Absolutely nuts

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, told lawmakers that after attending Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inauguration in May as part of a delegation led by Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Vindman had been looking forward to debriefing Trump and giving a positive account of Zelensky’s vision for Ukraine’s future.

[...]

But he was instructed “at the last second” not to attend the debriefing, Vindman told lawmakers, because Trump’s advisers worried it might confuse the president: Trump believed at the time that Kashyap Patel, a longtime [Rep Devin] Nunes staffer who joined the White House in February and had no discernible Ukraine experience or expertise, was actually the NSC’s top Ukraine expert instead of Vindman.

Vindman testified that he was told this directly by his boss at the time, NSC senior director for European and Russian affairs Fiona Hill.

Hill told Vindman that she and national security adviser John Bolton thought it best to exclude Vindman from the debriefing to avoid “an uncomfortable situation,” he said.

[...]

Vindman’s exclusion sheds even more light on the unusual steps top NSC officials were taking as early as May to avoid angering or annoying Trump on Ukraine issues — and the unusual level of access Patel had to the president.

[...]

Vindman also testified that he was told Patel had been circumventing normal NSC process to get negative material about Ukraine in front of the president, feeding Trump’s belief that Ukraine was brimming with corruption and had interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats.

[...]

Patel joined the National Security Council’s International Organizations and Alliances directorate in February and was promoted to a senior counterterrorism role around the same time as Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky.

[...]

Patel had previously served as Nunes’ top staffer on the House Intelligence Committee and worked to discredit the FBI and DOJ officials investigating Russia’s election interference.

  Politico

America is lost.

Holy Shit - when will these people be held to account?

In case NRCC doesn't immediately ring a bell:  National Republican Congressional Committee.  The entire Republican Party is out of control and beyond the pale.  We've entered a whole other level of existence. 

In case you missed it:  Noam Chomsky interview.

The brilliant Noam Chomsky

This is such an excellent, if not particularly uplifting, interview.  May Professor Chomsky live to be 100.  At least.

"The current moment...is the most grim moment in human history.  We are now in a situation where this generation...is going to have to make a decision of cosmic significance which has never arisen before: Will organized human society survive?  And there are two enormous threats: the threat of environmental catastrophe...and the threat of nuclear war...These have to be dealt with quickly, otherwise there's nothing to talk about...Some months ago..one of the Trump bureaucracies, the National Transportation Administration came out with what I think is the most astonishing document in the entire history of the human species.  It got almost no attention.  It was a long 500-page environmental assessment...They concluded by the end of the century temperatures will have risen 7 degrees...about twice the level scientists have determined is feasible for organized human life...Their conclusion is we should have no more constraints on automotive emissions.  Their reasoning is very solid.  We're going off the cliff anyway, so why not have fun?"

Happy Goblin Day

Villafane Studios

Morrison testimony

Tim Morrison, the top Russia and Europe adviser on President Trump’s National Security Council, on Thursday corroborated the testimony of a senior U.S. diplomat who last week offered House impeachment investigators the most detailed account to date for how Trump tried to use his office to pressure Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, according to people familiar with his deposition.

Morrison told impeachment investigators that the account offered by William B. Taylor Jr., the acting ambassador to Ukraine, is accurate. He said that he alerted Taylor to a push by Trump and his deputies to withhold both security aid and a White House visit for the Ukrainian president until Ukraine agreed to investigate the Bidens and interference in the 2016 presidential election.

[...]

Morrison, who told colleagues Wednesday that he plans to leave the Trump administration, said he did not necessarily view the president’s demands as improper or illegal, but rather problematic for U.S. policy in supporting an ally in the region.

  WaPo

Morrison can thread a needle.

Morrison’s testimony was sought because of his proximity to critical White House decisions and recurring presence in testimony from previous U.S. officials. House investigators have also requested testimony from Morrison’s boss, former national security adviser John Bolton.

Morrison corroborated that he spoke with Taylor at least twice in early September. The first conversation was to alert him that Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had told the Ukrainians that no U.S. aid would be forthcoming until they announced an investigation of Burisma

[...]

Morrison also told lawmakers that he spoke with Taylor again on Sept. 7 to share a “sinking feeling” about a worrisome conversation between Trump and Sondland, the person said. Morrison said that, during that conversation, Trump said he wasn’t seeking a “quid pro quo” but went on to insist that Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky had to publicly announce that he was opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference.

I wonder what Trump's definition of quid pro quo is.

Morrison has been brief with lawmakers about why he is leaving the White House and appears uncomfortable answering those questions, said people familiar with his testimony.

I bet.

He was picked by Bolton, though, and Bolton is gone. I don't imagine Trump wanted Morrison around any longer.

He is a staunch foe of nuclear nonproliferation advocates.

[...]

During his tenure, Morrison oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and continued to look for ways the United States could pull out of other nuclear accords.

This summer, Morrison urged Republican offices not to support an amendment to a defense authorization bill encouraging the administration to extend a landmark nuclear arms-reduction treaty known as New START, which will expire in February 2021.

So, good riddance to Bolton and Morrison.

UPDATE:

State to turn over Ukraine documents

The State Department has agreed to release documents related to President Trump’s handling of aid to Ukraine, potentially providing ammunition to the impeachment probe now being conducted by Democrats in the House of Representatives.

The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed by American Oversight, a watchdog group affiliated with progressive causes. That lawsuit was initially filed in the spring, after Trump dismissed U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch.

[...]

Last week, a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C., told the State Department it had to turn over Ukraine-related documents, citing “public interest” that he said tilted “heavily in favor of disclosure.”

[...]

Among the documents to be included in the trove are communications between departmental officials and Trump’s private lawyers and associates, in particular Rudolph Giuliani, Victoria Toensing or Joseph diGenova.

[...]

The order also covers records created by or pertaining to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has been criticized for putting Trump’s political prospects, and possibly his own business interests, over the nation’s foreign policy goals. Two close associates of Pompeo, Ulrich Brechbuhl and Brian Bulatao, are also named in the request, along with several others.

The agreement will also require the State Department to turn over calendar entries pertaining to Yovanovitch’s dismissal, as well as any meetings with Giuliani, and meetings pertaining to a potential Biden investigation in Ukraine.

The two sides could not agree on whether the State Department needed to turn over readouts of the July 25 phone call in which Trump is alleged to have engaged in a quid pro quo with Zelensky. State Department lawyers maintain those records “have a high likelihood of being classified and/or privileged.”

[...]

The agreement between the State Department and American Oversight stipulates that the documents be turned over by Nov. 22, by which time the impeachment inquiry could well be in its public stage.

  Yahoo

It definitely will be. Do you trust them to turn over all the documents requested? I don't.

House vote on impeachment

For only the third time in the history of the modern presidency, the US House of Representatives voted on Thursday to formalize impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States.

  Guardian

I might have worded that differently. The word "only" seems misplaced. Three instances in my lifetime seems like a lot.  Especially when you consider that only one president before then incurred a successful House vote to formalize proceedings against him, and that was in 1867.  (Also, by my count, it's four: technically, hearings were held about the Iran-Contra scandal, and Reagan should have been impeached.*)

In a largely party-line vote of 232-196, the House embarked on a path that seemed likely to lead to Donald Trump’s impeachment – if not necessarily his removal from office. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, presided over the vote.

[...]

Republicans held ranks to vote uniformly against the process, while two Democrats crossed party lines to join them.

Reps. Collin Peterson (Minn.) and Jefferson Van Drew (N.J.), who both represent districts won by Trump in 2016, which is not an excuse any more than Republicans condoning Trump's crimes and behavior.

The vote set rules for the public phase of the inquiry, laying out a road map for impeachment that could produce dramatic televised public hearings within two weeks and a vote on impeachment itself by the end of the year.

[...]

As the vote was announced, Trump tweeted: “The Greatest Witch Hunt In American History!”

That's what he said about the Mueller investigation.

When Pelosi banged the gavel, Republicans shouted “objection”, briefly sowing confusion as the clerk strained to be heard and Democrats countered with calls for order. The room eventually settled and the House returned to the rest of its agenda before leaving Washington for a week-long recess.

Moments after the vote, Republicans began their assault on Democrats in “swing” districts who supported the resolution, sending emails to supporters that accused the Democrats by name of participating in a “fraud”. With only two Democratic defections, that list includes members critical to the party’s majority.

[...]

The procedure allows for Republicans to request witnesses and documents and provides for the presence of lawyers representing Trump at judiciary committee proceedings.

Before that stage, however, public hearings would play out before the intelligence committee, chaired by Schiff of California, who has been spearheading the impeachment inquiry.

Schiff would call witnesses who previously testified in closed-door depositions before investigators, with an eye on presenting to the public the strongest case against Trump. Many Americans who have not been following the twists and turns of the closed-door testimony would be hearing the allegations against Trump – and meeting the witnesses, who include senior officials in the White House, state department and Pentagon – for the first time.

If they haven't been following the closed-door testimony, they may not follow the public hearings.

Anyway, here's House minority leader Kevin McCarthy:

*Regarding Reagan:

The Iran-Contra Affairs involved concerted efforts by the executive branch to work around the restrictions and intent of Congress. “The Enterprise” was a kind of privatization of foreign policy, conducted in secret and without the balance of powers envisioned by the constitution. These transgressions were seen by many as far worse than anything that happened in Watergate. Chairman Hamilton used his closing remarks to address the significance of the rule of law and the dangers of subverting democratic processes in the name of patriotism. Given the gravity of the matter, why wasn't President Reagan impeached? Why was there so little serious discussion of impeachment?

One reason is that the President Reagan was very popular. It is difficult, if not impossible, to impeach a popular president. A second reason is that the impeachment of President Nixon was still too fresh in the memory of the American people. There was no political will to endure another impeachment proceeding so soon after Watergate. A third reason is that there was insufficient proof about “what President Reagan knew and when he knew it.”

  Brown University

To an increasing degree, impeachment has become a tool of contemporary American public policy. Since 1973, for example, at least 30 impeachment resolutions against sitting presidents have been introduced in Congress. Given his well-documented participation in the coverup of the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon was the subject of 17 impeachment resolutions. Five have been introduced already against President Donald Trump, three were introduced against President George W. Bush, and President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush were the subject of two resolutions each. Only one impeachment resolution was introduced against President Bill Clinton.

  FreedomWorks

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Representative Speier has a word for Devin Nunes

Jackie Speier knows cults.

Dad? I thought he said she calls him Daddy

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And Donald Trump is still an idiot

If he keeps tweeting this, sooner or later his followers might actually do it.  (Or maybe not, as long as he doesn't provide a link to it.)

It makes me wonder if HE has read it.*

The word you're looking for is due.  And, YOU'RE President Trump.

How do you "do signing"?

And, hey, I bet there's a Trump property that's just perfect to do signing.  Or...is that why you have to select a "new" site?

*UPDATE:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Also, Devin Nunes is still a jackass

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

John Yoo is still a jackass

Mr. Torture is Fine is now digging himself into a deeper hole.  These people are like talking to a drunk worm.  You can't make any headway because they're off their nuts and they just wriggle away from anything you point out.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

So Rudy is still alive

What was that Trump said about Rudy a while back?  Oh yeah, "He'll get his facts straight."

Retrospective

Check out this Jeremy Scahill podcast for a clear understanding of alQaeda v. ISIS and how we got here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Attempting to advise the president

Sitting inside the White House, Mitch McConnell gave Donald Trump some straightforward advice: Stop attacking senators — including Mitt Romney — who likely will soon judge your fate in an impeachment trial.

  Politico

Even if he takes that advice, he won't be able to stick to it.

The one-on-one meeting last week between the Senate majority leader and the president covered several weighty issues including Syria, according to two people familiar with the conversation. But like everything these days when it comes to Trump, impeachment was high on the president’s mind.

[...]

Though much of the pair's contact is concealed even from aides, people familiar with the conversations say they speak all the time — and there’s been an uptick in recent weeks as the impeachment threat grows more serious.

[...]

[Trump has] been courting his congressional allies with golf, a World Series game and frequent phone calls — all to develop an echo chamber of support from his allies in Congress.

[...]

The president is largely laying off senators with difficult calculations to make in the coming months, declining to lobby the likes of GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Marco Rubio of Florida, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Johnny Isakson of Georgia. And he’s largely laying off Romney after suggesting he should be impeached and calling him a “pompous 'ass.'”

That's because he hasn't heard anything more out of Romney.

White House officials are leaning on Trump’s impromptu meetings at the White House and his direct calls to Republican senators including Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and John Kennedy of Louisiana. It’s a bet the cult of Trump’s personality and the power of his prolific Twitter feed will be enough to keep members within the fold, even as House Democrats quickly gather evidence as part of the impeachment proceedings.

[...]

That’s not to say the president has fully gone hands-off. Last Thursday he hosted 10 Republicans in the Situation Room for a meeting on Middle East policy, including several senators who had called his conversation with the Ukrainian president about Joe Biden inappropriate. After the meeting, they gathered in the ornate Roosevelt Room, where Trump vented about impeachment.

“He said he thought the process was unfair and he hadn’t done anything wrong. And he wanted us to know that,” said an attendee, who said Trump neither put pressure on his mild critics nor received any criticism himself.

[...]

Shortly after that meeting, Graham released a resolution attacking the House impeachment inquiry. Eventually, the resolution attracted the support of 50 GOP senators, earning an attaboy from Trump on Twitter and amounting to a show of defense for the president around the process, if not the substance, of impeachment proceedings.

The process and smearing witnesses is all they've got.

"It's as bad as you think"

Check out this interesting podcast interview with Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY18), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Uh-oh

This is the guy about whom it was said that he'd testify he didn't see anything wrong with what Trump did, but that there would be "nuance" in his testimony.  Whatever that means.

Mystery.

Also...

So close he can almost taste it

October has been one of President Donald Trump’s worst months in office -- and one of Mike Pence’s best.

[...]

In the span of two weeks, Pence salvaged a tenuous and short-term peace between Turkey and Kurdish forces, quelling an uproar in Washington after Republicans blasted Trump’s withdrawal in Syria. A week later, the vice president rebuked Beijing’s record on human rights -- in a speech long-sought by both Republicans and Democrats -- without disrupting fragile U.S.-China trade talks.

The performances suggest the White House may increasingly turn to the vice president to handle politically thorny situations as a parade of impeachment witnesses further weaken Trump’s ability to get anything done in Washington. In October, the number of Americans supporting the House inquiry grew to more than half, according to a RealClearPolitics average of public polling.

  Bloomberg

And RealClearPolitics is a right-wing organization.

Pence has also almost single-handedly led efforts to pressure House Democrats to vote for Trump’s rewrite of Nafta -- likely the only major Trump initiative that stands a chance of passing Congress before the 2020 elections. The vice president has been criss-crossing the U.S. to sell the deal -- traveling last week to key swing states Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and this week to Virginia.

He’s also stumping for GOP gubernatorial candidates in Louisiana and Kentucky this week and will headline a fundraising event in Texas for Trump’s re-election campaign.

While Trump has been rage-tweeting and saying stupid shit in public.

Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, dismissed the notion that Pence is filling a leadership void created by the impeachment inquiry. The vice president is relentlessly deferential to his boss, known in Washington for heaping praise on Trump at public events.

[...]

“In the midst of a conversation about impeachment, the vice president is showing the hard work that is being done by this administration on behalf of the American people,” Short said.

Yeah, we know what he's doing. His name is going to come up often enough in the Ukraine scandal. He needs to keep his head down.

Being in the limelight carries risks in Trump’s White House. The president is known to grow weary of people around him who attract too much attention. And there’s also the possibility of being undercut by the commander-in-chief.

That, too.

Trump drew Pence into the inquiry during a Sept. 25 news conference, telling reporters they should ask for the vice president’s communications with Zelenskiy because the records would show their discussions were “perfect.” Pence, who met with Zelenskiy on Sept. 1 in Warsaw, has said he doesn’t object to releasing accounts of his communications.

William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, testified last week that Zelenskiy had asked Pence directly about about security assistance that had been frozen during their Warsaw meeting. Pence didn’t answer definitively but said that Trump wanted European countries to do more to support Ukraine and for Kyiv to more aggressively probe corruption, according to Taylor. Pence has denied raising the topic of Biden with Ukraine’s leader.

Unlike Trump, Pence is a politician, and he may have been smart enough to be very careful what he said.

NBC News reported earlier on Tuesday that some of Trump’s allies are concerned that records of Pence’s communications with Zelenskiy could make the president’s own interactions with the Ukrainian leader look even worse.

Why doesn't that surprise me?

On Thursday in his China speech, Pence went further than the president has in criticizing Beijing’s human rights record, including its intervention to end protests in Hong Kong -- an attempt to “curtail the rights and liberties of its people,” the vice president said. China’s leaders fired back, criticizing what they called Pence’s “arrogance.”

Trump called Pence’s China speech “fine” four times when asked about it on Friday, stopping short of a full-throated endorsement.

“I’m also working very closely with China on a deal, but his speech was fine,” Trump said.

[...]

The president said he reviewed the speech with Pence before the vice president delivered it and Short said the two men are “in frequent communication” over messaging. The China speech was “no different,” he said.

Yeah, Pence is going to get thrown under the bus right after Mulvaney and just before Rudy.

Nicole Wallace holds back nothing on MSNBC

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Circumventing the Senate now

The point is to usurp all the power of Congress.  Loyalty only goes one way with Trump, and he intends for everyone to understand that.

The White House has found a way to bypass a federal statute that dictates who can fill secretary positions, potentially allowing President Trump to choose whomever he wants to lead the Department of Homeland Security, according to an administration official.

[...]

After Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting secretary who had a tumultuous relationship with the White House, announced this month that he would resign, it was widely believed in the administration that Mr. Trump would tap someone who would not question his more extreme policies.

[...]

But officials leading agencies in homeland security who echo Mr. Trump’s fiery language on immigration were initially deemed ineligible under the federal Vacancies Act. The law states that acting officials who take over cabinet-level positions must be next in the line of succession, have the approval of the Senate or have served 90 days under the previous secretary.

The White House, however, is exploring a loophole in the law, according to an administration official. Under this route, the White House would tap someone to be the assistant secretary of the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, which is vacant, and then elevate that person to be the acting secretary of homeland security.

[...]

This year the Trump administration has purged, installed and transferred leaders in the department, sowing chaos among its ranks and creating a legal maze on personnel matters. The latest dubious workaround would mean that Mr. Trump has found a way to use the many holes in the department to fill a void.

[...]

Mark Morgan and Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who both joined the department in recent months in an acting capacity, were thought to be out of the running for the job after the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel advised that their appointment would violate the Vacancies Act. Neither Mr. Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, nor Mr. Cuccinelli, the acting director of the agency overseeing legal immigration, was confirmed by the Senate or served for at least 90 days under the last Senate-confirmed homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen.

[...]

Mr. Cuccinelli has a tumultuous relationship with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. [...] Mr. Cuccinelli endorsed an effort by hard-line conservatives to force Mr. McConnell to step down and backed Mr. McConnell’s primary challenger in 2014.

  NYT

They were doing this back in 2017.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Cuccinelli once headed the Senate Conservatives Fund, an organization critical of the establishment GOP that ran primary campaigns against incumbents. That past has not been forgotten: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said earlier this year that he has a "lack of enthusiasm" for Cuccinelli and warned in April about nominating Cuccinelli to the permanent position.

McConnell stood by those remarks in a brief interview on Wednesday: “I don’t think I have anything to add to what I said about that earlier."

[...]

“The White House would be well advised to consult with the Senate and senators before they take any decisive action that might be embarrassing to Mr. Cuccinelli or to the White House itself,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who called the attempt to fill the top role at the department without Senate confirmations a “concern.”

[...]

Cuccinelli, acting head of the relatively obscure U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is one of the president’s top lieutenants because of his aggressive immigration agenda. But he is loathed by McConnell and other Republicans to the point that he probably could not be confirmed for a permanent job.

  Politico

One of these tweets is not true.

That's the only Trump tweet this morning.  The previous one was 20 hours earlier.  Do they have him sedated?


UPDATE:

Release of Mueller Grand Jury documents is on hold

A federal circuit court on Tuesday evening temporarily blocked the release of grand jury materials from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

A three-judge panel, all Obama appointees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, suspended a lower court’s Wednesday deadline in order to have extra time to consider the merits of a recent Department of Justice (DOJ) request.

The DOJ on Monday asked judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to hold off on enforcing her pivotal ruling last week that ordered the agency to provide the documents to the House Judiciary Committee by Wednesday.

The department's broader request to Howell is that she suspend her order indefinitely while the Trump administration formally asks the appeals court to reconsider whether it must disclose the grand jury materials to Congress at all.

The appeals court in its ruling Tuesday said the purpose of its stay was to provide “sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motion” by the DOJ.

The judges noted that their temporary suspension of the lower court’s deadline “should not be construed” as a ruling on the merits of the agency’s request.

  The Hill

Mulvaney will be looking for a new job

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney first learned about the U.S. military raid against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after the operation was already underway, according to five current and former senior administration officials.

Mulvaney was at home in South Carolina when President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday night that “Something very big has just happened!” He was briefed on the raid that night, officials said.

  NBC

I assume he's watching Trump's Twitter account closely.

The extraordinary move by Trump to leave his chief of staff out of the most significant U.S. military operation against the world’s most wanted terrorist since the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 represents a major blow to Mulvaney, suggesting that he is increasingly sidelined inside the White House.

And that bus is barreling down the highway.

The White House chief of staff typically would be central to such a momentous gambit for a president, coordinating logistics, public statements and notifications of congressional leaders and allies. Bill Daley, who was White House chief of staff during the bin Laden raid, was seated next to then-President Barack Obama as he monitored the raid in a secure White House room with a small group of senior officials.

Andrew Card, former President George W. Bush’s longtime chief of staff, said the exclusion of Mulvaney from a moment of such magnitude in the presidency is difficult to grasp because the chief of staff typically would be in national security meetings leading up to it and tasked with coordinating with other top officials on everything from a communications strategy to a plan in case the raid failed.

The writing is on the wall, Mick.

“I’m baffled by it,” Card said. “It’s hard for me to imagine."

[...]

“It’s really unprecedented, and to me it’s just a symptom of a total breakdown in the White House functions,” said Chris Whipple, author of “The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency.”

Honestly, I think it's pretty easy to understand. Mulvaney blew it on national TV when he admitted to a quid pro quo in Trump's dealings with Ukraine a couple of weeks ago.

“Only in a completely dysfunctional White House would the White House chief of staff be out of the loop on something so significant,” he added.

And that's what we have. A completely dysfunctional White House.

Trump has been actively considering possible replacements for Mulvaney, officials said. On Monday, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley repeatedly declined to say whether the president has confidence in Mulvaney when pressed by NBC News.

“Mick has done a good job implementing the president’s policies at OMB and as acting chief of staff,” Gidley said, referring to Mulvaney’s role as the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

[...]

[A] person close to the president said Mulvaney was “cooked” after that performance.

“Mick self-immolated,” this person said. “He got up there, poured lighter fluid on himself and lit the match.”

UPDATE 11/13:

President Trump has been threatening for weeks to fire acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, but senior advisers have counseled him to hold off on such a drastic step amid a high-stakes impeachment probe, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

Trump has expressed particular anger over Mulvaney’s performance in an Oct. 17 news conference in which Mulvaney stunned White House aides by saying military aid to Ukraine was withheld to pressure its government to launch investigations that could politically benefit Trump, two of the people said.

[...]

Senior advisers have cautioned Trump that removing Mulvaney at such a sensitive time could be perilous, the people said — both because Mulvaney played an integral role in the decision to freeze the aid, and because of the disruption that would be caused by replacing one of Trump’s most senior aides.

“I don’t think you’ll see him going anywhere until after December,” said one Trump adviser. [...] “But the president was very unhappy with that press conference. That was a very bad day for the president.”

  WaPo

Gee, what happened to bringing back all those coal companies?

A coal company owned by one of President Trump's donors, the largest privately owned U.S. coal company, filed for bankruptcy Tuesday.

[...]

[Robert E. Murray, the head of Murray Energy Holdings,] previously spoke out against former President Obama’s clean air regulations, calling Obama “the greatest enemy I’ve ever had in my life.” The coal company head reportedly gave $1 million to a political action committee supporting Trump's agenda in the 2018 election.

  The Hill

That was money ill spent.

Murray Energy says it came to a restructuring support agreement to manage $2.7 billion in debt with lenders who own more than 60 percent of a $1.7 billion loan. The agreement also funds operations to continue operating with $350 million.

Murray has advocated for miners to Trump’s administration, asking it to help the workers in the struggling industry, Bloomberg reported.

I'm pretty sure their donations to Trump were Hail Mary last ditch efforts to stave off bankruptcy. Not even coal company bigwigs really thought coal mining had a future.

Coal firms are struggling, with four other major companies filing for bankruptcy. Murray had cautioned in 2017 that bankruptcy could be on the horizon for his company because of the changing nature of the industry, with natural gas and renewable energy becoming cheaper alternatives to coal, according to Bloomberg.

The company, with 5,000 employees, including 2,400 union members, said it also has an $8 billion bill in liabilities for pensions and benefit plans, Bloomberg reported.

Well, those folks are going to get stiffed, no doubt.  Trump got their money.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

The guy from Monopoly shaved his mustache.  Wonder where he stashed his tophat.

Surprise, surprise

Those ellipses in the transcript of the "perfect" phone call were to remove Biden and Burisma.

Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, told House impeachment investigators on Tuesday that the White House transcript of a July call between President Trump and Ukraine’s president omitted crucial words and phrases, and that his attempts to include them failed, according to three people familiar with the testimony.

The omissions, Colonel Vindman said, included Mr. Trump’s assertion that there were recordings of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. discussing Ukraine corruption, and an explicit mention by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board employed Mr. Biden’s son Hunter.

Colonel Vindman, who appeared on Capitol Hill wearing his dark blue Army dress uniform and military medals, told House impeachment investigators that he tried to change the reconstructed transcript made by the White House staff to reflect the omissions. But while some of his edits appeared to have been successful, he said, those two corrections were not made.

  Guardian

This corrects the misunderstanding I had from someone's tweet that he wanted to keep the name Burisma out of the transcript, which didn't make sense.

UPDATE 11/1719:

Biden adviser Jennifer Williams' testimony:

Imagine that.

Pushing back on Trumpworld's smear attacks

Glad to see CNN's Brianna Keilar knocking back new CNN contributor Sean Duffy for his shameful treatment of Alexander Vindman.  Now CNN should can him.

There are bad first days at work and then there is Sean Duffy’s first day at CNN. Appearing as the network’s latest pro-Trump talking head last week, the former Wisconsin congressman (and Real World: Boston castmember) claimed that the hacking of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election was a false flag operation conducted by Ukrainians, not the Russians. The rest of the panel on State of the Union practically shouted him down: “This is a disputed, absurd conspiracy theory that you’re talking about right now,” conservative pundit Amanda Carpenter said.

Duffy tried his luck again the next day, suggesting that all Donald Trump wanted was to find the “real” DNC hackers, i.e. anybody but the Russians. CNN host Alisyn Camerota cut him off. “That’s a conspiracy theory,” she said indignantly.

CNN executives certainly knew what they were getting into when they hired Duffy. A five-term congressman and Tea Party darling, Duffy has a long, well-documented history of making inflammatory and dishonest comments. Appearing on the network in February of 2017, Duffy defended Trump’s Muslim ban by saying Middle Eastern terrorists are a more significant threat than white domestic terrorists because the latter commit “one-off” attacks. In the same interview he cited the “good things” that stemmed from Dylann Roof’s massacre of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. He has also suggested that George Soros was rigging elections, that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has “ties to the Muslim Brotherhood,” and that the Democratic Party’s pro-choice policies intentionally targeted black communities and amounted to “infanticide.” Unfortunately for CNN and any other organization that clinging to a both-sides model of journalism, Duffy is probably the best the network can get. [...] As Republicans become more extreme, it’s become near-impossible to find non-loony ones to fill airtime on cable news.

Duffy, who resigned his congressional seat this summer, will undoubtedly say outrageous and absurd things nearly every time he appears on air. That’s because he isn’t there to make cogent arguments. He is there to act as a surrogate for the president and to show that CNN is still willing to hear from the president’s defenders.

[...]

Cable news outlets already have stables full of liberal and progressive talking heads. And there are plenty of sober analysts—Doris Kearns Goodwin types—available to shoot the shit on Sunday shows. Post-Trump, however, the Never Trump conservatives who had previously dutifully advanced Republican talking points were overpopulating cable news shows and editorial pages. There were few pro-Trump figures, particularly ones who could represent the president’s political base.

CNN, in particular, has hunted for the right pro-Trump pundit, with disastrous results. Jeffrey Lord, whose exchanges with Van Jones regularly went viral, was fired after tweeting “Sieg Heil” at the president of Media Matters. Jason Miller resigned after he was accused of “surreptitiously” dosing a woman he had impregnated with an abortion pill. Earlier this year, the network cut ties with two pro-Trump surrogates, Andre Bauer and Jack Kingston—the latter of whom suggested that Parkland gun control activists were being manipulated by Soros. Kayleigh McEnany left in 2017 to work for the Republican National Committee.

  New Republic

CNN needs to get over it.  There are no sane Trump supporters.  There is no honest defense of Trump to be made.  If people want lies and bullsht, let them stay with Fox.  Or Trump's new darling, OANN.

Everybody on these smear campaigns needs to be called out.

A rare commendable moment for Roy Blunt

And, your president is insane:

Welllllllll....it looks like he actually helped write it.  And tried to help cover Trump's ass in he process.*

*UPDATE:  I read that wrong.  He was trying to do the opposite, which makes a whole lot more sense.  It was using company in place of Burisma that he objected to.

There's no consequence for lying to House Committees

This makes the testimony of those people who are calling out Trump's crimes and corruption regarding Ukraine and the 2020 election all the more meaningful.  Because it's obvious they wouldn't suffer any consequences if they simply lied for him.

For ourselves

Making America respected again.

Of course, it's what we've actually always been doing.  If not to have it ourselves, at least to keep anyone else from getting it.

In a nutshell

It worked for Dick Cheney.


Every Congressional Republican specifically

Obama v Trump: reporting the killing of an enemy

Funny and pathetic at the same time.

I hope everyone's still alive and able to laugh come 2021.

SNL doesn't need Alec Baldwin.  They can use the dipshit himself.

UPDATE:

The Democrats are keeping Republicans out!

Jesus, these people.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Dear Evangelical Trumpalos:

Your hero brags about making it safe for you to say Merry Christmas again, but every year he hosts a party for "the Devil's Holiday."

How do you square that?

Haha.  The little girl dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz knew better than to get close to him.

As expected, Trump cabal is smearing Ukraine deal witnesses

UPDATE:  And Ambassador Vindman:

“If you look at this lieutenant colonel’s background, he’s got a Purple Heart, he got hit by an IED in Iraq,” Brian Kilmeade said on “Fox & Friends.” “We also know he was born in the Soviet Union, immigrated with his family, young. He tends to feel simpatico with the Ukraine."

On CNN, former congressman Sean P. Duffy (R-Wis.) suggested that Vindman’s birthplace was important.

“It seems very clear that he is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense,” Duffy said. “I don’t know that he’s concerned about American policy, but his main mission was to make sure that Ukraine got those weapons.” (Of course, Ukraine’s defense is still U.S. policy.)

[...]

What Trump prioritizes in migrants who come to the United States is self-sufficiency and assimilation. He prefers migrants from Europe over Africa or the Middle East. What he wants is Alexander Vindmans — until Alexander Vindman points out where the loyalties of Trump himself might be questionable.

[...]

“My family fled the Soviet Union when I was three and a half years old,” Vindman’s opening remarks read. “Upon arriving in New York City in 1979, my father worked multiple jobs to support us, all the while learning English at night. He stressed to us the importance of fully integrating into our adopted country. For many years, life was quite difficult. In spite of our challenging beginnings, my family worked to build its own American Dream."

The statement continues: “I have a deep appreciation for American values and ideals and the power of freedom. I am a patriot, and it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend OUR country, irrespective of party or politics."

  WaPo

More American than the Trump cabal.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vinindman

I think Trump and the GOP, having already destroyed themselves with US intelligence agencies, are inexorably destroying themselves in the eyes of the US military.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

No.  They're not looking away.  They're going after him like rabid animals.

UPDATE:

Left: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman,

Right: Sebastian Gorka