Month: February 2020

The Nice Hillary? Klobuchar Surprises In New Hampshire

Posted on by LifeZette

By David Kamioner | February 12, 2020

If Hillary had been more personable, not the shrew we publicly know and loathe, could she have pulled off the 2016 general election?

Well, probably not. However, she could have made it closer in the Electoral College.

The same is likely true for the surprisingly ascending Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. The senator landed an upset in New Hampshire with a very legit third place. She is nice, in a know-it-all kindergarten teacher sort of way. Her accent is just short of the cast of “Fargo” and she looks better now than she did at the start of the process.

Klobuchar’s midwestern twang gives her the patina of sincerity and her moderate appeal plays especially to women.

MORE NEWS: Biden stuns New Hampshire voter by calling her a ‘lying, dog-faced pony soldier’

But when America is at peace and the economy is firing on all cylinders we hardly ever throw a president out of office. Plus, if she tried the cuddly Nurse Ratched routine on Donald Trump in a debate he’d have her for a snack.

So, that’s where she may go. But how did she get here?

Given the modern Democratic party’s tendency towards sexism, only her gender makes her competitive if she doesn’t have too many other negatives that a Democratic audience would take issue with. She doesn’t.

She, like the rest of the Dem field, makes a fetish out of getting Trump. Some of them though are still whining about impeachment. Not her. She has exited the wambulance and moved on to other matters, like trying to convince the middle class life is hard when they are undergoing one of the biggest economic booms in American history.

Klobuchar wants to go back to Obamacare, like Buttigieg, and that puts her at odds with Bernie and Liz on the issue. So far that duo have concentrated their fire on Pete regarding healthcare. But if Klobuchar does well enough in Nevada and South Carolina, not to mention Super Tuesday, she may well come in for a lock on their radar. In fact, Liz may try an end run on the female vote and hit her on not seeming, as opposed to being, feminist enough.

MORE NEWS: What if Biden drops out?

And oddly, Amy seems to have guy hands.

So we have a new player. An interesting one. And even though she would probably lose to the president, she needs to be taken seriously. The GOP “red tsunami” crowd should definitely take note. Lest their confirmation bias, play right into Dem hands. Again.

This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
Mitt Romney hit with new Republican resolution that would force him to support Trump or give up his seat
Pete Buttigieg demands all drugs be decriminalized, even meth and heroin
Pope Francis sides with the hard left, again.

The post The Nice Hillary? Klobuchar Surprises In New Hampshire appeared first on The Political Insider.

William Barr officially becomes Trump’s personal attorney—with power to persecute or pardon anyone

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On Tuesday, Donald Trump tweeted that the sentencing recommendations for his longtime associate Roger Stone were unfair. Stone, who was convicted in federal court on seven counts, including lying to Congress and obstruction, including death threats against a judge and threats to murder a witness’ dog, could have received 20 years in prison or more. The recommended sentence of seven to nine years was solidly in the middle of the possible range and was made by a quartet of veteran prosecutors.

But rather than ignoring Trump’s tweet, within hours Attorney General William Barr had instructed the Department of Justice to take an appallingly unprecedented move. The DOJ announced that it was overruling the action of the U.S. attorneys in order to reduce Stone’s suggested sentence—even as Trump threatened to pardon his henchman altogether. It was a moment when American justice teetered on the edge.

Then, overnight, it fell over completely. And the attorney general of the United States officially became Trump’s personal attorney.

Three of the four U.S. attorneys who signed on to Stone’s sentencing recommendation have now withdrawn from the case in protest. At least one has resigned from the DOJ entirely. Rather than seeing this as a moment to rethink how much he had been putting his thumb on the scale of justice, Trump responded by slamming down his whole fat hand. Trump spent the night mocking and threatening the career prosecutors, accusing them of being allies of Robert Mueller, then accusing Mueller of lying to Congress—one of the same charges on which Roger Stone was convicted.

It was a staggering sequence of events—Trump demanding a lighter sentence for someone who participated in both collusion and obstruction for Trump’s own campaign; Barr stepping in to give Trump what he wants; U.S. attorneys who had spent their whole careers with the Justice Department protesting in the only way available to them by resigning; Trump responding by mocking them and threatening to prosecute both them and others. In a matter of just a few hours, every possible flare had been launched to reveal that the Department of Justice wasn’t just being politicized—it was being corrupted, turned into an instrument of Trump’s will.

And then Barr doubled down. As NBC News reports, Barr has taken “control of legal matters of personal interest to President Donald Trump.” That includes persecution of Trump’s enemies, such as former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. That includes protecting Trump allies such as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. Barr isn’t turning the Justice Department into a political instrument—he’s already done that. He’s using his role to create revisionist history and to actively support and generate nothing less than corruption.

The entire Ukraine plot underlying the impeachment of Donald Trump revolved around a corrupt prosecutor general who persecuted political opponents but refused to go after his allies, no matter how large their crimes. And what Trump learned from this is was that that way of operating was a really good idea.

Fortunately, Trump already had William Barr on hand. Barr has already proven, with his manipulation of the special counsel’s report and his round-the-world conspiracy hunt, that he’s up to the job. And now the attorney general of the United States has officially made himself Donald Trump’s personal attorney—except that this personal attorney has the ability to protect Trump’s friends, persecute his enemies, and bring an end to the idea of apolitical justice in America.

Barr’s interference in Stone’s case follows his already reaching into that of Michael Flynn. Flynn, one of Trump’s former national security advisers, whose convictions were limited to lying to the FBI only because he had made a deal to provide information to the FBI in a number of other cases—including his illegal lobbying for Turkey and his participation in a plot to kidnap a U.S. resident cleric and return him to certain death in Turkey—began backing away from his deal and stalling on sentencing hearings last year. As a result of Flynn breaking his deal, prosecutors recommended a six-month sentence—and an angry judge seemed to agree that Flynn was still getting off easy. Then, in the midst of the process, Barr withdrew the attorney who had been handling Flynn’s case from the beginning and replaced him with a new attorney who rewrote the sentencing guidelines to suggest that there was no need for Flynn to be punished for his lying, obstruction, and defiance of investigators. Instead, the new recommendation was probation.

What’s happening in both the Flynn and the Stone cases is an overt subversion of the role of the attorney general and the Department of Justice. And Trump isn’t backing away—far from it. He has stated that he has an “absolute right” to tell the DOJ what to do. In addition to threatening the attorneys who withdrew from the case, Trump also expressed “congratulations” to Bill Barr in his new role of minister of justice, or prosecutor general, or whatever. 

When the Republicans in the Senate voted to allow Trump to get away with abuse of power and obstruction, he did learn a lesson. But it was the same lesson he’d learned before—that he can do anything. There are no laws except the laws that Trump declares. No justice except that which he permits. No republic remaining except what he deigns to allow.

That may seem like an exaggeration. It’s not.

Trump's War Against 'the Deep State' Enters a New Stage

Posted on by Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

Trump's War Against 'the Deep State' Enters a New StageWASHINGTON -- As far as President Donald Trump is concerned, banishing Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman from the White House and exiling him back to the Pentagon was not enough. If he had his way, the commander in chief made clear Tuesday, the Defense Department would now take action against the colonel, too."That's going to be up to the military," Trump told reporters who asked whether Vindman should face disciplinary action after testifying in the House hearings that led to the president's impeachment. "But if you look at what happened," Trump added in threatening terms, "I mean they're going to, certainly, I would imagine, take a look at that."This is an unsettled time in Trump's Washington. In the days since he was acquitted in a Senate trial, an aggrieved and unbound president has sought to even the scales as he sees it. Vindman was abruptly marched by security out of the White House, an ambassador who also testified in the House hearings was summarily dismissed, and senior Justice Department officials Tuesday intervened on behalf of Trump's convicted friend, Roger Stone, leading four career prosecutors to quit the case.More axes are sure to fall. A senior Pentagon official appears in danger of losing her nomination to a top Defense Department post after questioning the president's suspension of aid to Ukraine. Likewise, a prosecutor involved in Stone's case has lost a nomination to a senior Treasury Department position. A key National Security Council official is said by colleagues to face dismissal. And the last of dozens of career officials being transferred out of the White House may be gone by the end of the week.The war between Trump and what he calls the "deep state" has entered a new, more volatile phase as the president seeks to assert greater control over a government that he is convinced is not sufficiently loyal to him. With no need to worry about Congress now that he has been acquitted of two articles of impeachment, the president has shown a renewed willingness to act even if it prompts fresh complaints about violating traditional norms."The president is entitled to staffers that want to execute his policies, that he has confidence in," said Robert C. O'Brien, the national security adviser, who supervised Vindman and his brother, Yevgeny Vindman, also an Army lieutenant colonel, who was dismissed from the National Security Council staff even though he did not testify in the House hearings. "We're not a banana republic where lieutenant colonels get together and decide what the policy is."The president's involvement in Stone's case generated vigorous protests and calls for an investigation into whether he improperly sought to skew the prosecution in favor of a longtime associate and adviser. Hours after Trump's tweets criticizing the Justice Department for seeking up to nine years in prison for Stone, the department reversed gears and said it would ask for a lesser sentence.The Justice Department rejected any link to the president's tweets, while Trump insisted that he had nothing to do with the case. But the withdrawal of the four career prosecutors working on the case left the unmistakable impression that they thought something improper had happened."The American people must have confidence that justice in this country is dispensed impartially," Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, wrote in a letter asking the department's inspector general to investigate. "That confidence cannot be sustained if the president or his political appointees are permitted to interfere in prosecution and sentencing recommendations in order to protect their friends and associates."Trump has repeatedly railed against law enforcement agencies for targeting his associates. Among those who have been convicted are Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman; Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser; and Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer."The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them," he wrote on Twitter shortly after midnight Tuesday morning.By the evening, he was demanding to know why the Democratic power broker Tony Podesta had not been prosecuted and expanded his attack to Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is presiding over Mr. Stone's case."Is this the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure?" he wrote on Twitter, providing a false version of her role as well as his treatment. "How did she treat Crooked Hillary Clinton?"Trump has long suspected that people around him -- both government officials and even some of his own political appointees -- were secretly working against his interests. His impeachment for trying to coerce Ukraine to incriminate Democrats by withholding $391 million in security aid has only reinforced that view as he watched one official after another testify before the House.Witnesses like Alexander Vindman testified under subpoena compelling them to talk, but Trump blamed them for his dilemma. In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump complained at length about Vindman, accusing him of misleading Congress about the president's July 25 phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart. In fact, Vindman's version of the call closely tracked the written record released by the White House, but he did testify that he thought it was inappropriate to ask a foreign country to tarnish the president's domestic political opponents."We sent him on his way to a much different location, and the military can handle him any way they want," Trump said. "Gen. Milley has him now," he added, referring to Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I congratulate Gen. Milley. He can have him. And his brother, also. We'll find out. We will find out. But he reported very inaccurate things."Others involved in the impeachment process may also pay a price. The administration plans to withdraw the nomination for Pentagon comptroller of Elaine McCusker, a Defense Department official who questioned the aid freeze, The New York Post reported. While the Senate has not been notified of such a move, an administration official said it was likely to happen after budget hearings this week.McCusker could not be reached for comment, and a Pentagon official referred questions to the White House, which had no comment. Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters that he had "a feeling everything is going to be fine with the nomination." But friends of McCusker said she was aware that her nomination was in jeopardy.Just Monday, McCusker was the one left explaining the wielding of another Trump administration ax. Appearing before reporters in her role as the Defense Department's acting comptroller, she sought to describe why the Pentagon was proposing to eliminate the $7 million subsidy to Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for U.S. troops."We have essentially, decided that, you know, kind of coming into the modern age, that newspaper is probably not the best way that we communicate any longer," she told reporters.Another political appointee who may lose a nomination is Jessie K. Liu, who served as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia when her office prosecuted Stone; Manafort and other high-profile cases.She stepped down in December, when Trump nominated her to be the undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial crimes. But Tuesday the White House withdrew her nomination, a person familiar with the matter said.At the White House, Victoria Coates, a deputy national security adviser, has twisted in the wind amid feverish speculation about whether she would be pushed out. She has been the subject of a whisper campaign suggesting that she was the anonymous author of a book about being a member of the resistance inside the administration -- which prompted the literary agents for the actual author to deny the claims.O'Brien, Coates' boss at the National Security Council, rejected the speculation in an appearance Tuesday at the Atlantic Council. "This town is amazing when it comes to whispers," he said, adding he did not know who the author was. "I think writing 'Anonymous' is inconsistent with working at the White House or working at the NSC, so whoever wrote 'Anonymous' probably shouldn't be there."But O'Brien is presiding over a broader housecleaning at the National Security Council. Since being appointed last fall, he has said he wants to shrink the size of the staff to what it was under President George W. Bush. At the Atlantic Council appearance, he said he would be finished "by the end of the week" reducing the staff of policy professionals to 115 or 120 from the 175 when he took over.The ousted officials were detailed from elsewhere in the government like the CIA, the Pentagon or the State Department and are returning to their home agencies. According to an administration official, the original plan was to use this downsizing as cover to remove Vindman as well without looking like a reprisal.But in the end, the president did not want cover. He wanted to send a message -- a message that Washington has received.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company


Posted in Uncategorized

Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Picking up the pieces after New Hampshire

Posted on by Greg Dworkin

The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.

More on New Hampshire in subsequent days (it all happened last night!) Story of the night: Bernie won but didn’t run away with it. Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg are non Bernie placeholders and fought it out for second (and a late surge for Amy may have prevented a Pete win and vice versa). All three have a claim on winning something, and/but they still has to prove they can win elsewhere. Everyone else just flat out lost (Andrew Yang suspended his campaign last night). Now on to more diverse Nevada, Feb 22 and South Carolina, February 29. And Mike Bloomberg is circling out there.

 Meanwhile, the DOJ political intervention in the Roger Stone case is also an important evolving story. So big, in fact, that it cut into NH coverage on cable last night and shared the top story slot.

Not just me looking at NH this way:

Because he won with over 60% in a landslide in 2016. And he had over 150k votes. It�s a win, but also means he nearly lost half his voters or more to other candidates- notably two left-center candidates, Buttigieg and Klobuchar. https://t.co/FdFrknKIO2

— Joel Benenson (@benensonj) February 12, 2020

My take has been that if Sanders changes the electorate, he�ll be a force moderates can�t stop. Based on IA and NH he is not changing the electorate. But we�ve got 48 states left. https://t.co/n4psxS9XwG

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 12, 2020

But big picture:

The part of the electorate that has expanded isn�t the young Bernie coalition, but the educated suburbs. Question is if anyone can consolidate it.

— Conor Sen (@conorsen) February 12, 2020

NH Primary: Democrats hope this is the start of a political exorcism of President Trump, as their frustration has been very evident. "Job one is defeating Donald Trump," a man told Joe Biden in Hudson on Sunday. "I hate the man. I hate him." https://t.co/ZzAkOc5fpA

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) February 11, 2020

44% of folks who took part in the Dem primary said they were registered undeclared/Independent voters. Among them: Sanders: 25% Klobuchar: 24% Buttigieg: 21% Biden: 8% Warren: 7%https://t.co/iSHZFnoBOm

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) February 12, 2020

Keep in mind Bernie and Pete are more organized than Amy and have more staff. And while I love Elizabeth Warren, it was a very bad night for her (and bad for Joe Biden, who has no money and organization).

This is everything:

More than 8 in 10 NH Dem primary voters say they will support the nominee no matter who it is. pic.twitter.com/FhwDJQSAsR

— CBS News Poll (@CBSNewsPoll) February 12, 2020

So, Bernie has to grow and the non Bernie vote being carved up helps him.  And Mike Bloomberg remains the wild card.

Meanwhile, the other story:

BREAKING: Now, all four federal prosecutors on the Stone case have asked the judge to withdraw from the case. Michael Marando joins the rest of his team including Aaron Zelinsky, Jonathan Kravis, and Adam Jed.

— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) February 11, 2020

Asked about Roger Stone, Trump says he has an �absolute right� to tell the Justice Department what to do pic.twitter.com/AZRv9Aff7P

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 11, 2020

This will be known in the history books as the "OMFG It's Only Tuesday Afternoon Massacre" https://t.co/XSQ8M9MsAZ

— Michael Roston (@michaelroston) February 11, 2020

What if this one time, instead of "raising questions," it's providing answers? https://t.co/3pyuNAL9Fc

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 11, 2020

In other news...

Ron Brownstein/CNN:

Today may mark the end of the Iowa-New Hampshire monopoly

In this year's presidential campaign, the distorting effects of providing such power to two virtually all-white states in an increasingly diversifying party have grown impossible to ignore. The vote-counting meltdown in Iowa's antiquated and haphazard caucus system -- a process used partly to circumvent New Hampshire's law requiring it to hold the nation's first primary -- has further underlined the flaws in the existing order.

Just so you know, if Biden implodes as now looks very possible, it will take about 12 seconds for the Senate and Trump admin investigations of Hunter Biden to be dropped so they can focus their strong commitment to fighting corruption on Jane Sanders.

— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) February 10, 2020

Doesn’t matter that it’s bogus. Just understand what’s coming. Trump is already starting on Bloomberg.

Bloomberg's favorable rating among black voters in NYS (where they know him best): 61%. That's actually better than his favorable rating among all Dems in NYS. https://t.co/tVwXAKUye9

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) February 11, 2020

Nathan Gonzales/Roll Call:

RIP, election night

Vote-by-mail and close races could delay when the real story of 2020 is known

It’s time to retire the term “election night.”

The semiannual national tradition of staying up a few hours past bedtime to know who will control our government is over. From close races to “vote by mail” to human error, it’s becoming clear that counting votes no longer fits neatly into prime-time television windows. Reporters and politicos should prepare to practice patience when handling and digesting the results.

The recent chaos surrounding the Iowa caucuses was just a taste of what’s to come. Due to the lack of results, there was no clear winner, which created confusion rather than clarity in the search for a narrative on election night. But while the Iowa crisis might have been avoided with a working app, the 2020 elections won’t be as easy to uncomplicate.

Looking beyond the 2000 presidential election (which wasn’t decided until more than a month after Election Day), the 2018 midterm elections were a prime example of how the narrative of a cycle can evolve beyond election night.

Quinnipiac - 2020 head to head matchups vs Trump: Bloomberg 51-42 Sanders 51-43 Biden 50-43 Klobuchar 49-43 Warren 48-44 Buttigieg 47-43 If these are Trump's numbers after his "best week ever," he's going to have a really bad time in November. Absolutely brutal poll for Trump.

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) February 10, 2020

Gabriel Leung/NY Times with an excellent piece:

The Urgent Questions Scientists Are Asking About Coronavirus

Let’s start with what we don’t know.

What do we most need to know next? For epidemiologists who track infectious diseases, the most pressing concerns are how to estimate the lethality of the disease and who is susceptible; getting detailed information on how it spreads; and evaluating the success of control measures so far.

No. 1 is the “clinical iceberg” question: How much of it is hidden below the surface? Because the outbreak is still evolving, we can’t yet see the totality of those infected. Out of view is some proportion of mildly infected people, with minor symptoms or no symptoms, who no one knows are infected.

A fleet of invisible carriers sounds ominous; but in fact, an enormous hidden figure would mean many fewer of the infected are dying. Usually, simple math would determine this “case fatality” ratio: divide the total number of deaths by the total number of people infected. In an emerging epidemic, however, both numbers keep changing, and sometimes at different speeds. This makes simple division impossible; you will invariably get it wrong.

The State Department triggers authorized departure for non-emergency U.S. personnel in Hong Kong pic.twitter.com/aVqcfFPw0I

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) February 11, 2020

Another excellent piece from NY Times:

Inundated With Flu Patients, U.S. Hospitals Brace for Coronavirus

Resources are already stretched during flu season. With so much medical equipment and drugs made in China, public health experts are anxiously watching the global supply chain.

The mask shortage highlights just how dependent the United States health care system is on goods from China. Premier was told last week that a Taiwanese factory it had a contract with was halting shipments to the United States. In addition, Chaun Powell, the group vice president of strategic supplier engagement for Premier, said masks that are made in China are being diverted for use there. As a result, “there’s not as much supply to ship,” he said.

However you assess Trump�s re-election odds, the overall political dynamics of his presidency have been extremely stable. I think it�s still hard for people to process the idea that big events don�t necessarily change presidential politics very much these days. https://t.co/MYIcDufkQx

— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) February 10, 2020

Policy Tensor:

THE EVIDENCE FROM IOWA (SO FAR)

So, who should we bet on to oust Trump? If the pattern evident in Iowa holds, Biden and Sanders may both be viable against Trump. Biden is viable because he is working class and working class folk can tell that he is one of their own just by the way he talks — recall that class is passed on at your parents dinner table. As I suspected, the Biden tendency is the shadow of the class war on the Democratic primary. Sanders is viable because he does well in communities that are struggling. If you think that Trump is in the White House because large parts of the country are in trouble, and he has done little to help them, Sanders is your man. If you think that only a man who can out-blue collar Trump can oust Trump, Biden’s your guy. If progressives want Sanders instead of Biden because the former can be expected to demolish the neoliberal political economy, they must begin by losing the Boasian scold.

Ultimately, the governing question is whether culture or economics is more important to the meaning-making of the working class. For at issue in what Lind calls the New Class War, is not just the vertical and spatial polarization of value-added, income and wealth, but the concentration of symbolic production and the cultural desertification of vast swaths of America. Intellectuals have for too long paid attention to the former at the cost of the latter. It is time to pay attention to the historical sociology of the white working class — the dominant strata of American society. And to bring geography back to the center of political analysis, where it belongs.

Next time someone says �I don�t think Trump is racist� - show them ��. You can�t pick your family but you can pick who you hire. Show me the people you hire and you are showing me you.https://t.co/A4VJdXiG9E

— Jeff Kemp (@jkempcpa) February 11, 2020

Dana Milbank/WaPo:

Trump’s budget reveals a tremendous fraud

Trump promised to balance the budget, retire the debt, protect and enhance entitlements, and grow the economy at a rate far beyond anything we’ve seen. But he did none of that, and now he asks: “Who the hell cares about the budget?”

The fraud is in the open.

How to win elections https://t.co/Tph0AmO2J2

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) February 11, 2020

The Senate impeachment trial was conducted *unfairly,* voters say by a 24-point margin. (59% to 35%) New Quinnipiac Poll:https://t.co/9AdFdHpNu5 https://t.co/vj89EzKS6N

� Heidi Przybyla (@HeidiNBC) February 10, 2020

And more on our corruption story (not the DOJ):

NEW: Trump's AG secretary has quietly confirmed he won�t order an internal investigation into why a corruption-riddled Brazilian meatpacker got millions in farm bailouts. His reason: The company is already under several other investigations so why bother. https://t.co/AEwouxXL50

— Chris Sommerfeldt (@C_Sommerfeldt) February 12, 2020