Will Kansas Be The Silver Spike Through The Heart Of Moscow Mitch?

Alabama and Kansas are very different demographically-- Alabama, for example, has a sizable African-American population (26.4%) and Kansas' African-American population is just 5.6%-- but the two states have something very much in common: both are Republican bastions. Alabama's PVI is R+14 and Kansas' is R+13. In 2016, Hillary won just 34% in Alabama and 36% in Kansas. Alabam's politics is based on racism. After the Civil War, when the Democratic Party was seen as the more racist, Alabama elected Democrats to statewide offices. For a century after 1878, Alabama elected racist Democrats to the Senate. Jeremiah Denton, elected in 1980, was the first exception, although was defeated by racist Democrat Richard Shelby after one term-- and Shelby quickly switched parties and became a Republican. Then came racist Republicans Jeff Sessions and then... a break in tradition. Doug Jones, a non-racist Democrat was elected to fill out the remainder of Jeff Sessions term. How did that happen? The GOP nominated child molester and crackpot Roy Moore. Conventional wisdom-- in both DC and Alabama-- says the only way Jones can keep his seat next year is if Moore is nominated to oppose him again, which may or may not happen.

Meanwhile, Kansas was admitted to the Union early in 1861 and has basically been a Republican state ever since. The state elected a couple of Populists in the late 1800s and 3 Democrats in its entire history of sending Kansans to the Senate. The last was George McGill who was elected to fill the term of Republican Charles Curtis after he was elected vice president on Herbert Hoover's ticket. Republican Henry Allen was appointed interim senator but by the time the election to finish Curtis' term came along, the 1929 crash had occurred and the state decided to try a Democrat. He was the last one.

The state's senior senator, Pat Roberts (83 years old), has been noticeably senile for a some time and he finally announced he's retiring next year.) The Republican Party's first choice was to replace him with former Congressman Mike Pompeo, currently Trump's Secretary of State. He's passed, more or less. There are 5 Republicans competing for the nomination, former football player Dave Lindstrom, Congressman Roger Marshall, state Senate president Susan Wagle, Bryan Pruitt (a random sociopath from Wichita) and... former reviled Secretary of State and general all around racist and Trumpist, Kris Kobach, who lost the governorship to a Democrat last year. No, really:

There are 4 Democrats competing for their party's nomination-- GOP-lite former Congresswoman Nancy Boyda, former U.S. Attorney for Kansas Barry Grissom, Manhattan mayor pro tem Usha Reddi and frequent failed candidate for various things Robert Tillman.

Last night, wealthy far right extremists from around the country gathered at the New York City Park Avenue apartment of lunatic-fringe billionaire Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal. A big time Trump financier for a fundraiser Thiel-- and Ann Colter-- hosted the event for Kobach. Minimum ticket price was $1,000. Kobach is well-known nationally in far right circles as a regular guest pushing racism and xenophobia on Fox and in his hateful column for Breitbart.

3 neo-fascists on Park Avenue last night

Earlier yesterday Lindsay Wise reported for the Wall Street Journal that the Democrats have a shot at winning: Kobach. An NRSC poll, examined by The Journal for authenticity, shows Grisson beating Kobach by ten points.

The previously unpublished findings reveal why some Republicans are deeply concerned that a Kobach candidacy could cost the party a Senate seat in Kansas-- and why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been pushing so hard for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a former congressman from Wichita, to challenge Mr. Kobach for the GOP nomination.

...No Democrat has won a Senate race in Kansas since 1932. But in a statewide Senate race between Mr. Kobach and Mr. Grissom, a former U.S. attorney, Mr. Grissom led Mr. Kobach, 52% to 42%, the poll shows. Every single other Republican tested in a general election scenario led the Democrat by at least eight points.

The poll reviewed by The Journal was conducted June 9-11 for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP's campaign arm. It surveyed 600 likely voters in Kansas, including an oversample of 150 likely Republican primary voters. The margin of error was plus or minus four percentage points.

The poll found Mr. Kobach's image rating underwater across the state, at 32% favorable vs. 50% unfavorable. And there was a strong intensity to voters' negative reactions to his image, with 39% strongly unfavorable toward Mr. Kobach vs. 15% strongly favorable. Among independent voters, his image rating was a net 24 percentage points weaker than President Trump’s.

The poll also showed a generic Republican beating a generic Democrat for Senate in Kansas, 44% to 36%-- suggesting that Mr. Kobach underperformed the generic ballot.

...An outspoken opponent of illegal immigration, Mr. Kobach drew controversy during his two terms as Kansas' top election official for pursuing contentious measures to curb supposed voter fraud.

He announced a Senate run in July, a year after losing the Kansas governorship to Democrat Laura Kelly by 5 percentage points.

The polling reinforces the fears of some Republicans in Kansas and Washington that Mr. Kobach could put their party's Senate majority at risk should he win the GOP nomination. There now are 53 Republicans in the Senate. If Democrats win the White House, they'd have to pick up three seats from Republicans to take control of the 100-member chamber. If Mr. Trump wins re-election, Democrats would need to net four seats, since Vice President Mike Pence would hold the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.

With a handful of GOP-held Senate seats already considered competitive in states such as Colorado, Arizona and North Carolina, Republicans don't want to have to spend money and resources defending the Kansas seat as well.

Should Grisson or another Democrat win the seat, the media will likely call it part of a Blue Wave, when it is obviously part of an anti-Red/anti-Trump wave. Imagine though, Kansas voters-- plus Coulter and Thiel-- making Schumer Senate majority leader!

Congressional Terrorist by Nancy Ohanian

Pelosi Is Wrong About Impeachment

Al Green, wearing Grayson's tie

Even deranged Trump ex-fan girl Ann Coulter refers to him as a "shallow, narcissistic conman." Shallow and narcissistic aren't impeachable. Conman probably is. But Pelosi says he's not worth the trouble-- and the divisiveness-- an impeachment would stir up. One of the first Democrats to introduce an impeachment resolution was Texas Democrat Al Green. He's listened to Pelosi's arguments-- and isn't persuaded. Yesterday, Politico reported that he's still moving forward and is ready to force a floor vote. When I saw him in that picture wearing one of Alan Grayson's ties, I called Grayson and asked him if he's still as enthusiastic a believer in impeaching Trump as he was last year. "Yes," he responded emphatically, "Trump is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. Therefore, he should be removed from office. He doesn’t get some kind of pass just because he’s a demagogue."

That's just how Green sees it. He's very much not into putting "political expediency ahead of moral imperative... This is not about the speaker. It wasn’t about the speaker before she became speaker, and it’s not about the speaker now. It’s not about any one person-- it’s really not even about the president as much as it is about what he’s doing. It’s about his behavior that is harmful to society."

He pushed back on the notion, raised by Pelosi and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who would oversee any impeachment proceedings, that broad bipartisan support was needed to pursue impeachment.

“If we wait on Republicans, who are not going to buy in, then there won’t be an impeachment,” he said, citing recent polling of Trump’s support among his party. “We should not wait on people who are not coming. That bipartisan ship has already gone to the bottom of the sea of sophistry.”

“I did not reflect on [Pelosi's] words,” he said, saying he instead thinks about the words of voters who approach him about impeachment.

But he ripped “status quo opinion-makers and opinion-shapers” who would refuse the “loyal opposition” a chance to be heard.

“That’s your prerogative. I am not angry with you, I am not upset with you, I just tell the truth about you,” Green said. “I not only speak truth to power, I speak the truth about power.”

Green's enthusiasm for voting to impeach Trump at this stage is largely unmatched in the party, as evidenced by the lack of votes his impeachment articles got the last time he forced a vote on them.

But holding up a framed vote sheet from the last floor vote on his articles of impeachment, which only got 66 votes-- far short of the 218 needed to pass-- Green predicted that this time around, he would get at least one more vote.

But, he mused, “when you’re standing on righteousness, one can be a majority.”

Pelosi may have many reasons for coming out the way she did Monday against impeaching Trump-- mostly around political expediency. But part of the equation is her unfortunate tendency to always be fighting the last war. Clinton shouldn’t have been impeached, she is thinking, and "therefore" (she thinks) neither should Trump. That’s not the way it works. In fact, it's outrageous. The U.S. Constitution says that when you commit treason, bribery, high crimes or misdemeanors, you are removed from office-- period. If you take the oath of office seriously, then that’s what you’ve got to do to Trump. That’s what it means to uphold the Constitution. Pelosi and Nadler should know better than to whiff on this. Let Pence and McTurtle make the argument that Trump should not be impeached-- and let Pelosi do her constitutional job and impeach him. She owes that to America. He may not be worth it-- I'll give her that-- but the country is worth it. Let's think about America first.

Pelosi handpicked-- very carefully-- Adam Schiff to head the House Intelligence Committee. And sure enough, soon after she croaked out her latest "off the table" diktat, Schiff was on NPR advocating that Trump go to prison after he's out of office. Like most Americans, Schiff feels there's already sufficient evidence to support an indictment of Trump-- even before Mueller's report is issued. I'm sorry, but these people are all derelict of duty for not impeaching him. Asked about impeachment, Schiff parroted Pelosi: "I see little to be gained by putting the country through that kind of wrenching experience as I've often remarked in the past. The only thing worse than putting the country through the trauma of an impeachment is putting the country through the trauma of a failed impeachment." How about the trauma of letting an arch criminal like Trump get away with everything because Congress is afraid to take him on?

With Butthead In The White House, EVERYTHING Is Connected

On KABC this morning, Ann Coulter addressed the massive morning drive audience about her former hero, Donald Trump, urging them to "Forget the fact that he's digging his own grave. The only national emergency is that our president is an idiot." We don't all agree why, but I think that a good 70% of the country would agree. So much has happened since she wrote In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! in 2016. Earlier this morning someone asked Trump how much influence she's had over his policy decisions. "Ann Coulter," he babbled, "I don’t know her. I hardly know her. I haven’t spoken to her in way over a year. But the press loves saying, 'Ann Coulter.' Probably if I did speak to her, she’d be very nice. I just don’t have the time to speak to her. I would speak to her. I have nothing against her. In fact, I like her for one reason. When they asked her right at the beginning, 'Who’s going to win the election?' she said, 'Donald Trump.' And the two people that asked her that question smiled. They said, 'You’re kidding, aren’t you?' Nope. Donald Trump. So I like her. But she’s off the reservation. But anybody that knows her understands that. But I haven’t spoken to her. I don’t follow her. I don’t talk to her."

Defeating Trump is the most important priority for the majority of American voters for 2020. But it shouldn't be the only priority. Replacing him with some status quo ante corporatist like Biden or Bloomberg or Gillibrand will simply predict what no one thinks is possible: another Trump down the road. Let's opt for a great president instead of just someone who can beat Trump. They can probably all beat Trump. Think about what will happen after they beat Trump. In the famous words of Chris Hayes: "Who will they fight for? What will they fight for? Who can be trusted to do what they say?" I'd happily vote for Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley or Marianne Williamson. Yesterday Bernie sent a note to his supporters that reminded me why he's on the top of my list.

Let me be very clear. We cannot allow this country to become an oligarchy in which a handful of billionaires control our economic and political life.

At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the three richest people own more wealth than the bottom half of the country and when 46% of all new income goes to the top 1%, we need a progressive tax system which demands that the very wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.

That is what I want, and that is what poll after poll shows the American people want.

We will no longer tolerate huge tax breaks for the one percent while children in this country go hungry.

We will no longer tolerate massive tax loopholes which allow profitable corporations to stash billions in profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, while veterans sleep out on the street.

We will no longer tolerate a disastrous trade policy which allows major corporations to shut down here, send our jobs overseas and then line up for lucrative government contracts.

We will no longer tolerate CEOs of major corporations earning 350 times what their average employee makes.

The insatiable greed of the billionaire class must end. They cannot get it all.

We need an economy and tax system that benefits all of us, not just the few, and we can do that by creating a fair and progressive tax system that demands that wealthy individuals and profitable corporations begin paying their fair share of taxes.

There is a lot of debate in Congress on this issue, but among the people we represent, there is none. Democrats, Republicans and Independents, people of all backgrounds and from all communities believe that it is time for the wealthiest Americans to start paying their fair share.

...Instead of repealing the estate tax and giving a massive tax cut to the richest two-tenths of one percent, as Trump wants, we must substantially increase this tax on multi-millionaires and billionaires to reduce wealth inequality and preserve democracy in America.

Instead of companies like Amazon, that made $16.8 billion in profits over the past two years but have paid ZERO in federal income taxes-- and in fact received a $269 million tax refund-- it’s time to demand corporations pay their fair share in taxes so we can rebuild the disappearing middle class.

Instead of encouraging and rewarding Wall Street speculators who gamble trillions of dollars of others people’s money, it’s time for Congress to pass a financial speculation tax and use the money to ensure kids who study hard and do well in school can go to college, regardless of the income of their family.

Instead of giving $1 trillion in tax breaks to some of the richest people and corporations in the history of the world, Congress should be raising the minimum wage to a living wage for working people, $15 an hour, and nothing less.

Today in America, we have a rigged economy that is held in place by a corrupt campaign finance system-- one that amounts to legalized bribery.

But the good news is that the American people are with us on all of these issues, and have been for some time. They know that at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, the very rich must pay their fair share of taxes.

And much like we have moved the needle on issues like Medicare for All, college for all, jobs for all, and fighting climate change, we can do the same on this issue as well.

Bernie concluded by asking if people agree that instead of cutting taxes for corporations and some of the richest people in the history of the the world, it’s time for a progressive tax system that benefits all of us, not just those at the top. Maybe he slanted the results by adding "The greed of the billionaire class has got to end. And if Congress won’t do it, then we must."

Yeah, what we must do is present Congress with apathy to follow. Since we first published the list of co-sponsors of Pramila Jayapal's Medicare-For-All act the first week of February tons of more members have rushed to sign on as co-sponsors. No doubt many of them are true believers, like Hank Johnson (D-GA) and Katie Porter (D-CA), but pressure from their constituents may have had more than a little to do with some of the New Dems like Ed Perlmutter(CO) and Katie Hill (CA), as well as Blue Dog Vicente Gonzalez (TX). There's been at least a new co-sponsor per day, every day including weekends!

Timothy Faust did a definitive Guide to Medicare-For-All that should be a must-read for everyone who talks or writes about healthcare. He agrees that Pramila Jayapal's new Medicare-For-All bill-- probably unveiled in another couple of weeks-- "is astonishingly strong, and should become the baseline for federal legislation toward single-payer healthcare." (Democrats have 8 other healthcare bills floating around, some decent, some horrible. Faust's answer: "The relatively simple problems of health finance have been made very complicated by people who make money off of healthcare. So what are all of the issues being discussed and what do they mean? What’s really 'Medicare for All' and what’s not? How do existing bills stack up? And why does this matter?

The problem of American health finance-- not care, but finance-- can be expressed in two complementary points:

• It is extremely profitable to charge a sick person as much as possible, so long as someone is footing the bill.
• It is not profitable to insure people who are sick or who are likely to become sick.

This is the way things work now. Hospitals, manufacturers, and their various middlemen jack up costs, while insurance companies demand massive public subsidies to keep them from jettisoning people who most need insurance. If insurers can’t get those subsidies, they increase your costs of purchasing and using your insurance plan to compensate for the jacked-up costs.

Staring down these problems are the corporate dorks and the feckless policy dweebs whose policy prescriptions, whose wildest visions, continually place corporations in charge of our healthcare, and ensure that American public money subsidizes them for failing at it. If you hear 2020 candidates talk about the rot of American healthcare, look out if they float a “pragmatic policy solution” or talk about plans named something like “Medicare Extra As A Service... For You!” (If they’re polite, perhaps they will at least say they support “Medicare for All” before announcing they’d be open to keeping the feet of private insurance companies on our throats).

These pathetic programs, which usually revolve around a “public option,” are what happens when politicians understand the need for a massive change but lack the moral imagination to do anything but genuflect to existing structures. They are, in reality, corporate bailout packages which do very little for you, but quite a bit for the Aetnas and the Sacklers and the Joe Manchins.

On the other hand, you have federal single-payer, often called “Medicare for All.” Healthcare plans in the single-payer mold pool all the money currently spent on healthcare to insure every person in America. By pooling this buying power into one giant public insurer (the single payer), “Medicare for All” has much more leverage to determine prices through negotiation. It can say, “oh, we’re only going to pay $200 for an MRI instead of $1,000"; or, “our data shows that a knee replacement costs $15,000 to perform even though you bill five times that amount; take it or leave it,” and since it’s the only insurer in town, the hospital has to take it. This isn’t radical-- virtually every other country with universal coverage has a form of aggressive rate-setting. (And it lets the hospital spend a lot less money on massive towers of billing staff.)

You'll have to read his whole long, powerful piece to understand why he believes that Jayapal's bill-- and only Jayapal's bill-- "appears to meet all of the criteria for a proper single-payer plan. It includes long-term care with a preference toward home health. It sets guidelines for care but lets doctors overrule them. It is, by all accounts, the first actual robust single-payer bill of the post-ACA era. If you are looking for a bill to call 'Medicare for All,' this is the one. It must not be permitted to be weakened."

All that said, do not forget-- and I know you won't-- Every Day Is a New Low in Trump's White House. That's also the name of the piece The Atlantic just published by former FBI Director and Trump enemy Andrew McCabe. When someone told Trump about it, he started whining on Twitter as is his wont.

The Atlantic piece is an adaptation from McCabe's soon-to-be-published book, The Threat. McCabe makes you feel you are there as history is being made.

On Wednesday, May 10, 2017, my first full day on the job as acting director of the FBI, I sat down with senior staff involved in the Russia case—the investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. As the meeting began, my secretary relayed a message that the White House was calling. The president himself was on the line. I had spoken with him the night before, in the Oval Office, when he told me he had fired James Comey.

A call like this was highly unusual. Presidents do not, typically, call FBI directors. There should be no direct contact between the president and the director, except for national-security purposes. The reason is simple. Investigations and prosecutions need to be pursued without a hint of suspicion that someone who wields power has put a thumb on the scale.

The Russia team was in my office. I took the call on an unclassified line. That was another strange thing-- the president was calling on a phone that was not secure. The voice on the other end said, It’s Don Trump calling. I said, Hello, Mr. President, how are you? Apart from my surprise that he was calling at all, I was surprised that he referred to himself as “Don.”

The president said, I’m good. You know-- boy, it’s incredible, it’s such a great thing, people are really happy about the fact that the director’s gone, and it’s just remarkable what people are saying. Have you seen that? Are you seeing that, too?

He went on: I received hundreds of messages from FBI people-- how happy they are that I fired him. There are people saying things on the media, have you seen that? What’s it like there in the building?

This is what it was like: You could go to any floor and you would see small groups gathering in hallways, some people even crying. The overwhelming majority liked and admired Director Comey-- his personal style, the integrity of his conduct. Now we were laboring under the same dank, gray shadow that had been creeping over Washington during the few months Donald Trump had been in office.

I didn’t feel like I could say any of that to the president on the phone. I’m not sure I would have wanted to say it to him in person, either-- or that he would have cared. I told him that people here were very surprised, but that we were trying to get back to work.

The president said he thought most people in the FBI voted for him-- he thought 80 percent. He asked me again, as he had in his office, if I knew that Comey had told him three times that he was not under investigation. Then he got to the reason for his call. He said, I really want to come over there. I want to come to the FBI. I want to show all my FBI people how much I love them, so I think maybe it would be good for me to come over and speak to everybody, like tomorrow or the next day.

That sounded to me like one of the worst possible things that could happen. He was the boss, and had every right to come, but I hoped the idea would dissipate on its own. He said, Why don’t you come down here and talk to me about that later?

After we agreed on a time to meet, the president began to talk about how upset he was that Comey had flown home on his government plane from Los Angeles-- Comey had been giving a speech there when he learned he was fired. The president wanted to know how that had happened.

I told him that bureau lawyers had assured me there was no legal issue with Comey coming home on the plane. I decided that he should do so. The existing threat assessment indicated he was still at risk, so he needed a protection detail. Since the members of the protection detail would all be coming home, it made sense to bring everybody back on the same plane they had used to fly out there. It was coming back anyway. The president flew off the handle: That’s not right! I don’t approve of that! That’s wrong! He reiterated his point five or seven times.

I said, I’m sorry that you disagree, sir. But it was my decision, and that’s how I decided. The president said, I want you to look into that! I thought to myself: What am I going to look into? I just told you I made that decision.

The ranting against Comey spiraled. I waited until he had talked himself out.

Toward the end of the conversation, the president brought up the subject of my wife. Jill had run unsuccessfully for the Virginia state Senate back in 2015, and the president had said false and malicious things about her during his campaign in order to tarnish the FBI. He said, How is your wife? I said, She’s fine. He said, When she lost her election, that must have been very tough to lose. How did she handle losing? Is it tough to lose?

I replied, I guess it’s tough to lose anything. But she’s rededicated herself to her career and her job and taking care of kids in the emergency room. That’s what she does.

He replied in a tone that sounded like a sneer. He said, “Yeah, that must’ve been really tough. To lose. To be a loser.”

I wrote a memo about this conversation that very day. I wrote memos about my interactions with President Trump for the same reason that Comey did: to have a contemporaneous record of conversations with a person who cannot be trusted.

People do not appreciate how far we have fallen from normal standards of presidential accountability. Today we have a president who is willing not only to comment prejudicially on criminal prosecutions but to comment on ones that potentially affect him. He does both of these things almost daily. He is not just sounding a dog whistle. He is lobbying for a result. The president has stepped over bright ethical and moral lines wherever he has encountered them. Every day brings a new low, with the president exposing himself as a deliberate liar who will say whatever he pleases to get whatever he wants. If he were “on the box” at Quantico, he would break the machine.

After Comey’s firing, the core of my concern had to do with what might happen to the Russia case if I were to be removed. I convened a series of meetings about that investigation-- including the one interrupted by the call from the president-- in which I directed an overall review of every aspect. Was the work on solid ground? Were there individuals on whom we should consider opening new cases? I wanted to protect the Russia investigation in such a way that whoever came after me could not just make it go away.

As requested, I went back to the White House that afternoon. The scene was almost identical to the one I had walked into the previous night. Trump was behind the Resolute desk. He lifted one arm and jutted it out, fingers splayed, directing me to take a seat in one of the little wooden chairs in front of him. Reince Priebus, then the chief of staff, and Don McGahn, then the White House counsel, were in the other chairs.

The president launched back into his speech about what a great decision it was to fire Jim Comey, how wonderful it was that the director was gone, because so many people did not like Comey, even hated him-- the president actually used the word hate.

Eventually he changed the subject. He said that he wanted to come to FBI headquarters to see people and excite them and show them how much he loves the FBI. He pressed me to answer whether I thought it was a good idea. I said it was always a good idea to visit. I was trying to take some of the immediacy out of his proposal-- to communicate that the door was always open, so that he wouldn’t feel he had to crash through it right away. I knew what a disaster it could turn out to be if he came to the Hoover Building in the near future. He pressed further, asking specifically, Do you think it would be a good idea for me to come down now? I said, Sure.

He looked at Don McGahn. The president said, Don, what do you think? Do you think I should go down to the FBI and speak to the people?

McGahn was sitting in one of the wooden chairs to my right. Making eye contact with Trump, he said, in a very pat and very prepared way, If the acting director of the FBI is telling you he thinks it is a good idea for you to come visit the FBI, then you should do it.

Then McGahn turned and looked at me. And Trump looked at me and asked, Is that what you’re telling me? Do you think it is a good idea?

It was a bizarre performance. I said it would be fine. I had no real choice. This was not worth the ultimate sacrifice.

In this moment, I felt the way I’d felt in 1998, in a case involving the Russian Mafia, when I sent a man I’ll call Big Felix in to meet with a Mafia boss named Dimitri Gufield. The same kind of thing was happening here, in the Oval Office. Dimitri had wanted Felix to endorse his protection scheme. This is a dangerous business, and it’s a bad neighborhood, and you know, if you want, I can protect you from that. If you want my protection. I can protect you. Do you want my protection? The president and his men were trying to work me the way a criminal brigade would operate.

For whatever reason, the visit to the FBI never happened.

One of the regularly scheduled meetings with the attorney general, deputy attorney general, and some of their staff came two days later, on Friday, May 12. After the meeting, I asked the deputy, Rod Rosenstein, if he could stay behind. In part I wanted to talk with him about ground rules governing the separate investigations of the Russia case by the FBI and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Rosenstein had oversight because the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had had to recuse himself owing to his own interactions with Russians during the campaign. But my main message was this: I need you to protect the process.

After speaking to these points, Rod shifted his gaze. His eyes were focused on a point in space a few yards beyond and behind, toward the door. He started talking about the firing of Jim Comey. He was obviously upset. He said he was shocked that the White House was making it look as if Jim’s firing had been his idea. He was grasping for a way to describe the nature of his situation. One remark stands out. He said, There’s no one that I can talk to about this. There’s no one here that I can trust.

He asked for my thoughts about whether we needed a special counsel to oversee the Russia case. I said I thought it would help the investigation’s credibility. Later that day, I went to see Rosenstein again. This is the gist of what I said: I feel strongly that the investigation would be best served by having a special counsel. I’ve been thinking about the Clinton email case and how we got twisted in knots over how to announce a result that did not include bringing charges against anyone. Had we appointed a special counsel in the Clinton case, we might not be in the present situation. Unless or until you make the decision to appoint a special counsel, the FBI will be subjected to withering criticism that could destroy the credibility of both the Justice Department and the FBI.

Rosenstein was very engaged. He was not yet convinced. I brought the matter up with him again after the weekend. On Wednesday, we would be briefing the Hill. As I saw it, by informing Congress of the bureau’s actions, we would be drawing an indelible line around the cases we had opened—the four cases known publicly and any others that may have gone forward. The four known publicly were those of Carter Page, a foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign and a man with many Russian ties; George Papadopoulos, another foreign-policy adviser, who had told a foreign diplomat that the Russians had offered to help Trump’s campaign by providing information on Hillary Clinton; Michael Flynn, for a brief period the president’s national security adviser, who had pursued multiple high-level contacts with the Russian government; and Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, who had shady business dealings with Ukrainians and Russians.

On the afternoon of May 17, Rosenstein and I sat at the end of a long conference table in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol. We were there to brief the so-called Gang of Eight-- the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Rosenstein had, I knew, made a decision to appoint a special counsel in the Russia case. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York, was to our right. Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky and the Senate majority leader, was to our left. The mood in the room was sober.

After reminding the committee of how the investigation began, I told them of additional steps we had taken. Then Rod took over and announced that he had appointed a special counsel to pursue the Russia investigation, and that the special counsel was Robert Mueller. The Gang of Eight had questions. What was the scope of the inquiry? Who would oversee the special counsel? How could the special counsel get fired? Rod answered every question. Then it was over.

When I came out of the Capitol, it felt like crossing a finish line. If I got nothing else done as acting director, I had done the one thing I needed to do.

The Worst Person In The World

Friday, Michael Bloomberg was campaigning in front of the Democratic Business Council of Northern Virginia when he assailed Señor Trumpanzee for what he called "a complete failure of presidential leadership" and "totally incompetent management." Addressing the Trump-McConnell shutdown, he added that "The whole episode really is a cynical, political stunt, and, unfortunately, we’re the ones paying the price. You’ve gotten exactly what I described: This is a person who should not be the president of the United States, and I think we have to get serious. He is way in over his head." Likening Trump to Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street, he tried pumping himself up by saying "We’ve gotta do something to make sure we get somebody different in the White House two years from now, and I’m committed to do that. This is about competence-- or the lack of it. The presidency is not an entry-level job, and the longer we have a pretend CEO who is recklessly running this country, the worse it’s gonna be for our economy and for our security. This is really dangerous."

At this point, even Nancy Pelosi, who just forced him to CAVE and who is probably the most disliked Democrat in the country, would beat him in a head-to-head presidential match!

Last week Bill Curry, an Obama White House counselor, wrote about a visit to Donald Trump's home back in 1994, when he was running for governor of Connecticut and when Trump was a Democrat. Trump was trying to build a casino in Bridgeport at the time. "I arrived at Trump Tower," he wrote, "in early evening, accompanied by my finance chair and an old friend and colleague. Stepping off the elevator into his apartment, we were met by a display of sterile, vulgar ostentation: all gold, silver, brass, marble; nothing soft, welcoming or warm. Trump soon appeared and we began to converse, but not really. In campaigns, we candidates do most of the talking; because we like to, and because people ask us lots of questions. Not this time. Not by a long shot. Trump talked very rapidly and virtually nonstop for nearly an hour; not of my campaign or even of politics, but only of himself, and almost always in the third person. He’d given himself a nickname: 'the Trumpster,' as in 'everybody wants to know what the Trumpster’s gonna do,' a claim he made more than once."

He mostly told stories. Some were about his business deals; others about trips he’d taken or things he owned. All were unrelated to the alleged point of our meeting, and to one another. That he seldom even attempted segues made each tale seem more disconnected from reality than the last. It was funny at first, then pathetic, and finally deeply unsettling.

On the drive home, we all burst out laughing, then grew quiet. What the hell just happened? My first theory, that Trump was high on cocaine, didn’t feel quite right, but he was clearly emotionally impaired: in constant need of approbation; lacking impulse control, self-awareness or awareness of others. We’d heard tales of his monumental vanity, but were still shocked by the sad spectacle of him.

That visit colored all my later impressions of Trump. Over time, his mental health seemed to decline. He threw more and bigger public tantrums; lied more often and less artfully. The media, also in decline and knowing a ratings magnet when it saw one, turned a blind eye. Sensing impunity, Trump revived the racist ‘birther’ lie. In 2011, he told the Today show’s Meredith Vieira he had unearthed some dark secrets.



As Trump recycled old lies, Vieira had a queasy look but no apparent knowledge of the facts. Of course, there weren’t any. Trump had no proof of Obama being born in Kenya. (Since there is none.) It’s highly doubtful he had any researchers in Hawaii. (It was only after Vieira asked him that he claimed he did.) Later, when Trump’s story crumbled, he followed a rule taught by his mentor, Roy Cohn, infamous architect of McCarthyism: Admit nothing. To Trump, a lie is worth a thousand pictures.

By 2016, the private Trump was on permanent public display, raging over mere slights, seeing plots in every ill turn of events and, as always, stunningly self-absorbed. He was called a racist, a sexist and a bully. But his mental health issues were euphemized as problems of “temperament.” He lied ceaselessly, reflexively and clumsily, but his lies were called merely “unproven” or, later, “false.” The New York Times called the birther story a lie only after Trump grudgingly retracted it. Not till he was safe in office claiming that millions of phantom immigrants cast votes for Clinton did the paper of record use the word “lie” in reference to a tale Trump was still telling.

In 2016, the precariousness of Trump’s mental health was clear to all with eyes to see, but like extras in a remake of The Emperor’s New Clothes, reporters averted their glances. The day after the election, they were all in a state of shock, like staff at an asylum who woke one morning to find that the patient who thought he was Napoleon had just been named emperor of France. Once he took office, many publications began keeping running tallies of his lies. But all take a more cautious approach to questions of their origins in his deeply troubled psyche. To date, no major network, newspaper or magazine has run an in-depth analysis of Trump’s mental health.

The pathologies of American journalism are by now clichés: aversion to policy analysis; addiction to horse-race politics; smashing of walls that once separated news, opinion and advertising; an ideology that mistakes evenhandedness for objectivity. Yet we hear scant talk of reform. The press excels at public rituals of soul-searching but has little taste for the real thing. That said, its reluctance to discuss mental health reflects its virtues as well as its vices. Of major outlets, Fox News does by far the most psychological profiling. (It turns out all liberals are crazy.)

Like the language of politics, the language of psychology is imprecise; the term “sociopath” is as hard to nail down as “liberal” or “conservative.” What separates a serial liar from a pathological liar? Mere suspicion from paranoia? Righteous anger from uncontrolled rage? How do we ever tell mental illness from ill character? Our view of any antisocial behavior hinges on whether we view it through a moral, legal or therapeutic lens; to take a human life other than in self-defense is insane, and also criminal and, to many, sinful. Do we treat, punish or forgive? It’s so hard to say.

...[Y]ou don’t need to be a botanist to tell a rose from a dandelion. In 2016 Trump compared Ben Carson to a child molester and pronounced him “incurable,” but few raised the far more real question of Trump’s own mental health. Do we dare not state the obvious? You needn’t be an amateur diagnostician to see that Donald Trump is mentally ill.

Trump embodies that old therapists’ saw “perception is projection.” You can use this handy tool to locate the truth, exactly opposite from whatever he just said. He has a weight management problem, so women are “fat pigs.” He can’t stop fibbing, so his primary opponent becomes “Lyin’ Ted Cruz.” His career is rife with fraud so the former secretary of state becomes “Crooked Hillary.” He is terrified of ridicule, so Barack Obama is a “laughingstock.” When he says America’s a wasteland but he’ll make it great again, we know his secret fear.

Late in the presidential campaign Hillary Clinton famously dubbed some large portion of Trump’s base a “basket of deplorables.” A constant theme and core belief of her campaign was that his campaign was fueled by racism and misogyny, evils against which Democrats stand united. The evils are genuine and enduring, but political corruption and the economic inequality it fosters did at least as much and probably more to fuel Trump’s rise.

It’s likely that Trump’s arrested development also got him white working-class votes, among males especially. The infantilization of the American male is a phenomenon we have been slow to recognize. It is a product of fast-narrowing economic horizons fueled by cultural forces; by beer ads and anti-intellectualism, by addiction and violent video games, and now by Trump, on whom Jon Stewart pinned the fitting moniker “man baby.”

Countless surveys say our children are less racist and sexist than our parents. What many may not be is more adult. The issue isn’t the bros in the beer ads; we assume they have jobs. It’s the tinderbox we create by mixing ignorance and inequality with dashed hopes and an overwrought sense of victimization. They say presidents lead us down the paths we’re already on. It’s our job to make sure this one doesn’t.

One thing Trump has taught us is that the drafters of the 25th Amendment weren’t thinking about mental illness. It is unlikely anyone it puts in charge would have the courage to take action. In any case, progressives must put their primary emphasis on crafting a blueprint for political reform and economic justice. While they’re at it they could try making better cases on national security and climate change.

They must take another lesson from Trump: to say out loud things they never said before, not as Trump does, but with honesty, decency, reason and specificity. Trump got to be president in part because there were so many things Democrats and the media didn’t think or couldn’t bring themselves to say. Trump’s whole life is a fraud that Robert Mueller may soon expose as a criminal enterprise. His business career was a disaster till a book someone else wrote and a TV show someone else produced made him a celebrity. He then fell into the only line of work he ever prospered in: licensing that celebrity. He does it pretty well, but Zsa Zsa Gabor did it first and Kim Kardashian did it better and neither of them should be president.

In 2016 Trump’s real vulnerabilities were his mental health and personal finances. We can now add his proto-fascism and his possible or intended treason to the list. Trump was lucky in the draw. His defects were so monumental, so toxic, we had no protocol for talking about them. There are effective and responsible ways to talk about all such things, but first our media and political elites must find the courage to name them. They know as well as you or I who he is.

But what people are talking about this week, in regard to Trump, aren't critiques from the left or center, but from his base on the fringes of the far right. "Conservatives," wrote Matthew Choi for Politico, "had a quick message for President Donald Trump after he announced a deal to end the government shutdown without funds for his border wall: You caved! 'Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States,' tweeted conservative commentator Ann Coulter."

"Nancy Pelosi is alpha," tweeted conservative film maker Mike Cernovich.

And right wing commentator Michael Malice opined: "Apparently a wall isn't as good as a cave."

Conservative outlets, from the Drudge Report to Breitbart News, also blasted headlines in dramatic font declaring Trump caved with "NO WALL."

The response came like clockwork, only minutes after Trump announced the deal to reopen the government for three weeks with no guarantee of wall funds. It was unsurprising considering conservative figures including Coulter were some of the initial instigators who prodded Trump to shut down the government to get his wall.

After the White House revealed in December it could back off from Trump's demands for over $5 billion in border wall funding to avoid a shutdown, Coulter mocked the president on Twitter, leading to a feud in which Trump unfollowed one of his biggest campaign supporters.

"The chant wasn't 'SIGN A BILL WITH B.S. PROMISES ABOUT "BORDER SECURITY" AT SOME POINT IN THE FUTURE, GUARANTEED TO FAIL!' It was "BUILD A WALL!" Coulter tweeted in December.

During a March interview with the New York Times' Frank Bruni, Coulter said Trump should feel the "fear of God" if he doesn't build the wall, arguing his supporters would leave him en masse unless he fulfills his campaign promise.

"He could sell Ivanka Trump merchandise from the Oval Office if he would just build the wall," Coulter said. "If he doesn't change course, no, they're never coming back."

Trump announced the deal with Democrats during an address in the Rose Garden on Friday afternoon, where he continued to emphasize the need for physical barriers on the border. The deal will reopen the government only until Feb. 15, after which Trump said he would reshutter the government or declare a national emergency if he does not secure funding for the wall by then.

But Trump's description of what kind of wall he wants has evolved in a notable concession to his critics. Trump said Friday that natural barriers already provide ample protection in some parts of the border, and that resources for border control should also focus on ports of entry and technology developments beyond a physical barrier.

"The walls that we are building are not medieval walls. They are smart walls designed to meet the needs of front-line border agents and are operationally effective," Trump said. "We do not need 2,000 miles of concrete wall from sea to shining sea, we never did, we never proposed that."

He did propose that, however. Many times. And it was what many of his most ardent conservative followers called on him to do. But with the government shutdown stretching past a month and vital government services reaching a breaking point, the president apparently calculated that he had little choice but to concede. Trump's approval rating also suffered from the standoff, with The Associated Press showing about 60 percent of Americans blaming Trump for the shutdown.

But Malice didn't think conceding to Democrats was likely to help Trump among his most core base.

"Jeb Bush is laughing so hard rn that he's about to choke on his own puke," Malice tweeted.

Also writing for Politico on Friday, Anita Kumar and Gabby Orr wrote about the volcanic reaction on the far right to Trump's CAVE to Pelosi. One former White House official noted that "President Nancy Pelosi, she runs the country now. We went from indefinite shutdown, to down payment, to cave-- all within a span of 24 hours."

That official said that Trump’s core supporters and former aides are “furious” and “melting down.”

Bewildered by his decision to accept a deal without funding for a wall on the southern border-- not even the “down payment” the White House had requested a day earlier-- some of his most loyal supporters fretted that Trump was in danger of losing his fervent base that has fueled his presidency. It didn’t help that special counsel Robert Mueller had just released more details about the Trump campaign’s alleged attempts to backchannel with WikiLeaks during the election.

It all left Trump staring at a tough road ahead. Having staked his nascent 2020 reelection messaging to the wall fight, Trump now can’t claim victory as Democrats start entering the field. After stumbling in his first bout with Pelosi, Trump must now face an invigorated Democratic-led House keen to investigate the White House. And following Mueller's reveal of more evidence that Trump’s 2016 team tried to furtively gather intel about hacked Democratic emails, Trump will have to fend off increasing calls for impeachment.

Saturday, Alexander Burns, Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman at the NY Times confirmed the assertion: "Trump's defeat in his border-wall standoff with Congress has clouded his already perilous path to a second term in 2020, undercutting Mr. Trump’s cherished image as a forceful leader and deft negotiator, and emboldening alike his Democratic challengers and Republican dissenters who hope to block his re-election.The longest government shutdown in history inflicted severe political damage on the president, dragging down his poll numbers even among Republicans and stirring concern among party leaders about his ability to navigate the next two years of divided government. Mr. Trump, close associates acknowledge, appears without a plan for mounting a strong campaign in 2020, or for persuading the majority of Americans who view him negatively to give him another chance."

In a sign of the White House’s determination to project party unity, a top Trump campaign official, Bill Stepien, traveled to the Republican National Committee meeting in New Mexico this week to orchestrate an ornamental resolution of support for the president. It passed unanimously on Friday afternoon, hailing Mr. Trump for his “effective presidency” even as his shutdown strategy collapsed.

David Winston, a Republican pollster, said the burden was now on Mr. Trump to restore his stature as a leader by forging some kind of border-security deal with Democrats, and to deliver a stronger message on the economy.

“Leadership means results,” Mr. Winston said. “When you have a shutdown, people look at it, basically, as: the political system has failed.”

Mr. Winston said polling data suggested the border wall had been a problematic fight to pick. “Immigration is an important issue," he said, “but people are waking up every day trying to figure out how they’re going to pay a set of bills in front of them.”

For now, Mr. Trump remains wholly focused on appeasing his conservative base, comprising perhaps a third of the electorate, despite private G.O.P. polling suggesting that his agenda on immigration has failed to move the country in his favor, Republicans who work closely with the president said.

But Mr. Trump emerged from the shutdown with nothing to show for it, having angered swing voters with his intransigence, while disappointing hard-line supporters by failing to secure any funding for a border wall.

Conservatives still believe that Mr. Trump cannot afford to abandon his crusade for a barrier. Not long before Mr. Trump agreed to reopen the government, Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a White House ally who leads the hard-line Freedom Caucus, argued that the wall fight was vital to the president’s re-election hopes.

“It’s not lost on any of us that a central component of what he said when he ran in 2016 has to be addressed in a meaningful way,” he said in a recent interview.

Privately, some of Mr. Trump’s 2016 aides have said they are pessimistic about his path to 270 electoral votes after his party’s midterm defeats in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. An Associated Press poll on Wednesday showed that Mr. Trump’s overall approval rating had fallen to 34 percent, with his support among Republicans dipping below 80 percent-- a startling turn for a president who strives for total control of the G.O.P., and has usually achieved it.

...Trump’s low standing with political moderates and especially women is leading some G.O.P. officeholders to voice unease about having him at the top of the ticket next year... [E]ven among his own political lieutenants, there is a general recognition that Mr. Trump currently lacks anything resembling a positive message.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Two top Republicans in one! Will Rudy Coulter be the next Republican presidential candidate? And you thought cloning humans wasn't possible and Republicans hate science! Think of the possibilities! Mitchyanne Conway? Sarah Huckabee Bigfoot? Adolf Pence? Donald Putin? Oh, wait, we already have that one. Kim Jong Hannity?

We Know Trump Didn't Write A Word Of The Art Of The Deal, But Did He Ever Read It?

Congressional caucuses often invite special guest speakers Last week Ted Lieu organized for the House Democrats on the uses of social media, featuring Alexandria Ocasio and a rep from Twitter. It went over so well-- and standing room only-- that they're following up with sessions devoted to effective use of Facebook, Instagram, etc. Smart. At the same time Ted and AOC were helping some of their colleagues take steps into a new and mysterious world for many of them, McConnell invited Karl Rove to come over and speak to the Senate Republicans-- specifically the 22 up for reelection next year-- about sn alternative the failed Trump "it's-all-about-the-base" strategy that cost the House GOP 42 red districts in which independent voters deserted Republican incumbents and candidates in droves.

Alexander Bolton reported for The Hill that "GOP lawmakers are getting nervous about next year’s election as polls show President Trump’s approval rating dropping during the 28-day government shutdown, with economic experts warning that the standoff could dampen economic growth significantly. Rove advised lawmakers at the meeting not to rely too much on the conservative base, which is solidly behind Trump in the stalemate over funding for a border wall, and to remember the importance of expanding the GOP’s appeal, according to Republicans familiar with his remarks."

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll published Thursday showed the president has seen his approval rating drop by 9 points and his disapproval rating climb by 9 points among suburban men.  A GOP source familiar with Thursday’s meeting said Rove talked about his column published in the Wall Street Journal the previous day that warned “a base-only strategy is a perilous bet for 2020” and advised “the party that realizes this first may gain the edge in the coming presidential contest.”

Rove in his op-ed argued that while Democrats have refused to compromise, the White House should consider “publicly announcing an offer to end the shutdown” by asking for border wall funding in return for legal status for Dreamers.

A Quinnipiac University poll published Monday showed that registered independent voters found the arguments of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (NY) more believable than Trump’s by a margin of 48 percent to 33 percent.

Rove also discussed the problems that GOP candidates had appealing to suburban voters in the 2018 midterm, according to a Republican senator who heard his remarks.

...Senate Republican Whip John Thune (SD) acknowledged to reporters earlier in the week that the president still needs to convince independent voters that funding the border wall is worth a partial government shutdown.

“The real battlefield is for those independent voters and I don’t think he’s probably won them over yet,” he said.

Democratic pollsters are confident their party is winning the public relations battle over the shutdown, which they say is hurting Republicans especially among suburban and independent voters.

“Normally people respond [a government shutdown] is a pox on both your houses but people really think the shutdown is due to Trump,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster.

“Shutdowns often get blamed on the Republicans because people think that Democrats like to do things with government so they are unlikely to shut it down,” she added.

Lake said that voters also view Trump as temperamental, which adds to the “situation where Republicans are going to carry a lot more of the blame.”

“Right now we are winning the swing [vote] on the shutdown,” she said.

A Pew Research Center poll published Wednesday found that 58 percent of Americans oppose substantially expanding the border wall while 40 percent favor it. Yet the survey also showed that 91 percent of conservative Republicans and GOP “leaners” favor expanding the wall. 

Jonathan Allen reported on Saturday for NBC News that "Trump broke a fundamental rule of modern politics Saturday when he outlined a new plan to get his border wall and re-open the federal government: Never split your own party. The basic idea is to give 1 million immigrants-- 700,000 so-called Dreamers who were brought to the country illegally as children and 300,000 refugees facing expiration of their 'temporary protected status'-- a three-year shield from deportation in exchange for $5.7 billion in funding for the wall. While Republican leaders on Capitol Hill praised his leadership, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) readily agreed to bring his proposal up for a vote on the floor next week, conservatives were quick to criticize the president for offering 'amnesty' to undocumented immigrants."

"Conservatives were quick to criticize...?" Like Mitch McConnell isn't a conservative? Has Jonathan Allen lost his marbles? He was referring to neo-Nazi extremist Ann Coulter as a "conservative." So McConnell is what? A liberal? A moderate? I don't think so. Why are mainstream corporate media schlepps like Allen so scared to call fascists and racists fascist and racists?

"Amnesty encourages further illegal immigration, incentivizes the tragedy of human trafficking, and undermines our citizens' confidence in the rule of law," James Carafano of the conservative Heritage Foundation said in a statement released shortly after Trump delivered remarks on the plan from the White House. "Amnesty should not be part of any border security deal, especially given that many who today oppose a wall have publicly supported and even voted for physical barriers in the recent past."

The obvious problem for Trump is that he managed to divide his own ranks without much chance of breaking the wall of Democratic opposition to his border barrier. Congressional Democrats were quick to reject his plan.

"The president’s announcement today falls flat and includes the same wasteful, ineffective and unpopular $5.7 billion wall demand that shut down the government in the first place," Rep. Joaquín Castro, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said in a statement. "Further, the President’s offer is similar to previous proposals that included temporary DACA protections and that the President killed last Congress."

The big political question is whether Trump's latest gambit will give traction to his ongoing argument that Democrats have been intransigent and should now shoulder the blame for the longest government shutdown in history. Polls have consistently shown that most Americans blame him-- he once said he would be "proud" to allow a lapse in funding for federal agencies in order to force Democrats to capitulate on the wall money-- and that only about a third of them see Democrats as the culprits.

If he finds himself offering more to Democrats to re-open the government later on-- or backs down from the wall-- he will have caused himself more pain than necessary by issuing this plan. If his proposal ends up shifting public opinion enough to move Democratic votes, that may take time.

So, as a practical matter, the government is no closer to opening, and Trump is no closer to getting cash for the wall.

Often, deal-making requires a president to disappoint a segment of his own base to attract support from a portion of the other party. But in this case, Trump has created a split within his own party without finding a way to divide Democrats.

That's certainly a non-traditional approach to politics, but it may not be a winning one.

Trump is the weakest president in memorable history. He has no credibility. He's a terrible deal-maker. He's not bright and not interested. And he has the worst advisors a weak, dumb president could ever be expected to surround himself with. If he brings the GOP down with him, it will certainly be well-deserved. One of the Republican senators up for reelection in 2020: Mitch McConnell. Another is his #2, John Cornyn... in a Texas that is rapidly migrating from solid red to more purple.