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You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Goddamned Traitors

Goddamned Traitors

Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread

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Mr. Malamud is a Soviet immigrant…

Always check in with the head office before rolling out the new campaign:

#BunkerBoy is #PutinsPuppy

The ‘conservatives’ are skeptical!

Even Mr. Megan McArgleBargle:

Late Night Horrorshow Open ThreadPost + Comments (106)

Wisconsin Needs Our Help

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Wisconsin Needs Our Help

(Iron Brigade Forward – 2nd Wisconsin Infantry Led By General John Reynolds – Battle Of Gettysburg painting by Mark Maritato)

Earlier today the US Supreme Court, which has cancelled oral arguments for the first time since the 1918 FT Riley flu pandemic and can’t figure out how to use Zoom, Google hangouts, or the secure system that the Intel Community is using to telework, ruled 5-4 that Wisconsin would not be allowed to extend the deadline for absentee/vote by mail votes to be returned. The 5 Republican appointed justices overruled two lower Federal court rulings. In conjunction with the partisan 4-2 ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court that Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers does not have the power to unilaterally move tomorrow’s presidential primary, as well as state judicial, other state and local elections, this means that Wisconsin’s elections will go on as schedule tomorrow. No matter how deadly that may be. And no matter how many voters might be disenfranchised because they are either too scared to go out and risk infection to vote or because election officials have had to close the vast majority of Wisconsin’s polling places.

Wiscon needs our help. Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party has been doing yeoman’s work for months to prevent the created by an egregious partisan gerrymander Republican majority state legislature and state Supreme Court from screwing around with the elections for Republican partisan purposes. Both the presidential primary and state and local elections tomorrow and the general election in November. Wikler has put out an appeal for help. And you don’t have to live in Wisconsin to heed his call.

So if you have some time tomorrow and are willing to make some calls or texts, go to the links below and help out. The earlier the better would probably be most helpful.

This shouldn’t be partisan, but the Wisconsin Republican majority state legislature, the Republican state supreme court justices, and the Republican appointees on the US Supreme Court have decided that they, to quote President Lincoln from his Cooper Union speech, are only interest in ruling or ruining.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

To make phone calls, use this link.

To send texts, use this link.

What Wikler wants everyone to do who can make calls and/or texts is to tell Wisconsin voters:

If you have an absentee ballot in Wisconsin, you have to either put it in the mail so that it’s postmarked tomorrow, Tuesday 4/7, or drop it off in person by 8pm at your clerk’s office. It must arrive by Monday, 4/13.

Open thread!

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Repub Venality Open Thread: The Night Caligula’s Horse Delivered the State of the Union Speech

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Trump's State of Disunion - Jack Ohman

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)

 
Of course it was a load of manure — that’s the best the beast is capable of producing. More shame on the gutless GOP sacks in suits who, to protect their own sinecures, not only voted the horse as their leader, but insisted it was the finest orator and firmest patriot since Tailgunner Joe McCarthy dined alone (with his DTs).

Commentary, at this point, would be superfluous… El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago delivered his State of the Union address, one of the few constitutional responsibilities of his office that he hasn’t ignored. Which is not to say he hasn’t degraded it, too. On Tuesday night, he turned it into a cheesy spectacle that belonged in, say, a casino sinking into bankruptcy in Atlantic City.

He bestowed the Presidential Medal Of Freedom on Rush Limbaugh, hanging it on that rancid bag of old sins, right there in the House chamber. He arranged a surprise family reunion for a soldier home from deployment, right there in the House chamber. He told an African-American schoolgirl that he, personally, was going to see to it that she can go to a good school. He congratulated another child on not having been aborted, and promised that he, personally, would see to it that nobody was. These Dear-Leader-Grants-a-Wish moments are straight out of a dog-eared playbook used by various members of the Kim family in North Korea. Weaponized sentimentality is a powerful tool in authoritarian hands.

The speech itself was the usual farrago of lies and bigotry…

This is a lying, criminal president*, aided and abetted by a political party that lost its mind long before it lost its way, and that now swallows poisonous pablumlike this:

If forcing American taxpayers to provide unlimited free health care to illegal aliens sounds fair to you, then stand with the radical left. But if you believe that we should defend American patients and American seniors, then stand with me and pass legislation to prohibit free government health care for illegal aliens.

It’s morning in American carnage.

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The other obstruction and witness intimidation case tied to Russia and Ukraine

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Roger Stone was convicted on all counts of obstruction, false statements and witness intimidation.

Open Thread

UPDATE 1

At least this Friday has the courtesy of news-dumping during normal business hours.

The other obstruction and witness intimidation case tied to Russia and UkrainePost + Comments (75)

Another Whistleblower Update Open Thread: “Further Proof that Rudy Giuliani Is A Patriotic Mole”

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… Or maybe just a naked mole rat, which he resembles more and more. I’m guessing this will be the Media Village Idiot Hot Take by tomorrow…

ETA:

Another Whistleblower Update Open Thread: <em>“Further Proof that Rudy Giuliani Is A Patriotic Mole”</em>Post + Comments (26)

To the Leningrad Station: Putin’s American Auxiliary Has An Official Comedian

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Wonder how many other GOP turncoats will use the summer recess to slip away & join ol’ GriftGawdGuns’n’Gravytrain at Vlad’s summer resort? Dana Rorabacher? Devin Nunes?… Kevin McCarthy is too busy ‘acting’ as head to various department Trump wants destroyed. Doubt #MoscowMitch’s spouse will let him avoid his financial duties to the PLA. And Rand Paul is already supposed to be hiding out in Canada for ‘lung surgery’ consequent to losing the lawn-care argument with his neighbor…

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Open Thread: Oh, Look, Another GOP (Alleged) Felon!

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Can’t throw an ore-bearing rock around the Peepot Dome Gang without hitting one. From the NYTimes, “Investigation Intensifies Into Top Trump Fund-raiser”:

Federal prosecutors have intensified their wide-ranging federal investigation into Elliott Broidy, a top fund-raiser for President Trump, signaling the Justice Department’s continued interest in questions about foreign influence on the administration.

In recent months, federal authorities have searched Mr. Broidy’s Southern California office and subpoenaed records related to him from a onetime business partner and from Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee. They have reportedly asked the authorities in Romania for assistance investigating associates with whom Mr. Broidy worked to win military intelligence contracts potentially worth as much as $64 million.

They have also charged four people who worked with Mr. Broidy on plans to influence the administration, including on behalf of interests in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. While the charges against three of his associates were unrelated to their work with Mr. Broidy, most have been asked about their relationships with him, according to several people familiar with the investigation.

Taken together, the steps suggest mounting pressure on Mr. Broidy. And they underscore the legal questions raised by his efforts to parlay his access into business advantage in the frenetic weeks after Mr. Trump’s election, and then to influence the new administration’s policies toward the Middle East, where he was pursuing contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The scrutiny comes as the Justice Department has stepped up its enforcement of foreign lobbying laws and continues to investigate whether foreign money was illegally funneled into Mr. Trump’s super PAC or inaugural committee.

Mr. Broidy’s lawyers have contended that he did not do anything that would require him to lobby. One of the lawyers, Chris Clark, said in an email on Monday that he dismissed as “utterly false” the idea that his client used his connections to Mr. Trump to drum up business…

We never had to *ask*, Your Honor. Once we’d inserted our guy into office, we could count on him doing what was best for The (GOP) Family…

The AP story is more painstaking with the details:

… Broidy, a 61-year-old Los Angeles businessman, made a fortune in investments before moving into defense contracting and has played prominent roles in GOP fundraising, including as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2006 to 2008 and vice chair of the Trump Victory Committee in 2016.

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Open Thread: Oh, Look, <em>Another</em> GOP (Alleged) Felon!Post + Comments (61)

Repub Venality Open Thread: Still Laboring to ‘Make America White Again’

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The Washington Post, this morning:

There are two likely explanations for the Justice Department replacing its legal team in the census citizenship question case. Neither of them is good, and one could signal something much worse lying ahead.

The Justice Department announced the moves Sunday, as The Post’s Matt Zapotosky reported, and there is at least some indication that it was because the lawyers had qualms about the direction in which this was heading…

Another not-mutually-exclusive possibility is that the lawyers had seen their credibility shot by changing their minds about how to proceed. The old legal team told a judge last week that they were done, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross waved the white flag publicly too, before President Trump reversed the administration’s course in a tweet…

Or as Nancy Pelosi frames it, per Bloomberg:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused President Donald Trump’s administration Monday of wanting to “make America white again” with its plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

“You know his hat? ‘Make America white again.’ They want to make sure that people, certain people, are counted,” Pelosi said at a press conference on election security. “It’s really disgraceful and it’s not what our founders had in mind.”

Pelosi said the goal of the Trump administration is “self-evident” to have “a chilling effect” so certain populations will not respond to the census…

She added that Democrats were fighting for an accurate census count and are seeking enough funding for outreach to ensure everyone is counted.

Democrats are also seeking to enforce subpoenas for information on the census. The House Oversight and Reform Committee voted last month to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for withholding documents.

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Ted Lieu Live Tweets Hicks Testimony

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They are on a lunch break. You can follow along here when they return.

ETA: Adam says Hicks has left the building. So you’ll have to make do reading Lieu’s old tweets here.

 

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Monday Morning Open Thread: The Struggle Continues

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Monday Morning Open Thread: The Struggle ContinuesPost + Comments (194)

C.R.E.A.M. Open Thread: The McConnell-Chao Marriage Is *Mutually* Profitable

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Guess it’s nice for the GOP senators who’ve handed their balls over to Mitch to know that, should his Russian funding ever dry up, he won’t be reduced to peddling his memoirs to support his lifestyle:

The Transportation Department under Secretary Elaine Chao designated a special liaison to help with grant applications and other priorities from her husband Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, paving the way for grants totaling at least $78 million for favored projects as McConnell prepared to campaign for reelection.

Chao’s aide Todd Inman, who stated in an email to McConnell’s Senate office that Chao had personally asked him to serve as an intermediary, helped advise the senator and local Kentucky officials on grants with special significance for McConnell — including a highway-improvement project in a McConnell political stronghold that had been twice rejected for previous grant applications…

The circumstances surrounding the Owensboro grant and another, more lucrative grant to Boone County, highlight the ethical conflicts in having a powerful Cabinet secretary married to the Senate’s leader and in a position to help him politically. McConnell has long touted his ability to bring federal resources to his state, which his wife is now in a position to assist.

Chao’s designation of Inman as a special intermediary for Kentucky — a privilege other states did not enjoy — gave a special advantage to projects favored by her husband, which could in turn benefit his political interests. In such situations, ethicists say, each member of a couple benefits personally from the success of the other…

(Much more at the link. As with so many similar one-man pork projects, the money seems to have drained away on ‘showpiece’ architectural projects that benefited a small cadre of connected businessmen without providing much assistance to the voters who really needed some help.)

The power couple isn’t particulary covert about their money-spinning prowess. Bess Levin, at Vanity Fair:

… Last week, the New York Times reported that the secretary tried to bring family members to government meetings with Chinese officials, despite said family members having major financial entanglements in China. Last month, the Wall Street Journal found that she’d made a $40,000 profit on her stake in Vulcan, the nation’s largest construction materials supplier, despite having promised—over a year ago!—to divest from the company, on whose board she sat…

Cole linked to the NYTimes article when it appeared, but seriously: Can you imagine the outrage if a Democratic Senator’s wife did anything like this?

… Ms. Chao is the top Trump official overseeing the American shipping industry, which is in steep decline and overshadowed by its Chinese competitors.

Her efforts on behalf of the family business — appearing at promotional events, joining her father in interviews with Chinese-language media — have come as Foremost has interacted with the Chinese state to a remarkable degree for an American company.

Foremost has received hundreds of millions of dollars in loan commitments from a bank run by the Chinese government, whose policies have been labeled by the Trump administration as threats to American security. The company’s primary business — delivering China’s iron ore and coal — is intertwined with industries caught up in a trade war with the United States. That dispute stems in part from the White House’s complaints that China is flooding the world with subsidized steel, undermining American producers.

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Impeachable (Open Thread)

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I’ve talked myself off the “Trump must be impeached now!” ledge by acknowledging two obvious facts: impeachment is a political instrument, and there aren’t enough House Democrats in favor of it right now to proceed. It was inexcusably naive of me to think of it any other way, of course.

As a political instrument, impeachment can’t realistically have a “moral imperative” attached to it since political acts either result in good or bad outcomes for the party committing them, and that is the measure of their success or failure.

If we’re serious about upholding the rule of law in the executive branch in a post-Trump era, we’ll have to figure out another enforcement avenue. The constitutional remedy has been rendered garbage by partisan extremists in the Republican Party who’ve made it clear where their allegiance lies.

Liz Warren and others who point out that Congress has a constitutional duty to act are correct, and I’m glad they’re saying so. But reality is what it is, and that’s what Nancy Pelosi is dealing with right now.

The political risk Pelosi is trying to avoid is galvanizing Trump’s base through an impeachment process that will inevitably end in “exoneration” in the Senate, no matter what the investigation uncovers. That the Senate Republicans will “exonerate” Trump regardless is a near-universally acknowledged truth.

The argument is whether that should be a factor in a decision to impeach or not. I can see both sides of that argument, but if the ultimate goal is to get rid of Trump as soon as possible, the reality is we have to get people on board for impeachment through investigations, if only to clear the “impeached in the House” hurdle, and that work isn’t complete.

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Russiagate Horrorshow Open Thread: Salesman Trump Checks In with Home Office

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Mueller is really getting to the Squatter-in-Chief; Trump can’t be arsed any longer to even pretend he isn’t taking orders directly from Putin. And — let it never be forgotten — the entire GOP is just fine with that!

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Muellergate Open Thread: All the President’s Minions

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So, as it happens, Dave Roth’s done another fine pigbladdering of a most deserving target…

One of the most common misunderstandings about Dumb Guys is that they are not capable of doing things. This is false. They can and in fact absolutely love to do complicated-sounding things like scheme and intrigue. They may not do those things well, and will generally do them in arbitrary and ineffective ways. But they will attack the work of scheming and maneuvering and infighting with all the vigor of a dog trying to carry a too-big tree branch through a doorway…

… It is a common Dumb Guy trait to stop assimilating new information at some moment of great personal success; there is no reason to think that Jon Gruden believes the NFL is any different than it was when he won a Super Bowl in it during George W. Bush’s first term.

The problem is that all that intrigue creates its own sort of paranoid gravity. The Dumb Guy believes that the moment he stops scheming is the moment that he becomes vulnerable, and so must throw himself into constant counter-intrigue and intrigue-maintenance and general amphetamized vigilance. And that, according to Ian Rapoport, is where the Raiders stand today, after Mayock and Gruden sent home the team’s entire scouting department because they “don’t know who to trust.”…

Yeah, not exactly about Our Political Moment. But it certainly could be!

Because if there is one common denominator to the collection of grifters, racists, willing traitors, overconfident scions and all-purpose villains that compose the Oval Office Squatters Squad, it is that they are every one a Dumb Guy, revolving around the Dumb Guy in Chief.

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Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: He’s Decompensating, and None of His GOP Fellows Cares

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If you weren’t paying attention during Reagan’s second term, take my word: The old man was visibly falling to pieces, week by week. But unlike the current Oval Office Occupant, Ronnie at least had a wife who cared enough to fight for him, and a moderately competent bunch of advisors alert to the possibility that they themselves might be held accountable some day.

Today’s Repubs haven’t got even that rudimentary sense of self preservation — they’re just grabbing everything they can steal before the whole rotten Potemkin village falls apart.

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