Do you know what you do when a toddler threatens to hold their breath until they die?

You let them try.

It’s impossible. If they are incredibly strong willed and stubborn the best they can accomplish is to pass out, after which their body will take over and they’ll start breathing again.

Thus we can take Unidicted Co-conspirator Trump’s empty threats to shut down the border (or the Government) in a tantrum because he’s not going to get his boondoggle Wall.

Not even worth commenting on really, but it’s a slow news day and I’m pretty desperate.

Trump threatens to shut down the border ‘entirely.’ Here’s why he can’t do that.
By Colby Itkowitz, Washington Post
December 28, 2018

Trump’s exact wording was that, absent Democrats’ agreeing to fund the wall, he would “be forced to close the Southern Border entirely.”

That’s not possible, said Leon Fresco, an immigration lawyer at Holland & Knight. First, Trump can’t lawfully stop U.S. citizens from reentering the country from Mexico, so there’s no scenario in which the border could be closed off completely.

What about closing it to foreigners crossing legally with visas? If the president tried that, it would face the same legal scrutiny as his travel ban of people from certain Muslim-majority countries, which has ping-ponged through the court system. And he’d have an even tougher sell closing off the southern border to legal entry, because he tweeted that his motivation to close the border is for political leverage and not an imminent national security threat, Fresco said.

The same would be true if he tried to further limit entry for refugees seeking asylum. His efforts already to restrict the ability of immigrants to request asylum at the border was struck down by a federal judge in California last week.

“He is generally frustrated he can’t stop illegal crossings by fiat. He can’t build a wall. He can’t turn off the asylum system,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute. “He has a mounting frustration — the one thing that was his central promise to his voters, and they haven’t found a way at it yet. Trump wants a quick fix, and there’s no quick fix.”

The only way Trump could potentially shut down the border would be through trade. But certain statutes in the North American Free Trade Agreement restrict him from stopping commerce between Mexico and the United States without a national security concern. And even then it would be for a limited period of time.

The business community in the United States and Mexico are afraid that Trump could introduce trade barriers gradually. But doing so would be “suicidal,” because it would hurt U.S. manufacturers, Selee said.

“His problem here is not with Mexico, it doesn’t get him anywhere with Democrats, and it really hurts American industry,” Selee said. “You have this picture of trying to threaten someone, but it’s like telling a kid, ‘I’m going to take away the toy from this other kid.’ ”

Trump could theoretically pull out of NAFTA and then stop allowing commerce over the border, but that would also invite legal challenges. Fresco said many people with businesses that rely on Mexican goods would sue.

“There is no actual governmental compelling interest that led to you being taken out of business,” he said. “It can’t be just because the president is angry.”

So, ultimately Trump’s threat is fairly empty. There’s very little he can do to shut down the border that would stand up legally.

“The president is articulating these things that are so far outside the bounds of constitutional norms, we cannot divorce ourselves and think they can be implemented — they just can’t,” Fresco said. “He’s not thought through when those statements are made.”

It would be farce if it wasn’t a tragedy. Two children, 7 and 8, are dead and at least 50 families (conservatively, could be thousands depending on how you count) are still separated, sacrificed on the altar of blind racism.

And yes, I do hold the gutless, cowardly Republican Party responsible individually and as an institution, along with their bigoted base. Those people must never, ever hold positions of power and responsibility in the United States again.

Not even Dog Catcher. If they’re like Mike Huckabee’s son they’ll take every pet they find and hang it from the neck until dead for sport and amusement. They are nothing but psychopaths who should be under heavy medication and treatment as a threat to themselves and others.

Every last one of them.

Herr Doktor Professor gives them too much credit.

Bad Faith, Pathos and G.O.P. Economics
By Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Dec. 27, 2018

What you need to know when talking about economics and politics is that there are three kinds of economist in modern America: liberal professional economists, conservative professional economists and professional conservative economists.

By “liberal professional economists” I mean researchers who try to understand the economy as best they can, but who, being human, also have political preferences, which in their case puts them on the left side of the U.S. political spectrum, although usually only modestly left of center. Conservative professional economists are their counterparts on the center right.

Professional conservative economists are something quite different. They’re people who even center-right professionals consider charlatans and cranks; they make a living by pretending to do actual economics — often incompetently — but are actually just propagandists. And no, there isn’t really a corresponding category on the other side, in part because the billionaires who finance such propaganda are much more likely to be on the right than on the left.
…
Do economists’ political preferences shape their research? They surely affect the choice of subject: Liberals are more likely to be interested in rising inequality or the economics of climate change than conservatives. And human nature being what it is, some of them — O.K., of us — occasionally engage in motivated reasoning, reaching conclusions that cater to their politics.

I used to believe, however, that such lapses were the exception, not the rule, and the liberal economists I know try hard to avoid falling into that trap, and apologize when they do.

But do conservative economists do the same? Increasingly, the answer seems to be no, at least for those who play a prominent role in public discourse.

Even during the Obama years, it was striking how many well-known Republican-leaning economists followed the party line on economic policy, even when that party line was in conflict with the nonpolitical professional consensus.

Thus, when a Democrat was in the White House, G.O.P. politicians opposed anything that might mitigate the costs of the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath; so did many economists. Most famously, in 2010 a who’s who of Republican economists denounced the efforts of the Federal Reserve to fight unemployment, warning that they risked “currency debasement and inflation.”

Were these economists arguing in good faith? Even at the time, there were good reasons to suspect otherwise. For one thing, those terrible, irresponsible Fed actions were pretty much exactly what Milton Friedman prescribed for depressed economies. For another, some of those Fed critics engaged in Donald Trump-like conspiracy theorizing, accusing the Fed of printing money, not to help the economy, but to “bail out fiscal policy,” i.e., to help Barack Obama.

It was also telling that none of the economists who warned, wrongly, about looming inflation were willing to admit their error after the fact.

But the real test came after 2016. A complete cynic might have expected economists who denounced budget deficits and easy money under a Democrat to suddenly reverse position under a Republican president.

And that total cynic would have been exactly right. After years of hysteria about the evils of debt, establishment Republican economists enthusiastically endorsed a budget-busting tax cut. After denouncing easy-money policies when unemployment was sky-high, some echoed Trump’s demands for low interest rates with unemployment under 4 percent — and the rest remained conspicuously silent.

Ok, I’ll admit I was skeptical about the Steele Dossier. I mean, you’d have to be monumentally stupid not to understand that Russia monitors, minds, taps, and tapes every single thing you do.

Well, you remember how Michael Cohen insisted he was never in Prague and couldn’t possibly have met with the Internet Research Agency’s hackers?

Eh… not so much.

Cell signal puts Cohen outside Prague around time of purported Russian meeting
By Peter Stone and Greg Gordon, McClatchy
December 27, 2018

A mobile phone traced to President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say.

During the same period of late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague, two people familiar with the incident said.

The phone and surveillance data, which have not previously been disclosed, lend new credence to a key part of a former British spy’s dossier of Kremlin intelligence describing purported coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s election meddling operation.

The dossier, which Trump has dismissed as “a pile of garbage,” said Cohen and one or more Kremlin officials huddled in or around the Czech capital to plot ways to limit discovery of the close “liaison” between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The new information regarding the recovery of Cohen’s cell phone location doesn’t explain why he was apparently there or who he was meeting with, if anyone. But it adds to evidence that Cohen was in or near Prague around the time of the supposed meeting.

Both of the newly surfaced foreign electronic intelligence intercepts were shared with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, people familiar with the matter said. Mueller is investigating Russia’s 2016 election interference and whether Trump’s campaign colluded in the scheme. Mueller also is examining whether Trump has obstructed the sweeping inquiry.

McClatchy reported in April 2018 that Mueller had obtained evidence Cohen traveled to Prague from Germany in late August or early September of 2016, but it could not be learned how that information was gleaned.

Cohen has been cooperating with Mueller’s investigation since he pleaded guilty on Aug. 21 to charges of bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance law violations. He later pleaded guilty to one count of lying to Congress, and was sentenced in early December to three years in prison.
…
Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks said that if disclosures of the foreign intelligence intercepts are true, “This is a very significant break, because it looks like a direct link between Donald Trump’s personal fixer and Russians most likely involved in the disruption of our election.”

“It would prove that lying was going on, not only about being in Prague, but much beyond the Prague episode,” she said.

Steele’s dossier, a compilation of intelligence from his network of Kremlin sources, is full of uncorroborated details about the purported meeting.

It said Konstantin Kosachev, a longtime member of the Russian Senate and chairman of the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee, “facilitated” the gathering.

Steele reported that Kosachev may well have represented the Russians in Prague, where he had extensive ties. But Mike Carpenter, a former Russia specialist at the Pentagon under President Barack Obama, said that seems unlikely – about “as discreet as sending (Secretary of State) Mike Pompeo to meet with an informant on a sensitive issue.”

Kosachev has publicly denied traveling to Prague in 2016.

Among the goals of the meeting, the dossier said, was to limit negative news reports about the Russia-friendly relationships of two Trump campaign aides— foreign policy adviser Carter Page and just-ousted campaign Chairman Paul Manafort — and to ensure that European hackers were paid and told to “lie low.”

While the foreign intelligence about Cohen does not confirm a meeting even occurred, it provides evidence that he traveled to the Czech Republic, where the sources said his phone was momentarily activated to download emails or other data.

Cohen’s denials about Prague stand in the face of court admissions that have damaged his credibility.

In his second guilty plea in late November, he confessed to a single count of lying to Congress in denying that he had contact after January 2016 with Russians in pursuit of a long-sought Trump-branded hotel in Moscow. Cohen now acknowledges his contacts with Russians about the hotel continued for nearly six more months while Trump wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination.

The most publicized charges in his earlier guilty plea in New York last August related to hush money payments he arranged days before the election for two women who were about to publicly allege they had sex with Trump. Cohen kept the payments secret for more than a year after the election.

Trump has repeatedly sought to disparage Mueller’s investigation, echoing the words “no collusion” and “witch hunt” over the last two years.
…
The records show that the brief activation from Cohen’s phone near Prague sent beacons that left a traceable electronic signature, said the four sources.

Mueller’s investigators, some of whom have met with Steele, likely also pursued Cohen’s cell phone records. It would be a common early step in such an investigation for a prosecutor to obtain a court warrant for all U.S. and foreign phone company records of key subjects, even those dating back more than 18 months.

Such data might enable investigators to track Cohen’s whereabouts whenever the phone was in his possession, even if it was turned off, said several experts, including a former senior Justice Department official who declined to be identified.

These officials said intelligence agencies and federal investigators often can examine electronic records to trace the location of a cell phone or any other device sending signals over phone lines or the Internet, so long as the data was still stored by phone carriers or cell phone manufacturers that offer location-tracking services, such as Apple and Google.

Jan Neumann, the assumed name of a former Russian intelligence officer who defected to the United States years ago, said that Cohen’s electronic cell tower trail appears to reflect sloppy “tradecraft.”

“You can monitor and control cell phones in Europe same as you do it here in US,” Neumann told McClatchy. “As long as the battery is physically located in the phone, even when it’s turned off, the mobile phone’s approximate location can be detected and tracked. Any attempt to use an app, to get mail, send texts, connect to a Wifi network, your phone and your location will be detected.”
…
The sources could not definitively pin down the date or dates that the intelligence indicated Cohen was in the vicinity of Prague. Cohen has insisted that he was in Southern California with his son from Aug. 23-29, 2016, but his public alibis have not been so airtight as to preclude flights to and from Europe during the relevant period.

Even if Cohen has told investigators about a furtive meeting in Prague, it could be difficult for Mueller to corroborate his story. Any Russians with whom he met are likely out of the reach of U.S. law enforcement officials, because the United States has no extradition treaty with Moscow.

If Cohen indeed made the journey to the Czech Republic, one lingering mystery is how he entered Europe’s visa-free, 29-nation Schengen area without detection. While those countries’ open-border arrangements would have spared Cohen from having to produce a visa to travel between Germany and Prague, U.S. and European authorities should have a record if he took a trip to Europe. Those records are not public.

The Smoking Gun–

Haldeman: Okay -that’s fine. Now, on the investigation, you know, the Democratic break-in thing, we’re back to the-in the, the problem area because the FBI is not under control, because Gray doesn’t exactly know how to control them, and they have, their investigation is now leading into some productive areas, because they’ve been able to trace the money, not through the money itself, but through the bank, you know, sources – the banker himself. And, and it goes in some directions we don’t want it to go. Ah, also there have been some things, like an informant came in off the street to the FBI in Miami, who was a photographer or has a friend who is a photographer who developed some films through this guy, Barker, and the films had pictures of Democratic National Committee letter head documents and things. So I guess, so it’s things like that that are gonna, that are filtering in. Mitchell came up with yesterday, and John Dean analyzed very carefully last night and concludes, concurs now with Mitchell’s recommendation that the only way to solve this, and we’re set up beautifully to do it, ah, in that and that…the only network that paid any attention to it last night was NBC…they did a massive story on the Cuban…

Nixon: That’s right.

Haldeman: …thing.

Nixon: Right.

Haldeman: That the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters call Pat Gray and just say, “Stay the hell out of this…this is ah, business here we don’t want you to go any further on it.” That’s not an unusual development,…

Nixon: Um huh.

Haldeman: …and, uh, that would take care of it.

Nixon: What about Pat Gray, ah, you mean he doesn’t want to?

Haldeman: Pat does want to. He doesn’t know how to, and he doesn’t have, he doesn’t have any basis for doing it. Given this, he will then have the basis. He’ll call Mark Felt in, and the two of them …and Mark Felt wants to cooperate because…

Nixon: Yeah.

Haldeman: …he’s ambitious…

Nixon: Yeah.

Mark Felt, by the way, was “Deep Throat“.

Ahem, when I drive I don’t move slowly.

I frequently take moderately long road trips, anywhere from an hour or three up to 14 straight. I used to be able to do 22 but now I find my butt gets numb and I have to find someone to pry me from behind the wheel at the end.

How far can I travel in 14 hours? About 1050 miles or from New York City to Minneapolis, Des Moines, Meridian Mississippi, or either Tampa or Port St. Lucie Florida. With a 10 hour layover (you need to sleep and shower you know) I could be in Los Angeles in 3 days easily.

Seem pretty amazing? It’s the law of averages.

In order to achieve such phenomenal distances I have to keep my speed at an average of 75 miles an hour.

Oh, that’s easy ek. I drive at 75 all the time.

Only, you don’t.

It’s not as simple as setting your Cruise Control at 75 and watching the miles unfold. You have to account for Pit Stops and Pee Breaks (you can eat on the road) and all that time you spend navigating not on Super Highway at speeds much lower than 75 and for traffic, construction, and accidents (not yours hopefully) that slow you down. When driving for time efficiency my cruise control is set for 80 just to remind me not to slow down too much. 85 is the target and I practice what I call “visibility” driving. If you can see the road for 3 or 4 miles ahead and there are no County Mounties with a speed trap…

Well, how fast are you comfortable driving? I once did Eire Boulevard at 110 just to see if the light timing was the same as it is at 55 (for the record, yes).

Anyway you can gain as much as 8 minutes an hour which you pay for in stress, anxiety, and concentration as well as the occasional ticket. Every minute you’re stopped though costs you a little less than a minute and a half (1.4 @ 85).

It is extremely difficult to raise your average and very easy to lose it so what’s remarkable about this story is that Unidicted Co-conspirator Trump has been able to go from a 5 to a 10.

Trump has made 7,546 false or misleading claims over 700 days
By Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, Washington Post
December 21, 2018

The numbers are astonishing.

In the first eight months of his presidency, President Trump made 1,137 false or misleading claims, an average of five a day. In October, as he barnstormed the country holding rallies in advance of the midterm elections, the president made 1,205 claims — an average of 39 a day.

Combined with the rest of his presidency, that adds up to a total of 7,546 claims through Dec. 20, the 700th day of his term in office, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.

The flood of presidential misinformation picked up dramatically as the president campaigned across the country, holding rallies with his supporters. Each of those rallies usually yielded 35 to 45 suspect claims. But the president often tacked on interviews with local media (in which he repeats the same false statements) and gaggles with the White House press corps before and after his trips.

The second biggest month was November, with 866 claims, and that’s largely because of the president’s rallies just before the Nov. 6 election. Four of his five most prolific days for falsehoods fell in November.

• Nov. 5, when he held rallies in Fort Wayne, Ind., Cape Girardeau, Mo., and Cleveland: 139 claims.
• Nov. 3, when he held rallies in Pensacola, Fla., and Belgrade, Mont.: 130 claims.
• Nov. 2, when he held rallies in Indianapolis and Huntington, W.Va.: 97 claims.
• Nov. 26, when he held two rallies in advance of a special election in Mississippi: 90 claims.

More than a quarter of Trump’s claims, 2,032, came during campaign rallies. An additional 1,921 came during remarks during press events, and 1,266 were the result of the president’s itchy Twitter finger.

The president’s proclivity to twist data and fabricate stories is on full display at his rallies. He has his greatest hits: 124 times he had falsely said he passed the biggest tax cut in history, 110 times he has asserted that the U.S. economy today is the best in history, and 92 times he has falsely said his border wall is already being built. (Congress has allocated only $1.6 billion for fencing, but Trump also frequently mentioned additional funding that has not yet been appropriated.) All three of those claims are on The Fact Checker’s list of Bottomless Pinocchios.

In terms of subjects, false or misleading claims about immigration top the list, totaling 1,076. Claims about foreign policy and trade tied for second, with 822 claims, followed by claims about the economy (765) and jobs (741).