Month: December 2020

First tweet to greet me this morning (from DocDawg of Daily Kos):

On the bright side, trump's orgy of perp-pardons is his psycho way of conceding the election's result.

— EQV Analytics 🇺🇦 (@AnalyticsEqv) December 24, 2020

Next order of Christmas Eve business: were there more pardons as I slept? (Checks Donald Trump’s Twitter feed.)

Nope. Just more lunatic chatter about snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Did you know Communists took over America? Did you know you are one of them? Did you know Vice President Mike Pence will not “receive” electoral vote reports from “six fraudulently certified States“? (Does Pence know?) Not to mention Trump issuing threats to attack Iran.

Trump himself is too busy golfing in Florida to fight for the $2,000 per person covid lifeline he just demanded from Congress, and he is too busy to pass the defense authorization bill. But he is not too busy to threaten to start a war from his tee box.

“Complete clusterf—,” a top Republican Hill aide told Politico, meaning the aborted legislation.

What Trump has found time for is granting pardons and commutations to, among others, four Blackwater mercenaries who massacred civilians, three corrupt former Republican congressmen, and two former Border Patrol agents who shot fleeing suspects. Among the 26 partridges and pear trees in Wednesday’s tally are longtime Trump ally Roger Stone, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and Charles Kushner, father to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared.

Foreign agent and former sometime national security adviser Mike Flynn got a pardon. So did “coffee boy” George Papadopoulos, and more. The Washington Post lists the pardons Trump has issued since the November election.

Among the lower-profile pardons: one for Stephanie Mohr, a former Maryland police officer. Mohr was convicted for setting her K-9 partner on an unarmed homeless man who had surrendered to police during a burglary stakeout. Ricardo G. Mendez, a Mexican national, was not a suspect. He and another man had been sleeping on the roof of a printing shop in Takoma Park. She served ten years for a felony civil rights felony. The dog “bit a chunk out of the man’s leg.”

The New York Times Editorial Board believes Trump “has made a mockery of mercy, doling out clemency to some of the most deplorable people in the country, an alarming number of whom happen to be his friends, while ignoring tens of thousands of more deserving applicants.” Trump has pardoned “a rogues’ gallery of wrongdoers who shouldn’t have been on anyone’s mercy list.”

But of course he would. Immediate family members are next, we suspect.

The process needs review and reform, the Board suggests, and the incoming Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration should do so: institute a clemency board, set clear, consistent standards, etc. Biden could undo some of the damage inflicted by harsh, criminal-sentencing standards he himself helped institute as a senator:

He can’t undo the damage these federal laws have inflicted, but he can begin to repair it, and his own legacy on this issue, by reforming the pardon power from the ground up.

Until Biden takes the oath of office, Trump will continue to lay waste to the government he misled using the the powers he has misused for the last four years. As with the last Republican administration replaced by a Democratic one, there is a cleanup on aisle everywhere waiting.

“The coal industry is back,” Trump told miners in Charleston, W.Va. in 2018. And plenty enough lumps of it for the stockings of every member of the incoming Biden administration.

It’s Happy Hollandaise time here at Hullabaloo. If you’d like to drop a little something in the old Christmas stocking you can do so here:

Uhm, don’t look now but there’s something happening here. What it is isn’t exactly clear.

But it’s not good:

Rosemary Vrablic, a managing director and senior banker in Deutsche Bank’s wealth management division, has resigned, effective Dec. 31, Vrablic and Deutsche Bank said Tuesday. Vrablic became President Trump’s private banker at the German lender in 2011, at a time when Trump was having difficulties borrowing money due to his history of defaulting on loans. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, already a client of Vrablic’s, introduced her to Trump.

“The reasons for Ms. Vrablic’s abrupt resignation were not clear,” The New York Times reports. But Deutsche Bank in August opened an internal investigation into a real estate deal in which Vrablic and a longtime colleague at the bank, Dominic Scalzi, invested in an apartment building partly owned by Kushner. Scalzi is also resigning at the end of the year.

The status of the internal review is unclear, the Times reports. But the relationship between Trump and Deutsche Bank is the subject of congressional, civil, and criminal investigations, including a criminal inquiry by the Manhattan district attorney. Vrablic is not among the handful of Deutsche Bank employees questioned by New York investigators yet, but her lawyer told CNN that “Ms. Vrablic is committed to cooperating with the authorities if asked.”-

Deutsche Bank has been exploring how it can end its heavily scrutinized relationship with Trump, Reuters reports. But for Trump, his “key contacts at his biggest financial backer are leaving at a perilous time for the departing president,” the Times reports. “He owes Deutsche Bank about $330 million, and the loans come due in 2023 and 2024. Mr. Trump provided a personal guarantee to get the loans, meaning that if he fails to pay them back, the bank can pursue his personal assets.”

Both the Manhattan District Attorney and the New York AG are investigating the Trump organization. It’s possible the SDNY or maybe the SEC or the IRS are on something as well. And as the article says he owes a boatload of money.

Keep your eye out for developments on this.l You can be sure that Trump is petrified.

It’s Happy Hollandaise time. If you’re of a mind to drop something in the old Hullabaloo Christmas stocking, you can do so below.

cheers,
digby

The president just vetoed a defense bill that included a major, long overdue pay raise for our men and women in uniform. Kelly Loeffler needs to say today that she will override his veto and support this pay raise for our troops. https://t.co/a2aTmGV1mY

— Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) December 23, 2020

Kelly and Dave are in a bit of a pickle here. Because Republican voters are all in with Trump.

Republican Trump voters are more likely to identify with the president than their political party, a new survey finds.

GOP voters remain far likelier to align themselves with President Donald Trump than they are to side with other Republicans, a new HuffPost/YouGov survey shows.

In the case of a disagreement between Trump and Republicans in Congress, 52% of Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters say they’d be more likely to support Trump, according to the poll, conducted Dec. 15 through Sunday. Only 15% say they would side with the GOP legislators, with the rest saying they’d back neither or that they’re not sure.

Similarly, 62% say they would back Trump over their own representative, and just 14% say they would support the latter.

The results reflect, at most, a modest erosion in Trump’s base support since he lost his bid for reelection. In an August HuffPost/YouGov survey, 61% of GOP voters said they would back Trump over congressional Republicans, and about two-thirds had said that they’d back him over their district’s representative.

The questions are broad hypotheticals, designed to gauge levels of intraparty loyalty rather than precise reactions to any particular issue. But such a disagreement is currently brewing: On Tuesday, Trump threatened to veto the coronavirus relief bill passed by Congress, calling for an increase in the size of direct stimulus checks ― something Democratic legislators have also supported.

Trump also lashed out against GOP legislators, including South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who shot down the idea that Republicans in the Senate could challenge Trump’s electoral loss.

“Republicans in the Senate so quickly forget,” Trump tweeted. “Right now they would be down 8 seats without my backing them in the last Election.”

Just 18% of Republican and Republican-leaning independents say they believe that almost all congressional Republicans support Trump, down from 27% who said the same in August. A 65% majority of those voters say most congressional Republicans back the outgoing president. That’s down from 78% in the summer, but still considerably above what it was in 2017, when only about half of Trump’s voters thought he had the support of most party legislators.

A 42% plurality of Republican and Republican-leaning independents who voted for Trump in this year’s presidential election say they consider themselves more supporters of Trump than of the Republican Party. Just 21% feel that they are more supporters of the party, with another 31% saying they are supporters of both.

Hating on RINOs is nothing new. In fact, it’s been a surefire money maker for conservative movement types for decades and it probably will be again. But they are going to have to give Trumpie a a taste. A big one. It’s his party now.

I’ve always been flummoxed as to why anyone would admire a wealthy, privileged, powerful white man who whines and blubbers more than a 3 year old. It just escapes me. But now that he has turned himself from a presidential candidate who lost an election — something happens every four years to someone — into the biggers sore loser in world history, I find it completely inexplicable. Who likes that?

Loeffler and Perdue are between a rock and a hard place. They were bragging about voting for the COVID relief bill just yesterday. Will they change their minds now that Dear Leader has weighed in? And can they afford to lose any Republican voters over this?

Trump doesn’t have a plan. He’s just flailing around trying to figure out a way to change the reality that he’s the biggest sore loser in history. But there are possible ramifications for the GOP in doing this. Not that he cares. But they do.

It’s Happy Hollandaise time. If you’re of a mind to drop something in the old Hullabaloo Christmas stocking, you can do so below.

cheers,
digby

There’s been a lot of discussion about what to do it Trump refuses to leave. In the beginning we all laughed and laughed at the prospect of Trump being frog-marched down the stairs, hahaha. But now? It’s starting to seem like there might be something to it:

If there are any checklists or plans, procedures, or guidelines for the Secret Service to follow in the event of an autogolpe—a crisis in which a sitting president refuses to transfer power—a half-dozen former officials privy to the government’s most sensitive contingency plans aren’t aware of them.

None would speak for the record, owing to both the secrecy of the plans and to the sensitivity of the moment: They don’t want to encourage President Donald Trump to cross a line that authorities haven’t conceived of.

The Daily Beast pressed these officials to run through scenarios on the grounds that Trump has made a sport of turning the inconceivable into the how the hell did that just happen?

These officials, who include leaders of Secret Service presidential details, agency heads, and military planners, see two distinct issues.

One is: Will there be a question about who the president really is? The other: What happens if, in a fit of pique, the former president simply will not vacate the seat of American government.“I’d have a conversation with the chief of staff, and then the family, Ivanka, and the other kids, and say, it’s going to be your job to make sure he’s gone.”— former senior Secret Service official

The first question is easy to answer. After the certification of the Electoral College on Jan. 6, the White House Military Office will prepare a briefing for President-elect Joe Biden on the contents of the president’s emergency satchel, often known as “the football,” with a secure satellite phone and laminated nuclear-war option guide inside. They will accept, from the National Security Agency, a set of presidential authentication cards, known as biscuits, that will be active the moment Biden is sworn in. Each has two columns of letters and numbers on it, and are used by the Pentagon emergency-action controllers to positively identify the president.

If past is prologue, Biden will receive the procedural briefing on Jan. 19 and a military aide will be assigned to him immediately, hours before the inauguration. (As vice president, he received similar briefings and the process hasn’t changed, according to officials.)

President Trump’s nuclear authentication card won’t work after the swearing-in. So far as the U.S. military is concerned, it doesn’t matter where the president is; billions of dollars have been spent to ensure the commander-in-chief can execute a war plan from anywhere on earth, even if he can’t immediately occupy the White House. There will be no ambiguity, these officials said, even if Trump were to try something extraordinary. The Pentagon’s command and control centers would not accept his orders.

What if Trump won’t go?

Well, there seems to be only one possibility:

Former senior government agency heads and Secret Service detail leaders pushed to think through this scenario offered several plausible solutions. “I think I’d have a conversation with the chief of staff, and then the family, Ivanka and the other kids and say, ‘It’s going to be your job to make sure he’s gone,’” a former senior Secret Service official said.

Another possibility: “When the staff leaves on January 19, don’t let them back into the complex the next day. He can’t do anything without his staff.”

An isolated president, in other words, would be more susceptible to just throwing in the towel.

“I really think it would be up the Republican Party if he were to try something like that,” a second former official said. “The Service and the military would just not want to get involved. It’s not our role.” (Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said there is “zero” role for troops to play in the election or its aftermath.)

Oh my God.

If we are counting on Republicans we have a big problem. YUGE. Honestly, I don’t think this will happen. He’s on his way to Mar-a-lago today and there’s a much greater chance that he will never return than that he won’t leave on January 20th.

But if this did happen, — and he’s acting completely crazy now — apparently, the only ones who can stop him are his own cult. WTF?

It’s Happy Hollandaise time. If you’re of a mind to drop something in the old Hullabaloo Christmas stocking, you can do so below.

cheers,
digby

Thanks again for all your kind contributions to our Hullabaloo Holiday! I am so grateful that so many of you stop by to read us every day and support what we do.

The gun issue is one aspect of the culture war that makes me see red. Why in the world should wingnuts be allowed to carry guns inside a secure building with armed guards all around it? It’s not like they need it for self-defense. It’s a ridiculous, uncivilized display of intimidation that has no place in any government building, much less the US Congress.

Several incoming House freshmen have inquired about carrying guns into the Capitol, leading a board overseeing congressional security to rethink a regulation banning members from packing heat under the dome, a House aide with direct knowledge of the board review told Axios.

Why it matters: Some Democratic members say expanded gun carrying on Capitol Hill would be a “provocation” in light of the current political climate. Some Republicans consider it an expression of a citizen’s Second Amendment rights.

The matter will be reviewed by the Capitol Police Board, which consists of the sergeant-at-arms of the House, the sergeant-at-arms and doorkeeper of the Senate, and the Architect of the Capitol, said the House aide. The chief of the Capitol Police also serves on the board.

“The Architect of the Capitol and the Senate sergeant-at-arms are gonna do whatever [Mitch] McConnell wants,” another aide to a top Democratic lawmaker told Axios.

The backstory: The District of Columbia has some of the nation’s strictest gun laws but the Capitol complex is exempt since it’s on federal land. That allows lawmakers to set their own rules.

Members can carry guns into the House and Senate office buildings surrounding the Capitol building.

There’s a ban on carrying them into the House and Senate chambers, the Speaker’s Lobby just off the House floor, as well as other rooms around either chamber, according to a Capitol Police Board document from 1967.

That said, there’s no way to tell if a member violates the rules because they’re allowed to walk around metal detectors when they enter the Capitol. It’s also an open question about whether they can legally carry guns in the Rotunda and other public areas of the building.

Congress recently spent $600 million on a new Capitol Visitors Center, in part to expand the public security perimeter around the House and Senate chambers after a gunman rushed into the building in 1998 and killed two police officers.

Members can bypass all that with their own entrances and wave-through privileges.

In other words, they just want to show off their big, shiny guns in public. It’s disgusting. (I wrote this piece about open carry back in 2014 and it broke the internet for a day or two.)

I suspect the gun issue is going to come back again in a big way soon. Mass shootings seem to come in waves, just like terrorist attacks. And we may have some right wing violence coming our way if they continue to be ramp up their rage.

The good news is that the NRA is completely unraveling which means their most effective propaganda machine is no longer operative. But activism on this issue is going to continue regardless and it’s getting more and more radical like everything else on that side of the political divide. These new politicians are going to be especially confrontational and provocative because that’s just who they are.

I think we all have particular issues that we feel particularly passionate about. This is one for me. The idea that we simply must allow people to carry loaded guns around because of some poorly drafted amendment still boggles my mind. Remember, it was only in 2008 that the Supreme Court recognized an individual right to bear arms, and even some of the conservatives on the court recognized at the time that the state had a right to regulate them.

People using guns in self-defense does happen, but the carnage from gun violence, suicide and accidents far outnumbers those incidents. It’s just completely illogical to me that we can’t seem to find some sort of accommodation on this issue. I don’t think there are very many gun control advocates who are arguing for banning all guns. And yet the gun rights fanatics are insisting on total, unfettered rights to carry all guns, including semi-automatic weapons everywhere.

Anyway, this is going to continue to be a fight. Luckily, the mass shootings we had come to expect every few months has taken a break for the moment (perhaps because of the pandemic.) But the issue isn’t going away.

There are many issues we’ll be covering here over the next year which may have gotten short shrift during he Trump circus. He overwhelmed everything. But we are probably going to re-establish at least some form of politics that addresses real issues that effect people lives, like gun violence, economics, health care, immigration etc and we’ll be here to try to help you sort out the players and their positions as we work through it. None of us are “my team right or wrong” types, so we’ll be tough on the Democrats when they deserve it. And needless to say, we’ll be watching the Republicans like hawks.

If you’d like to help us do that by contributing to our Hullabaloo fundraiser this year, I would be most appreciative. It means the world to me.

Happy Hollandaise, everyone!

cheers,
digby

This year cannot end soon enough:

This is the deadliest year in U.S. history, with deaths expected to top 3 million for the first time — due mainly to the coronavirus pandemic.

Final mortality data for this year will not be available for months. But preliminary numbers suggest that the United States is on track to see more than 3.2 million deaths this year, or at least 400,000 more than in 2019.

U.S. deaths increase most years, so some annual rise in fatalities is expected. But the 2020 numbers amount to a jump of about 15%, and could go higher once all the deaths from this month are counted

That would mark the largest single-year percentage leap since 1918, when tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers died in World War I and hundreds of thousands of Americans died in a flu pandemic. Deaths rose 46% that year, compared with 1917.

COVID-19 has killed more than 318,000 Americans and counting. Before it came along, there was reason to be hopeful about U.S. death trends.

The nation’s overall mortality rate fell a bit in 2019, due to reductions in heart disease and cancer deaths. And life expectancy inched up — by several weeks — for the second straight year, according to death certificate data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But life expectancy for 2020 could end up dropping as much as three full years, said Robert Anderson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The way things are going, I’m sorry to say that the first few months of 2021 are going to be even worse. An awful lot of people have just decided to say “fuck it, I’m ignoring this thing” amd many of them are asymptomatic and are spreading it all over the place. It’s just a nightmare.

If you didn’t happen to see the recent CNN Special Report on the 1918 pandemic, it’s really worth watching. You can see it here. Let’s just say we haven’t learned much in the last 100 years. Sure the science is much improved. But the public is just as skeptical and uncooperative. I suspect that people will refuse to take these things seriously until we get one of those “Contagion” type of pandemic where people just drop dead by the millions. We don’t seem to be able to grasp the idea that it’s not just about whether we personally want to take the risk, but that we are capable of giving it to other people who are susceptible or have no choice. It’s really a moral question. And a whole lot of people have failed, I’m afraid.

It’s Happy Hollandaise time. If you’re of a mind to drop something in the old Hullabaloo Christmas stocking, you can do so below.

cheers,
digby

One of the more haunting images from “The Final Days,” the sequel to Woodward and Bernstein’s “All the President’s Men,” is that of Richard Nixon wandering drunkenly through the White House giving speeches to the portraits of the previous presidents as Watergate was unraveling and he realized he was about to endure the worst humiliation of his life. In a meeting with some congressman, at one point, he said, “I can go in my office and pick up a telephone and in 25 minutes millions of people will be dead,” prompting California Senator Alan Cranston to warn Defense Secretary James Schlesinger about “the need for keeping a berserk president from plunging us into a holocaust.”

Schlesinger went on to issue an order that if the president gave any nuclear launch order, military commanders should check with either him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger before executing them, which is a serious departure from the normal protocol requiring an order from the Commander in Chief to launch immediately. Luckily, Nixon just moped around the White House for a while until he was finally given the heave-ho by members of Congress.

Looking back on it, what we thought of as a frightening, dangerous episode now looks like a staid and dignified affair compared to what’s going on in Donald Trump’s final days. We can only wish that Trump was just crying into a glass of scotch and asking Henry Kissinger to get down on his knees and pray for him as Nixon did. Instead, he seems to be having a very public nervous breakdown. Since the election, he’s fired the civilian leadership at the Pentagon and replaced them with henchmen and sycophants, apparently setting of serious concern among the top brass.

Axios reported on Tuesday that he has become so frustrated that he’s even starting to turn on his most trusted accomplices, including Vice President Mike Pence, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House counsel Pat Cipollone, all of whom he believes are failing him. He is said to believe that everyone around him who isn’t actively egging on his futile efforts to overturn the election is either “weak, stupid or disloyal” and he is increasingly only listening to propagandists at OAN, Newsmax, a few select programs at Fox News and his inner circle of conspiracy mongers.

We know from various reports that Trump has been meeting with his former National Security Adviser, the recently pardoned, admitted felon Mike Flynn, and his lawyer Sidney Powell, who was formerly Trump’s lawyer as well. Powell wanted to be named a “special counsel” to investigate election fraud, but according to the Daily Beast, that has been nixed by the president for now. The president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani is hostile to Powell and has told the press that she is not affiliated with the president’s legal team, but he too is pushing ridiculous schemes such as having the Department of Homeland Security seize the voting machines in certain states, which the DHS has said they have no authority to do. Flynn has also publicly proposed Trump invoke Martial Law in the states that Biden won narrowly and order the military to run a new election. That Trump has been open to discussing such far-fetched plans is bad enough in itself. And for some bizarre reason, former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who also happens to have had a long term affair with convicted and deported Russian Spy Maria Butina, has been present at at least one meeting with all of these people, as slightly less unhinged members of the White House attempted to push back on their wacky plots.

At the moment Trump seems fixated on the idea of having the Republicans in congress refuse to accept the certification of the electoral college vote on January 6th. This week QAnon believer Marjorie Taylor-Greene, a newly elected member of the House of Representatives from Georgia, organized a strategy meeting with Trump at the White House along with some of his most loyal supporters in the House like Matt Gaetz, R-Fl, Louis Gohmert, R-Tx, Mo Brooks, R-Al, among others. They seem hopeful that at least one Republican in the Senate will join them to object — which would turn the whole thing into a circus but change absolutely nothing.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell begged his senators not to go along with the whole charade because it would look bad to vote against Donald Trump since he clearly lost the election. His deputy, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, said “it’s going down like a shot dog and I just don’t think it makes a lot of sense to put everybody through this when you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be.”

That put McConnell and Thune on Trump’s ever-growing shit list. First Trump sent around a graph supposedly showing that he was responsible for McConnell’s re-election and than on Tuesday night threw this out there::

Republicans in the Senate so quickly forget. Right now they would be down 8 seats without my backing them in the last Election. RINO John Thune, “Mitch’s boy”, should just let it play out. South Dakota doesn’t like weakness. He will be primaried in 2022, political career over!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2020

But perhaps he’s taking his greatest revenge by threatening to veto the COVID-9 relief bill unless they agree to give every American who qualifies a $2000 check instead of the measly $600 that they finally squeezed out of McConnell and his caucus. Democrats immediately endorsed Trump’s idea and the ball is in McConnell’s court as I write this. If Trump wants to wreak revenge on his “disloyal” Republicans by agreeing to send badly needed money to Americans who are suffering from his and the Republican’s malfeasance I couldn’t be happier. However, it’s very likely that this will do nothing but blow up the bill at the last moment, resulting in some very bad outcomes. Had he involved himself in the negotiations and pushed hard for relief he just might have won the election and helped people sooner. But he preferred to pretend the pandemic was over instead. The stable genius blew that one bigly.

Trump also pumped out some pardons on Tuesday night, showing that no matter how much he is trying to convince himself that the Greek chorus in this farce isn’t chanting “it’s over,” he knows he’s still got some business to take care of. He pardoned two people convicted in the Mueller probe, three corrupt Republican allies, more horrific war criminals and some border guards who shot an unarmed drug dealer. (He also pardoned a small handful of people who deserved it, proving there is a Santa Claus after all.)

Trump is all over the place and it’s hard to know what’s serious and what’s just the usual Trump sideshow. But he’s making one thing very clear. If someone is loyal to him he will make sure they never have to pay a price for committing an illegal act as long as he’s president. The incentives to do so on his behalf are right out there. We’ll just have to hope none of his ecstatic followers in or out of government decide to do something about it while he’s still got the power to pardon them.

It’s Happy Hollandaise time. If you’re of a mind to drop something in the old Hullabaloo Christmas stocking, you can do so below.

cheers,
digby

Dead at the hands of police. The Columbus Dispatch reports that early Tuesday a Columbus police officer shot and killed an unarmed Black man while responding to a neighbor’s noise complaint:

Police spokesman Sgt. James Fuqua said officers were dispatched at 1:37 a.m. Tuesday on a non-emergency call to the 1000 block of Oberlin Drive on the city’s Northwest Side for a disturbance involving an SUV running on and off for an extended time.  Fuqua said the complaint came from a neighbor.

The officer did not turn on his body camera until after the shooting.

When officers arrived on the scene, they found a home’s garage door open and a man inside. 

The man, who was visiting someone at the home, walked toward officers with a cellphone in his left hand and his right hand not visible, according to a review by city officials of one of the responding officer’s body-worn camera footage.

One officer fired his weapon, striking the 47-year-old Black man, who later died at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital. 

A weapon was not recovered at the scene

The Tuesday shooting occurred less than three weeks since a Franklin County sheriff’s deputy Jason Meade shot and killed another Black man, Casey Goodson Jr., 23. The deputy alleged Goodson, a concealed-carry permit holder with no criminal background, pointed a gun at him. There were no eye witnesses. The attorney for the Goodson family dispute the deputy’s account:

“With Meade’s statement issued nearly one full week after he killed Casey, it is critical to note that this is a classic defense often claimed by police after they shoot and kill someone,” they said. “It is also critical to remember that often the evidence does not support these claims.”

For more on this “classic defense,” take some time to read “How Cities Lost Control of Police Discipline” in the New York Times:

Throughout the 1970s, unions changed the disciplinary process, city by city, contract by contract. Some provisions mirrored the rights of criminal defendants: for instance, allowing officers to see any evidence against them. Other measures went much further. Officers under review were given 24 or 48 hours — or up to 30 days in Louisiana — before investigators could interview them, which critics complained allowed errant cops to concoct a defense for any accusation. Many cities banned anonymous complaints. Reprimands could be erased from an officer’s file after a few years.

Many experts and public officials said cities failed to anticipate the long-term implications of such provisions. “It felt a lot of times like Elmer Fudd negotiated for the City of Portland and the police union brought Perry Mason,” said Jo Ann Hardesty, a city commissioner, one of the city’s most vocal advocates of police reform.

The way employee contracts developed since the 1960s has left elected officials with little control over hiring, firing, and discipline of its police forces. In Detroit, for example, the police commissioner does not have final authority in disciplinary actions. Disputes go to arbitration, including in Columbus:

The 83-page contract between Columbus and its police union shows how arbitration works there, similar to many other cities. The arbitrator, usually a lawyer, is picked from a short list of names submitted by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, a government agency that tries to prevent labor disputes. The city and the union each strike a name until one remains.

“Who do you end up with?” asked Daniel Oates, the former police chief in Miami Beach, Fla.; Aurora, Colo.; and Ann Arbor, Mich. “The guy who’s much more likely to have a middle-of-the-road decision in a termination. What’s the middle-of-the-road decision in a termination? Well, it ain’t a termination.”

Half the time, the Times found, fired cops end up back on the force and on the street.

These problems, the “warrior cop” culture as well, we have examined here multiple times over the years. The Times report suggests it took a long time to take root and it could take time to uproot. The “defund” movement is still in its infancy, and I have no idea whether the needed retooling of policing will happen, but the Times investigation points to a few of the stumbling blocks.

It’s Happy Hollandaise time here at Hullabaloo. If you’d like to drop a little something in the old Christmas stocking you can do so here:

Hmm. Amazing. Now he wants to do his job. He Trump, that is.

The outgoing president emerged briefly from his sulk last night. Donald Trump posted to Twitter a video response to the covid relief bill Capitol Hill expected him to sign so everyone could go home for Christmas with a deal in their sacks. USE YOUR LEVERAGE, Trump says (and Tony Schwartz wrote for him) in “The Art of the Deal.” He sees leverage now and he’s using it.

Trump labeled the $600 stimulus checks to individuals “ridiculously low” and demanded $2,000 instead (what Democrats wanted all a long). He elided the fact that the $600 amount came from his own treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin. Trump condemned a series of items he deemed “wasteful” and hinted he would veto the legislation if he did not get changes (Washington Post):

The video landed like a sonic boom in Washington. His own aides were stunned. Congressional aides were stunned. Stock market futures quickly slumped on the prospect that the economic aid could be in doubt.

And the implications for what happens next could be severe. If he refuses to sign the bill, the government will shut down on Dec. 29. The $900 billion in emergency economic aid will be frozen, and the race for the two Senate seats in Georgia could also be upended.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), however, quickly responded to the Twitter post by saying congressional Democrats would move as soon as Thursday, when the House is scheduled to meet for a brief pro forma session, to advance the $2,000 stimulus checks.

The Post reports that Ben Williamson, a spokesman for Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, publicly signaled Trump would sign the bill ahead of its release. But Trump had recorded his response five hours before the bill’s release and tweeted it after a number of aides and Meadows had already left town.

Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks. At last, the President has agreed to $2,000 — Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent. Let’s do it! https://t.co/Th4sztrpLV

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) December 23, 2020

Virtually all the complaints about waste Trump voiced in the video referred not to the relief part of the bill, but to the omnibus appropriations package. Congressional leaders packaged the two together.

A desperate Trump may be hallucinating another angle for staying in the White House past January 20. He finished his video saying, “I am also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items from this legislation, and to send me a suitable bill, or else the next administration will have to deliver a covid relief package, and maybe that administration will be me.” If successful, Trump will have delivered $4,000 per couple just ahead of asking his cult members to back whatever last-ditch scheme he has for holding onto the presidency. Failing that, he could pocket a ton of the federal cash he just secured for them.

No doubt Trump will use the video to make yet another fundraising pitch to his large email list. He’s washed-up. A has-been. A failure. But that does not mean the one-term president cannot make money off the disaster of his maladministration even as his net worth sags. He has not stopped fundraising since Nov. 3. Trump has raised over $200 million from losing, using false claims the money will go towards an “official election defense fund” when he could in fact spend it on himself. As Leo Bloom says in The Producers, “Under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit…”

“Under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit…”

Start your weekend in style with Mel Brooks’ THE PRODUCERS. Watch tonight through the @AppleTV App: https://t.co/HSn0sWbJRb pic.twitter.com/RkXG9yvszd

— MUBI (@mubi) June 29, 2018

Leo Bloom: Let’s assume, just for the moment, that you are a dishonest man.
Max Bialystock: Assume away.
Leo Bloom: It’s very easy. You raise more money than you need.
Max Bialystock: What do you mean?
Leo Bloom: Well, you did it yourself, only you did it on a very small scale.
Max Bialystock: What did I do?
Leo Bloom: You raised $2,000 thousand more than you needed to produce your last play.
Max Bialystock: So? What did it get me? I’m wearing a CARDBOARD BELT!
Leo Bloom: Well, that’s where you made your mistake: you didn’t go all the way. You see, if you were a truly bold criminal, you could’ve raised a million.
Max Bialystock: But the play cost me only $60,000 thousand to produce!
Leo Bloom: And how long did it run?
Max Bialystock: One night.
Leo Bloom: You see? You see what I’m trying to tell you? You could’ve raise a million dollars, put on your $60,00 thousand flop, and kept the rest.
Max Bialystock: But what if the play was a hit?
Leo Bloom: Well, then you’d go to jail. See, once the play’s a hit, you have to pay off all the backers, and with so many backers, there could never be enough profits to go around. Get it?
Max Bialystock: Uh-huh. A-ha! So, in order for this scheme to work, we’d have to find a sure-fire flop!

Trump already has his flop. His legacy? A U.S. grievously diminished in the world’s eyes and more divided against itself than ever. His response to the pandemic? A disaster: 320,000 Americans dead and climbing; small businesses failing or on life support (and too little of that). What a financial opportunity for someone unscrupulous enough to exploit it!

Richard Nixon got an opera. Why not Trump a musical? Axios reported Tuesday morning that Trump is “turning bitterly on virtually every person around him.” In the right hands, quotes from the Axios story are virtually titles of show tunes. It might not be “Springtime for Hitler,” but it has potential:

“Weak, Stupid or Disloyal”

“Backing Away”

“First One Off the Ship”

“The Ultimate Betrayal” (about Vice President Mike Pence)

“Focused on the Middle East” (sung by or about Jared Kushner)

“Congratulations. You now own 45 percent of ‘Prisoners of Love.’ NEXT!“

Who knows? After New York City and the state of New York are through with him, Trump might even end up in Sing Sing, too.

It’s Happy Hollandaise time here at Hullabaloo. If you’d like to drop a little something in the old Christmas stocking you can do so here:

First, he pardoned some more murderous war criminals, Border Patrol criminals, corrupted political cronies and also a few people who deserved it:

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

It was a remarkable assertion of pardon power by a president who has disputed his loss in the election and might be only the start of more to come in the final weeks before he leaves office on Jan. 20.

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

Among those pardoned was George Papadopoulos, who was a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and who pleaded guilty in 2017 to making false statements to federal officials as part of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

Also pardoned was Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer who pleaded guilty to the same charge in 2018 in connection to the special counsel’s inquiry. Both men served short prison sentences.

The Mueller-related pardons are a signal of more to come for people caught up in the investigation, according to people close to the president.

Mr. Trump recently pardoned his former national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who pleaded guilty twice to charges including lying to the F.B.I. in connection with the inquiry into Russian involvement in the election. The president in July commuted the sentence of Roger J. Stone Jr., his longtime adviser who was convicted on a series of charges related to the investigation. Both men have maintained their innocence.

Mr. Trump’s pardon list also included four former U.S. service members who were convicted on charges related to the killing of Iraqi civilians while working as contractors in 2007.

One of them, Nicholas Slatten, had been sentenced to life in prison after the Justice Department had gone to great lengths to prosecute him. Mr. Slatten had been a contractor for the private company Blackwater and was sentenced for his role in the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad — a massacre that left one of the most lasting stains of the war on the United States. Among those dead were 10 men, two women and two boys, who were 8 and 11.

The three former members of Congress pardoned by Mr. Trump were Duncan D. Hunter of California, Chris Collins of New York and Steve Stockman of Texas.

Mr. Hunter was set to begin serving an 11-month sentence next month. He pleaded guilty in 2019 to one charge of misusing campaign funds.

Mr. Collins, an early endorser of Mr. Trump, is serving a 26-month sentence after pleading guilty in 2019 to charges of making false statements to the F.B.I. and to conspiring to commit securities fraud.

Mr. Stockman was convicted in 2018 on charges of fraud and money laundering and was serving a 10-year sentence.

The president also granted full pardons to two former Border Patrol agents whose sentences for their roles in the shooting of an alleged drug trafficker had previously been commuted by President George W. Bush.

Aaaand, this too. Of course:

In an unexpected video posted to Twitter Tuesday night, President Donald Trump poured cold water on a sweeping COVID-19 relief package he was expected to sign, calling it a “disgrace” and urging congressional leaders to make several changes to the bill including increasing direct payments for Americans.

“It’s called the COVID relief bill, but it has almost nothing to do with COVID,” he said in a video posted just moments after he issued pardons for several allies. “I’m asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2,000 or $4,000 for a couple.”

The president stopped short of saying he would veto the bipartisan legislation but was expected to sign the measure alongside a $1.4 trillion spending bill to fund the government. Trump called on Congress to remove “wasteful and unnecessary items from this legislation,” appearing to conflate the relief bill with the government spending bill. 

In implying a threat to veto the bill, Trump also referenced his efforts to somehow stay in office.

He said Congress needs to improve the bill, “or else the next administration will have to deliver a COVID relief package – and maybe that administration will be me.”

He’s been sitting around watching TV and plotting revenge and coups so this is the first he’s heard about this bill. He’s only the president.

They have the votes to override the veto I think. But you never know what those Republicans are going to do. They might just fall in line behind Dear Leader. And whatever McConnell wants, Trump may not care about Loeffler and Perdue or anything other than his own wounded ego.

pic.twitter.com/v9Rdjz6DNu

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2020

He says he wants a $2,000 stimulus. Great. Maybe he could take that up with Mitch.

And maybe he’s just acting out like the overgrown baby he is. But damn … has there ever been a bigger sore loser in world history>

It’s Happy Hollandaise time. If you’re of a mind to drop something in the old Hullabaloo Christmas stocking, you can do so below.

cheers,
digby