Trump vs Democracy

Our heroic jefe, Señor Trumpanzee, is not just a war-time president, he's fighting a war on two fronts-- one against the COVID-19 pandemic-- who could have known?-- and one against democracy. Yesterday, Alex Isenstadt reported from the front lines in Trumpanzee's war against democracy. As you can see on the chart above, 65% of registered voters support the idea of vote by mail-- including 93% of Democrats, 70% of independents and even 32% of Republicans.

It is notable that 68% of Republicans oppose vote by mail. Makes no sense. Actually it does. Historically, conservatives have always done everything they could to keep the franchise as small as possible. They year for their glory days when only older white males with property were allowed to vote. Progressives have slowly but surely chipped away at that. This week David Ralston, the Republican Speaker of the Georgia House explained it as well as any conservative: "The president said it best. This will be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia." Yep, larger numbers of people voting usually is "extremely devastating" to conservatives.

Isenstadt wrote that "Trump's political operation is launching a multimillion-dollar legal campaign aimed at blocking Democrats from drastically changing voting rules in response to the coronavirus outbreak. In the past several weeks, the reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee have helped to oversee maneuvering in a handful of battleground states with an eye toward stopping some Democratic efforts to alter voting laws, and to bolster Trump. The mobilization is being closely coordinated with Republicans at the state and local levels.

The Trump campaign and RNC are actively engaged in litigation in Wisconsin, where the parties are at loggerheads over an array of issues including voter identification, and in New Mexico, where the battle involves vote-by-mail. The skirmishing has also spread across key states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, where the well-organized Trump apparatus has fought over changes that could sway the outcome of the election.

The enterprise-- which includes more than two dozen GOP officials, including lawyers dedicated entirely to litigation-- shows how completely the pandemic has upended the 2020 election. While litigation over voting issues is not uncommon, the coronavirus-- and the likely obstacles it will create for voting in November-- has brought the issue to the forefront of the campaign.

The public health crisis is already injecting a huge X-factor into the election, with impossible-to-predict effects on voter turnout, and officials in both parties acknowledge the fights over voting laws could affect the outcome of the election.

Democrats-- who typically benefit from high turnout elections because their voters cast ballots less reliably-- are plowing ahead with initiatives to make it easier to vote.

...Trump advisers say they are open to certain changes, such as automatically sending absentee ballot applications to voters over age 65. But they’re opposed to other moves Democrats are pushing, such as sending every voter a ballot regardless of whether they ask for one, which Republicans argue would open the door to fraud.

Trump has long been fixated on voter fraud. He has repeatedly claimed without evidence that he lost New Hampshire in 2016 because out-of-staters cast ballots, and after the election the president set up a since-disbanded voter fraud commission. Following the disastrous 2018 midterms, Trump said that after voting, some people “go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again.”

During an appearance on Fox News this week, Trump pushed back against an effort by House Democrats to secure billions of dollars for election assistance in the coronavirus relief package. The bill Trump ultimately signed included $400 million, a fraction of what Democrats had been seeking.

“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said.

Federal funding to help states ease voting barriers in response to coronavirus is just one front in the battle. Trump's political apparatus is taking a state-by-state approach.

In Pennsylvania, where Democrats proposed an entirely vote-by-mail system, Trump advisers worked with the Republican-controlled Legislature to push through more circumscribed rules. They include a limited expansion of absentee voting and changes to the handling and counting of those ballots.

In Georgia, some officials are recommending sending everyone a ballot, also a no-go for Trump's team. The president’s advisers instead advocated mailing people applications they would need to fill out and return in order to receive a ballot. The idea was approved by Georgia’s Democratic Party and Republican secretary of state.

Republicans see an advantage in the change in Georgia. They say they will be able to use their financial advantage over Democrats to reach their Georgia supporters to ensure they're returning ballot request forms.

The Democratic offensive is being led by Marc Elias, a veteran election attorney who is currently involved in litigation in more than a dozen states. He has advocated a handful of changes in the wake of the outbreak, including providing pre-paid postage for mail-in ballots and extending the postmark deadline to Election Day.

"If states are not able or willing to rise to the occasion of the challenges that Covid-19 poses, we’re going to continue looking very seriously to the courts to protect the rights of voters and to ensure that ballots don’t go uncounted that should be counted,” Elias said.

Trump advisers say they are trying to prevent overreach on the part of Democrats, who have long sought to ease voting restrictions.

“It is beyond disgusting that the Democrats are using this crisis to try to dismantle the integrity of our voting system,” said Justin Clark, a senior Trump campaign counsel who is helping to spearhead the legal fight. “The American people won’t stand for this, and the campaign and the party intend to fight with them for a free, fair, and open vote in November."

Clark pointed to so-called community ballot collection-- an idea embraced by some Democrats that would allow local organizations and individuals to collect ballots from voters at their homes-- as something the Trump campaign would fight.

The pandemic is expected to increase the amount of funding the Republican Party devotes to lawsuits. The cash-flush Trump machine announced in February it was directing $10 million toward legal battles, but people involved in the effort say that figure is now likely to climb much higher.

You know how you always see photos of presidents and their wives early on election day voting at the polls? You won't see one of those this Friday for the Florida primary; Trump has requested absentee ballots for himself and the former Slovenian sex worker he married-- just as some 160,000 other Palm Beach County residents have. Yesterday at his daily shit show, he said "I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting. People should vote with ID, voter ID, I think voter ID is very important. The reason they don’t want voter ID is because they intend to cheat. It shouldn’t be mail-in voting. It should be you go to booth and you proudly display yourself, you send it in the mail… all sorts of bad things can happen… by the time it gets in and is tabulated."

Some think that the conservative plot to demolish the U.S. Post Office-- which happens to be constitutionally-mandated-- is now, because of the pandemic-- in high gear. No post office, no trustworthy mail-in-voting? Kara Eastman, in the progressive Democrat running to replace Trumpist toady Don Bacon in Omaha. "Republicans are afraid of high turnout so they are afraid of universal vote by mail," she told us. "We need to push to ensure that our democracy doesn’t fall victim to this virus like our economy has." Texas progressive Mike Siegel noted that "In one fell swoop, we see that the Republicans are both a death cult and fundamentally anti-democratic. They’d rather us risk infection than increase voter participation. I understand that creating national vote-by-mail is a monumental task, but with resources and commitment it is certainly achievable. It’s the right thing for public health and it’s the right thing for our democracy." Please consider supporting the campaigns being run by Kara, Mike Siegel, Mark Gamba and Liam O'Mara by clicking on the thermometer below and contributing what you can in these tough times.

Mark Gamba, the mayor of Mikwaukie, is running for Oregon's 5th congressional district against Blue Dog Kurt Schrader, who finds himself voting with Republicans far more than an actual Democrat. Gamba is a progressive with every instinct and every action. This morning he told us that "Oregon has been 100% vote by mail for over 20 years. It’s super convenient, we have two weeks with our ballots and can vote at our kitchen tables. We get some of the best turnouts in the country especially since we have one of the highest levels of voter registration in the country. What’s more, there’s a paper trail. It can’t be cheated. That last one in particular is what worries the Republicans. They know that in totally fair elections they lose. In this Pandemic moment, we are one of the few states that can safely vote. Our primary will continue as scheduled. I think the Republicans know that these last 3+ years have been some of the worst in American history for a significant part of the population. In a fair election, with a big turnout, they will lose the presidency, the Senate and the House will move further to the left. If we hope to stop climate change and create a universal health care system so that these pandemics don’t become a regular part of our lives then moving to a nationwide, Oregon style, vote by mail will be a powerful first step."

A Riverside County congressional candidate for a seat help by Trump-lockstepper Ken Calvert, progressive Liam O'Mara is also a history professor. "It is one of the most poorly-kept secrets in American politics that not everyone involved in it likes democracy," he said today. "There is a vocal subset of Republican officials who scream about Democrats wanting to take our freedoms, while they quietly do the job themselves-- authoring and passing surveillance legislation, expanding police powers, eroding civil rights legislation through the courts, and engaging in active voter-suppression. This has long since moved past hypocrisy and into farce, and if we cannot find a way to reach the voters who enable these figures, we will find ourselves living under permanent minority rule as the kind of "managed democracy" we see in places like Russia. If we're not willing to fight back for basic liberties like voting, then the act could lose meaning, becoming a rubber-stamp for a minority party, and our freedom be stamped out with it. We need to extend and secure voting rights, not let them be stripped from more each year. Enough is enough. Are we to be a republic or a party dictatorship? Talk to your Republican friends. Help them to understand that partisan divisions are being exploited to undermine what it means to be an American. If we can't talk to each other again, we may lose those values to which we pledged our allegiance."

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Remember when Putin's Fist Puppet said he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue, shoot someone dead in broad daylight, and his brainwashed followers would still love him and do nothing about it? Well, apparently, the Democrats in the House and $enate aren't much different when it comes to law enforcement. What a surprise.

It seems that crimes aren't crimes if you're a member of Club Washington. That's no surprise either. Time after time after time, Trump's wise guys and made men and women have ignored lawful subpoenas issued by wimpy, deliberately toothless dog and pony show House committees, refusing to testify before the committees run by Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler. Virtually all of those summoned don't even come in to take the fifth and they are allowed to get away with it. Hope Hicks, Trump's Communications Director, seen in tonight's meme, came in but was allowed to stonewall with impunity.

Until all of Trump's team and enablers, including those such as the Moscow owned Mitch McConnell and his $enate deputies are locked away for the rest of their days, all this talk of impeachment is just talk. It is an insincere, orchestrated made for TV and made for fundraising farce. People went to jail (unfortunately for ridiculously short periods or time) for their roles in covering up or participating in the Watergate burglary. Susan McDougal, also depicted in tonight's meme went to jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury during the investigation of the Clinton/Whitewater case. But, if a Club Washington member sells out the United States Of America... well, that's just fine and dandy. That's obviously how they see it in Washington. Fuck this parade of assholes!

Trump's team makes a point of very publicly pissing on the Constitution and our legal system. The result to date is that there are no consequences at all other than to make this country a country of no laws. The people at the top set the tone so we can expect our entire American society to turn into something far worse than lawless Tombstone or Dodge City very soon, all because the Hou$e and $enate are abdicating their oaths and responsibilities. Pardoning Nixon was bad enough. He was allowed to get away with his crimes, sending a message to all Americans. This will be worse, far worse. Congressional committees have the right, the ability, and the duty to jail people for contempt of Congress but instead Congress shows its contempt for us by not doing so. Hope Hicks is just one of dozens if not what will soon be hundreds of Trump gang members who should already be wearing an orange jumpsuit, but, no, instead she is walking free, allowed to be walking free as a living mockery of our so-called justice system.

Republican War On Democracy-- Losing But Still Not Vanquished

In an interesting, unsigned piece in The Economist this week, The Failure of Gerrymandering, the point was made that "Ever since district borders in America’s House of Representatives were redrawn in 2011, Republicans’ share of seats has exceeded their proportion of the vote. In 2012 Democrats won 51% of the two-party vote but just 46% of seats." However, "the Congress that began on January 3rd, however, has no such imbalance. Democrats won 54% of the total two-party vote-- and also 54% of House seats. Whatever became of the vaunted pro-Republican bias?"

Although Democrats won a comfortable majority in 2018, had they won the same share of votes in 2016, they would have remained in the minority-- even while winning the popular vote.

Indeed, in 2016, their structural advantages meant Republicans could expect to be over-represented in the House of Representatives unless the Democrats won 59% of the popular vote, a better showing than either party has had in the post-war era.

In 2018, however, the Democrats needed just 53% of the vote to overcome Republicans’ structural advantage. This is because the electorate has changed in the Trump era, mostly in ways that frustrate Republican efforts in 2011 to control their electoral fortunes through gerrymandering.

America’s political geography is shaped by education. In presidential contests the most influential voters are whites without college degrees, who cluster in “swing” states. By contrast, in House elections, white college graduates are unusually valuable, congregating in suburban districts where both parties are competitive.

Donald Trump has rearranged American politics, by courting working-class whites and alienating educated ones. That helped Republicans win the presidency. It should have hurt them in the House. But in 2016 the party got the best of both worlds, because many conservative whites with degrees split their tickets. In states whose presidential winner was never in doubt, they chose Hillary Clinton. But perhaps because they expected her to win and wanted a check on her power, they backed House Republicans in narrowly decided districts.

That changed in 2018, when educated whites abandoned Republican House candidates. Because Democrats were already competitive in suburbs, they needed only small swings. They won 13 of the 15 Republican-held districts where a majority of white voters have college degrees. That made the Democratic vote more efficient. In 2016 the party won 17 seats by single-digit margins; this time they took 40.

And what about gerrymandering, widely thought to protect incumbents? Republicans did draw the borders of more districts than Democrats did. But they only ran the process in 37% of seats. Of the 42 seats the party lost, it had gerrymandered just nine.



Those nine seats, however, show that extreme gerrymandering is risky. Many Republican mapmakers tried to neutralise Democratic voters by burying them in suburban districts full of educated whites. They never imagined that this ruse would backfire, but Mr Trump drove these once-loyal Republicans into Democrats’ arms.

Terrie Rizzo, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, yesterday: "This day is long overdue for millions of Floridians. These people have paid their debts to society and deserve to have a say in the future of their state, and their country. We will be working hard to expand the electorate in Florida and earn the support of these new voters." I was worried when Florida's neo-fascist new governor-elect and the Republicans in the state legislature started getting funny about the results of Amendment 4. First look at these results:

It's going to probably mean over a million new voters, many of then not especially GOP-friendly. Florida was one of only 4 states, the others being Kentucky, Iowa and Virginia, where convicted felons do not regain the right to vote after serving out their sentences. Amendment 4 was designed to automatically restore the right to vote for people with prior felony convictions-- other than convicted murderers or those who committed felony sexual offenses-- on completion of their sentences, including prison, parole, and probation. The victory for Amendment 4 was massive-- 64.55% to 35.45%. Compare that to Rick Scott's win in the Senate race (50.1-49.9%) or Ron DeSantis' win for governor (49.6-49.2%). 5,148,926 people voted to allow felons to regain their right to vote, over a million more people than those who voted for Scott and DeSantis (who both opposed the amendment). The potential to change politics in Florida is enormous. It seems like Republican politicians woke up to that after the vote and started moving against what they call "implementation," although the amendment seemed clear enough that no actual implementation was needed. But it was just part of the GOP's national assault on democracy and there was a growing concern that the Republican-dominated state legislature was finding ways to "slow-walk" the process, although most normal people exactly understand why there even was "a process," since the amendment was written to just kick in automatically; end of story. Alan Grayson told me to just turn off the noise and not to worry because the GOP couldn't do a thing about it-- not even with a legislature and a governor in their hands. He was right.

As of yesterday as many as 1.4 million former felons regained the right to vote, overturning a 150-year-old law that permanently disenfranchised people with felony convictions. Until yesterday more than 10% of Florida's adult population was not eligible to vote. Yesterday, Mark Young, reporting for the NY Times wrote that "Manatee County Supervisor of Elections Mike Bennett said he won’t know for sure until later this week, but he doesn’t expect his office to be inundated with former felons looking to get registered. However, he is prepared to begin approving those registrations when asked. 'This is no different than any other philosophy when it comes to this office,' Bennett said late Monday. 'We make it as easy as possible for everyone to be able to vote.'" State Republicans are still not ready to give up though-- nor will they ever be. "[T]wo months after the election," reported Young, "the electoral waters remain muddied at the state level. The law requires that a former felon has completed all of his or her sentencing requirements, including probation, parole and/or restitution.

Right now, there is no communications link from the state to election officials to verify that is the case for every voter looking to register. Bennett said, for now, it will take some personal responsibility on the part of the potential voter to ensure they are not committing another felony by illegally applying to vote.

“Unless we know for a fact that you have not completed those requirements, I’m signing you up because I have no way to verify if you paid restitution or are off probation,” Bennett said. “If you check the box and are willing to commit a felony, then there is the personal responsibility.”


Bennett said there wasn’t anything special his office had to do to prepare for Tuesday’s law to go into effect, but he said state officials needed to work hard and fast toward making some clarifications. While murderers and sexual predators will remain ineligible to vote under the new law, Bennett said those crimes still have some interpretation issues to resolve, as well.

“Is DUI manslaughter a murder? What are we talking about here?” Bennett said. “If you have someone who is 17 and 15, is that a sex crime that keeps you from voting? I would rather have some clarification from the state.”

Newly elected Gov. Ron DeSantis agrees, but wants the law to go back to the legislature. Bennett said the Florida Secretary of State’s Office can clarify how the law is ultimately interpreted.

“I know the governor wants it to go to back to the legislature, but it doesn’t need to,” Bennett said. “I would have a problem with that. Clarification can come from the secretary of state and if it does, I think we have plenty of time to ensure those who are eligible to vote have the opportunity to vote under the law before the next election cycle.”

Is America Really Up Against An Internal Fascist Threat?

That should be apparent to anyone who's been watching the metastization of the worst features of right-wing populism within the American conservative movement and within the Republican Party. If the non-progressive bulk of the Democratic Party establishment is moving more in the direction of an Eisenhower Republican posture, it's been pushed there by a drastic lurch to the right-- exacerbated by, but by no means begun by, Trump... more a headlong plunge than a mere lurch, by the GOP. And this isn't going to get any better, primarily because conservatives don't see a way forward for the Republican Party within the confines of democracy. The radical right-- and not just a morons like Trump-- is done playing by a set of rules that they feel are stacked against them. And that means anything goes.

Conservatives freaked out when people without property were allowed to vote, when ex-slaves and their descendants were allowed to vote, when women were allowed to vote, when young people were allowed to vote. They flip out when their schemes to prevent voting by groups unlikely to embrace conservatism are prohibited and when their endeavors to water down the vote of those people are declared unconstitutional. Ever since the Patriots beat the British and their conservative American allies in the late 1770s, conservatives have felt they've never gotten a break.

Trump's buffoon-like reflexive fascism was easier for conservatives to embrace than it would have been if they thought they could get anywhere without the populists, nationalists and, yes, fascists, who worship him. Over the weekend Jeremy Rosner from the quintessential Democratic establishment polling firm, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, wrote an OpEd for The Hill, The Democratic and Anti-democratic parties, explaining a realignment of America’s two major parties that will not be mostly defined by demographics but by ideas about democracy and the rule of law. "To put it simply, we are headed for an era in which America may well have a Democratic Party and an Anti-democratic Party." Headed for? How many Republicans do you see standing up to Trump? Yes, a few... a very few.

"This realignment, in large part," he wrote cautiously, "was driven by a crucial strategic choice the Republican Party made over the past decade, as described in a recent piece for The Atlantic by Vann Newkirk II. Soon after the GOP’s 2012 presidential defeat, Reince Priebus... led a post-mortem analysis that was unusually blunt and prescient. It said the GOP must make big reforms in its outlook and agenda or risk electoral marginalization. In particular, it called for the GOP to support comprehensive immigration reform, liberalize its views on gay rights, demand reforms on corporate governance, and stop talking like a bunch of 'stuffy old men' who leave younger voters 'rolling their eyes at what the party represents.'" That was seen by the populist-right as a recipe for RINO-ism, so none of the recommendations were taken seriously, let alone adopted. "Instead," wrote Rosner, "it relied on tactics aimed at preserving power for a party that represented a steadily shrinking share of the population, mostly defined by non-urban, lower-educated whites. These tactics included gerrymandering, voter suppression, manipulation of the census process and efforts to stack the federal judiciary with like-minded jurists." Trump only made this tendency-- part of the nature of conservatism to begin with-- much, much worse-- and devoid of societal norms or even guard-rails.

If Republicans after 2012 decided to go outside democratic norms to preserve their power, rather than to reform and align with the values of a majority of the rising American electorate, Donald Trump in 2016 put that strategy on steroids. His presidential candidacy-- built on racially-charged language, offensive comments about women, nationalism and appeals to less-educated whites-- snugly fit the imperatives of a party that was drifting away from a majority of the public. So, too, the recent power-grabs by Republican legislatures in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan, which have moved to strip incoming Democratic governors or attorneys general of traditional powers, simply to preserve Republican power, even in the face of a popular vote for change.

Trump didn't order, nor coordinate, those moves. They came pretty naturally to a Republican Party obsessed with power and financial greed over and above any "American ideals," which most conservative never truly embraced anyway. Rosner is looking for a happy ending and suggests that "the Trump-era moves to preserve Republicans’ power may have crossed an important line-- a legal line. Disclosures by special counsel Robert Mueller and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York suggest that some on the GOP team lied, during and/or after the 2016 election, about their interactions with the Russians, and Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, has pleaded guilty to his part in a hush-money scheme during the campaign involving two women who say they had extramarital affairs with Trump. The march to apparent illegality was not confined to the 2016 presidential race. In the 2018 race for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, it now appears that the campaign of GOP candidate Mark Harris, the uncertified winner, may have run an illegal scheme to skew absentee ballots in his favor. The new legislative power-grab schemes in Wisconsin and Michigan almost certainly will face court challenges. Many Republicans who themselves are not breaking electoral laws or subverting democratic institutions are still condoning their party’s anti-democratic bent by refusing to condemn such actions. The slide toward extra-constitutional, illegal and anti-democratic tactics to preserve GOP power is becoming its new brand."

The Trump base is too thick to understand and conservatives who do understand seem to be increasingly opting for the Republican Party tribalism they're comfortable with.

Some analysts suggest issues of race, gender and education will be dominant drivers in upcoming elections, since those demographic fault lines were so visible in recent voting. But another dynamic may define 2020 even more strongly. Should the various Trump investigations produce more evidence of law-breaking, a defining dividing line between the parties could become the question of democracy-- which party is for it, and which is trying to subvert it.

Already, the incoming Democratic majority in the House has vowed that its first major bill will focus on democracy-- making it easier to vote, limiting big money in politics and ensuring presidential candidates are more transparent about their finances.

Will half-assed Democratic band-aid policies work while hypocrisy dominates the party establishment, essentially nothing more than another wing of deadly conservatism?

All this mirrors what happened after Watergate. A year before Nixon’s resignation, the dominant issues were the economy and the oil embargo. By the 1974 midterm, a focus on campaign finance reform helped to sweep in the 49-seat Democratic gain that became known as the “Watergate babies.” And two years later, the focus on ethics and reform was enough to sweep in a moral reformer and Washington outsider from Georgia.

It could be that Republicans in coming months will begin to change path on issues tied to democracy and the rule of law, as new revelations emerge about Trump and as they ponder the extent of their losses in the recent House elections. They might finally begin to act on Reince Priebus’s post-2012 urgings to adjust their policies and outlook. But if they continue to double down on preserving their power by any means, even as their voter base shrinks, their anti-democratic brand could become even more pronounced.

More likely, someone snuck into Rosner's room and shot him up with some pure diacetylmorphine. I'd count on Bernie winning before I'd count on the Republican or the conservative establishment changing stripes.

GOP Has Declared War-- On Democracy

Liberty Revisited by Nancy Ohanian

Last month, North Carolina Democrats didn't come close to winning with chamber of the state legislature but they did accomplished something very important in both chambers-- they broke the Republican supermajority in each. In the state Senate, the 34-15 Republican veto-proof majority is now a simple 29-21 majority, strong, but not strong enough top override a veto from the Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. Same thing happened in the state House, where the 75-45 GOP supermajority is now 66-54 (6 fewer than what they need to override). So... how is the GOP responding? By rushing through a bunch of anti-democracy bills they know will provoke votes from Cooper before the new legislature is seated when his vetos will stick.

Yesterday, the North Carolina Republican Party decided to try to sweep the stolen congressional election in the 9th district under the rug while passing another voter ID law aimed at making it more difficult for poor people, students and racial minorities to vote. (The first voter ID bill they passed was declared unconstitutional when a federal appeals court found that it was passed with the intent to discriminate against minority voters.

On Wednesday another North Carolina court struck down more legislation passed by the rogue Republican legislature in their lame-duck session to erode the legitimate powers of a Democratic governor-- the same kind of crap Wisconsin and Michigan Republicans are doing now. Yesterday, writing for Vox, Zack Beauchamp reported that the Wisconsin power grab is part of a bigger Republican attack on democracy and that the Republican Party turn against democracy may be a greater threat than Trump is. Only problem with that line of thought is that Trump is very much a part of the Republican Party turn against democracy. "The Wisconsin Republican Party," wrote Beauchamp, "is nullifying the results of the 2018 election. On Wednesday morning, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a bill that would seize key powers from incoming Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who defeated incumbent Gov. Scott Walker in November. Walker is expected to sign it in the coming days. The bill blocks Evers’s ability to change state welfare policy and withdraw from a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act-- two things he campaigned on. It limits the state’s early voting period, a move that would make it harder for Democrats to win future elections. And this is all happening during the lame-duck session before Evers takes power, rushed through quickly in an explicit effort to weaken Democrats and prevent the new governor from doing what he was elected to do. In essence, Wisconsin Republicans are telling the state’s voters that their preferences will be ignored." Republicans in Michigan and North Carolina are doing the same thing.

These power grabs highlight one of the most disturbing facts about American politics today: The Republican Party has become institutionally indifferent to the health of democracy. It prioritizes power over principle to such an extreme degree that it undermines the most basic functioning of democracy.


...The specifics of the power-stripping efforts vary from state to state... but share a fundamentally similar structure. Each one curtails the governor’s ability to make changes to Republican-backed policies like welfare work requirements, and political rules like campaign finance regulation. Republican-controlled legislatures are given enhanced powers to block governors’ moves through measures such as handing them control over state bureaucracies. And these bills all happen during lame-duck sessions, specifically subverting the results of elections that just happened.

...Democracy is premised on the idea that political power is only legitimate when exercised with the consent of the governed. But in reality, people disagree about fundamental political and moral issues; no elected government will ever have 100 percent support of the population, or anything close to it. The purpose of a democratic political system is to bridge that gap: to create a system for resolving these disagreements that everyone thinks is fair. That way, everyone will accept the outcome of the election as basically legitimate even when their side loses.

The post-election power grabs amount to Republicans declaring that they no longer accept that fundamental bargain. They do not believe it’s legitimate when they lose, or that they are obligated to hand over power to Democrats because that’s what’s required in a fair system. Political power, to the state legislators in question, matters more than the core bargain of democracy...[L]iterally stripping powers from officials of the opposing party after they win elections [is] nothing less than a rejection of the idea that the people should get to decide who rules them, a point that many political scientists were quick to highlight after the Wisconsin bill passed.

“By undermining the results of the midterms, the GOP makes a mockery of the notion that elections matter,” Jaime Dominguez, a political scientist at Northwestern University, told me via email. The Wisconsin law is “a breathtaking assault on the most basic democratic norm: the willingness of the loser of an election to let the winner rule,” Yascha Mounk, a fellow at Harvard scholar who studies democratic breakdown, tweeted.

There’s also a broader context. Republicans have, for years now, engaged in a systematic and nationally coordinated effort to rewrite the rules of the political game in their favor. What’s happening in Wisconsin and Michigan is only the latest manifestation of a broader anti-democratic trend, which in the past decade or so has become part of the party’s identity.

The spread of extreme partisan gerrymandering and voter ID laws, tools used by Republicans to marginalize minorities and other Democratic-leaning constituencies, are the most obvious examples.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) wrote draft legislation that Republican state legislatures around the country quickly and easily adapted into their own voter ID laws. Another effort, Project REDMAP, an initiative of the Republican State Leadership Committee, was a national coordinating committee helping Republicans at the state level put together extreme partisan gerrymanders in the wake of their sweeping 2010 victories.

In both cases, Republican or GOP-aligned organizations at the national level spearheaded a campaign to systematically undermine the fairness of the electoral system. It’s the flip side of the Wisconsin-Michigan-North Carolina laws: Instead of trying to nullify Democratic victories after they happen, they’re trying to change the system so Democrats can’t win in the first place. At times, they’re even honest about it.

“I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map in a way to help foster what I think is better for the country,” North Carolina state Rep. David Lewis, chair of the legislature’s redistricting effort, once said in defense of his gerrymander. And there is simply no parallel on the other side. While state Democrats have certainly gerrymandered-- Maryland being a particularly egregious case-- it’s not nearly as nationally systematic as it has been on the Republican side. And Democrats certainly have not engaged in large-scale efforts to suppress Republican voters or strip powers from Republican officials after they win office. Republican officials don’t seem to feel constrained by the basic, principled norms of democracy the way that Democrats are.

“There’s really an assault on electoral fairness, I would say, in Republican-governed states,” Daniel Ziblatt, a Harvard professor and author of How Democracies Die, tells me. “It’s really only in Republican-governed states where this has taken place.”

Republican indifference to democracy is a threat to the system

For most of American history, elections have not been free or fair. Vast swaths of the country were not permitted to vote based solely on their race or gender. Even after voting rights were inscribed in the Constitution, Jim Crow laws and campaigns of racist terrorism prevented African Americans from exercising the right to vote. It’s only recently, really since the 1965 Voting Rights Act, that the United States even approximated a fully egalitarian democracy.

And that’s what makes these Republican moves so alarming. It’s not that Republicans are anti-democratic, in the sense of wanting to tear down American democracy and replace it with an authoritarian alternative. It’s that they’re democracy-indifferent, unconcerned with the fact that their pursuit of power echoes some of the undemocratic practices we’ve seen in both American history and failing democracies abroad.

...“Once partisan goals trump democratic commitments, everything is on the table,” writes Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. “Scholars of democratic erosion know how dangerous this situation can be.”

It’s not clear what the bottom is-- when more responsible Republicans will start to see that they’re walking down the same road as authoritarian political parties like Fidesz. Is the Republican Party too far gone, too willing to countenance anti-democratic behavior, to be able to reform itself?

If that’s the case, then American democracy is in serious trouble.

As for "worse than Trump," rather than part and parcel with Trumpism is all about, I hope everyone read Mike Spies' piece in Mother Jones yesterday on illegal campaign coordination between Trump and the NRA. That also undermines democracy, as so much of what Trump does from week to week, as though he is being directed by... oh, I don't know... Vladimir Putin, perhaps? "The National Rifle Association spent $30 million to help elect Donald Trump-- more than any other independent conservative group," wrote Spies, something we've all already read about. "Most of that sum went toward television advertising, but a political message loses its power if it fails to reach the right audience at the right time. For the complex and consequential task of placing ads in key markets across the nation in 2016, the NRA turned to a media strategy firm called Red Eagle Media." There's plenty of strong evidence of coordination-- illegal-- between Red Eagle and the Trump campaign. "[T]he NRA and the Trump campaign employed the same operation-- at times, the exact same people-- to craft and execute their advertising strategies for the 2016 presidential election. The investigation, which involved a review of more than 1,000 pages of Federal Communications Commission and Federal Election Commission documents, found multiple instances in which National Media, through its affiliates Red Eagle and AMAG, executed ad buys for Trump and the NRA that seemed coordinated to enhance each other."

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a situation where illegal coordination seems more obvious,” said Ann Ravel, a former chair of the Federal Election Commission, who reviewed the records. “It is so blatant that it doesn’t even seem sloppy. Everyone involved probably just thinks there aren’t going to be any consequences.”

Has everyone forgotten where the NRA got all that money for all this Trump campaigning in 2016? Hint: starts with something that sounds like "Poo" and ends with "tin." And now, some good, solid, positive news:

The Incivility Of The Trumpist Regime

Monday night, Maxine Waters was Chris Hayes' guest on All In to explain how Señor Trumpanzee had misinterpreted-- purposefully-- her call for Americans to confront Trumpist Cabinet members into a call for violence against GOP Voters. What she had said had zero to do with violence and zero to do with GOP voters... it was simply about legitimate, constitutionally-protected protest about usually cloistered and unavailable government officials... very healthy. She then read a list of times Señor T had publicly called for violence against Americans. A few we should all easily remember:

• "Maybe he should be roughed up"
• "I’d like to knock the crap out of them"
• "Try not to hurt him but if you do, I’ll defend you in court. Don’t worry about it."
• "I’d like to punch him in the face."

Real civil, right? Speaking of which... Early Tuesday morning Mark Sumner posted an important essay at Daily Kos about the media's "civility debate." "The media demands for “civility”over the last three days," he wrote, "are not just being unfairly applied in a wholly one-sided manner-- dirty hippies aren’t allowed to comment on their betters-- they are themselves a dangerous and unreasonable demand that is threatening the nation."

It’s not just that major media sources have settled into a routine where when Donald Trump insults someone, their first instinct is to repeat that insult. Or that they are constantly in search for a comment from the left which, no matter how it is phrased, can be turned into the focus of some serious nose-lifted high dudgeon. It’s not simply that while the right punches, the press plays stenographer, and when the left fights back, they declare fighting out of bounds. It’s not even about the incredible spectacle of journalists who have personally been on the receiving end of both spit and thrown bottles while Trump rants about ending “political correctness,” suddenly chiding the left for refusing to be good little frogs while the water boils.

It’s that the demand being made for “civility” isn’t about language at all. It’s about throwing a ring of protection around the powerful. It’s about pretending that people whose actions wreck millions of lives on a whim, are cocooned from the consequences of their actions, not just because they have money, and connections, and resources, but because their power puts them on a different plane.

The idea that “politics” represents some kind of insulating blanket, that someone should be able to take any action in the service of a political office, then stroll out into the street and be treated with cheery “civility,” giving no consequence to what they’ve done in their day job, is not just foolish. It’s dangerous. That’s not civility. That’s royalty.

This isn’t some theoretical thing. The arguments here are not about angels on pins or the health of unseen cats. There are children being taken away at the border who may never see their parents again. And there are parents out there who will absolutely never again see their child again because he was gunned down for simply being black. And there are people out there whose lives are purposely being made worse, simply because those people-- those people who feel like they deserve to rule from inside Washington, and still go out to demand a good meal from the peasantry-- find them handy objects of ridicule.

The idea that political statements take place in some privileged space, and that pushing back outside the beltway is wrong isn’t just sickening, it’s surrender.

For many of the journalists engaged in this latest round of finger-waving, A large part of the argument is about who they value. They value those people they see, they meet, they talk with every day. Those people that they interview and quote are real people, worthy of nice things, even when they don’t say nice things. And the people who don’t have power, the people whose only appearance on television is as a literal face in the crowd, … are not. Not valued. Not worthy. Not real.

It’s why Sarah Sanders can lie directly to their faces every day, and threat them like a class of unruly third graders, and they’ll still moan in sympathy when Sanders is featured in a punch line. Because jokes hurt … not like the policies that Sanders is promoting that only take food and medicine from those who need it, and pump pollution into the air and water to the tune of 80,000 American lives lost. That tendency to place more import on those around you is only human. But the media’s tendency to demand it, is part of protecting the power structure.

When senators and congressmen wax lyrical over the magic age of civility past, even that is just another way of saying “when we once went to our country clubs together, free of our lessers, and the press coddled us even more.”

The press would be happier if Americans storming the castle would limit their efforts to the occasional neatly proscribed march. With colorful signs! And a permit!

The press is going to continue to be disappointed in us. If we’re lucky.

Democracy is messy-- and establishment media has always been worried about "civility"

A biproduct of reactionary Trumpism: A new poll released this morning found that half of us think the country is in "real danger of becoming a nondemocratic, authoritarian country." But maybe still civil? 55% see democracy as "weak" and 68% believe it is "getting weaker." About eight in 10 Americans say they are either very or somewhat concerned about the condition of democracy here. What an historical mistake we made... as a people! I hope it's not too late. We'll all counting on November! 

Now, please, go back up top and watch that lovely video of New Oder's "Age of Consent"-- and don't worry about all that civility in the beginning... it ends well. And you can sing to it, dance to it, dream to it.

Won't you please let me go
These words lie inside they hurt me so
And I'm not the kind that likes to tell you
Just what I want to do
I'm not the kind that needs to tell you
Just what you, want me to

We're A Happy Family-- Swamp Creature Roger Stone To The Defense

The Trumpist forces of authoritarianism are circling the wagons. Trump and his allies have no intention of going down quietly and care not a whit of what damages they do to a constitutional democracy— which they abhor anyway— in the process of preserving their own grasp on power. This week one of Trump’s long time closest confidents, wrote a “How To” for a neo-fascist website, “How The President Can Checkmate Mueller And Dismiss His Partisan Hit-Squad.” It’s what all the kids on the far right fringe are talking about— on Fox and Hate Talk Radio, among the worst partisans in Congress (like Florida’s neo-nazi stooge Matt Gaetz) and all through the fringes of the far right. Señor Trumpanzee “has only one viable option,” wrote Stone, “to repel the partisan lynch mob now nipping at his heels in the form of a taxpayer-funded pack of legal hyenas. These hyenas are masquerading as objective prosecutors under the droopy eyes of old reliable deep state hatchet man Robert Swan Mueller III, the special counsel appointed to ‘investigate’ the Clinton-Podesta-Schiff-Democrat Party-Corporate Media fabricated Russia collusion delusion. As the GOP Congress finally begins to stir, as events make it increasingly impossible to deny the true nature of Mueller’s handpicked partisan hit squad of Trump-hating, Hillary-supporting D.C. swamp lawyers and arrogant federal careerists, as firings and other departures quickly erode the carefully-contrived, totally-counterfeit veneer of credibility ascribed to Mueller and his hench-people, my advice to the president has only become more apropos…and more imperative.”

He urges Trumpanzee to act— to “kill two birds with one stone.” Trump has no sense of history and no dignity. Expect him to follow Stone’s recipe, at least in part, for and end to our democracy, regardless of consequences. Stone calls on him to “completely disempower and dismantle Robert S. Mueller’s fraudulent rogue prosecution gang, which is merely an extension of a larger corruption of power that is unparalleled in our history [and… to] use every resource at his disposal to prosecute the almost-seditious abuses of power by lawless Clinton-Obama FBI and NSA apparatchiks who:

1) Politically weaponized the federal government’s electronic intelligence capabilities to spy on a presidential candidate and his campaign,
2) Colluded with foreign and non-state intelligence agents to manufacture evidence used as false pretexts for securing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) warrants(s) that employed the national security laws of the United States to give illicit, illegal cover to this political espionage,
3) Used the fruits of this political espionage activity to damage or otherwise hinder this candidate after he had become president-elect and eventually president of the United States through surreptitious releases of the criminally-procured information,
4) Fabricated and instigated false allegations about foreign state collusion implicating the president’s election campaign and family members, and
5) Perpetuated this massive criminal fraud on the American people for nearly a full year by manipulating and abusing the investigatory and prosecutorial powers of the Department of Justice.

This is the kind of crap and simpleminded conspiracy theory pablum those on the fringes are being brainwashed with. Now, come omn— who didn’t always know that the Ramones were way ahead of their time:



And another one from Rocket To Russia. No coincidence, believe me, no coincidence.



Stone keeps referring to him as “President Trump.” I just can’t do it, so I’ve substituted the more accurate term, “Señor Trumpanzee,” each time Stone tries conveying some kind of legitimacy on him.

To this end, Señor Trumpanzee must begin at the intersection of these seditious current and former federal officials who had previously facilitated and covered up a similarly-breathtaking criminal fraud on the country during the previous presidential administration, to include the previous president.

El Señor T must order his attorney general to appoint a special counsel to investigate the Obama-Clinton-Mueller-Rosenstein criminal collusion that enriched the Clinton-Democrat crime syndicate by hundreds of millions of dollars and further embedded the power of the deep state operators who facilitated the multi-billion-dollar Uranium One pay-to-play scam.

This incredible scheme perpetrated by the criminal Clintons— and their coterie of minions and fellow travelers— implicates top officials of our federal government…including and especially the U.S Department of Justice, including and especially Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein.

An investigation is manifestly in the best interests of this country and of justice. It is not some political maneuver against el Señor’s cynical partisan persecutors or some clever machination to spare his presidency from the illegitimate cabal that is single-minded in its intent to fraudulently remove el Señor from office, by any means possible.

This course of action by el Señor is both legally and constitutionally necessary to preserve any remaining credibility in our institutions of government, which now hinges on whether or not justice will, once and for all, be visited upon the Clintons and their well-placed partisan accomplices, finally vindicating our system of law and justice after decades of yet-unpunished corruption that the Clintons and their ilk have insinuated into these institutions, bringing unparalleled and a now-accelerating degradation to American civic life itself.

Proactive Republican lawmakers have already demanded the resignation of Robert Mueller, as a start, and are calling for a thorough probe of his entire ad hoc operation, which is now coming apart at the seams with almost daily revelations of its rotten fraudulent core.

Mueller’s decades as an establishment federal careerist, which only ended with his ceding of the FBI’s top job to his good pal, criminal leaker and manipulator Big Jim Comey, offer more than enough grounds for Mueller’s disqualification for merely the appearances of impropriety and professional conflicts of interest they raise. They are of such incestuous nature as it concerns key figures of the conspiracy to remove the president that Mueller should never even have been considered for appointment.

That Mueller took the special counsel appointment without even blinking, despite his own close professional and personal connections to key figures implicated in the Department of Justice, National Security Agency and FBI corruption in service to ulterior partisan ends, via the Clinton crime family, was a major red flag, right from the beginning.

Reinforcing this red flag was the fact that Mueller’s entire (supposed) vetting for this sensitive, consequential special counsel position amounted a single-sentence approval letter signed by some faceless deputy attorney general barely a day after the appointment was promulgated.

Aside from Mueller’s blatant disregard for both attorney and public service ethics in accepting the special counsel appointment, some GOP lawmakers have also cited the former FBI director’s close involvement with the Obama administration’s secret Russian-U.S. uranium deal as more than enough reason for his immediate removal and the commencement of a real (untainted) investigation of the Obama-Clinton Russia-connected treason that Mueller has been instrumental in abetting and covering up.

So exactly what is the story with Uranium One?

Uranium One 101

The short version is that in 2010, when Mueller was FBI director, members of an interagency committee working under the Obama administration facilitated a highly-suspicious business deal that had grave public implication. The result of it was that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton effectively handed Russia and Vladimir Putin control over as much as 20 percent of the uranium production capacity of the United States.

As this deal was coming to fruition, after years of nefarious Clintonian machinations urging it along, Mueller’s FBI was investigating— and may have uncovered clear evidence of— Russian bribery and fraud to the detriment of U.S. uranium contractors, as part of a larger Russian (Putin) racketeering scheme to gain control of global uranium resources, namely by purchasing the power and influence being peddled by the Clintons to anyone who would meet their terms.

The FBI appears to have been investigating a Moscow-compromised uranium trucking company called Tenex As early as 2009. Tenex was allegedly engaged in racketeering through a pattern of bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Tenex was operating out of Bethesda, Maryland through a subsidiary named “Tenam USA.” The company was run by a Russian official named Vadim Mikerin. As the FBI was investigating Tenam’s alleged extortion and bribery scheme, Russia was seeking permission from the Obama administration and the Clinton State Department to acquire ownership in Uranium One. Despite evidence of Tenex’s and Mikerim’s alleged corruption as early as 2009, the Obama administration rubber-stamped a U.S. work visa twice for Mikerim, as late as 2014.

And what did our intrepid paragon of justice Robert Swan Mueller III do to thwart this alleged scheme and arrest its perpetrators? The answer is absolutely NOTHING. In fact, a confidentiality agreement prevented a key witness to the Clinton-Russia uranium treason from testifying. The Justice Department only just lifted on October 25, 2017, a full seven years after the fact, under pressure from congressional intelligence committee leadership.

Robert Mueller ensured that his own FBI investigators were effectively walled off from exposing the real players in our own government who were complicit in this epic influence-peddling scam founded on the Clintons’ ruthless greed and epic criminality.

Obama’s Justice Department and Mueller’s FBI knowingly kept Congress and the American people in the dark about Russia’s significant and quite possibly illegal manipulations involving American uranium companies and the highest officials of American government, possibly among them U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The result was that the Clintons’ criminal treason, in collusion with Russian nuclear criminals, went full steam ahead, unperturbed.

Mueller’s key role in the covering up of these Russia-Clinton uranium dealings constitutes more than enough justification for Robert Mueller’s immediate and unceremonious removal as an autonomous, secretive inquisitor limitlessly probing the newly-inaugurated president who defeated Mueller’s former Obama administration crony and cohort, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

There are probably a dozen other reasons why Mueller should be criminally charged but, for now, let’s just focus on this most heinous of schemes to which Mueller has been party: the transfer of our precious uranium resources to criminal Russian oligarchs to benefit the Clinton-Obama crime junta and sleazy hucksters from the ranks of the Democratic Party.

You might ask: How is it even possible that Russia (a supposed enemy) could acquire an in U.S. uranium capacity? The answer is that while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, was handed official U.S. government authorization to purchase a Canadian company named Uranium One which controlled uranium mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West...

Uranium One, as handed over to the Russians by the Obama-Clinton cabal, was effectively the creation of a Canadian entrepreneur named Frank Giustra. Mr. Giustra conveniently happened to be a major Clinton donor and a personal friend of Bill Clinton.

The Clinton-Giustra genesis of the Uranium One scam was detailed in a lengthy New York Times story in April 2015 titled “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.”

(Based on the old Grey Lady’s incessant animus for Donald Trump and its complicity in puffing up the Russia collusion delusion about the president, it would seem that Clintonian amnesia is the order of the day at the New York Times.)

In 2005, Clinton was flown on Giustra’s lavish private jet to Kazakhstan, a central Asian country once part of the former Soviet Union. By some estimates, Kazakhstan possesses around 12 percent of the world’s uranium resources and Giustra wanted to acquire ownership interest in several uranium mines.

Using his substantial network of contacts as a former U.S. president, Bill Clinton reportedly had arranged for Giustra and himself to dine with Kazakhstan’s despotic ruler, Nursultan Nazarbeyev. During the meal, Clinton handed the Kazakh president a propaganda coup when Clinton expressed support for Nazarbayev’s bid to head an international elections monitoring group.

Apparently it was of no consequence or concern to officialdom in Washington that this move by Clinton ran directly counter to American foreign policy and undermined much-deserved criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, Clinton’s wife, at the time a U.S. senator.

The new company Giustra formed to effectuate the Uranium One deal, UrAsia Energy Ltd., reportedly signed a preliminary deal giving it stakes in three uranium mines controlled by Kazatomprom, the government agency that runs Kazakhstan’s uranium mines and nuclear energy industry. In 2007 UrAsia merged with Uranium One in what was described as a $3.5 billion transaction, with the successor company retaining the name Uranium One.

Mukhtar Dzhakishev, president of Kazatomprom, subsequently alleged that then-Senator Hillary Clinton had pressured Kazakh officials to cede the uranium rights to Giustra.

Basically, Hillary served as the stick to her husband Bill’s proverbial carrot in making the deal happen.

According to the Washington Post, Dzhakishev “described the deal as ‘a financing mechanism of the Democratic Party’ and said a Clinton adviser named Tim Phillips championed it in meetings with him and other officials.”

From the same WaPo article:

When all was said and done, UrAsia’s investors controlled the new Uranium One. The chairman of the new company was Canadian Ian Telfer.

Telfer reportedly donated $2.3 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Frank Giustra, who had shepherded Bill Clinton’s influence with the Kazakhstanis, held a personal stake in the deal estimated by some reports at about $45 million. Through a spokesperson, Giustra said he sold his stake in 2007. According to the New York Times, one year after the 2005 uranium deal was final Giustra donated $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation with a promise of $100 million more.

One adviser on the Uranium One-UrAsia merger was Paul Reynolds.

Reynolds reportedly donated $1 to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.

A company called U.S. Global Investors Inc. held $4.7 million in Uranium One shares. A U.S. Global executive named Frank Holmes reportedly donated $250,000 to $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

This is just the short list of Uranium One-connected donations that flowed back to the Clintons. Although the Clintons had an obligation to report these donations, they conveniently waited until 2008 to do so, and only when the New York Times was poised to expose and publish details about this obvious multi-million dollar pay-to-play scheme.

As is modus operandi with all of the Clintons’ sleazy machinations, any questions or suggestions posed about the connections between shady Clinton influence-peddling business deals and the inevitable cash windfalls realized by the Clintons were glibly pooh-poohed as either mere coincidence (please!) or lacking any “evidence” (as if we need signed receipts and written agreements to connect the obvious dots of the Clintons’ epic lucre).

With classic Clintonian prevarication, treating the public as either blind or stupid (or both), the Clintons steadfastly deny the obvious quid pro quo connections at the root of the Uranium One Kazakhstan acquisitions.

Of course, the Clinton crony-beneficiaries of the deal knew enough to follow suit with similar huffy denials, lest they meet with an unfortunate premature demise like so many others who have dared run afoul of the Clintons’ scamming and scheming, all the way back to their Arkansas backwater days.

Russo-Clinton Treason: Phase II

Once Uranium One was set up with the Kazakhstani uranium holdings firmly in the control of Clinton cronies, the stage was set for the next step in the Clintons’ treasonous plot: handing over Uranium One and its holdings to the Russians, or more accurately to Vladimir Putin.

The Clinton cabal’s uranium wheelings and dealings began immediately at the commencement in 2009 of the Obama administration, under the close direction of newly-installed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In order for Russian nuclear entity Rosatom to purchase Uranium One the deal required approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.. The committee consists of top officials from nine different federal agencies. Not surprisingly, given the foreign subject matter intrinsic to the committee’s work, the key agency— the main driver out of all government players involved— is the U.S. Department of State, which was conveniently headed by Mrs. Bill Clinton in 2009.

To be clear, Hillary Clinton did not have the authority to push such a potentially-controversial deal through by herself. Such power ultimately resides with the president, in this case Barack Obama.

The CFIUS voted twice, first in 2010 and then in 2013, to approve Rosatom’s acquisition of Uranium One, thereby conceivably giving Vladimir Putin control of up to 20 percent of all U.S. uranium capacity.

It would be ridiculous to think that Obama, Hillary, Holder and Mueller would not have been well aware of the FBI’s investigation into the Russian racketeering and all of the bribes and kickbacks— in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act— that formed a backdrop to the Uranium One acquisition by Russia.

These sworn federal officials did not step in to expose and halt the tainted Uranium One deal. They may have cleared the way for it.

Robert Mueller appears to have known about the delivery of 10 grams of HEU (highly enriched uranium) to the Russians in September 2009.

The highly enriched uranium in question had been confiscated in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Energy in a “nuclear smuggling sting operation involving one Russian national and several Georgian accomplices.” A cable, one of several released by WikiLeaks, details Director Mueller’s mission to personally deliver the HEU to Russian law enforcement at the behest of Hillary Clinton.

Another interesting bit of “innocent timing” or convenient coincidence (take your pick): In June of 2010, the same month that Rosatom struck its deal for a majority stake in Uranium One, Bill Clinton spoke in Moscow for the tidy sum of $500,000, the second-highest fee he had ever received for a speech.

Clinton’s half-million dollar bonanza for 90 minutes of “work” was paid by Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin.. Renaissance Capital analysts talked up Uranium One’s stock, assigning it a “buy” rating and saying in a July 2010 research report that it was “the best play” in the uranium markets. Of course this, too, is just a “coincidence.”

If you think all of these connections and occurrences are too mind-boggling to accept as mere coincidence, hold onto your seat for this next one. Remember how the alleged Tenam/Rosatom racketeering activities were centered in Bethesda, Maryland at the Tenex U.S. offices? As rank-and-file FBI agents were assiduously investigating these Russian schemes to obtain U.S. uranium resources through corruption of public officials, Robert Mueller handed his longtime legal crony the Uranium One case to be buried and forgotten, clearing the way for approval of the Rosatom deal by the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton.

The crony’s name was Rod Rosenstein.

And the rest is history.

I leave you, good reader, to draw the obvious conclusions about what is really behind this cozy little bromance between Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein, the two lawyers who promulgated Mueller’s grotesque, unaccountable partisan hit squad that is clearly intent on taking out our president.

Let’s not forget what Donald Trump said to Hillary Clinton and the entire nation in a televised presidential debate on October 9, 2016:

After his election, Donald Trump chose to be magnanimous and forward-looking rather than follow through on his words and appoint that special prosecutor. Trump naively thought he could commence his presidency free from the tentacles of his seething, embittered dragon lady of an opponent.

Donald Trump genuinely did not want his presidency tangled up with the Clinton stain. He knew this would be impossible to avoid were he to see to the much-deserved prosecution of Hillary Clinton and her extensive syndicate of cohorts, cronies, flunkies and fellow travelers, including the likes of Mueller and Rosenstein, for their countless crimes and endless scandals.

Unfortunately for Donald Trump, they turned his debate promise around and gave him his “special prosecutor.” And now this “prosecutor” is ruthlessly and illegitimately driving towards nothing less than a coup d’état, that will only end with Donald Trump’s removal as the duly-elected el Señor of the United States.

It will be ugly. It will be noisy. It will be dirty. It will be extremely difficult. The deep state’s spooky guardians will threaten el Señor with everything they can summon. But, by God, it is high time for Señor Trumpanzee to end this despicable sedition being perpetrated by repugnant, monomaniacal partisan degenerates and begin the work of draining the swamp…for real.

Did you hear any of this from your moron brother-in-law during Christmas dinner? Any neighbors spouting this scary crap yet? They will.