All Eyes On Flake-- Will He, As Is His Wont-- Disappoint Us Again?

When The Arizona Republican Party first selected Flake as its candidate for the open U.S. Senate seat in 2012, he had already served 6 terms (12 years) in Congress. Before that he had been executive director the the Barry Goldwater Institute. His credentials as an extreme right-wing kook-- with a libertarian bent-- could not be challenged. His first primary was against 4 conservatives, although Flake was by far the most conservative. In the House he was a bit of a pest to establishment Republicans as he fought to end earmarks and special interest corruption. He was never interested in bipartisan compromise and was considered the most hardcore conservative in the Arizona delegation. He was narrowly elected to the Senate-- 49-46% and started trending slightly more bipartisan than he had been. Now-- having announced he isn't running for a second term after feuding with Trump-- he's the guy who can scuttle Kavanaugh's confirmation.

Sunday, on 60 Minutes, he and Chris Coons (D-DE) were asked "if Judge Kavanaugh is shown to have lied to the Committee... nomination's over?" Flake immediately responded "Oh yes" and Coons followed with "I would think so." Watch:



There's only one way that could happen. All the Democrats vote against confirmation and they are joined by at least one-- but more likely, two-- Republican senators. Will Flake be that senator? Will Susan Collins? Lisa Murkowski? Apparently there is literally not one other Republican senator who cares whether Kavanaugh lied or not. Tuesday morning, writing for the Washington Post Sean Sullivan shined a spotlight on Flake's year-long jihad against "tribalism". [I'm no fan of Steve Kornacki's MSNBC appearances but his book on tribalism is very good.] Flake was (subtly campaigning for president in New Hampshire Monday) and Sullivan wrote that he warned that the FBI must thoroughly investigate allegations against Kavanaugh, "as he made a long-shot plea to use the moment to bridge the divides that have deepened" since Trump occupied the White House and exacerbated centrifugal forces already tearing the country apart that benefits no one but America's most determined enemy, Russia.

“We’re wanting to make sure that is a fulsome investigation-- that it’s not limited as some worry that it might be,” Flake told reporters here.

Decrying tribalism, partisanship and “the politics of vengeance” in a speech that served as an unmistakable shot at Trump, the Arizonan signaled he intends to use the polarizing court fight to amplify his long-standing calls for more civility and cooperation in Washington and across America.

“Tribalism is ruining us. It is tearing our country apart. It is no way for sane adults to act,” said Flake, a possible 2020 presidential candidate.

But the near impossibility of his task came sharply into focus in this early primary state as he faced dueling pressure from both sides of the Kavanaugh divide after forcing the Senate to delay a vote so the FBI could reopen its background check of the federal appeals court judge.

Flake remains a pivotal swing vote with the potential to sink Kavanaugh’s nomination, making him the target of liberal demands to keep him off the court, as evidenced by the anti-Kavanaugh protesters he faced here and in Boston on Monday. He is also the focus of conservative insistence that Kavanaugh be swiftly confirmed.

As he awaits the outcome of the FBI probe, which will determine his decision, he is poised to be a hero to one side and a villain to the other. “I sometimes feel like a man temporarily without a party,” Flake said.

But he is not without an audience. Flake is trying to turn the Kavanaugh standoff into a teachable moment that he hopes will help usher in a new political era, one that will produce greater compromise and expand the appeal of a Republican Party he says has put its long-term survival at risk by appealing to a narrow swath of Americans.

That pitch has become increasingly consequential as Flake, one of Trump’s most vocal GOP critics, prepares to retire from the Senate. His presence in this first-in-the-nation primary state has stoked speculation that he will run against Trump in 2020, a possibility he did not rule out.

It has become a career-defining moment for the mild-mannered lawmaker, who is at the epicenter of the collision between the #MeToo movement and the Trump presidency as he pursues pragmatism in a Senate riven by strident partisanship.

In his speech at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College, Flake emphasized the themes that he has returned to repeatedly during Trump’s presidency, preaching civility and comity over rancor and recriminations.

“We Republicans have given in to the terrible tribal impulse that first mistakes our opponents for our enemies,” Flake said. “And then we become seized with the conviction that we must destroy that enemy.”

...Democrats have voiced concerns that the scope of the FBI probe will be limited. Flake urged the FBI to conduct a “real investigation” and said he was in touch with the White House counsel’s office and his colleagues to ensure that happens.

“It does no good to have an investigation that just gives us more cover,” Flake said. “We actually need to find out what we can find out. And we have to realize that we may not be able to find out everything that happened.”

Flake said he is “waiting for the additional information that will come from the supplemental FBI investigation” to inform his decision on how to vote on Kavanaugh. He said the thrust of the probe is to see whether there is corroboration for the account Christine Blasey Ford delivered under oath at a Senate hearing last week... If Kavanaugh lied, Flake said, that should disqualify him.

I've seen lists that show Kavanaugh lied 49 times during his testimony. Monday Elle lied to the Committee, under oath, about his drinking habits, definitions of words he had written in his year book (like "Devil's Triangle," "boof," "ralph," and "Renate Alumnius"), his bullshit about witnesses contradicting Ford, his Yale pedigree, and, of course, the allegations themselves.

At the hearing, Kavanaugh was asked when he first heard about the sexual harassment allegations from Deborah Ramirez, who alleges Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party while the two were at Yale. He responded by saying,"In the last-- in the period since then, the New Yorker story," referencing the New Yorker piece that first publicized the allegations.

However, according to a new report from NBC News, Kavanaugh and his team were trying to get former classmates to discredit Ramirez's claims before the piece was ever published, leading many to believe that Kavanaugh did know about the allegations beforehand.

Elaina Plott, writing for The Atlantic also shined a bright spotlight on Flake yesterday, reporting that he called the Kavanaugh’s interactions with lawmakers "sharp and partisan" and that "We can’t have that on the Court." She paints him-- as would anyone who's watched-- as someone who comes off as mixed up, shook up and confused. I bet you don't remember Mink Deville. This is one of their best songs performed in Montreux in 1994, over a decade after their "heyday":



"Flake," she wrote, "seemed to be wavering in recent days over his willingness to confirm Kavanaugh. On Friday afternoon, mere hours after stating he would vote to send the judge’s nomination to the Senate floor, he struck the agreement with Coons, and urged his colleagues to support the week-long probe before moving forward." Later he said he would vote to confirm after the FBI investigation. Then he said Kavanaugh was done for if he lied, which he clearly did. His past record indicatesnhe will vote to confirm regardless of what the FBI finds. He just doesn't have it in him to do more than whine. Collins has bigger cajones than he does, I don't expect her to vote NO either... unless she can get Murkowski to do it with her.

Which Mousketeer will save the Republic?

Another Putin-Gate Sunday While Trumpanzee Golfs In New Jersey

Republican politicians, Senators Tom Cotton (AR) and Thom Tillis (NC) are very different characters but there is no way to accurately describe either one of them without using the words "right wing" or even "very right wing." Each was on TV yesterday, Tillis with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, and Cotton with John Dickerson on CBS news' Face the Nation. Believe it or not, somehow Señor Trumpanzee came up in both conversations. First a little background: On Thursday, Tillis, along with Democrat Chris Coons of Delaware, introduced the Special Counsel Integrity Act, which Tillis' office described as "bipartisan legislation that supports the integrity of independent investigations by allowing judicial review if a special counsel is removed. In the event that a special counsel is removed, the Tillis-Coons legislation allows the special counsel to challenge the removal in court, which would be heard and determined by a panel of 3 federal judges within 14 days of the filing of the action. The panel of judges would determine whether or not there was good cause for the removal of the special counsel. In the event that the panel of judges finds there was no good cause for the removal, the individual would be immediately reinstated as special counsel. Other provisions of the Special Counsel Integrity Act:"

• Codifies existing Department of Justice regulations that a special counsel appointed by the department may only be removed for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or other good cause, like a violation of departmental policies. The Department of Justice must inform the special counsel in writing as to the reason for their removal.
• Ensures that a special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice may be disciplined or removed from office only by the personal action of an Attorney General who has been confirmed by the Senate, or, if the Attorney General is recused from the matter, the most senior Department of Justice official who has been confirmed by the Senate and is not recused from the matter.
• Provides that the legislation is retroactively effective as of May 17, 2017, and applies to any special counsel appointed or after that date.

When Chris Wallace asked the obvious, if the bill was directed against the Trump Regime, Tillis responded "Well, there’s no question that it is... That’s why we put the effective date back to the date of the hire of the current special counsel." Like most senators of both parties-- and, by the way, Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced a similar bill Thursday as well-- Tillis is worried that Trump will do something that leads to the inappropriate firing of Robert Mueller. Tom Cotton, however, isn't one of the senators too concerned about it and he predicted Tillis' bill won't pass. He doesn't like the Senate safeguarding the country from Trump's deprecations. Cotton showed what he is when Dickerson stated that "First there was the vote on sanctions, which the President did not like with respect to Russia. Also in the Senate you took measures to make sure there were no recess appointments. And finally there are a couple of bipartisan efforts to make sure that the President can’t fire the special counsel." Dickerson observed that "[It] seems to be Congress is trying to constrain the president." He tried having it both ways.

Well, those are all very different kinds of actions. On the sanctions legislation, I supported that legislation because Russia and China are adversaries, and North Korea is racing towards having a nuclear armed missile that can strike the United States. The recess appointment issue is something that goes back to the Obama administration.

I can tell you, as a junior senator, I signed a sign-up roster early this year that was choosing when I was going to be in Washington, D.C., during a recess, to preside over a short session of the Senate, to insure that there wasn't a recess appointment. That's simply Congress taking its responsibilities seriously, to provide advice and consent to all nominations.

We did it under the Obama administration. It's happening under the Trump administration, as well. Finally, on those two pieces of legislation, I don't see them going very far. The Independent Counsel Statute in the 1970s and '80s and '90s was a disaster. We have an executive branch in which the power of all the departments and all the agencies reports to the single elected member of the President.

So those are all very different kinds of actions. But Congress is a co-equal branch of government. And in my opinion, for decades, Congress has ceded too much authority to the executive branch. And we should exercise our constitutional responsibilities seriously and with vigor.

Cotton is a warmonger and anti-Russia hawk and he twists himself into knots trying to defend Trump's romance with Putin and at the same time distancing himself from Trump's obvious lies about witch hunts and Fake News. "Russia," he said to Dickerson, "has a long history of using disinformation, deception, subterfuge, and espionage to influence Western democracies. That happened in our election last year when Russian intelligence services hacked into those emails and released them. It happened in 1983 when Russian intelligence services were behind much of the protest against the deployment of intermediate range nuclear forces to Western Europe. So it should come as no surprise that Russia continues its effort to manipulate Western democracies in a way to sow discord and disagreements between our countries in NATO and within the United States or any other Western European country. And it's something the United States obviously must be on guard against... [I]t shouldn't surprise any American to know that Russia uses its money and its intelligence services to spread disinformation, use subterfuge and deception and manipulation, to try to divide political opinion within the United States, within any Western European country, or among NATO countries. That's one of the techniques that Russia has used for decades, during the Cold War and during the Putin era... Russia remains an adversary to the United States. We have some overlapping interests. It would be better if our relationship was better. But our relationship is not good right now because of Vladimir Putin. There are steps that I think that we should be taking that we should have taken under the Obama administration. For instance, providing defensive weaponry to Ukraine. I encourage the President and the administration to take a look at those steps. I know they are doing so through deliberate, careful National Security Council meetings."

Back to Mueller for a moment, Tillis' co-sponsor, Chris Coons, was on ABC News' This Week and told viewers that he thinks "if the president should fire Robert Mueller abruptly, that would be crossing a big line, and I think you would be seeing strong bipartisan action from the Senate which might include our reinstating him or our hiring him to continue to conduct that investigation on behalf of Congress."

A die-hard Trumpy-the-Clown ally, Britain's Nigel-Farage-the-Clown, was on Fox & Friends yesterday whining that Ryan and McConnell are thwarting the Trumpanzee agenda, just as Theresa May is thwarting, in his mind, the fascist agenda in the U.K. "The political revolution of 2016 with Brexit and with Trump was people voting for change, real, fundamental change. And here we are in the middle of the following year and that change isn't happening." He's probably not aware that 3 million more people voted against Trumpanzee than for him. "What's so frustrating on both sides of the pond is that there are people who masquerade as conservatives in order to get themselves elected and are now damaging the attempt for us to get a clean Brexit, stopping the president from getting his agenda through Congress, and I think there is something very fundamental at stake here, it is people's faith and belief in the whole Democratic process."

Mueller portrait by Nancy Ohanian

Cover Up... Trump Is Melting Down

Andrea Mitchell spoke with Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a conservative Dem on both the Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees. He thinks the FBI and/or other intelligence agencies have transcripts (and presumably tapes) that would serve as the proverbial smoking gun to end the national nightmare that a trump Regime would trigger. Remember, it's only been 5 or 6 weeks.

"There are transcripts," Coons told Mitchell Friday, "that provide very helpful, very critical insights into whether or not Russian intelligence and senior Russian political leaders, including Vladimir Putin, were cooperating, were colluding with the Trump campaign at the highest levels to influence the outcome of our election. If that information is stonewalled or hidden away and if we are not able to get that on the Senate Intelligence Committee, House Intelligence Committee, then I think that has real consequences for our democracy."

Rachel Maddow began her Friday show with a blockbuster report on the courageousness of someone few Americans have likely ever heard of, Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition figure running-- if he can-- against Putin for president. The whole 22 minutes clip is at the bottom and it's worth watching and listening to in its entirety. But I want to focus on just one small aspect, one that relates to our own situation we find ourselves in because there are enough morons in our country, who, like my brother-in-law, found their ways to a polling station and voted for the least qualified person to ever get elected to the presidency.

Who do you think is the richest man in the world? And if you ask somebody who's connected, who's worldly, who's been around, every single one of those people, every single time will give you the same answer. They will say, "the richest man in the world, obviously, in Vladimir Putin."

And on paper, that shouldn't be true, right? The salary of the Russian president is a fraction of what even the U.S president gets paid. Vladimir Putin has never had a job outside the Russian government. He's never had any disclosed business ties, any official investments we are allowed to know about. But, you know what? The whole 'oligarchs thing,' the whole conversion of all state run enterprises of the Communist Soviet Union... all those billions, even tens of billions of dollars that have moved in the past 20 years? Alllll of that money is believed to have gone, to some degree, through Vladimir Putin's pockets. He is widely believed by people in a position to know to be the richest man in the world-- and by a lot... all of that wealth has been stolen an/or extorted and/or kicked back to him over his 17 years in office running an increasingly autocratic Russian government.

Technically, yes, there's a Russian Parliament but it is like a vestigial organ at this point. Basically it's the adenoid of the Russian government; it's the tonsil. Technically there is also a court system in Russia. But you know what? That's Putin too.

Look at these two pieces of shit. They're not a check on Trump; they are his enablers, his conspirators. McConnell and especially Ryan are so excited to get their reactionary, backward anti-human agenda signed into law that they don't seem to care what deprecations the Trump Regime visits on our country.

I don't want to see another Civil War. I don't believe there is any way to avoid one and avoid a Trumpist take over of America-- on a kleptocratic/kakistocratic level of Russia-- that would avoid a Civil War. There is one thing and one thing only-- a 2018 take over of Congress by the Democrats. The horrible, lame, corporate-beholden, incompetent, venal, untrustworthy careerist Democrats. The only hope to stop Trumpism... that stinking pile of excrement led by the inept hands of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi in Congress. But it's worth it to stop Trump. The candidates Blue America supports are not garden variety Democrats like the ones I just described. They're the good ones. They'll ameliorate the horror of going from Trump-- and Bannon and Miller and Sessions and Wilbur Ross and Gorka... and the generals-- to the party of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer. Want to help? The candidates you'll find by hitting the ActBlue thermometer ion the right have been vetted and are courageous and public service-minded. They're worth helping get elected to the House this year and next. Yeah... courageousness is important-- so, so important, so, again, watch the whole Maddow segment: