Rand Paul Loves The Prince Of Peace Trump While Lindsey Graham Loves The Big Macho Ass-Kicker Trump

Last week-- on Fox News, no less-- Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) said Trump should never have pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement and that the assassination of Qassem Soleimani was a mistake, the two blunders together making the U.S. "less safe." A poll by Ipsos since then shows that most Americans agree that Trump's botched approach to Iran has made the country less safe. Only 25% of Americans belief what Trump has done made the U.S. safer. This caused the Senate's most notorious closet case to pull his head out of Trump's butt to hiss some anti-Rand assertions before reinsertion. The AP's Ben Tobin reported that Lindsey Graham mocked Paul's constitutional knowledge: "If I had an eye problem, I would go to him. If I had a constitutional question, he would be the last guy I would pick."

Maybe Lindsey should take his problems with the Constitution to constitutional law professor and Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, certainly the most knowledgeable member of either House when it comes to the U.S. Constitution. "Gee," he said this morning, "you think the people who pretend to be constitutional 'textualists' and 'originalists' would at least bother to read the Constitution, research its history and spend 5 minutes thinking seriously about it. The reason the Framers gave Congress the exclusive power to declare war, raise armies and make military appropriations is because the Kings and princes constantly plunged their populations into wars of vanity, political advantage and distraction, all at the great expense of human life and national treasure. Our Founders didn’t want presidents to have that awesome and easily exploited power and that’s why it’s the representatives of the people who, under Article I, must debate and deliberate the benefits, costs and consequences of going to war against other nations. Our passage of a War Powers Resolution on Iran last week is the beginning of restoration of Congressional warmaking powers that have been usurped by the President and abdicated by prior Congresses for far too long."




Graham was all in a dither because Paul criticized Trump's decision to authorize Soleimani's assassination while he was in Iraq without consulting Congress. "Trust me, I'm going to let people know that at this moment in time to play this game with the war powers act ... whether you mean to or not, you're empowering the enemy," Graham told reporters on Wednesday, referring to Republican senators Paul and Lee.

After receiving a briefing with fellow senators on Wednesday, Paul called the Trump administration's justification for killing Soleimani "absurd" and "an insult" to Congress.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, made similar comments, leading Graham to say his two Republican colleagues were "overreacting." The South Carolina Republican also attacked Paul and Lee for supporting the Democratic House's war powers resolution, a measure that passed Thursday evening to limit Trump's powers with respect to military action with Iran.

...Paul fired back during an interview later Wednesday on CNN, claiming Graham was invoking a "fake sort of drape of patriotism."

"I love my country as much as the next guy, but for him to insult and say that somehow we're not as patriotic as he is, he hasn't even read the history of the Constitution," Paul said. "He insults the Constitution, our Founding Fathers and what we do stand for in this republic by making light of it and accusing people of lacking patriotism. I think that's a low, gutter type of response."

Will John Bolton Testify? by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, Paul was on Meet The Press, still on the attack against the Trump regime's Iran bungling. The first thing Chuck Todd asked him was if he thought he had gotten "enough information to make you feel comfortable with what President Trump did?" Paul said he hadn't-- and that the information he got, as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was "contradictory... We've heard that the-- from the Secretary of State that they don't know where or when but it was imminent. That to me does seem inconsistent. He thinks he can square the circle, but to me it seems pretty inconsistent. To me there's a bigger question too, though. This is what really infuriated me about the briefing: Is they maintain both in private and in public that a vote by Congress in 2003 or 2002 to go after Saddam Hussein was a vote that now allows them to still be in Iraq and do whatever they want, including killing a foreign general from Iran. And I don't think that's what Congress meant in 2002, nor do I think one generation can bind another generation. So my point in being for this war powers debate is that we really need to have a debate about whether we should still be in Iraq or in Afghanistan. There needs to be authorization from Congress... I think presidents of both parties have been trying to usurp the authority. But our Founding Fathers wanted it to remain in Congress. They wanted to make it difficult to go to war. And I think we've been drifting away from that for a long time. But that's why I'm willing to stand up. Not because I distrust President Trump. I actually think he has shown remarkable restraint. But I'm willing to stand up even against a president of my party, because we need to stand up and take back the power. We also need to debate whether or not we're going to keep sending kids forever to Afghanistan and Iraq. And I, frankly, think we ought to end those wars."

TODD: Are you concerned? I mean look, the numbers tell the story. It does feel as if we've sent more troops to the Middle East, look at what's happening in Saudi Arabia, which I know you've been against, then we're bringing them home. What kind of message does that send to the American people?

PAUL: Well, I think it's a mixed message. I think President Trump has been very consistent saying he doesn't want perpetual war. But I have pushed back and I've said, "If you keep sending more troops, you will have perpetual war." The troops are merely targets. I'm going to be having a hearing in the next couple weeks about the Afghan Papers. It troubles me that in private commanders and generals have been saying for more than a decade that there's no mission in Afghanistan. We had two young men die this week. You know, I have friends who will be sending their kids there in the next six months. I don't want to send these young men and women to war if there is no mission and if the generals are privately saying it can't be won.

TODD: Is there a way... it's my understanding during the briefing, according to George Will's reporting, that Senator Chris Coons multiple times asked whether, whether they would seek congressional approval to deal with Iran if Iran got a nuclear weapon, to deal with Iran in a military way. And they just kept dodging the question. How important do you think it is to get that, essentially, on paper?

PAUL: I think it's incredibly important. Throughout the whole briefing they were dismissive of Congress. They , in the end, said they didn't have time to come back. We only had about eight senators ask questions and they said, "Oh, we don't have time. We're busy" about coming back to brief the rest of us or take questions from the rest of us. So it was very dismissive. But it's also arrogant to say that a vote from Congress, 16, 17 years ago, that that vote now binds another generation and another generation to war in Iraq. It was against Saddam Hussein, for goodness sakes. This is a completely different government. This is not even the Iraqi government we're now fighting. It's Iranian generals that happen to be in Iraq. But here's the great irony of the Iraq War, and this is something Trump gets incredibly right. And that is that since the Iraq War we now have an Iraq that is more aligned with Iran than us. We're trying to force them to keep our troops. The irony of that is glaring. And I think we really need to have a full throated debate in Congress. The majority of American people want to come home. They don't understand why we're still there. I want to have that debate and I want to bring our kids home.

TODD: You know, it's interesting. You have-- and I think in some ways you believe President Trump's instincts comport with your instincts when it comes to national security and foreign policy. But his advisers are in a different place. How much do you think that-- does that bothers you? Or is that healthy?

PAUL: I'll give you an example. You know I'm on the Foreign Relations Committee and all of his nominees come before me. And I even warned some of them in private, "I'm going to ask you, 'Do you agree with President Trump that the Iraq War was a mistake?'" You know what? Most of them don't agree with him. He keeps appointing people to represent him that think the Iraq War was just great. They loved Dick Cheney's position and they still don't admit it was a mistake. So that's why he keeps getting policy that isn't his policy. I do think his instincts are pure. He's been saying it since -- for 20, 30 years. He's been saying it for a long time that the wars have drained our treasury and that he's not in favor of these wars. But then they convince him if we leave, we'll look weak. I actually think this is a time of strength right now. Soleimani's dead. The leader of a lot of the mayhem is dead. This will be the time to come home. The Iraqi government, the democratically elected government, wants us to come home. We should come home. And the only way...

TODD: I was just going to say you think the President should take them up on this offer? You want us out? Let's do it.

PAUL: Absolutely. And the only way people become stronger is when they stand up for themselves. In Afghanistan when the government, and the soldiers, and the police finally fight the Taliban, they'll do better. When Iraq says, "Oh my goodness. Iran is overrunning us," or they see that the Sunni extremists are overrunning us, they have to stand up and fight. If they can't fight for their country, why are we always the patsy sending our kids there?

Rudy Giuliani-- The Gift That Keeps On Giving-- Mueller Couldn't Have Imagined He Could Get This Lucky

No love lost, but late yesterday, Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey, wrote that Señor Trumpanzee's management of the shutdown, which they are kind enough to remind us is his first foray in divided government, has exposed as never before his shortcomings as a self-proclaimed great dealmaker. Fuckface "has been adamant about securing $5.7 billion in public money to construct" his vanity wall but has been incapable of winning congressional approval despite his shutdown antics and shameless hostage-taking. They wrote that "The 30-day shutdown-- the impacts of which have begun rippling beyond the federal workforce into everyday lives of millions of Americans-- is defining the second half of Trump’s term and has set a foundation for the nascent 2020 presidential campaign. The shutdown also has accentuated several fundamental traits of Trump’s presidency: His apparent shortage of empathy, in this case for furloughed workers; his difficulty accepting responsibility for a crisis he had said he would be proud to instigate; his tendency for revenge when it comes to one-upping political foes; and his seeming misunderstanding of Democrats’ motivations."

My favorite new neocon website, The Bullwark-- basically a new name for the Weekly Standard-- featured an essay by-- who else?-- William Kristol Sunday morning, Trump’s Slippage in Support is Real. Click bait? How about this: "The president is losing support-- not just among independents, but from his evangelical and white-male base, too." Nothing all that new here, just more about the Marist poll everyone else covered last week. There's slippage (anticipated) for Trump's standing due to the shutdown. "The slippage is the worst kind-- the slow erosion of support from key blocs: swing voters (independents and suburbanites) and those who put Trump over the top (blue collar white men and Republicans over 60). It’s been registering in a cross section of polling data, not just one poll. Trump’s job approval rating is down to 31 percent among independents in Gallup. His approval ratings in Rasmussen are down from the 48-49 percent range of late last year to the 43-44 percent level of the past week or so. The Marist data for PBS shows a drop of 10 percent in job approval among Republicans and a decline of 11 percent among white evangelicals and 17% among suburban men. And Trump continues to enrage the Dem base while this erosion in his base continues to progress. Blue collar white men being turned off from Trump shouldn’t surprise anyone, for they know the difficulty of living paycheck to paycheck. This, plus the skew of the tax cut package, spells political trouble for Trump long term, especially if a slow down, much less a recession, looms in 2020."

So those are the #NeverTrumpers. Then there are the actual fascists. They're mad at him too. Even the basest part of the base!

This erosion of support is coming at the worst possible moment for Trump-- unless you consider every moment the worst possible moment for Trump-- because of the Putin-Gate scandal. The video up top is Giuliani speaking with Jake Tapper on CNN and the video below is Giuliani on Meet The Press, both interviews yesterday. Does anyone understand how Trump keeps this clown on his team? He keeps giving more and more away. Today it was that the Trump Organization kept negotiating with Russia to build a Trump Tower Moscow right into November of 2016. Previous to that, all that had been dragged out of Trump was that there was some communication about the project until the spring but not beyond.

Chuck Todd had Mark Warner (D-VA), co-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on afterwards. Warner seemed pretty surprised Giuliano spilled the beans. "That is news to me, and that is big news. Why, two years after the fact, are we just learning this fact now when there’s been this much inquiry? I would think most voters... that knowing that the Republican nominee was actively trying to do business in Moscow, that the Republican nominee at least at one point had offered, if he built this building, Vladimir Putin, a free-penthouse apartment, and if those negotiations were ongoing up until the election, I think that’s a relevant fact for voters to know. And I think it’s remarkable we are two years after the fact and just discovering it today." The CNN show with Tapper was much worse (for the Trumpists). When Tapper pushed him on whether or not Trump was instructing Cohen how to answer congressional questions about the deal, Giuliani, who seemed frazzled and defensive throughout the interview, said "I don't know if it happened or didn't happen. It may be attorney-client privilege if it happened, where I can't acknowledge it. But I have no knowledge that he spoke to him, but I'm telling you I wasn't there then... So what if he talked to him about it?"

Yeah! So what! Sounds "perfectly normal" to me! You? I'm assuming that Cohen secretly recorded this perfectly normal conversation (which is considered a no-no but isn't illegal unless Individual 1 suggested what Cohen should say. Then it's illegal... and impeachable.

How Will History Judge Trump? How About As An Entertainer-- Which Is Exactly What He Is (Plus All The Horrible Stuff)

They may regret it, but I don't see any Republican candidates trying to distance themselves from Trump. Quite the contrary. In primary races across the country-- and at every level-- Republicans are arguing that they are the most Trump-like and that their opponent is a faux-Trumpist. There are even red-state Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- say Joe Donnelly, Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp-- who have gone out of their way to draw attention to the fact that they often vote for Trump's proposals and work well with him. But when it comes to Republicans... the whole primary in most districts is based on which candidate is deeper up Trump's ass. Even politicians who know how history will judge him and know what a danger he is to democracy and the country and who are well aware that every word that comes out of his mouth is a self-serving lie, are savvy enough to know what the Fox brain-washed GOP base wants-- Trump and his alternative reality-- and they know if they don't cater to that, they could wind up being the next Mark Sanford

Ohio Governor John Kasich isn't running for office this year and if he does run again in the future, it will be against Trump or at least against Trumpism. He was on Meet The Press yesterday (video clip up top). He was there to explain why the special election in his old district-- OH-12-- was not a good thing for the GOP, but I noticed something else he mentioned: "People just want the government to do its job, to improve the situation for them. Not to be, not to be on the front page and creating a chaotic environment all the time. They don't want that." Is that so? I think he was describing Democratic voters and independent voters, not most of the voters of his own party. They apparently crave cheap, gaudy entertainment-- exactly what Trump is and has always been. Trump may model himself after Mussolini, Hitler and Putin to some extent, but even more of a role model was P.T. Barnum. He's been compared to Barnum before-- and he's always said he takes it as a compliment.

Neither Phineas Taylor Barnum nor Señor Trumpanzee coined the phrase "there's a sucker born every minute," but both men have lived their lives as though they did. Barnum plagued American for most of the 19th Century, a hustler and grifter who Trump has always admired. He was a businessman/showman, author and politician. He freely admitted that his actions were meant to "put money in my own coffers" and, more than anything else he considered himself "a showman by profession." His name is synonymous with hoaxes and self-serving "philanthropy." Like Trump, he made some spectacularly bad investments and went bankrupt. And like Trump, he ran for office, as a Republican. He served 2 terms in the Connecticut state legislature and one term as mayor of Bridgeport.

When Kasich told Chuck Todd and the Meet The Press audience that he wasn't "making the case" against Trumpanzee but just trying to return the party to its roots, he was being somewhat disingenuous. The problems he has with the GOP are, after all, all Trump's policies. "The Republican Party has never been for protectionism. The Republican Party doesn't support a notion that families shouldn't be held together. The Republican Party never supported the notion that we should ring up debt... The Republican Party has never believed that we should walk away from our allies who have helped us keep the peace since World War II. These positions are... they don't even resemble the Republican Party. They do now... and the Republican base and GOP candidates around the country are fully embracing them-- like automatons.

Kasich's point about OH-12-- which is so close it has even been officially called yet-- was that Balderson should have been able to walk away with the win without breaking a sweat and that, nationally, Republicans ought to be worried, not celebratory.

"It wasn't a good night because this is a district that you should be winning by, you know, overwhelming numbers," he told Todd. "The last guy won by, I don’t know, 17 points. So, what you had is, I think, a message from the voters to the Republicans that you've got to stop the chaos and you've got to get more in tune and stop alienating people and try to figure out, how do families do better." Too late-- at least for the midterms.

Let me go back to the idea of politics on 24-hour news channels and on social media being all about entertainment. Look at the Meet the Press interview again. Was that entertaining? Not really. Kasich is pretty dull and Chuck Todd isn't much better. Nor is either trying to be entertaining. They're trying to be serious and deliver some kind of an interpretation of self-serving news. Trump supporters are stupid and ignorant-- drug addled and generally with incredibly low IQs and lower attention spans-- and they want that excitement and red meat and "owning the Dems" that Trump gives them. When he's finally gone from the scene-- losing in 2020 or impeached before that or whatever--  will they be able to calm down and go back to the status quo ante? Or has Trump set a tone that his successors will have to take into account from now on? Obama, more than most of his predecessors, actually was fairly entertaining, but in a relatively high brow way. Now we're talking about really low brow crap... like The Apprentice. Will that be Trump's ultimate contribution to America? This morning, John Kasich responded to one of his childish and delusional tweets:

The Deal With The Devil Is Paying Off For Evangelical Voters

Did you watch Meet The Press Sunday? The highlight was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but Chuck Todd had another interesting guest as well, Maria Canwell, a standard issue Democrat from Washington (state and DC). Cantell had a warning for senators in regard to Trump's not-as-yet named replacement for Anthony Kennedy. "My colleagues," she said, "on both sides of the aisle know that this vote could be one of the key votes of their entire career. If they vote for somebody who's going to change precedent, it could be a career-ending move."

Remember, during his hate-filled campaign, Trump repeatedly said he would appoint nominees who would overturn Roe v. Wade, one of the top reasons over 80% of evangelicals voted for him and still support him, despite his obvious personal flaws.

On CNN yesterday, Susan Collins (R-ME) said she wouldn't support anyone who is against the Roe v. Wade. How will she know? By remembering what Trump said during the campaign? "I would not support a nominee who demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade because that would mean to me that their judicial philosophy did not include a respect for established decisions, established law."

CNN's top legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, also writes for the New Yorker and this week, he explained how How Trump's Supreme Court Pick Could Undo Kennedy's Legacy, although I think Kennedy already did that by retiring before the midterms. A conservative, Kennedy was considered the swing vote on the court because he departed from right-wing orthodoxy on some key issues: gay rights, affirmative action, the death penalty, and, in Toobin's opinion, "most notably, abortion rights. In the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Kennedy voted to uphold Roe v. Wade, and he remained a reluctant but steady advocate for maintaining the precedent."

The whole purpose of Trump’s Supreme Court selection process has been to eliminate the possibility of nominating someone who might commit Kennedy’s perfidies of moderation. The activists from the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation who supplied the President’s list of twenty-five prospective nominees are determined to tear down the monuments, on select issues, that Kennedy has built. Their labors have already produced one soaring success, in the confirmation, last year, of Neil Gorsuch. His extremism has exceeded that of his predecessor Antonin Scalia and equalled that of his colleague Clarence Thomas, the Justice with whom he has voted most often.

Yet it’s far from certain that the public wants the kinds of rulings that a brazen conservative majority would produce. So the nominee and his or her supporters will avoid spelling out the implications of this judicial philosophy. As with Gorsuch, the nominee will be supported with meaningless buzz phrases: he or she will be opposed to “legislating from the bench” and in favor of “judicial restraint.” Like Gorsuch, the nominee will rely on airy generalities rather than on specific examples. It’s all the more important, then, to articulate in plain English what, if such a nominee is confirmed, a new majority will do.

It will overrule Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortions and to criminally prosecute any physicians and nurses who perform them. It will allow shopkeepers, restaurateurs, and hotel owners to refuse service to gay customers on religious grounds. It will guarantee that fewer African-American and Latino students attend élite universities. It will approve laws designed to hinder voting rights. It will sanction execution by grotesque means. It will invoke the Second Amendment to prohibit states from engaging in gun control, including the regulation of machine guns and bump stocks.

And these are just the issues that draw the most attention. In many respects, the most important right-wing agenda item for the judiciary is the undermining of the regulatory state. In the rush of conservative rulings at the end of this term, one of the most important received relatively little notice. In Janus v. afscme, a 5–4 majority (including Kennedy) said that public employees who receive the benefits of union-negotiated contracts can excuse themselves from paying union dues. In doing so, the Justices overruled a Supreme Court precedent that, as it happens, was nearly as old as Roe v. Wade. (Chief Justice John Roberts, who has made much of his reverence for stare decisis, joined in the trashing of this precedent, and will likely join his colleagues in rejecting more of them.) The decision not only cripples public-sector unions-- itself a cherished conservative goal-- but does so, oddly enough, on First Amendment grounds. The majority said that forcing government workers to pay dues violates their right to free speech. But, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent, this is “weaponizing the First Amendment, in a way that unleashes judges, now and in the future, to intervene in economic and regulatory policy.” She added, “Speech is everywhere-- a part of every human activity (employment, health care, securities trading, you name it). For that reason, almost all economic and regulatory policy affects or touches speech. So the majority’s road runs long.”

Anthony Kennedy didn’t spend his entire career on that road, and there is, in his best opinions, the kind of decency and empathy that characterized many of the moderate Republicans who once dominated the Court, such as Justices Potter Stewart, Harry Blackmun, and Sandra Day O’Connor. Kennedy’s words at the conclusion of the Obergefell opinion deserve to be his judicial epitaph. “It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage,” he wrote. “Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” But the Constitution grants only those rights that the Supreme Court says it grants, and a new majority can and will bestow those rights, and take them away, in chilling new ways.

Snopes: "A June 2018 news report accurately described the controversial reality of children facing deportation proceedings without legal representation."

Collusion As Far As The Eye Can See-- You Don't Even Need Binoculars To See All The Collusion

When Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intel Committee, got caught colluding with the White House on the investigation and pretended to recuse himself, Mike Conaway (R-TX) supposedly took over as acting chair in all matters Putin-Gate. Conaway represents TX-11, a west Texas district (Midland, Odessa, San Angelo) so red that the PVI is R+32. Trump beat Hillary there 77.8% to 19.1%. In 2012 Obama took 19.6% of the vote. Conaway usually gets reelected with around 80%. He had no Democratic running against him in 2012, 2014 or 2016. It hardly matters to him how imbecilic his sounds. He constituents are even stupider. Yesterday on Meet The Press he admitted that the reason the committee didn't find any collusion was because they weren't looking for any. Nunes and Trump have been running around yelling "no collusion, no collusion." Look at the crazy orange chimp:

On Saturday, Trumpanzee was at it again: "The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime."

Conaway, yesterday, a slow-witted dullard doing his first Sunday morning talk show: "We were focused not so much on that, as it feeds into the collusion issue. Our committee was not charged with answering the collusion idea. So we really weren't focused in that direction." In fact a few days ago, Conaway said on a conference call that "we believe that the broader evidence available to us was that they [the Kremlin] favored her [Hillary] over him [Comrade Trumpanski], and the main issue was to sow discord." Watch Chuck Todd interview the poor stumbling, mumbling, simpleminded Conaway:



Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) were on CNN yesterday, warning Señor T that he better not fire Mueller and that he had to allow federal investigators looking into Russian meddling in the 2016 election to do their jobs. Graham said it was very important that Mueller be allowed to proceed without interference and that many Republicans share this view. Flake said it appeared the baboon’s latest comments were aimed at the firing of Mueller.

“I don’t know what the designs are on Mueller, but it seems to be building towards that, and I just hope it doesn’t go there, because it can’t. We can’t in Congress accept that,” Flake told CNN’s State of the Union.

“So I would expect to see considerable pushback in the next couple of days urging the president not to go there. He can’t go there.”

In a series of tweets over the weekend, Trump accused the FBI leadership of lies, corruption and leaking information. He called the Russia probe a politically motivated witch hunt.

... “The only reason Mr. Mueller could ever be dismissed is for cause. I see no cause when it comes to Mr. Mueller,” Graham said on CNN. “I pledge to the American people as a Republican, to ensure that Mr. Mueller can continue to do his job without any interference.”

“As I have said before, if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency, because we’re a rule of law nation,” Graham said... "As I have said before, if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency, because we’re a rule of law nation."

...Senator Angus King, an independent, also warned Trump against trying to fire Mueller.

“This is a serious investigation, and if the president tries to terminate it prematurely, I think it will be a true constitutional crisis,” he said on CBS.

Trump also drew criticism from fellow Republicans on Sunday over the firing of McCabe, who said he believed he was targeted because he corroborated Comey’s claims that Trump tried to pressure Comey into killing the Russia probe.

“I don’t like the way it happened. He should’ve been allowed to finish through the weekend,” Senator Marco Rubio said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Rubio, who supports the special counsel probe, said the decision to fire McCabe was made before the release of the Justice Department inspector general’s report that Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited in his dismissal.

Flake said the Senate Judiciary Committee would look at the report, which Sessions said concluded McCabe leaked information to reporters and misled investigators about his actions.

“I’m just puzzled by why the White House is going so hard at this, other than that they’re very afraid of what might come out,” he said on CNN.

Rubio seems to be really scared of Trump, like a child afraid of a stove after he's burned his little hand on it. No one can count on him to oppose Trump no matter what he does. Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown was also on Meet the Press yesterday with an interesting way of phrasing that kind of mentality. "I hear so many Republican senators grumble about Trump’s ethics, about his name-calling. … At some point Republican enablers in the House and Senate are going to say publicly what they’ve been saying privately. And that’s when things change and we see a president back off this kind of name-calling, not telling the truth, sending out these tweets, all that." We'll have to see if that ever happens-- at least before November. Speaking of which...

By a pretty big 50-40% margin, registered voters want to see Democrats win the congressional midterms in November. Two even more important numbers are that voters over 65, by an 11 point margin, want Democrats to win and Independents, by a 12 point margin, also want Democrats running the House and Senate. Seniors vote in midterms more than any other group. And, in terms of districts not as red as Conaway's, independents, decide the races. So in basically all the Republican districts outside off the Deep South, it could be curtains for congressional Republicans. This is a doomsday scenario building for GOP members like from Maine (Bruce Poliquin) to all of them in New York and New Jersey and more than any Democratic strategists was counting in California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas, Ohio... I wonder if any of them will jump off a bridge or a building. They really should based on what they've been doing to allow Trump to run rabid and wild.

Do You Think Mueller Will Have A Couple Of Flynns Arrested This Week Or Next Week?

Yesterday, NBC broke the news most of all have surmised, namely that Mueller has enough evidence on Flynn to bring charges against him and his crackpot son (the one who was pushing the story about Hillary running a child prostitution business from the basement of a popular DC pizzeria (that has no basement). Their team of reporters asserts flatly that Mueller's team has "gathered enough evidence to bring charges in their investigation of President Donald Trump's former national security adviser and his son as part of the probe into Russia's intervention in the 2016 election, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation... Mueller is applying renewed pressure on Flynn following his indictment of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort." The big point of leverage has to do with Flynn lying to investigators about his money-laundering, serious charges that could land him and his son in prison. Meet The Press was all over Putin-Gate yesterday too. Senators Warner (D-VA) and Lankford (R-OK):

Mueller's team is also examining whether Flynn attempted to orchestrate the removal of a chief rival of Turkish President Recep Erdogan from the U.S. to Turkey in exchange for millions of dollars, two officials said.

...Flynn's son, Michael G. Flynn, who worked closely with his father, accompanied him during the campaign and briefly worked on the presidential transition, could be indicted separately or at the same time as his father, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.

If the elder Flynn is willing to cooperate with investigators in order to help his son, two of the sources said, it could also change his own fate, potentially limiting any legal consequences.

...Investigators also revealed Monday that former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to federal officials and had been cooperating with Mueller's investigation.

If the senior Flynn is charged, he would be the first current or former Trump administration official formally accused of criminal wrongdoing by the Mueller team.

So far, the probe has only ensnared campaign officials, and the White House has argued that the connection to the president is minimal. An indictment of the president's former national security adviser and his son would scramble that dynamic.

...The FBI is also investigating former CIA Director Jim Woolsey's account to the Wall Street Journal-- which he confirmed to MSNBC-- that Flynn and Turkish officials discussed a potential plan to forcibly remove Gulen from the country in September 2016, according to sources close to Woolsey, who say the former director has spoken to FBI agents working for Mueller about the matter.

Flynn was fired in February following public revelations that he had lied to Vice President Pence about his dealings with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

Most hated occupant of the White House ever

How Much Longer Will It Take To Institute Single Payer Here In America?

Saturday evening Bernie was in Pittsburgh Saturday for a Don’t Take Away Our Health Care rally at the Convention Center. He addressed Republican Pat Toomey directly. I hope he takes the same message to Ted Cruz in Texas and to Jeff Flake in Arizona, two Republicans up for reelection in 2018. (Dean Heller has already said he’s voting no.) Sunday he brought the message to Rob Portman in Columbus and then to Shelley Moore Capito in Charleston. Listen to his 27 minutes speech above; you can’t hear his points enough. “This so-called health care bill passed in the House last month is the most anti-working-class piece legislation passed by the House of Representatives in the modern history of this country,” he said to loud applause. “And the Senate bill... is even worse… We will not allow 23 million Americans to be thrown off of the health insurance they currently have in order to give over $500 billion in tax breaks to the top two percent, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, and to other multi-national corporations... What kind of a country are we if anyone can come before you and talk about cutting health care for children with disabilities in order to give tax breaks to the richest people on earth?”

After the Pittsburgh rally he appeared briefly on Meet the Press, where he told Chuck Todd much the same message he explained to the audience in Pittsburgh (and Columbus and Charleston), even though Todd just wanted to talk about disunity and divisiveness. Bernie’s learned how to use questions like that to springboard into getting to the message he wants to deliver. “For the last 9 years,” he replied to a question about why Ossoff lost, “Democrats have lost the White House, we’ve lost the Senate, we’ve lost the U.S. House. Two-thirds of governor’s chairs are controlled by Republicans. A thousand seats have been lost the Republicans in state legislatures all over this country… There is a massive amount of demoralization on the part of the American people, with the Democratic Party, with the Republican Party. I think the American people, in many cases, are seeing themselves work longer hours for lower wages. They’re worried about their kids not being able to go to college. They’re worried about what’s going to happen to them when they are retiring. They’re seeing almost all new income and wealth going to the top 1 percent. There is an enormous amount of pain in this country, Chuck. People are saying, ‘Does anybody in Washington know what’s going on in my life-- that I’m 60 years of age and I have nothing in the bank and I’m going too be retiring in 5 years or that I have $50,000 in college debt and can’t find a decent job. Does anybody know that? Do the Republicans know it? Do the Democrats know it?’ And I think what the Democrats have got to say is that we will be on the side of the working class of this country. We are prepared to stand up to Wall Street and the drug companies who rip us off everyday and the insurance companies. [at this point Todd got nervous that Bernie was attacking his advertisers and started trying to cut him off] And that we’re going to fight for an agenda that makes sense to working families.”

Ah, and there’s the rub… that elusive agenda. Look how close the Democrats in blue, blue California came to passing single-payer-- only to see Jerry Brown have Assembly Speaker Rendon kill it? The Intercept pointed out that someone who disagrees with Governor Brown’s opposition-- that single payer is too expensive, the Republican argument, which somehow always manages to manipulate the facts and forget to mention the “the efficiencies created from having one public insurer save a lot of money-- was, none other than presidential candidate Jerry Brown in 1992 (when he was still toying around with the idea of posing as a progressive).

It was a cornerstone of his unsuccessful 1992 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In April of 1992, Brown passionately argued for this system in a debate with then-Arkansas Democratic Gov. Bill Clinton on the nationally-syndicated Phil Donahue Show.

“My preference is that we create a single system, put everyone under a universal health care system. We treat health care not as a commodity to be played with for profit but rather the right of every American citizen when they’re born,” he explained.

He then went on to explain how this system would save money:

“You cut out all the private health insurance. You have one single payer either at the national level or through the 50 states. And that one single payer will be the one that negotiates with the doctors, the hospitals, and the other providers. And since you have only one source of income in the whole medical establishment, you can drive down the cost. With the holding down of the cost, you can eliminate the intermediary, the middle man, the bureaucracy. In some of these hospitals there’s more people doing the billing then there are in direct patient care on an eight-hour shift. It doesn’t make any sense. But through a single payer, as we’ve seen in Canada, you can eliminate tremendous amounts of paperwork both for the doctors, the hospitals, and the part of the insurance companies.”

We ran the video of this moment of Brown's long past progressive dalliance here yesterday, if you want to check it out. Here's the whole Meet the Press interview from Sunday morning:

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Trumpf Says When People Call Him P.T. Barnum He Takes It As A Compliment

I'd venture to guess that most people who have heard of Phineas Taylor Barnum (P.T. Barnum) think he coined the phrase "there's a sucker born every minute." He didn't, nor did Donald Trump, but both men have lived their lives as though they did. Barnum plagued American for most of the 19th Century, a hustler who Trumpf has modeled himself on. He was a businessman/showman, author and politician (briefly). He freely admitted that his actions were meant to "put money in my own coffers" and, more than anything else he considered himself "a showman by profession." His name is synonymous with hoaxes and self-serving "philanthropy." Like Trumpf, he made some spectacularly bad investments and went bankrupt. Unlike Trumpf, he ran for office, as a Republican, and won. He served 2 terms in the Connecticut state legislature and one term as mayor of Bridgeport.

Meet the Press went to Ottumwa, Iowa Sunday to capture some ratings points by interviewing the clownish Herr Trumpf. He spent a lot of time attacking Cruz-- insinuating that his birth in Canada could ruin the GOP chance to win theWhite House, reminding Iowans he's a flip-flopper on ethanol and only claims to be for it for the sake of the campaign, and a flip-flopper on "amnesty." Any time Chuck Todd tried to pin him down on something factual, Trumpf would try to worm out of it, often in artfully, by changing the topic slightly or just going off into a non-sequitur, like "I am really looking to February first; it's gonna be very exciting." Republicans-- though not necessarily Trumpf fans-- may be mortified that he's bragging about an intention to use executive orders when he wants to get things done.

Ted Cruz went on Fox News to whine that when President Obama issued an executive order, he was "behaving in an unprecedented way." as with much of what comes out of Ted Cruz's mouth, that's false. Lately-- i.e., since Obama was elected-- Republicans claim executive orders are unconstitutional and tyrannical, etc but they really took off in a big way under Teddy Roosevelt. His predecessor, William McKinely, had only used 185 but Teddy issued 1,081. "Mr. Republican," William Howard Taft, would sit in his bathtub issuing them and he averaged 181 per year, for a total of 724. Woodrow Wilson, a conservative Democrat, went right along with the trend-- 1,803. The 3 Republicans who caused the Great Depression were collectively responsible for 2,693 and FDR hit the top end-- 3,522, but he was president for a really long time. It's become much rarer since then:

• Eisenhower- 484
• JFK- 214
• LBJ- 325
• Nixon- 346
• Ford- 169
• Carter- 320
• Reagan- 381
• Bush I- 166
• Clinton- 364
• Bush II- 291
• Obama- 226

So... the only presidents contemporary of anyone still drawing breathe today who have issued fewer executive orders than Obama were one-term presidents. Here are Chuck and Donald:



Obviously, when Trumpf sits down for an interview, the fact checking organizations have to be on high alert. It's almost impossible to fact check every lie he tells because virtually everything he says is a lie. But Politifact caught a couple of whoppers. First his nonsensical claim about the detainees Obama traded for Bowe Bergdahl 2 years ago. Herr said "We get a traitor, they get five people that they've wanted for nine years, and they're back on the battlefield, trying to kill everybody, including us. And we get a dirty, rotten traitor."

Politifact:

Trump’s statement that the five former detainees-- who were senior Taliban operatives-- are now "back on the battlefield" is one we rated False in July 2015. We decided to revisit the claim to see if anything had changed in the past six months.

We looked into whether there were any new developments around the detainees, sometimes called the Taliban Five. The new information shows they’re still where they were last-- in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar under government supervision. So Trump is still wrong.

The five detainees were released to Qatar in 2014. Qatar is understood to be a neutral state, as opposed to a "battlefield" for insurgent activity. Under the agreement, the five released detainees are not allowed to leave the country.

This travel ban was initially supposed to last one year, ending June 1, 2015, but it has been extended.

Multiple administration officials told us the detainees haven’t left Qatar. We looked for any evidence to contradict that and found nothing.

In fact, in December 2015, the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee produced a report in which it expressed concern that the Taliban Five pose a security risk. But the report noted that the security arrangements first made in 2015 had been extended so that the five would remain in Qatar.

The State Department told us on Jan. 9, 2016, that the men were still in Qatar.

"None of the five individuals has returned to the battlefield," said State Department spokeswoman Liz Trudeau. "All five men are subject to a travel ban, and none have left Qatar."

"They’re still in Qatar," added Myles Caggins, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

...Because there is no evidence to support Trump’s claim, we rate it False.

He also went off on some crazy rampage that South Korea doesn't give us anything in return for protecting it. "We have 28,000 soldiers on the line in South Korea between the madman and them. We get practically nothing compared to the cost of this." Another lie. Politifact:

This is not the first time Trump has used this talking point. In 2011, we checked this claim about South Korea: "We have 25,000 soldiers over there protecting them. They don't pay us. Why don't they pay us?"

We rated the claim that South Korea doesn't pay False, noting that South Korea had picked up the tab for nearly $700 million in the most recent year for personnel, logistics and construction costs.

On Meet the Press, Trump made a slightly less absolute statement. Rather than saying, "They don't pay us," he said, "We get practically nothing compared to the cost." So we took another look at this assertion.

We found that South Korea does still pay for the U.S. presence, which currently includes roughly 28,500 military personnel. (That’s far smaller than the roughly 500,000 South Korean service members on active duty, plus many more South Korean reserve troops.)

In fact, South Korea pays quite a bit more than they did in 2011.

In the most recent agreement, announced in early 2014, South Korea said it would pay $866.6 million that year to support the U.S. presence. That was 5.8 percent higher than the 2013 amount, and that could grow by as much as 4 percent annually through 2018.

...Beyond that, several experts said Trump’s apparent premise-- that the United States is giving a growing, affluent country what amounts to a charitable gift-- is wrong. The United States itself benefits from the military investment in South Korea, they said.

"U.S. forces are no longer there strictly to defend South Korea," said William W. Stueck, historian at the University of Georgia. "They are there to enhance regional stability as well. The point is that we have vital interests in East Asia and the Western Pacific, so why shouldn't we pay part of the bill for our force presence?"

Janda concurred: "The traditional argument for keeping troops in South Korea is that it deters North Korea from attacking South Korea, stabilizes the region politically, socially, and economically, and gives the United States bases from which it can project military power throughout the western Pacific. In addition, he said, the military expense helps protect countries that buy U.S. products, he said.

Allan R. Millett, a historian and director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, agreed. "Alliances are not to be measured in dollars, but in their effectiveness at deterring conflict," he said.

...Currently, South Korea pays well over $800 million annually to support the United States’ troop presence, an amount that doesn’t qualify as "practically nothing." And while Trump makes it sound like the United States’ willingness to pay the rest of the freight amounts to a gift to South Korea, he overlooks that the United States actually benefits significantly on a strategic level from the arrangement. We rate the claim Mostly False.

Can Bernie Channel The Rage And Frustration Of Trump Fans Into Support For Him After Trumpf Gets Schlonged By The GOP?

When Herr Trumpf comes in among the most admired men in America, one has to wonder who are they asking

On the surface, Trumpf's running away with the Republican nomination-- and, in fact, he may (although I've always believed Ted Cruz is the perfect match for what the GOP has become, even more so than Herr Trumpf and that it is Cruz who will be the nominee). Right now the next-to-meaningless national polls show Trumpf way ahead-- 36.5% in the RealClearPolitics national average, against Cruz's 17.8% and Rubio's 11.3%, the only 3 in double digits. That's a lagging indicator which doesn't predict much of anything except a barrage of tweets from Trumpf talking about how well he's doing. The first contest, the Iowa caucuses, are coming up February 1-- right around the corner-- and Trumpf is on track to lose to Cruz. The newest CBS poll of Iowa Republicans has Cruz beating him 40-31. And Cruz has a real campaign operation in Iowa (and across the Confederate Super Tuesday states). But the point is, even worse for Herr... no one thinks his supporters (see photo about) will turn out too vote, let alone caucus in Iowa. They'll buy his hats and t-shirts and fragrance, maybe even a book, but caucus? We'll see.

Trump’s unexpected and sustained popularity has, at least in part, been fueled by his appeal to a voting bloc that seems to be emerging: blue-collar workers without college degrees who are slightly younger than the traditional Republican voter. Many say they haven’t cared about politics until now, as they flock to Trump rallies like groupies to a rock concert, read his books, buy his products, quote his jokes and follow his social-media accounts.

But is their devotion to Trump deep enough to vote?

For those who don’t regularly vote in primaries, doing so for the first time is a hurdle-- especially in Iowa, which uses a caucus system that can intimidate first-timers.

In states with early primary contests, Trump’s staffers are trying to teach their supporters how to vote and get a commitment that they actually will. Before each rally here, Trump’s state co-chairs walk the crowd through how the caucuses work and urge them to attend. But they are also hoping word will spread through social media and in conversations after church, at the school bus stop, during coffee breaks and over holiday dinners.

At Trump’s rally in Des Moines on Dec. 11, a couple in their early 30s said they have no plans to caucus, even though they hope Trump will be president and wanted their two young sons to see the candidate speak. A 25-year-old graduate student said he would probably caucus for Trump, but he just moved to the state and has no idea how to do so. A group of high school students said they won’t be old enough to vote. A retiree who said he’s “not a political sort of guy” is still surveying his options.

...“Is there anybody up here that’s 100 percent sure that you’re caucusing on February 1 for Trump?” the staffer asked, then waited, holding the clipboard over his head. “Anybody? No?”

With no takers, the staffer moved on to the next section of cheering fans eagerly awaiting Trump’s arrival.

The Republican Party establishment has several things they are really good at-- and one of them is preventing people, particularly poor people, from voting. As we mentioned yesterday, the Virginia GOP has already taken steps to prevent Trumpf fans from participating in their primary if the said Trumpf fans are not already registered Republicans, causing a twitter shit-fit from Herr. How many state GOPs will follow Virginia's lead, which, obviously, is meant to trigger a brokered convention and a Paul Ryan nomination?

And while Herr was howling on twitter, Bernie Sanders was on Face the Nation making a reasonable appeal to a slice of anti-establishment Trump voters. "Look," he told John Dickerson, "many of Trump’s supporters are working-class people and they’re angry because they’re working longer hours for lower wages. They’re angry because their jobs have left this country and gone to China or other low-wage countries;they're angry because they can't afford to send their kids to college and they can't retire with dignity. And what I’m suggesting is that what Trump has done successfully is take that anger, take that anxiety about terrorism and and say to a lot of people in this country 'the reason for our problems is because of Mexicans' and he says they're all criminals and rapists. 'We've got to hate got to hate Mexicans..." Here watch the video:



Later he talked with Andrea Mitchell on Meet the Press and did his best to steer her away from her sad penchant for cheap, tawdry sensationalism, saying that "the real issues are not Donald Trump's vulgarity-- and he is vulgar-- it is the fact that Donald Trump thinks we should not be raising the minimum wage. He believes that wages in America are too high. This guy wants to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top three-tenths of one percent. And meanwhile what he wants to do is divide our country between Latinos and Americans, between Muslims and everybody else. That's not the kind of America we need... What we have got to do is ask the hard questions: why is it that the people on top are doing phenomenally well while almost everyone else is seeing a decline in their real incomes... Frankly, I think for the American people there are far more important issues having to do with the disappearance of the American middle class and huge income and wealth inequality and climate change."

With Trumpf And Cruz Spouting Off So Much, Voters Forget What A Hateful, Slimy Little Bigot Marco Rubio Is

None of the new polls show Rubio making much progress as the establishment pick to end the existential dual menace-- at least to the Republican Party-- of Herr Trumpf or Texas' neo-fascist Senator Cruz. The two newest national polls, one from NBC and one from Fox, don't offer the Karl Roves, Mitch McConnells or Reince Priebuses much hope that Rubio is the right champion to save the party. The Fox poll shows him a distant 3rd with 13% to Cruz's 28% and Herr Trumpf's 26%. If every other candidate dropped out and all their backers jumped on the Rubio bandwagon, he would still trail the fascist duo. And Fox respondents don't see him as best-equipped to handle either the economy (7%) or national security, his supposed strong suit (11%). Nor is he seen as an especially good bet to beat Hillary. The NBC poll has Rubio at 15%, way behind Herr Trumpf at 27% and Cruz at 22%. Conclusion: the conservative mainstream vote is not coalescing around Rubio the way party bosses had hoped, which is why they are increasingly turning to a brokered convention and Paul Ryan.

Yesterday on Meet the Press, people unfamiliar with Rubio's record as a career-long bigot had an opportunity to see why many mainstream conservatives are not buying what he's selling. Although Rubio's campaign is being partially funded by right-wing hypocrite Paul Singer, a pro-gay GOP billionaire with an openly gay son, Rubio is adamant about ending marriage equality. And he told Chuck Todd he will do it by appointing ugly bigots like himself to the Supreme Court. He tried to worm his way out of answering the question, since Meet the Press has not just Republican voters, but normal people as well:

CHUCK TODD: Are you going to work to overturn the same sex marriage?

MARCO RUBIO: I disagree with it on constitutional grounds. As I have said...

CHUCK TODD: But are you going to work to overturn this?

MARCO RUBIO: I think it’s bad law. And for the following reason. If you want to change the definition of marriage, then you need to go to state legislatures and get them to change it. Because states have always defined marriage. And that’s why some people get married in Las Vegas by an Elvis impersonator. And in Florida, you have to wait a couple days when you get your permit. Every state has different marriage laws. But I do not believe that the court system was the right way to do it because I don’t believe...

CHUCK TODD: But it’s done now. Are you going to work to overturn it?

MARCO RUBIO: You can’t work to overturn it. What you...

CHUCK TODD: Sure. You can do a constitutional amendment.

MARCO RUBIO: As I’ve said, that would be conceding that the current Constitution is somehow wrong and needs to be fixed. I don’t think the current Constitution gives the federal government the power to regulate marriage. That belongs at the state and local level. And that’s why if you want to change the definition of marriage, which is what this argument is about.

It’s not about discrimination. It is about the definition of a very specific, traditional, and age-old institution. If you want to change it, you have a right to petition your state legislature and your elected representatives to do it. What is wrong is that the Supreme Court has found this hidden constitutional right that 200 years of jurisprudence had not discovered and basically overturn the will of voters in Florida where over 60% passed a constitutional amendment that defined marriage in the state constitution as the union of one man and one woman.

CHUCK TODD: So are you accepting the idea of same sex marriage in perpetuity?

MARCO RUBIO: It is the current law. I don’t believe any case law is settled law. Any future Supreme Court can change it. And ultimately, I will appoint Supreme Court justices that will interpret the Constitution as originally constructed.

The young fogey's record on equality for the LGBT community has been pretty wretched going back to his days in the Florida legislature. In 2006 he was adamantly opposed to gay couples adopting children and told the Tallahassee Democrat that foster children forced to spend the night in a conference room would never been allowed to find homes with gay parents. "Some of these kids are the most disadvantaged in the state. They shouldn't be forced to be part of a social experiment." Even after federal courts struck down the gay adoption ban, Rubio backed GOP legislation that encourages adoption agencies turn away otherwise capable gay parents by claiming a moral or religious objection.

Before Rubio had flip-flopped on his own immigration bill he was threatening to vote against it if an amendment against LGBT discrimination was included. On a right-wing radio show he promised fellow bigots that ""If this bill has in it something that gives gay couples immigration rights and so forth, it kills the bill. I'm gone. I'm off it. I've said that repeatedly."

But the slimy little Rubio has been consistent in one thing: trying to turn the tables by claiming bigots and hate mongers like himself are being subjected to intolerance. He loves to play the victim card when he's denying people equality. Last year he was making a play for the aggrieved anti-gay far right vote by whining that he and others who believe in bigotry as a fundamental right are the victims of intolerance. "There is a growing intolerance on this issue, intolerance of those who continue to support traditional marriage. Even before this speech is over, I’ll be attacked as a hater or bigot. Or someone who’s anti-gay. This intolerance in the name of tolerance is hypocrisy. Supporting the definition of marriage as one man and one woman, is not anti-gay. It is pro-traditional marriage."

In April, The Advocate, probably not having thoroughly vetted Ted Cruz well enough yet, asserted that Rubio might be the most anti-gay presidential candidate yet, at the same time one of his local newspapers was reminding Floridians that Rubio's record on women and LGBT rights is pretty terrible.

[W]hile Rubio is young and Hispanic and so, by default via those things, "exciting," it's also critical to remember that he's still very much old-school about some pretty important things. Namely women's and LGBT rights.

A quick refresher course on what Rubio thinks of women and gays:

He Voted Against the Renewal of the Violence Against Women Act

In 2013, the U.S. Senate renewed the Violence Against Women Act by an overwhelming 78-22 vote. The renewal of the act included protection for domestic violence against gays, lesbians, immigrants, and Native American women. Since being established, the act has helped reduce national rates of domestic violence with programs and services, including the federal rape shield law, community violence prevention programs, funding for victim assistance services-- such as rape crisis centers and hotlines-- as well as providing legal aid for victims of violence.

Rubio was one of the 22 who voted no to renewing the act.

He Blasted Florida for Repealing the Same-Sex Ban

2015 kicked off with a bang when the state finally legalized same-sex marriage across the board. Gay couples from all over the state lined courthouse steps and got hitched. Some wanted to be counted among the first, while others simply wanted to take in the momentous occasion with laughter and tears. It was an historic moment for the state and the LGBT community. Florida was finally catching up with the times. And then Marco Rubio went and crapped all over it.

While he was careful not to use antigay wording, Rubio was very much antigay marriage. Though he argued it was a legal issue.

"I do not believe that there is a U.S. Constitutional right to same-sex marriage," he said at the time. "I don't believe it's unconstitutional. I just don't believe there's a constitutional right to it."

So in other words, he doesn't believe there's a constitutional right to it. Or, to put it another way, screw your rights, gay people.

He's Been Opposed to Same-Sex Marriage for a Long Time

At least he's consistent. 2015 wasn't the first time Rubio spoke out on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. In 2013, he went the "states should have the right to define marriage in the traditional way" route while scoffing at the notion that he was somehow a bigot.Yet, even as he espoused the virtue of constitutionality, he's always been very pro "God in government," particularly when it comes to gay rights.

In 2013, he told the famously antigay Florida Family Policy Council: "We hear about keeping God out of our schools, keeping God out of our politics, keeping God out of other people's lives," Rubio said. "This is a ridiculous debate, because God is everywhere at every time."

He Once Made Robocalls for Vehement Antigay Group

In 2012, Rubio participated in an antigay campaign called the National Organization for Marriage. In robocalls made for the organization, Rubio joined Mike Huckabee and Focus on the Family cofounder James Dobson in asking people to "protect the sanctity of marriage" and vote against any same-sex initiatives found on voting ballots in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maine, Maryland, and Washington state.

And this is what the party bosses think they can pass off as the new mainstream image of the GOP? He's like an 80 year old trapped in the body of someone in their 40s... and awkwardly so.

Of course, the ugly bigotry just one miserable piece of what's wrong with Marco Rubio that makes him so utterly unqualified to be president of the United States. That whole "Deep Bench" turns out to be such a ridiculous and ironic farce. Last night Michigan Republican Justin Amash was horrified by Rubio's foolish pandering to the discredited warmongers who once dominated the Republican Party. He's worse than Hillary Clinton, so much worse... and on some levels I suspect that he's even worse than Herr Trumpf.