I am jaded and cynical. He’s guilty, guilty, guilty you Morans and pretending that he isn’t is to live in the opiod orange haze that envelopes him.

Pretty Poppies. Sooo tired Toto.

No ‘new’ in news, just in 3D IMAX and whatever Dolby it is that includes the vibrating chairs.

Like them vibrating chairs.

Anyway, hope you have your Microwave Popcorn ready (What? If you think I’m above Microwave Popcorn or am willing to spend more than 2.5 minutes preparing it you are sadly mistaken), because this is how Watergate started.

Cohen to Testify That Trump Engaged in Criminal Conduct While in Office
By Rebecca Ballhaus and Warren P. Strobel, Wall Street Journal
Updated Feb. 26, 2019

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, plans on Wednesday for the first time to publicly accuse the president of engaging—while in office—in criminal conduct related to a hush-money payment to a porn star, a person familiar with his expected testimony before Congress said.

Appearing before the House Oversight Committee, Mr. Cohen also plans to make public some of Mr. Trump’s private financial statements and allege that Mr. Trump at times inflated or deflated his net worth for business and personal purposes, including avoiding paying property taxes, the person said. The financial statements were developed by Mr. Trump’s accountant, the person said. The Wall Street Journal hasn’t seen those statements.
…
Some Republican lawmakers attacked Mr. Cohen ahead of Wednesday’s hearing. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) tweeted Tuesday at Mr. Cohen: “Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time to chat.”

Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Mr. Cohen, called the tweet a “new low.”

Mr. Cohen’s testimony on Wednesday is expected to focus on his “behind-the-scenes” accounts of working for Mr. Trump for over a decade, a period during which Mr. Cohen plans to say he witnessed “lies, racism and cheating” by Mr. Trump, the person said.

Mr. Cohen is expected to recount racist remarks Mr. Trump allegedly made to him, including instances in which Mr. Trump allegedly questioned the intelligence of African-Americans and criticized their lifestyle choices, the person said.
…
In his testimony Wednesday, Mr. Cohen will provide documentation of his reimbursement for the $130,000 Clifford payment, which he received in monthly installments of $35,000 throughout 2017, the person familiar with his testimony said. Mr. Cohen intends to show the panel a signed check, the person said.

Mr. Trump signed some of the checks reimbursing Mr. Cohen, which Mr. Cohen began receiving after Mr. Trump took office, according to another person familiar with the payments.

The payments to Mr. Cohen were characterized by Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg as legal fees, but federal prosecutors have said the monthly invoices weren’t in connection with any legal services Mr. Cohen provided at that time.

After the 2016 election, Mr. Weisselberg authorized a payment of double what Mr. Cohen had paid Ms. Clifford to cover related income taxes, as well as adding a $60,000 bonus, the Journal has previously reported.

In the wake of the Journal’s revelations, federal prosecutors investigated Mr. Cohen’s activities, raided his home, hotel room and office, and began probing the business practices of the Trump Organization, including whether it committed campaign-finance violations. The Trump Organization investigation, spearheaded by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, is continuing, people familiar with the matter said.
…
Mr. Cohen agreed to testify before the committee at the behest of its Democratic chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, after postponing his scheduled hearing last month, citing public statements by Mr. Trump he saw as threats toward members of his family.

In August Mr. Cohen implicated the Republican president in two federal crimes when he told prosecutors Mr. Trump directed hush-money payments during the 2016 campaign to Ms. Clifford and to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who alleged she had an affair with Mr. Trump.

The person familiar with Mr. Cohen’s anticipated testimony said Mr. Cohen would provide “evidence of criminal conduct since Mr. Trump became president,” but other than saying it involved the Clifford payment, wouldn’t offer more specifics before Wednesday’s House hearing.

The hearing would be the first time Mr. Cohen alleges that Mr. Trump committed a crime while in office. While the payments to both women were made in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election, Mr. Trump has faced questions from reporters about his possible knowledge of Mr. Cohen’s subsequent reimbursement for the Clifford payment, as well as about whether he discussed with Mr. Cohen efforts to conceal the payment after the Journal first reported its existence in January 2018.

The president has denied the sexual encounters with the women as well as ordering Mr. Cohen to arrange the payments to them.

In December, federal prosecutors in New York for the first time directly implicated the president in the payoff scheme, referring to him in court papers as “Individual-1,” alleging that Mr. Trump had played a key role in the hush payments, as the Journal had previously detailed in its reporting.
…
Mr. Cohen plans to give his most detailed public account to date of Mr. Trump’s alleged direction of the hush payments, as well as how Mr. Trump was involved in efforts to conceal them from the public weeks before the 2016 election, according to the person.

He also plans to allege that Mr. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, was involved in those efforts, the person said.

The Journal first detailed Mr. Cohen’s account to prosecutors of Mr. Weisselberg’s involvement in November. Mr. Weisselberg was granted immunity by federal prosecutors in the investigation and testified before a grand jury, according to a people familiar with the matter.
…
In a memo released last week, Mr. Cummings said that in addition to the hush-money payments, Mr. Cohen’s testimony would focus on the president’s compliance with tax laws, his “potential and actual conflicts of interest,” his business practices and “the accuracy of the President’s public statements,” among other matters.

Mr. Cohen won’t answer questions related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump or any of his associates colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election, according to a person close to Mr. Cohen. Mr. Trump has denied collusion, as has Russia.

Mr. Cohen is expected to explain why he lied to Congress in 2017 to play down Mr. Trump’s involvement in efforts during the campaign to build a Trump Tower in Moscow but isn’t expected to say whether Mr. Trump had directed him to make those misstatements, according to the person familiar with Wednesday’s planned testimony. Mr. Cohen will tell the committee that Mr. Trump continued to inquire about the project months past January 2016—the month Mr. Cohen cited before Congress in 2017 as when the project ended, this person said.

Mr. Cohen is set to speak before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday.

Republicans on the Oversight Committee plan to try to undercut and discredit Mr. Cohen’s testimony by raising questions about his motivations for speaking to Congress.

Republicans plan to ask Mr. Cohen the reason for the “sudden righteousness” that led him to plead guilty and implicate the president in crimes, according to a GOP lawmaker on the committee. They also plan to ask who is paying his legal fees; why he fired his former attorney, Guy Petrillo; and to whom he has spoken about his conversations with investigators, the lawmaker said.

In a letter last week to the chairman, GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina accused the panel under Mr. Cummings’s leadership of being “out to attack the president for partisan gain,” noting that Mr. Cohen had previously lied to Congress in a 2017 hearing. They said they intended to question Mr. Cohen about his “conduct throughout his professional life and any other financial dealings he has had, including with his father-in-law.”

The documents Mr. Cohen plans to discuss in his public testimony partly reflect a way for Mr. Cohen to deflect attacks from Republican members of the committee, the person familiar with his plans said, adding: “He expects to be called a liar.”

So is Cohen the new John Dean? He’d like you to think so. His evidentiary value is in verifying documents and tapes seized during his search warrants are the real thing.

The only things wrong with this is that Chris Christie is not in jail and I don’t think Baroni is being sincere in his regret.

He only cares that he got caught.

Bridgegate conspirator blames Christie’s ‘cult and culture’ ahead of prison sentence
By RYAN HUTCHINS, Politico
02/26/2019

One of the conspirators behind the George Washington Bridge lane closing scandal blamed the “cult and culture” of Chris Christie before being sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in federal prison.

The bizarre political stunt, which became known as Bridgegate, was designed to help the Republican governor’s career, but ended up halting his march toward the White House.

Bill Baroni, a former Republican state senator who served as Christie’s top appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was convicted in November 2016 after a dramatic, six-week trial in federal court.

Appearing before U.S. District Court Judge Susan Wigenton on Tuesday, Baroni said he takes full responsibility for what he has done, though he blamed his actions on the hard-edge political style imposed by those loyal to Christie. Before his appointment to the staff of the bi-state Port Authority, Baroni said, he thought he had a clear sense of “right and wrong.”

“When I went to work at the Port Authority — when I went to work for Chris Christie — that line disappeared. I wanted to be on the team. I wanted to please him,” Baroni told the court. “I chose to get sucked into his cult and his culture.”

Baroni said he did nothing to stop the political scheme, which involved closing lanes to the world’s busiest bridge to cause severe traffic problems over the course of several days in September 2013.

Baroni said he’s ready to be punished and wants to work to make amends.

“I’m broken. So much good that I have done in my life I destroyed,” Baroni said, openly crying as he stood to face the court. “I deeply disappointed my friends and my family and my father. I’m so sorry.”

Tuesday’s court appearance came nearly two years after Baroni had been sentenced to 24 months in prison by the same judge. Baroni and his co-defendant, Bridget Anne Kelly, later appealed their convictions and were able to convince a federal appellate court to toss some of the counts against them, opening the window for the shorter stint in prison.

“The facts haven’t changed,” Wigenton said, calling the crimes an “outrageous display” and an “abuse of power.”

She also ordered Baroni to complete a year of supervised release, 500 hours of community service and pay nearly $22,000 in fines and restitution.

In a decision in November, a panel of judges sitting on the Third Circuit upheld the seven wire fraud and conspiracy counts on which Baroni and Kelly were convicted, but dismissed two civil rights-related convictions.

Kelly, who was one of Christie’s deputy chiefs of staff, is still fighting her conviction, hoping to plead her case before the U.S. Supreme Court. She was previously sentenced to 18 months.

With the help of a third conspirator, David Wildstein, who pleaded guilty and testified against the others, Baroni and Kelly helped orchestrate a scheme to close local access lanes to the bridge, tying up traffic for hours in the densely-populated Bergen County town of Fort Lee. The plan was meant to punish Fort Lee’s Democratic mayor, who refused to endorse Christie, a Republican, in his reelection bid.

Christie was never charged in the case and insists he had nothing to do with the scheme. But testimony during the trial painted an unflattering picture of his administration and damaged his presidential aspirations. Some testimony also contradicted Christie’s previous statements about when he was notified of the lane closures.
…
Federal prosecutors had urged Wigenton to consider imposing the same 24-month sentence she had delivered in 2017 — just above the new guideline range of 12 months to 18 months. Baroni, they argued, did not accept full responsibility for his actions, minimizing his role in the scandal.

“What he’s actually acknowledged is something far, far less than what actually happened,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee Cortes said.

He said Baroni’s claim that he lost his way is true.

“But just saying it like that doesn’t fully grapple with the conscious choices he made over and over and over again,” Cortes said.

Every Republican is guilty of cheating.

Every last one.

To be fair there is a Left case to make against the EU based on Corporatist Regulation and Labor reservations about free movement diluting the Demand for Labor and reducing wages, both of which are very real. Just about half the Party falls in the Leave camp so moves in support of Remaining in the EU risk losing base support. Moreover an important part of Jeremy Corbyn’s career has been made expressing just this sentiment (regardless of how he really feels which, since I’m not a mind reader, I can’t know and Corbyn has been deliberately cagey in his public pronouncements).

But the time for long term political positioning is past and it is high time for Labour to take a stand, which is basically all of the above. Labour is now simultaneously in favor of-

1. A very soft Labour Brexit (unlikely to pass)
2. An extension (highly likely to pass)
3. And huzzah, a Second Referendum (also likely but not a sure thing)

Jeremy Corbyn: we’ll back a second referendum to stop Tory no-deal Brexit
by Jessica Elgot, The Guardian
Mon 25 Feb 2019

Jeremy Corbyn has finally thrown his party’s weight behind a second EU referendum, backing moves for a fresh poll with remain on the ballot paper if Labour should fail to get its own version of a Brexit deal passed this week.

The decision to give the party’s backing to a second referendum follows a concerted push by the shadow Brexit secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, and the deputy leader, Tom Watson, who fear any further delay could have led to more defections to the breakaway Independent Group (TIG), whose members all back a second referendum.

Although the move has delighted MPs who are backing the People’s Vote campaign, Corbyn is likely to face determined opposition from dozens of MPs in leave seats if the party whips to back a second referendum, including a significant number of frontbenchers.

The former shadow minister Lucy Powell said she believed at least 25 MPs would vote against any whip to back a second referendum, meaning that it would face an uphill struggle to pass the Commons without significant Conservative support.

A private briefing sent to Labour MPs on Monday night and seen by the Guardian makes it clear that Labour’s policy would be to include remain as an option in any future referendum.

“We’ve always said that any referendum would need to have a credible leave option and remain,” the briefing said. “Obviously at this stage that is yet to be decided and would have to be agreed by parliament.”

The briefing also makes it clear that the party would not support no deal being included on the ballot paper. “There’s no majority for a no-deal outcome and Labour would not countenance supporting no deal as an option,” the briefing says. “What we are calling for is a referendum to confirm a Brexit deal, not to proceed to no deal.”

The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, indicated on Monday evening that both she and Corbyn would campaign for remain if there were a future public vote.

“We would have a referendum on whatever deal it is that may or may not pass through parliament and we would be saying to people: ‘Do you want this, or do you want to remain?’” she told Channel 4 News.

Thornberry said she “would certainly be campaigning for us to remain” in those circumstances and, when asked if Corbyn shared that view, she added: “If it’s a choice between a disastrous Tory Brexit or no deal, and remaining, then that is what we will have to do.”

The redrawing of Labour’s objectives is likely to stem any fresh flood of resignations to TIG, whose members include the former Labour MPs Chuka Umunna and Chris Leslie as well as the ex-Tory MP Anna Soubry, all key figures in the People’s Vote movement.

Corbyn told MPs the party would back a fresh poll as a final resort in order to stop “a damaging Tory Brexit being forced on the country”.

Speaking to MPs on Monday night, a week after seven MPs who backed a referendum quit the party, Corbyn said Labour would first table its own version of a Brexit deal, including a permanent customs union.

That amendment is set to be tabled to the government’s Brexit motion on Wednesday, when Labour will also whip to back another amendment tabled by Yvette Cooper and the Tory Oliver Letwin, which would legislate for a delay to the UK’s exit date in order to avoid no deal.

May is expected to make a last-ditch attempt to avoid a serious cabinet rebellion over that amendment this week. The Guardian reported last week that at least four cabinet ministers and almost a dozen junior ministers and many others on the government payroll were ready to rebel and vote for the measure.

The prime minister’s most likely option is a pledge to let MPs vote on delaying Brexit if the withdrawal deal does not pass by 12 March, though Cooper and Letwin’s backers have suggested they will reject that approach.

Party sources said Labour would not introduce or back any amendment for a second referendum this week, but see the crunch point at the next opportunity – likely to be the next meaningful vote on the Brexit deal that May has promised to hold by 12 March.

The reason this is smart and should have been done long ago is May’s deal is terrible (not for the reasons European Research gives) and a No Deal is worse than that. A Labour Brexit has no chance without a General Election so it’s kind of a fantasy and a Second Referendum at least gives you a chance to shuffle the deck.

Plus it has the advantage of being ‘democratic’.

There is no political downside to Lefty ideas and policy. They are popular with huge majorities, even of Republicans.

Republicans will call any Democrat a Communist, even the most conservative, and will never, ever vote for one.

Why chase that impossible constituency? Why not instead concentrate on delivering effective Government and popular programs?

The only people they’re not popular with are committed Racist Republicans and the Radical Centerists of the Versailles Villager Chattering Class who have shown themselves to be Republican sympathizers of the worst sort except for the naked Racism, Bigotry, and Misogyny which, frankly, they share, they’re just more discreet about it.

Do Democrats really have to worry about the left? Actually, not so much.
By Paul Waldman, Washington Post
February 25, 2019

If you were a moderate Democrat who got elected to Congress in 2018, you might worry about how the sweeping proposals from your more liberal colleagues will reflect on you. Are the voters in my swing district going to think I’m some kind of far leftist, too? Should I make efforts to signal my centrism so they don’t turn against me? Will that work?

The answer, according to some fascinating new data, appears to be no. In fact, there’s a strong case to be made that in congressional elections, especially for the House, the general election barely matters anymore. All the action is in the primary. Once that’s over, you can be a liberal Democrat or a moderate Democrat, and you’ll do just as well.

That goes against what political professionals have believed pretty much forever. Members of Congress spend a good deal of time worrying about how this or that vote will be received back in their districts, and about whether they’ve constructed an ideological profile that matches their constituents.

We see that struggle in articles like this one about moderate freshman Democrats being confronted with statements made by their colleagues and proposals like the Green New Deal, as they worry about whether they’ll be dragged too far left.

That seems perfectly rational, and for a long time it was. If you were a moderate, in a general election you could hold on to your own party’s voters and poach some voters from the other party, too. If you utilized the power of incumbency, you could forge a bond with voters that would be stronger than party, at least in enough cases so you could be reelected even if your party’s presidential candidate didn’t win your district.

But that’s no longer true. Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz shared with me an analysis he did of the effects on House elections of the district’s presidential vote, whether there’s an incumbent running, and whether that incumbent is more or less ideologically extreme.

Here’s what his results show. Up through the 1990s, while there was still a fairly strong relationship between presidential and House votes, the other two factors mattered a lot too. Incumbents did far better than non-incumbents, even controlling for their district’s partisanship. And being more moderate was a big help.

But by the time you hit the 2008 election, ideology has stopped making a difference. A moderate or a far-left liberal will do equally well if their district looks roughly the same. And by 2016, the effect of incumbency is reduced from a huge benefit to a tiny one.

“Incumbents still get reelected at a very high rate, but the reason is that the large majority of them are in districts that favor their party,” Abramowitz told me.

In 2018, Abramowitz looked at whether Democratic candidates were endorsed by Our Revolution, an organization affiliated with Bernie Sanders, as a proxy for highly liberal ideology. He found that they did no better or worse than more moderate Democrats, once you took the tilt of their district into account. Their ideology made no difference. Ticket-splitting is largely a thing of the past.

So what does that mean if you’re a member of Congress? Let’s say that you’re a Republican representing a district that tilts slightly Democratic, like former Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia. You can make all kinds of efforts to signal to voters that you’re a moderate. But come election day, you’re going to lose just as surely as you would if you had been a hard-right conservative, which is just what happened to her in 2018 when high Democratic turnout doomed her.

“It doesn’t do you any good,” Abramowitz says, “to position yourself in the center in hopes that that’s going to attract more votes from the other party. It just doesn’t seem to work.”

In a way, voters have stopped caring so much about their members of Congress as individuals. “What’s happening is that people are not voting based on who they want to represent their district,” says Abramowitz. “They’re voting based on which party they want to control the chamber.”

Which is a perfectly rational thing for a voter to decide. If control of the chamber really is at stake, even if you think the candidate from the other party is actually a pretty good guy, it would be foolish to support him if it means your party won’t be in control.

What’s really striking is how closely votes for the House and votes for president have locked into alignment. Abramowitz notes that in the 1960s, the 1970s, and even the 1980s, the correlation between the presidential vote in a district and the House vote in that district was about .6 — substantial but not overwhelming (correlations run from 0, meaning no correlation, to 1, meaning perfect correlation). In 2016, it was .97, higher than it had ever been before. The candidates who thought they could overcome their district’s fundamental partisanship by constructing a more moderate profile were almost all on a fool’s errand.

To be clear, that doesn’t mean there won’t be a few outliers who manage to pull it off. But in most cases the general election will turn out the same way no matter who the nominees are.

Who is the pragmatist here?

So it’s like voting Labour or Tory, only things in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead Armadillos.

Still, those vulnerable to Left Primary attacks are invited to consider the prospect of being AOCed.