Tweet Early, Tweet Often

Tweeting All Day:  An increasingly erratic Trump started his Wednesday by retweeting three inflammatory anti-Muslim videos from Britain First, a fringe group of right wing anti-Muslim activists.  One was an Al-Qaeda propaganda video and another claimed to show a “Muslim” migrant beating up a Dutch boy, except that it turns out that the assailant depicted in the video wasn’t a migrant and wasn’t Muslim. Sarah Huckabee Sanders who never fails to go even lower when Trump goes low, defended the despicable tweets by saying “the threat is real, it needs to be addressed.” To say that Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, who was on a visit to Iraq when she learned of the tweets, was distressed would be an understatement.  Her office responded to Trump’s idiocy by saying “it is wrong for the president to have done this, Britain First seeks to divide communities by their use of hateful narratives that peddle lies and stoke tension.”  Wow, if Trump lived in Britain, he’d fit right in with the Britain First crowd. Unable to let May have the last word, last night Trump tweeted back “don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islam Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom.”  Way to go Trump, good job offending our long term ally and “special friend.”  About the only people happy with Trump’s tweets were Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke who tweeted “Thank God for Trump! That’s why we love him” and the various lawyers fighting against his travel ban.  Once again Trump has handed them an unexpected gift, more proof that the ban is motivated by religious bigotry.  Words matter and Trump tweets matter even more.

Men Behaving Badly:  Moments after NBC announced that Matt Lauer had been “terminated,” for inappropriate sexual behavior, Trump, the man who now claims that his image and voice were edited into the “fake” Access Hollywood tape and who has managed to escape punishment for what he calls “locker room behavior” launched another set of tweets, this time celebrating Lauer’s dismissal and suggesting that executives at NBC and at its parent Comcast should also be fired for “putting out so much Fake News, adding “check out Andy Lack’s past.” Lack is the chairman of NBC News.  He also wondered will they terminate “low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the ‘unsolved mystery’ that took place in Florida years ago?”  That last comment referred to the death of an intern who worked in “Morning Joe” Scarborough’s office in 2001 when he was a Florida Congressman. Although terribly sad, there was nothing  mysterious or controversial about the intern’s death, she died after collapsing from a heart condition.  The attack on Morning Joe wasn’t just small minded, it was also libelous, and is just another one of his ever escalating smacks at all members of the press who don’t work for Fox News, Breitbart or one or another alt-right rags.  CNN, his favorite target, announced that their correspondents will be boycotting this year’s White House Christmas party, Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded by tweeting “Christmas comes early, Finally good news from @CNN.”  As of now no other stations have joined the CNN boycott, but April Ryan, one of the few African American White House correspondents, who has been a frequent press secretary target won’t be attending because for the first time in twenty years she wasn’t invited.  Later in the day Minnesota Public Radio announced that they were terminating their contract with Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegon fame after learning of allegations that he had engaged in inappropriate behavior. The socially awkward Keillor, who just the day before had written a rambling defense of Senator Al Franken published in The Washington Post, said that the allegation refers to a time that he “inadvertently“ touched a woman’s back when trying to comfort her.  The Washington Post said that at this time they are not revising their relationship with Keillor, pending a review. As to Lauer, his womanizing ways weren’t much of a secret before yesterday but to the extent that accusations about his seriously gross behavior are true, and they most likely are, he is now officially another Weinstein Despicable.  The embattled Congressman Conyers hasn’t resigned, yet, but one of his aides reports that he won’t seek reelection, not much of a concession for a guy who is 88 years old and who, even before recent events, had been reported to be showing signs of dementia.     

Tax Reform:  Trump went to Missouri yesterday to continue pitching his tax reform bill.  While there he rallied the gullible crowd by telling them that they were the chief beneficiaries of the bill, a bigly lie since none of them appeared to be millionaires or billionaires.  He also asserted that the tax plan would cost him a fortune, another bigly lie since he is expected to save about $20 million a year, chump change for a billionaire but significant for the rest of us mere mortals.  And of course he attacked Missouri’s Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, a former prosecutor, calling her out as pro-crime, pro high taxes and pro illegal immigration.  While he was traveling Republican leadership continued to push the Senate tax plan forward.  It’s not done yet, they are still tinkering, possibly increasing the corporate tax rate up to 22% from Trump’s desired 20% in order to raise hundreds of billions more to pay for the child care credit advocated by favorite daughter Ivanka and a decrease in the rate applicable to pass-through entities for Senators Johnson and Daine.  Other areas still under discussion include Senator Corker’s desired but controversial tax rate trigger, the feature that would kick in when the deficit ballooned into the stratosphere, and Senator Collins $10,000 deduction for state and local property taxes. Though Collins still hasn’t committed to support the bill, she is being seriously courted and has been promised that leadership would support legislation “stabilizing”  the health insurance markets if she votes yes.  Late last night the Joint Committee on Taxation report that Majority Leader McConnell had been trying to avoid was finally released and to no one’s surprise the news isn’t all that good, though more than 60% of households would see at least a very modest tax cut in 2019, that percentage would drop in subsequent years so that in ten years 60% of households would see little, if any, cut in their taxes and many would see increases.  Corporations however, make out like bandits, three of them, Coca Cola, Pfizer and  Cisco Systems, have already said that they would use their tax savings to buy back stock, great for shareholders but not so good for wage growth or new investment.

Other Stuff:  The North Korean missile that lit up the skies over the Sea of Japan this week was even more advanced and capable than previously reported.  Son-in-Law Kushner, who is turning out to be much less capable than he’d like us to believe, spent some time with Special Counsel Mueller a few weeks ago.  He had been brought in to answer some targeted questions about former national security advisor Flynn, primarily to determine if he had anything to say that would prove exculpatory for Flynn.  If he did, it wasn’t enough to stop Flynn from deciding he should cooperate with Mueller. Yesterday Mueller delayed some planned Grand Jury testimony, another sign that his team is working out a deal with Flynn.  One final note, on Tuesday the first round in the legal battle over interim leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau went to Trump when a federal judge that he recently appointed denied a request for a temporary restraining order to keep his choice for the job, Mick Mulvaney, from serving as acting director. Don’t be surprised if no one answers the phone next time you call to complain about excessive bank fees or mysterious credit card accounts.       

Et Tu Matt Lauer

Another Step Forward: Tax reform legislation took a major step forward yesterday after the Senate version of the bill was voted out of committee on a party line vote.  Despite his claims that he would never vote for any tax plan that would increase the deficit by even a penny, Senator Corker, one of Trump’s biggest critics, proved that at the end of the day he really is just another complicit Republican more concerned about satisfying donors than the concerns of the ordinary folks.  He climbed on board apparently because a $1.5 trillion increase in the deficit is close enough to a penny to be just fine by him.  Before voting yes he extracted some kind of commitment that a trigger will be inserted into the legislation requiring taxes to be increased if economic growth doesn’t cover the deficit increase by some future date.  Senator Johnson, the other committee member who had been threatening to hold up the bill, voted yes too after he was promised better treatment for pass-through entities.  The bill is now poised to move to the Senate floor.  McConnell doesn’t yet have the fifty votes he needs but he’s getting closer.  The bill still differs substantially from the House version so even if it passes the Senate it will not be a done deal but it is substantially closer to passage than it should be.  The stock market is positively exuberant, for now.  Democrats are far less pleased, even the vulnerable red state senators who had been expected to feel pressured to vote for the bill are likely to remain in the no column.   

More Missiles:  North Korea launched another intercontinental ballistic missile yesterday, one that puts all parts of the US in striking distance.  China expressed their extreme concern and Russia blamed the US for showing a lack of constraint by ramping up sanctions and continuing joint  exercises with South Korea. South Korea responded by launching three of its own missiles in a show of their strength.  In a press conference following the launch Trump said “it is a situation that we will handle” and vowed to “take care of it,” whatever that means.  After the press conference he spoke with Japan’s Prime Minister Abe and they both agreed that China needs to “play an increased role to tackle the crisis.” Somewhere in China, Xi sighed.  The UN plans to hold another one of their crisis meetings.  One thing that was different about Trump’s reaction is that this time he also blamed Chuck and Nancy.  They were in his cross hairs because  after he preemptively attacked them in the morning by tweeting out they he would be “meeting with ‘Chuck and Nancy’ today about keeping government open and working.  Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don’t see a deal!”  they responded by refusing to attend his meeting.  Trump then pulled a “Clint Eastwood,” going ahead with the meeting without Chuck and Nancy, replacing them with empty chairs and inviting the press in for a photo-op so that they could broadcast Chuck and Nancy’s empty seats.  The stunt went about as well for Trump as it did for Eastwood when he spoke to an empty chair at the 2012 Republican convention, leaving many to quesiton his sanity.  For their part Chuck and Nancy agreed to the last funding extension because they thought that they had a deal with Trump to pass Dreamers legislation.  With no action on that front and Trump’s threatening morning tweet, they’ve had it with him and have no interest in playing by his rules. Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McConnell can’t pass a budget extension without Democratic support because a number of Republican Congressman never vote yes on anything to do with the budget and McConnell can’t muster sixty votes without Schumer’s support.  If it comes to it, Trump and his Republican enablers will do their best to shift the blame for a shutdown onto Chuck and Nancy but try as they might controlling all three seats of government comes with responsibility, the blame will rest in Republican hands.  As to Trump’s sanity, it also appears to be slipping.  Not only is he now questioning the integrity of the Access Hollywood tape, a number of Senators who prefer to remain nameless, say that he has started questioning Obama’s birth certificate again too. 

Flynn, Flynn, Flynn: Trump’s sanity slippage may be attributable to the increasing number of stories about his good friend Flynn’s nefarious activities.  ABC news reported that one of Flynn’s lawyers was seen walking into Special Counsel Mueller’s office on Monday, bolstering expectations that Flynn is now cooperating with Mueller.  Also, more details are coming out about some of the things that Flynn did while he was serving as Trump’s security advisor.  It’s been known for a while that Flynn had advised and served as a consultant to some US companies involved in a controversial plan to build dozens of nuclear reactors throughout the Middle East.  The Wall Street Journal reports that he continued to advocate for the private sector clients behind the plan even after he was inside the White House so much so that before he was fired he was involved in the preparation of a memo authorizing the project that he, and his clients, wanted Trump to sign. The recent guilty plea by Reza Zarrab, the Turkish gold trader involved in violating sanctions against doing business with Iran, is also problematic for Flynn because Zarrab’s release was one of the issues that Turkish officials brought up with him last December at the meeting where they also discussed and possibly offered Flynn $15 million for his help with the “forced extradition” of Fethullah Gulen, the cleric that Turkish leader Erdogan wants sent back to Turkey. In exchange for leniency, Zarrab is now cooperating with US prosecutors, a problem for both Erdogan because of the implication that Turkey was involved in the Iran violations and a problem for Flynn because of expectations that Zarrab is also working with Mueller.  Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is scheduled to testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee this week.  Last December, Flynn, Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon met with then Russia Ambassador Kislyak and Mohammed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi in one of the meetings they all conveniently forgot to disclose.  Following their tete-a-tete, bin Zayed organized a back channel meeting for the Trumpsters with Russian officials in the Seychelles Islands.  Because the attendance of either Flynn or Kushner would have been hard to hide, Erik Prince attended instead. Though information about the meeting has been known for a while, the name of the Russian who attended the meeting had not previously been disclosed. We now know that Putin’s representative was Kiril Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, another one of those sanctioned government owned Russian entities.   For the record Dmitriev acknowledges being in the Seychelles at that time, but says he was just there to work on his tan. Maybe, just maybe Prince will have something to say about the meeting.

More Men Behaving Badly:  The Congressional Black Caucus is planning to hold a closed door meeting during the day where they are expected to press for long time Congressman John Conyers’ resignation.  In all likelihood he will make an announcement that he’s on his way out very soon.  Assuming he resigns, he will have plenty of company at the commiseration bar.  This morning NBC fired their long time morning host Matt Lauer for sexual improprieties.  In the mean time, Alabama senatorial candidate Moore is moving up in the polls and Trump is still president.        

Word of the Year

The Codebreakers:  November is National Native American Heritage Month so like presidents before him Trump welcomed surviving members of the Navajo code talkers to the White House to honor them for their brave World War II and Korean war service.  During the ceremony, in front of the elderly heroic former Marines, Trump slammed Senator Elizabeth Warren by throwing in a snide reference to the “Pocahontas” currently serving in the Senate.  The elegant Navajos ignored his ethnic slur during the ceremony and were also too classy to say anything about a large painting of Trump’s hero Andrew Jackson, the man responsible for the killing of so many of their ancestors.  After the ceremony Senator Warren responded to Trump by saying "there he was, at a ceremony to honor Native Americans, men who have really put it all on the line to save American lives, to save lives of people, our allies, during World War II, really amazing people. And President Trump couldn't even make it through a ceremony to honor these men without throwing in a racial slur."  Warren wasn’t the only one who found his comment offensive, Russell Begaye the Navajo Nation President later commented “All tribal nations still battle insensitive references to our people. The prejudice that Native American people face is an unfortunate historical legacy." When asked about criticism of Trump’s culturally insensitive remarks, Sarah Huckabee Sanders reached into her bag of pathetic Trump excuses and said that “was certainly not Trump’s intent, then she went on to slam Warren for lying about her heritage to further her career, a reference to Warren’s old claim that she is part native American. Sanders conveniently ignored Trump’s long time assertion that his family was of Swedish ancestry, a claim his father originated to distance the family from their German heritage when they were marketing apartments to Jewish residents of Queens.  Warren had been on Trump’s mind because of her role in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the entity that Republicans believe is unnecessary because banks and financial institutions “never” treat consumers unfairly.  Budget Director Mulvaney showed up for work there yesterday, pushing aside Leandra English the competing bureau head who continues to assert her position in court.  He immediately started to dismantle the bureau that he hates so much by imposing a hiring freeze and putting a “temporary” halt on new regulations and guidance.  Notably, later in the day Wells Fargo, one of those financial institutions that consumers don’t need to be protected from revealed that they’ve screwed up again, this time the bank that previously issued 2 million credit cards in the names of unwitting clients, overcharged customers for their foreign exchange transactions. Count Mulvaney as another one of Trump’s complicit guys, so fitting since complicit is Dictionary.com’s word of the year.   

Tax Legislation Marches On:  In a pattern reminiscent of the health care battle, the Congressional Budget Office released its report on the Senate tax reform plan and it hurts the poor even more than originally thought. By 2019, those earning less than $30,000 would be worse off, by 2021 those earning $40,000 or less would be net losers and by 2027, most people earning $75,000 would be worse off.  Much of this hit will occur because of cutbacks in government aid for health care. Republican leadership isn‘t all that concerned because millionaires would be big beneficiaries so despite the bad news Republican leadership still plans to move forward by focusing on meeting the requirements of their problem senators, several of whom need to see changes that will further benefit higher earners.  Some accommodation is likely to be made to provide better treatment for small corporations to meet the requirement of Senators Johnson and Daines, by small corporations they mean lowering tax rates for pass-through entities, a change that will also benefit Trump one of those higher earners whose portfolio of real estate investments would qualify for the change.  A few of the deficit hawks including Senators Corker, Flake and Oklahoma’s James Lankford want some type of trigger mechanism that would kick in and raise taxes if the economic growth projections that are key to the plan and are necessary to defray even larger increases in the deficit don’t materialize over a predetermined time period.  Satisfying Corker is important because tax legislation can’t make it through committee and onto the Senate floor without his vote since Republicans hold only a one vote majority on the Budget Committee and no Democrats will be onboard.  That vote is supposed to take place later today.   

Moore from Alabama:  Former Judge Roy Moore, Steve Bannon and Donald Trump’s favorite child molester, finally emerged from his cave on Monday and gave a rousing speech to his dedicated fan base in rural northeast Alabama, sticking to his Bannonesque script he claimed that he had an unblemished reputation not including the two times he was forced to step down from the bench and denied all assertions that he had ever made unwanted romantic or sexual advances to any of those lying women who accuse him of going after them during their teenage years.  Moreover, he likened the assault on his character and the convenient timing of the accusations to the claims against Trump made during the presidential campaign and the allegations of Russian collusion, that he said were invented to interfere with Trump’s legislative agenda. The crowd gave him a standing ovation.  Alabama’s other Senator, Republican Richard Shelby, must have missed the speech, he revealed that he has already mailed in his absentee ballot and that he voted for someone else. Though Trump continues to support Moore from afar, Sarah Huckabee Sanders reports that he is too busy with other things like taxes and golf to join him on the campaign trail.  The controversial right wing Project Veritas group led by conservative activist James O’Keefe has been busy trying to bolster Moore’s chances the old fashioned way, with lies and deception.  O’Keefe had one of his female plants, tell a Washington Post reporter that she had been impregnated by Moore when she was fifteen and that Moore had then taken her for an abortion.  To O’Keefe’s dismay, the reporter researched the woman’s story, found inconsistencies, uncovered her lies and then, instead of publishing the false accusation, an act that would have damaged the veracity of Moore’s other accusers, the Washington Post disclosed the O’Keefe and Project Veritas “false news” trap. By the way, Trump donated $10,000 to Project Veritas in 2015.  In other Alabama election news, Lee Busby a retired Marine colonel who once served as an aide to Chief of Staff Kelly, is launching a last minute write-in campaign to compete against Moore and his Democratic opponent, Doug Jones.  With the election scheduled for December 12, it highly unlikely that Busby stands any chance of victory.  It’s also not known who he will hurt more, Moore or Jones.      

           

Transgender Ruling:  On Monday a federal judge ruled that the military must move forward with plans to allow transgender recruits by January 1. The Justice Department had filed notice that it planned to appeal an injunction preventing the implementation of Trump’s plan to block transgender recruits and had asked the judge to clarify that her court's earlier ruling did not prevent Defense Secretary Mattis from "exercising his discretion to defer the January 1 effective date” while the Justice Department pressed Trump’s case.  Rather than clarifying that Mattis could delay recruiting transgender soldiers while litigation continued the judge did the opposite, clarifying that the court's injunction meant the January date has to stay.  Secretary of State Tillerson’s Trump mandated plans to reorganize, and by reorganize think dismantle, the State Department are also facing a speed bump. Last night Bloomberg News reported that the senior official responsible for overseeing the State Department reorganization, a plan that has been criticized by current and former US diplomats, has stepped down. The State Department is still in disarray but now it’s missing its full time reorganizer and Jared Kushner, the renaissance man who previously served many diplomatic functions, can’t step in to help because he has had his wings clipped by Chief of Staff Kelly who has cut back on his expansive list of responsibilities leaving him to focus solely on Middle East peace, innovation, and his legal woes.  

Not So Happy Talk

Sex Talk:  The Sunday morning talk shows went all in on sexual harassment, hyper focused on who should resign and when, so much so that they left little time for a discussion of tax reform.  NBC’s Chuck Todd cut off both House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Ohio Senator Rob Portman when they tried to address the pending tax reform legislation.  Tax stuff just doesn’t generate ratings the way that sex does.  As to the sex stuff, Todd painted a somewhat inarticulate Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi into a corner, coming down on her when she refused to call for 88-year old Detroit Congressman John Conyers to step down for his transgressions.  Though Pelosi came off weak during the program it turns out that she had a good reason to obfuscate.   She had been working behind the scenes with the Congressional Black Caucus and Conyers, an icon of the Civil Rights movement, in an effort to get him to voluntarily step down from his position as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.  Later in the morning Conyers did step aside to participate in an ethics committee review, New York Congressman Jerry Nadler will assume his role.  Given his age, don’t be surprised if Conyers finesses the investigation by announcing that he won’t run for reelection.  Minnesota Senator Al Franken emerged from his Thanksgiving holiday saying he was “embarrassed and ashamed” about his groping allegations, he sounded remorseful and just a wee bit baffled that he’s being thrown into the same bucket as Alabama senatorial wannabe Moore.  Franken plans to return to work in the Senate to willingly participate in his ethics review.  In the meantime, Trump continued advocating for child molester Moore, tweeting “the last thing we need in Alabama and the US Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet…..Jones would be a disaster!”  Not only has Trump concluded that Moore is innocent of all those nasty pedophile and teen stalking accusations, he’s also now convinced himself that his own Access Hollywood tape isn’t authentic, illogical but very Trumpian. Though Trump’s all in for Moore, others remain less convinced.  Senator Lindsey Graham called Roy Moore’s candidacy a lose-lose proposition for Republicans, if he wins its bad for the party because then they have to deal with it, if he loses its bad for the party because they lose the seat.  As far as he is concerned the lesson is “don’t nominate candidates like Roy Moore.”  When pressed Senator Portman, who just wanted to talk about taxes, said it would be better for the country if Moore stepped aside but hedged when he was asked how he would vote if he were in Alabama.  Outspoken former basketball player and native Alabamian Charles Barkley cut through the crap by just saying  “Roy Moore should have been disqualified before this women stuff,” asking how can a white supremacist supported by Steve Bannon, another white supremacist, represent all the people in Alabama, a state that is 25% African American.  He has a point.           

Tax Talk:  Sex talk may make for good ratings but it doesn’t do anything for Republican prospects in the 2018 midterms so this week the focus in the Senate will be taxes, taxes and taxes.  Their plan is awful, with only 25% of Americans thinking it’s a good idea, Republicans know its wildly unpopular but leadership is determined to move forward because they need a notable legislative accomplishment and their donors are threatening to bolt if they don’t get their tax cuts.  With no Democrats on board every effort is being made to meet the concerns of Republican fence sitters.  The bill includes a sweetener for Alaska’s Senator Murkowski, opening up drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge something that has nothing to do with tax reform but which is near and dear to her, making her a likely yes.  Wisconsin’s Senator Johnson is continuing to hold out for better treatment for small corporations, he has been joined by Montana’s Senator Daines, working together they are holding out for a tax rate concession from leadership that will bring them back into the fold.  Maine’s Senator Collins is pushing to allow individuals to deduct up to $10,000 in local real estate taxes, a provision already included in the House version that had been omitted from the Senate’s. The challenge is that all of these changes would increase the deficit above the $1.5 trillion threshold so offsetting changes will have to be made at the same time and one possibility being considered would be a limitation on the amount of state and local taxes that corporations would be allowed to deduct.  Think about it, right now the plan so favors big corporations that it permits them to deduct state and local taxes at the same time that it eliminates a corresponding deduction for individuals. Senators McCain, Flake and Corker, remain concerned about the $1.5 trillion deficit increase, McCain is also concerned about the environmental impact of Murkowski’s pet cause, Alaska drilling, and all three are pissed at Trump and like hotdog maker Hebrew National, at this point in their careers they answer to a higher authority and that authority is not Trump, so it’s not clear what it will take to get them on board.  Nevertheless expectations remain that the Senate will pass something.  Hopefully, Senators can multi task because tax legislation isn’t the only thing that needs to be addressed, a continuing budget resolution must be passed by midnight on December 8 in order to avoid a government shutdown.  This time around expect Nancy and Chuck to hold out for the inclusion of a Dreamer solution.  The extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the previously uncontroversial program that’s been left in the lurch by the increasingly callous Republican leadership, and another tranche of hurricane funding relief are also on the docket.      

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Trump tweeted out “since the first day I took office, all you hear is the phony Democrat excuse for losing the election, Russia, Russia, Russia. Despite this I have the economy booming and have possibly done more than any 10 month President. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”  Preet Bharara, the Former US Attorney for the Southern District now a self-appointed Trump thorn, tweeted back “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, the President of the United States is Jan Brady” before commenting that there's a “substantial likelihood” that former security advisor Michael Flynn’s lawyers are “at least in discussions with regard to cooperating with Mueller.”  Asked if Trump should be worried about the possibility that Flynn is cooperating with Mueller's team, Bharara said: "It depends on what the President has done and what the President's conversations with Michael Flynn and others have been. But if you've done bad things, then you should be very worried."  Judging by his tweet, Trump is worried, very worried.

Press Talk:  Trump really hates the free press particularly CNN, so much that he has the Justice Department trying to disrupt ATT’s planned merger with Time Warner, CNN’s parent company.  Over the weekend he tweeted “@FoxNews is MUCH more important in the United States than CNN, but outside of the US, CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly. The outside world does not see the truth from them!” Not only does that tweet make it that much harder for the Justice Department to prevail  but it also reveals another Trump lie.  During his Asia trip, when he was asked for a reaction to the accusation that Roy Moore had “dated” a 14 year old, he said that he couldn’t comment because he was out of the loop, he’d been too busy to watch much TV.  Apparently, not too busy, just very frustrated that CNN was his only choice.  Following Trump’s CNN tweet smack, his nemesis, America’s Boy Scout former FBI Director Comey tweeted  a quote from Thomas Jefferson that “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”  Last night the weary Justice Department’s plate got a little fuller. The battle for leadership of the Republican hated Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the entity that Senate Minority Whip Durbin says “Republicans hate like the devil hates holy water,”  reached a new level when acting head Leandra English sued to prevent budget director Mick Mulvaney, the Trump appointee who has been openly hostile to the bureau’s mandate, from adding her job to his portfolio.  A little more chaos to the start of what is expected to be a very busy week. 

Gobble, Gobble, Trump

Talking Turkey:  On Turkey Day, the NY Times reported that lawyers for former security advisor Michael Flynn, the guy in trouble for representing the interests of Turkey and Russia, have formally notified Trump’s legal team that they will no longer discuss or share information about the Special Counsel Mueller investigation.  Prior to this notice, Trump and Flynn’s attorneys had a “defense agreement” to share information, a typical arrangement among defense attorneys involved in the same case that helps them glean as much as they can by sharing what they learn from their individual conversations with prosecutors and from their clients’ interviews.  Those days are over probably because Flynn is now cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.  Earlier in the week it had been disclosed that Mueller is also putting the screws on Bijan Kian, an Iranian-American who had been a partner in the now defunct Flynn Intel Group, the focus on Kian is viewed as another point of pressure on Flynn and, together with the threats to indict his son, may have been what pushed Flynn to flip on Trump.  Jay Sekulow, the clueless White House legal spokesman, responded to the reports that Flynn has gone over to the other side by saying “No one should draw the conclusion that this means anything about General Flynn cooperating against the president, it’s important to remember that General Flynn received his security clearance under the previous administration,” not that that last part is relevant.   Despite Sekulow’s assertion, the possibility of Flynn spilling his guts to Mueller is a bigly problem for Trump.  Trump’s concerns about Flynn go way back to the beginning of his administration.  Why else would he have ignored former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates’ warning that Flynn had been compromised and why else would he have asked former FBI Director Comey to lay off that “good guy” Flynn? While the turkeys were being carved we also learned that Paul Manafort, another one of Trump’s really shrewd picks,  took at least eighteen trips to Moscow and met with Putin allies many times before being hired to run Trump’s campaign, leading to speculation that Manafort may have been on Team Putin well before he joined Team Trump.  In other Turkey news, the country not the bird, on Thursday Trump tweeted that he “will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!” Having once again slammed Obama and having ceded the determination of Syria’s future to Russia, Turkey and Iran, Trump told Erdogan that the US will stop supplying arms to our allies, the Syrian Kurdish rebels, something that Erdogan has demanded for a while. The US press and more disturbingly, the Pentagon learned of Trump’s concession from the Turks, who announced it during a press conference following the call.     

Watchdog Confusion:  Richard Cordray the outgoing head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau pulled a fast one on Trump on Friday.  Taking advantage of provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act, the bureau’s authorizing law, he appointed his chief of staff, Leandra English, as his deputy setting her up as his immediate successor in a brazen attempt to prevent Trump from putting his own pick into the leadership role.  Not to be outdone, Trump responded by quickly appointing Budget Director Mick Mulvaney as the Bureau’s acting head.  The bureau is well hated by Republicans who essentially believe consumers don’t need a whole lot of protection from the finance industry.  While in Congress, Mulvaney attacked the bureau, calling it “a wonderful example of how a bureaucracy will function if it has no accountability to anybody.” He added that the CFPB has been a "sick, sad" joke.  After Trump appointed Mulvaney, Senator Elizabeth Warren who was the architect of the bureau, weighed in by tweeting “The Dodd-Frank Act is clear: if there is a @CFPB Director vacancy, the Deputy Director becomes Acting Director. @realDonaldTrump can’t override that.”  It’s not clear who’s now in charge and where things go from here.  This is another dispute that could end up in court.

Boys Behaving Badly:  Somewhere in the new employees handbook for incoming Congressmen and Senators there should be a reminder that it’s never okay to text out pictures of your private parts to anyone, unless of course you want to join the Anthony Weiner hall of fame, and, in another chapter, there should be a section on where to place your hands during photo ops. After pictures of his “anatomy” appeared on social media, Texan Republican Congressman Joe Barton released a statement saying that “while separated from my second wife, prior to the divorce, I had sexual relationships with other mature adult women, each was consensual. Those relationships have ended. I am sorry I did not use better judgment during those days. I am sorry that I let my constituents down."  He doesn’t plan to resign. Two more women are now accusing Democratic Minnesota Senator Al Franken of inappropriate tushy touching during photo-ops at a Minnesota state fair.  Franken’s response is that "I've met tens of thousands of people and taken thousands of photographs, often in crowded and chaotic situations, I'm a warm person; I hug people. I've learned from recent stories that in some of those encounters, I crossed a line for some women -- and I know that any number is too many."  At least for now, he doesn’t plan to resign either.  More stories have emerged about embattled Democratic Congressman John Conyers, one of his former staffers said that he once called her into a meeting while sporting only his briefs. Another chapter for the incoming legislator handbook should probably cover appropriate office attire. As of now Conyers doesn’t plan to resign either.

Tax Returns:  Trump and Republican leadership are pressing forward with their reverse Robin Hood tax reform plan, the one that blows up the deficit while redistributing wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy and from blue states to red states, with the goal of getting anything passed before Christmas. Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski, previously viewed as a potential hold out, now says that she could vote for a bill that strips the individual mandate from Obamacare because she doesn’t like forcing anyone to do anything they don’t want to do.  However, she also said that she would want to see the dormant Alexander-Murray Obamacare fix legislation passed and that she is still reviewing the other components of the bill.  As to those components, one indication that the votes for passage aren’t there yet, is that many of the major provisions, including the size of the corporate tax rate, remain in flux.  Trump is scheduled to put the squeeze on Senate Republicans when he meets with them on Tuesday.         

Tragedy in the Sinai:  Over three hundred people were killed yesterday in a horrific terrorist bombing of a Mosque in the Sinai peninsula. Trump expressed his condolences to the people of Egypt and their leader President al-Sisi and then used the tragedy to throw in a plug for his wall and Muslim ban by tweeting “We have to get TOUGHER AND SMARTER than ever before, and we will. Need the WALL, need the BAN! God bless the people of Egypt." God bless them but they’d better not try to visit the US anytime soon.

Time Person of the Year:  Egotist Trump claims that he’s turned down the opportunity to be 2017 Time Person of the year. He tweeted that “Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named ‘Man (Person) of the Year,’ like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway.” Time refuted his claim by simply tweeting “the President is incorrect.” Though Trump is not in the running, quarterback Colin Kaepernick, the perpetual football free agent and king of the “take a knee” movement is one of the people under consideration. A Kaepernick cover would be nice, if only to witness Trump’s reaction.  Other contenders are the women who make up the “me too” movement.  On the “me too” front the Alabama race for the Senate between “alleged” child molester Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones remains neck and neck.  It’s hard to believe any polls because of concerns that many Moore supporters may be pulling a “Trump,” denying they’ll vote for Moore even as the they remain firmly in his camp.  Moore has lost his communications director and is reportedly down to a bare bones staff, though he may get a big boost next week if Trump, the campaigner-in-chief and “alleged” serial molester, joins him on the trail. As much as I’d like to see Trump go nuts over a Kaepernick cover, at this point a “me too” cover would probably be more appropriate.

Birds of a Feather

My Guy:  Nothing he could say or do would tear Trump away from his guy, senatorial wannabee Roy Moore.  After days of dithering and after sending his surrogates out to pave the way,  Trump finally revealed what he’d been thinking all along.  He is on team Moore and he wants all Alabama’s Trump loving voters, and there are a lot of them, to know it.  Yesterday, he said that since Moore “totally denies” the allegations that he sought out and molested young women and because the events, to the extent they happened, took place forty years ago, “you have to listen to him.”   On a personal level he relates to Moore, he knows what Moore is going through because he too was “falsely” accused of harassment or so he’d like everyone to believe.  On a strategic level he desperately wants another Republican vote for his corporate tax cut plan.  He hammered that point home by attacking Moore’s Democratic opponent, moderate Doug Jones by saying "We don't need a liberal person in there, a Democrat, "I've looked at his record. It's terrible on crime. It's terrible on the border. It's terrible on the military ... we do not need somebody that's going to be bad on crime, bad on borders, bad with the military, bad for the Second Amendment." Unlike Moore, who dates young girls, Jones, the man that Trump described as soft on crime, is responsible for the conviction of two of the KKK members responsible for the murder of four little girls killed in the notorious bombing of a Birmingham Baptist church. Jones is a supporter of a woman’s right to choose but the rest of his positions are fairly centrist and he is a supporter of the second amendment.  Though he doesn’t believe Moore’s accusers, Trump wants us all to know that “women are special” and that he thinks “it’s a very special time because a lot of things are coming out and I think that’s good for our society and I think it’s very, very good for women, and I’m very happy a lot of these things are coming out, and I’m very happy it’s being exposed.” Yesterday, Jones released an ad quoting one of Trump’s special women, his favorite daughter Ivanka Trump, who earlier commented on Moore’s acts by saying “There’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children and I have no reason to doubt the victims’ accounts.” The ad also quotes Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who formerly occupied the seat Moore and Jones are vying for, and Republican Alabama senator Richard Shelby, who said that he will “absolutely not vote for Roy Moore.”

Other Birds of a Feather:  Charlie Rose responded to accusations that he had sexually harassed a series of women by saying that he didn’t mean to be offensive he just thought he “was pursuing shared feelings.”  CBS, who had been alerted that the Washington Post article about Rose was about to drop before it was released, officially dropped Rose yesterday, as did PBS and Bloomberg.  Representative John Conyers, admitted  to making a payment to a staffer who had alleged that she was fired for refusing his advances but disputed the facts of her accusation and said that the $28,000 payment he gave her was more of a severance payment that anything else. Because the payment came from his office’s discretionary funds, it sidestepped the official Congressional system for dealing with harassment accusations, a system that has come under attack for its treatment of victims, and raises concerns that the amount of payments made to accusers far exceeds the previous $15 million estimate. In any case, Conyers will now be subjected to a  House ethics committee review.  The information about Conyers, while accurate, was provided to Buzzfeed under questionable circumstances by Mike Cernovich, the far right conspiracy promoter who was also responsible for the blatantly phony “Pizzagate” accusations against Hilary Clinton. Cernovich obtained his evidence, an unsigned draft of a confidentiality agreement between Conyers and his accuser, by tweeting out an offer of $10,000 for anyone who could provide proof of Congressional harassment. Shedding a light on bad behavior by members of Congress is a good thing, shedding light to justify the election and seating of serial dater and molester Roy Moore, not so much.

Net Neutrality out, Transgender In:  Net neutrality is one of those confusing topics that doesn’t mean much until your Netflix transmissions start slowing down and/or your cable provider starts sending you really big bills for faster service, the service you were getting before for a lower price.  During the waning days of the Obama administration rules were adopted that treated internet service providers as if they were utilities, prohibiting them from favoring their content or the content of some of their best clients over the content of their competitors.   Yesterday Trump’s FCC Chairman Ajit Pal announced that he is  “proposing to repeal the heavy-handed Internet regulations imposed by the Obama Administration and to return to the light-touch framework under which the Internet developed and thrived before 2015.”  In other words, regulations are bad, Obama’s regulations are really bad, and neutrality is on its way out.  In any case, like many other Trump rollbacks, you won’t notice the impact of this change on day one, but you are likely to notice it eventually. Some of Trump’s other plans have encountered a few bumps in the road.  Yesterday a Republican appointed federal judge in Maryland blocked Trump’s transgender military ban saying there was no justification for the policy change.  He went on to slam Trump saying that “a capricious, arbitrary, and unqualified tweet of new policy does not trump the methodical and systematic review by military stakeholders qualified to understand the ramifications of policy changes.”  He’s the second judge to halt the ban, but he went one step further, also lifting the ban on sex reassignment surgery for military members. The courts are also giving Trump a hard time about his sanctuary cities policy. Earlier in the week a San Francisco federal judge issued an injunction blocking Trump’s executive order that tried to deny funding to cities that refused to cooperate with federal immigration officials, after finding the order unconstitutional.  Needless to say Trump isn’t all that happy with the courts or the judges which is why he’s been pushing to get more and more new judges confirmed, qualified or not.  You do have to wonder how his newest judge, Brett Talley, the guy with no experience but who is an expert in the supernatural, would have ruled in these cases.    

The World Turned Upside Down:  Trump had a great one hour phone call with his BFF Putin yesterday.  According to Trump they discussed North Korea, Syria and Iran, it was a “great call” because Putin talked "very strongly about bringing peace to Syria" and "very strongly about North Korea."  Heather Nauert, the State Department spokesperson, pointed out that Putin has a really good relationship with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad as evidenced by the picture of the two of them walking arm and arm in Moscow earlier this week and that we should be very relieved that Putin is taking control of the situation over there.  Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s strongman has officially stepped down after four decades of rule, a good thing except that his likely replacement is his former deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, nicknamed the crocodile, another guy with a reputation for brutality.  Hopefully, Zimbabweans relief at getting rid of Mugabe is not short lived.  Moving further north, things aren’t going well for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the collective sigh of relief breathed out when she won her election was premature. She’s been unable to form a government and may have to call a new election, which would provide another opportunity for German’s far right party to solidify their standing. At least the Turkeys are okay.  Trump pardoned Wishbone and Drumstick, the winners of this year’s pardon lottery but not before cracking a joke at Obama’s expense.  He said that he had looked into revoking the pardons for last year’s lucky turkeys, Tater and Tot, but had been advised by White House counsel that their pardons are irrevocable.  Perhaps he was delivering a message to Mike Flynn, the man in trouble for his Turkey crimes?

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Weinstein Creep Scale

Moore Accusations:  Long term TV newsman Charlie Rose and New York Times Washington correspondent Glenn Thrush, whose persistent questioning of Sean Spicer earned him his own impersonator on Saturday Night Live, have just joined the harassers club.  On the spectrum of bad behavior Rose’s acts which included groping young female staffers and prancing around naked in front of them, earn him an eight out of ten on my Weinstein Creep Scale while Thrush’s, drinking too much and hitting on female colleagues in bars, seems closer to a three. And to be clear, any score on the scale is a really bad thing.  Rose has now been suspended from CBS, PBS and Bloomberg and Thrush, whose bad behavior took place at his previous employer, has been suspended from the NY Times and MSNBC and is checking into alcohol rehab.  Al Franken is now facing an accusation from another women who alleges he inappropriately touched her butt when they posed for a picture, a lesser offense, possibly just a one on the Weinstein scale, but for the fact that it happened when he was already a Senator and because it’s an add on to his earlier crass acts.  Franken is still hanging on, awaiting a Senate ethics hearing where he is likely to have lots of company.  Meantime, the Senator wannabee Roy Moore, the alleged child molester and serial teen dater, whose bad act fall outside the upper range of the scale, one hundred on a scale of ten, is still running for Senate, now with the implicit support of the Trump administration.  Trump surrogate Kellyanne Conway, who had previously said that no Senate seat is worth more than a child, has changed her tune, she is now all in for the child molester because “we want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill through.” To be clear she went on to trash Moore’s moderate opponent saying  "Doug Jones in Alabama, folks, don't be fooled. He will be a vote against tax cuts. He is weak on crime. Weak on borders. He is strong on raising your taxes. He is terrible for property owners."  Sarah Huckabee Sanders reiterated Conway’s comment, making it clear that no sex crime is so bad that it can’t be overcome by a yes vote on corporate tax cuts.  All this followed NBC’s Savannah Guthrie’s interview with Leigh Corfman, the woman who was fourteen years old when Roy Moore hit on her as she waited for her mother to finish a court appearance.  Corfman convincingly detailed her “dates” with Moore and explained that though she had discussed her experience with her family and thought about coming forward the last time that Moore ran for office, she hadn’t because of concerns that telling her story would hurt her children, that she was approached by the Washington Post who’d heard about her experience and that she agreed to speak only after some other Moore accusers agreed to come forward too.  She also made it clear that no one was paying her to speak.  When asked about Moore’s denial that he knew her, Corfman responded "I wonder how many more me's he doesn't know." Most Alabama Christian evangelicals don’t know her either, they are still supporting Moore’s candidacy but some of his local base is starting to see the light, the Young Republicans group of Alabama has pulled their support. Also, seeing the light are the names of more harassers from both sides of the political spectrum. Apparently Democratic Congressman John Conyers, the longest serving member of Congress, settled a harassment involving unwanted advances and unfair termination for $27,000 in 2015 and Wesley Goodman, a married Ohio Republican lawmaker who is a staunch defender of conservative policies and family values, whatever those are, was forced to stepdown due to inappropriate sexual encounters with mostly younger guys.       

Tax Cuts for Some:  Without any Democratic support Senate Majority Leader McConnell can only afford to lose two Republican votes for tax reform.  The senators expected to cause him the most grief are Tennessee’ Bob Corker, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, Maine’s Susan Collins, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Kentucky’s Rand Paul and both the senators from Arizona, John McCain and Jeff Flake.  Flake, who Trump said would vote no just to spite him, pushed back at that assertion saying that while he is still in the undecided column his decision will have nothing to do with his animosity towards Trump.  Johnson is holding out for better treatment for small companies, Corker is concerned about exploding the deficit, Murkowski and Collins are focused on health care and Paul and McCain are just unpredictable. There are a lot of things not to love in the tax plan even for those fully supportive of corporate cuts.  Perhaps because Trump’s isn’t all that into smart, well educated people, the House version of the bill ends a tax deduction for interest paid on student loans, raises taxes for more than 100,000 graduate students who receive tuition waivers and imposes a levy on endowments at certain private colleges and universities.  The Senate’s version is kinder to students but harsher in its treatment of state and local taxes. Somewhere, something’s gotta give, the calendar marches on, and Trump is desperate to deliver a big fat Christmas present to his mega-donors with lumps of coal to the rest of us, by Christmas.     

Trump Dump: Perhaps to distract from the Russian investigation which is not ending soon despite Trump lawyer Ty Cobb’s assertion that its end is near, the Trump administration made a bunch of announcements yesterday.  North Korea has been added back to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, joining Syria, Iran and Sudan.  They’ve been there before, had gotten a reprieve from George W. Bush who though that their removal from the list would help with nuclear negotiations.  This time they are back on purportedly for the assassination of Kim Jong-Un’s half-brother in a Malaysia airport but really because of their nuclear ambitions.  The Justice Department announced that it is suing to prevent the merger of ATT and Time Warner, an unusual move which may have more to do with Trump’s disdain for the press, particularly CNN, rather than any anti-trust concerns.  The administration is ending a “temporary” humanitarian program that allowed 59,000 Haitians to live and work in the US, they’ve now got eighteen months to get out of Dodge, most of the Haitians have been here since the 2010 earthquake that destroyed their country.  The decision is consistent with Trump’s views that the only “unskilled” immigrants who should be allowed in the country are the ones who work at one or more of his properties, and even they are only entitled to temporary visas.  Lastly, speaking for many of us National Security advisor General HR McMaster, already not one of Trump’s favorites, has reportedly called Trump an idiot and a dope, repeatedly. 

Civility No Moore

Tax Deception:  The Trump surrogates were out in force over the weekend putting their spin on the House and Senate tax plans.  Budget Director Mick Mulvaney dismissed any criticism that making corporate tax cuts permanent while allowing individual cuts to sunset at the end of ten years was a problem of priorities or optics. Taking a page from former presidential candidate Mitt Romney who once famously said that corporations are individuals, he instead blamed the approach on the vagaries of the Senate’s arcane rules.  By rules he means that Republican leadership has decided to push forward with tax reform without any input from Democrats and in order to do that and avoid the need for the sixty votes they could never get without a bipartisan plan they are following the more constraining reconciliation rules. Still he couldn’t explain why the individual tax cuts were the ones that disappear over time.  Steve Mnuchin response to this concern was truly hair raising.  He said no one should worry about the individual tax cuts going away, because in ten years when they are due to expire, President Pence will make sure that they are renewed. President Pence, he really said that.  As to those fifty votes that Republican leadership will need in the Senate, they may still be elusive.  Senator Susan Collins says that she has several problems with the current Senate plan.  First and foremost, she isn’t pleased with the elimination of the Obamacare individual mandate.  She also wants more benefits skewed to the middle and lower class, she wants the tax rate on higher income people to remain at 39.6% and she would prefer a higher tax on corporate profits.  Trump seems not to understand that he needs every vote he can get and so he has all but written off ever getting Arizona Senator Flakes vote.  After Flake was overheard on a “hot mic” saying that the Republican party is “toast” if it becomes the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, Trump responded by tweet, of course, saying “Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on ‘mike’ saying bad things about your favorite President. He’ll be a NO on tax cuts because his political career anyway is toast.”  It’s worth noting that Flake, despite all of his criticism of Trump, generally votes with him, so further antagonizing him is probably not the way to insure passage of tax reform.  The real action, arm twisting and compromise on tax reform legislation will heat up after Turkey day.     

Sexual Perversions:  Trump will get another chance to practice his pardoning skills on Tuesday at the  traditional Turkey pardoning ceremony assuming he sticks to the script and doesn’t punish the Turkeys for choosing to stay at the luxurious Willard Hotel instead of his local Trump Dump International.  Though Trump hasn’t pardoned Alabama’s Roy Moore, he’s pretty much keeping out of the Alabama fray, following the instructions of his Mr. Outside Steve Bannon.  Budget guy Mulvaney defended President Trump’s silence on the sexual misconduct claims against Moore by saying the president “doesn’t know who to believe.”  Senator Susan Collins does believe Moore’s accusers and was quick to remind everyone that she never supported Moore in the first place given his past history of discrimination and Muslim bashing.  The three biggest Alabama newspapers concur with Collins, they are urging voters to “stand for decency, reject Roy Moore,” and send the message that Alabamians aren’t going to support a child molester.  With a banner headline that appeared on the front page of their papers the Alabama Media Group also endorsed Doug Jones, pointing out to readers that he was the type of moderate Democrat who could wield power in the Senate because of his middle of the road positions.  They compared him to other red states Democrats including West Virginia’s Senator Manchin and North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp.  They also told their readers not to be concerned about Jones’ liberal views on abortion rights by saying that a women’s right to choose would remain the law regardless of who Alabama puts in the Senate. One can only hope that they are right about that.  Senator Al Franken is still a senator but he didn’t have a particularly great weekend.  He got the full Saturday Night Live treatment, particularly scorching given his past membership in the SNL club.  His appearance was cut out of the Mark Twain tribute to David Letterman that will be aired tonight on PBS.  Still Franken, who asserts that his harassment of Leann Tweeden, was a one time thing, doesn’t plan to resign. That’s okay with Tweeden who says that she came forward to shed light on the problem and doesn’t want him to step down from office because “she thinks he does a lot of good things in the Senate.”  One person who is probably enjoying watching Franken twist in the wind is Attorney General Sessions, who blames Franken for calling him out on all of his “Russian indiscretions.”  When asked about all of this Hillary Clinton called for accountability and said that Franken’s apology for his inappropriate behavior and his willingness for a Congressional ethics investigation into that “is the kind of accountability I’m talking about. I don’t hear that from Roy Moore or Donald Trump.”  She also pushed back at Senator Gillibrand’s comment that her husband should have stepped down by saying “I don’t know what she was trying to say.”  It’s not like Bill Clinton got off easy, Hillary nearly killed him and he was impeached.    

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Over the weekend the focus was also on publicist Rob Goldstone’s interview with The Guardian and his impending trip to the US, Hope Hick’s upcoming interview with Special Counsel Mueller and Jared Kushner’s inability to be frank with anyone who asks him any questions or requests him to provide any information.  As if this wasn’t enough, late yesterday ABC revealed that Mueller has sent a subpoena to the Justice Department requesting that they turn over documents related to Trump’s firing of former FBI Director Comey, Attorney General Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Trump’s campaign, and emails and other records of communications between DOJ officials and their counterparts at the White House.  In all likelihood this is part of Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice. For his part Jeff Sessions may be getting close to the edge. Last week before starting a planned speech to the conservative Federalist Society he “mischievously” asked if Ambassador Kislyak or any other Russians were in the room, the crowd of likeminded collusion skeptics roared with laughter at his humor. As to Goldstone, the disheveled chunky guy who arranged the meeting between Don Jr and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, his spin is that the reaction to his email about the meeting was overblown.  He claims he was just trying to do a friend who just happened to be one of Putin’s favorite oligarchs, a favor and that he came up with the idea to hold out the lure of Hillary emails to help Natalia get her foot in the Trump revolving door all by himself. Hope Hicks probably shouldn’t make anything up during her upcoming Mueller interview. Her months of preparation won’t help much if the wily Mueller has learned something she tries to hide from one or more of the other people he has already interviewed.  Kushner’s lawyers responded to news that he failed to admit to being aware of WikiLeaks outreach to the campaign through dim light bulb Don Jr by saying that he can’t be expected to answer questions that aren’t more specific.  Fresh off his success representing New Jersey’s Senator Menendez, his lawyer Abbe Lowell asserted that Kushner should be treated like a hero for rebuffing a meeting request from Putin oligarch and crime boss Alexander Torshin.  All that other stuff, like deceptively filled out forms, deceptive testimony, not to mention his habit of showing up at fancy events while refugees are being hung out to dry and heath care is being dismantled, should be ignored because he really is a national treasure.

The Last Word:  Like it or not Trump probably does deserve some credit for helping the three UCLA basketball players who got caught shoplifting during their trip to China.  Trump’s “warm” personal relations with his good buddy Xi may not do much to improve world peace or fix trade problems but it did come in handy for the players.  Still he seems to have met his match in LaVar Ball, the outspoken father of one of the players.  The two squabbled over the weekend after Trump took umbrage at Ball who responded to a question about Trump’s involvement in springing the boys from hard time in China by saying “Who? What was he over there [on the Asian trip] for? Don’t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out.”  Not one to take the high road Trump responded “I should have left them in jail.”  And so it goes, civility from the top.     

Dumb, Dumber and Dumbo

Men Behaving Badly:  Judge Roy Moore is still running for Senate in Alabama, with the full support of his wife,  her Stepford friends and Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, who says that despite Moore’s “indiscretions” she does believe that she’ll cast her vote for him because he’s a Republican and we need him to vote on things we care about like the Supreme Court. Trump, the serial molester, is still president and Al Franken, the guy who so far only has one accuser is holding on for dear life. Picking up on Governor Ivey’s Supreme Court theme, Trump updated his list of potential Supreme Court nominees to include an outspoken anti-abortion activist, his way of suggesting that a vote for Moore is just fine with him.  Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump’s snide anti-Franken tweet and virtual silence about Judge Roy Moore by saying that since Franken has admitted his bad act he, unlike Trump who asserts his innocence, is fair game. A number of Franken’s former colleagues, including former Not Ready for Prime Timer Jane Curtin and women from his Minnesota office have jumped to his defense saying that despite his stupid crass behavior on the USO tour he’s always treated them with respect.  New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand is taking a really hard line, not only is she ready to ditch Trump,  Moore and Franken, she’s now also throwing former President Clinton under the bus as well.  Even though she sits in Hillary’s former seat, a seat she won with the early support of the Clintons, she says that he should have stepped down back in the days when he got into trouble for lying about his Monica Lewinsky sexcapades.  Her remarks aren’t making her many friends in high Democratic places,  if she keeps this up, the presidential wannabee could end up joining Franken in the trash bin of fallen contenders.  As to Trump, it’s been suggested that he is staying out of the Moore battle on the advice of Steve Bannon who appears to still be coaching Moore to stick to the Bannon-Trump deny all strategy. Though he may be listening to Bannon, Trump isn’t paying much attention to his staff’s advice.  They told him to avoid tweet smacking Franken or face the consequences but since Trump has no impulse control he went ahead with his tweets and the consequences are that several news channels have been running stories featuring his accusers.  Funny how when merged into one continuous clip the allegations show a distinct Trump groping pattern, one that may someday catch up with him, or not.  

Kushner, Kushner, Kushner:  Son-in-law Kushner’s hole keeps getting bigger and bigger.  When Senators Grassley and Feinstein released their letter telling his lawyers that they expect a full dump of his emails, calls and correspondence pronto the letter mentioned a “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite.”  Apparently that particular reference was to an invitation from still another Putin crony, this one named Aleksander Torshin, a Russian Central Banker with links to Russian organized crime.  Torshin wanted to organize a meet-up between Trump and Putin but reportedly Kushner put the kibosh on any meeting.  Unfortunately for him Kushner also failed to provide the Congressional committees or Special Counsel Mueller with the emails about the offer justifying his omission by saying that since he didn’t okay the meeting the outreach was a nothing burger.  However the nothing burger defense isn’t working since the email trail was provided by campaign aide and White House deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn and may have also been provided by Don Jr.  While Kushner rebuffed the offered meeting, Don Jr appears to have been a little more receptive, he ended up breaking bread with Aleksander Torshin at a May 2016 National Rifle Association reception. Kushner is also in trouble for lying to Congress.  During his testimony, he said that he knew nothing about the WikiLeaks outreach to the Trump campaign, yet he was a recipient of Don Jr’s email detailing the WikiLeaks offer to help and he forwarded that email on to Hope Hicks, who at that time served as Trump’s human email box.  Lying to Congress is a crime.  Now Communications Director, Hope Hicks is due to meet with Special Counsel Mueller very soon, reports are that she’s spent months preparing for her grilling because telling the truth, and nothing but the truth takes lots and lots of preparation.  Another possible testifier is waiting in the wings.  Rob Goldstone, the guy who was the intermediary for the meeting between Don Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort and the Russian lawyer, Natalia Vesilnitskaya has offered to make the trip from his current home in Bangkok to the US to spill his guts.     

Return of the Elephants:  Maybe it was the really bad press including criticism from arch conservative commentator Laura Ingraham who had tweeted that she “did not understand how the decision would not INCREASE the gruesome poaching of elephants.”  Maybe Daddy Don decided that Donny Jr didn’t deserve a reward for failing to be more discrete about all his Russian collusion.  Whatever the reason, Trump has decided to freeze his decision that would have lifted the ban on elephant hunters bringing their trophies, and by trophies think body parts and tusks, back to the US.  It’s probably too soon to celebrate because Trump still plans to further discuss the issue with Interior Secretary Zinke, the tone-deaf serial private plane traveler, before reaching a final decision. For now Dumbo and his awesome friends have been spared from being shot and dismembered by one or more of the Trump sons and their misguided, mean spirited hunting buddies.   

Senate Fisticuffs:  The Senate is off on a weeklong Thanksgiving recess and not a moment to soon.  Before departing, Senator Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat and another Democratic presidential contender, and Senator Orrin Hatch, the possibly retiring Utah Republican, got into a heated verbal sparring match about the Senate tax plan with Brown attacking the plan for its “dishonesty, misdirection and bottomless bad faith” for prioritizing corporate tax cuts over the needs of Americans.  Hatch blew a gasket snapping back at Brown for his lack of civility because you are supposed to act civil even when your constituents are being pillaged.  When they return from their Turkey, the Senators will get back to their fighting.  Right now a number of Senate Republicans remain in the “no” or “not so sure” column about the tax plan.  Republican leadership wants to do whatever it takes to move forward with a vote before the Alabama Senate special election to avoid having to deal with the consequences of seating child molester Senator Moore or worse yet, losing a vote to a Democratic Senator Doug Jones.    

Et tu, Al

Giant No More:  Yesterday Leeann Tweeden a former playboy model, now a radio commentator, accused Senator Al Franken of groping and kissing her during a 2006 USO trip.  She says that he wrote a kiss into a skit and then proceeded to insist on aggressively practicing the scene with said kiss.  She also learned after the fact that he was photographed faux groping her while she was sleeping on the flight home.  In any case, in this environment of heightened harassment awareness  Franken’s actions are not being taken lightly.  Unlike, Alabama child molester Moore, Franken has issued a fairly sincere sounding apology saying that he regrets his activities, doesn’t remember the kissing the way she does, but acknowledges that if she was offended he must have done something wrong.  As far as the picture goes, he also admits it was in bad taste, although it doesn’t appear that he was actually touching her and I reluctantly admit that I thought it was pretty funny.  However, Senators McConnell and Schumer aren’t laughing.  Relieved to have a Democrat to skewer, McConnell has called for an ethics probe. Feeling compelled to subject Franken to the standards he wants to impose on Moore, Schumer has also called for an ethics investigation.  And not to be outdone, Franken has asked for an ethics investigation of himself.  Assuming that a rash of women don’t come forward with similar accusations, Franken could survive this but if the list of his accusers grows his days in the Senate could be cut short and it’s fair to say that his name just fell off the list of potential Democratic presidential candidates for 2020.  The governor of Minnesota is a Democrat, so if Franken has to stepdown at least his interim replacement will be a Democrat too.  At least for now, Democrats won’t be losing their New Jersey seat anytime soon.  NJ Senator Menendez, who has been on trial for accepting bribes lucked out today.  The judge hearing his case declared a mistrial after jurors said that they couldn’t reach a verdict on any counts.  Menendez isn’t completely out of the woods, prosecutors could still seek a retrial but if they do and if he is found guilty, by then the selection of any interim senator will be in the hands of NJ’s next governor, Democrat Phil Murphy.  The multiple youth harasser, Alabama’s Roy Moore is soldiering on. A group of local evangelists and faith leaders reaffirmed their support for him because they believe that a child molester is a far better choice for protecting moral standards and fighting creeping homosexuality than a Democrat, especially one like Doug Jones, who is pro-choice.  So far nine women have come forward accusing Moore of harassment but that’s not enough for Trump.  On his behalf  Sarah Huckabee Saunders said “look the president believes these allegations are very troubling and should be taken seriously, and he thinks the people of Alabama should make the decision on who their senator should be.” For what it’s worth, the most recent poll, completed by Fox News shows Jones leading Moore by 8 points.   It’s kind of hard for Trump, who weighs in on everything, to weigh in on sexual harassment accusations so his lack of tweets about Moore isn’t all that surprising. However, despite his personal concerns he has no problem slamming Franken.  Last night he tweeted “Al Frankenstien (his spelling error, not mine) picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words. Where do his hands go in pictures 2,3,4,5,& 6 while she sleeps?...”  This from the man who bragged about grabbing women’s crotches. Sadly, it’s likely that Trump, Moore and Franken represent the tip of the iceberg and while there’s a chance that Moore will lose his election and that Franken will be forced from his seat, Trump seems immune from the consequences of his actions.  The names of more legislative harassers are likely to start flowing soon and it’s likely that each of them will be equally flummoxed as to why they are getting hammered while Teflon Trump stays put.     

Kushner, Kushner, Kushner:  Son-in-law Jared hasn’t been all that forthcoming with the Senate Judiciary Committee and they aren’t all that happy about it.  Yesterday, Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Feinstein took the unusual step of publicly revealing that they had sent Kushner a letter telling him that they are aware that he received an email about WikiLeaks in September 2016 and that he passed it on to an official within the Trump campaign. The letter said that they are also aware of a “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite” that he didn’t disclose as well as some communications with Sergei Millian, a Belarussian-American businessman who is thought to be the source of the most salacious component of the infamous Steele dossier. They also believe that Kushner failed to produce some previously requested phone records. Grassley and Feinstein know that these emails exist because they’ve received portions of the email trail from other more forthcoming witnesses. It’s hard to understand why Kushner thinks that rules don’t apply to him and why he and his coterie of high priced lawyers think that he can get away without adequately complying with official requests.  In any case his days of getting away with sketchy responses may be over, Special Counsel Mueller has issued a “clean up” subpoena to the Trump campaign for more Russia-related documents.  Mueller had previously received the information that had been handed to the Congressional committees, but his investigators felt that there were things that they didn’t see so now they are formally seeking the rest.

Flipping on Flynn:  Mueller may have flipped a significant witness who could provide incriminating information about former security advisor Michael Flynn and his not very legitimate work with the Turkish government. Reza Zarrab a gold-trader and a dual Turkish-Iranian citizen who is close to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, had been in a federal prison but he is now out of jail and talking to federal prosecutors including Mueller. NBC news reports that given the relationship between Erdogan and Zarrab and the allegations of an improper relationship between Flynn and the Turkish government, Zarrab's decision to cooperate with federal prosecutors is a significant development and is likely another bigly problem for Flynn which would also be a bigly problem for Trump.

Tax Reform Progresses:  Good news for Speaker Paul Ryan, his tax reform plan passed through the House today.  Bad news for the rest of us, except for big corporations and people like Trump with really large estates.  At this point there is no point in dwelling too much on the details of the House plan because the Senate plan which passed out of committee last night is significantly different than the one that the House passed.  One notable difference is that unlike the House plan, the Senate plan provides for only a temporary cut in taxes for individuals while permanently slashing the corporate rate from 35% to 20%.  Another is that it calls for the elimination of the Obamacare individual mandate. Suffice it to say that the big picture is that the deficit will grow by at least $1.5 trillion, many lower income and middle class people won’t be getting much in the way of extra pocket money and, regardless of what Ryan, McConnell and Trump say about how corporate tax cuts will pay for themselves by spurring growth, the real plan is to pay for the deficit increase by cutting social services and crimping Medicaid and Medicare expenditures.               

Channeling Little Marco

Road Trip Over: Trump returned from his Asian junket looking a little worse for wear.  He promised a real bigly speech with a real bigly announcement but didn’t have much to announce so instead he delivered a little Stevie Miller special, a brooding American first speech which summarized how well he was treated and respected at every country and summit that he’s attended since inauguration day, starting with his trip to Saudi Arabia and finishing with his sojourn in the Philippines.  He’d hoped to be able to announce a big trade deal or two but none of the countries he visited had much interest in a bilateral trade agreement with the Donald, they were far more focused on finalizing multilateral agreements, the ones without the US. With nothing dramatic to report, he instead provided a list of mostly previously negotiated arms sales combined with some promises that the US will no longer be party to all those crappy unfair trade arrangements negotiated by all of his predecessors.  All the travel must have left him very dehydrated because in the midst of his impassioned delivery he had an urgent need for water and since no one on his staff thought to position a glass on his podium, he had to rely on someone in the audience telling him where he could find a bottle of water.  Remember when he skewered Marco Rubio for inelegantly drinking water from a bottle during one of the primary debates, well Trump pulled a clumsy “Marco,” inspiring a tsunami of mocking tweets, including one from Marco who said that he ”needs to work on his form.”  Sloppy slurping aside, the most notable thing about Trump’s speech was what he didn’t address.  In addition to having no new trade agreement announcements he also had nothing to say about Alabama’s chief molester Roy Moore.  Favorite daughter Ivanka did provide a few comments to the Associated Press about Moore, saying that “there’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children” but she didn’t explicitly call for Moore to drop out of the race nor did she comment on whether people like her father who prey on women over the age of consent share that special place.   

More Moore:  After all those years as a judge you would think that Senator wannabee Moore would have better taste in lawyers.  One of his lawyers went on MSNBC’s Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle news show and instead of firmly denying that the Alabama candidate had preyed on adolescents, he defended Moore’s actions by saying to Ali Velshi that a guy “like him” with his background should understand that in some cultures it was okay to have sex with young girls. Velshi, politely seethed while Ruele ripped into the lawyer and his ignorant suggestion that sex with minor girls was ever appropriate, and she pointed out that Velshi was Canadian.  Anyone from Alabama should be horrified with Moore’s lawyer and his implication that child molestation was just fine in their home state. Later in the day another one of Moore’s lawyers, a virtual doppelganger of the first one, held a press conference where he attacked Moore’s fifth accuser, the one with the signed yearbook.  He questioned her story and allegations, suggesting that the signature from Moore in her high school yearbook was a forgery.  He demanded that the yearbook be released for a forensic analysis.  Unfortunately for him, as he was speaking two additional accusers came forward to the Washington Post, their stories were similar to those of all the other accusers.  In one case Moore asked a minister’s daughter out, she turned him down telling him that she was too young for him, he responded, not a problem, I date young.  After she rebuffed his overtures, he showed up at her high school and had her called out of her trigonometry class to the principal’s office so he could ask her out again.  He persisted, flattered by the attention she went on one date, at the end of which he drove her to a dark parking lot and gave her an unwanted “forceful” kiss. Like the other accusers, she is a Republican and is only coming forward now because she feels empowered to tell her story in the company of the others.  Senator McConnell and Republican leaders in Washington are trying to come up with a strategy to either forestall the upcoming December 12 election or to present a viable write-in candidate. They’ve considered asking the current Alabama Senator, Lucas Strange, to step down because that would trigger a different special election and they’ve also considered asking Attorney General Sessions to resign and accept an interim appointment to his old seat.  A survey conducted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee indicates that Moore is trailing Democratic candidate Doug Jones by 12 points, the same survey indicates that Sessions wouldn’t do that much better.  Other polls show a closer race.  Local Republican party officials met last night, emerging to say that they are sticking with Moore because they have no problem with their candidate being a child molester. Reports are that Steve Bannon, who is out of the country, is still backing Moore, but he’s not saying much himself.  Last night Fox’s Sean Hannity told voters to “make their own informed decisions” about Moore.  His show focused on Bill Clinton’s unwanted sexual advances. The guy with the twitchy twitter finger remains silent unable or unwilling to say anything about Moore’s actions because they hit too close to home, and besides he may need his vote for tax reform.  

Tax Reform is Complicated:  Tax reform really is complicated, especially when you throw Obamacare repeal into the mix.  The Senate is moving forward with a version that eliminates the Obamacare individual mandate. Maine Senator Susan Collins isn’t all that happy about that and could again be in the “no” column. She rightfully fears that the elimination of the mandate would increase health insurance premiums, wiping out the anemic savings that the tax reform plan would provide to the middle class.  Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson also came out against the plan yesterday for different reasons.  He doesn’t like that the tax plan favors large corporations over smaller companies and is holding out for some changes.  No Democratic senators are on board so McConnell is again facing the Obamacare repeal conundrum. The House version is still expected to come up for a vote today, an indication that Speaker Ryan believes that he has enough votes for passage even without the support of a number of his blue state representatives.  Economic Advisor Gary Cohn, who has promised that the large corporate tax cuts will lead to economic growth, more employment opportunities and more investment in US industry has been out marketing the plan to CEOs.  At a meeting of the Wall Street Journal’s CEO conference, when the audience was asked how many of them would reinvest their tax savings in America, only five attendees raised their hands. The rest admitted that the extra money would go to stock buy backs not growth related investment.  The not so pleased Cohn was stunned by the response.  So much for the benefits of trickle-down economics.

More National Embarrassments:  Frances’s President Emanuel Macron announced that France would cover the amount the US had previously contributed for climate science research to a United Nations panel.  Arguing that killing of endangered species is good for the species, Trump’s US Wildlife Service plans to lift prohibitions against importing trophies of elephants killed by US hunters in Zimbabwe and Zambia.  To the extent that Special Counsel Mueller doesn’t confiscate  his passport, expect Trump son and WikiLeaks colluder, Don Jr, to grab his brother Eric and head out on a hunt soon.