The case against the Russians

Don't wish to appear recalcitrant about the matter.  I've rounded up some links and excerpted a few bits that have appeared over the past couple of weeks in order to document where things stand today.  As we know, James Comey is to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee publicly next Thursday, and more tantalizing pieces may leak out in the interim.

The lede, exhumed: no evidence is yet publicly available that convinces me that Putin or any of his "patriots" stole the election for Trump.  They stole data from the DNC.  Mounting evidence suggests what has long been suspected by everyone, including me: Russians meddled around the edges of the election, but whatever they managed had no effect on the presidential outcome.

Josh Marshall at TPM has IMO been the sanest and most calm resource, but that isn't saying very much, especially lately, as you'll see at the end here.  Before I get started, Mother Jones (mostly a bunch of Hillbots during the past election season and certainly afterward, FWIW) submits your lineup and its own timeline of events up to May 17.  You can smell their Clinton bias when you see they've published that dinner table photo as well as their prop job of Louise Mensch at the bottom of the second link in my previous sentence.

Okay, here we go.

May 23: Former CIA director John Brennan testifies that Russia may have recruited people in the US to influence the election.

Brennan said he was aware of intelligence and information that revealed contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign. He couldn't say, however, whether that the activities amounted to collusion.

More from Reuters:

... Brennan said on (May 23) he had noticed contacts between associates of Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia during the 2016 election and grew concerned Moscow had sought to lure Americans down "a treasonous path."

Brennan, like so many spooks before him, has lied to Congress under oath previously.  His credibility with me is zilch on topics involving insinuation.  If you click on those two links for the full context of his remarks as reported by the media, you might come away with the impression that his most recent public testimony was guarded.  To put it mildly.

May 24: "Top Russian officials discussed how to influence Trump aides last summer".

American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers, according to three current and former American officials familiar with the intelligence.

The conversations focused on Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman at the time, and Michael T. Flynn, a retired general who was advising Mr. Trump, the officials said. Both men had indirect ties to Russian officials, who appeared confident that each could be used to help shape Mr. Trump’s opinions on Russia.

Some Russians boasted about how well they knew Mr. Flynn. Others discussed leveraging their ties to Viktor F. Yanukovych, the deposed president of Ukraine living in exile in Russia, who at one time had worked closely with Mr. Manafort.

The intelligence was among the clues — which also included information about direct communications between Mr. Trump’s advisers and Russian officials — that American officials received last year as they began investigating Russian attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of Mr. Trump’s associates were assisting Moscow in the effort. Details of the conversations, some of which have not been previously reported, add to an increasing understanding of the alarm inside the American government last year about the Russian disruption campaign.

The information collected last summer was considered credible enough for intelligence agencies to pass to the F.B.I., which during that period opened a counterintelligence investigation that is continuing. It is unclear, however, whether Russian officials actually tried to directly influence Mr. Manafort and Mr. Flynn. Both have denied any collusion with the Russian government on the campaign to disrupt the election.

John O. Brennan, the former director of the C.I.A., testified Tuesday about a tense period last year when he came to believe that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was trying to steer the outcome of the election. He said he saw intelligence suggesting that Russia wanted to use Trump campaign officials, wittingly or not, to help in that effort. He spoke vaguely about contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials, without giving names, saying they “raised questions in my mind about whether Russia was able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.”

Also May 24: "Fake Russian intel on Lynch-Clinton collusion prompted Comey investigation into Hillary’s emails".

A dubious Russian intelligence document that purported to show coordination between Hillary Clinton and the U.S. Justice Department, and prompted former FBI Director James Comey to disclose the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s emails, was “bad intelligence” and “possibly even fake,” the Washington Post reports.

According to the FBI’s own assessment, the American contacts mentioned in the Russian document -- which described an email exchange between former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and officials working on behalf of 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton -- deny having had any conversations “remotely” similar to those described in the memo. By August 2016, the Post reports, the FBI concluded the memo was unreliable.

Fake news about fake documents.  Now do you see why I think Comey went off the rails?

Despite the memo’s dubious origins, sources told the post it was “a very powerful factor” in Comey’s decision to reveal an investigation into Clinton’s email server -- and ultimately determine the bureau should not prosecute her.

“The point is that the bureau picked up hacked material that hadn’t been dumped by the bad guys [the Russians] involving Lynch,” a source told the Post. “And that would have pulled the rug out of any authoritative announcement.”

May 25: A Florida Republican political consultant reveals that he 'colluded' with Guccifer 2.0 -- one of the highest-profile Russian hackers of DNC servers -- to disseminate some of their purloined data.  Not emails but voter demographics, turnout strategies, and the like.  First, TPM (because most of us cannot access the WSJ):

A Republican political operative in Florida asked the alleged Russian hacker who broke into Democratic Party organizations’ servers at the height of the 2016 campaign to pass him stolen documents, according to a report Thursday by the Wall Street Journal.

In return, that operative received valuable Democratic voter-turnout analyses, which the newspaper found at least one GOP campaign consultant took advantage of the information. The hacker went on to flag that same data to Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of Donald Trump’s who briefly advised his presidential campaign, and who is currently under federal investigation for potential collusion with Russia.

The Wall Street Journal’s report presents the clearest allegations to date of collusion between people connected to Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Cybersecurity experts were sounding the alarm as early as last July that Guccifer 2.0, which had tapped into both the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic National Campaign Committee, was connected to the Russian military intelligence apparatus. However, in September, Florida GOP consultant Aaron Nevins wrote to Guccifer 2.0 to tell the hacker to “feel free to send any Florida-based information,” according to the Journal.

Guccifer 2.0 ended up passing Nevins 2.5 gigabytes of stolen documents, including information about Democrats’ get-out-the-vote strategy in Florida and other swing states, the Journal reported. Nevins then posted the documents on his blog, HelloFLA.com, under a pseudonym.

The stolen documents Nevins published on his blog and then passed along to Florida journalists included detailed analyses commissioned by the DCCC of specific Florida districts -- reports that revealed how many dependable Democratic voters, likely Democratic voters, and frequent-but-not-committed voters resided in each area.

Salon:

“I just threw an arrow in the dark,” Nevins, who set up a Dropbox account for Guccifer 2.0 to transfer data, told the Journal. “If your interests align,” the operative concluded, “never shut any doors in politics.”

Stone told the Journal that while he did receive a link to Nevins’s blog from Guccifer 2.0, he didn’t share the stolen data published on the blog with anyone.

In addition to receiving hacked information about Democratic races in Florida, Nevins also received internal details about congressional districts in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC with close ties to House Speaker Paul Ryan, eventually used the material that was stolen by hackers in attack ads against several Democrats.

Anthony Bustamante, a Republican campaign consultant for Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., told the Journal that he used the stolen information to plan ad buys and better target a mailer effort: “I did adjust some voting targets based on some data I saw from the leaks.”

Did I mention 'tantalizing'?

Do you see anything that suggests Trump was assisted?  Look again at the states listed above: not exactly swingy.  And these were Congressional races anyway, so the leap of faith necessary to bridge this to Trump and the presidential election is a chasm too far.

May 26: Comey knew the Lynch email document was a fraud but used it anyway.

This isn’t necessarily quite as crazy as it sounds. Comey’s apparent reasoning was that if the document was later released in a Russian/Wikileaks document dump, the fact that it was fake wouldn’t necessarily matter. The Bureau wouldn’t necessarily be able to publicly prove it was a phony without disclosing sources and methods, or perhaps not at all. The point being, whether or not the document was real didn’t really matter. Its release would potentially discredit the integrity of the DOJ/FBI decision making either way.

Two points seem worth noting.

Go read them.  Josh Marshall concludes ...

The big takeaway here is that the Russian interference and subversion campaign appears to have gone much deeper and reached much higher than we’ve heretofore known. Whichever version of events you credit, Russian disinformation operations seem to have reached to the very top of the law enforcement and national security state and driven critical decisions at that level. Remember, the October 28th letter to Congress flowed directly from commitments Comey made because of that July press conference. The impact of this decision was quite simply vast.

I heard dramatic music playing, interspersed with a few "Law and Order" dunh-dunhs in the background as I read that post.  Did you?

Maybe it's as ominous as Marshall believes but it still smells like Red-scaring to me.

Also May 26: Trump's most trusted advisor and son-in-law enters the fray, and Josh Marshall seems more stunned.  But this might not have much, if anything at all, to do with election meddling.

... (I)n secret meetings in December, Jared Kushner proposed to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak setting up a “back channel” so the Trump team could communicate secretly and securely with Moscow. But this use of the phrase “back channel” does a serious disservice to back channels. A back channel is secret and unofficial communication through trust intermediaries that goes around the national security and diplomatic bureaucracy and provides some plausible deniability. Kushner proposed using the Russian government’s own secure communication facilities, presumably housed in Russian diplomatic facilities in Washington and New York, to communicate with Moscow behind the back of the US government, state, intelligence apparatus, military, etc.

Why exactly would you want to do that?

Here are key passages from the Post.

Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Ambassador Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.

The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.

[...]

Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate — a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team.

This is truly extraordinary. As the Post notes, even Kislyak seems to have found it shocking, not least because under normal or even abnormal circumstances the Russians (or any other government) would never let the US government see or have any contact with these facilities and hardware.

Think Progress explains it with less melodramatic flair.

I took the Memorial Day weekend off from this shit, came back to more Kush.  Now we've got cocktail napkins with Venn diagrams mentioning "troll farms" and "bot armies".  Sad!

In doing my catchup reading, I found this from a fresh young face named Z. Byron Wolf at CNN.  He references Comey's handling of the fake Lynch email and ties a few other things to it; despite its tenuousness, it is the best argument for Russian meddling that may have influenced the election that I have read.  No excerpt does the argument justice, read it through.  Here's Wolf's very sustainable conclusion.

(I)f it is true that a fake Russian intelligence memo, led Comey to act the way he did -- and if the academic study and polling suggest that those actions kept her emails in the news -- and if those actions hurt her public standing, then how is it possible to still say that there's no way to say if Russian meddling had any impact on the outcome?

It's not possible to say that credibly.  But there's still no evidence -- make that no public evidence, and certainly not enough rumored, suggested, or insinuated -- to demonstrate sufficient causality to me that the election was tipped away from Her.  As the lawyers say, correlation is not causation.

Your mileage may vary, as always.

Hillary Clinton, 'round the bend

Let the healing begin scab be scratched open and bleed on the carpet a bit more.

"I take responsibility for every decision I made, but that's not why I lost."

She lost, she told Recode's Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, because of unfair media coverage, an "unprecedented" campaign waged against her by a foreign adversary, James Comey's decision to re-open her email probe, criticism of her candidacy that she claimed bordered on misogyny, and a prevailing sentiment that she would be victorious, which hampered voter turnout.

And also the DNC, that POS -- something we can both agree on, although for a few reasons we might agree on ... and several we would not.

Clinton said that she did not inherit a strong data foundation from the Democratic party, which was "bankrupt" and near "insolvent."  

I suppose if this was true, it then wouldn't be Debbie Wasserman Schultz's fault.  But it is not true, unless you would rather believe Breitbart, which posted fundraising numbers from the fall of 2015 and linked to a FEC page (you'll have to manipulate your request by year and org to compare the figues with Breitbart's claims).  There's this from 2013 and CNN and Fortune magazine, and that's the best evidence I can find that supports Clinton's assertion.  By contrast, this story from Politico last July completely contradicts Her.

Hillary Clinton’s joint fundraising committee with the Democratic National Committee raised $81.6 million over the last three months, and transferred $20.7 million of it to her campaign, according to a report filed Friday night with the Federal Election Commission.

The committee, Hillary Victory Fund, has been raising money aggressively since last year and it finished last month with $41.9 million in the bank. That’s more than double the balance maintained by the two joint fundraising committees started in late May by her presumptive GOP rival Donald Trump, who is facing a gaping financial disadvantage.

Hillary Victory Fund’s FEC report reveals a smoothly functioning Democratic Party fundraising apparatus behind their presumptive nominee. The committee transferred $22.8 million to 32 participating state parties as well as $11.8 million to the DNC.

It also reported receiving $1.5 million raised by lobbyists, including $31,200 bundled by Tony Podesta, the brother of Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. In contrast, Trump, who has railed against the power of lobbyists, did not report receiving any money raised by lobbyists into his joint committees.

Perhaps she's accurate; the DNC may have been flat busted in late 2015, and she certainly did 'inject money' into it.  Don't all presidential candidates do that, though?  At the very least, presidential nominees augment the fundraising of the national organization.  I recall hearing lots of complaining about the DNC not helping state parties, and the article above notes her contribution to them, but there was a later Politico story reporting that both she and they did not follow through on that, and indeed sought to conceal that fact from the media.

(*ed. note: several updates have been made to the above graf.)

Let's read Clinton's full statement for context.

"So I’m now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party. I mean, it was bankrupt. It was on the verge of insolvency. Its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong," she recalled. "I had to inject money into it."

By contrast, she said, then-GOP candidate Donald Trump inherited a well-funded and extensively tested data operation that laid the foundation for his ultimately successful campaign to effectively weaponize data and internet content against Clinton.

"So Trump becomes the nominee and he is basically handed this tried and true, effective foundation," Clinton said. 

The DNC was not bankrupt nor was it insolvent, or anything near it, at the time she became the Democratic nominee last summer.  That statement is demonstrably false.

With respect to data management infrastructure: recall that Clinton had her own (allegedly) sophisticated IT team and tool, named Ada.  So if what she said above was true ... why would Trump even need the Russians and their agents to spew out fake news on social media, conning gullible Americans into not voting for Her?

Big Data failed Clinton but not Trump?  Trump and the GOP -- specifically Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica, or maybe Robert Mercer -- were just smarter than Clinton and the DNC?  Okay, scratch that question.  But this one deserves an answer: does the evidence of the past six months of the Trump Administration in action enable you to believe this?

It did make Ted Cruz sick to his stomach once upon a time, for whatever that's worth.  Again, why do you need Russians when you have evil geniuses like Michal Kozinski?

A couple of things before we move on to the Russians hacking the election (sic).

"We did not engage in false content," Clinton said. "We weren't in the same category as the other side." (There have been false stories from both political stances, according to analysis from BuzzFeed News.)

And she was "the victim of an assumption she would win".

Now then, let's get our passports stamped for Moscow, via the looking glass.

“The [17-agency report from the intelligence community] concluded with high confidence that the Russians ran an extensive information war campaign against my campaign to influence voters in the election,” Clinton said. “They did it through paid advertising, we think. They did it through false news sites. They did it through these 1,000 agents. They did it through machine learning, which kept spewing out this stuff over and over again, the algorithms they developed.”

Then she asked, not-quite-rhetorically, “Who were they coordinating with or colluding with?”

Unlike previous Russian cyberattacks inside the U.S., “This was different. They went public,” she said. “The Russians, in my opinion -- and based on the intel and counterintel people I’ve talked to -- they could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they had been guided.”

“Guided by Americans?” Mossberg asked.

“Guided by Americans,” Clinton answered. “And guided by people who had polling data and information.”

Okay then. At least we didn't get any postulates about voting machines being hacked.

After a brief tour of James Comey’s behavior during the election, Kara Swisher asked Clinton who she thought was guiding the Russians. “ I hope that we’ll get enough information to be able to answer that question,” Clinton responded at first.

Swisher prompted, “But you’re leaning Trump.”

“I am leaning Trump,” Clinton said.

“We’re going to, I hope, connect up a lot of the dots,” she said. “And it’s really important because when Comey did testify before being fired this last couple of weeks, he was asked, ‘Are the Russians still involved?’ And he goes, ‘Yes. They are.’ Why wouldn’t they be? It worked for them. It is important for Americans, particularly people in tech and business, to understand Putin wants to bring us down and he is an old KGB agent.”

I'm sorry to say it, but both the Democrats and the Republicans nominated candidates who were far too emotionally unstable to serve as President of the United States.  I still believe the worst one won, but it's a real close call.

Of course, Clinton believes she beat Trump. And Bernie Sanders, too.

Hillary in Wonderland.

I'll still stand on James Comey being a blithering idiot, voter suppression in states like Wisconsin, and Clinton being the absolute worst candidate imaginable in a 'change' election cycle, and that was before her rumored health issues were unfortunately confirmed, and a host of other Al Gore-like small mistakes that added up to her pulling defeat from the jaws of victory.  Errors in polling, the coup de grâce, gave everybody a false sense of security that she would hang on.  I went back and forth about her prospects myself at the end of September, and again in early November.  But even Trump himself was musing about 'taking a nice, long vacation' after Election Day.

That was in August, though.  Conspiracists alight!

Memorial Day Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance would like to remind you that many people confuse Memorial Day and Veterans Day.  Memorial Day is a day for remembering and honoring military personnel who died in the service of their country, particularly those who died in battle or as a result of wounds sustained in battle.  While those who died are also remembered on November 11 each year, Veterans Day is set aside to thank and honor all those who served honorably in the military, in wartime or peacetime.  In fact, Veterans Day is largely intended to thank living veterans for their service, to acknowledge that their contributions are appreciated, and to underscore the fact that all those who served -- not only those who died -- have sacrificed.

Please also note the correct spelling of Veterans Day, not Veteran's Day or Veterans' Day.  Here's the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs with the grammar lesson: "Veterans Day does not include an apostrophe but does include an 's' at the end of 'veterans'; it is not a day that 'belongs' to veterans, it is a day for honoring all veterans."

Please: never say 'Happy Memorial Day', or 'Happy long weekend', or any other variant, because if all you're doing is shopping and barbecuing, then you've completely lost the ability to relate to what today is all about.  It's much more offensive, in fact, than saying  'happy holidays' at Christmas.

And let's not forget exactly what they died for, either.  It wasn't just defending our country or 'freedom'.  Especially in the wars and 'domino effect' police actions, declared and otherwise, since World War II.

Here's the lefty blog post roundup.

Off the Kuff has an update on the redistricting situation.

Socratic Gadfly has collected and assembled his first set of thoughts on the idea of guaranteed, universal, or basic income; both its promises and its possible perils.

Texas Republicans are leading the way for mean, misogynistic, crazy, racist policies. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme joins the resistance.

With hurricane season approaching, Neil at All People Have Value reported on the Trump/Governor Abbott hurricane plan for the Houston/Galveston area. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

Democrats were on the comeback trail even before the Montana special election results came in, reported PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

jobsanger is fearful about the three bullies -- Russia, China, and the US -- who are jockeying to be King of the Rest of the World.

In acknowledging the 2,000 homeless teens living in Denton County, the Lewisville Texan Journal also reports that a non-profit organization has recently opened a new shelter there for them.

Jeremi Suri writes in Rivard Report that on this Memorial Day, we must better prepare for the next war.

High Plains Blogger offers his take on Ken Burns' latest long-form video project for PBS about an aspect of American culture, The Vietnam War.

=================

In a plethora of reactions to the Texas Legislature's flurry of bill passages and deaths as Sine Die comes today ...

RG Ratcliffe at Burkablog posts about Dan Patrick's scorched earth potty politics in 'War and Pee'.

Better Texas Blog explains the Saturday Night Massacre Texas budget deal approved by the Lege, and dives deeper into the cuts to Medicaid.

The TSTA Blog criticizes Greg Abbott's support of the "sanctuary cities" law, Dwight Silverman explains how you can legally circumvent the new texting-while-driving ban, and Grits for Breakfast adopts the 'glass half full' POV for the law named after Sandra Bland that omits the full telling of her story.

Mark McKinnon wonders how the Texas GOP got to be so out of touch with the business community, and Mimi Swartz was not amused by Greg Abbott's joke about shooting reporters.

===============

And in non-Memorial Day and Texas Lege blogging ...

DBC Green Blog explains 'lesser evil' and defines 'progressive'.

Somervell County Salon has a few religious news items and notes from the distaff side.

The Rag Blog tells the story of one of Houston's least acclaimed filmmakers, Eagle Pennell, who lost his aspirations and eventually his life at the bottom of a bottle.

Beyond Bones (the blog for Houston's Museum of Natural Science) has a new paleontology exhibit spotlighting the living and deceased -- as in fossilized -- artistry of swimming crinoids, aka feather starfish.

And Harry Hamid reminisces about his first car.

Sunday Funnies

WH Budget Chief: ‘I Hope’ Fewer People Get Social Security Disability Insurance

“There is fraud, no doubt,” the New York Times‘ Teresa Tritch argued in 2015. “But there is no evidence it is rampant.” Tritch pointed to a telling statistic: “If people on disability were faking it, they wouldn’t have such high death rates.”

Democrats come creeping back

This will be a "kind to the Donkeys" post.  Seriously.

-- Today is special election day in Montana, and things seem to be breaking nicely for Rob Quist, the folk singer and political novice bidding to replace Ryan Zinke (now Interior Secretary) as the Treasure State's sole Congressman.  His Republican opponent body-slammed a reporter for the British newspaper The Guardian yesterday.  Greg Gianforte was charged with assault late last night after the incident.  The best account comes from a Fox News reporter, among three who witnessed it.  Don't be afraid to click on the link.

Gianforte was rejected by the voters just six months ago in his bid to become the Big Sky Country's governor.  Montanans elected Democrat Steve Bullock, barely, with 50.2% of the same electorate among which Trump carried 56-35 over Hillary Clinton.

Polling still slightly favors Gianforte, so this late development may or may not change enough minds; it's all about turnout, as per usual in special elections.  Trump has recorded a robocall for Gianforte and the Republican has run hard on President Pussy Grabber's coattails, so today's result will truly be a marker of how far disenchantment with Boss Tweet has come.

No bets made or taken.

Update: Quist falls short, 44-50. I received an email from a Democratic organization on May 24 -- asking for phone calls or a donation -- claiming a poll showed him "as few as two points behind".

-- In Georgia, prospects are similarly brightening for Joel Ossoff, who has opened a 7-point polling lead on Karen Handel for the right to replace HHS Secretary Tom Price in Congress.

Ossoff and Handel will face off in a June 20 runoff election in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District. Democrats are hopeful they can channel anti-Trump fervor into a win for Ossoff, given that Trump won the ruby-red district by just one point in November.

-- These two potential Congressional flips come on the heels of a couple of statehouse victories for the Blues in New England.

(Last) Tuesday, Democrat Edith DesMarais won a New Hampshire House of Representatives seat while Christine Pellegrino, another Democratic candidate, won a New York state assembly seat. Both races took place in districts previously under Republican control that Trump won in November.

More here.

-- And Roll Call sees a shift to the left in 19 US House races across the country.  They mention Pete Sessions' TX-32 -- still 'likely Republican' -- but not John Culberson's TX-7, and call today's Montana election as 'tilting' GOP.

Certainly the cautionary warnings about polling apply in the wake of Clinton's narrow win loss for the White House six months ago.  I personally distrust polling even more than I did before; not good old Ted at jobsanger, however.  You can find a couple of posts just like this every single day at his shop.  Something considerably less than meaningful and very close to worthless.  A few people are never going to get it; this cluelessness almost has a 'teaching pigs to sing' quality about it.  Still, it's better than pimping out fake news, advanced by the most ignorant and vile of Republicans, who are forced to retract, and even then won't stop.

If you're a Democrat being duped about the Seth Rich murder mystery by the likes of Blake Farenthold, Newt Gingrich, and Sean Hannity, would you please wake up and smell the coffee.

That was being nice to Democrats; trust me.

The Weekly Wrangle

With this week's lefty blog post wrangle, the Texas Progressive Alliance is old enough to remember when Republicans considered giving classified information to the Russians a bad thing.

Off the Kuff notes that the state's voter ID failure in 2016 was way bigger than you thought it was.

SocraticGadfly says that Republicans, Democrats and media pundits alike who talk about a "25th Amendment solution" to President Trump need to read their Constitution better.

The night they drove old Dixie down happened twice in New Orleans this past week, as documented by PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Republicans double down on killing women with expanded war on health services. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme says vote as if your life depends on it. It does.

Dos Centavos wonders aloud if Houston will sue the state of Texas over SB4.

jobsanger is in the camp of those who believe Trump's top pick for FBI director, Joe Lieberman, would be a terrible idea.

The Lewisville Texan Journal questioned the seeming collaboration of the local school district and their political action committee -- a violation of state law -- in that city's recent school bonds election.

Neil at All People Have Value attended the weekly Tuesday protest at the Houston office of wicked-doing Senator John Cornyn.  APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

Texas Leftist celebrates Houston's diversity.

And Houston Streetwise has some photos of the de-Dowlingization and soon-to-be Emancipation of a street in Houston's Third Ward.

===============

More news and blog posts from around Texas!

Jonathan Tilove at First Reading interpreted the Freedom Caucus' outsized influence on the legislative session as a coarse correction.

The Texas Observer quotes a House member saying that her chamber -- and Speaker Joe Straus -- are "being rolled by the Senate" and Dan Patrick, and transgender children are under the wheels.

The San Antonio Current watched some of the most self-proclaimed "pro-life" members of the Texas Lege using procedural tactics to kill a bill that would fund a study of rising maternal mortality rates.

 (note date on toon)

Grits for Breakfast complains that the bill in the Lege that replaces 'Driver Responsibility' fees with a 'Phillips-Miles tariff' is making a bad situation worse.

In PoliTex's North Texas political roundup, Rosie O'Donnell is raising money and attention for a centrist Democratic challenger to to thirty-year incumbent Joe Barton, and one of two open seats on the Fifth Circuit may go to a John Cornyn protege'.  Or perhaps state Supreme Court Justice (and prolific Tweeter) Don Willett.

Covering San Antonio's municipal elections, the Rivard Report explains that river barges and runoffs make for ugly politics.

Zachery Taylor explains how for-profit insurance is a government-authorized crime syndicate.

DBC Green Blog wishes to point out for the record that Dr. Jill Stein remains relevant to the national discussion (why would that dinner table photograph be so ubiquitous and contentious among Democrats if she weren't?) and she is still debunking the Russian conspiracy theories.

Therese Odell adds the late-night comics' reactions to the latest Russia revelations.

New Deal Democrat at Bonddad graphs out the economics of real median income having flat-lined since 1958. 

Doing its part to keep Austin weird and to export the feeling, The Rag Blog brought their ongoing anniversary celebration to Houston's Brazos Bookstore.

And Tom Carson at Texas Monthly eulogizes Snyder native Powers Booth.

Sunday Witch Hunt Funnies

(Click it to big it if you can't read it)

The night they drove old Dixie down

You might recognize the title of this post as the name of a song by '60's-era folk stalwarts The Band, but made more famous in that time by recent RRHOF inductee Joan Baez.

Levon Helm co-wrote and sang it, and wasn't pleased when Baez covered it in what he thought was a "happy-go-lucky style".  If you consider the song a lament to the 'lost cause', as I do, then it would seem odd that Baez, being the lifelong progressive activist, would have sung it at all.  But that may just be my bias of interpretation.  YMMV.

Thus I use the song's title in context of the very appropriate and long-overdue lynching of Confederate heroes traitors Jefferson Davis and General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (yes, he would be Jeff Sessions' namesake), in New Orleans this past week.

And later this morning, Robert E. Lee gets the same treatment.

The city of New Orleans is set to remove its fourth and final Confederate-era monument. Unlike the first three statues, Gen. Robert E. Lee is coming down during the day.

Streets near the city's Lee Circle -- where the monument stands -- were blocked off by early Friday in preparation for the dismantling that's scheduled to begin at 9 a.m.

The city started removing the landmarks in late April after the New Orleans City Council voted in 2015 to take down the four Confederate markers. Recent court rulings cleared the way for the monuments to be removed and relocated following heated public debate and legal fights.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu will give remarks Friday afternoon about the city's efforts to remove the four Confederate monuments.

To all those "hell no I ain't forgettin'" types: your history is not being erased.  Would that it could be, as a matter of fact.  And your precious heritage blows goats anyway.  Grow up and acquire some tolerance.  It won't cost you a dime to be a better human being, and our country -- the one you say your political opponents despise -- is long overdue to put these tributes to sedition and slavery in a park somewhere that will hopefully charge you high-dollar admission to wave your Stars and Bars and grouse about 'libruls'.

It's almost as offensive as Republicans who claim Democrats are the real racists without the slightest understanding of the history of the Civil War, or how the duopoly parties have evolved since that time.  In point of fact, it's much more complicated -- I prefer 'interesting' -- than that.

Anyway, screw the crackers still clinging to their guns, Bibles, and Rebel flags.

Scattershooting Roger Ailes, John Cornyn, and impeachment

Has today's news broken yet?

Frankly I have a raging case of Trump Fatigue.

-- Chris Cornell (of Soundgarden -- "Black Hole Sun", "Fell on Black Days") and disgraced Fox News founder Roger Ailes are both reported to have died this morning.  If I believed in a heaven and/or a hell, this would feel a lot like balancing their respective ledgers.

-- Thankfully I did not have to blog about John Cornyn, who two-stepped into the lead for FBI director and then right back out.  Here's hoping I don't have to blog about Joe Lieberman.

-- Impeachment is on the table for a few House Democrats, my former representative Al Green among them.  Not so much the Senate.  Gadfly has already shot down Russ Douthat's 25th Amendment solution, and this piece from Michael Walsh at Yahoo reinforces that with a scenario from MSU law professor Brian Kalt as to the Article 4 application:

In his New York Times column, Douthat argues that Trump’s situation is not what the “Cold War-era designers were envisioning” but that the president’s inability to “really govern” is testified to on a daily basis by his Cabinet.

“Read the things that these people, members of his inner circle, his personally selected appointees, say daily through anonymous quotations to the press. (And I assure you they say worse off the record.) They have no respect for him, indeed they seem to palpate with contempt for him, and to regard their mission as equivalent to being stewards for a syphilitic emperor,” Douthat wrote.

Kalt, who earned his juris doctor from Yale Law School and researches structural constitutional law and juries, argues however that using Section 4 in the case of Trump “would be a really bad idea.”

He believes that commentators like Douthat and (WaPo columnist Richard) Cohen might think Trump is nuts and unfit for the office, but says that the fact that he’s still lucid and able to communicate would make problematic the use of Section 4 as a means for removing him from office.

If Vice President Mike Pence and the majority of Trump’s Cabinet were to declare that Trump is disabled, Pence would temporarily assume the role of commander in chief, but then Trump could easily come back and declare that he is just fine. In this situation, Pence and the cabinet would then have four days to reiterate their declaration that he is disabled.

If they failed to do this, Trump would have his power back. If they did reiterate their claim, then Congress would assemble within 48 hours and vote on whether they think Trump is able to “discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Pence would stay on as president if he could secure a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate that Trump is unable to be president.

“If the president loses that vote he can always keep coming back and say, ‘Well, now I’m OK,’ and again Congress would have to vote,” Kalt said.

Section 4, it bears pointing out, has never been used.

Short of a Nixon-style resignation by Trump, those betting odds from January are going to have to be revised in about a month.  I think we're stuck with Cheetolini at least until 2018, when Democrats have a shot at retaking the House.  But keep in mind that the last time Nancy Pelosi was about to become Speaker -- immediately after the 2006 midterms -- she quickly took impeachment of W Bush off the table.  Would there be votes in the Senate in 2019 to remove Trump from office if the GOP still held the upper chamber and was the jury for the House's trial?  That's more possible in my opinion than Paul Ryan allowing a vote to bring forth articles between now and then.

And impeaching Trump gives us President Mike Pence, who in many ways could be considered worse than Trump.  Several have already noted this but J Clifford at Irregular Times says it best.

Eighteen more months of Trump Fatigue trumps President Pence.  Trust us on this.

Update: Ted Rall offers an amusing and contrary take.

-- Democrats should be focusing on the midterms -- and certainly the early scrum in CD-7 is evidence that they are -- but infighting between the 2016 primary combatants and their disciples, as well as policy purity, is still a serious damper on 2018 prospects.  CAP's Ideas Conference pointedly excluded Bernie Sanders, essentially because establishment Democrats (note nasty Kos' comment at that last link) simply do not like the country's most popular politician.  Robert Borosage at OurFuture.org underscores that the Resistance seems more important than big ideas, a doom-filled strategy for orthodox and centrist Donkeys.  Still, they persist.

They want to keep quarreling over whether pro-life Democrats should be allowed in the party.  As I pointed out weeks ago, there are already vulnerable 2018 electeds -- Democratic Senators -- who SAY they are pro-life, but VOTE pro-choice.  Some folks need to wrap their brains around this nuance or else they're going to keep losing elections.

In the queue: the Texas Lege, with Dan Patrick steering, in a finish that is looking like a demolition derby, the night they drove old Dixie down in New Orleans, the Seth Rich murder making headlines for all the wrong reasons, and the latest on Houston's homeless and the city ordinance opposing their right to exist.

The Weekly Wrangle

As late spring temperatures and blood pressure readings rise in places where Republicans congregate to exact their legislative punishment on everyone who isn't white, rich, and male -- such as DC, Austin, and Charlotte, NC -- the Texas Progressive Alliance isn't going to be signing off on any loyalty pledges.

Here's the lefty blog post and news roundup!

Off the Kuff considers the possibilities of Big John Cornyn's Senate seat being vacated by an appointment as FBI director.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes Sally Yates owned John Cornyn and Ted Cruz this week. Cornyn proved he's a Trump puppet and an excellent choice of FBI director -- if you want to destroy our democracy and make Trump officially god emperor.

Dos Centavos laughs to keep from crying about the ACLU's Texas travel advisory in the wake of SB4 becoming law.

On the day the world lost its mind, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs was a little dizzy and nauseous but otherwise got through it ... same as everyone else.

Texas Vox bemoans the bills killed by the House "Freedom Caucus" in a fit of legislative pique.

Ted at jobsanger sees a large partisan divide in the public's perception of the media.

The Lewisville ISD sent parents of middle and high school students a letter about the Netflix series "13 Reasons Why", which deals with the subject of teen suicide.  The Texan Journal has more about the proactive effort in their community for Children's Mental Health Month (May).

John Coby at Bay Area Houston interpreted his local school district election outcome in favor of their bond referendum as a big defeat for the Tea Party forces.

SocraticGadfly skips his writing about the Comey firing and politics in general.  It's baseball season, and he offers an update of a piece on how the Cardinals are lucky they didn't overpay to re-sign Jason Heyward.

Neil at All People Have Value attended a Trumpcare Die-in and saw a Sandra Bland memorial railroad car. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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On Mother's Day in Austin, the Texas Observer was at the Governor's Mansion with hundreds of people protested SB4, the "anti-sanctuary cities" legislation signed into law by Governor Abbott.

The Texas Election Law Blog comments on the ProPublica/Texas Tribune story that details Texas voter suppression as executed by the implementation of voter/photo ID in 2016.

At the Lege, Better Texas Blog laments the likely demise of some good school finance legislation, Grits for Breakfast has a status update on the criminal justice reforms bills, and the TSTA Blog wonders why charter schools are asking for more tax money.

A lot of beneficial medical-related bills also died as the result of intra-GOP quarreling and noted in the Houston Chronicle, and Texans for Public Justice added up how much lobbying money the predatory lenders have been spending this session.

Former San Antonio mayor and HUD secretary Julián Castro, in his endorsement of Ron Niremberg in the June 10 mayoral runoff election and posted at the Rivard Report, thinks the challenger would be more effective than the incumbent, Ivy Taylor.

Reveal sees the feds moving ahead with the southern border wall, but in typical Trump fashion, refusing to disclose the names of the contractors bidding on the job.

Andrew Edmonson tells what you can do to fight against attacks on LGBT Texans.

Paradise in Hell notes a correlation between life expectancy and Trump support.

In a flashback to the days when Republicans seemed sensible and not so much the psychopaths, Arnold Schwartzeneggar visited Houston and gave the commencement address at U of H, had lunch with George HW and Barbara Bush, and made other public appearances suggestive of a 2020 presidential candidate, as reported in CultureMap Houston.  (Apparently he's coming back, a message he left everywhere he went.)

And the Texas Progressive Alliance applauds and congratulates the 'new' politics editor at Texas Monthly, RG Ratcliffe.

Sunday Funnies, on both sides of the aisle