leaves the White House next month with the country more sharply divided than when he moved in and amid caustic assessments of his record in office, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll finds.

Fifty percent of Americans now predict history will judge him as a "failed" president.

The survey, taken in the waning weeks of his administration, shows the risks of actions he is contemplating on his way out the door. Americans overwhelmingly say issuing a preemptive pardon for himself would be an abuse of presidential power, and an even bigger majority, including most Republicans, say he should attend President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration to demonstrate the peaceful transfer of power.

Trump hasn't announced whether he will attend the inauguration Jan. 20, and White House officials say he has been weighing pardons for himself and family members. On Tuesday, he issued 20 politically charged pardons and commutations, with more expected to follow. Much of his energy since the Nov. 3 election has been spent seeking ways to overturn the results, making allegations of widespread fraud.

"The last four years have been lacking in compassion and empathy, lacking in anything other than advancing the personal interests of President Trump and his friends and allies and family," said Babette Salus, 60, a retired attorney and Biden voter from Springfield, Illinois, who was among those surveyed. "There have probably been worse presidents, (but) I'm not sure there has been a worse one in my lifetime."

The poll of 1,000 registered voters Dec. 16-20 has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Asked how history would judge Trump's presidency, 16% predict he will be seen as a great president, 13% as a good president, 16% as a fair president, and 50% as a failed president. Five percent are undecided.

 

 And yes, Barack Obama fared far better four years ago.

Trump's ratings are more sharply negative than the ones Barack Obama, himself a controversial president, received when he left office four years ago. Then, a USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll found that half of Americans predicted history would view Obama in a positive light, with 18% calling him a great president and 32% a good one. Twenty-three percent called him a failed president.

 

So Merry Christmas, Donald Trump.

You'll have a few presents left to open on January 20. Probably from process servers.

 

HoliDaze: Pardon The Traitormas Holiday Special

Twas the night before Traitormas,

and in the White House,

sedition was stirring,

led by an orange louse.

Alabama GOP Rep. Mo Brooks and fellow House conservatives met privately on Monday with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence as the lawmakers prepared to mount a long-shot bid in January to overturn the Electoral College results that made Joe Biden the official winner of the election. 

The discussion focused on Trump's baseless claims and conspiracies that the election was stolen from him, participants said, and lawmakers emerged confident that there were would be a contingent of House and Senate Republicans who would join the effort and prompt a marathon debate on the floor on January 6 that would spill into January 7. 

Pence's involvement in the meeting is significant because he will preside over the joint session of Congress that would count the electoral votes that day. Brooks said that Pence attended "different parts" of the meeting. 

"I believe we have multiple senators and the question is not if but how many," Brooks said, something that would defy the wishes of Senate Republican leaders who are eager to move on and urging senators not to participate since doing so could force them to cast a politically toxic vote against Trump.

Brooks told CNN on Monday night that they would seek to challenge the election in at least six battleground states, saying he needs to coordinate "as many as 72" five-minute speeches that GOP lawmakers would make that day. "That's a significant task," he said. 

The effort is doomed to fail but would create a spectacle that Senate GOP leaders want to avoid. And if a House member and a senator object to six states' results, it would lead to at least 12 hours of debate, in addition to the time for casting votes on each of the motions, potentially prolonging the fight until the next day.

Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, told CNN the House conservative effort is futile and urged Senate Republicans not to join the effort.
"I think the thing they got to remember is, it's not going anywhere. I mean in the Senate, it would go down like a shot dog. I just don't think it makes a lot of sense to put everybody through this when you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be," he said. 

The White House meeting, Brooks said, was to discuss "how bad the voter fraud and election theft" was in November, even though such claims have been rejected by election officials and courts across the country. 

Brooks said the meeting was attended by a "double digit" number of lawmakers, but he wouldn't say if senators were part of the meeting. Brooks said the group had a separate meeting with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. And the Alabama congressman also said he saw at the White House Sidney Powell, the attorney whose conspiracies about the election have prompted Trump's interest. But, he said, they didn't meet with her. 

Other GOP lawmakers have also confirmed their attendance at the meeting, including Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, who told CNN: "We talked about a lot of things." 

Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, a staunch Trump defender, said this when asked if Trump urged him to object to the election results at the meeting: "He didn't urge anything, he didn't need to, I've been planning on objecting all along." 

Rep. Jody Hice, a Georgia Republican who attended the meeting, tweeted: "I will lead an objection to Georgia's electors on Jan 6." 

Sources told CNN that other members were there, including Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a prominent ally of the President who has been urging him to continue the battle. 

While the House conservatives have virtually no chance at succeeding, it would put many Republicans in an awkward spot. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his top lieutenants have urged senators not to join House conservatives because they would then be forced to cast a vote that would make them choose between Trump and the will of the voters. 

But several senators have not ruled out joining the effort, including Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rand Paul of Kentucky. And Trump has heaped praise on Alabama's incoming senator, Tommy Tuberville, for signaling he'd object to the results. 

Another incoming senator, Kansas Rep. Roger Marshall, wouldn't say if he would join House conservatives' effort to contest a state's election results. Marshall was a signatory on the House GOP's amicus brief backing the Texas suit seeking to invalidate votes across several battleground states that the Supreme Court rejected earlier this month.

To recap, multiple sitting Republican members of Congress are openly plotting sedition to overturn a legitimate, fully certified presidential election and to steal America's executive branch in a coup. They believe that enough flimflamery, chicanery, bamboozlement and plain ol' ballsing it out will give Trump a second term, that Joe Biden will give up or something and walk away, or that they can somehow force a Supreme Court decision in Trump's favor.

Trump has already tweeted that he wants his supporters in DC on January 6th and to be "wild" and I guess in Trump's delusional fantasies he expects House Republicans and Senate Republicans to be forced to go along with with the coup attempt when his "legions" of armed followers show up and surround Capitol Hill, and that Mike Pence will simply count the illegal Republican electors instead, or throw out the actual electors from the "disputed" states, and Trump will be president again, and we'll all just accept it or else. 

The fact remains though at some point, Mike Pence and Republicans in Congress will have to either make the decision to count the actual electors and confirm Joe Biden will be sworn in as President at noon on January 20, or to go along with an illegal seditious, traitorous coup. If he does, his political career ends, and he may take dozens of Republicans down with him, and we'll still have two weeks of Trump left to do whatever last-minute awfulness he wants, and a country with 74 potentially violent Trump voters, the vast majority who will not accept this outcome and will be baying for blood.

 

And remember, Trump takes care of his own.

In an audacious pre-Christmas round of pardons, President Trump granted clemency on Tuesday to two people who pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s Russia inquiry, four Blackwater guards convicted in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians and three corrupt former Republican members of Congress.

It was a remarkable assertion of pardon power by a president who continues to dispute his loss in the election and might well be followed by other pardons in the weeks before he leaves office on Jan. 20.

Mr. Trump nullified more of the legal consequences of an investigation into his 2016 campaign that he long labeled a hoax. He granted clemency to contractors whose actions in Iraq set off an international uproar and helped turn public opinion further against the war there. And he pardoned three members of his party who had become high-profile examples of public corruption.

The 15 pardons and five commutations were made public by the White House in a statement on Tuesday evening. They appeared in many cases to have bypassed the traditional Justice Department review process — more than half of the cases did not meet the department’s standards for consideration — and reflected Mr. Trump’s long-held grudges about the Russia investigation, his instinct to side with members of the military accused of wrongdoing and his willingness to reward political allies.

Hundreds if not thousands of clemency seekers have been looking for avenues of influence to Mr. Trump as he weighs pardons before leaving office. The statement highlighted a number of prominent Republicans and Trump allies who had weighed in on behalf of those granted clemency. Among them were Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and lobbyist who helped defend Mr. Trump during his impeachment, and Pete Hegseth, a Fox News commentator who has pushed for previous pardons of service members.

 

And he did it again on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday evening announced 26 new pardons, including for longtime ally Roger Stone, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner's father, Charles. 

The pardons extend Trump's streak of wielding his clemency powers for criminals who are loyalists, well-connected or adjacent to his family. While all presidents issue controversial pardons at the end of their terms, Trump appears to be moving at a faster pace than his predecessors, demonstrating little inhibition at rewarding his friends and allies using one of the most unrestricted powers of his office. 

The pardons of Manafort and Stone reward two of the most high-profile and widely condemned former advisers of the President, both of whom were indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, went to trial and were convicted by juries of multiple crimes.
Manafort, who is serving home confinement, admitted his crimes and initially agreed to cooperate with Mueller then lied to prosecutors, while Stone never cooperated after lying to Congress to protect the President. Manafort spent close to two years in prison for bank and tax fraud, illegal foreign lobbying and witness tampering conspiracies before being released because of the Covid-19 pandemic, while Stone's sentence for obstruction of Congress and threatening a witness was commuted by Trump earlier this year days before he was set to surrender. 

Charles Kushner, meanwhile, had been prosecuted by then-US Attorney for New Jersey Chris Christie in the early 2000s for tax evasion, witness tampering and illegal campaign contributions. 

He eventually pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion, one count of retaliating against a federal witness -- his brother-in-law -- and another count of lying to the Federal Election Commission. 

Christie in early 2019 went on to say that Charles Kushner committed "one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes" he had prosecuted, referring to an elaborate revenge plot that the older Kushner hatched in 2003 in order to target his brother-in-law, William Schulder, a former employee turned witness for federal prosecutors in their case against Kushner.
As a part of the plot, Kushner hired a prostitute to lure Schulder into having sex in a Bridgewater, New Jersey, motel room as a hidden camera rolled. 

A tape of the encounter was then sent to Kushner's sister and Schulder's wife, Esther. Ultimately, the intimidation stunt failed. The Schulders brought the video to prosecutors, who tracked down the woman and threatened her with arrest. She promptly turned on Kushner. 

Also included in Trump's pardon list Wednesday evening is former California GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter's wife, Margaret, just one day after Trump granted Duncan Hunter a full pardon. Margaret Hunter had pleaded guilty last year to conspiring "knowingly and willingly" to convert campaign funds for personal use. 

Beyond the high-profile pardons, Trump also pardoned more than 20 other individuals, including those who had pleaded guilty to various cyber crimes, firearm possession and mail fraud. He also commuted the sentences of three others.

 

Transactional Trump now figures the military and the GOP owe him, on top of all his aides and all the Mueller people who covered up for him, so when he tells them that he's taking over, he expects their full support. This includes Pence.

This is actually the best-case scenario.

But if he does side with Trump here, and he does choose to end our democracy and usher in a catastrophic new chapter in America's story, then I don't honestly know what will happen.

I don't know how this ends, folks.

I don't know how this ends.

HoliDaze: Russian To Judgment, Feliz Novichok Edition

The enterprising folks over at Bellingcat have gotten their hands on a recording of a nearly 50-minute phone call between Russian dissident Alexey Navalny and the FSB, where Navalny pretends to be a Politburo aide asking about how the FSB poisoned Navalny in August, and the FSB just tells him on an open line exactly how they did it.

The phone call took place on the morning of 14 December 2020; several hours before Bellingcat and its partners would publish their investigation into the Navalny poisoning. Legal and journalistic standards obliged the co-publishing partners to confront the main subjects of the investigation and offer them the right of reply.

Prior to offering these rights-of-reply, Alexey Navalny requested the opportunity to confront, by telephone, members of the FSB squad implicated in his poisoning. Bellingcat agreed and arranged for its representatives to be present during the calls, for the purpose of obtaining any additional information that might be exchanged.

The calls were made beginning at 4:30 am CET (6:30 am Moscow time) from a location in Germany, where Navalny has been recuperating since his poisoning. In order to increase the chance of his calls being answered by the FSB operatives, Navalny used an IP telephony application which permits the custom-setting of a caller ID. In this case, the number that was selected for ID spoofing was that of an FSB landline which, call records showed, had been in regular communication with several of the squad members.

In the initial calls, which were made to the key members of the FSB squad and chemical weapons scientists who had been in contact with them during the operation, Navalny introduced himself and asked why the respective person had agreed to be involved in a plot to kill him. The called parties did not reply and hung up, with the exception of one of the contacted chemical-weapons scientists: Oleg Demidov — who said he had Covid-19 and couldn’t talk.

In addition to calling most of the FSB operatives on his own behalf (and failing to get a response), Navalny decided to call two members of the FSB squad, Mikhail Shvets and Konstantin Kudryavtsev, by impersonating a senior security official. To both of these officers, Navalny introduced himself as a fictional character: Maxim Ustinov, an “aide to [Chairman of Russia’s Security Council] Nikolai Patrushev”. The premise of the call was that Navalny — playing the role of “Maxim Ustinov” — would ask the officers for an oral report on the reasons for the failure of the Navalny poisoning operation.

The first call — to Mikhail Shvets, a member of the squad who had tailed Navalny during his July 2020 trip to Kaliningrad — was unsuccessful. Shvets listened to Navalny’s introduction as “Maxim Ustinov” and replied “I know exactly who you are”, before hanging up.

The second and last call was to Konstantin Kudryavtsev — a member of the FSB team who had graduated from the Military Biological-Chemical Academy and then worked in the 42nd (biological warfare defense) Institute of the Ministry of Defense, before joining the FSB. As we reported, Kudryavtsev traveled to Omsk twice in the aftermath of the poisoning: once on 25 August and a second time on 2 October 2020. His phone records had also shown that just before and during the suspected time-range of the poisoning, he had been in regular communication with Col. Stanislav Makshakov, the direct commander of the FSB squad and deputy director of FSB’s Criminalistics Institute.

This call was successful. Kudryavtsev initially thought he was receiving a call from Artyom Troyanov (his first line upon answering the phone was “Artyom, greetings…”), an FSB officer who — in Kudryavtsev’s own words — uses that landline number. “Maxim”, the non-existent aide to Nikolay Patrushev, told him that his call was routed via the FSB phone exchange, which might explain why it appears as someone else’s number, and Kudryavtsev appeared to believe this.

“Maxim” told Kudryavtsev that his boss had requested an urgent report from all members of the FSB team involved with the Navalny operation due the enormous problems this operation has led to. (Kudryavtsev implied that he understood what these problems were, saying “I also watch TV and read the Internet”). Kudryavtsev was initially hesitant to talk on an open line, and said he was not informed about all aspects of the operation due to compartmentalizing of information on a need-to-know basis. From his own subsequent account, it appears he was primarily involved with the evidence clean-up following the poisoning attempt and not the poisoning itself. However, “Maxim” was able to convince Kudryavtsev that his presumed boss needs every team member’s personal assessment of the operation, and furthermore, that the call had been authorized by Gen. Vladimir Bogdanov, director of FSB’s Special Technology Department. The latter piece of information appeared to persuade Kudryavtsev, and he agreed to answer detailed questions from Alexey Navalny, acting as the fictitious “Maxim”. This phone call was made before any publication on the FSB squad and their link to the Navalny poisoning operation, and without any of the operatives being publicly named. Thus Kudryavtsev’s decision to open up and share top-secret details seemed to be swayed by the detailed, non-public knowledge “Maxim” appeared to have about the composition of the FSB team that was involved in the operation.

The call lasted for 49 minutes. Navalny did not break character until the end.

 

If I'm the FSB, I offer Navalny a job. You know, for a number of reasons.

 

This is also a pretty good read, so give it a spin.

HoliDaze: The Georgia Gambit

Republicans bet big on the ground game to get out the vote and won big on state legislature races, and nearly took back the House, but lost two key Senate races in Arizona and Colorado and were forced into the Georgia Senate runoffs (not to mention Biden's substantial win in the presidential contest.)  The GOP won smaller "all politics are local" races, but the Dems won the nationalized big ticket battles with a superior national ad campaign, assisted by anti-Trump Republicans who (and it pains me to say this) made a difference.

So what's the plan in Georgia, a single state with two huge nationalized Senate races and control of the Senate itself on the line? Switching off, apparently, as Dems are going after a precisely targeted ground game in Black and Latino communities to get out the vote, while Republicans are betting big on saturating the airwaves and internet ads with tens of millions in out-of-state dark money Super PAC dollars.

Democrats are getting out-advertised in the Georgia Senate runoffs thanks to a megadonor-funded blitz from GOP super PACs in the races that will decide control of the Senate.

Republicans hold an overall advertising advantage across the state, largely fueled by $86 million in outside spending supporting their candidates, compared to just $30 million spent by Democratic outside groups on TV advertising so far, according to AdImpact. Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are hauling in record small-dollar cash, far ahead of GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — but not enough to own the airwaves.

Super PACs pay more per ad than candidates do, so Ossoff and Warnock have been able to blunt the GOP’s financial edge, especially in the Atlanta media market, where nearly two-thirds of people in the state reside. But GOP TV ads are running in much higher rotation in other markets, according to data from AdImpact, and the disparity has sparked concern among Democrats that the two campaigns aren’t getting enough help with control of the Senate on the line.

Interviews with a dozen Democratic strategists and donors outlined several key reasons why Republicans have been able to build an advertising advantage. There’s fatigue among Democrats’ biggest donors after pouring millions into the 2020 general election, as well as mild skepticism that Ossoff and Warnock can actually win.

“[Donors] say, ‘I’m tired,’ they say, ‘I’m spending on ground game,’ … and lastly, they say, ‘I don’t think [Democrats] are going to win,’ even though they don’t have good data to back that up,” said one prominent super PAC official, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly. “The outside money’s been obscene [on the Republican side], and outside money on the Democratic side has been slow.”

Most crucially, there is growing suspicion among some Democratic donors — grounded in the party’s failure to flip control of the Senate in November — that massive TV ad campaigns don’t equal success, and money might be put to better use with organizations operating on the ground in Georgia instead of on the air.

“There’s a feeling in the donor community that too much was spent on TV and not enough on field operations,” said Ami Copeland, a Democratic strategist who served as Barack Obama’s deputy national finance director in 2008. “We had parity plus last time on TV, and it didn’t work. If donors are shifting their contributions and their support to ground operations, that at least shows a willingness to learn very quickly as to what might work and try something a little different.”

That strategic choice is showing up on the ground: Organizations focused on voter registration and mobilization, like Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight, are swimming in record cash. The Indian American Impact Fund announced this week they’d drop $2.5 million to turn out Asian American and Pacific Islander voters through digital ads, mail and field operations. BlackPAC, Collective PAC and the New Georgia Project are all out in force with field programs in the state, even though some activists still say they could use more cash to fund their efforts in these all-important races.

“I do think there’s been a shift with Democratic donors, particularly women donors, who are far more progressive about supporting and understanding [the importance of a] ground game,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, another group based in Georgia doing on-the-ground organizing. “There’s been some shift where there’s more resources on the ground, but I don’t think it’s at the level or at the scale we need.”

Indeed, even while Democrats aren’t thrilled to be outspent on TV, the disparity isn’t generating the five-alarm panic that it might have before November. Most Democrats argued a runoff puts heavier emphasis on turning out voters rather than persuading them, a reality that lends itself to door-to-door canvassing rather than to non-stop TV ads.

A Democratic donor adviser also noted that high-dollar contributors are “very reluctant to put a lot of money on traditional advertising plans” right now.

 

The lesson Republicans took away from November is that local races count, but nationalizing the race wins the nationally-important races. The lesson Democrats took away from November is that nationalizing a local race can mobilize the other side, too.

Both are correct.

We're about to see "by how much".

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