There he goes again:
It’s just who he is:
He has the mind of an 11 year old bully. And the sad dact is that tens of millions of our fellow citizens love this about him and want him to be president for 4 more years.
"what digby sez..."
Month: October 2020
It was stunning when the acting president complained to an Iowa audience the other day that Iowa flooding and crop losses got more press than his third Nobel nomination. Sen. Joni Ernst tried to one-up him in her debate Thursday night with Democrat Theresa Greenfield.
From the Des Moines Register:
The candidates were also asked for the break-even price of corn, in Greenfield’s case, and soybeans, in Ernst’s case.
“Well a bushel of corn is going for about $3.68, today, $3.69, and breakeven really just depends on the amount of debt someone has,” Greenfield said as moderator Ron Steele nodded and said “that’s correct.”
Ernst was then asked about the price of soybeans, but began her answer by talking about the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement and its impact on Iowa’s corn market. When Steele followed up, Ernst appeared to believe he had asked her about corn as well.
“I might have missed it, I don’t think you answered my question: What’s the breakeven price for soybeans in Iowa? You grew up on a farm, you should know this,” Steele said.
“I think you had asked about corn, and it depends on what the inputs are, but probably about $5.50,” Ernst said.
“Well, you’re a couple dollars off, I think here, because it’s $10.05, but we’ll move on to something else,” Steele said.
Greenfield’s RCP average is above average too.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
The first day of early voting in North Carolina went smoothly and briskly:
According to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, nearly 230,000 ballots were cast across the state as of 5:30 p.m.
The NCSBE says that number is more than it was back on the first day of early voting in 2016, when 166,000 ballots were cast statewide after that first day.
Thursday’s total is in addition to the nearly 553,000 absentee ballots returned through Thursday. This isn’t close to being over.
A close friend from Anderson, SC (hometown of the late Chadwick Boseman) experienced southern culture shock when he returned after several years of coaching track in the Bay area. Southern accents crashed against his ears so jarringly that he cracked up for weeks as he reassimilated and we repeated familiar phrases phonetically.
“Ahm ona git me a beer. Y’ont one?”
“Aw-aight.”
But with record early voting underway in many states, one of those tobacco-chewing coach-ism he heard might apply here. If you expect to win [spit!], you gotta want it. (In parts of the South, want sounds like won’t.)
As exciting as reports of record-shattering early vote totals might seem, remember: Republicans bat last. If they expect not to get out-scored in the bottom half of the last inning, Democrats had best run up a lead so high that in Little League the umpire would call the game. In Little League, it’s sometimes called the “mercy rule.” But politics is more like Cobra Kai: no mercy. Democrats’ opponents will show none.
Democrats need to keep putting points on the board all the way to the close of polls on Election Day. Really. You gotta want it.
Early voting was so intense here in 2008 that by Election Day there was virtually no one left to vote at my precinct who intended to. Between 3 p.m. and polls closing at 7:30 p.m., six voters showed up. It was like an episode of the Twilight Zone. Just me and the tumbleweeds outside in the street. In the end, Barack Obama won the state by 14,000 votes, 3,000 less than the margin delivered out of our county. That was close. Not Florida 2000 close. Not Roy Cooper 2016 close. But too close.
In 2020, too close won’t cut it.
New Democratic candidates are always buoyed by favorable-looking early voting numbers. Experienced ones know not to trust them.
Work your asses off.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Apparently, Trump really, really wants one of his followers to cause harm to Gretchen Whitmer:
President Donald Trump continued his attacks on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday, calling the Democratic lawmaker a “dictator” as authorities announced charges against a 14th suspect in the thwarted plot to kidnap her and violently overthrow the government.
“Michigan, she has to open up. [Whitmer] wants to be a dictator in Michigan and the people can’t stand her,” Trump said Thursday in a FOX Business interview. Blasting Whitmer’s COVID-19 policies, he insisted people “want to get back to work.”
This is what incited those terrorists to plot against her in the first place. Trump sent out the order to “Liberate Michigan” and “Liberate Virginia.” Whether these violent extremists took that as an order or whether it just gave them reassurance that their plans were sanctioned by the president I don’t know. But they knew they were on the same wavelength.
And, by the way, these particular terrorists may be in jail but there are whole lot more where that came from. And they aren’t going away if Trump is elected.
Look at your president bragging about sending in federal law enforcement to execute a suspect:
“They didn’t want to arrest him …” He always says the quiet part out loud.
The truth is that Trump has always made it very clear that he believes in summary execution. It’s fundamental to his worldview.
That’s him today, bragging about it. And if he does this now, just imagine what he’ll do in second term.
Biden continues to have an advantage with Black voters, Latinos, whites with a college degree, women, people who live in cities and suburbs, young voters and independents.
Notably, Biden is leading in this survey with white voters 51% to 47%. That is extraordinary. Trump won white voters in 2016 by 20 points, and no Democrat has won that high a share of white voters since Jimmy Carter in 1976, when the U.S. was far less racially diverse.
If Biden does, in fact, win that level with whites, it would indicate that a very large wave is building for Democrats up and down the ballot.
Trump’s strongest groups continue to be white evangelical Christians, rural voters and whites without college degrees. But Trump’s advantage among whites without a degree is down a net of 19 points from last month.
In September, Trump led among whites without a college degree 63% to 33%. That has significantly narrowed this month to a 54%-43% advantage for Trump. Trump won them 66% to 29% in 2016 over Hillary Clinton.
The one group the Biden campaign has to be concerned about is Latinos. Biden is leading only 55% to 37% with Latinos. Clinton won Latinos 66% to 28% in 2016.
Biden’s widened lead comes on the heels of Trump’s erratic first debate performance, the vice presidential debate and Trump’s contracting COVID-19. By a 53%-to-35% margin, likely voters say Biden and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, benefited more from the debates than Trump and Vice President Pence.
I hate to put too much stock in white people at this point. But the internals show a large erosion of Trump support among non-college educated white women and college educated white men. Maybe some people have finally wised up. He’s also doing poorly among seniors. Perhaps it’s because he’s trying to kill them but I can’t be sure …
Meanwhile, Biden is leading on the major issues of the day as well:
Biden has significant advantages among likely voters when it comes to handling the coronavirus pandemic and race relations, while voters are split on who’s best to handle the economy.
On the pandemic, likely voters say they prefer Biden to handle it by a 55%-to-41% margin. On race, it’s an even wider 56%-38% advantage for the former vice president.
On the economy, voters are split — 47% say they prefer Trump to handle the economy, while 48% say Biden. That’s slightly tighter than the 50%-46%edge for Trump on the economy last month. The economy had been one of Trump’s strengths, but since the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the economy, Trump’s ratings have suffered some.
I wish I understood why they think Trump is good on the economy but I’d have to say that it’s a result of decades of GOP propaganda combined with Trump’s relentless blarney about his “talents” as a businessman. But even on that he’s losing.
Nonetheless, it would be stupid to discount Trump’s chances. If he can get out a huge vote among supporters who didn’t vote last time — white non-college educated, rural voters, he could pull another inside straight in enough battle grounds to eke out a win. The people who like him really, really like him. It could happen.
This op-ed by a longtime US Attorney pretty much says it all:
After 36 years, I’m fleeing what was the U.S. Department of Justice — where I proudly served 19 different attorneys general and six different presidents. For the last three-plus decades, I have respected our leadership regardless of whether we were led by a Republican or a Democrat. I always believed the department’s past leaders were dedicated to the rule of law and the guiding principle that justice is blind. That is a bygone era, but it should not be forgotten.
Maybe I should’ve seen this coming, but like many of my colleagues, I fervently hoped that Attorney General William Barr’s preemptive misrepresentation of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was an honest mistake or a solitary misstep — rather than a deliberate attempt to conceal potential presidential misconduct. After all, Barr has never actually investigated, charged or tried a case. He’s a well-trained bureaucrat but has no actual experience as a prosecutor.
Unfortunately, over the last year, Barr’s resentment toward rule-of-law prosecutors became increasingly difficult to ignore, as did his slavish obedience to Donald Trump’s will in his selective meddling with the criminal justice system in the Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Roger Stone cases. In each of these cases, Barr overruled career prosecutors in order to assist the president’s associates and/or friends, who potentially harbor incriminating information. This career bureaucrat seems determined to turn our democracy into an autocracy.
There is no other honest explanation for Barr’s parroting of the president’s wild and unsupported conspiracy theories regarding mail-in ballots (which have been contradicted by the president’s handpicked FBI director) and his support for the president’s sacking of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office used the thinnest of veils to postpone charging the president in a criminal investigation along with Michael Cohen (who pled guilty and directly implicated the president). It took federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein to stop Barr’s unprecedented “retaliatory” demands to silence the president’s former lawyer as a condition for staying out of jail.
Similarly, it took federal Judge Reggie Walton (who sharply criticized Barr for a “lack of candor”) to at least temporarily stop Barr from dismissing all charges against Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser, who admitted lying to the FBI about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador. Rather than representing the interests of the American public, Barr chooses to act as Trump’s lap dog.
More recently, Barr directed federal officers to use tear gas in Lafayette Park to quell what were, at that time, peaceful protesters. Barr’s assertion the square was not cleared due to the president’s desire for a Bible-carrying photo op is laughable. It is certainly a case that Barr would lose before a jury (again, though, this may not be clear to him due to his unfamiliarity with jury trials).
Barr also turned his back on the rule of law by supporting the president’s selective use of federal troops to assault citizens protesting the killing of George Floyd in Portland, Oregon. Yet he stood silently by when armed right-wing protesters stormed the Michigan state Capitol building to protest the Democratic governor’s public health orders.
Barr’s longest-running politicization of the Justice Department is the Durham investigation — a quixotic pursuit designed to attack the president’s political rivals. Confirming his scorn for honest apolitical prosecutors, Barr refers to some as “headhunters” who pursue “ill-conceived charges against prominent political figures.” It does not appear to be a coincidence that all of these prominent political figures happen to be friends of the president. However, if I’m a headhunter because I charged and convicted disgraced local House members Duncan D. Hunter and Randy “Duke” Cunningham, so be it. It’s a badge that I will wear with honor.
I remained in government service this past year at least partly because I was concerned that the department would interfere with the Hunter prosecution in my absence. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues without such a rationale appear to have started abandoning Barr’s ship. Equally troubling, highly qualified lawyers appear to be unwilling to apply to be federal prosecutors while Barr remains at the helm. Yet, as I leave government service, I take great comfort in the fact that the career people who remain in the Department of Justice are firmly committed to the rule of law, and are some of the most dedicated, ethical and industrious individuals we have in government. At times like these, I take heart in knowing that they are all committed to preserving and rebuilding the Department of Justice that I was privileged to serve.
It’s nice that he thinks so. But the DOJ is still going to have to be fumigated if the Democrats win. It’s impossible to imagine anyone ever having the slightest trust in the justice system again unless there is a full reckoning with what has happened during Trump’s reign. And it didn’t start off in a good place to begin with.
Update — from the “no good deed goes unpunished”files:
President Trump publicly expressed dissatisfaction with Attorney General William Barr and refused to say whether he would keep him if he wins a second term following Barr’s failure to make public any evidence of the widespread wrongdoing by his Democratic opponents that Trump has long alleged.
Asked in a Newsmax interview Wednesday whether he would keep Barr on if he plans to keep Barr if he wins a second term, Trump said he “can’t comment on that” because, “It’s too early.”
Trump aired his grievances about Barr, however, telling Newsmax reporter Greg Kelly he’s “not happy with all of the evidence I have,” reiterating that he’s “not happy” with Barr.
The comments come a day after the Washington Post reported U.S. Attorney John Bash, appointed by Barr to look into Trump’s long-time allegations that the Obama administration improperly “unmasked” the names of his allies redacted in intelligence reports, found no wrongdoing and brought no criminal charges.
Trump – who had called the list of Obama officials who requested the unmasking a “massive thing” and the “biggest thing since Watergate” – called Bash’s conclusions “ridiculous” and a “disgrace,” complaining, “they actually said no indictments before the election.”
Trump explicitly urged Barr earlier this month to indict former President Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden – his Democratic opponent – for “the greatest political crime in the history of our country,” adding, “we’re going to get little satisfaction unless I win.”
If Barr helps him out with this little election problem, I’m sure it will all be fine.
Once the Supreme Court gets its first (but certainly not its last) Handmaid, I give us ten years until we turn into Poland.
Then again, ten years may be optimistic:
In little over a year, hundreds of regions across Poland — covering about a third of the country, and more than 10 million citizens — have transformed themselves, overnight, into so-called “LGBT-free zones.”
Duzniak, left, and Głowacka hope to marry in Poland, but the country currently prohibits any kind of formal same-sex unions.
These areas, where opposition to LGBT “ideology” is symbolically written into law at state and local levels, have put Poland on a collision course with the European Union and forced sister cities, allies and watchdogs across the continent to recoil in condemnation. Local laws have been contested, and some communities that introduced such legislation have seen their EU funding blocked.
But the impact is felt most painfully — and daily — by the gay, lesbian and transgender Poles who live in towns that would prefer they simply weren’t there.
Poland’s leaders have been reading up furiously on Nazi extermination strategies. This is exactly how it began for the Jews:
“The zones themselves don’t have any legal power, they’re mostly symbolic,” he notes. No signs go up overnight; no businesses become immediately empowered to refuse custom. “(But) it encourages the opposite-minded people to speak out again us, and be more active.”
Oh, and just in case you think this is just a few towns run by a handful of rightwing Trumpian-style nut cases, here’s a map that demonstrates how far the open display of hatred and bigotry has spread in Poland:
I think Lawrence O’Donnell has a good point there. The COVID relief is not just a matter of splitting the difference between Mnuchin and pelosi and settling on 2 billion. It’s also about what they want to spend the money on. If they want to give 1.5 billion to rich people and insist on eliminating all liability for meat packing plants that knowingly infect their workers, is it really a good deal? And more importantly, when Mitch is sitting there insisting that he will only spend 500 billion what are the chances of getting this through the senate? He’s no longer playing on Trump’s team. He’s on his own team.
And then there’s this bozo:
It’s not just about the numbers.
It’s not much of one and I do think they could have come up with something more imaginative than “emails found on a laptop” dropping in mid-October. They really are losing their touch. And if this piece by David Corn is right, it’s so obvious that it’s almost as if the Russian government is trolling the US:
A newly discovered laptop, the FBI, a trove of emails, October, a presidential election—it sounds familiar. Especially when you add in a Russian disinformation campaign. On Wednesday, the New York Post released what it hailed as a bombshell: an unidentified computer repair store owner in Delaware had come to possess a laptop that contained Hunter Biden emails (and purportedly a sex tape), the hard drive and computer was seized by the FBI, the store owner at some point passed a copy of the hard drive to Rudy Giuliani, and one of the emails suggested that Hunter, who served on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, may have in 2015 introduced a Burisma official to his dad, Vice President Joe Biden. The story depicts this as a big scandal, and Guiliani tweeted, “Much more to come.”
But the key point of the article was predicated on false information that Giuliani has been spreading for a long time—and that appears to be linked to a Russian disinformation operation that the Post neglected to note in its article. That is, the Post piece, based on an unproven smear, is in sync with Moscow’s ongoing effort to influence the 2020 election to help President Donald Trump retain power. (The FBI and other parts of the US intelligence community have stated that Vladimir Putin is once again attacking the US political system to boost Trump.) And this story presents a challenge to the American media: how to report on an orchestrated campaign to affect the election that relies on disinformation, salacious and sensational material, and the revival of allegations that have already been debunked.
The bad faith animating the Post story is demonstrated by its open embrace—in the first sentence—of a demonstrably false narrative and by its failure to report Giuliani’s association with a Russian intelligence agent who the Department of Treasury has accused of interfering in the 2020 election.
The article begins: “Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.” The claim that Biden forced the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect Burisma has been the centerpiece of Giuliani’s long-running, Fox-hyped effort (on behalf of his client Donald Trump) to dig up dirt on Biden in the former Soviet republic.
Biden in 2016 did push for the firing of this prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, but there is no indication this was done to assist Burisma. In fact, there is a boatload of evidence that Shokin was canned because of his own corruption. There was no active investigation of Burisma at the time of his dismissal. (The absence of such a probe was even cited at the time as one sign of Shokin’s malfeasance)
And as has been widely documented, Biden’s demand that Shokin be dumped was part of an international effort to pressure Ukraine’s government to clean itself up in order to receive financial assistance. (Several Republican senators also called for Shokin’s removal.) Yet Trump and others have falsely claimed that Biden nefariously bounced Shokin to cover up supposed Burisma misdeeds.
The Post repeating this baseless accusation is an act of propaganda—and the foundation for the article. The email the tabloid touts as big news suggests that in 2015 Hunter introduced a Burisma board member to his dad. The newspaper implies that this was somehow connected to Biden urging Shokin’s dismissal the following year. If there was nothing untoward about Biden pressing the Ukrainian government to replace Shokin, there certainly isn’t anything necessarily scandalous about Biden having met with the board member.
Moreover, the 2015 email to Hunter—which simply says, “thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father”—discloses nothing about any conversation the board member might have had with the vice president. It’s not even confirmed that this meeting occurred. (The Biden campaign issued a statement saying it had reviewed Joe Biden’s schedule and no such meeting “ever took place.”)
This is just nuts.
Meanwhile, here in the real world, we just found out today about yet another investigation into Trump’s nefarious financial self-dealing that has gone without prosecution because Trump and his henchmen stonewalled his financials. CNN reports
For more than three years, federal prosecutors investigated whether money flowing through an Egyptian state-owned bank could have backed millions of dollars Donald Trump donated to his own campaign days before he won the 2016 election, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.
The investigation, which both predated and outlasted special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, examined whether there was an illegal foreign campaign contribution. It represents one of the most prolonged efforts by federal investigators to understand the President’s foreign financial ties, and became a significant but hidden part of the special counsel’s pursuits.
The investigation was kept so secret that at one point investigators locked down an entire floor of a federal courthouse in Washington, DC, so Mueller’s team could fight for the Egyptian bank’s records in closed-door court proceedings following a grand jury subpoena. The probe, which closed this summer with no charges filed, has never before been described publicly.
Prosecutors suspected there could be a link between the Egyptian bank and Trump’s campaign contribution, according to several of the sources, but they could never prove a connection.
It’s not clear that investigators ever had concrete evidence of a relevant bank transfer from the Egyptian bank. But multiple sources said there was sufficient information to justify the subpoena and keep the criminal campaign finance investigation open after the Mueller probe ended.
CNN learned of the Egypt investigation from more than a dozen sources familiar with the effort, as well as through hints in public records, including newly released court documents and Mueller witness interview summaries, called 302s, that CNN and Buzzfeed obtained through lawsuits.
In a court filing last month, the Justice Department confirmed that when the special counsel’s office shut down in 2019, Mueller transferred an ongoing foreign campaign contribution investigation to prosecutors in Washington. Some of CNN’s sources have confirmed that the case, which Mueller cryptically called a “foreign campaign contribution” probe, was in fact the Egypt investigation.
The probe was confirmed this week by a Justice Department senior official who responded to CNN’s queries: “The case was first looked at by the Special Counsel investigators who failed to bring a case, and then it was looked at by the US attorney’s office, and career prosecutors in the national security section, who also were unable to bring a case. Based upon the recommendations of both the FBI and those career prosecutors, [Barr crony] Michael Sherwin, the acting US attorney, formally closed the case in July.”
Part of what drew investigators’ initial interest in the matter was intelligence, including from an informant, that suggested there could have been money from an Egyptian bank that ended up backing Trump’s last-minute injection of $10 million into his 2016 campaign, according to two of the sources. Among the chief questions prosecutors sought to answer and apparently never did was whether Trump was supported by or was indebted to a foreign power.
The investigation even went as far as the US Supreme Court, the only time during the two-year Mueller investigation a dispute went to the high court. The justices ultimately declined to hear the case.Yet neither the special counsel’s office, nor prosecutors who carried on the case after Mueller, got a complete picture of the President’s financial entanglements. Prosecutors in Washington even proposed subpoenaing financial records tied to Trump, before top officials finally concluded this summer they had reached a dead end, the sources said.
Trump’s finances have been impenetrable largely because of cowardice on the part of prosecutors and the reasonable suspicion that his Supreme Court will protect him no matter what he does. Apparently, this criminal is truly above the law. I wonder if it will last if he is out of office.
By the way, if you followed the Mueller probe closely I’d urge you to read this CNN piece. It explains a whole bunch of mysteries that were never resolved. It’s fascinating.