Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

I always used to have ambivalent feelings about Dan Rather. Those feelings centered around what I saw as him being such a conservative corporate news guy, but, opinions can change, both his and mine. The tweet I'm using as tonight's meme may be the most astute thing I've ever heard from him. I love it for its facetiousness. The obvious answer just hangs there!

There were early reports that Señor Trumpanzee would welcome storm refugees from the Bahamas into our country. That apparently changed the second he saw all those people of color getting on that ferry headed for our shores. Oh to have a listening device in the oval office, the proverbial fly on the wall! I can just see Stephen Miller, or one of the other of Trump's fellow White House white supremacists, running into the oval office to make sure he saw. We can easily imagine Trump having an exploding freakout! That idea makes sense in the context of what Trump is. He probably always thought of the Bahamas as a kind of tropical Norway, full of nice, tidy white Brits walking around in white suits or white tennis outfits, off to the local courts for a deliciously uncoordinated game of tennis and some drinks with umbrellas in them. Then, he saw it: The Ferry Of Horror! He started spouting off about gangs and druggies, his main descriptives for "brown people."

Ironic isn't it, being as the White House is one big destructive gang. And, they probably all snort adderall and worse with him. I hope though that there's at least a couple who will stop him when he starts planning to invite all of the Republican Senators over for cross burnings on the White House lawn. They'll probably have to tackle him and take away his matches. Hmmm. What are the odds that that has already happened?

Will Mainers Remember In 2020? Perhaps Justice Kavanaugh Will Remind Then Now And Then

Ted Cruz never hesitated or thought twice about his vote for Brett Kavanaugh. He fund-raised off it. It's who he is, who he's always been and will always be. Yesterday, after the 50-48 vote roll call, Beto send a note to Texas voters saying, clearly: "Today, the Senate voted on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. If I were in the Senate, I would have voted no. Maybe that's why Schumer and the DSCC aren't supporting his race-- way too plain-spoken; no hedging there. No Republican-lite bullshit either.

The events of the past two weeks--  including Dr. Ford’s courageous, powerful, and credible testimony and Judge Kavanaugh’s temperament in his response--  have only added to my concern that he does not meet the bar to serve on the Supreme Court.

I am disappointed that he was confirmed. I know that today’s news and the headlines we’ve seen over the last few weeks have been extremely difficult for many Texans and especially painful for survivors of sexual assault and sexual harassment-- so many of whom bravely spoke out, shared their stories, and continue to lead the way. The news has also been hard on those who might feel let down after making their voices heard by calling their senators, organizing with one another, uniting for what we believe in. Today, we are going to come together for one another.

But tonight and tomorrow and in the days that follow, I want you to know that we are going to meet this disappointment weighing on many of us with the power of people who want to make sure that our government represents all of us. In a democracy, the government is the people and the people are the government. If the government does not represent the will of the people, we will change the makeup of the government.

We will ensure that the senators voting on lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court fight for people, for our rights, for our future. That they put country over party. That they bring a sense of civility and decency to what is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body in the world.

Together-- not as Democrats or Republicans but as Texans and Americans-- we will ensure that the next nominee to be confirmed to the Supreme Court represents all of our interests.

We will do it because in a state that is last in voter turnout--  not by accident but by design-- we understand the importance of voting rights.

We will do it because in a state that is the epicenter for the maternal mortality crisis--  three times as deadly for African American women--  we understand that.

Roe vs. Wade is the decided law of the land and that women should be able to make their own decisions about their own bodies, and have access to the healthcare that will save their lives.

We will do it because in a state where you can be fired for being gay and where the justice system does not serve everyone, we understand the importance of civil rights and equal justice under law.

And we will do it because we understand the need to put people over PACs, people over corporations, and people over special interests.

Thank you for staying strong for one another, for Texas, and for this country. We will not let one another down.

Writing on his Facebook page, Dan Rather pointed a finger directly at the senator most responsible for yesterday's debacle-- and it wasn't Mitch McConnell. "So Collins misses her moment to be a hero, and the old bulls win again. Trump, McConnell, Grassley, Hatch, Graham-- the whole lot of them-- win. Again. They are laughing, congratulating one another, and at least metaphorically are popping Champagne. For most women and many men it’s a bitter, devastating loss. Which makes it all the sweeter for the old bulls, and for the forces of power, privilege and money everywhere. A sense that the nation’s climate of justice has taken another turn toward dark clouds rises. The age-old question for the country of whether we prioritize power, privilege and money over justice takes on renewed importance."

Will Collins be held accountable? The PressHerald in Maine warned that With a ‘yes’ vote, Sen. Collins ties her legacy to that of Brett Kavanaugh. "If Kavanaugh," the wrote, "joins a five-member bloc of Republican judges that makes it more difficult for women to get an abortion, or interferes with the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to control air pollution that comes to Maine from the Midwest, or protects President Trump from legal action, Collins will own a share of the blame. And it should also be part of her legacy if more evidence emerges to support the charges of sexual misconduct that have been made against the judge. Without the benefit of a real investigation, Collins decided that he deserved a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court unless the charges against him could be proven up to the civil court standard of a preponderance of the evidence or 'more likely than not.'... Collins’ vote should be remembered for a long time."

In the same newspaper, Beth Quimby wrote that her vote is parking interest from potential 2020 Democratic challengers.

Speculation about who might challenge U.S. Sen. Susan Collins if she seeks re-election in 2020 began before she finished her speech Friday afternoon on the Senate floor about why she would vote for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Not only did a former Obama administration official, Susan Rice, drop a hint Friday that she might make a run for the senior Maine senator’s seat, but two Maine Democrats indicated an interest just minutes after Collins cast her vote in favor of Kavanaugh on Saturday afternoon.

Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon of Freeport said in a telephone interview that she is seriously thinking about a challenge in a vote that is more than two years away.

“It is definitely something that I will be seriously considering, although it will probably wait until Nov. 6 to really dig deep into really exploring that,” Gideon said.

...Emily Cain, a former state legislator from Orono who ran unsuccessfully for the 2nd District U.S. House seat in 2014 and 2016 and is now executive director of EMILY’s List, said she is seriously considering a run.

Collins hasn't committed to running again in 2020 yet. Probably if a really weak candidate who couldn't win an election for dog-catcher-- say... Emily Cain-- were to run, Collins might enjoy an easy race just to go out on a high note. After yesterday's floor vote, CNN was also reporting that the effort to unseat Susan Collins in 2020 is already underway. Even before this, she was a big DSCC target for next cycle. This will make recruitment easier and money-raising easier. No doubt there will be plenty of really terrible candidates eager to run, not just Emily Cain. I'm already hearing about some of them. It's important that whomever the Democrats choose be someone who wants to represent all Mainers, not just one segment of the population. There isn't anyone on the "Congress Needs More Women" thermometer on the right who will be a 2020 candidate in Maine or anywhere else. I sure hope Maine state Senator Shenna Bellows agrees to run, though.

Joel Peter Witkin doesn't usually do overtly political art but last year, it looks like he couldn't help himself. This lovely photographic collage print is "The Great Masturbator And The Country He Rode In On." [Thanks Valley Girl for sending it along.]

I'm a bit of a JP Witkin aficionado. I have one of his pieces hanging over my fireplace. Whenever I get an opportunity to see an exhibition of his, whether in a museum or in a gallery, I always go. I was happy that Valley Girl sent me this monologue from Witkin explaining his relation to Señor Trumpanzee.

Trump is a child living in a narcissistic hollow man-- with the power to destroy the world...

Trump is not qualified to be President. His election to that office represents the ignorance of the American electorate and the corruption of our political representatives. Ours is not an intellectual culture in which thought and reason are unselfishly presented. It is a “Pop Culture” of materialistic escapism which has elected an autocratic, draft dodging, corrupt business man, who has made this country the laughing stock of the world.

'The Great Masturbator And The Country He Rode In On' took several months to create. The Trump model was willing to pose nude. In his right hand is the nuclear button. On his extended left arm is written: 'The Only Conquest Left Is Ivanka.' On his right arm, he is wearing the symbol of Communism, the secret agenda Russia is promoting today under Putin. And for reasons yet unknown, all of us look forward to know why Trump is Putin’s marionette.

I made this photograph because I am involved in mankind. As a citizen of this formally great country, and as an artist, I made this photograph to help defeat the Republican party in the 2018 elections for its cowardice in putting their party ahead of their country. Where are our elected leaders, the Lincoln’s, the Kennedy’s of today? Where are our citizen’s hero’s, the César Chávez’s, the Martin Luther King’s, the Rosa Parks of today?

What ever happened to morality, courage and integrity?”

A Whiff Of Fascism? Dan Rather: "Someone In There Is Not Thinking Very Well And It All Begins With The President"

Chris Wallace is a Fox guy, so how good could he be, right? Still, hold off comparing him to Chris Hayes and try comparing him to the fascist automatons on Fox & Friends instead. Take a look at the clip directly under this paragraph. The Fox & Friends clowns are just such horrifying jokes posing as "journalists!" And it's more than just "a very selective view of history." I don't think Wallace will be able to teach any of these proudly ignorant, over-paid propagandists anything about what journalism is. Notice how the bimbo in the middle (Abby, I think I heard someone call her?) starts giggling gleefully and rubbing her legs together with excitement when Wallace says he doesn't think Dan Rather is worth paying any attention to?



Chris Wallace and the Fox clowns may refuse to pay any attention to Dan Rather, but it isn't just Rachel Maddow who does. A lot of buzz over the interview Don Lemon did with him over the weekend at CNN. Rather makes clear what Fox is trying to keep from its dull-minded viewers, namely that the firing of Jim Comey was "clearly about the Russian investigation. This has echoes of the Nixon administration. There's a Nixonian tone increasingly enveloping this." He reminds CNN's viewers that what brought Nixon down-- and what is likely to bring Señor Trumpanzee down-- was and is the cover-up... obstruction of Justice. On his Facebook page, Rather wrote "I have lived through nearly 4,500 weeks in my life, and I have never seen a week like the one we just had. I have seen weeks of far greater darkness, of war, and death, and economic despair. I have seen weeks of more confusion and uncertainty. But I have never seen a week where a president of our nation has behaved with such a cavalier disregard for the norms and institutions of our democracy. And it now seems like the investigation is expanding into Trump's business dealings. The comparisons with Richard Nixon are plentiful these days, but even he did not seem so untethered from our basic governance. And I have never seen so many members of a political party rally around incompetence, intemperance, and inanity. The threats, the lies, the willful disregard for the rule of law should be limited to the world of Hollywood caricature. To see this played out each night on the news, to read about ramblings and inconsistencies in justifications for actions that should never have been taken, is to see a moment of great peril for our nation. I remain, however, an optimist. I see the swellings of civic engagement and action. I hear the voices of those who demand that this subversion of our national ideals shall not stand. I have covered social movement of the past, and never have seen one where so much power and numbers lie on the side of the opposition. This is a clash for the values of our nation. Our destiny is in our hands."



And now even the Republican-controlled Senate is being inexorably drawn into what can only end in Trump's impeachment-- next up: looking into how his corrupt business practices intersects with Putinism. Adam Davidson reported for the New Yorker that Trump's lack of any kind of serious attention span his greed and his attraction to quick, "shiny" payoffs makes it less likely that he personally conspired with the Russians. Does that make you feel better? It shouldn't.

Trump’s businesses-- maybe because of his fondness for shiny deals-- have been the subject of investigations over the years but have not been discussed much in the context of the Trump campaign’s relationship to Russia. But that seems to be shifting. Senator Lindsey Graham, whose committee is heading one of the investigations, raised the question at a hearing on Monday, and apparently asked the White House for information about ties between the President and Russia. In response, lawyers for Trump released a letter to the Associated Press on Friday, saying they had reviewed ten years of Trump’s taxes and didn’t find “any income of any type from Russian sources,” except for a property sold to a Russian billionaire and proceeds from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, held in Moscow. Trump’s actual tax returns weren’t released, so the information could not be confirmed. More significant for the long term, perhaps, was another request made by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which is known as FinCEN, to turn over documents related to Trump and his campaign officials as part of what Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the committee, told CNN is “our effort to try to follow the intel no matter where it leads.”

The FinCEN request is particularly interesting because the unit enforces money-laundering laws and is familiar with Donald Trump’s holdings, specifically the Taj Mahal casino, in Atlantic City. Trump opened the Taj Mahal in 1990. He sold half of his shares in 2004, as part of a bankruptcy settlement, but remained a minority owner. In 2015, the Taj Mahal admitted to “willfully” violating the law by letting many suspicious transactions go unreported to the authorities, and agreed to pay a ten-million-dollar fine-- one of the largest ever for a casino. While the fine came at a time when Trump was no longer a majority owner, FinCEN made clear in its public statement that the casino had violations dating back to 2003, when Trump was majority owner, and had faced another fine in 1998. The casino closed late last year.

Casinos can make it remarkably easy to allow people, such as drug dealers or corrupt oligarchs, to use funds they obtained illegally. One method is to walk into a casino in a jurisdiction with light regulation-- Macau is a favorite-- hand several million dollars to a cashier, and ask for a “marker,” or a slip of paper promising repayment. That marker can be transferred to another casino in a different country, where the original depositor or an associate can pick up the millions, play some games, lose some money, and then turn in the remaining chips for cash. With a compliant or unobservant casino, that money can be reported as gambling winnings to the I.R.S. and deposited into a U.S. bank with minimal questioning. A similar trick can be pulled off without having to change jurisdictions, or even casinos. A money launderer can hand a stack of bills to a casino cashier and receive chips for betting on games. The chips can be returned for cash that will be reported as winnings to the I.R.S. Casinos can make a fair bit of money this way. Money launderers will, typically, aim to gamble with-- and, inevitably, lose-- some of their money to disguise their activity.

Money launderers can avail themselves of other methods, such as buying expensive real estate through shell companies or slipping their ill-gotten money into cash-heavy business, like laundromats or pizza shops, or large banks. But those retail methods work best for relatively small amounts of money, and in the past two decades, government regulators in the U.S. and elsewhere have moved to prevent money laundering through the banking system. So casinos have become increasingly popular for the large-scale money launderer.

Tom Bock, a money-laundering expert at K2, a global investigative firm, told me that money laundering has, historically, been a major source of revenue for many casinos. But more aggressive anti-money-laundering investigations have led many casino companies to do a better job at complying with the law. That means continuously monitoring activity and reporting any suspicious transactions to the government. They make sure that players have actually won their money at the gaming tables when they turn in chips for winnings.

This robust compliance was not happening at the Taj Mahal. The Treasury Department found that the casino didn’t monitor or report suspicious activity. About half the time that Treasury investigators identified suspect behavior, the Taj Mahal had not reported it to authorities. “Like all casinos in this country, Trump Taj Mahal has a duty to help protect our financial system from being exploited by criminals, terrorists, and other bad actors,” Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the FinCEN director, said in a statement at the time of the settlement. “Far from meeting these expectations, poor compliance practices, over many years, left the casino and our financial system unacceptably exposed.”

The Trump Organization is not known for its careful due diligence. As I wrote in the magazine earlier this year, Ivanka Trump oversaw a residence and hotel project in Azerbaijan. The project was run in partnership with the family of one of that country’s leading oligarchs, and while there is no proof that the Trumps were themselves involved in money laundering, the project had many of the hallmarks of such an operation. There was no public accounting of the hundreds of millions of dollars that flowed through the project to countries around the world, millions of dollars were paid in cash, and the Azerbaijani developers were believed to be partners, at the same time, with a company that appears to be a front for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which is known as one of the world’s leading practitioners of money laundering. Trump’s Azerbaijani partners are known to have close ties to Russia, as do his partners in other projects in Georgia, Canada, Panama, and other nations.

A former high-ranking official at the Treasury Department explained to me that FinCEN could have collected what are known as Suspicious Activity Reports from banks, casinos, and other places, about transactions involving any Trump projects. These reports could be used to create a detailed map of relationships and money flows involving the Trump Organization.

The Senate committee headed by Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, and Warner has been ratcheting up the pressure on Trump’s associates in the course of investigating Russian meddling in the Presidential campaign. On Thursday, the committee sent a subpoena to Michael Flynn, the short-lived national-security adviser, demanding documents that he didn’t turn over voluntarily. By asking the Treasury Department for more details about Trump and his associates, the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to be signalling a widening of its interest from the narrow question of collusion between Russia and members of Trump’s campaign staff. (My calls to Warner’s office about this weren’t answered.) If the committee does begin to seriously consider the Trump Organization’s business practices and any connections those show to figures in Russia and other sensitive countries, it would suggest what prosecutors call a “target rich” environment. Rather than focussing on a handful of recent arrivals to Trump’s inner circle-- Mike Flynn and Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser-- it could open up his core circle of children and longtime associates.

The same associate who told me that he doesn’t think Trump was likely involved in a long-term plan with Putin and Russia said he is certain that Trump has, many times, made very risky decisions in order to take advantage of a short-term opportunity. “If he sees something shiny,” he said, “he wants it.”

Something Unconstitutional Has Happened But With Gorsuch Confirmed, It Won't Matter One Bit

Many of the nutters usually most enamored of Trump turned on him after the missiles flew Thursday evening, including UKIP whackadoodles Paul Nuttall and  Nigel Farage, plus Milo Yiannopoulos Katie Hopkins, Ann Coulter, Arron Banks and Paul Joseph Watson. Nuttall, who took over the British neo-Nazi party when Farange left, tweeted that "The U.S. bombing of Syria last night was rash, trigger happy, nonsensical and will achieve nothing. I hoped for better." In as much as anyone has ever heard on Watson, it's on the crackpot Trump news InfoWars channel. He said Trump turned out to be "just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet. I'm officially OFF the Trump train. It's been fun lads, but the fun is over. I'll be focusing my efforts on Le Pen, who tried to warn Trump against this disaster." Coulter, brutal, sounds sad: "Those who wanted us meddling in the Middle East voted for other candidates... Trump campaigned on not getting involved in Mideast. Said it always helps our enemies & creates more refugees. Then he saw a picture on TV."

One of the first Members of Congress to respond to Trump's illegal bombing of Syria Thursday night-- amidst all the Trumpanzee-ish fan-fair-- was Kentucky Republican Rand Paul. He tends to almost always give Trump the benefit of the doubt-- but not on something this clear and blatantly unconstitutional. Had you not looked at the dates of these Trump tweets, you might think Trump beat him to the punch. Trump:

Rand:

Ted Lieu, who also tweeted up a storm, sent this statement to his constituents in the morning:

"President Bashar al-Assad’s latest attack on his own people with chemical weapons was heinous and heartbreaking. The U.S. Constitution, however, does not allow the President to engage in acts of war without authorization from Congress. Having served on active duty as a JAG, I am well aware of the legal authorities for the use of military force. President Trump’s unilateral decision to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles at another country’s military-- which had not attacked the U.S.-- was unconstitutional.

"In 2001, Congress authorized the President to use military force against nations and terrorists that committed or aided 'the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.' In 2002, Congress authorized the President to use military force to defend the U.S. against the 'threat posed by Iraq' and to enforce U.N. Resolutions 'regarding Iraq.' Neither of those authorizations apply in this case.

"As a Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I am also deeply disturbed by the whiplash actions of the Trump Administration and the lack of any coherent strategy in Syria. Last week, the Trump Administration signaled that it was okay with allowing Assad to stay in power, even though Assad had already killed hundreds of thousands of people in Syria and previously used chemical weapons. Yesterday, the Trump Administration attacked the Assad regime.

"In 2013, Assad used chemical weapons in Syria. Donald Trump stated that the President needed 'Congressional approval' in order to bomb Syria. He was right. I urge Trump to follow his own advice, as well as the Constitution, and stop engaging in unilateral acts of war without Congressional approval."

Although Schumer, as usual, wanted it both ways, tweeting a quick something-for-everyonecelebratory statement that began with "Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do." Ro Khanna (D-CA) seemed as happy with Schumer's bullshit as we were here at DWT. "Let's be blunt: The problem with process arguments is it's not the substantive question," he said. "The question is: Where do you stand on issues of war and peace? Do you believe it's more unilateral military intervention? Did we learn the lessons of Iraq and Libya and that we should not be engaged? I wish the Democratic Party would speak to the substance of that issue."

Moments after Schumer's stupid tweeted statement Grand Rapids independent-minded Republican congressman Justin Amash had a less wishy-washy statement that Schumer:

This morning, Seattle freshman Justin Pramila could have been speaking for over 100 members of Congress we reminded Trump that presidents aren't allowed to start wars without permission of Congress. "Under the Constitution," she wrote, "only Congress has the power to authorize the use of military force. President Trump has not proposed to Congress a comprehensive strategy to end the violence in Syria and combat the Assad regime. The President owes the American people a plan that ensures we do not become entangled in another war. His unilateral action, without Congressional approval, is a disturbing precedent that we must not allow. A foreign policy of unilateral military action will not bring enduring peace. President Trump must demand Russia come to the table and support a UN investigation of the chemical attack. He must also engage the international community in a multilateral plan to end this humanitarian crisis in Syria and throughout the Middle East. In the meantime, the latest attacks in Syria have resulted in even more deaths and the displacement of thousands of innocent people. President Trump must lift his ban on refugees, and allow those who are fighting for their lives to seek refuge in our country." Also this morning, Paul Krugman tweeted, "Syria strike is to foreign policy as Carrier deal (remember that?) was to trade policy: impresses the rubes, but basically meaningless."

Jerry Nadler (D-NY), one of Congress' foremost constitutional experts went for it as well, pointing out that Trumpanzee's "action in attacking Syria without Congressional authorization was clearly illegal and unconstitutional. Our action against Libya in 2012 without an imminent threat to the United States and without prior Congressional approval was similarly illegal and unconstitutional, as I said at the time. It is essential that the power to decide whether or not to take the country to war rest with the people, through their representatives in Congress, as the framers intended, rather than in any one person. “Furthermore, while it is heartening to know that President Trump was moved by photos of slain Syrian children earlier this week, there have been countless images over the past few years of children laying face down on sandy shores or floating lifeless in the water as they flee the devastations of war at home. Yet the President’s approach to the Syrian refugee crisis flies in the face of the moral decency he cites as the reason to launch a military strike against Assad. I hope President Trump develops the same sense of moral decency when dealing with the Syrian refugees fleeing from Assad’s brutality.”

When I woke up today my first e-mail was from my friend Helen who was dismayed, she said, that one of her favorite columnists, Nick Kristof favored Trump's idiotic move in Syria, a move he admits was of dubious legality, hypocritical, impulsive, politically motivated and risky for the United States: "What the hell has happened to Kristof? Now he is supporting the bombing by Trump. The latter, a knee jerk bellicose bullying response by Trump without any forethought of its implications and no overall strategy or policy, will only lead further to more entanglement and more crap. I kinda prefer reading Brooks these days! Unbelievable."

Kristof wrote that although he's "deeply suspicious of Trump’s policies and competence... this is a case where he is right and Barack Obama was wrong. Indeed, many of us believe that Obama’s worst foreign policy mistake was his passivity in Syria." Of course, others of us think that by taking the constitutional route-- asking Congress to authorize an attack-- Obama did exactly the right thing (as did Congress for turning him down).

Dan Rather agrees with Helen:

There is a tendency to rally around the flag, and a President who takes on a war footing can see a boost of support. It is often transitory. There are arguments to be made that President Assad in Syria has crossed a line that demands U.S. military interference. Whether this should have been a unilateral action is something we all must consider. Whether President Trump has a plan for what comes next must be debated. Whether there is a coherence to this missile strike fitting into a larger foreign policy strategy is a question that should give us all pause.

The role of the press is to ask hard questions. There is ample evidence that this Administration needs to face deep scrutiny. The lies we have heard, the chaos in governance, and the looming questions about ties with Russia-- itself a major player in Syria-- demand that the press treat this latest action with healthy skepticism. Perhaps it was the right thing to do. Perhaps a strong and wise policy will emerge. But that judgement is still definitely hanging in the balance.

The number of members of the press who have lauded the actions last night as "presidential" is concerning. War must never be considered a public relations operation. It is not a way for an Administration to gain a narrative. It is a step into a dangerous unknown and its full impact is impossible to predict, especially in the immediate wake of the first strike.

On his show last night Bill Maher was also more perceptive and on the ball than Kristof. "In America, you’re not really president until you bomb something, you know? Even the liberals were all over this last night. Everybody loves this fucking thing. Cable news loves it when they show footage of destroyers firing cruise missiles at night. It’s America’s money shot."



And, yeah... Bill Maher had Ted Lieu, who the audience seemed to be completely enamored with, on the show last night:

Putin-Gate-- is Multi-Dimensional Chess Back?

Lindsey Graham was on CNN Tuesday talking Congress' role and next step in Putin-Gate. They invited him on to talk about Flynn getting fired and he almost immediately said that what he wants is to see the incriminating transcripts that the Trump Regime is hiding from Congress:

"I haven't seen the transcripts; I don't know what we're talkin' about. What did General Flynn say to the Russian ambassador about lifting sanctions? Did he say anything at all or is this just being spun by the media? I think Congress needs to be informed about what General Flynn said to the Russian ambassador about lifting sanctions. And I want to know, did Gneral Flynn do this by himself or was he directed by somebody to do it? ... I'd have a hard time believing that General Flynn would get on the phone with the Russian ambassador and suggest that 'Don't worry, we will revisit this when we get to be president'... without some understanding that the administration would be sympathetic to the idea... Americans have a right to know whether or not this was a General Flynn rogue maneuver or was he basically speaking for somebody else in the White House.

When the anchor pushed him on House Republican efforts to cover up the whole scandal-- basically Paul Ryan, Jason Chaffetz and Devin Nunes-- he pointed out that "we do have allegations now coming from the media that the Department of Justice informed the White House that the National Security Advisor may be subject to blackmail by the Russians. I think that's something Congress has a right to know." Listen to the whole tape. And then consider what Moby posted on his Facebook page Monday. Here's the screen-grab:

Pretty heavy stuff-- and I suspect Lindsey Graham was not one of the DC friends Moby spent the weekend talking with. Nor was Moby the only one posting this kind of heavy scary shit about the Trump Regime on Facebook. Earlier today Dan Rather sounded a rather loud alarm bell:

Watergate is the biggest political scandal of my lifetime, until maybe now. It was the closest we came to a debilitating Constitutional crisis, until maybe now. On a 10 scale of armageddon for our form of government, I would put Watergate at a 9. This Russia scandal is currently somewhere around a 5 or 6, in my opinion, but it is cascading in intensity seemingly by the hour. And we may look back and see, in the end, that it is at least as big as Watergate. It may become the measure by which all future scandals are judged. It has all the necessary ingredients, and that is chilling.

When we look back at Watergate, we remember the end of the Nixon Presidency. It came with an avalanche, but for most of the time my fellow reporters and I were chasing down the story it rumbled along with a low-grade intensity. We never were quite sure how much we would find out about what really happened. In the end, the truth emerged into the light, and President Nixon descended into infamy.

Welcome to Chelsea

This Russia story started out with an avalanche and where we go from here no one really knows. Each piece of news demands new questions. We are still less than a month into the Trump Presidency, and many are asking that question made famous by Tennessee Senator Howard Baker those many years ago: "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" New reporting suggests that Mr. Trump knew for weeks. We can all remember the General Michael Flynn's speech from the Republican National Convention-- "Lock her up!" in regards to Hillary Clinton. If Hillary Clinton had done one tenth of what Mr. Flynn had done, she likely would be in jail.

And it isn't just Mr. Flynn, how far does this go?

The White House has no credibility on this issue. Their spigot of lies-- can't we finally all agree to call them lies-- long ago lost them any semblance of credibility. I would also extend that to the Republican Congress, who has excused away the Trump Administration's assertions for far too long.

We need an independent investigation. Damn the lies, full throttle forward on the truth. If a scriptwriter had approached Hollywood with what we are witnessing, he or she would probably have been told it was way too far-fetched for even a summer blockbuster. But this is not fiction. It is real and it is serious. Deadly serious. We deserve answers and those who are complicit in this scandal need to feel the full force of justice.

The first comment on Rather's page came from Stephanie Wolkin: "I worked in the US Senate during Watergate. The difference is that during the investigations that led to Nixon's resignation we had lawmakers in both parties who valued our nation over their own party. Howard Baker and Lowell Weicker, both Republicans, followed the evidence and it led to the rest of the country finding the truth and the extent to which our democracy was endangered. We have no one in the Republican party now who will stand up to the Trump machine."

Lindsey Graham? John McCain? Little Marco? Certainly not the lemmings in the House; they followers-- hacks like Ryan, Chaffetz, Nunes... someone has to make it 100% safe before they'd ever make a move. Trump will be down and all-but-out before Ryan and the House Republicans ever get serious.

Chaffetz-- DO. YOUR. JOB!

Will The Trump Regime Use Orwell's 1984 As A Playbook?

The delusional self-imagine Trump and his lackeys are pushing out from the White House is colliding with the cold hard facts, if not the #AltFacts. He may style himself a "ratings machine," but his inaugural concert was "a dud, lacking A-list talent. On Friday, the inauguration ceremony pulled in 30.6 million viewers, 7 million less than Obama’s first swearing in, 12 million less than Reagan, and 3 million less than Jimmy Carter-- but slightly above that of Bill Clinton’s first- term ceremony of 29.7 million viewers. Trump, who recently Twitter-shamed Arnold Schwarzenegger for pulling in lower ratings than he had as a reality host of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice, barely bested George W. Bush, a president whose election was won only after an aborted recount and Supreme Court intervention... At times, the president-elect appeared distracted at his own inauguration. Never known for his patience [attention span], he could not seem to sit still. He rocked in his seat minutes before taking the oath, tapped his fingers together and whispered to newly sworn-in Vice President Mike Pence when others were taking up time on the mike."

Art by Tim O'Brien

No matter how you sliced it, the affair lacked the exuberance and adoration we’ve come to expect from a showman like Trump on the campaign trail. He often cites his own power to amass fans and followers (have you heard he has a Twitter account?) as one of his greatest assets. He’s referred to it as his edge above all the other “losers.”

Those losers seemed to be on his mind later that night as he danced with his model-beautiful wife wearing the look of a high school bully who’d just been named Prom King. Two lines from his inauguration speech seemed especially relevant to the moment: “Everyone is listening to you now... You will never be ignored again.”

Ignored? No, but upstaged, yes. The next morning the Women’s March on Washington flooded the areas around the Capitol Dome that had been noticeably less populated when Trump was waving from and walking near his stretch limo on the parade route. The half-empty parade bleachers and unoccupied ground tarps of Friday were swallowed up by a sea of protesters who’d flown in from across the country to voice concerns about the Trump presidency.

They were thousands among the millions who protested across the nation and the world for women’s rights-- and their concern about a president whose remarks about sexually assaulting women were as disturbing as some of his conservative Cabinet picks’ views of reproductive rights.

Madonna, America Ferrera, Ashley Judd, Scarlett Johansson and Gloria Steinem stoked the crowd’s exuberance in way that Trump did not the day before. It was a rousing spectacle. It was exciting. It was everything the show on Friday was not.

And maybe that is why Spicer was sent out on Saturday to belligerently berate the press-- “the opposition party,” in the words of one Trump official. Here was the “unbelievable” scene-- the likes of which we’d “never seen before.”

The true start of the Trump presidential reality show had begun.

In a Facebook post, Dan Rather warned that "These are not normal times. These are extraordinary times. And extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures." Will Newt Gingrich want to toss him into prison with Madonna for thought crimes?



Rather's point, though, is not blowing up the White House but that we all must step up "and say simply and without equivocation, 'A lie, is a lie, is a lie!' And if someone won't say it, those of us who know that there is such a thing is the truth must do whatever is in our power to diminish the liar's malignant reach into our society... Facts and the truth are not partisan. They are the bedrock of our democracy. And you are either with us, with our Constitution, our history, and the future of our nation, or you are against it. Everyone must answer that question."

Following the path Trump and his lackeys are headed is the road to tyranny and fascism. Are Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell going to countenance that?

Not that the first few days in the Trumpanzee Era were only about distorting the truth, Chuck Todd and his crew pointed out that it also highlighted America's great political divide, the structure on which Trump will build his government. "[Y]ou could argue," they wrote, "that the United States today is more politically divided than it was during the brass-knuckled 2016 campaign. In his inaugural address on Friday, President Trump took aim at Washington's political establishment ('For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost'), big cities across America ('Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones…; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives'), and globalization ('From this moment on, it's going to be America First'). Then, 24 hours later, millions of women-- as well as some men-- protested against Trump across the country and throughout the world. It was Rural America vs. Urban America. Nationalism vs. Globalism. 'American Carnage' vs. Women's Power. And we have 1,457 days to go in Trump's presidency."

Hawaii's Republican Party Did To Their Own Trump What The National GOP is Afraid To Do To Trumpanzee Himself

The Republican Party-- especially although not exclusively the Trumpanzee Republican Party-- combines a hatred and bigtry wing with a greed and selfishness wing. And the chat between Dan Rather and Rachel Maddow in the video above focused on David Bossie from the former and Robert Mercer from the latter, both equally dangerous to the country and equally contemptible. The kind of people who support Trump and the same kinds of haters and sociopaths that supported the breakup of the U.S. leading up to the Civil War. But what that got to do with Hawaii?

Well, it turns out Hawaii has it's own Trumpist candidate, Angela Kaaihue, running for... well, running for just about everything and anything. Last I could tell she was running for mayor of Honolulu and against Tulsi Gabbard as a Republican in the 2nd congressional district and as Democrat in the special election to fill the remainder of Mark Takai's freshman term in the 1st congressional district. Mark Takai died of cancer and Kaaihue had been running against him as the "candidate without cancer."

She's a typically disgusting, revolting, completely narcissistic Trumpist who no one could imagine anyone voting for. Except she won the Republican primary for HI-02 a couple weeks ago, so several thousand people did vote for this hate-spewing racist monstrosity. Even before being disowned by the Republican Party of Hawaii a couple days ago, people were starting to get an understanding about the depths of depravity from which Kaaihue crawled out from.

Friday, the Party chairman, Fritz Rohlfing, urged Republicans to disavow her candidacy and not vote for her. "I want it understood by the general public and the media that the recent inflammatory comments made by candidate for Congress (CD2) Angela Kaaihue do not represent the views, values, or the sentiments of our party and its members. Her vulgar, racially-bigoted, and religiously-intolerant descriptions of Democratic Party candidates are offensive, shameful, and unacceptable in public discourse. I unconditionally denounce her despicable statements." This is her:



Hawaii's biggest voting block are Japanese Americans are she's denounced them. She's denounced all non-Christians, particularly Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims and has called them traitors to America. She claims her hateful campaign is a war between "the righteous and the unrighteous, between God and Satan... Angela’ means messenger of God. My whole family is Christian." Jesus must be rolling his eyes. This is from her bizarre and hate-filled Facebook account:

She uses that Facebook account to insist her political opponents, like Congresswomen Gabbard and Hanabusa, Mayor Caldwell and Governor Ige are non-Christians devil worshipers. Last week, the Republicans finally kicked her out of the party altogether:

The Hawaii Republican Party has terminated the membership of Angela Kaaihue, a controversial Congressional candidate who's made national headlines for her distasteful signs and vulgar social media posts.

"In accordance with the rules of the Hawaii Republican Party, our party has terminated the membership of Ms. Kaaihue based on her public statements on social media that she is 'not a Republican,'" said party Chairman Fritz Rohlfing.

"Additionally, Ms. Kaaihue has filed as a Democrat in the upcoming special election for the remainder of the term of the late U.S. Rep. Mark Takai in Congressional District 1.

Kaaihue, who was previously running against incumbent U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, announced over the weekend she would be running as a Democrat in the special election.

Meanwhile, Hawaii’s Democratic Party said it would file a complaint with the First Circuit Court because Kaaihue is not a registered Democrat.

In response, Kaaihue issued a statement inviting the legal challenge.

"I'm not in violation of any policies," she said. "As far as I'm concerned, changing parties is construed as a positive thing."

A lot of the vitriol from this sociopath and Trumpist seems to stem from a real estate dispute with Gov. Ige and she claims she'd be willing to drop out of the election contests if he'd drop his lawsuit against her. She's Donald Trump in a hula skirt and a lei. 

Barbara Bush Was Completely Right That The Country Doesn't Want Another Bush In The White House

Let's talk about a service the Trump campaign is doing for America. Thanks to Obama and Pelosi, Bush and Cheney were never held accountable for their 8 years of mayhem. And thanks to Trump-- or, more accurately, thanks to the Trump campaign's jihad against Jeb-- the Bush-Cheney responsibility for 9/11 and then destabilizing the Middle East by attacking Iraq under false pretenses is again being discussed by the American people. I'm sure you've noticed. We touched on it over the weekend to illustrate how a ruthless predator like Trump can force a sad patsy like Jeb to commit suicide by pressing the right buttons. Early this morning, Peter Beinart, writing for The Atlantic, made the devastating case that "Bush didn't do all he could to prevent the attack-- and it’s time Republicans confronted that fact"... and that the unsavory Trump is doing the right thing by bringing it up, even if for the wrong reasons. Beinart called it "an ugly truth," in contrast to the ugly untruths we've come to expect from the Trumpish mouth-- and noted that "politicians and journalists erupted in indignation. Jeb Bush called Trump’s comments 'pathetic.' Ben Carson dubbed them 'ridiculous.'... and that the reporter who had asked Trump the question said, 'Hold on, you can’t blame George Bush for that.'" But, as Beinart said, "Oh yes, you can."

There’s no way of knowing for sure if Bush could have stopped the September 11 attacks. But that’s not the right question. The right question is: Did Bush do everything he could reasonably have to stop them, given what he knew at the time? And he didn’t. It’s not even close.

When the Bush administration took office in January 2001, CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Council counterterrorism “czar” Richard Clarke both warned its incoming officials that Al Qaeda represented a grave threat. During a transition briefing early that month at Blair House, according to Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, Tenet and his deputy James Pavitt listed Osama Bin Laden as one of America’s three most serious national-security challenges. That same month, Clarke presented National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice with a plan he had been working on since Al Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole the previous October. It called for freezing the network’s assets, closing affiliated charities, funneling money to the governments of Uzbekistan, the Philippines and Yemen to fight Al Qaeda cells in their country, initiating air strikes and covert operations against Al Qaeda sites in Afghanistan, and dramatically increasing aid to the Northern Alliance, which was battling Al Qaeda and the Taliban there.

But both Clarke and Tenet grew deeply frustrated by the way top Bush officials responded. Clarke recounts that when he briefed Rice about Al Qaeda, “her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before.” On January 25, Clarke sent Rice a memo declaring that, “we urgently need…a Principals [Cabinet] level review on the al Qida [sic] network.” Instead, Clarke got a sub-cabinet, Deputies level, meeting in April, two months after the one on Iraq.

When that April meeting finally occurred, according to Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz objected that “I just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden.” Clarke responded that, “We are talking about a network of terrorist organizations called al-Qaeda, that happens to be led by bin Laden, and we are talking about that network because it and it alone poses an immediate and serious threat to the United States.” To which Wolfowitz replied, “Well, there are others that do as well, at least as much. Iraqi terrorism for example.”

By early summer, Clarke was so despondent that he asked to be reassigned. “This administration,” he later testified, “didn’t either believe me that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared to act as though there were an urgent problem. And I thought, if the administration doesn’t believe its national coordinator for counterterrorism when he says there’s an urgent problem and if it’s unprepared to act as though there’s an urgent problem, then probably I should get another job.” In July, the Deputies Committee finally agreed to schedule a Principals level meeting on Clarke’s plan. But the schedule for July was already full, and in August too many Cabinet members were on vacation, so the meeting was set for September.

During that same time period, the CIA was raising alarms too... But the same Defense Department officials who discounted Clarke’s warnings pushed back against the CIA’s. According to Eichenwald’s sources, “the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat.”



...The warnings continued. On July 11, the CIA sent word to the White House that a Chechen with links to Al Qaeda had warned that something big was coming. On July 24, the Daily Brief said the expected Al Qaeda attack had been postponed but was still being planned. Finally, on August 6, the CIA titled its Daily Brief: “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US.” The briefing didn’t mention a specific date or target, but it did mention the possibility of attack in New York and mentioned that the terrorists might hijack airplanes. In Angler, Barton Gellman notes that it was the 36th time the CIA had raised Al Qaeda with President Bush since he took office... On the morning of September 11, 2001, Clarke’s anti-Al Qaeda plan was sitting on Bush’s desk, awaiting his signature. It was the ninth National Security Presidential Directive of his presidency.

...When Donald Trump hurls insults at his opponents, respectable people generally roll their eyes. But it is precisely Trump’s refusal to be respectable that helps him spark debates that elites would rather avoid. And sometimes, those debates are important to have.

Given that George W. Bush’s advisors still dominate the Republican foreign-policy establishment-- an establishment that has not broken with his ideological legacy in any fundamental way-- his record both before and after 9/11 remains relevant to the terrorism debate today. For many years now, that foreign-policy establishment has insisted that questioning Bush’s failure to stop the September 11 attacks constitutes an outrageous slur. That’s why Fleischer is now calling Trump a “truther.” He’s purposely blurring the line between accusing Bush of having orchestrated the attacks and accusing Bush of having been insufficiently vigilant in trying to stop them. But Bush was insufficiently vigilant. The evidence is overwhelming.

If Jeb’s loyalty to his brother makes it impossible for him to confront that, fine. But he has no right to demand that the rest of the public avert its eyes.

Maybe it's more than Jeb's blind loyalty in play here, though. David Sirota, writing for today's International Business Times noted the real irony about Jeb's laughable assertion that his brother "kept us safe." Jeb himself, in his role as Governor of Florida didn't keep us safe, in fact, quite the contrary. "Many of the 9/11 hijackers were able to obtain Florida driver’s licenses or identification cards-- and train freely in the state-- while Jeb Bush was governor." Jeb, of course is trying to pass the buck and blame his subordinates.

While Jeb Bush has called Trump’s criticism “pathetic,” the immigration policies of Bush’s gubernatorial administration were under the microscope in 2001 when law enforcement officials acknowledged that Florida had issued driver’s licenses or state identification cards to 12 of the hijackers, all of whom had come to the United States on visas. The St. Petersburg Times reported that at the time of the attack there was a warrant in Florida to apprehend one of the lead hijackers, Mohammed Atta, but “the warrant for Atta's arrest was ignored.” A national conservative organization pushing tougher immigration laws soon criticized Bush for his unwillingness to support what the group said was legislation necessary to stop terrorism.

...In the days after the 2001 attacks, news broke that most of the 9/11 hijackers carried driver’s licenses or identification cards issued by Florida’s department of motor vehicles-- an agency controlled by Bush and the other statewide elected officials who comprise the Florida Cabinet. Some of the licenses and ID cards were issued by the state while Bush was governor. Some of the hijackers trained for the attacks at Flight Safety International in Vero Beach, Florida. Local newspapers said the Florida licenses played a pivotal role in helping the hijackers conduct business in the United States.

“Terrorists known to have Florida licenses or identification cards made more than a dozen trips total to driver's license offices in the state,” the St. Petersburg Times reported “That's how often the terrorists willingly called themselves to the attention of the state, either to acquire a license or to update their address, both of which might have helped them rent cars or board planes without arousing suspicion.”

Mohammed Atta lived in Delray Beach and rented an airplane. He had been stopped a few months before 9/11 by Florida law enforcement officials, and was told to appear in court the next month. However, he was not arrested and, the Times wrote, “deputies never learned that Atta reportedly was on a U.S. government ‘watch list’ of people tied to terrorist activity.” The newspaper also noted that while Atta tried and failed to get a driver’s license at one Florida facility, he was able to get one later at another facility.

Another hijacker, one of several aboard the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon, was stopped for a traffic violation in Arlington, Virginia, days before the attack and had a Florida driver’s license, according to CNN.

Others bided their time in Florida; the Palm Beach Post reported that “at least seven and possibly nine of the hijackers lived in Delray Beach in the months leading up to the attack” and “three others lived in Boynton Beach.” Several also looked into renting crop duster planes-- officials believed they may have been aiming to use them to drop chemicals, according to news station WPBF.

“Gov. Jeb Bush has ordered a ‘top-to-bottom’ review of all state security measures, including Florida's licensing laws,” the St. Petersburg Times wrote in an editorial just after the attacks. “That so many of the terrorists obtained IDs and flight instruction here was not a coincidence.” Noting that the majority of hijackers “were able to obtain state driver's licenses and identification that enabled them to nestle within the fabric of society,” the newspaper declared: “Alarm bells should have gone off but never did. We can no longer afford these kind of security lapses.”

Bush signed an executive order in October 2001 for foreigners to receive only 30-day temporary driving permits while police investigate their identification, and he called for the regulation of flight schools to be reviewed.

"The world has changed and we're going to respond to that change," Bush told the Tampa Bay Times that month, as he accepted a report on the state's readiness to prevent terrorism.

But now Jeb is trying to raise money by attacking Trump over the issue! "If you believe as I do," his campaign wrote in an e-mail, "that my brother kept this country safe and strong after those horrific attacks, then I need you to donate $5 and fight back against Donald Trump." Neither his nor his brother's policies did anything but throw out a welcoming mat to the 9/11 terrorists.

What a terrible time for Jeb's campaign for Truth, the SONY movie about how Dan Rather and producer Mary Maples were fired for reporting the truth about George W. Bush's shady record in the Texas Air National Guard, to get released! I hope everyone goes to see it.