Month: May 2019

by digby

Check out this lunacy:

Prominent figures on the Christian right in the US ranging from religious magazines to authors to elected politicians have warned that the fight over abortion rights could lead to a new civil war.

Though such dire predictions are not necessarily new on the extreme right wing in the US, the passing of a wave of hardline anti-abortion laws in numerous states this year appears to have amped up the conspiracy-minded predictions that depict abortion squarely as a root cause of a coming conflict.

Republican lawmakers such as Ohio’s Candice Keller have openly speculatedthat the divide over abortion rights might lead to civil war. Last month, Keller drew explicit comparisons with the antebellum situation over slavery, telling the Guardian: “Whether this ever leads to a tragedy, like it did before with our civil war, I can’t say.”

Earlier this month, the Guardian revealed that the Washington state republican legislator Matt Shea had also speculated about civil war, and the “Balkanization” of America, predicting that Christians would retreat to “zones of freedom” such as the inland Pacific north-west, where Shea is campaigning for a new state to break away from Washington.

Asked on a podcast if the two halves of the country could remain together, Shea said: “I don’t think we can, again, because you have half that want to follow the Lord and righteousness and half that don’t, and I don’t know how that can stand.”

Shea has introduced a bill – unlikely to pass – which would criminalize abortion in the state.

Along with legislators, the notion of a civil war over abortion has been finding traction in the media organs of the Christian right.

In the past year, Charisma magazine, the leading media voice of Pentecostal and charismatic Christians, has run at least half a dozen articles contemplating the possibility of an imminent civil war in America. One recent article profiles pastor, broadcaster and author Michael L Brown, who blames a “coming civil war” on “militant abortionists”.

Brown told Charisma: “A civil war is coming to America, only this time, it will be abortion, rather than slavery, that divides the nation”.

An upcoming book from Brown also warns that abortion is among the signs that “the demonic spirit of Jezebel is powerful in America”. In another column this month Brown wrote: “A civil war is certain. The only thing to be determined is how bloody it will be.”

This year the Christian televangelist Rick Joyner has, on his ministry’s website and other Christian right outlets, been offering detailed descriptions of a civil war he believes to be coming on the basis of his own prophetic dream.

Abortion is one of the key reasons he thinks that war is imminent.

Joyner also turned to Charisma magazine at one point to describe a dream, which he says he had late last year. “We are already in the first stages of the Second American Revolutionary/Civil War,” he wrote. “In the dream, I saw that we had already crossed that line and it is now upon us, so we must change our strategy from trying to avoid it to winning it.”

André Gagné is an associate professor of theology at Concordia University in Montreal, who researches the religious right. He says that while Charisma magazine may be unfamiliar to secular and liberal Americans, it is “absolutely representative” of charismatic and Pentecostal Christians on abortion, and as such speaks for “millions of people”.

He says that the idea that abortion may lead to civil war has percolated for some time on the Christian right. Gagné says that the Christian right’s fight against abortion is driven by real belief, and real fear.

“The Christian right believes that if they don’t engage politically, and try to influence social issues, God will judge America, and he will judge them,” Gagne said.

But is the possibility of an abortion-centred civil war likely?

Journalist Robert Evans hosts the breakout podcast It Could Happen Here, which canvases scenarios for a new American civil war.

He said that the Christian right “generate a lot of the extremist language in mainstream politics”, but that “there’s more talk about violent insurrection from the white nationalist right than the Christian right, because there’s less faith in politics”.

For now, as demonstrated by the abortion bills passed in several states in an apparent attempt to get a case to the supreme court and overturn abortion rights nationally, the Christian right is reaping dividends from engaging with the political process.

But, Evans notes, the danger may come if “they see victory slip from their grasp”.

And unlike the fractious and small subcultures of the racist far right, “the Christian right is really good at keeping people working together for years at a time”.

Keep in mind, that these are the most dedicated members of Trump’s cult:

Trump consistently does better with regular churchgoing white Evangelicals than with less observant members of this group (70 percent of weekly churchgoers approve of Trump’s job performance, versus 65 percent of others). This finding suggests that MAGA people aren’t just a bunch of rednecks who identify as Evangelical but are as heathenish as Trump in their actual belief systems and conduct. The same is true, interestingly enough, of another relatively pro-Trump religious demographic, white Catholics. Being churchy and being Trumpy seem to go hand in hand (not so much, however, with white mainline Protestants, an at-best-lukewarm group for Trump)…

If Trump doesn’t win in 2020, one can imagine this group losing its grip and just going for it.

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And yet, they work for him

President Trump is on a state visit to Japan

by digby

This is what he’s accomplished so far:

North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me. I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse. Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2019

Great fun and meeting with Prime Minister @AbeShinzo. Numerous Japanese officials told me that the Democrats would rather see the United States fail than see me or the Republican Party succeed – Death Wish!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2019

You can’t make this stuff up. The president of the United States on a state visit to Japan takes the side of the North Korean dictator (and existential threat to Japan, by the way) and also says that both Kim Jong Un and Japanese leaders are hostile to the Democratic Party.

“Most leaders try to avoid engaging in domestic politics while on foreign soil; few if any have publicly sided with an autocrat against an American political rival.”

⁦@Noahbierman⁩ from Tokyo >> https://t.co/YYzWROexFR— Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) May 26, 2019

This isn’t ok, it really isn’t. I know he’s a clown and we are supposed to take these tweets with a grain of salt. But that would be a mistake. Trump is being played from all sides on the global stage and it’s making all of us less safe.

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Still a boys club
by Tom Sullivan

Still image from Greg Murphy campaign video.

Democrats sent nearly 40 women to Congress in last fall’s elections. Republicans, only four. That’s quite a ratio.

The Hill reports:

Democrats are again looking to put Republicans on the defensive in 2020 after a string of GOP legislatures passed a number of actions restricting abortions, including in Alabama where the procedure was banned under almost all circumstances.

It is a lesson that Republicans have absorbed this year, as they look to prove they are a big tent party and look to dispel the notion it’s the party of old white men.

They will have to work harder to prove themselves in North Carolina.

Special elections this summer in North Carolina will fill two additional vacant House seats. One is the infamous “do-over” election ordered after election fraud tainted results in NC-9 and the state Board of Elections refused to certify results. The other is a special election in NC-3 to fill the vacancy created by the death in February of Republican Walter Jones.

Among the over two dozen Republicans vying for those seats in the spring primaries, only one woman has a shot at advancing to the general elections on September 10.

Leigh Brown is not her. People in Washington, D.C. who encouraged the realtor to jump into the NC-9 primary (Brown lives in NC-8) were gone when it came time to campaign.

“That’s a little frustrating to have initial conversations and then follow up and be ghosted,” Brown told Politico:

GOP consultants and candidates acknowledge their recruitment and resources lag far behind Democrats. And no centralized group exists to provide hiring advice, social media guidance, press training, or messaging tactics to candidates. Democrats, on the other hand, have the behemoth EMILY’s List network, as well as groups focused on recruiting immigrants, women of color, female veterans and more.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) refocused her leadership PAC (E-PAC) this year on electing more Republican women. Stefanik and a new super PAC “Winning for Women” turned their eyes to pediatrician Joan Perry in NC-3 after Brown finished a distant fourth in NC-9 to state senator Dan Bishop of “bathroom bill” fame. Bishop faces Democrat Dan McCready on September 10.

Perry herself finished seven points behind Greg Murphy, a urologic surgeon, in a field of 17 Republicans vying for the Jones seat. Both live in NC-3; only half of the GOP candidates in the NC-9 primary did. The two anti-abortion physicians facing each other in the July 9 runoff will try to out-Trump each other.

On that score, Murphy is already ahead. House Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows (NC-11) has endorsed Murphy, as has “Women for Trump.” The runoff winner will face Democrat Allen Thomas, the former mayor of Greenville, NC, on September 10. Donald Trump won NC-3 by nearly 24 points.

Even as Republicans promote their efforts to attract women (as stories in Politico and The Hill show), those efforts appear disjointed, if not half-hearted, despite party boasts of how many female and minority candidates it is wooing:

Yet according to recent data collected by The Associated Press, just 38 of 172 declared Republican House challengers for the 2020 elections were women, or around 1 in 5. That compares with 84 of 222 declared House Democratic challengers, nearly 2 in 5.

Meanwhile, over half of Democrats’ 2018 freshman class in the House are women.

Saturday Night at the Movies


SIFF-ting through cinema, Pt. 2

By Dennis Hartley

The Seattle International Film Festival is in full swing, so this week I’m continuing to share film reviews. SIFF is showing 410 films over 25 days. Navigating such an event is no easy task, even for a dedicated buff (ow, my ass). Yet, I trudge on (cue the world’s tiniest violin). Hopefully, some of these films will be coming soon to a theater near you…

Enormous: The Gorge Story (USA) – The Gorge is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the mall, but that’s just peanuts to the Gorge (with apologies to Douglas Adams). I refer to Washington State’s Columbia Gorge, 140 miles from Seattle. For music fans, the Gorge has become synonymous with memorable concert experiences. This amiable doc traces its transformation from a homemade stage built in the 80s to accommodate a wine-tasting to a now legendary music mecca. Employees, fans and artists (Dave Matthews, Mike McCready, Steve Miller, John Oates, Jason Mraz, et.al.) share favorite memories.

Rating: *** (Plays May 25 & 28)

Storm in My Heart (USA/Scotland) – Remember when some stoner discovered that if you sync up the “Dark Side of the Moon” album with The Wizard of Oz…magic happened? This is a similar concept. It’s tough to pigeonhole this “video essay” by obsessive cineaste and film maker Mark Cousins (The Story of Film, The Eyes of Orson Welles). I’d call it more of “an experiment”. Anyway, his premise: Actresses Susan Hayward and Lena Horne were born on the same day in Brooklyn. Both ended up with storied careers. However, as Horne was African-American and Hayward was white, their trajectories were decidedly different. Simultaneously running Horne’s 1943 musical Stormy Weather alongside Hayward’s 1953 film With a Song in My Heart, Cousins hopes viewers gain insight regarding racism in Hollywood. I tried, believe me. Aside from a few interestingly synchronous moments, I’m afraid that he did a complete flyover on me.

Rating: ** (North American Premiere; Plays May 28)

Emma Peeters (Belgium/Canada) – Maybe it’s coincidence, but what with the popularity of the HBO series Barry and this new black comedy from Belgian-American writer-director Nicole Palo, it appears acting class satires with dark undercurrents are now a thing. As she careens toward her 35th birthday, wannabe thespian Emma (Monia Chakri, in a winning performance) decides that she’s had it with failed auditions and slogging through a humiliating day job. She’s convinced herself that 35 is the “expiry” date for actresses anyway. So, she prepares for a major change…into the afterlife. Unexpectedly lightened by her decision, she cheerfully begins to check off her bucket list, giving away possessions, and making her own funeral arrangements. However, when she develops an unforeseen relationship with a lonely young funeral director, her future is uncertain, and the end may not be near. A funny-sad romantic romp in the vein of Harold and Maude.

Rating: *** (Plays May 28, 29, & 31)

The Hitch-Hiker (USA) – 46% of this year’s SIFF selections are by female directors, as are 56% of the 2019 competition films (ratios which should be industry-wide, not relegated to the festival circuit). As part of this emphasis, SIFF is presenting two restored gems from pioneering actor-director Ida Lupino. This 1953 film noir is not only a tough, taut nail-biter, but one of the first “killer on the road” thrillers (a precursor to The Hitcher, Freeway, Kalifornia, etc.). Lupino co-wrote the tight script with Collier Young. They adapted from a story by Daniel Mainwearing that was based on a real-life highway killer’s spree. Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy play buddies taking a road trip to Mexico for some fishing. When they pick a stranded motorist (veteran noir heavy William Talman), their trip turns into a nightmare Essentially a chamber piece, with excellent performances from the three leads (Talman is genuinely creepy and menacing).

Rating: ***½ (Special revival presentation; Plays May 29 only)

Eastern Memories (Finland) – Using excerpts from 100 year-old journals by Finnish linguist G.J. Ramstedt as a narrative, directors Niklas Kullstrom and Martti Kaartinen retrace his experiences in two countries. He was sent to Mongolia to study and compile a written record of the language, then was later assigned to a diplomatic post in Japan-where he studied the Korean language (I know-a little confusing). While his studies were primarily academic, his journals reflected a more subjective take on the geography and people of the respective countries. The directors juxtapose Ramstedt’s century-old musings with modern travelogues of the locations he wrote about. Despite the intriguing premise, the film is deadly dull in execution-not helped by dry and perfunctory narration.

Rating: ** (Plays May 29)

Miles Davis: The Birth of the Cool (USA) – Few artists are as synonymous with “cool” as innovative musician-arranger-band leader Miles Davis. That’s not to say he didn’t encounter some sour notes during his ascent to the pantheon of jazz (like unresolved issues from growing up in the shadow of domestic violence, and traumatic run-ins with racism-even at the height of fame). Sadly, as you learn while watching Stanley Nelson’s slick and engrossing documentary, much of the dissonance in Davis’ life journey was of his own making (substance abuse, his mercurial nature). Such is the dichotomy of genius.

Rating: **** (Plays May 29 & May 31)

Fantastic Planet (France) – Director Rene Laloux’s imaginative 1973 animated fantasy (originally La planete sauvage) is about a race of mini-humans called Oms, who live on a distant planet and have been enslaved (or viewed and treated as dangerous pests) for generations by big, brainy, blue aliens called the Draags. We follow the saga of Terr, an Om who has been adopted as a house pet by a Draag youngster. Equal parts Spartacus, Planet of the Apes, and that night in the dorm you took too many mushrooms, it’s at once unnerving and mind-blowing. SIFF is adding a unique twist: Seattle DJ “NicFit” will provide a live, “carefully curated soundtrack” of Flaming Lips tracks as accompaniment.

Rating: **** (Special event presentation; Plays May 30 only)

Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins (USA) – Janice Engel profiles the late, great political columnist and liberal icon Molly Ivins, who suffered no fools gladly on either side of the aisle. Engel digs beneath Ivins’ bigger-than-life public personae, revealing an individual who grew up in red state Texas as a shy outsider. Self-conscious about her physicality (towering over her classmates at 6 feet by age 12), she learned how to neutralize the inevitable teasing with her fierce intelligence and wit (I find interesting parallels with Janis Joplin’s formative Texas years). Her political awakening also came early (to the chagrin of her conservative oilman father). The archival clips of Ivins imparting her incomparable wit and wisdom are gold; although I was left wishing Engel had included more (and I am dying to know what Ivins would say about you-know-who).

Rating: ***½ (Plays May 31 & June 1)

The Legend of the Stardust Brothers (Japan) – Billed as “a lost gem of 1980s Japanese cinema”, this alleged cult film is an example of why some lost gems are perhaps best-left “lost” (you know…like Bilbo’s goddam ring). Then again, perhaps I wasn’t in the right mood (or under the influence of the right “enhancement”) to experience the sway it apparently holds over some midnight movie enthusiasts. Granted, there are moments of campy fun in this tale of a new wave duo’s rise and fall, but overall it’s a psychedelic train wreck. The original songs are gratingly awful…kind of a deal breaker for a musical.

Rating: ** (Special revival presentation; Plays May 31, June 2 & 3)

This is Not Berlin (Mexico) – Less Than Zero meets SLC Punk…in the ‘burbs of Mexico City. Set circa 1985, writer-director-musician Hari Sama’s semi-autobiographical drama is an ensemble piece reminiscent of the work of outsider filmmakers like Gregg Araki, Gus Van Sant and Larry Clark. The central character is 17 year-old Carlos (Xabiani Ponce de León), a shy and nerdy misfit who has an artistic (and sexual) awakening once taken under the wing of the owner of an avant-garde nightclub. Intense, uninhibited, and pulsating with energy throughout. Sama coaxes fearless performances from all the actors.

Rating: **** (Plays June 2 & 6)

Previous posts with related themes:

2019 SIFF Preview
More reviews at Den of Cinema
On Facebook
On Twitter

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Game of Jones

by digby

If you’re a Game of Thrones fan and you’re looking for some belly laughs, look no further:

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Maybe the Dems should try this approach

by digby

It’s honest:

WHYYY did I wait so long to watch this?? So happy to share with my American friends after it’s made the rounds here in the UK. pic.twitter.com/6Jfuu7uRcw— rob delaney (@robdelaney) May 25, 2019

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A showdown between Barr and the IC? I doubt it.

by digby

Natasha Bertrand at Politico reports:

President Donald Trump’s declassification order Thursday night has set up a showdown between his own Justice Department and the intelligence community that could trigger resignations and threaten the CIA’s ability to conduct its core business — managing secret intelligence and sources.

Trump’s order directed intelligence agencies to fully comply with Attorney General William Barr’s look at “surveillance activities” during the 2016 election — a probe that Trump’s allies see as a necessary check on government overreach but that critics lambaste as an attempt to create the impression of scandal. Numerous former intelligence officials called the move “unprecedented,” saying it grants the attorney general sweeping powers over the nation’s secrets, subverts the intelligence community and raises troubling legal questions.

“There’s nothing CIA or NSA, for example, guards more jealously than sources and methods,” said Larry Pfeiffer, a 32-year intelligence veteran who served as the chief of staff to CIA Director Michael Hayden. “It is not hyperbole to say that lives are at stake.”

“I doubt any of the [CIA directors] or [directors of national intelligence] that I worked with would have sat by silently if their president contemplated or made such a decision,” added Pfeiffer, who also served as senior director of the White House Situation Room.

It’s the latest chapter in Trump’s rocky relationship with his own intelligence community. During the election, Trump cast doubt on Russia’s role in hacking Hillary Clinton’s campaign. As president, Trump has publicly disagreed with his own intelligence agencies on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, the threat posed by the Islamic State, the situation in Afghanistan and whether the Saudi crown prince ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The two sides have usually papered over their differences, but national security veterans said this time might be different.

“I could see something of a showdown happening here, where the CIA says, ‘We’re not comfortable with the declassification of this material and we won’t provide it without the assurance that you won’t declassify it,’” said a former senior Justice Department official who served under both Trump and President Barack Obama, and requested anonymity to discuss the directive more freely. “They feel that these are their sources, their connections.” (more at the link…)

There was a time when I might have believed that. But we’ve seen that any intelligence and law enforcement employee who even expresses a suspicion that Trump and his henchmen might not be on the up and up are summarily dispatched and now they are talking about putting them in jail. There has been very little of that in recent days as a result. So, I don’t expect any of them to stand up to Barr who is clearly doing Trump’s bidding.

There are probably some different motives. Some are probably sincere Trump fans and would like to see him bring the hammer down on any liberal symps. Others are concerned for their careers and still others may believe that they will know when to make that move for the good of the country but it just isn’t the time.

Whatever the reason, I don’t expect anyone to stand up. Robert Mueller doesn’t want to testify publicly because he doesn’t want to play politics. Even he doesn’t see the seriousness of what’s happening so I can’t imagine that anyone in the IC would. Sure they’ll be unhappy about losing their sources, but they are keeping their powder dry for a time when it’s really important. And then it will be too late.

The whole point of Trump and Barr’s crusade to “investigate the investigators” is to shut these people down. I expect it will work.

The IC and the DOJ aren’t going to save the country from Trump and the reckless GOP. It’s up to the Democrats.

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A “legislative graveyard”

by digby

More than 120 bills passed by the House are awaiting action in the Senate.

But even the most common sense bills with broad support from one end of America to the other meet the same grim fate at the hands of @SenateMajLdr McConnell. https://t.co/4GrcfWY0u6— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 24, 2019

Unlike the House, the Senate isn’t bothering to pass legislation. Apparently, Mitch McConnell figures that legislation that the House won’t pass and trump won’t sign if they did isn’t something that will help him keep the Senate in 2020. Speaker Pelosi thinks otherwise and believes that the House should focus all its energy on passing such legislation rather than impeaching the president, apparently assuming that is the key to keeping the majority.

If the Dems keep the House and the GOP keeps the Senate I suppose they’ll both say they were proven right. But under the current polarized politics, unless a party wins the trifecta none of that matters.

The Democrats need to save the country and the one thing that matters more than anything else is getting the nuclear codes out of the hands of that criminal freak in the White House. Without that, we’re lost. We’re just lost.

Senators are growing increasingly frustrated as legislative activity has slowed to a crawl during the first half of the year.

The Senate voted on two bills Thursday, breaking a nearly two-month drought during which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has focused instead on judicial nominations, his top priority.

The lack of floor action has left lawmakers publicly complaining, even though the high-profile feuding between President Trump and congressional Democrats makes it highly unlikely that large-scale bipartisan legislation will succeed heading into the 2020 elections.

Tensions boiled over onto the Senate floor this week when Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) knocked the slow start to the new Congress, characterizing lawmakers as having done “nothing, zilch, zero, nada.”

“I’m not saying we haven’t done anything. We have confirmed some very important nominees to the Trump administration, long overdue,” Kennedy said. “I’m saying we need to do more.”

Asked how he felt about the pace of legislation in the Senate this year, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) shot back: “What legislation?”

“So it’s pretty slow, isn’t it?” he asked.

Before Thursday, when the chamber passed bills addressing robocalls and disaster relief, the Senate’s previous roll-call vote on legislation was April 1, when senators rejected disaster aid proposals. And the most recent bill passed via roll call was in mid-March, when senators voted for a resolution to nix Trump’s emergency declaration for the U.S.-Mexico border.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said the inability to get legislation through the Senate was “frustrating,” but he argued that major agenda-setting bills were difficult without unified control of Congress.

“I’m not sure what we can do about it except to wait to hopefully take back the House one day,” Rubio said.

Of the 17 bills that have been signed into law so far this year, only two were substantial enough to require roll-call votes in the Senate. Both measures — a government funding deal and a lands package — were holdovers from the previous Congress.

Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, acknowledged there were some frustrations within the caucus, which he described as being filled with “Type A” personalities, but said confirming nominees is a priority held by all Republican senators, who changed the rules to speed up most of Trump’s picks.

“Our members — these are people who are Type A personalities, in most cases, to get to the Senate — they want to get things done. We all do,” Thune said. “There’s stuff out there to do. And our members … appreciate the fact that we continue to process judges.”

McConnell, when asked about the chance for bipartisan deals, said Congress would likely be sending fewer bills to Trump’s desk in an era of divided government.

“The House will be sending us a lot of bills that we are not likely to take up. We’re probably going to be sending them a lot of bills that they’re not going to take up,” McConnell told reporters during a press conference earlier this year.

Senate Republicans aren’t the only ones who are publicly airing their grievances over the inability to get major bills moving.

Trump and White House officials have argued that House Democrats haven’t accomplished anything since they took over in January. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CNN on Thursday that Democrats have “yet to accomplish a single thing” and that Congress this year hasn’t passed legislation that will “change the course of the country.”

Her comments came after Trump walked out of a meeting Wednesday with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), throwing a curveball into the chances of reaching a deal on infrastructure or a budget caps agreement and complicating Trump’s goal of getting a new trade agreement through Congress.

Thune, asked about Sanders’s comments, added that the “reality you deal with is if you want to see something become law it’s going to be something that enjoys pretty broad bipartisan support.”

“I don’t know what she’s talking about in terms of big, consequential legislation. They haven’t been able to get their act together on what they want to propose in terms of infrastructure. I don’t think they have their own health care plan,” Thune said. “But we can kind of know what the traffic will bear in the Senate, and have a pretty good idea about what it will bear in the House.”

Republicans argue that there’s still time to increase the pace of legislation after a slow start to the year, which began amid a partial government shutdown that stretched on for a record 35 days. Before the Senate left town for the Memorial Day break, McConnell teed up a vote on a budget proposal from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), along with more nominations.

“I would expect the pace to pick up again — you have to reconstitute the committees, you have to start holding hearings, you have to draft the legislation,” Johnson said.

“The leader is definitely asking committee chairman, ‘bring me some bipartisan legislation,’” he added, referring to McConnell.

Republicans are defending 22 seats heading into the 2020 elections, compared to a dozen for Democrats. Two of those GOP seats — Colorado and Maine — are in states won by 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Democrats also view states like Arizona, Georgia, Iowa and North Carolina as potential pickups.

Asked how GOP senators could run on their record if the Senate wasn’t passing much legislation, Rubio responded by saying it was a “challenge.” He predicted that “we will pass uncontroversial, bipartisan pieces of legislation … so people can build records on that.”

Democrats, meanwhile, have rallied behind blasting McConnell for not moving more legislation, terming the Senate a “legislative graveyard.”

Schumer, in one of several instances where Democrats have dropped the phrase in recent weeks, pointed to a stalemate over the Violence Against Women Act as another example of how McConnell “has turned this chamber into a legislative graveyard.”

“Even the most commonsense bills with broad support from one end of America to the other that are passed by the House … meet the grim fate at the hands of the Senate’s self-proclaimed ‘grim reaper,’” Schumer said.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has accused McConnell of turning the Senate into a “very expensive lunch club,” added that Democrats should highlight McConnell’s refusal to move legislation on issues like health care or gun control as they make the case for Democratic control of the Senate.

“We got to get the Senate working again,” he said. “We’ve got to be debating health care. We’ve got to be debating guns. We’ve got to be debating immigration.”

Asked about the Senate’s legislative agenda so far this year, he said: “I mean, it’s nonexistent. I can’t remember the last time I voted on an amendment on the Senate floor.”

Mitch’s only job, in his mind, is to pack the courts and keep the majority. Even keeping Trump in the White House is only a lever to do those two things. Even when they had the majority, he didn’t care all that much about passing any legislation that wasn’t soley about reversing previous legislation. Republicans don’t win by bragging about their “achievements.” They win by stopping the Democrats from having any.

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Impeachable offense #376

by digby

The following ran through my mind as well. If it isn’t an abuse of power I don’t know what is. It actually defines the term:

Long before becoming president, Donald Trump called for the jailing of his adversaries. Aided by Attorney General William Barr, he may now actually be training the full force of federal law enforcement against his enemies, real or perceived. Unlike Richard Nixon, who acted in secret, Trump is corrupting the justice system openly and publicly.

The seriousness of such a presidential abuse of power, and its potential for undermining the constitutional order, could well surpass any of the crimes detailed in the Mueller Report. Indeed, the Congress long ago recognized that such misconduct can merit impeachment.

Trump’s desire to investigate the investigators who uncovered the Russian plot to elect him president has taken on a special urgency since the release of the Mueller Report, with Trump repeatedly accusing government officials of “treason,” and the White House declaring: “This whole thing was a TAKEDOWN ATTEMPT at the President of the United States.”

On Thursday night, after Trump had spent days excoriating the purportedly “treasonous” investigators by name, he announced he had granted Barr the “full and complete authority” to declassify documents relating to the Russia probe. The White House also stated that Trump had directed intelligence agencies to “quickly and fully” cooperate with the investigation into the investigation.

It’s reminiscent of Nixon’s secret scheme to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies,” as then-White House Counsel John Dean put it, by manipulating “grant availability, federal contract, litigation, prosecution, etc.” Nixon directed the IRS provide potentially damaging information against some of his enemies. Although the agency’s commissioner refused Nixon’s demand, the scheme became part of the impeachment case against Nixon, which accused him of illegally endeavoring “to obtain [information] from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens.”

While much of Nixon’s scheme was forestalled, Trump appears poised to effectuate his. Barr recently named Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham (best known for investigating the FBI’s corrupt relationship with Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger) to head up an inquiry into the “origins” of the Russia investigation. Unnamed government officials have attempted to minimize the significance of the inquiry by stating to the press that it does not currently entail the use of grand jury subpoenas, but that of course could change at any time—indeed, Senator Lindsey Graham is publicly demanding as much.

Barr, meanwhile, has become remarkably open about his intent to follow the president’s lead by making the investigators the focus of as much opprobrium as possible. In Senate testimony several weeks ago, Barr denied endorsing the president’s accusation that there was “improper surveillance”of the Trump campaign. More recently, however, he responded to a Fox News interviewer’s question whether he “smell[ed] a rat” at the FBI by stating: “I don’t know if I’d describe it as a rat. I would just say that the answers that I’m getting are not sufficient.” In the same interview, Barr emphasized that officials at the highest levels of the FBI and other agencies were involved, in a plain allusion to James Comey and the other former high-level law enforcement and intelligence officials that Trump has repeatedly excoriated.

Barr even opined that the evidence against Clinton was stronger than any potential evidence of wrongdoing by the president.

Trump’s initial target was Hillary Clinton.Trump implored Jeff Sessions (ultimately with some success) to reopen an investigation into unsubstantiated claims that she had improperly interfered in the sale of a uranium mining concern, Uranium One, to a Russian company as secretary of state. In November 2017, the New York Times’s called 10 former attorneys general, but only one responded to its question whether Sessions should accede to Trump’s loud demands: It was Barr, who said he saw no problem with the president training the sights of the Department of Justice on a political enemy, as long as it was “warrant[ed].” Barr even opined that the evidence against Clinton was stronger than any potential evidence of wrongdoing by the president, this despite the fact that the primary “evidence” for the Uranium One allegations came from a book sponsored by Steve Bannon.

Barr seemed unconcerned with the risk posed by a president employing the Justice Department as a mechanism for exacting revenge against a former electoral opponent. Indeed, Barr declared, the department would be “abdicating its responsibility” if it did not pursue Clinton as Trump desired. In a memorandum he later wrote to the DOJ officials overseeing Mueller, and shared with Trump’s defense team, before becoming attorney general, Barr asserted that there is “no limit” on the president’s authority to direct the course of law enforcement investigations, including those he is personally interested in.

In fact, Trump’s effort to undermine the legitimacy of the now-completed Russia investigation is part-and-parcel of Trump’s earlier efforts to limit and even terminate the investigation while it was ongoing, conduct that the Mueller Report identified as potential obstruction of justice, and that Trump (with Barr’s support) has asserted merely amounted to “fighting back.”

Barr suggested to the Times that there is just no problem with a president personally selecting who should or should not become the subjects of criminal investigations, as long as the facts “warrant” inquiries. But that entirely misses the point.

As the nation recognized during the Watergate era, if the president employs the apparatus of the federal government to single out and punish political or personal enemies by making them the focus of law enforcement investigations, the perception (and the reality) of fairness on which our justice system depends will be gravely endangered.

I think I have always found the weird bloodlust around the “lock her up” chants one of the most disturbing demonstrations of the Trump cult. The febrile energy freaks me out. I can see that if given the chance these people wouldn’t be any more civilized than the more primitive societies that stone or behead people. The president of the United States encouraging it is profoundly disturbing and should be condemned with as much institutional power as can be mustered. This is beyond mere political demagoguery. It’s mob boss behavior.

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