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Daddy ain’t around, probably out committing felonies

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I realize this is kind of bullshit topic but I keep thinking about it…Trump is obviously an asshole who was undoubtedly a shitty father. Ivana hates him, accused him of rape in their divorce proceedings. So…what’s the deal with Eric and Don Jr. and Ivanka? Do you they think he’s an asshole too and just want the inheritance and general free ride or what? I don’t get it. I’m curious if anyone knows anything about the psychology of these kinds of situations.

Speaking of people who suck up to Donald, let’s make vulnerable Republican Senators pay for going along with this sham trial. Give here to a fund split equally between eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado, Georgia, and Arizona.

Goal Thermometer

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Amo, amas Amash

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As Brave Sir Mitt gets ready to cave into all of McConnell’s commands, I had a thought: why hasn’t the media lionized Justin Amash they way they’ve lionized Mitt and McCain? Amash did something genuinely courageous — he tanked his career because he had too much dignity to go along with other Republicans on impeachment. And his statements about why he couldn’t weren’t preening and attention-getting, they were simple and factual. I don’t agree with Amash about much else and I can’t imagine ever voting for him for anything, and, no, I don’t want him to get his own MSNBC show (he won’t anyway), but he probably won’t get re-elected now and I don’t see how he goes on wingnut welfare or anything like that after he loses. Mitt and McCain, by contrast, never did much other than write sternly worded tweets, were never in any danger of not being reelected, and are both eight figure wingers who could just retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness if they did fail to get reelected.

It’s a very strange thing: the media loves to blab about the bravery of wankers like Mitt and McCain and Susan Collins and Jim Comey, but when someone does something that involves real sacrifice, it’s crickets. Of course the reason is obvious — they’re all millionaires and they relate to other master of the universe types, not to back-benchers (or bureaucratic whistleblowers).

Let’s make vulnerable Republican Senators pay for going along with this sham trial. Give here to a fund split equally between eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado, Georgia, and Arizona.

Goal Thermometer

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But you knifed me in my dirty filthy basement

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I don’t get out much anymore now that I have a kid, but we did manage to get out during daycare hours this summer to see Last Black Man in San Francisco. And then more recently, my parents were able to babysit while we saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Knives Out, Little Women, and Parasite. One thing I’ve come to realize is that seeing a movie on the big screen is totally different than seeing it at home, especially if you’re easily distracted, as I am.

I liked Last Black Man in San Francisco and Knives Out the best, though I liked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood just as much once it was over (I was dreading the ending too much to enjoy it while I watched, but the twist at the end made me like it better). I liked Little Women too. I didn’t know what to make of Parasite.

What did you think of the movies I mentioned? And what other movies were good this year? One other thing I’m curious to hear what people think about: there have been all these articles about how everything is a superhero movie these days but I find it very easy to go see non-superhero movies and I don’t live in a major city. Is not being able to see non-superhero movies really a thing?

Also too, let’s raise some more money for Democrats in the Senate. The following is split between the eventual nominees in Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Maine, Colorado, and Arizona.

Goal Thermometer

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Election Year Open Thread: Cancel Iowa

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I’m sorry, Iowans, you’re lovely people and I’m sure you mean well, but this is not an optimal way to select the leadership for a country as large and diverse as ours. Because the rest of us are tired of finding euphemisms — unpredictable! — for the fact that too many of you are actually insulated from the effects of your choices:

And, no, you’re not responsible for the DNC’s weirder efforts to please all its warring factions, but if we weren’t all fixated on your antiquated caucus system (yes, and NH’s cranky insistence on being FRIST IN THE NATION, forty-nine other states be damned), the DNC would have a much more practical path…

… “I think that people need to idle their engines a little bit,” says Penny Rosfjord, an Iowa Democratic Party district chair. “A caucus was never meant to be smooth; it’s kind of a messy process. It’s not a straightforward, check a box and move on.”…

Of course, it’s never easy to give up a perceived entitlement...

… but once you’ve laid down this burden, we’ll all be happier voters!

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Let me tell you ’bout Pete, didn’t want no fame

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As many of you know, I am fueled creatively by my massive hatred of David Brooks.  And that’s why I’ve grown to dislike Pete Buttigieg so much.  The fucker’s running to be the president of David Brooks.  I’d like to say I wonder why totebaggers love him so much but I don’t: the seven languages, the rhetoric about unity, the praise from David Brooks…it hits all the NPR erogenous zones.

Ok, now that that’s off my chest, let’s raise some money for the Senate.  I think that’s the place where it makes the most sense to raise money right now.  The Balloon Juice Senate fund is split between the eventual Dem nominees in CO, NC, GA, IA, and ME.  (Update: Also AZ.) You can divvy it up however you like.

Goal Thermometer

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Grifters Gonna Grift Open Thread: Why Is the Sanders Campaign Suddenly In Need of A Big Distraction?

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Warren is an unelectable whore! Biden is an elderly racist! Buttigieg is a larval robot! Sure, it’s crunch time in Iowa, but I had been expecting this kind of noisy media-friendly shite-flinging from the Sanders campaign ever since a certain AP article appeared last week — “Shadow group provides Sanders super PAC support he scorns”:

Bernie Sanders says he doesn’t want a super PAC. Instead, he has Our Revolution, a nonprofit political organization he founded that functions much the same as one.

Like a super PAC, which is shorthand for super political action committee, Our Revolution can raise unlimited sums from wealthy patrons that dwarf the limits faced by candidates and conventional PACs. Unlike a super PAC, however, the group doesn’t have to disclose its donors — a stream of revenue commonly referred to as “dark money.”

Now, with less than one month to go before the Iowa caucuses, Our Revolution appears to be skirting campaign finance law, which forbids groups founded by federal candidates and officeholders from using large donations to finance federal election activity, including Sanders’ 2020 bid.…

…[W]hile Warren has come under fire for courting wealthy financiers in her past Senate campaigns, Sanders and Our Revolution have largely avoided scrutiny during the primary, even as he has accelerated his criticism of others, among them Biden, for relying on super PACs founded by their allies.

In the case of Our Revolution, which aims to boost voter turnout for Sanders, the Vermont senator was the founder…

The campaign finance act says groups “directly or indirectly established” by federal officeholders or candidates can’t “solicit, receive, direct, transfer, or spend funds” for federal electoral activity that exceeds the “limitations, prohibitions, and reporting requirements” of the law. Those limits are currently set at $2,800 for candidates and $5,000 for political action committees.

Our Revolution has taken in nearly $1 million from donors who gave more than the limits and whose identities it hasn’t fully disclosed, according to tax filings for 2016, 2017 and 2018. Much of it came from those who contributed six-figure sums.

It won’t have to publicly reveal its 2019 fundraising until after this year’s presidential election. And money it raises between now and then won’t have to be disclosed until the following year…

Read the whole thing. I’d been waiting to see how much this story would be amplified outside sources like the Daily Caller, or whether the Sanders campaign would mount a defense. But that defense, as ever with St. Bernie, turns out to be “I HAVE NO FLAWS, unlike every other Democratic candidate!”

So, no, I don’t expect to hear Word One about this during tomorrow’s debate — the other candidates can’t afford to waste resources fighting a million bad-faith assaults on their staff and volunteers from the Bernie mob, and the media has no interest in damping down such an ‘exciting’ candidate. They’re saving their ammo until, in Chris Cillizza’s dreams, it’s a two-army battle between the Oval Office Occupant and his mirror-world doppelganger. And as long as he can keep squirreling away money for his ongoing, never-ending national campaign (and his fourth house), Sanders is perfectly happy to take advantage.

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Grifters Gonna Grift Open Thread: Trump Publicly Offers to Rent Out American Troops

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… which is the most generous possible framing here. Perhaps he hasn’t actually sold American soldiers’ lives to his Saudi bankers — yet. Trump says a lot of stuff that’s ‘just marketing’, after all. Maybe he’s just doing a little advertising, in case anybody in the area’s looking for some well-equipped military muscle…

Elsewhere…

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So Much Winning

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Three flaming leftie, know-nothing, numbers-‘n’-stuff libtards are out with a new examination of the impact of Trump’s tariffs.

This paper, by Mary Amity of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Columbia’s David E. Weinstein, and Stephen J. Redding of Princeton (AKA America’s northernmost southern school) concludes that once again, Donald Trump and his merry band of Republican scorched-earth economic terrorists have shat the bed:

Trade theory suggests that tariffs levied by a large country, such as the U.S., should cause foreign firms to lower prices. However, until the 2018 trade war, economists have not had the opportunity to study tariffs on large economies in recent history due to the reluctance of governments in these economies to apply substantial tariffs…The recent U.S. application of substantial tariffs on imports from major trading partners provides a natural experiment for understanding these effects. Quite surprisingly, we have found that in most sectors, these U.S. tariffs have been completely passed on to U.S. firms and consumers.

As in: Trump’s trade war is a tax on American workers and consumers.

So Much Winning

There is an oddity the authors note:

The data show that U.S. tariffs have caused foreign exporters of steel to substantially lower their prices into the U.S. market. Thus, foreign countries are bearing close to half the cost of the steel tariffs. Since China is only the tenth largest steel supplier to the U.S. market, these costs have largely been borne by regions like the EU, South Korea and Japan.2 This is likely good news for U.S. firms that demand steel, but bad news for workers hoping that steel tariffs will bring back jobs. Indeed, the fact that foreign steel producers have lowered their prices in response to U.S. tariffs may help explain why U.S. steel production only rose by 2 percent per year between the third quarter of 2017 and the third quarter of 2019 despite 25 percent steel tariffs.

So: we’re still paying half the cost of steel tariffs; workers are getting bupkis, and surely our heartland Real American™ Trump voters have discovered the eternal truth that Everything/one Trump Touches Dies.*

Trump has succeeded in his highest aim: his own taxes have been cut and he’s been able to grift on a grand scale. Those who hired it done have got theirs too, on their 1099s and in the judges that only the rubes think are there simply to enforce Christo-sharia law on the rest of us, but are really in place to ensure that big business never loses another court case, and labor never wins one.

And we pay more for the privilege.

On that happy note…this thread is open!

*Narrator: They won’t.  (Edit prompted by Redfish’s spot-on comment.)

Image: Roland Vivian Pitchforth, Snack time in a factory, 1941

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Election Year Open Thread: Good for Mike Bloomberg

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Stacey Abrams will not be Bloomberg’s VP, if only because his chances for the nomination are vanishingly small. But if her local paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is correct, Bloomberg was responsible for about a third of the funds Fair Fight raised to fight voter suppression during the second half of 2019. For that money, not to mention the money he’ll be expected to donate in the future (and that his support will produce from other donors), she’s willing to give him a spot at her invite-only summit. Who knows, he might learn some important leassons… as might the reporters who’ll follow Bloomberg, who wouldn’t have shown up otherwise.

It’s purely transactional, on both their parts. I’m sure this is actually comforting to Mike — he’s a self-proclaimed Data Guy, for whom transactional is easy, unlike all that grip’n’grin stuff natural politicians find fulfilling.

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Late Night Open Thread: The Way We Live Now

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Election 2020 Open Thread: It’s Not A Campaign, It’s A Performance

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So Sanders’ most online supporters have successfully gamed the system — and the media — into another BIG WIN FOR BERNIE!!! media cycle, this time concerning his fundraising:

Hey, as long as it’s good for the credit-card companies, amirite? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Meanwhile, out in the real(ish) world, where the actual work is done…

Part of the price of relying on volunteers and interns is that every campaign will be plagued with staffers who spend more time cultivating their personal issues than working on their candidate’s official program. But of course the Sanders campaign is the one whose staffers feel the need to contact the media about this eternal dynamic!

Also, it was reported as Excellent news for Bernie! when Jeff ‘Comic Book Guy’ Weaver lost his position as the official face of the Sanders campaign. Perhaps the political horse-race touts predicted this would give Weaver more opportunity to play to his real strength, nitpicking minor details and curating grudges…

Sen. Bernie Sanders frequently attacks Amazon on the campaign trail, vowing to break up the online retail giant if elected, denouncing its treatment of workers and decrying its ability to pay no federal taxes on billions in profits.

That’s why impassioned dissent erupted within the Sanders campaign earlier this year over its purchases of large amounts of supplies through Amazon, according to five people with knowledge of the situation…

The Sanders campaign continued using Amazon despite the concerns. Through September, it had spent more than $233,000 on Amazon purchases — much of it in office supplies, and often through Amazon’s Marketplace feature — a review of campaign finance records shows…

The campaign’s spending on Amazon is a small fraction of the more than $40 million it shelled out on operating expenditures during the same period. But it was more than other campaigns spent on the company, and more than enough to prompt surprise and complaints from staffers who felt it conflicted with the campaign’s principles…

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BREAKING: “Lev Parnas Pushes to Share His Info With House Intel”

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Happy New Year’s Eve, political journalists!

Lev Parnas, a former Rudy Giuliani associate charged with financial crimes, is looking to share more material with congressional investigators, according to a letter his lawyer has sent to a federal judge. The letter, filed in court on Monday evening, indicates that the committee first tasked with helming the impeachment inquiry is gathering additional evidence about Trump World.

In the letter, Parnas’ lawyer Joseph Bondy said the Justice Department will share materials with his client on Tuesday that it seized from his home and at his arrest. The materials include documents and the contents of an iPhone. Bondy then asked Judge Paul Oetken of the Southern District of New York to allow him to share those materials with the House Intelligence Committee; a court order currently bars him from sharing them with anyone. The Justice Department has said it does not object to him giving the material to Congress…

Trump’s relationship with Ukraine—in particular through his intermediary and personal lawyer Giuliani—is at the center of the impeachment process. Parnas had a front-row seat to much of Giuliani’s Ukraine-related activity.

Federal authorities arrested Parnas and his associate Igor Fruman at Dulles Airport in October and charged them with conspiring to illegally funnel money from a foreign national into an American election. For many months before their arrest, the two worked with Giuliani to investigate allegations about former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who served for a time on the board of a scandal-dogged Ukrainian energy company…

Parnas and Fruman, both Soviet-born U.S. citizens, made hefty political contributions through an entity they started called Global Energy Partners. And they built connections on Capitol Hill; after then-Rep. Pete Sessions sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling for Yovanovitch’s removal, a PAC the pair supported shelled out a huge sum to boost his re-election bid. Sessions’ name was also batted around within the Trump administration as a potential replacement for Yovanovitch, though any efforts to install him there didn’t get traction.

Parnas and Fruman have both pleaded not guilty. And Parnas indicated he would cooperate with the congressional impeachment inquiry. Because of his close proximity to Giuliani, he may have significant visibility into Giuliani’s actions that other witnesses lack. For instance, a senior Zelensky aide confirmed to The Daily Beast that Parnas was present for a meeting he had with Giuliani where they discussed the U.S.-Ukraine relationship…

Guess we’ll know from the Oval Office Occupant’s tweet-stream — or Giuliani’s — how successful efforts to hide this news from him have been. As if the festivities at Mar-A-Largo weren’t fraught enough already.

Credit for Individual-1’s obsession with appearances, though; Parnas looks exactly like the bumbling minion in a spy caper who inadvertently betrays Mr. Big, doesn’t he?

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Election Year Open Thread: Biden’s An Old Pro At This

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I was looking for a less entendre-friendly title, but… Joe is what he is. And proud of it, bless the man.

It still feels to me like he’ll blow up his nomination, because that’s been his track record. But this is a brave new century, so maybe my cynicism is misplaced!

As long as he picks a decent younger candidate for his VP (psst: KAMALA HARRIS, Joe), I’ve steeled myself to cheer for President Biden. Joe 2020: YOUR CHOICE COULD BE SO MUCH WORSE

Politico, at the beginning of December — “Biden struts as his rivals bite the dust”:

… The chest-thumping two months before the Feb. 3 caucuses is a risky approach for Biden, given the fluidity of the race, especially in Iowa, where Biden has steadily lost ground in polling since January. And historically, Iowa voters have demonstrated their willingness to make last-minute shifts, falling away from a safe bet or getting behind a relative unknown, just before the caucuses.

But despite his wobbly debate performances, lackluster fundraising and verbal mishaps, Biden is still standing. And nationally, he’s still leading in the polls…

“Biden’s been in the race since April, and despite ups and downs, and many gaffes and missteps, and attacks by many of the other candidates, he’s still standing as the overall frontrunner,” said Garry South, a Democratic political consultant from California who long expressed doubts about his home state senator’s presidential bid. “So there’s something to crow about, I would say.”…

Biden’s confidence also rests on his position in South Carolina and a raft of Southern Super Tuesday states that include more diverse populations and more conservative Democrats. To that end, Biden said Monday, if he faltered in Iowa, he could still win the nomination. But if he won Iowa, Biden argued he’d be almost unstoppable.

And Biden said he doesn’t see anyone even close to him in South Carolina polling who could surge even if they won Iowa.

“There is no one else who is in a position to all of a sudden to do what Barack [Obama] was able to do,” he said. “I think even if we didn’t do well in Iowa, we’re still way in the game in terms of where we are on Super Tuesday and where we’ll be in South Carolina and Nevada. I feel confident about those two, and I don’t see something fundamentally shifting.”…

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A Very GOP Xmas: Taking Food Benefits From the Desperate

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Trump Santa's Opposite - John Deering

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

But the GOP can’t celebrate unless they know someone else is suffering:

Scrooge Trump & His Sidekick Miller

(Jeff Danziger via GoComics.com)

Just Ask Your Old Man for A Million - Sheneman

(Drew Sheneman via GoComics.com)

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Florida Man Open Thread: The Proposed Trump Library

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Carl Hiaasen, call your lawyer:

… That’s the vision of James Arena, a real estate broker and resident of Briny Breezes, the 43-acre coastal town just south of Boynton Beach that’s made up entirely of a mobile home park.

Arena, an avid Trump supporter, says he thinks he can convince the president to buy the land and turn it into a personal monument. Arena said he has the ball rolling by reaching out to his friend, rapper and Palm Beach County resident Vanilla Ice, who is close to the Trump family…

The projected listing price to buy Briny Breezes, which is sandwiched between the ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway and is made up of nearly 500 property owners?

$1 billion…

For Briny – as it is known by residents – to be sold, it would have to be approved by property owners representing 67 percent of the town’s shareholders. That’s because Briny is also a corporation run by a board of directors, with the property owners holding corporate “shares.” The better the location of an individual’s property, the more shares that person owns.

Arena said the town’s land owners have little choice but to sell because of major infrastructural issues involving the town’s seawall, fresh water pipes and sewer system that are prohibitively expensive for residents to fix…

Arena said Trump could develop the land by building a hotel, marina and restaurants along with the presidential library and make the site a major tourist attraction.

“It makes a lot of sense for him to do something like that here,” Arena said.

It’s not the first time Trump’s name has been linked to Briny Breezes. In 2007, Trump showed interest in the land, possibly teaming with The Related Group at the time. “We may do that together,” Trump said then. “It’s a great job, a wonderful location.”…

Of course it’s not gonna happen — if only because Trump wouldn’t put up the money, even if he *had* it — but I can totally see #Failson the First getting sweaty-excited over the idea…

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