Month: December 2018

Why change when there’s so much winning?

by digby

I’ll have what they’re smoking:

With a brutal finality, the extent of the Republicans’ collapse in the House came into focus last week as more races slipped away from them and their losses neared 40 seats.

Yet nearly a month after the election, there has been little self-examination among Republicans about why a midterm that had seemed at least competitive became a rout.

President Trump has brushed aside questions about the loss of the chamber entirely, ridiculing losing incumbents by name, while continuing to demand Congress fund a border wall despite his party losing many of their most diverse districts. Unlike their Democratic counterparts, Republicans swiftly elevated their existing slate of leaders with little debate, signaling a continuation of their existing political strategy.

And neither Speaker Paul D. Ryan nor Representative Kevin McCarthy, the incoming minority leader, have stepped forward to confront why the party’s once-loyal base of suburban supporters abandoned it — and what can be done to win them back.

The quandary, some Republicans acknowledge, is that the party’s leaders are constrained from fully grappling with the damage Mr. Trump inflicted with those voters, because he remains popular with the party’s core supporters and with the conservatives who will dominate the caucus even more in the next Congress.

But now a cadre of G.O.P. lawmakers are speaking out and urging party officials to come to terms with why their 23-seat majority unraveled so spectacularly and Democrats gained the most seats they had since 1974.

“There has been close to no introspection in the G.O.P. conference and really no coming to grips with the shifting demographics that get to why we lost those seats,” said Representative Elise Stefanik, an upstate New York Republican who is planning to repurpose her political action committee to help Republican women win primaries in 2020. “I’m very frustrated and I know other members are frustrated.”

Ms. Stefanik said there had been “robust private conversations” but she urged Republicans to conduct a formal assessment of their midterm effort.

The G.O.P. response, or lack thereof, to the midterm backlash stands in stark contrast to the shake-ups and soul-searching that followed its loss of Congress in 2006 and consecutive presidential defeats in 2012.

This Town Once Feared the 10-Story Waves. Then the Extreme Surfers Showed Up.
House officials indicate that they will pursue an after-action report, but it is unclear how far it will go in diagnosing why they lost the popular vote by more raw votes than any time in history.

Many of the lawmakers who lost their races or did not run again say the party has a profound structural challenge that incumbents are unwilling to fully face: Mr. Trump’s deep toxicity among moderate voters, especially women.

With most of the Republicans who lost hailing from suburban seats, those who remaining represent red-hued districts where the president is still well-liked.

“Now the party is Trump,” said Representative Tom Rooney of Florida, who at 48 decided to retire, “so we follow his lead.”

Why would they re-evaluate? According to Trump is was a historic victory. That’s the bizarroworld they’re living in now and nothing will change it until they are completely shut out of government and even then they will just say it was all because Trump wasn’t a “real Republican.” Whether that will work will depend a lot on how them media portrays it and I don’t have high hopes. They are clearly yearning to be able to switch gears and call the Democrats a bunch of extremists and insist they start cutting “entitlements” and being “fiscally responsible.”

But for now, this is where we are and I don’t see it changing any time soon. The Republicans just get battier and battier and at some point they’re going to do something so catastrophic that we can’t ever fix it. I don’t know when that’s going to be but Donald Trump has made that more likely than things are going to get worse before they get better.

And anyway, it’s not as if they haven’t had their moments:

Putin’s spokesman: “This is not our struggle”

by digby

This guy is enjoying himself:

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — A spokesman for Russia’s government said Saturday that only two emails and a phone call took place between President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and Russian officials about a planned Trump Tower project.

But Russian officials gave the exchanges no more attention than any other business proposition, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Argentina.

Peskov told NBC News in an interview that “every week dozens and dozens of foreign businessmen are approaching us, mentioning possible investments, searching for contacts.”

He said Trump representatives ceased contact with the Russians.

“For us, it’s not different,” Peskov said. “For you, it’s a future president Trump. For us, it’s one of the other applicants.”

Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty this week to lying to Congress about the proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow and admitted discussions continued into June 2016 during the presidential campaign.

The revelations raised new questions about Trump’s involvement in a possible Moscow deal that never came to fruition.

Peskov said there were “two emails and one telephone call, returned telephone call, asking what they wanted and why they wanted to be in contact with [the Russian] presidential administration.”

He said “we told them that Russian presidential administration is not dealing with construction works” but they could arrange contacts with potential Russian counterparts at an economic forum in St. Petersburg.

Peskov claimed the Trump side stopped making contact and “they did disappear,” and Peskov said he never had any personal conversations with Cohen.

Asked about how some might struggle to believe that the lawyer for a U.S. presidential candidate made contact with Peskov’s office and that it came to nothing, Peskov said: “This is not our struggle, it’s their struggle, we wish them success.”

Peskov’s statements Saturday and documents filed in relation to Cohen’s plea deal seem to contradict Peskov’s prior statements on Russia’s involvement in the proposed Trump Tower deal.

Peskov said in August 2017 that “we do not react to such business topics — this is not our work — we left it unanswered,” the Washington Post reported.

But Peskov seemed to say Saturday that there was a return telephone call. In the plea agreement documents, prosecutors wrote that Cohen did receive a response from the Putin press secretary’s office…

The president claimed that “everybody knew” about the project, which he characterized as “more or less of an option that we were looking at in Moscow.”

Well ok, then. We don’t need to look any further. It’s all fine.

This is a very clever guy who has been playing this game since since trump entered the campaign. Check it out:

WATCH: Trump and Putin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov echo each other within hours of news breaking about Russia dossier…

"Are we seeing what amounts to Donald Trump and Russia having a joint defense agreement of sorts?" – @AriMelber pic.twitter.com/usIwtSOpdG— TheBeat w/Ari Melber (@TheBeatWithAri) November 30, 2018

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Unpredictable superpowers are not safe for anyone, including themselves

by digby

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of articles comparing George H. W. Bush to Trump and Trump doesn’t come out on top in most of them. People do seem to think that America was a lot greater when Bush was president than it is now,which is both true and not true in a number of different ways.

I don’t really think it’s useful to keep harkening back to the past, whether it’s Trump’s hazy 1950s Bizarroworld version of America or the nostalgia people seem to have for the Bush years, as if they were really a high point. (I keep thinking about AIDS and crack right along with the end of the cold war. It wasn’t perfect, by a long shot.)

In any case, there is one thing about Bush Sr’s time (and all those that came before Trump) that was truly important at least in terms of global security:

[A]s Trump played global statesman at the G-20 summit here against the backdrop of a former president’s passing, many world leaders clearly missed the predictability of the Bush years and the America he represented.

It’s not that America’s “predictability” was always positive. It was often imperious and self-centered. But as the most powerful military power on earth, it was not erratic, amateurish and ignorant, at least not all at once. That’s what Trump has brought to the table: unpredictability. He bragged about it as his primary national security strategy, which was one of the scariest aspects of his proposed presidency. I suppose most people assumed he would not actually behave that way once in office since the stakes are so monumental, but he has proved them wrong. This is exactly what he’s done.

And what that means is that we can’t count on the reactions of others to be predictable either. Nobody believes the president, nobody knows what he’s going to do, nobody thinks he’s competent even to carry out the daft plans he proposes.

Someone may very well take a risk that could lead to catastrophe because of this. As long as the US has the most powerful military on the planet — and the “peacenik” “isolationist” Trump is hardly trying to pare that down — the US has to also assume the responsibility of being predictable lest someone else make a mistake.

Trump doesn’t know that because he’s an idiot. The rest of the world understands it very well.

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The funeral excuse

by digby

We’ve all used it to get out of work at one time or another, right? Well, Trump just used it. Stan Collender explains:

The Washington Post is reporting this morning that, because of Ex-President George H.W. Bush’s death, Congress and the White House may agree to extend the current continuing resolution by a week or so and, therefore, delay a possible federal government shutdown.

Don’t be fooled.

Bush’s death and the events that have been scheduled this week to commemorate his life almost certainly will be a cover story rather than the actual reason this Friday’s shutdown showdown may be delayed.

The real reason will be that neither the White House nor Senate Republicans have the votes they need. If they did, the debate and vote would have taken place this week “in President George H.W. Bush’s memory and honor.”

This is one of the most basic truisms of legislating in Washington: You stop talking and take the vote as soon as possible when you’ve got enough to win. When you don’t, you figure out a way to delay.

A delay in the shutdown deadline past December 7 was always likely even if Ex-President Bush had not died. Negotiations over funding for the wall Trump wants built between the U.S. and Mexico we’re going very slowly and it was becoming increasingly clear that there wouldn’t be an agreement by the this-Friday-at-midnight deadline.

Plus Congress and the White House had left themselves room to maneuver when they made the original deadline December 7, two weeks before Christmas. While they may have hoped and prayed they would be able to resolve the funding fight by this Friday, there was always the possibility that it could be extended.

The question now is will even this new deadline provide enough time for Trump and Congress to come to an agreement over the wall.

Lame duck sessions of Congress get more difficult the later they get in December because defeated and retiring representatives and senators don’t vote as reliably, and sometimes don’t show up to vote at all.

In addition, as I posted last week, it’s still not clear that, for all his chest pounding, Trump really wants to force the showdown now. Indeed, his rapid willingness to consider delaying the shutdown deadline is very likely a sign that he’s not really sure he knows what he wants to do.

He doesn’t understand how this works so he’s just vamping. Not that it won’t happen. But there’s no strategy. If it does it will be because they can’t stop the runaway train.

That is, of course, the danger we face in any number of dangerous situations.

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Performance art of the deal

by digby

Trump told reporters late last night he’ll be withdrawing from the original NAFTA to pressure Congress to accept the new agreement, giving them a choice of the new agreement or nothing. It’s unclear he can withdraw without congressional approval; some experts say yes, some no. pic.twitter.com/JvmQ2xJajB

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) December 2, 2018

So this should work out well:

U.S. President Donald Trump said late Saturday that he will withdraw the United States from NAFTA “in the not-too-distant future” in a hardball attempt to pressure Congress into voting in favour of his new agreement with Canada and Mexico.

The original North American Free Trade Agreement would otherwise remain in place if Congress rejected or delayed the new agreement, which Trump calls the USMCA and Canada CUSMA or “the new NAFTA.” A Trump withdrawal would give Congress a take-it-or-leave-it choice between the new agreement — which is mostly the same as the original — or no agreement at all.

The new agreement has been criticized on various grounds by both Democrats and Republicans, leaving its prospects for passage uncertain. The Democrats, who will take control of the House of Representatives in January, have made clear that they do not plan to approve the agreement any time soon.

 Trump told reporters late last night he’ll be withdrawing from the original NAFTA to pressure Congress to accept the new agreement, giving them a choice of the new agreement or nothing. It’s unclear he can withdraw without congressional approval; some experts say yes, some no.

Trump’s announcement introduced new uncertainty into the continental trading relationship just a day after the leaders of the three countries held a signing ceremony for the new agreement, at which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the agreement “lifts the risks of serious economic uncertainty” that hovered over the negotiations themselves. Trump’s words suggested the state of bilateral trade will remain uncertain as long as the president is in office.

Advocates of free trade say a withdrawal would be a foolish gamble with the American economy. Trump has said he doesn’t see it that way, since he believes the economy was stronger without NAFTA than with it.

“Congress will have a choice of the USMCA or pre-NAFTA, which worked very well,” Trump told reporters on the flight back from the G20 summit in Argentina.

“Congress will have a choice of approving the USMCA, which is a phenomenal deal. Much, much better than NAFTA. A great deal,” he said. He again described NAFTA as a “disaster,” although the new deal he describes as “incredible” retains almost all of NAFTA’s central features while making a smattering of substantial changes.

The Canadian government declined to comment on the record. An official said on condition of anonymity, “We are focused on our domestic ratification process and not a process that is internal to the U.S.”

Trump’s announcement is likely to displease businesses across the continent, which had hailed the new agreement for preserving tariff-free North American trade and for allowing them to make investment plans with some degree of confidence that the rules would not soon change.

It is unclear whether Trump has the power to actually withdraw the U.S. from NAFTA. Some experts say he does, some say he doesn’t. The move would undoubtedly be challenged in U.S. courts, which have not yet weighed in on the question.

Basically he’s going to attempt to hold the economies of three countries hostage in order to force his will upon the US Congress. He’s not doing it because it’s such an important achievement — it isn’t. It’s solely to demonstrate dominance. If they refuse to do his bidding he brings commerece over the two borders to a halt. If they go along (which is the pragmatic choice since the agreement is something of a farce) he gets to strut around and talk about his VICTORY and further myth that he’s a great dealmaker to his gullible cult followers.

All of this is nothing but a performance that his power requires other players to join or let the world burn. It’s a sick form of manipulation.

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Truth, justice, and the un-American way
by Tom Sullivan

Truth and a life spent in pursuit of it seems as anachronistic these days as donning replica armor and doing “battle” in city parks on weekends.

One hundred and fifty or so friends, colleagues, and former students attended a memorial last Sunday for Dr. Tom Buford, retired chair of the philosophy department at Furman University. Truth was his business. Tom told me in his office long ago a philosophical argument, no matter how logical, that left you with a world you could not live in was not worth much.

And here we are many years later watching a world constructed of alternative facts and lies facing its greatest adversary, special council Robert Mueller’s team of F.B.I. investigators. “Just the facts, ma’am” is probably embroidered on their underwear. Uncovering truth, sieving it from a sea of lies, is, like pursuing philosophy, a vocation.

Contrariwise, Donald Trump’s circle of goombahs lie by reflex, as the New York Times’ Sharon LaFraniere explains:

If the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has proved anything in his 18-month-long investigation — besides how intensely Russia meddled in an American presidential election — it is that Mr. Trump surrounded himself throughout 2016 and early 2017 with people to whom lying seemed to be second nature.

They lied when warned not to. They lied to win the boss’s favor. They lied to cover up lies by their boss and others. They lied to cover up their own misdeeds. Trump, who speaks “like a parody of a lousy mob flick,” sees underlings’ willingness to parrot his lies as loyalty. Those who do not are “traitors” and “rats.”

Mueller’s team of truth-seekers meets the liars with “thick binders documenting their text messages, emails and whereabouts on any given date.”

Longtime Trump adviser Sam Nunberg tells the Times:

“People are conspiring against themselves, and they are playing right into Mueller’s hands,” he said. “If Flynn had said he discussed sanctions, he could very well be national security adviser today,” he added. Instead, Mr. Flynn awaits sentencing for lying to F.B.I. agents about various matters, including his talks with the Russian ambassador over whether the new administration would lift sanctions against Russia.

The reasons for the lies vary, but, not surprisingly, people were most often trying to protect themselves. Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer, said in federal court this past week that he had misled Congress about the details of a Trump hotel project in Moscow because he did not want to contradict the president’s own false characterizations of his business dealings in Moscow. He specifically cited his loyalty to Mr. Trump, referred to as “Individual 1” in court papers, as the reason for his crime.

They lie from a twisted sense of loyalty, for fame, for power, for money. Trump lies for all those reasons, maybe more.

As the absentee ballot fraud scheme in North Carolina’s uncertified 9th Congressional District race unravels, one of the alleged conspirators boasted about the money he’d be paid:

Another affidavit claimed that a Bladen County man named Leslie McCrae Dowless had acknowledged “doing absentee” for [incumbent Republican Mark Harris] and said that he would receive $40,000 if Harris won. “You know I don’t take checks. They have to pay me cash,” the affidavit quotes Dowless as saying.

It is remarkable what moral compromises people will make provided the right incentives. Intelligence and foreign policy analyst Malcolm Nance recently mentioned the acronym used in the intelligence community for motives behind people becoming spies. MICE: Money, Ideology, Compromise or Coercion, and Ego. It was money that made “Sashko” lie for a living.

Filmmaker Kate Stonehill’s “Fake News Fairytale” tells the story of a Macedonian teenager who took up spreading fake news for a quick buck until he saw what havoc his actions contributed to thousands of mile away:

“I think there’s a common misconception that people who write fake news must have a nefarious desire to influence politics one way or another,” Stonehill told The Atlantic. “I’m sure some of them undoubtedly do, but I met many people in Macedonia, including Sashko, who were writing fake news simply because they can make some money.”

[…]

Stonehill believes the first step to combatting the seductive proliferation of falsehoods is opening up an honest, critical discussion about technology, speech, and politics in order to better understand the fake-news phenomenon. “How, when, and why did the truth lose its currency?” she asked. “Who is profiting when the truth doesn’t matter? In my opinion, we’re only just beginning to unpack the answers to these questions.”

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words. – Ursula K Le Guin

Saturday Night at the Movies

Bizarre love triangle: Burning (**)

By Dennis Hartley

The Great Gatsby meets The Talented Mr. Ripley at the corner of William Faulkner and Brett Easton Ellis in director Lee Chang-dong’s leisurely-paced mystery-thriller Burning. I’m telling you it’s “leisurely-paced” now, because with a time investment of 2 hours, 28 minutes, I’d hazard to guess it’s the type of news you’d prefer that I’d share right away.

The story centers on an insular, socially isolated young man named Jongsu (Ah-in Yoo) who has become sole caretaker of his father’s modest farm near the North Korean border while dad languishes in the court system (he’s on trial for some unspecified malfeasance).

One day, Jongsu is sleep-walking through his part-time delivery gig in nearby Seoul, when he is unexpectedly jostled by a vivacious and flirty young woman named Haemi (Jong-seo Joo) who claims to have been a childhood schoolmate. It’s clear the flustered Jongsu initially doesn’t remember her; it’s also painfully obvious he’s unaccustomed to having even a vague possibility of romantic involvement fall in his lap, so he plays along.

Before he knows it, Haemi has ingratiated herself into his life; Jongsu walks around with a half-dazed expression like he can’t quite believe his dumb luck, especially after one glorious (if initially fumbling and awkward) night of amour. But then, just as quickly, the flighty Haemi announces she is travelling to Africa for a soul-searching sabbatical (oh, and would he mind checking in on her apartment and feeding her cat while she is away?). Of course, he doesn’t mind; he’s one of those hapless pushover-types that anyone who’s been to two world’s fairs and a film festival will instantly recognize as a classic noir sap.

Cue an interlude reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion; wherein Jongsu falls into a listless torpor holding vigil in Haemi’s dark and claustrophobic apartment, dividing his time between feeding a cat that he can never find and masturbating joylessly to a photo of Haemi as he faces a small window that affords a smudged view of the tip of the Namsan Seoul Tower (insert Freudian subtext here). As days run into (weeks? Months?) Jongsu begins to question whether the cat even exists. Scratch that; was Haemi ever there? The viewer begins to wonder as well, especially since we’re told Jongsu is an aspiring writer.

Jongsu brightens when he gets a call from Haemi, back from her sojourn and wanting to meet up with him for lunch. However, his heart sinks when he sees she’s brought “a friend” she met in Africa, a fellow Korean traveler named Ben (Steven Yuen). Ben is a mysterious, urbane trustafarian. Haemi, ebullient as ever, is confident the trio will be thick as thieves in no time. Jongsu, not so much. Initially seeing Ben as a possible sexual rival, Jongsu eyes him suspiciously, but then inexorably succumbs to his inherent charm.

It’s difficult to further discuss the narrative without risking spoilers, so suffice it to say that many twists ensue. Unfortunately, the twists that ensue are nothing that haven’t previously ensued in scores of other mystery-thrillers (and presented with more brevity).

The director and Jung-mi Oh co-adapted their screenplay from a short story by Haruki Murakami called “Barn Burning” (also the name of a short story by William Faulkner; at one point in the film, Jongsu tells Ben that Faulkner is his favorite writer). Interestingly, in a transcribed interview with the director conducted by co-screenwriter Oh that was included in the press kit, Lee says “When you first recommended to me this short story, I was a bit taken aback. Because the story felt mysterious, but nothing really happens in it.”

Judging by that criteria, I’d have to say Lee’s film is, if nothing else, a faithful adaptation.

Previous posts with related themes:

Memoir of a Murderer
Buster’s Mal Heart
The Two Faces of January

More reviews at Den of Cinema
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–Dennis Hartley

If you continue to wonder how Trump’s voters can be so deluded, this is why

by digby

Watch @seanhannity on @FoxNews NOW. Enjoy!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 1, 2018

The Hannity rant Trump asked people to watch is just the same old tired material: Mueller, a longtime Republican, is a secret Dem out to get Trump; obstruction of justice is just a "process crime"; there's "no evidence of collusion" (please ignore all evidence of collusion). pic.twitter.com/j6bCei07ye— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 1, 2018

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): What does [Michael Cohen’s plea] mean, legally?

JEANINE PIRRO (FOX HOST): Nothing.

KILMEADE: Nothing? Nothing at all?

PIRRO: It means absolutely nothing. Look —

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): So why did he do it?

PIRRO: So why did he do it? Because they forced — this is what happens. People don’t remember everything. People say things that they can’t exactly remember. And then the prosecutors come in and they say you willfully lied. You said this before. And then you say, gee, you know, maybe I forgot. I’m not sure. Well you have to come up with a reason. Why did you lie? I was trying to align with his messaging. Here is the bottom line, Donald Trump is the one who provided this information voluntarily to Mueller regarding the Russia attempt at the tower development in Moscow. Donald Trump was not involved in the negotiation. His team goes in as they always do, whenever they go into a country to try to develop, you know, a building or a hotel or whatever it is that they’re building. Now it didn’t work out. He didn’t do it.

Let me ask you this. If the Russians were really intending to own Donald Trump so that they could get access to whatever they want in the United States, they would have made such a sweetheart deal for Donald Trump, that Donald Trump wouldn’t have had a point or a choice other than to make sure that that deal went through. It didn’t go through. They ended it, kaput. It’s over. Now, Michael Cohen is a liar. He’s an admitted liar in federal court, campaign finance and campaign debt, all that nonsense. What’s amazing is nobody is talking about taxing medallions, which is the real issue where they could have sunk him big time. But they didn’t. So what do they do? They bring this out to make it look like, oh there is Russia collusion. There was no Russia collusion in the dossier. There is no Russia collusion in the Donald Trump Jr. meeting at the tower. And there is no Russia collusion here. You show me how the fact that Michael Cohen said it ended, honestly it ended in June of 2017.

KILMEADE: Not January.

PIRRO: Not January 2016 I was off by six months. It doesn’t matter when it ended okay, because nothing came of it. And, no, it doesn’t influence anything. It doesn’t show that the election was affected, that votes were affected, that emails were affected.

This guy appears regularly on CNN and acts as though he is an honest analyst. He worked for Ken Starr. Here’s how he sounds on Fox:

SOL WEISENBERG (FORMER DEPUTY INDEPENDENT COUNSEL): If you actually look, Laura, at the plea agreement and at the criminal information, there is absolutely nothing that implicates President Trump in a crime. There’s absolutely nothing in there that says where Michael Cohen says President Trump talked with me about the lie I was going to tell to Congress. We conspired, we talked about it. There is nothing whatsoever. So if we really confine ourselves to the actual law and not a bunch of babble that you hear all day on television, let’s just look at the actual documents. It doesn’t implicate President Trump in any way which brings up the question of why he was so angry if he had been told about this and why he came out and said Cohen is nothing but a liar. He’s lying. All Cohen said is that I lied to Congress. He didn’t say President Trump helped me lie. So, there could be all kinds of things that Mueller is keeping quiet from us that we don’t know about, that Cohen has told him. That’s possible. But that’s the realm of speculation. Let’s talk about reality, and reality is this is a nothingburger.

Aaaaand Trump’s most important adviser:

CALLER: I haven’t heard an idea that I have, and I don’t know if it’s feasible or not. With the corruption in the Department of Justice, the people that are demanded to appear, they don’t appear, they appear, they lie, everything that’s going on with all the corruption — what about — does President Trump have the authority to do — have the JAG in the military do a tribunal, and investigate the Department of Justice that way? Where Congress —

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): He actually does have that authority.

CALLER: — apparently cannot do its job.

HANNITY: Well, it’s the — again, that would be within the realm of the executive branch of the government, which he is the head of. Yeah, he would. And look, I think the president has been — look, he could have fired Mueller, he could — and he could do it legally, Alan Dershowitz said it yesterday. He could fire Rosenstein, he could have done that at any point, he didn’t.

Media Matters collected most of these and notes:

After President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to “lying to Congress about the timing and extent of his negotiations,” on behalf of the Trump Organization, to build a Trump Tower in Moscow — his second guilty plea to a federal crime in three months — Trump’s sycophants and defenders in the media are proclaiming that Cohen’s guilty plea means “absolutely nothing.” By furiously attempting to spin the potentially devastating news as “a nothingburger,” right-wing media are simply picking up where they left off in August after Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws on Trump’s behalf. And even though Trump’s stooges in the media have openly worried about what may come next for some time now as the special counsel investigation continues, they continue to wage their public relations campaign with laughable spin.

Trump voters are brainwashed by non-stop right wing propaganda. Granted, they choose to watch it and they are obviously using it confirm their biases. They could watch something else if they chose.

But this is a big problem and I don’t have the slightest idea how to fix it.

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Can this marriage be saved?

by digby

That’s the look you get from the network execs at a party after they canceled your show. https://t.co/VjUJr83Epf— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) November 30, 2018

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Will Newt be at the funeral?

by digby

There’s a lot of George H.W. Bush hagiography today and that’s fine. He was an important figure in American politics for a number of reasons for a very long time. I’ll leave it to others to examine his legacy and just say that he lived a long and consequential life and you can’t ask for more than that.

Given that Bush’s legacy includes his campaign’s odious decisions to use the racist Willie Horton ad (unofficially) he’s certainly in the pantheon of dirty political players. But one thing I doubt most people will talk much about in all this is the fact that he lost re-election in 1992 not just because of his dual opponents Bill Clinton and Ross Perot signaling a desire for big change. He was also sabotaged by his own party:

To defeat the Democrats, Newt believed he must also destroy the old Republican mindset, the complacent minority, always compromising with the Democrats’ liberal agenda. In 1990, when George Bush caved in to the Democrats on a tax increase, Newt, now the Republican whip, defied his party and refused to support his president. Behind the scenes, Newt had been building a new political army to take over the House. He took control of the Republican political action committee, GOPAC, and made it a potent instrument for his conservative vision.

Bob Woodward:

On the evening of Oct. 4, 1990, Newt Gingrich and his then-wife, Marianne, were enjoying a VIP reception at a Republican fundraiser when they were suddenly hustled over to have their picture taken with President George H.W. Bush.

“I thought it was a bad idea,” Gingrich said in a series of interviews in 1992 that have not been previously published.

Days earlier, Gingrich had dramatically walked out of the White House and was leading a very public rebellion against a deficit reduction and tax increase deal that Bush and top congressional leaders of both parties — including, they thought, Gingrich — had signed off on after months of tedious negotiations. The House was to vote on the deal the very next day.

“We went over and I said [to Bush], ‘I’m really sorry that this is happening,’ and he said with as much pain as I’ve heard from a politician, ‘You’re killing us, you are just killing us.’ ”

Gingrich said that made him feel like crying, which is obviously bullshit. He was thrilled. The whole country could see the power-mad look in his eye.

Today that “rebel” is working hand in glove with Donald Trump who, regardless of your opinion of Bush’s career, perfectly represents the extreme decadence and degradation of the Republican Party since Newt began his crusade. These modern Republicans have never been great, as Bush’s career attests. But they went into another dimension when Newt and his minions took over.

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