File under You Can’t Make This Up:

It started a few days ago in RW Nutjob Land (I never link to RW Nutjob sites, so you’ll have to find it yourself), but this story has legs and deserves covering.  This story is about Tad Devine who was…wait for it…Bernie Sanders chief strategist during the 2016 election.  Devine is a long-time advisor and strategist for Democratic candidates, even being senior advisor to both Al Gore and John Kerry for their presidential runs.  He’s also been an international political consultant, (and this is where it gets weird), he partnered with Paul Manafort to advise Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian backed strongman who is now in exile in Russia after being removed from power in 2014 for corruption and suppression of protests and the press.

What’s really bad for Devine (and us) is that Mueller’s most recent indictment contains many exhibits of communication between Devine and Manafort, and even Russian-born Konstantin Kilimnik, who is under indictment by Mueller.  This association feeds the rumors that Sanders was part of a vast conspiracy by the Russians to get Hillary.  No one knows yet if that storyline is true, but it damn sure looks bad;  it’s unknown if the Russians had some inroad into Sanders campaign, but there is certainly a possible onramp.  This one will be interesting to follow.

There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.

Friday, the DNC Rules and Bylaws committee proposed a rules change for the 2020 campaign.  The new rule is directed straight at Bernie Sanders:

The new rule specifically requires that someone running for president must declare in writing his or herself as a member of the Democratic party and that they will run and serve as a Democrat.  Easy, right?  Not so fast.  The two party system in the US is cemented in place by statute, creating an almost impenetrable wall to outsiders.  Party primaries are paid for by the taxpayers, and getting on the ballot in all the states as an independent presidential candidate is virtually impossible.  Because of this, the only realistic path to the presidency is as insurgency in one of the two entrenched  political parties.  You saw that in spades in 2016 where Trump used his television persona to hijack the GOP and Sanders’ grass roots campaign almost uprooted Hillary’s coronation.

This rule seeks to stifle competition for the nomination, all while DNC political operatives are loudly denying that fact, which is as obvious to normal people as a hillbilly at a Newport garden party.  Even while these operatives are all sniffy that outsiders understand their actual intent, Sanders supporters aren’t happy.  Mark Lonabaugh, a senior Sanders advisor, call the new resolution “stunning”.

Someday, establishment Dems will have to face the fact that they are way out of step with their constituents.  The Sanders phenomenon should have shaken these pillars of the party to the core, but it didn’t.  They are ignoring, at their own peril, the 13 million voters, many first time voters, who went for the tottering old candidate from Vermont instead of the tottering old candidate from New York, Chicago, Arkansas (pick your accent).  He brought a message of social justice, equity, and fairness that the Dems abandoned in the 1990s.  And it appears that, rather than learning from that experience, the DNC is trying to keep it from happening again by further rigging the rules in favor of the establishment.

Oh, and one last thing – While the DNC specifically designed a rule to keep out insurgents, there are no adopted rule changes to eliminate or significantly reduce the influence of superdelegates, and no rule that prevents a presidential candidate from controlling the national party until AFTER they are nominated.  It appears the Democratic party is the LEAST democratic organization in US politics, and that should piss you off.

Remember when the State of Maryland and Washington DC filed suit against Trump for violating the Emoluments clause of the Constitution for failing to separate himself from his hotel properties?  I do, but the media gave it passing coverage, and Trump’s henchmen dismissed the suit as frivolous.  And, a Trump devotee within the government inexplicably said that Trump was violating no laws with his continued ownership in the hotel.  Well, on Tuesday, it go more real.  The Justice Department, protecting Trump, filed a motion in federal court to get the case tossed.  U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte in Greenbelt, Maryland refused to toss the case, but did limit it to Trump’s new hotel in DC, where it is well documented that everyone, foreign and domestic, wanting to curry favor with Cheeto Jesus, is flocking to the hotel.

Now that the case can go forward, there will be discovery that will delve into how foreign governments are funneling money into Trump’s pocket through his hotel, and potentially catastrophic for Trump and his crowd.  The news coverage?  Light at best, non-existent generally.  With the Stormy Daniels case now gaining traction with its salacious details, the Constitutional case moves forward, and almost nobody noticed.

Note:  Even as I write this, MoJo just started discussing it on MSNBC.  LOL.

Last week with great fanfare, the Republicans gleefully announced that House Intelligence Committee was ending its probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and that it had “found no evidence” of the Trump campaign colluding with the Russians.  Congressional Dems howled, calling foul and saying that the committee concluded no such thing.  Trump, of course, took to Twitter gloating that he was completely vindicated.

Today, on Meet the Press, Mike Conaway, who chaired the committee after Devin Nunes was forced out, clarified the committee Republicans conclusion – they found no evidence of collusion because…wait for it…they didn’t look.  That’s right, Conaway got on national television and defended his conclusion that there was no evidence of collusion because they didn’t bother to look for it.

House Republicans are blatantly lying to the American people to give cover to Trump.  The longer this goes on, the more I’m convinced that this is going to end really badly.

Paying off a porn star to silence her less than two weeks before a presidential election; colluding with foreign powers to swing the election; starting a war with the US Justice Department; using the presidential seal in a crass commercial operation; running a hotel in a federal building, pocketing millions of dollars in foreign money; putting family members who can’t pass a background check in charge of top secret operations; having a family member on the White House staff who uses his government position to reward (and punish) countries to advantage his private real estate projects; using government influence for foreign trade licensing of the family business; cheating contractors, banks, and investors; filing bankruptcy numerous times; having 5 children by 3 wives, 2 of which were made US residents by shady means; staffing the White House with a rogue’s gallery of white supremacists, unregistered foreign agents, criminals, and weirdos; playing 100 rounds of golf in his first year as president spending one-third of the time at his own resorts; starting trade wars; threatening nuclear war; pissing off every US ally; lying in a continuous stream.  It goes on and on, but that’s enough for now.

The question is, what does it take to wake the Congress from its coma?  Can you imagine the 24/7 howling if even ONE of these transgression was committed by anyone else?  Especially a Democrat who made the mistake of being president while black?

During a congressional hearing yesterday, director of national intelligence Dan Coats testified that the “United States is under attack by the Russians to meddle in the 2018 elections after their successful meddling in the 2016 election.  The White House and congressional Republicans are silent on any action that could prevent (or at least disrupt) these efforts.  Why?  That’s easy.  The Russians are working to help the Republicans stay in power even though their voter base is shrinking.  You can be sure that if a foreign country, say Kenya, was conducting regular cyber attacks on the US to help Barack Obama stay in office, we would be bombing Nairobi right now.  Since this unprecedented attack on US sovereignty is helping them, Trump and Republicans are more than happy to allow it to continue.

That’s called, at the minimum gross negligence.  What it really is? Treason.