What Does A Traitor Do When He Loses? He Starts A Constitutional Crisis!

"If Donald Trump's newly installed political hack of an acting attorney general takes action against special counsel Robert Mueller, the Democratic House of Representatives will bring Robert Mueller to testify publicly about exactly how the acting attorney general has interfered in his investigation. And the Democratic House of Representatives will move to impeach the president of the United States for obstruction of justice.  They will do it, they will have to, they will have no choice. The new members of the House will demand it."  - Lawrence O'Donnell, last night, 'The Last Word'

As Rachel Maddow put it last night, generally when a sitting president's party loses big in the midterms, he adopts a conciliatory - not combative - tone afterwards.  This hasn't been the case after the Dems yesterday reclaimed nearly a third (333) of all the state legislature positions lost in the Obama years, as well as recapturing the House. The House, let us be clear, confers full investigatory as well as impeachment powers. Any sane or normal, i.e. non-traitor president faced with this, therefore would have not adopted a bellicose tone the day after. He'd have bent over backwards to be a Mensch instead of an asshole.  This is why the WaPo proclaimed today that "Washington has now entered the prelude to a state of war".   Peace? You want peace? Not with Trump at the helm!

That is the nature of the depraved, deranged creature we have occupying the White House, as he defiles and divides the nation.   This is a despicable orange maggot who not only threatened the new Dem House if it launched any kind of long overdue probes ("I'll investigate them too!" ) but also fired the first shot in a looming constitutional crisis.

What  did he do? He fired current AG Jeff Sessions, and then -  in a blatant display of high thuggery and disrespect for law-  he appointed a two-bit political hack and Trump loyalist instead of the next man in line of succession, Rod Rosenstein.  The stooge and puppet appointed is  Matthew Whitaker , a name that will now live on in infamy. Why?  Because he shares the same gangster mentality as Trump, and a gangster attitude that says one is above the law, because you are backed by those who would corrupt the law. Why else accept an appointment for which all DOJ rules state he ought to recuse himself? Well, because now - after blabbing his intent as a pundit - he is in the very position to kneecap the Mueller probe he targeted.  This is why Trump dumped Sessions and inserted this jag off.  As MSNBC legal specialist Ari Melber put it last night ('Last Word'):

"It is very real tonight that we have public evidence that Donald Trump and Mr. Whitaker share one priority, which is overseeing the Justice Department to kneecap the Mueller probe and not recuse. His one beef with Sessions was that he recused. Whitaker has also said as a pundit there are ways to kneecap the Mueller probe by defunding it or putting pressure on it."

Is Whitaker's failure to reject the appointment surprising - based on glaring conflicts of interest-  not to mention prejudgments and broadcast intent to stop Mueller? Nope. Not when you have thug DNA in every fiber of your being. Thanks to primo investigatory work by The UK Guardian we now know this new acting attorney general was part of a company accused by the U.S. government of running a multimillion-dollar scam. In it, Whitaker was paid to sit on the advisory board of World Patent Marketing, which was ordered in May this year to pay a $26m settlement following legal action by federal authorities, which said it tricked aspiring inventors.

In other words, we have here not only a puppet stooge but a sleaze bag. Court filings in the case against World Patent Marketing - according to the Guardian --  show that Whitaker received regular payments of $1,875 from the Florida-based company, and sent a threatening email to a victim of the alleged scam.  Whitaker publicly vouched for the company, claiming in a December 2014 statement that they “go beyond making statements about doing business ‘ethically’ and translate those words into action”.

Whitaker’s role in the alleged scam was first reported by the Miami New Times in August 2017, shortly before he joined the Trump administration as a senior aide to Sessions.  This linkage itself came after shamelessly touting his willingness - as a so-so CNN pundit - to go to bat for Trump against Mueller if he needed him. Voila! Whitaker gets a nice cushy job at Justice as Session's puppet....err right hand man.

World Patent Marketing and its founder, Scott Cooper, were sued by the Federal Trade Commission in March last year. The government said it had “operated an invention-promotion scam that has bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars”.  The company was accused of tricking hopeful inventors into paying it thousands of dollars to obtain patents and licensing deals for their inventions. In fact, they “failed to fulfill almost every promise they make to consumers”, the complaint said.

Emails filed to federal court show that in August 2015, Whitaker cited his former role as a federal prosecutor in a threatening email to a customer of World Patent Marketing who had complained about the company to the Better Business Bureau. Whitaker is shown below with Scott Cooper:

In May, a judgment requiring World Patent Marketing to pay the government $25,987,192 was entered against the company by a federal court in southern Florida. Whitaker was not named among the defendants in the case.

Now the relevant details in regard to Dotard's continued treason and obstruction of justice, of which this appointment reeks...in spades.  Two weeks ago I predicted two things to Janice: 1) The Dems would retake the House in a blue wave (though the exact definition would be subjective) and 2) Realizing a Democratic controlled House meant possible impeachment and reinforced protection for Mueller, Trump would a) get rid of AG Sessions and b) appoint a Nunes clone in his place to run interference against Mueller.

This is exactly what Traitor Trump has done with Whitaker's criminal appointment:  flouting the statutes for succession at DOJ.   In doing so let us understand, Trump has also taken the media's attention off his midterm losses and onto this disruptive act of a self destructive madman.   What can Whitaker do? Well, a lot to make Mueller's probe and life miserable if he wanted, and for at least 7 months - by which end point he either needs to be confirmed in the Senate, or vacate.  In the meantime, according to  Sarah Isgur Flores, a DOJ spokeswoman, in an email: “The acting attorney general is in charge of all matters under the purview of the Department of Justice.”

One thing Whitaker has openly proposed, by which standard he definitely needs to recuse himself, is pulling back funding for Mueller.  Yes, he has publicly proposed choking off funding for Mueller’s investigation and wrote an article for CNN last year declaring that the special counsel was “going too far” and needed to be brought under control.  According to Whitaker:

"The president is absolutely correct,  Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing.”

So not only does the Traitor have a willing pawn to issue a 'get out of jail free' card on the Supreme Court in the person of Bawling Brett Kavanaugh, e.g.

He now has a surplus toady, a 2nd "Devin Nunes" if you will, running interference for him as acting AG.  (Though as Lawrence O' Donnell correctly warned last night, if Whitaker has any ruminations about interfering in any way - even via lowballing Mueller's funding - he had better think twice because he also will be investigated for obstruction of justice.)

The whole thing smacks of a blatant,  in your face act of desperation and crass thuggishness fully worthy of impeachment proceedings. (Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, said Trump’s replacement of Sessions with Whitaker was arguably an impeachable offence in itself. “This rule of law crisis has been a slow-motion train wreck for a long time,” said Prof. Tribe).

The aim is clear: To use a pet puppet and political loyalist to derail or defund the Mueller probe. This ain't astrophysics, folks.  It shouldn't take a Mensa-level IQ to spot what's going on here, and how it is tied to the Ds midterm success, now acknowledged as the 'blue wave' it is, i.e.

Steven Rosenfeld

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2018 Elections

It Was a Blue Wave Election—And the Republicans Are Feeling the Fallout

Fortunately, at least some Reeps appear to have found spines and good sense and are warning the Dotard not to do anything else. Senator Susan Collins was among the first Republicans to warn: “It is imperative that the Administration not impede the Mueller investigation … Special Counsel Mueller must be allowed to complete his work without interference."

Mitt Romney, who won the race on Tuesday to become a senator for Utah, aimed his first broadside at Trump, tweeting: “It is imperative that the important work of the Justice Department continues, and that the Mueller investigation proceeds to its conclusion unimpeded.”

WSJ columnist Dan Henninger today ('Trump 2.0 Begins', p. A19) finally conceded in one of his least objectionable offerings: "Trump will have trouble reassembling his 2016  coalition unless his behavior changes." 

Seriously? First, Trump will never change his behavior. He is a perverse, authoritarian narcissist for whom everything is about him. Asking or expecting Dotard to change his behavior is about as sensible as expecting the Pope will become a Buddhist monk tomorrow.  Second, this "coalition" was never real in the first place, at least in terms of getting the presidency for Trump.   On Nov. 8, 2016 MOST Americans rejected Dotard, by almost 3 million votes. In other words, the candidate who came in second in the vote was awarded the presidency through the outdated and anti-democratic institution of the Electoral College.  As Lawrence O'Donnell put it: "American voters did not want Donald Trump to be president".  So in fact there never really was a "winning" coalition, and even if one strenuously argues the EC is legit, it did not function as the Founders intended, i.e. in allowing an unqualified demagogue through.   See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/09/had-electoral-college-done-its-job.html

The fact is that the Blue wave was the embodiment of the majority of Americans' disapproval of the Dotard residency from the day it began. This majority has been waiting patiently, mainly in a resistance movement to deliver its verdict. It did on Tuesday, with a number of results still being counted.

Meanwhile, Moveon.org and other progressives activated a plan for mass protests across the United States, starting today at 5 p.m. in all time zones.  John Brennan, former CIA chief, also predicted that it was likely Mueller had already completed his report for the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who was yesterday relieved of his duty overseeing the investigation into Russian election interference and any collusion with the Trump campaign.

As I told Janice yesterday - and have the same advice for blog readers:  "Buckle your seat belts and hang on because we are a long way from any domestic tranquility!" 

If you are tired of the chaos and division, maybe you need to consider moving to Canada.

See also:
Fierce Critic of Mueller Probe Now Has Power to Sabotage the Investigation

And:

Will Bunch

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2018 Elections | Donald Trump

Trump Appealed to the Very Worst in America. Too Often, It Worked.

And:

Donald Trump Jr. Told Friends He Could Be Indicted This Week — and the President Is 'Depressed' About the Possibility: Report

No, It Wasn't A Blue Tsunami - But A Genuine Blue WAVE ("Pussy grabber payback") - Update

Dems celebrate with yet another big House win on Tuesday night.

The Reepster codger clique at the local BK this morning could barely contain themselves as they spat out invective at the midterm election results.  They babbled such predictable effluent as the following in one exchange.

"Yeah, just imagine, them damn Dems put a gay guy in as governor!"

"What'cha expect? It was the cemetery vote, and that's why them Demo-crats got the House too! I kept seein' all that blue on the tube, state after state."

"Heck, that's all them minorities  and migrants votin' who want free stuff. They like socialism and the Dems promised 'em lotta benefits."

Of course, that's why the Reepturds will soon be going the way of the dinos and Whigs. It's a cult party populated by  too many ossified oldsters, incapable of rational thought, and also doting Trumpster cultists who worship at the altar of the Dotard Joker: 


As gratifying as it was to hear these old farts piss, whine and moan - even if the basis was moronic- things did not initially look good on the home front last night. At around 6:30 James Carville appeared on MSNBC's 'Your Vote' and began pontificating that he "didn't really see a blue wave coming". This was soon after results showed the FLA governor's race likely going to Trump toady Rick DeSantis and Bill Nelson possibly losing to Rick Scott.  At that point Janice burst into tears, and I had to do some major psychological damage control by telling her Carville's definition of a blue wave was too excessive - likely 50 or 60 net seats gained.

As another commentator (Chris Matthews) appeared, he confirmed my take that Carville defined a "blue wave' too extravagantly."  In Matthews' opinion a 30 seat win in the House qualified as a wave and I agreed. It now looks like that's exactly what transpired with the Ds at 230 seats - or 22 more than needed to take the House back. Indeed, there were major House flips - from red to blue- in hard red Texas as well as Oklahoma. As I told Janice, "That should cheer you up!"  To which she replied, "Yeah, but Beto still lost to that damned Cruz."

I turned in by 11:30 MT  but Janice stayed up hoping to see if John Tester would win in Montana, but that contest still seems too close to call. Even if Tester loses, I will tell Janice that it's more or less offset by Jacky Rosen's win in Nevada over Dean Heller.  (Update: Tester ultimately won by a very narrow margin, reported the next morning. Needless to say, it almost made J's day - until the news of the Dotard appt. of Whitaker came on and she burst into tears once more- see next post.)

But MSNBC political commentators Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace put it best: "This is like an earthquake because the Democrats now control the House and can mount investigations" (Even though idiot Dotard barked this a.m. if the Dems do he will "mount investigations of them".  LOL!)

Also, Schmidt made no bones about the fact it marked a repudiation of Trumpism, at least from the nation's suburbs and cities - from which most House districts derive their political support. The rural areas? They predictably went for Trump Reeps, and that led to expanding the GOP margin in the Senate.   Never mind! Taking back the House, even in spite of gerrymandering and voter suppression was huge  - and it took at least a generic blue wave to do it!

The takeaway from all this is that enough American voters  (mainly women) brought a semblance of  sanity back to the nation, realizing that a one party state doesn't redound to any citizen's benefit.  Look, the GOP while it had all branches of gov't didn't do diddly or squat to control or check Trump's excesses, they merely enabled him. This required intervention by the adults in the room and arrived when the Democrats recaptured the House of Representatives.  At last now we are done with the enabling traitor goon  Devin Nunes, e.g.

Who as head of the House Intel Committee had been in charge of a third column effort to make the special prosecutor the target of his own bastardized, specious House probe, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/03/house-intel-committee-case-closed-no.html

Now the jig is up for Trump as the Democrats sweep into Washington in January with significant new power to shape the national agenda and especially to mount  REAL investigations for the first time that could change the nature of the Trump presidency. Make no mistake as one female firned of wifey's put it, "This is pussy grabber payback, for that Access Hollywood tape!") Indeed and now women are on track to take over 100 seats in the House.

At the top of the list of  House initiatives will be efforts will be getting Trump's tax records.  After that, the House Intelligence Committee will likely  reopen its investigation of Trump to do the job that Nunes and his traitor collaborators refused to do.

As Adam Schiff  had to say concerning the then GOP mock investigation:

"By ending its oversight role in the only authorized investigation in the House, the Majority has placed the interests of protecting the President over protecting the country, and history will judge its action harshly."

Now Schiff gets to shine a spotlight on  Trump as well as GOP House chicanery in enabling him, which every red blooded American ought to cheer. Yeah, Dotard the past few weeks has displayed a bunker mentality, sensing attack from all sides – Democrats, TV talking heads, distant caravans, hidden conspirators, the media. BUT...now he is about to face an opposition with actual teeth, many of them female.

In the end, let's be clear the House vote was a much needed referendum on the disruptive and disgraceful presidency of  Trump. The Dotard himself on Monday admitted that “even though I’m not on the ballot, in a certain way I am on the ballot.” The press, he whined, considers the election “a referendum on me.”  Well, it was and he failed the test as the sane contingent of Americans restored checks and balances.  That majority comprised mainly of women voters holding their fire for two years to issue payback - and they did- with votes still being tallied.

Thw  “blue wave” didn’t reach tsunami, so never reached the Senate, but it attained massive wave level on a pace to flip almot 40 Reep House seats. . Note also this massive flip occurred despite the supposedly "great" economy: low unemployment, rising DOW etc. under the Reepo reign.  In other words, the big D- House win likely should never have occurred under a normal presidency in such economically beneficial times. As one commenter (Ezra Klein)  put it: "Republicans managed to make people angrier even despite the low unemployment of only 3.7 percent.This  is a political failure of a startling proportion."

 Apart from that,  the Dems had  to overcome monumental gerrymandering,  as well as the earlier SC decision to shelve the Voting Rights oversight, and even more recently ruling against Native Americans voting in North Dakota because they lived on reservations and lacked a street address. (At the last minute, the ACLU came to the rescue in court but it wasn't enough to pull out a win for Ms. Heitkamp). Meanwhile, Reep degenerates voted for three soon -to -be jailbirds to keep their House seats: Duncan Hunter (CA),  Chris Collins (NY), and Ken Paxton(TX) - the latter for AG.

As one Dem observer in Texas put it: "If Paxton can't follow the law, how can he enforce it?"

Good question.  But see the Trumpies don't care about laws or norms.  Look at the shenanigans of Kemp in Georgia.

The shift in the House clearly constitutes a repudiation of Trump’s reckless policies, his violation of political and ethical norms and his repeated falsehoods. It is also an unmistakable rejection of the contemptible rhetoric of fear and prejudice that he has resorted to in recent weeks to rile up his base, especially his claim that a caravan of dangerous asylum-seekers from Central America was heading north to the border to “invade” the United States.

As for Colorado, the Dems took the governorship with Jared Polis besting Walker Stapleton by nearly 5 points.  They are also set to regain a “trifecta” of elected power for the first time since 2014.
As of 9:30 p.m last night, Democrats held strong margins in all five of the critical Senate races. This would give Dems the state Senate, state House and the governorship.

It was also gratifying to see Wayne Williams lose Secretary of State to Dem  challenger Jena  Griswold.  Williams is best known for punishing the Hamilton electors in Colorado, as well as other missteps. He deserved to go down in flames.

Another biggie was Reep House Rep Mike Coffman going down to Dem newcomer Jason Crow.  As all these results from state Senate, House results poured in Democratic strategist Steve Welchert, declared:

"Those are huge numbers. This is a royal blue wave in Colorado.  Colorado is going to be a blue thumb sticking out of the country a little bit.”

Another big win:  Coloradans voted Tuesday for Amendment A,  to officially abolish slavery.  See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/10/yes-ive-just-voted-to-abolish-slavery.html

On the downside, the Amendment 73 to fund schools, education, failed to pass, as well as Proposition 112 which would have increased offsets to fracking wells by 2,500 ft.  It is  an unfortunate outcome, not only because the noise and odor adversely impact home owners located within 500' of wells (currently the limit) but also because of the attendant health issues. (The Colorado School of Public Health showed in 2012 that those living less than a half mile - 2, 680 feet- from a fracking site, were at greater risk for neurological and respiratory diseases as well as congenital birth defects.)

Well, maybe next time around - especially as more newcomers moving into our state feel the adverse effects to their well being, as well as on property values. Just two years ago the slavery prohibition item failed in Colorado, but passed this time around. So who knows?

Update:  Nov. 9: As the size of the Dem Blue Wave continues to  increase to mini-tsunami level, with Kyrsten Sinema now ahead of Trump troll Martha McSally in AZ, and Stacy Abrams staying faithful to voters in GA - to count every damned vote -  despite Kemp's and Trump's pressure to cease.  Let's be clear the Reeptards, Trumpies, and GOOPr stooges are playing their usual card - calling "Fraud!"  Do not be surprised, as these fuckers are incapable of winning fairly and squarely, without putting their grubby paws on the scale. If they can't cop seats via voter suppression, omitting absentee or provisional ballots, or machine tricks  they play the vote fraud card.   Hopefully, enough citizens, including in the Dem party  - raise a hue and an outcry against these anti-democratic, nee fascist forces.  It is bad enough that a minority government controls most branches (SC, Senate, Presidency), we can't allow it to tilt even worse.

See also:

Steven Rosenfeld

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2018 Elections

It Was a Blue Wave Election—And the Republicans Are Feeling the Fallout

And:

Autocrats, Incorporated: Thoughts on Election Day 2018