What Is Matt Gaetz's Role In The Republican Party Human Sex Slave Trafficking Market In Florida

Who will Saturday Night Live cast to play Li Yang? The Chinese-born pimp is already more famous than Schenectady-born presidential candidate, Obama's former Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurshi, Andrew Yang. She appears to be the new Jeffrey Epstein, whore monger to the Trumpist elite. As well as someone who has been helping to illegally funnel money from wealthy businessmen from China into Trump's campaign coffers. Just call her Cindy from Florida, where she owns a chain of whore houses disguised as massage parlors and a "consulting business"-- GY US Investments-- that introduces wealthy Chinese businessmen into the ultra-swampy Trumpanzee orbit.

After the Bob Kraft bust in one of her whore houses, I first read about Ms. Yang, a naturalized U.S. citizen and official of the Republican Party, in a Mother Jones article over the weekend by David Corn: A Florida Massage Parlor Owner Has Been Selling Chinese Execs Access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago-- The Strange Swampy Saga OfTrump Donor Li Yang. Ms. Yang is destined for a major-- if fleeting-- role in American pop culture. A punk band named Li Yang? An HBO docu-drama? Which U.S. Attorney will take this case on-- or has already taken this case on?

Corn and his team summarized what we know so far: "The latest Trump political donor to draw controversy is Li Yang, a 45-year-old Florida entrepreneur from China who founded a chain of spas and massage parlors that included the one where New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft was recently busted for soliciting prostitution. She made the news this week when the Miami Herald reported that last month she had attended a Super Bowl viewing party at Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club and had snapped a selfie with the president during the event. Though Yang no longer owns the spa Kraft allegedly visited, the newspaper noted that other massage parlors her family runs have 'gained a reputation for offering sexual services.' (She told the newspaper she has never violated the law.) Beyond this sordid tale, there is another angle to the strange story of Yang: She runs an investment business that has offered to sell Chinese clients access to Trump and his family. And a website for the business-- which includes numerous photos of Yang and her purported clients hobnobbing at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach-- suggests she had some success in doing so." She's in trouble.

Yang, who goes by Cindy, and her husband, Zubin Gong, started GY US Investments LLC in 2017. The company describes itself on its website, which is mostly in Chinese, as an “international business consulting firm that provides public relations services to assist businesses in America to establish and expand their brand image in the modern Chinese marketplace.” But the firm notes that its services also address clients looking to make high-level connections in the United States. On a page displaying a photo of Mar-a-Lago, Yang’s company says its “activities for clients” have included providing them “the opportunity to interact with the president, the [American] Minister of Commerce [Wilbur Ross, apparently] and other political figures.” The company boasts it has “arranged taking photos with the President” and suggests it can set up a “White House and Capitol Hill Dinner.” (The same day the Herald story about Yang broke, the website stopped functioning.)

...Her Facebook page, which was taken offline on Friday, was loaded with photos of her posing with GOP notables: Donald Trump Jr., Rep. Matt Gaetz or Florida, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, among others.

What does poor Matt Gaetz do after a long tough day of lusting after AOC?

The GY US Investments website lists upcoming events at Mar-a-Lago at which Yang’s clients presumably can mingle with Trump or members of his family. This includes something called the International Leaders Elite Forum, where Trump’s sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau, will supposedly be the featured speaker. Attendees, the site says, will include “Chinese elites from various countries, including the US states, as well as elite leaders from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia, Europe and other countries and regions.” Another event for which Yang’s firm says it can provide access is Trump’s annual New Year’s celebration at Mar-a-Lago. Elsewhere on the website, the firm boasts that “GY Company arranged a number of guests to attend the 2019 New Year’s Eve dinner. All the guests took photos with” members of Trump’s family. This page displays photos of Chinese executives and a Chinese movie star with Donald Trump Jr., suggesting that these pics were arranged by the company, and also includes a photo of Yang with Elizabeth Trump Grau.

Among the Chinese executives who attended that New Year’s event was Huachu Tang, the owner of an electric car company. Tang told Yahoo Finance that he flew 17 hours from Xi’an, China, with his family and an assistant in hopes of meeting with Trump at the party. Though he reportedly speaks almost no English, Tang said he hoped to use a Trump connection to build up his company’s brand before eventually taking it public on the New York Stock Exchange. Trump, however, canceled his trip to Mar-a-Lago due to the government shutdown. Tang and his wife managed to pose for pictures with Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Trump Grau. Tang told Yahoo that he received admission to the New Year’s party through a package offered by a public relations agency-- perhaps Yang’s firm. According to Yahoo, the company Tang used declined to reveal the price of the package, citing the confidentiality of the contract.

The GY US Investments website also posted photos of Yang at a White House celebration of the “Asian New Year” in 2018 and at a Chinese New Year dinner celebration that purportedly included Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Transportation Secretary Chao. The firm says it invited 10 guests to the Chinese New Year event and the website shows several of them posing with Chao.

According to the website, the company has offices in Miami; Washington, DC; and Wuhan, China, and is preparing to open an office in Beijing. But the address of its office in the Washington area matches the location of a UPS store.

 ...The overall message conveyed by the GY US Investments website seems clear: hire Yang’s company and she can get you close to Trump and his government—at Mar-a-Lago and in Washington. If the posted photos are authentic, she has been able to get Chinese clients at least into the Trump circle for a quick pic. They are a sign that this Chinese immigrant and Trump donor has used her contacts to go from massaging clients to massaging influence.

Update: Yang has been active in Asian American Republican groups. Since 2017, she has participated in the Broward County, Florida Chapter of the Asian GOP, a national Republican group. The chapter’s web page touts the Mar-a-Lago “Safari Night” promoted by Yang’s company-- with Trump Grau listed as the host. Yang also visited the White House last year as part of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Initiative, an advisory group Trump formed by executive order.

Republican Strategists Are Beginning To Realize Hillary Isn't Being Embraced By Democratic Voters

Last week, writing for The Intercept, Lee Fang reported that the Clinton campaign is stuffed full of advisors and fundraisers who were lobbyists working to kill Obamacare and Dodd-Frank. That's the Clinton Machine, her team and her allies-- corrupt lobbyists working against progressive values on every level.

Hillary Clinton is campaigning as a guardian of President Barack Obama’s progressive policy accomplishments. In recent weeks, she has called the Affordable Care Act “one of the greatest accomplishments of President Obama, of the Democratic Party, and of our country,” and promised that she is “going to defend Dodd-Frank” and “defend President Obama for taking on Wall Street.”

Meanwhile, however, Clinton’s campaign has been relying on a team of strategists and fundraisers, many of whom spent much of the last seven years as consultants or lobbyists for business interests working to obstruct Obama’s agenda in those two areas.

Consultants associated with the Dewey Square Group, a lobbying firm that has been retained by business interests to defeat a variety of progressive reforms, are playing a major role in the Clinton campaign. Charles Baker III, the co-founder of Dewey, is a senior strategist and the campaign’s chief administrative officer. Michael Whouley, another Dewey co-founder, played an early role in advising Clinton’s plan for the current campaign by convening some of the very first strategy sessions. Senior Dewey officials Jill Alper and Minyon Moore are also close advisers and fundraisers for Clinton, while at least four other Clinton officials have worked at Dewey within the last four years. In addition, disclosures show that Clinton’s Super PACs Priorities USA Action and Correct the Record have also paid Dewey Square Group for a variety of services in this election.

Dewey, for instance, worked on behalf of the health insurance industry during the health reform debate, specifically to block the changes to Medicare Advantage that were critical for financing the Affordable Care Act. Medicare Advantage, which allows Medicare beneficiaries to use plans administered by private insurers, had long served as a cash cow for the health insurance industry. By one estimate, insurance companies over-billed the government by nearly $70 billion in improper payments over just a five year period. Dewey, which had been tapped to by health insurers to block cuts from the program starting in 2007, continued during the Obama era to lobby to protect Medicare Advantage, even as such reforms became a major part of how Democrats and the Obama administration sought to finance the Affordable Care Act.

...On financial reform, Clinton has similarly tied herself to Obama’s legacy. Speaking with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last month, Clinton asserted that on Dodd-Frank, Obama’s financial reform legislation, she is one of the “many Democrats” who are “fighting to prevent it from being turned back.”

Clinton’s inner circle, however, has lobbied to help obstruct and roll back many of Dodd-Frank’s signature reforms.

The Benenson Strategy Group, the consulting firm run by Joel Benenson, now serving as the Clinton campaign’s chief pollster and strategist, was retained by the Financial Services Forum, a lobbying group for Wall Street interests such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Lobbying records show the Financial Services Forum has worked over the years to weaken a variety of Dodd-Frank reforms. In 2013, the Financial Services Forum paid Benenson’s firm $273,459 while it was lobbying on a number of rules that were mandated by Dodd-Frank, including capital requirements designed to prevent another financial crisis. Danny Franklin, a partner with the Benenson Stategy Group, wrote to The Intercept to say the Financial Services Forum is not currently a client of his firm, but declined to comment any further.

  Last month, Benenson convened a conference call with reporters to “deride Bernie Sanders for airing an ad that criticized Wall Street firms and the politicians who accept their donations,” according to a report from International Business Times. As IBTimes reported, Benenson has also represented JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, among other corporate clients.

...Speaking to The Hill last year, Tony Podesta said that unlike President Obama, who instituted a ban on registered lobbyists in his administration, K Street will find a more welcome home in a Clinton White House.

“I think Hillary Clinton will be the next nominee and probably be the next president, but whomever the next president is will not maintain the lobbying ban,” he predicted. “It was a good applause line for Obama, but it didn’t seem to make much sense for policy.”

Similarly, when we look at which members of Congress voted against the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (Dodd-Frank) and against the Affordable Care Act, many are Clinton surrogates or on her Leadership Teams. Most the the 34 conservative Democrats who crossed the aisle and voted with the Republicans against the Affordable Care Act were subsequently defeated for reelection by Democratic base voters who refused to turn out and vote for them in the 2010 midterms, 7 months after the Obamacare debate. We referred to it as the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse, since nearly the entire Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- a big part the Hillary support team-- was wiped out in one fell swoop. Only 3 are still in Congress-- Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) and Stephen Lynch (MA). Lynch is on the Clinton Massachusetts Leadership Team and several of the defeated Blue Dogs-- like John Tanner and Lincoln Davis of Tennessee-- have also endorsed her. 27 Democrats voted against Dodd Frank. The only ones still in Congress are Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Marcy Kaptur (OH), Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ), Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR) and Pete Visclosky (IN). Cuellar, Kirkpatrick and Schrader are on Clinton Leadership teams in their states.

When her close relationship with Establishment war criminal Henry Kissinger was exposed on national TV during last Thursday's debate-- followed by her public defense of the reviled figure-- many Democrats began to see for the first time what they are being asked to support. As David Corn reported for Mother Jones after the debate, the Clintons and Kissingers are close personal friends and spend summer holidays together in a Dominican beachfront villa owned by Oscar de la Renta. Watch the video of the Kissinger exchange at the top of the post.

What Clinton did not mention was that her bond with Kissinger was personal as well as professional, as she and her husband have for years regularly spent their winter holidays with Kissinger and his wife, Nancy, at the beachfront villa of fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, who died in 2014, and his wife, Annette, in the Dominican Republic.

Oscar de la Renta, Hillary and war criminal Henry Kissinger

This campaign tussle over Kissinger began a week earlier, at a previous debate, when Clinton, looking to boost her résumé, said, "I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time. So I have an idea about what it's going to take to make our government work more efficiently." A few days later, Bill Clinton, while campaigning for his wife in New Hampshire, told a crowd of her supporters, "Henry Kissinger, of all people, said she ran the State Department better and got more out of the personnel at the State Department than any secretary of state in decades, and it's true." His audience of Democrats clapped loudly in response.

It was odd that the Clintons, locked in a fierce fight to win Democratic votes, would name-check a fellow who for decades has been criticized-- and even derided as a war criminal-- by liberals. Bill and Hillary Clinton themselves opposed the Vietnam War that Nixon and Kissinger inherited and continued. Hillary Clinton was a staffer on the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach Nixon, and one of the articles of impeachment drafted by the staff (but which was not approved) cited Nixon for covering up his secret bombing of Cambodia. In the years since then, information has emerged showing that Kissinger's underhanded and covert diplomacy led to brutal massacres around the globe, including in Chile, Argentina, East Timor, and Bangladesh.

With all this history, it was curious that in 2014, Clinton wrote a fawning review of Kissinger's latest book and observed, "America, he reminds us, succeeds by standing up for our values, not shirking them, and leads by engaging peoples and societies, the sources of legitimacy, not governments alone." In that article, she called Kissinger, who had been a practitioner of a bloody foreign-policy realpolitik, "surprisingly idealistic."

This Clinton lovefest with Kissinger is not new. And it is not simply a product of professional courtesy or solidarity among former secretaries of state, who, after all, are part of a small club. There is also a strong social connection between the Clintons and the Kissingers. They pal around together. On June 3, 2013, Hillary Clinton presented an award to de la Renta, a good friend who for years had provided her dresses and fashion advice, and then the two of them hopped over to a 90th birthday party for Kissinger. In fact, the schedule of the award ceremony had been shifted to allow Clinton and de la Renta to make it to the Kissinger bash. (Secretary of State John Kerry also attended the party.) The Kissingers and the de la Rentas were longtime buddies. Kissinger wrote one of his recent books while staying at de la Rentas' mansion in the Dominican Republic and dedicated the book to the fashion designer and his wife.

...When awarding herself the Kissinger seal of approval to bolster her standing as a competent diplomat and government official, Hillary Clinton has not referred to the annual hobnobbing at the de la Renta villa. So when Sanders criticized Clinton for playing the Kissinger card-- "not my kind of guy," he declared-- whether he realized it or not, he was hitting very close to home.

What did he teach her? "The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern." Or was it this? "It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination." Or was this Kissinger quote where she got her attitude? "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." Or maybe he taught her how much money she could put in her pocket by giving speeches to groups eager to bribe her.

Although low-info Democrats still back Clinton to a great extent-- she is still ahead of Bernie in virtually all polls-- the margins are rapidly shrinking and her campaign is beginning to disintegrate. Republicans are now starting to prepare for what seemed out of the question just a few months ago-- that they will be facing Bernie Sanders, not the fatally flawed Clinton they had hoped for, in November. Friday BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski reported that a Republican opposition research firm, America Rising, has already begun compiling an opposition book on Bernie. In fact, they've already released their first video attempting to smear him:

President Rand Paul? ROTFLMAO

It's no secret that Blue America is as excited about the Shenna Bellows race in Maine this cycle, as we were about the Elizabeth Warren race in Massachusetts last cycle. The two women are different in many ways, of course, but both are strong, independent-minded, brilliant and focused on breaking through the same-ole/same-ole that has made Washington so utterly dysfunctional. Bellows raised some eyebrows among progressives in the last few weeks by asserting that she is looking forward to working across the aisle, not to compromise away the economic interests of working families the way conservative Democrats always do, but on issues of civil liberties and national security. She singled out Michigan Congressman Justin Amash and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, both of whom have been trying to lead their party away from the warpath and away from a willingness to gut the Constitution in the name of self-selving Chicken Little squawking from the Military Industrial Complex. Others focused on how Paul and Amash are anti-Choice and economic neanderthals. We focused on creating a coalition across party boundaries to get some movement on crucial issues. One of my friends, however, chastised me for giving props-- by backing Bellows' approach-- to Rand Paul, a possible presidential opponent to the far more Establishment-oriented Hillary Clinton. I don't think he really has too much to worry about. Yes, ole Establishment Hillary is bound to be the Democratic nominee… but Rand Paul will never, ever, ever be the Republican nominee.

Paul has been polling well in the 2016 presidential sweepstakes among Republicans-- far better, in fact than the eventual nominee-- human sacrifice-- Ted Cruz. A CNN poll last week showed Paul as the top pick among Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters:

• Rand Paul- 16%
• Paul Ryan- 15%
• Rick Perry- 11%
• Mike Huckabee- 10%
• Jeb Bush- 9%
• Chris Christie- 8%
• Ted Cruz- 8%
• Marco Rubio- 5%
• Rick Santorum- 3%

David Corn dug up an old Western Kentucky University video from 2009 when Paul was running for Senate in which he is pretty clear that Cheney pushed the invasion and occupation of Iraq on George W. Bush-- something he had opposed when he worked for Bush's father-- because he was serving the interests of Halliburton. He even went so far as to admit that Cheney used 9/11, which had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq, as an excuse for the attack. "It became an excuse. 9/11 became an excuse for a war they already wanted in Iraq." Rand Paul wasn't spouting standard Republican Party fare when he told the audience about Cheney's change of heart:

"He's being interviewed (in 1995), I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and and he says it would be a disaster, it would be vastly expensive, it would be civil war, we'd have no exit strategy. He goes on and on for five minutes-- Dick Cheney saying it would be a bad idea. And that's why the first Bush didn’t go into Baghdad. Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton. Makes hundreds of millions of dollars-- their CEO. Next thing you know, he's back in government, it's a good idea to go into Iraq."

The anti-establishmentarianism of a Rand Paul-- or a Justin Amash-- will always have some adherents in the GOP, but the Republican Party is a top-down authoritarian operation and those ideas will never become serious party doctrine. And it's not just what Corn called a "intra-party feud between Republican hawks and GOPers skeptical of foreign interventions." That's just a part of it, but not the whole story of what's going to make Ted Cruz the Barry Goldwater of 2016. Digby, writing for Salon today went right to the heart of it with her Tea Party Dunce-Off post: How Ted Is Quietly Kicking Rand Paul's Butt. "Ted Cruz," she wrote, "traveled to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and gave what everyone considered to be a fiery sermon about the gathering threat to religious liberty in America."

[I]t must be noted that the right wing of American politics is inherently reactionary and always animated by certain impulses, however they might be identified at a particular time. As sociologist Theda Skocpol, author (with Vanessa Williamson) of the book The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, described them:

They are overwhelmingly older, white, conservative-minded men and women who fear that “their country” is about to be lost to mass immigration and new extensions of taxpayer-funded social programs (like the Affordable Care Act) for low- and moderate-income working-aged people, many of whom are black or brown. Fiscal conservatism is often said to be the top grassroots Tea Party priority, but Williamson and I did not find this to be true.

(They could have called themselves the “Get Off My Lawn Coalition,” but Tea Party has a nicer ring to it.) That description goes to the far right’s motives and those don’t change much. And one can see how both Rand Paul and Ted Cruz might feel they have a claim to these voters. But only one of them really does.

When Rand Paul won his Senate election, he famously proclaimed there was “a Tea Party tidal wave” and they had “come to take their government back.” And he can certainly appeal to the right’s ongoing antipathy to our black and brown brothers. His history and rhetoric has proved his solidarity with those particular Tea Party/conservative movement values time and again.

But Paul has a hard time speaking the language of the Christian Right even if he is largely sympathetic to their beliefs. For instance, here’s how Paul spoke about Christian values at Liberty U:

My hope, though, is that we don’t lose our appreciation of the miracle that springs forth from tiny strands of DNA. Einstein said there are two ways we can look at the world: we can either look at life as if there are no miracles or look at life and see miracles everywhere. I choose the latter.

Rand Paul would have been better off saving that speech for some New Age conference, not that he’d ever be invited to one. (I do have to give him some credit, though. Quoting Einstein at Liberty University takes some brass.) Cruz, on the other hand, hit the right-wing sweet spot. He managed to wrap alleged Christian persecution in the Constitution and tie it up with a red, white and blue bow.

These are troubled times and religious liberty, the very first liberty in the Bill of Rights, the very first protection we have, has never been more in peril than it is right now.

Which brings us to the until-recently-avoided third leg of the conservative stool: foreign policy. One gets the sense that enough time and distance from the Iraq debacle has finally passed that the hawks feel they can once more engage. And here is where the problem for Rand Paul really lies. He likes to portray himself as a man of principle in these matters, but his recent comments about the Ukraine and Russia crisis show how difficult it’s going to be to thread the needle as a presidential candidate. He sounds nearly incoherent as he tries to use the traditional GOP rhetoric of “strength” and “will” while staying true to his isolationist beliefs-- and succeeds at neither.

As for his stand on civil liberties, it’s been noted that the Tea Party had a very recent miraculous awakening on this issue. If Rand Paul can turn a bunch of elderly white conservatives into permanent civil liberties activists, it really will be a miracle.

By contrast, Cruz has come out swinging. He’s taken a very hard line on nearly every foreign policy and national security issue that’s come up in recent months and seems to be making a play for hawk of the walk. Last week he was among the first to call Iran’s new Ambassador to the UN a “slap in the face” to America and use it to criticize President Obama for being “naive,” the right wing’s favorite descriptive term after “feckless” when talking about Democratic foreign policy.

He knows what the Tea Party really wants, and isolationism isn’t it. They are mainstream Republicans on these issues:

And what about those billionaires? You’d think Rand Paul would at least have the backing of that constituency. After all, he promises to give them everything their little Randroid hearts desire. But they don’t like his foreign policy either and are promising to spend whatever it takes to stop him. In fact, the only real friends Paul has in the GOP are the measly 7 percent of young, white males who call themselves libertarians.

Cruz might not be able to get a GOP majority to vote for him when it comes down to it. But he’s bellied up to the Tea Party and pulled up the three-legged stool of traditional conservatism to make his appeal. Paul is teetering on a pogo stick.

Hubris... Still No Accountability-- Forget Bush And Cheney, What About Steny Hoyer And Steve Israel?

Rachel Maddow's presentation of Hubris lived up to the promise. Maddow explained why the film is so important in her introduction when she pointed out how LBJ hoodwinked Congress into going to war against Vietnam. 40 years later it happened again. In the clip above, Bush and Cheney are shown still refusing to admit they were wrong or even to apologize to the families of thousands of Americans and Iraqis whose lives their perfidy destroyed. I was touched that the one person who was truly remorseful, Rep. Walter Jones, a Republican from North Carolina, a Republican who has, since then, been one of Congress' most independent voices on either side of the aisle. Walter Jones voted for that war because he was duped by his president. What about the 81 Democrats-- a minority among Democrats in Congress but without whose support there would have been no war-- who voted for it? Hubris doesn't deal with them.

Did they vote for the war because they were too stupid and incompetent to know they were being duped? Or were they in on the scam? In either case, shouldn't they be held to account by the voters? They haven't been. Instead, Iraq War-mongers like Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Steve Israel (D-NY) and Joe Crowley (D-NY) have climbed the ladder of party leadership and now run the congressional Democrats. What a disgusting, repulsive political party! Will we ever hear an apology from Steny Hoyer or Steve Israel? Sure we will-- the same day we hear one from John McCain or Dick Cheney. Our political elites failed us. David Swanson agrees that Hubris could have gone a lot further.

As our government was making a fraudulent case to attack Iraq in 2002-2003, the MSNBC television network was doing everything it could to help, including booting Phil Donahue and Jeff Cohen off the air. The Donahue Show was deemed likely to be insufficiently war-boosting and was thus removed 10 years ago next week, and 10 days after the largest antiwar (or anything else) demonstrations in the history of the world, as a preemptive strike against the voices of honest peaceful people.

From there, MSNBC proceeded to support the war with mild critiques around the edges, and to white-out the idea of impeachment or accountability.

But now MSNBC has seen its way clear to airing a documentary about the fraudulent case it assisted in, a documentary titled Hubris. This short film (which aired between 9 and 10 p.m. ET Monday night, but with roughly half of those minutes occupied by commercials) pointed out the role of the New York Times in defrauding the public, but not MSNBC's role.

Yet, my primary response to that is joy rather than disgust. It is now cool to acknowledge war lies. Truth-tellers, including truth-tellers rarely presented with a corporate microphone, made that happen.

  ...[U]sing Maddow as the presenter and narrator of a film about Republican war lies during a period of unacknowledged Democratic war lies unavoidably gives the thing a partisan slant. Watching Hubris, I was reminded of something that Michael Moore tweeted last Friday: "Senate Repubs: U started 2 illegal wars that broke the treasury & sacrificed the lives of thousands of our troops & countless civilians."

Of course, the Senate that gave us the two wars in question was in reality controlled by Democrats, and the war lies were pushed hard by Senators Kerry, Clinton, and their comrades.  Hubris touches on this reality but not with sufficient clarity for most viewers-- I suspect-- to pick up on it.

...The Hubris version of Colin Powell's lies at the United Nations is misleadingly undertold.  Powell was not a victim.  He "knowingly lied."

The same goes for Bush, Cheney, and gang. According to Hubris it may have just been incompetence or hubris. It wasn't. Not only does overwhelming evidence show us that Bush knew his claims about WMDs to be false, but the former president has shown us that he considers the question of truth or falsehood to be laughably irrelevant. When Diane Sawyer asked Bush why he had claimed with such certainty that there were so many weapons in Iraq, he replied: "What’s the difference? The possibility that [Saddam] could acquire weapons, If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger."

What's the difference?  In a society based on the rule of law, the difference would be a criminal prosecution. MSNBC and Hubris steer us away from any ideas of accountability. And no connection is drawn to current war lies about Iran or other nations.

  But the production of programs like this one that prolong Americans' awareness of the lies that destroyed Iraq are the best hope Iran has right now. MSNBC should be contacted and applauded for airing this and urged to follow up on it.

Monday we looked at the list of some of today's DC powerbrokers-- like the aforementioned Hoyer, Israel and Crowley-- who backed Bush's unprovoked attack on Iraq, either because they were too stupid to see through the tissue of lies or because they were in on the con. They're nearly as responsible as Bush and Cheney for the deaths and destruction and for the three trillion dollars in tax payer money wasted. The implication, of course, is that they shouldn't be in Congress today. I'd also like to reiterate that the majority of Democrats in the House voted against the war, including, to name a few who are often in the news these days, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Xavier Becerra (D-CA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Jim Clyburn (D-SC), John Conyers (D-MI), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Barbara Lee (D-CA), John Lewis (D-GA), Jim McDermott (D-WA), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Jim Moran (D-VA), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Hilda Solis (D-CA), Mark Udall (D-CO), Tom Udall (D-NM) and Maxine Waters (D-CA).

Many of these Democrats have also climbed the leadership ladder. Nancy, even if someone hemmed in by war-mongers and corporate whores Hoyer, Israel and Crowley, is the House's top dog and half a dozen are now in the Senate. Clyburn is also in the top rung of House leadership and Becerra may be one of the only hopes for a post-Pelosi progressive Democratic House leadership. Meanwhile of the 6 Republicans who voted NO that day, 5 (including Ron Paul) are no longer in public service and only one is still in the House, libertarian Jimmy Duncan (R-TN), still a backbencher after 25 years in Congress... although he is co-chairman of the Congressional Friends of Scotland Caucus.

Bush and Cheney got a lot of the appearance of public momentum and support for their evil little project from the most simple-minded and easy to manipulate dullards in the population: evangelicals. According the Max Bumenthal's reporting in Republican Gomorrah, the regime had a strategy for mobilizing the religionists on the far right.

When Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the White House deployed [convicted criminal Chuck] Colson to market the war to fellow evangelicals in the context of St. Augustine's Just War doctrine-- a dubious exercise considering Augustine's explicit rejection of preemptive, unilateral warfare. Meanwhile, the popular televangelist and former Southern Baptist Convention president Charles Stanley warned, in a February 2003, sermon, that those who opposed or disobeyed the U.S. government in its drive to war "will receive condemnation upon themselves" from God.

...Evangelicals rallied to Bush's side with unmatched fervor, supporting the invasion and its eventually discredited justifications in a greater percentage than any other demographic group. The Christian-right leaders who orchestrated this PR push waited patiently for their reward, hoping that the appointment of far-right nominees to the federal bench and Supreme Court was not far off.

Rachel's MSNBC Iraq War Special Tonight-- Don't Miss It

Last week we looked at the idea of redemption in the political context and the post wound up being about my own congressman, Adam Schiff (D-CA). Schiff recently quit the Blue Dogs (while remaining in the not totally different New Dems) and he's been co-sponsoring progressive legislation. Does that expiate his vote for Bush's unprovoked attack on Iraq?

Yesterday it was reported that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is planning to mount a run for president (or, more likely, vice president) in 2016. It won't hurt him in the Republican primary, but what will normal voters think when it comes up that when he was in Congress, he rushed back to Washington on Palm Sunday, 2005 to participate in Tom DeLay's disgraceful, necrophilious charade over the vegetative body of Terri Schiavo? Bobby Jindal, who claims to have the powers of exorcism and faith healing, voted against allowing this woman to die with dignity and he did so as part of a political agenda. My guess is that most Americans will hold that against him-- hold him accountable.

Adam Schiff has never been held to account to his vote on October 10, 2002 to authorize the use of force against Iraq. The war cost America over 4,000 dead, 32,000 seriously wounded and over $3 trillion. Over 100,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, were killed. Tragically, the authorization to use force passed 296-133, 81 Democrats joining 215 Republicans to back the Bush regimes plans to deal with Saddam Hussein. Had Schiff and the other 80 Democrats not voted for it, the resolution would have failed and that war wouldn't have gone forward. That resolution, co-sponsored by Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL) and Democratic Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO), pretty much ended Gephardt's aspiration to be president and his political career. He's a successful K Street lobbyist now. But no other Democrats ever really had to answer for this vote. Soon after the vote, war-advocate Steny Hoyer (D-MD) was elected second-ranking Democrat in the House leadership. Nor did his unabashed war advocacy derail the career trajectory of Steve Israel (D-NY), now chairman of the DCCC. This year war monger Eliot Engel (D-NY) was made ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and war monger Joe Crowley (D-NY) was elevated to the House Democratic leadership. Massachusetts ConservaDem Stephen Lynch and Massachusetts progressive Ed Markey both voted for the war resolution and they're running against each other for an open Senate seat now. The Iraq War isn't an issue. And of the dozen or so Democrats who voted for the war and are no longer Members of Congress-- from Harold Ford (D-TN) and Shelley Berkley (D-NV) to Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and Tim Holden (D-PA)-- none were defeated or forced to retire because of it.

Tonight Rachel Maddow is hosting an MSNBC special, Hubris, based on the book by Michael Isikoff and David Korn and it is unlikely to mention Adam Schiff or Eliot Engel or Harold Ford but it will attempt to put the treachery against the American people by our political elites into focus. David Korn explained the project over the weekend for his readers at Mother Jones:

Bush did succeed in removing Saddam Hussein, but it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction and no significant operational ties between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda. That is, the two main assertions used by Bush and his crew to justify the war were not true.

...One chilling moment in the film comes in an interview with retired General Anthony Zinni, a former commander in chief of US Central Command. In August 2002, the Bush-Cheney administration opened its propaganda campaign for war with a Cheney speech at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. The veep made a stark declaration: "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." No doubt, he proclaimed, Saddam was arming himself with WMD in preparation for attacking the United States.

Zinni was sitting on the stage during the speech, and in the documentary he recalls his reaction:

It was a shock. It was a total shock. I couldn't believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program. And that's when I began to believe they're getting serious about this. They wanna go into Iraq.

That Zinni quote should almost end the debate on whether the Bush-Cheney administration purposefully guided the nation into war with misinformation and disinformation.

But there's more. So much more. The film highlights a Pentagon document declassified two years ago. This memo notes that in November 2001-- shortly after the 9/11 attacks-- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with General Tommy Franks to review plans for the "decapitation" of the Iraqi government. The two men reviewed how a war against Saddam could be triggered; that list included a "dispute over WMD inspections." It's evidence that the administration was seeking a pretense for war.

The yellowcake uranium supposedly bought by Saddam in Niger, the aluminum tubes supposedly used to process uranium into weapons-grade material, the supposed connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden-- the documentary features intelligence analysts and experts who at the time were saying and warning that the intelligence on these topics was wrong or uncertain. Yet administration officials kept using lousy and inconclusive intelligence to push the case for war.

...A hoax. That's what it was. Yet Bush and Cheney went on to win reelection, and many of their accomplices in this swindle never were fully held accountable. In the years after the WMD scam became apparent, there certainly was a rise in public skepticism and media scrutiny of government claims. Still, could something like this happen again? Maddow remarks, "If what we went through 10 years ago did not change us as a nation--if we do not understand what happened and adapt to resist it-- then history says we are doomed to repeat it."

I would guess that the likelihood of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest being tried as war criminals is about zero. There is still a chance-- if voters wanted to-- to hold congressional enablers accountable in terms of their careers. Check the roll call again and see if your congresscritter voted for the war. Here's a very incomplete synopsis of where some of the perps are now:

• Spencer Bachus (R-AL)- chairman of the House Financial Services Committee
• Roy Blunt (R-MO)- now a U.S. senator
• John Boehner (R-IL)- now Speaker of the House
• John Boozman (R-IL)- now a U.S. senator
• Richard Burr (R-NC)- now a U.S. senator
• Dave Camp (R-MI)- chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee
• Eric Cantor (R-VA)- Majority Leader of the House
• Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)- currently running for the U.S. Senate
• Duke Cunningham (R-CA)- still in prison but on unrelated criminal charges
• Nathan Deal (R-GA)- now Governor of Georgia
• Tom DeLay (R-TX)- sentenced to 3 years in prison on unrelated criminal charges
• Jim DeMint (R-SC)- heading a far right think tank and extremist SuperPAC
• Jeff Flake (R-AZ)- now a U.S. senator
• Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)- chairman of the House Judiciary Committee
• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)- notorious closet queen, conspiracy theorist and Senate obstructionist
• Doc Hastings (R-WA)- chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources
• Johnny Isakson (R-GA)- now a U.S. senator
• Darrell Issa (R-CA)- chairman of the House Oversight Committee
• Ron Kind (D-WI)- chairman of the New Dems
• Mark Kirk (R-IL)- now a U.S. senator
• Buck McKeon (R-CA)- chairman of House Armed Services Committee (and the Drone Caucus)
• Jeff Miller (R-FL)- chairman of House Veterans Affairs Committee
• Jerry Moran (R-KS)- now a U.S. senator
• Mike Pence (R-IN)- now Governor of Indiana
• Rob Portman (R-OH)- now a U.S. senator
• Hal Rogers (R-KY)- chairman of House Appropriations Committee
• Mike Rogers (R-MI)- chairman of House Intelligence Committee
• Ed Royce (R-CA)- chairman of House Foreign Affairs Committee
• Paul Ryan (R-WI)- chairman, House Budget Committee, TV news star
• Pete Sessions (R-TX)- chairman, House Rules Committee
• John Thune (R-SD)- now a U.S. senator
• Pat Toomey (R-PA)- now a U.S. senator
• Fred Upton (R-MI)- chairman, House Energy and Commerce Committee
• David "Diapers" Vitter (R-LA)- now a U.S. senator
• Greg Walden (R-OR)- chairman of the NRCC
• Tom Wicker (R-MS)- now a U.S. senator

"Is Karl Rove in trouble?" Is the pope Jewish?

"It's not a crime in Washington to lie."

-- David Corn, talking to Chris Matthews on Hardball

about Karl Rove's possible legal peril

by Ken

I have a lot of respect for David Corn, but really, what was he thinking when he slapped the head "Is Karl Rove in trouble?" on a Politics Daily post Friday. Well, I think we know what he had in mind. He got invited, along with his pal Mike Isikoff, to be a talking head on the teevee, and what they wanted him to talk about was this question, "Is Karl Rove in legal trouble?," following his two days of super-secret, "did it really happen" closed-door House Judiciary Committee testimony last week. And he knows perfectly well that the only way of sustaining possible reader interest is repeating the question with a straight face, allowing for the possibility that there might be a positive answer.

Is Karl Rove in Trouble?

by David Corn

Karl Rove is back in the news for Bush era shenanigans. This week, he finished giving testimony to the House judiciary committee regarding his role in the firings of nine US attorneys. (He had fought for two years not to cooperate with the committee.) As The Washington Post noted, new evidence indicates he was more involved in this episode than he had previously acknowledged.

But is Rove in legal jeopardy? That's the question that Chris Matthews put to me and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff (with whom I co-authored Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War) on Hardball. Here's what we said:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

So is Karl Rove in legal trouble?

Oh, be serious. You know the answer as well as I do. Does anyone really believe that our Karl might have said anything that either (a) is true, or (b) might in any way incriminate himself? We all know that the guy probably didn't spend as much as a day in the White House without committing some crime. And I don't mean small stuff like perjuring himself.

As the Hubris Boys point out in the Hardball clip, after nearly getting caught contradicting himself under oath in the matter of the Valerie Plame leak, he learned his lesson, and for two years he went to whatever lengths were necessary to avoid saying anything under oath about either of the subjects of greatest interest now: his role in the political purge of U.S. attorneys, and his role in railroading Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. The math here is simple: nothing said under oath, nothing to be caught contradicting.

With regard to the U.S. attorney firings, there is a statement put out by the Dept. of Justice that it wasn't aware of a role by Mr. Rove, and by now there's plenty of testimony to contradict that, but that statement came from the DoJ, not from him.

No, when I talk about Karl's career as a criminal in the White House, I mean big stuff, real crimes aimed at dismantling the federal criminal justice system and turning the entire federal government into a political enforcement unit. But because the Bush regime has so far maintained solidarity, there's nothing in the way of legally admissible advice to present to a grand jury, let alone a regular one.

Not only do we not have to worry about Karl incriminating himself, I don't think there's any danger of our ever learning what he actually did say when he finally "testified." Because I'm assuming that his "testimony" was given under the usual rules for Bush regime felons:

* Your guest (not to be referred to as a "witness") won't take no stinkin' oath. If we say it, that makes it reality. If you don't like it, [expletive deleted] you!

* Your guest don't allow no stinkin' record -- no tape, no stenography, no transcript, no record of any kind, except for details and characterizations that he may choose to release afterward.

* Your guest will be addressed as "sahib."

* Your guest may not be spoken to in an unfriendly tone of voice.

* Unfriendly questions are discouraged. You can ask 'em, but you don't expect him to answer 'em, do you? Are you new here?

* Your guest expects that decent snacks will be provided.

* Your guest says, "What a bunch of saps," and is prepared to consider an apology, if it's issued with sufficient contrition.

* Kissing your guest's butt would be taken as a commendable sign of contrition, but isn't mandatory.

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