Yes - There Was A Crime

Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker:

(there's a full audio at the link above, but I couldn't figure out how to embed it)

For now, Sekulow and Cobb are sticking to their original strategy. They have advertised their willingness to coöperate with Mueller as a sign that Trump has nothing to hide, and their reaction to Flynn’s guilty plea reflects this view. “Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn,” Cobb said. With regard to Mueller’s broader investigation, the White House lawyers’ position continues to be that President Trump didn’t commit a crime because no one did—or could—because there is no federal crime called “collusion,” and Rosenstein’s order did not refer to any criminal statutes that may have been violated. In several conversations with me, Sekulow emphasized that collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, even if it did take place, wouldn’t be illegal. “For something to be a crime, there has to be a statute that you claim is being violated,” Sekulow told me. “There is not a statute that refers to criminal collusion. There is no crime of collusion.”

The Mueller investigation appears to consist, roughly, of three areas of inquiry. The first focusses on illegal lobbying by people affiliated with the Trump campaign; the second relates to the hacking of e-mail accounts associated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee; and the third involves possible obstruction of justice by Trump and others after he was inaugurated. (Mueller’s office declined to comment.)
- and -

The broad outlines of the grounds for impeachment are more or less settled. Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School, who recently published “Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide,” told me, “The Framers wanted some kind of check on the executive, but they didn’t want to see impeachments for routine disagreements between Congress and the White House. They wanted to preserve the separation of powers, so they tried to set out criteria which would not compromise the executive branch.” One rule that’s clear is that an impeachable offense doesn’t have to be an actual crime. For example, a President who joined a religious order and took a vow of silence would surely be impeached without having committed a crime. At the same time, not all criminal offenses are supposed to be impeachable. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 65, impeachable offenses must involve “abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

It seems clear, too, that a President can be impeached for conduct that took place before he took office, especially if the misdeeds led to his electoral victory. George Mason, one of the most eloquent of the Framers, asked rhetorically during the Constitutional Convention, “Shall the man who has practiced corruption & by that means procured his appointment in the first instance, be suffered to escape punishment, by repeating his guilt?” As Sunstein told me, “If you procure your office by corrupt means, that would be an impeachable offense.”

The unusual facts of the Russia investigation may implicate another, lesser-known part of the impeachment provision in the Constitution. Article I states that a President can also be impeached and removed for treason and bribery. Treason is defined in the Constitution as “levying war” against the United States, which seems inapplicable to Trump’s conduct, but his business dealings with Russian interests may yet produce evidence of bribery. Trump’s financial affairs, especially with regard to Russia, remain opaque, but it’s possible to imagine how they might give rise to an impeachable offense. A straight payoff to Trump—cash in return for, say, a relaxation of the sanctions imposed by President Obama on the Putin regime—would certainly be impeachable even if it were not technically a crime under American law. Trump’s known business dealings suggest the possibility of a quid pro quo with Russian interests. In 2015, for example, Trump signed a “letter of intent” to build a tower in Moscow. Felix Sater, a Russian associate of Trump’s, wrote of the project, in an e-mail to Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen, “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. . . . I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.” That deal never came to fruition, but the intent expressed on both sides is deeply troubling.

Today's Tweet

We are so fucked.

Sadly, the Roy Moore pedophilia accusations have successfully distracted from Roy Moore being a batshit lying homophobic Constitution-hating misogynist fake-Christian racist.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) December 10, 2017

 

Lies Heard 'Round The World

45*'s proclivity for lying is well documented.  The simple fact that he lies on a frequent and regular basis is not at all in dispute.

WaPo's fact checkers reported 1628 lies this year (as of November 13th):

For some reason, our year-long project analyzing, categorizing and tracking every false or misleading claim by President Trump had seemed like quite a burden in the past month. Well, the numbers are in and now we know why: In the past 35 days, Trump has averaged an astonishing nine claims a day.

The total now stands at 1,628 claims in 298 days, or an average of 5.5 claims a day. That puts the president on track to reach 1,999 claims by the end of his first year in office, though he obviously would easily exceed 2,000 if he maintained the pace of the past month. (Our full interactive graphic can be found here.)

Take a look at PolitiFact's list of just the Pants-On-Fire whoppers - 4 pages of them.

Now comes a piece from Bella DePaolo via Chicago Tribune:

The college students in our research told an average of two lies a day, and the community members told one. (A more recent study of the lies 1,000 U. S. adults told in the previous 24 hours found that people told an average of 1.65 lies per day; the authors noted that 60 percent of the participants said they told no lies at all, while the top 5 percent of liars told nearly half of all the falsehoods in the study.) The most prolific liar among the students told an average of 6.6 lies a day. The biggest liar in the community sample told 4.3 lies in an average day.

In Trump's first 298 days in office, however, he made 1,628 false or misleading claims or flip-flops, by The Post's tally. That's about six per day, far higher than the average rate in our studies. And of course, reporters have access to only a subset of Trump's false statements — the ones he makes publicly — so unless he never stretches the truth in private, his actual rate of lying is almost certainly higher.

That rate has been accelerating. Starting in early October, The Post's tracking showed that Trump told a remarkable nine lies a day, outpacing even the biggest liars in our research.

But the flood of deceit isn't the most surprising finding about Trump.

- and -

The most stunning way Trump's lies differed from our participants', though, was in their cruelty. An astonishing 50 percent of Trump's lies were hurtful or disparaging. For example, he proclaimed that John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey, all career intelligence or law enforcement officials, were "political hacks." He said that "the Sloppy Michael Moore Show on Broadway was a TOTAL BOMB and was forced to close." He insisted that other "countries, they don't put their finest in the lottery system. They put people probably in many cases that they don't want." And he claimed that "Ralph Northam, who is running for Governor of Virginia, is fighting for the violent MS-13 killer gangs & sanctuary cities."

The Trump lies that could not be coded into just one category were typically told both to belittle others and enhance himself. For example: "Senator Bob Corker 'begged' me to endorse him for reelection in Tennessee. I said 'NO' and he dropped out (said he could not win without my endorsement)."

The sheer frequency of Trump's lies appears to be having an effect, and it may not be the one he is going for. A Politico/Morning Consult poll from late October showed that only 35 percent of voters believed that Trump was honest, while 51 percent said he was not honest. (The others said they didn't know or had no opinion.) Results of a Quinnipiac University poll from November were similar: Thirty-seven percent of voters thought Trump was honest, compared with 58 percent who thought he was not.

This shit is not normal.

Amy Siskind

Amy Siskind, Meduim:

December 2, 2017

This week marked further erosion to our failing democracy. Attacks on, and deconstruction of our free press is happening at an alarming rate, as conservative billionaires buy up media outlets, some of which are then precipitously shuttered. Republicans in the Senate passed a tax bill whose primary beneficiary will be people like Trump and regime members, without any debate, scoring, hearings, or even a chance for senators to read a bill which impacts one-sixth of the US economy.

This week Trump continued his bigoted attacks on marginalized communities, dividing us at home and embarrassing our country on the world stage. There was disturbing reporting on Trump’s mental health, including his continued belief in conspiracy theories. With events and his actions this week, Trump’s net approval gap (-29) matched an all-time low.

This week was the second bombshell in the Mueller probe, as Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate. Flynn’s testimony in court documents ties in Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Flynn’s ongoing cooperation will likely ensnare many higher-ups, including Trump.

1. Late Saturday, in retaliation for RT being told to register as a foreign agent in the US, Putin signed a law that allows the Russian government to list any foreign media operating in the country as a foreign agent.

2. Late Saturday, Trump tweeted Fox News is “MUCH more important” than CNN in the US, and “CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly.”

3. CNN Communications tweeted in response, “It’s not CNN’s job to represent the U.S to the world. That’s yours. Our job is to report the news.”

4. Former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden slammed Trump: “Until now it was not possible for me to conceive of an American President capable of such an outrageous assault on truth, a free press or the first amendment.”

-and-

10. LA Weekly’s staff was gutted Wednesday, including nine of the 13 editorial staff and all but one staff writer, as Semanal completed their purchase. Theownership of Semanal is a mystery.

11. On Friday, the LA Weekly, the second largest publication in Los Angeles, issued its last print edition. The website was not updated, and the social media accounts were dormant. The media outlet was quickly shut down.

12. Walmart pulled a t-shirt offered on its online store, which read, “Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED,” after a journalist advocacy group told the retailer it found the shirt threatening.

There're 126 items on the list this week.

Today's Today

December 9th is Grace Hopper's birthday. She would've been 109 today.

I never knew her, but along with probably millions of people just like me, I owe Admiral Hopper an awful lot.

Because of her work developing Compilers, computers became very human-friendly, which greatly helped to open the floodgates for computer technology to evolve with unbelievable speed.

If I have to work in machine language, I couldn't program my way off of a flatbed truck. Grace Hopper made it possible for me to master a certain level of Application Programming that led me to some pretty great things in a very satisfying career.

One of my favorite things is the story of her presence at the birth of the term "bug" as it applies to computers. 

Wikipedia:

While she was working on a Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay; the moth impeded the operation of the relay. While neither Hopper nor her crew mentioned the phrase "debugging" in their logs, the case was held as an instance of literal "debugging." For many years, the term bug had been in use in engineering.[35][36] The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.[37]
Like I said - I owe that lady a lot.

Worse Is Better

Starting with tonight's performance, the part of Martha Mitchell will now be played by Ms Simona Mangiante.

(She's trying pretty hard to be Maureen Dean, but I don't think that's working for her just yet)

It would seem that Mike (The Holy Beard) Pence, is among very few guys in 45*'s gang who aren't married to, or engaged to, or separated from, or hangin' with a woman who has very obvious ties to the Russian government.

So, "follow the money"?  Yeah, OK - but with these guys, it's also "follow the dick".

Nicole LaFond, TPM:

“He never took any initiative, as far as I know, unauthorized,” she said. “He never took any initiative without the blessing of the campaign.”

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in October and has agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the foreign power to win the election. According to court documents, Papadopoulos was charged for lying about his communications with a professor who had “substantial connections to Russian government officials” and promised to provide “dirt” obtained by the Russians on Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The court records did not identify the professor, but Mangiante identified him as Joseph Mifsud, whom both she and Papadopoulos have worked for in the past. She told ABC News that they met last year after Papadopoulos reached out to her on LinkedIn because of their connection over Mifsud.

“I know (Mifsud) was interested in George because he was working for Trump,” she said.

She said getting interviewed by the FBI caught Papadopoulos “out of the blue” and she thought he didn’t think it was a big deal at the time.

“As soon as he find out that he committed a mistake, he took responsibility for that and he passed to the right side of history, in my view,” she said, adding that she received a subpoena from Mueller on the same day Papadopoulos plead guilty to the FBI. “It was very brave because he has been the first one and he is helping a lot. … I think he has been the first domino in Russia-gate.”

ProLeft Podcast

Don't you dare call it "Trumpism" - what we're seeing is what the Republican Party is now.

And people like Joe Scarborough and David Brooks have been perfectly happy helping it to become what it is - what they both now insist isn't what they wanted.  That may be "true" technically, but along with so many others, they looked the other way and accepted the inclusion and the growing influence of the shitty people who're now in charge of the joint.

The monster is rampaging through the village, and they don't get to pretend they didn't have a hand in building it.

The Professional Left

GoFundMe

From Illinois Times:

After more than 400 episodes, Langum and her husband have this down pat. With themselves as bosses, butter-smooth voices made for radio and no commercials to squeeze in, their podcast lasts about an hour, and if it runs a few minutes over or under, no biggie. It sounds remarkably professional as the couple sprints from one topic to the next, with nary an “er” or “ah” or “um” marking time as they consider what they should say next.

They do their homework, making notes throughout the week so that they can discuss such nearly forgotten Republicans as Jacob Javits (worthy of respect) alongside more familiar names such as Newt Gingrich (boo, hiss) with aplomb.

They don’t flinch from f-bombs, and the media isn’t spared. Fox News? “It helps to understand it as a puppet show,” Driftglass says. Donald Trump’s least-favorite network is no better. “CNN puts red ants and black ants in a jar, shakes them up and passes it off as debate and drama,” Langum asserts. How about public radio? “Nice, polite Republicans – that’s what NPR stands for among liberals,” she says. The couple rejects notions that both the right and left are up to the same tricks in a never-ending battle for hearts and minds.

“We give our listeners a vocabulary to understand the world that we live in,” Driftglass says. “When you turn on CNN, you see this nonsense. Every time you hear someone in the media say, reflexively, ‘It’s both sides, it’s both sides, it’s both sides,’ that’s an enabling mechanism for conservatives.”

This Joint Stinks

2 more students shot dead at school.

Two students were killed after gunfire erupted early Thursday at a New Mexico high school, according to police.

The San Juan County Sheriff’s Office said the person believed to have opened fire at Aztec High, a school of about 1,000 students near the Colorado border, is also dead. No one else was injured, the sheriff’s office said. The Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President, which oversees territory not far from the school, had previously released a statement saying 15 people were injured.

The FBI and New Mexico state police were investigating.

Officials held an afternoon press conference but released little information about what transpired at the school Thursday morning, including the names of those killed and how the suspected shooter died.

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez commended police for their courage and described students “hiding in closets, in teacher’s offices and under desks.”

“There were several acts of bravery by staff members, teachers and students that were amazing, that actually saved lives,” said Martinez, who added that the White House had called, offering its condolences.
But let's spend all day talking about Al Franken's hands and Roy Moore's dick, and how they can be used to change the 2-party dynamic - and blah blah blah - cuz after all, it's just politics.

I get so fucking tired of this shit.

Today's Tweet

A kid murders both of his parents and then pleads for mercy because he's an orphan.

We must cut back on health care to pay for the repairs to the house I just purposefully burned down. https://t.co/h8BP1ZuR5h

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) December 7, 2017

 

Casualties Of War

Al Franken resigned this week.

(hoping I'm wrong about all this, BTW)

I can't stop thinking he got swift-boated. GOP went after him solely because he's been very strong on Equality issues.

It's basic Debate (and Salesmanship) training: If the opponent can knock down your strongest point, they can ignore everything else you have to say and revert to their comfortable assumptions.

There's a strong element of False Equivalence too. Kristen Gillibrand has led the charge, saying that when we argue over Degrees of Offense, we're having the wrong conversation - harassment is harassment is harassment, and we simply cannot have it.

I think I get it - we all have to be called to account, including our friends and political allies.

But this looks a lot like the GOP has played the Hypocrisy Card, and the Dems have bought in like it's Everything On Sale At Whole Foods. 

AKA: taking your strength and turning it against you. And as usual, Dems have been most obliging by going into navel-gazing mode, picking fights with their own, and imploding with self-recrimination.

Meanwhile, we are in fact very busy being drawn into having Ms Gillibrand's Wrong Conversation anyway - because when you overreact, you can lose some credibility, which means you give up the edge, which means the other side gets more control over the subject of the argument.

To wit: we're talking about why The Librul Media cropped out one of their Silence Breakers.

"It's intentional, to represent women who aren't able to come forward," Rosner wrote. "In this case, it is an actual woman with a tale of harassment who was unable to be public, but here she represents all women who remain silent (for whatever reason)."

Rosner also compared this cover to New York Magazine's July 2015 cover, which depicted the 35 women who had accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault at the time. The cover left one empty space to symbolize the women who hadn't come forward with their stories.

"When New York Magazine did their Cosby accuser cover they similarly left an empty chair — it's an elegant and powerful gesture, a visual ellipsis," she wrote.

And suddenly, we're not talking about the problems caused by harassment. The folks who need to be thinking about, and talking about harassment aren't thinking or talking about it.

So Dems, you assholes better make this work, cuz this is USAmerica Inc, where we really suck at nuance. Maybe you're trying to move against that; trying to demonstrate a stark contrast between the two parties, but the Rule Of Unintended Consequences is against you.

If you think this is a low-cost proposition, you're probably in for a rude surprise. I think you can count on a serious backlash against the perception of "Dems being Dems - always looking to tell us how to live our lives - they're a buncha pinch-faced blue-nosed prigs who just love the smell of their own farts, and the Nanny State! and blah blah blah".

If you make it about Purity, we lose the best opportunity we've had in 50 years.

Don't fuck this up.

Stoopid Is As Stoopid Does

The Beaverton:

JERUSALEM – In response to US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, the Palestinian National Authority has announced that it will recognize Texas as a state of Mexico since it was violently annexed by the United States in the 1840s.

“The territory north and east of the Rio Grande is very important to the Mexican people,” explained a PNA spokesperson. “Before American settlers showed up and implemented slavery, Mexico oversaw this land. Then, President Polk sent his armies to invade the rest of these Mexican territories, and force the country to give up California, New Mexico, most of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. We may soon recognize these states as part of Mexico too.”

hat tip = @ALT_uscis

There's A New Wrinkle

I thought it had to be phonied up, but I checked half a dozen sources.

Here's the C-SPAN clip:

Dry mouth, sniffles, slurred speech. Lotsa speculation, particularly about how maybe it's nothing but an older man's dentures getting all wonky on him.

OK, but he's a billionaire who shits in a gold-plated toilet. Wouldn't he maybe have dental implants instead of dentures?

With all the pressure from the Russian thing, and considering all the reports about his usual whacko behavior becoming even more bizarre, I'm thinking some high-octane Medicinal Cocktails are not out of the question.

Let's not forget who this guy's doctor is.

Today's GIF

I'd just like to get back to where I've got some chops - but I promise I won't assault your sensibilities by trying to do anything like this.

'Bout Damned Time

driftglass and Blue Gal have been nailing this one for a good long time - politics is broken, and it's because we have a party making a mainstay of its raison d'etre to piss in our gas tank.

And finally, NYT is starting to catch up:

(Mann and Ornstein)

What is astounding, and still largely unappreciated, is the unexpected and rapid nature of the decline in American national politics, and how one-sided its cause. If in 2006 one could cast aspersions on both parties, over the past decade it has become clear that it is the Republican Party — as an institution, as a movement, as a collection of politicians — that has done unique, extensive and possibly irreparable damage to the American political system.

Even today, many people like to imagine that the damage has all been President Trump’s doing — that he took the Republican Party hostage. But the problem goes much deeper.
These guys have been here before, but as they point out in the piece, they've been going along with the standard crapola that it's all even - the corporate media's insistence on the horse race - the evil duopoly - yada yada yada. 

Not any more.

Today's Pix

(Click to embiggen)