A Day With No Surprises

Trump warns against U.S. accepting Bahamian refugees who survived Hurricane Dorian

Trump: “I don’t want to allow people that weren’t supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the (U.S.) — including some very bad people & very bad gang members.” https://t.co/fqnnxFkijd

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) September 9, 2019

It's not that today was a slow news day, mind you, that I found it to be day with no surprises. If Trump tries to justify not letting Bahamian refugees into this country because he thinks there might be some "very bad people", why, how is that a surprise when he's used the same justifications for barring migration from Central and South America and banning Muslims? It might seem shockingly racist and xenophobic, in addition to being mind-blowingly cruel, but surprising?

Nope.

News has been broken regarding the Scottish airport that has been used recently by US flight crews who went on to berth at his Turnberry property. "NOTHING TO DO WITH ME" Trump Tweeted--which pretty much is the sort of denial I have come to take to be equal to an admission. By "nothing to do with", Trump means nothing more than, he didn't book them in himself. The Air Force and Congress will be examining this further.

Oh. Another investigation? Must be a day ending in "y".

A Predator With "Friends"

"It's an indictment of the legal system that allows well-connected, well-heeled, wealthy individuals to avoid accountability for obvious, horrific crimes with victims."

Jeremy Bash on Jeffery Epstein's 2008 plea deal with Alex Acosta.https://t.co/DAmdVIPfZC

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 9, 2019

There's a lot that's hard to stomach in reading about the extensive abuse Jeffery Epstein is charged with, but the chilling thing to me is that he seems pretty damn guilty and got let off the hook once, and it looks for all the world like it was because money and influence can do that for a person, no matter how reprehensible they are. Now, stories are flying around about important people whose names and reputations will go down in flames, or who will face criminal liability for any involvement. And good--that's what should happen. Knowing that something evil is happening and saying nothing, risking nothing, is enabling it to persist. To me, it isn't political in the least, but about what justice means. Justice should be blind with respect to party or class. It shouldn't be something that can be bought off or threatened away.

It's also chilling in hindsight that there were lots of signs that Epstein's world was a deeply weird construction of mysterious deals (probably lots of financial shenanigans) and the cultivation of "friends" in a oddly useful sort of way. A lot of people are making the connection now that his investments might actually in part equal "A fuckton of blackmail." What does this sound like:

Finally, despite having been previously convicted of a sex offense involving an underage victim, the defendant has continued to maintain a vast trove of lewd photographs of young-looking women or girls in his Manhattan mansion. In a search of the New York Residence on the night of his arrest, on July 6-7, 2019, pursuant to judicially-authorized warrants, law enforcement officers discovered not only specific evidence consistent with victim recollections of the inside of the mansion, further strengthening the evidence of the conduct charged in the Indictment, but also at least hundreds—and perhaps thousands—of sexually suggestive photographs of fully- or partiallynude females. While these items were only seized this weekend and are still being reviewed, some of the nude or partially-nude photographs appear to be of underage girls, including at least one girl who, according to her counsel, was underage at the time the relevant photographs were taken. Additionally, some of the photographs referenced herein were discovered in a locked safe, in which law enforcement officers also found compact discs with hand-written labels including the following: “Young [Name] + [Name],” “Misc nudes 1,” and “Girl pics nude.” The defendant, a registered sex offender, is not reformed, he is not chastened, he is not repentant;6 rather, he is a continuing danger to the community and an individual who faces devastating evidence supporting deeply serious charges.

so much as a trove of evidence to be used as leverage later on the off-chance it would come in handy? But also looking back at pieces written about Epstein from mere years ago, the nebulousness of his income stream and odd hedonism comes through in ways that seems a bit like foreshadowing.

From Vicky Ward's Vanity Fair piece:

Unlike such fund managers as George Soros and Stanley Druckenmiller, whose client lists and stock maneuverings act as their calling cards, Epstein keeps all his deals and clients secret, bar one client: billionaire Leslie Wexner, the respected chairman of Limited Brands. Epstein insists that ever since he left Bear Stearns in 1981 he has managed money only for billionaires—who depend on him for discretion. “I was the only person crazy enough, or arrogant enough, or misplaced enough, to make my limit a billion dollars or more,” he tells people freely. According to him, the flat fees he receives from his clients, combined with his skill at playing the currency markets “with very large sums of money,” have afforded him the lifestyle he enjoys today.

Why do billionaires choose him as their trustee? Because the problems of the mega-rich, he tells people, are different from yours and mine, and his unique philosophy is central to understanding those problems: “Very few people need any more money when they have a billion dollars. The key is not to have it do harm more than anything else…. You don’t want to lose your money.”

Why the mega-rich? Because under the right circumstances, they'll let you hold their money for them so nothing bad happens. They're more anxious than other people--they have more to lose.

Or take this piece from 2002 at New York Magazine:

But beautiful women are only a part of it. Because here’s the thing about Epstein: As some collect butterflies, he collects beautiful minds. “I invest in people – be it politics or science. It’s what I do,” he has said to friends.

It seems corny: "I invest in people". Sure. If one is a philanthropist, great. And "To Serve Man" is a cookbook to a man-eater. And sometimes, those people being invested in are a network of abused underage girls who are traded like units without any regard for their wellbeing.

This will be very ugly. I see that AG William Barr has recused due to prior associations. Time will tell us whether that means anything. And in a very rare concurrence with myself and the Concerned Women of America, I agree that Alex Acosta needs to be removed from Trump's cabinet, because defending himself regarding the sweetheart plea deal he made with Epstein should be his new full-time job.


UPDATE: Oh, it's like that, then:

NEW: DOJ official says that AG Barr will remain recused from any review of the 2008 #Epstein case due to past legal work, but after consulting with ethics officials, he will NOT recuse from the current #Epstein case led at #SDNY

— Brooke Singman (@brookefoxnews) July 9, 2019

Unbearably Hostile. And Also Very Contrite.

I found myself basically uncharacteristically without calm in my own comment section, which I've spent the last day and a half trying to get myself rational about. Regarding third party voting, or as I look at it, "voting your feelings", I absolutely wasn't trying to offer a good faith argument against voting third party because the exercise itself is infuriating to me. It feels like the reason not to do it should be self-evident and I should not have to make the case against it because history already did. 

But I can't leave it like that, because my commenter hurled some pretty justifiable shit at me, and in retrospect, my freaking out over electoral shenanigans isn't a good excuse for me to be rude, unhelpful, and above all, unbearably hostile to people who aren't acting with deliberate bad intent, no matter what I think the results of their decisions could be. Other folks' feelings about what they do with their vote is legitimate to them, even if fully unfathomable to me. All I can do is try to unpack my white-knuckle panic at what I view as a threat to anything like a progressive electoral agenda going forward.

When I half-jokingly tell people I am still not fully over the 2000 Presidential election, it's just that--only half-jokingly. I've had time to replay how the media covered the candidates, whether the Florida recount debacle could have gone another way, and oh so much time wondering how the period 2001-2008 would have looked different if only Al Gore won. Take just having someone in office who took climate change seriously and might have addressed it then. Or someone who might have listened and responded differently to intelligence about operatives on behalf of Bin Laden looking to unleash an attack on US soil, or with the patience to view the search for WMD's in Iraq wholly differently. I'm not kidding when I say I developed a distinctly hostile attitude to the concept of third party voting from this exact line of thought. 

The political calculation with respects to our two-party set up just seemed pretty crystalline clear to me--the party that gets the most votes, wins. Regardless of how the other parties place or show. And if Democrats, the established left-leaning party in this country, doesn't get the most votes in a contest, progressive policy values don't advance. You get Republicans in office. And progressive momentum is stalled or rolled back. It isn't the intention of the third party voter. It's just the damn effect. Numbers don't care about feelings.  This is why I clench up when I hear people sincerely talk about how it would be nice to just have some other options. 

We're not looking back fondly on the presidencies of Jack Anderson or Angela Davis or Ross Perot. That's because of a lot of things, structurally, about the US electorate--there isn't a lot that tempts most voters away from one of the two established political firms in this country, and despite all the media "both-sidesing" in the world, if you have historically voted with one party or the other, you already know the hell why you do and how the parties are different. And if this question was a little muddy in 2000, it sure as hell should not have been by 2016 as the parties only grew more ideologically divergent, and the actual personal history, experience, and character of the Republican and Democratic contestants should have made abundantly clear. 

You would have thought. But after microscopic focus on emails and Benghazi and pantsuits and hot sauce for Clinton, and a fuzzy focus on what basically amounts to a whole entire life of crime-adjacency for Trump, there were still enough people (especially after microtargeted Facebook ads and bad-mouthing via RT and people who I will never look at the same way, like Chris Hedges and Cornell West, trying to make Jill Stein look legit) who were ready for Not Hillary. 

What the fuck did these people expect? The only Not Hillary they were ever going to get was Trump. There isn't a magic curtain that slides open when enough left-leaning folks of good will get together and say "welp--the Democratic Party done shit the bed" that gives them a whole new party with shiny new faces and a do-over. 

You just get Republicans. And have you seen these Morlocks lately? They don't know if there should be a minimum wage or why food stamps should be a thing. Health care isn't a right and carrying a child to term is mandatory. And they like voter suppression and don't give a flying fuck about civil rights for minorities, whether religious, ethnic or sexual. And forget about regulatory agencies protecting consumers, the environment, or Homeland Security being good at helping people in times of trouble (Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Maria). They'll just be about baby jails, and people getting hurt, and families being separated, etc. 

Democrats aren't the sterling exemplars of everything good and great you might want them to be, but they'll hold the fucking line. If they can.

And that's the big "if". Democrats have to be in office and have the votes to get shit done. There is no Green Lantern ring that magically makes everything possible just because we had a Democratic president, in the case of Obama, or a Democratic House right now. Because Republicans are still here. Doing as they do. 

And their voters have amaaazing brand loyalty. Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins got re-elected being under indictment. Steven King and Louie Gohmert are open bigots with brain worms, but by golly, they are still here. 

Yet here we are, in the opening up of the 2020 Democratic primaries, when it should genuinely look like Trump is too corrupt and has too many investigations into himself to even be shining up his campaign shoes, but his white evangelical followers talk about him like he's the Second Coming, and we have damn fools already speculating if Elizabeth Warren is likable enough or if her DNA test was too damn much (not Trump's overt racism). 

I can't face third party talk without becoming unbearably hostile. I don't know what genuine consideration of who the GOP is right now vs who the Democrats are right now, makes that search for oh, something different, not seem like sheer folly. It's blowing the damn rent money on a longshot nag. It's saying "Yeah, Republicans are pretty bad, boy, but what about this bullshit Clinton/Biden/some other Democrat m'f-r did 20 years ago?"

We don't have time for this. We don't have time to build a sweet-ass clean and pretty and totally pure party and hope it somehow wildly eclipses the liberal party vehicle we already have. The environment doesn't have time. People need their health care. People need access to reproductive health choices. People need affordable education and opportunities. We need to make the Democratic Party Great Again--

And we're off to a great start with the most diverse and female new Congress getting sworn in, and I am very proud of Senator Sanders for his work in encouraging a more genuinely left new generation of the Democratic party, even if he still isn't in or of it. This energy is welcomed, and gives me a lot of hope. 

But I'm still a frantic white-knuckled hostile mess about talk regarding third parties. And for that matter, I'm already deep in my feelings about people saying "well, it can't be anybody but Joe Biden", or "Berner for Life" or "I'm still mad as hell about Al Franken and Kirsten Gillibrand can kick rocks" and so forth. 

I have my own opinions about who I want to see run on the 2020 Democratic ticket (please don't start some "Kamala is a cop" on my watch, thanks!) but I will go hard for whoever the nominee eventually is, regardless. If it's Beto O'Rourke, I will stan: He shreds. Skateboard, fretboard, headboard--whev. If it's Lincoln Chafee, I...  Look it could be that Buttigieg dude. I'll put on my best face. 

I'm just saying, in 2008 I would have fought a raging PUMA and I am still that unbearably hostile to people who can't get their shit together for the cause (not for the person if you aren't feeling it--the overall liberal agenda). 

But I am also very contrite at my prior failure to fully articulate all this. I see third party voting as a pointless and ineffective gesture that can have the reverse consequences of what one intends. I can't hold third party voters responsible for Dems not winning all the time but even if it's once in 1000 elections, it's a shame ( I once could have been down with voting third party for state office until I became persuaded, quite recently, that there's no reason not to consider the Democratic party viable and capable of being built upon and given a local character in any state, and it might be the best bet for holding/expanding voting rights locally.) I get that the Democratic party has disappointed voters--I'm not thrilled with everything I've witnessed from then the past thirty years or so I've been paying attention. But the Republican party is always worse. Always. And I'm with Jane Curtin--death to the GOP. Not like, be killing their dudez. But that party is exactly why we can't ever have nice stuff. 

Here We Go Again

I am entirely amazed at the resourcefulness of one Hillary Rodham Clinton, who based on all the medical experts who were paying close attention back in 2016, wasn't even still supposed to be alive right now, what with all the Parkinson's and brain damage and what not, that she is still out here fiendishly stealing elections for other people in 2018 (like she, um, did not do in 2016 for herownself). Or so Rudy Giuliani, one-time presidential hopeful, and current Trump lawyer, wants us to imagine. 

The unvarnished story appears to be that Rick Scott, current governor and possible future senator of the great state of Florida, would very much like to see a manager because somebody is still counting these votes and he might not stay ahead. He has a little problem with this Florida law that triggers an automatic recount if the margin is...

Ah, fuck me, I have been here before. If we're older than 18, we all the hell have. It's the long national nightmare again, isn't it? Where, for some reason, Florida's election law says all the votes should be recounted, but there's a special, invisible ink "dibs" where GOPers think maybe this shouldn't always be true if electing a Republican is at stake, right?

Because there will be a popular revolt, where "popular" means a rent-a riot of GOP stalwarts from out of town will swoop in to stop the counting of the actual Floridians' votes. In other words, a kind of mob. (I thought those were supposed to be the worst, though, right? Ask Ann Coulter, or Derek Hunter, or some orange peel-wrapped rancid bacon sculpture like Donald Trump.)

Or maybe, just saying, instead of being the kind of guys that Scott and Giuliani are actually being, Florida could just, I don't know, follow the actual election rules as they were written and see what shakes out in the game as it is supposed to be played? Especially when it's a likely recount for US Senate, Governor, and players to be named later? Instead of being the kind of drama that goes all the way to SCOTUS, which was always kind of stupid. But now, it would be even more stupid, because Justice Bro Keggernaugh. 

This isn't even addressing the extra-special crispy fried fuckery that is whatever is going on in Georgia (Jesus be a legitimate and fair run off with all the machines present and working) and probably Arizona, where Democrat Kyrsten Sinema is now up because of the mail-in ballots, and now the GOP in AZ doesn't want to count all of those. 

Which is not to say not all Arizona Republicans get it:

@AZGOP I am one of those mail in ballots. I was under the impression my vote was always counted.

— Cindy McCain (@cindymccain) November 8, 2018

(I respect this lady.)

We have dealt with voter suppression, from purging of the voter rolls to voter ID laws that can't really address an in-person voter fraud problem that doesn't actually exist, to try and rustle up the people to just know that they have a voice. I have so much respect for the way some of these challenged but still rising stars worked their asses off to try and increase the map of who we think of as "likely voters". But. This sort of thing, right here, the actual clear message the GOP as a freaking institution, puts out that they are not interested in actual "one person, one vote" where any of those people might be demographically likely Democratic voters, is an outright admission that they don't really love small "d" democracy or perceive that what they are doing is extremely divisive because it means they want, not to debate people who differ, but to erase their vote--their ballot-voice. 

How do you negotiate with a polite grin for your existence as a political power, when the other side will aim for your teeth?

Strap in. This arc of justice is not too rusty yet to get moved. 

Because Losing the House and Firing Sessions Wasn't Enough

Slowed down the @Acosta encounter to show the FOUR times the White House staffer touched HIM... not the other way around. Unclear if she's been suspended. pic.twitter.com/gBhlR2r5P1

— Sarah Burris (@SarahBurris) November 8, 2018

Trump, when he feels cornered, acts like a tantrum-y little baby and lashes out like one. Everybody should have recognized this by now. With subpoena-power in the hands of Democrats and the likelihood that some real shit could go down, now, Trump with huge obviousness had his flunky, General Kelly, go "You're fired!" at Sessions and made him sign his own "at the request of the President" resignation.

This is how he rewards Sessions' loyalty for being the first major endorsement, working on Trump's campaign, and actually taking a little heat off press inquiries about the Russia investigation by recusing. Now, that loyalty might have had everything to do with loving to be in charge of performing legal racisms, but to give Sessions his due, he didn't do anything specifically wrong to get on Trump's bad side except to acknowledge his legal limitations. But as everyone needs to know, and some indicted and pled-out people already have cause to suspect, loyalty with Trump is a one-way street. You can be as loyal to Trump as the law will allow and quite a few ways it won't, but in the end, if you ain't useful enough to His Nibs, you get the brush.

But that story, the furthering of the obstruction of justice that is the Sessions' firing and the ramifications thereof and the whole thing where Rod Rosenstein isn't in charge of the Mueller investigation and doesn't this mean Mueller's thing is all in danger, is a whole blog post for another time. This is about cheap-jack press trumpery--this thing where Trump keeps fucking with the press for no other reason than it makes them pay more attention to him.

Jim Acosta has been a Trump target for a while. So, I kind of tend to agree with Leah McElrath that this press stunt, where a WH aide tries to grab for Acosta's mic and it somehow gets turned into a story about Acosta being the aggressor, looks a lot like a set-up. The aide marched up to him with purpose while he was speaking, and reached at him several times. He protected his mic, but was not poking at her--it was the other way around!

And then the White House fuxxors with his press pass and Sarah Slanders has to use some Infowars version of what happened to make a case for why. You all know Infowars--they are the guys who think Obama has a weather machine and every school shooting is crisis actors. They are exactly who legit players would turn to for straight footage. (Eyeroll, please!)

So, what's going down here is, instead of talking about how the Democrats taking the House is bad for Trump, or how it's really damn suspicious that a white nationalist is visiting the White House (and isn't it racist of Yamiche Alcindor or April Ryan to even bring this up--well, no, isn't it racist of Trump to play the game where women of color are the real racists?) or how Trump is furthering his obstruction of justice behavior by firing the guy who is sort of permitting the investigation into his earlier obstruction of justice, or how all of this warrants more investigations which we will now get, we're going to talk about whether Jim Acosta got a bum rap, but only for about a minute, before the next big outrage, because this is how Trump plays news cycles, and his wee culty-brained folks let him.

But let the record of your own damn eyes stand--she, little and young and deliberately chosen I think to be the one to go up and do it, swiped for Acosta's mic and got in the way of his expressive hand, perhaps, and looked up at the podium at "Daddy Trump" to see if she was noticed doing a very good job.

But Acosta didn't touch her at all intentionally, he was just protecting his mic, because questioning the president is his job. End of story.

UPDATE: I don't think our young lady that Sarah Slanders calls an intern is that, at all.

UPDATE:  Westerhout debunks this:

We Aimed High, Is What Happened

There is something that feels incomplete to me about the 2018 midterm elections--there are still, of course, some races yet to be called, and some that may lead to a run-off or recount. I know there is some disappointment that some of the superstars of this campaign season, like Beto O'Rourke, Stacy Abrams, and Andrew Gillum just didn't walk away with the seats they ran for--but to be really honest--this is Texas, Georgia, and Florida we're talking about, and we are honestly talking about them as having become competitive. 

That is not any kind of disappointment, as far as I can tell. Also, I am not convinced we've heard the end of the Abrams and Gillam races (where, sorry, Mr. President, I know pretty well who the more truly qualified candidates were). Now, I've been around (at least since 2000), and I really don't have a problem saying that there is fuckery afoot about Florida's vote-counting (I think the Scott/Nelson race is due for a recount at my last check-in), but c'mon, everybody--if we can't 'fess up that Kemp was out there cheating his ass off, we need to get honest, because he was open about it (I may have more to say about this one, but leaving out the folks purged from the voter rolls, and the messing around with the machines,  and the appeals to bigotry, there was his actual saying he worried about all the votes counting.

And well, Texas is going to do Texas. Beto O'Rourke was hella popular in Texas, and really hella popular outside of Texas with people like me, because he is relatable. He and Ted Cruz are not much different in age, but O'Rourke seemed to me more like my generation (he's days younger than myself) and my kind of music, if that makes sense. And we can talk about the limits of charisma, but he brought a serious challenge where Dems really shouldn't have been able to expect one, and I can't help but think the effect of energizing liberal voters actually did put a few TX US Rep. candidates over. The pity isn't that Cruz won, you know. It's that he didn't lose.

And here's where we are--with the US House now majority Dem, with a few tough losses in the Senate, like Heidi Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill ("red states with blue ladies" just sounds like a country song waiting to happen) and several new Democratic governors and majorities in state legislatures--

It was a good night. If it feels a little anti-climactic, I think the thing is, Democratic supporters aimed really high, and for what it's worth--that was key in doing as well we did! We need to look at Democratic candidates as being good to go everywhere, like how Jacky Rosen handed Sen. Dean Heller a loss. One great thing that happened was our slate brought diversity--there are more women in office! Representation matters!

Anyway, my takeaway is, as Browning said, "a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" And I think the newly Democratic US House come January will find an awful lot to reach for.

Fox News Does the Full Monty

It's always been just a little bit obvious that Fox News was more of a political advocacy outlet than a straight news organization, but if there was any doubt, popular Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro joined Rush Limbaugh in standing up for Trump and his party's candidates this evening (right before the midterm elections). They could maybe pretend they were just there to report from a very special vantage, but let's be really honest, that vantage was earned by being propagandists and useful to the party. This is what a wholly partisan effort would look like. They also derided other news outlets, laughably, as being "fake" while making this particular obvious show. 

I think people who really pay attention have some idea who the fakes are here. Pirro, Limbaugh, and Hannity might be popular, but they surely aren't honest, and what they do has never been about straight news. Limbaugh doesn't pretend to be an honest purveyor of the tea--he stresses from time to time that he is an entertainment figure (probably not to land his ass in trouble). But Hannity and Pirro?

While they are joke figures outside of the Fox milieu, among Fox news fans, the possibility that Hannity delivers real news is apparently some kind of open question, left open, deliberately, but Fox itself. (I think the same nebulous area exists for Pirro, to the extent that she is treated as being sober as a judge when both the "sober" and "judge" portions of that assessment appear to be way off.)

I may be off base for pointing out that while Brett Baier and Chris Wallace are probably kind of good, I'd really only consider Shep Smith actually wholly a journalist in the sense of not radiating bias. (That probably radiates bias in and of itself to some of Fox's conservative viewers, for a value of bias that reflects Steven Colbert's observation that reality has a liberal bias--and maybe it sort of does.) What Fox the tv channel was set up to do for people who care about these things was be a conservative and Republican-leaning outlet. 

Now, I don't want to reinvent the wheel, discuss the hack gap, broach the problem of right-wing epistemic closure, or even just point my English Lit degree-having white liberal finger at the tribe Morlock and curse their darkness while they eat my daywalking Eloi sibs. 

I just want to point out that Trump doesn't and never has had a problem in the world with fake news. He was best-buddies with the National Enquirer guy who kept hot shit-takes on Trump in a vault and is no stranger to just making shit up or repeating ridiculous conspiracy theories from the absolute underbelly of the fever-swamps--like birtherism. 

Trump loves fake news (like Alex Jones, even!) no matter what terrible things he says about the real news being terrible and fake. But you know what? That old devil "fake news"? When Trump surrounds himself with these Fox folk, he is soaking in it!

He just likes the news that magnifies him over the kind that tells bad stories about him. Only, there are plenty of bad, real stories about, and news isn't really about what Trump happens to like to hear. 

I'd like to hope this moment had any bearing on whether future news-watchers bothered with the Fox brand in the future, but, no. I doubt it. I believe they watch for reasons wholly unrelated to veracity. 

(UPDATE: It is possibly also objectionable if Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders do these things because of the Hatch act, but really? Are we going to expect the White House to actually be the paragons of virtue, here?)

UPDATE 2: See what I mean, Vern? Does saying it's not an endorsement really "disclaimer" it?

Questions for Ted Cruz

Two basic Qs every reporter should ask Beto today: (1) should the “caravan” be allowed to cross illegally into Texas? (Beto refuses to answer.) And (2) did your campaign dollars illegally fund their doing so? https://t.co/5HcePn3AGs

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 2, 2018

Does Ted Cruz Tweet something like this because (1) he doesn't like his internal polling very much or (2) because he doesn't like himself very much? Because it just seems to me you'd had to be some kind of schmuck to shoot past "George Soros and the Democrats" are funding the caravan (which, as I've pointed out, makes no sense--not before an election we sure as hell wouldn't have!) to "my opponent is funding them"--when it should be clear these are desperately poor people walking a couple thousand miles because...

They have nothing. They aren't funded: they have nothing. And whatever someone might want to do for them might be considered one's moral duty to help the least of us. If one ever believed in such a thing.

UPDATE: Ah--apparently, Cruz's calumny was based on an O'Keefe lie, and O'Rourke's staffers were discussing a donation to charity that was being conflated with the caravan. Cruz and O'Keefe are entirely made of bullshit.

Certainly the Products of a Healthy Mind

I am sure it is very reasonable, right, to bitch about his Twitter follower count and put scare quotes around the word "Bomb" during an ongoing domestic terror investigation--in his own mind. I also think actually reasonable people would agree with CNN that there's something not really "Presidential", here.

Civility!

Full video of GOP candidate Scott Wagner threatening Gov. Tom Wolf: "You better put a catcher's mask on your face because I'm going to stomp all over your face with golf spikes." pic.twitter.com/Whh6TdsOXz

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) October 12, 2018

Ok, Ok, I'm not brand new here, and I get that this ad might be calculatedly stupid just so that it will go viral. But in a climate where many GOP figures are bemoaning the lack of civility, this "cleats in the face" approach is refreshingly...poorly timed.

PA-18 Was Close

Democrat Conor Lamb is the apparent winner over Republican Rick Saccone Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District special election, according to an NBC News projection. https://t.co/XRGHrHlNCy pic.twitter.com/4TqXdwN0xh

— NBC News (@NBCNews) March 14, 2018

I think the thing to keep in mind is, this district went big for Trump in 2016 and was gerrymandered to be a safe GOP seat, and Saccone wasn't really a particularly bad candidate (whatever Trump might say despite his rally for him).  But something changed. Does this reflect on the 2018 midterms?

I want to say "yes".

This is Not your Father-in-Law's TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

As you might have surmised, this edition of the TrumpWorld Grab-Bag is going to feature pretty heavily on Jared Kushner, who just had his security clearance downgraded, which seems great, although there is a pretty big issue with his ever having had one in the first place. Leaving aside the obvious problem of nepotism, Kushner is crazily in debt, his family has shown a willingness to use his position to get mad unethical, and, as was revealed today, a pattern of financial insecurity and poor, naïve decision-making has made foreign countries decide he is a super great halfwit to work with.  This was kind of a no-brainer--Kushner should not have high security access because his position is really insecure.

It's also probably a no-brainer to suppose that this means he either can't do his presumed job (which is, last I checked, all the foreign policy things we're supposed to have a State Department for) or, Daddy Trump and Ivanka are going to let him crib from their notes. This is a situation of such abominable stupidity it could only be happening in the Trump White House.

But in the world of "Jared can't catch a break", he's also facing a Hatch Act violation for talking up President Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, while using his official White House title. Kushner, of course, brought Parscale on to the 2016 campaign and worked closely with him, so he has a good idea about the quality of his work-product from the digital end of the campaign, but even that is darn problematic. Parscale went from being pretty much no one in politics, to being a weird 2016 success story, but the funny thing is, he's tied to Cambridge Analytica, which is tied to Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn and, obviously, the Russia investigation.  Parscale has already had a chat with Congress, and is probably going to get another one with Robert Mueller and friends. (Don't sweat, pets, there's other hang-ups this cat likely has.)

Among the things that are kind of alarming about Parscale's "genius" strategy is that it counted on using social media as a voter suppression tactic for targeted demographics. And oh! Hey! Far out! Neat! That was exactly the game the Russia interference was playing at, the Mueller has already indicted folks for. But really, who knows just how Russian assets intersected with the Trump campaign--yet? 

You know who might or might not know? Roger Stone. Apparently, it turns out he was all up in the WikiLeaks DMs (even though he tried to front like he wasn't and WikiLeaks tried to front like he wasn't) getting told to please stop telling people he was in touch with WikiLeaks. These reads are a little funky. You know who's digital back and forth I might like to know about, though--Assange and Sean Hannity. I know. This might just be a fanfic "ship" I have in my head. Anyhow, Sean Hannity recently said something kind of funny--that he was actively involved in the Trump campaign, and he never heard of George Papadopoulos.  "Actively involved"? Wow. This was a journalistic integrity half-minute with Sean Hannity.

I can't assess whether Hannity ever crossed paths with George Papadopoulos, but Joseph Mifsud, the professor that dangled Hillary Clinton "dirt" obtained by Russia to him, is missing. Is he the victim of foul play, or just ducking child support? I can't even pretend I know for sure, but if he's alive, I'm sure he has stories.

But as it must, this TrumpWorld Grab-Bag has to circle back around to Trump himself. Jared Kushner wasn't the only person whose dodgy background interfered with performance of his job--four Commerce employees just got the boot for clearance issues. There's definitely still "vetting" issues. But the poor vetting might not even be as bad as the failure of this Administration to address the Russian election hacking to any real degree. NSA Chief, Admiral Mike Rogers advised that he had not been given any order about disrupting the ongoing Russian plot. That is not good, because we know that Russia will try to affect the 2018 midterms.  We've also recently found out that the election-related systems of seven states were breached by Russian hacking in 2016.

And the GOP-lead Congress doesn't seem arsed to do much about any of it, either. (If anything, they still want to make our election systems less secure.) But if Congress doesn't seem interested in things like seeing if Trump is financially compromised due to his foreign indebtedness (which is, rather like his son-in-law's a pretty big deal, whatever Rep. Conaway thinks), Robert Mueller is, as always, on that case.

Continuing, Resolutely

Consider me in the "not a cave" camp regarding the vote to end the government shutdown in exchange for six years of CHIP funding. a promise for a DACA debate, and the possibility of another shutdown.  The deal wasn't perfect--of course settling the situation of the Dreamers sooner rather than later would be better as the lives of hundreds of thousands are in the balance.  But Sen. McConnell already gave us a clue that that was not the binary choice Dems (and a handful of Republicans) were actually going to get. In the meanwhile, CHIP remained unfunded, and Sen. McConnell had blocked a bid to keep the military and other federal workers paid. Hostages were piling up.

It should be clear that, just as the party that has neither the majority in the House and Senate nor the Presidency is unlikely to be the main culprit in causing a government shutdown in the first place, that the party that does have those advantages is also responsible for determining what gets voted on. It should be obvious, but there is no counting on the media not to report this as a "both sides" problem. The framing coming from the White House and from Majority Leader McConnell presented the most negative light: Those liberals were ready to support illegal immigrants over American citizens. And sure--that's crap. Kids brought here when they were minors had no control over coming here, and are as American as anybody, except for the paperwork. But given enough time, and without the ability to easily reframe that debate, Dems were facing losing support for the trying to do what not only seems right but is actually popular.

The thing of it is, while DACA is popular, government shutdowns are not. So, I don't see this vote as a "cave" so much as choosing a different time and battlefield. Dems responsibly voted to end the shutdown. And if Mitch McConnell is a man of his word, he will allow a debate on DACA. He said so.

Now, that means an awful lot rides on the good word of Mitch McConnell. Senate colleague Bob Corker was optimistic:

Addressing questions about whether McConnell would stick to his word on DACA, Republican Sen. Bob Corker said, “He’s going to do it. He said he’s going to do it. I’ve never gotten any sense that he’s not going to do it."

Corker added that it would be an “affront” to a larger number of his colleagues if McConnell didn't keep his promise.

 (Wouldn't it just be an affront, now?) But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been luxuriating in his effrontery for some time, now. There was that thing about denying President Obama a hearing on his SCOTUS pick. There was giving assurances to Senator Collins and Senator Flake  for votes over things that did not come to pass. But what McConnell promised just now was public and maybe just a little harder to go back on. And in three weeks, if he was not a man of his word, he deserves to get well and truly dragged for his bullshit.

There's no guarantee that, even if a debate takes place, an acceptable bill will get passed by the House and Senate, what with the Freedom Caucus and all that. Or that a bill gets signed by President Trump, given who his particular base is, and all that. (There were no assurances this time around either, which makes me wonder what people think would have happened this go-around.) Our best option on a good DACA resolution would involve neither a Republican Senate, nor racist-ass Trump in the White House--and that takes elections. But the next time, the debate about immigration can't hide behind insurance coverage for kids. It rests on McConnell having the debate, and the spotlight being on what Republicans do with that debate.  All in an election year.