On Bannon, The Unraveling, And The Bogus Voter Suppression Commission (UPDATED)

Let's catch up on some of the latest from the Thunderdome that is the regime of neo- fascist nitwit Donald "Rump" Trump:

The Bannon Bombshells in Michael Wolff's upcoming book "Fire and Fury."  Rump's mouthpieces issue a "cease and desist" letter and threaten to sue Steve Bannon:

In the letter, attorney Charles Harder, accused Bannon of breaking his nondisclosure agreement, “by, among other things, communicating with author Michael Wolff about Mr. Trump, his family members, and the Company [the campaign], disclosing Confidential Information to Mr. Wolff, and making disparaging statements and in some cases outright defamatory statements to Mr. Wolff about Mr. Trump, his family members.”

Smart move, Rump mouthpieces!  Keep the story going through possible extended legal action (which is not likely to succeed anyway).

Also, from the book,

Wolff book on how top aides regard Trump:  “For Steve Mnuchin and Reince Priebus, he was an ‘idiot.’ For Gary Cohn, he was ‘dumb as shit.’ For H.R. McMaster he was a ‘dope.’ The list went on.”

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) January 3, 2018

Which is pretty strong proof to us that these remora were/ are knowingly serving an unfit, unstable menace to America and the world mostly for their own $elfish, cynical reasons. (Jared Yates Sexton has a thread on just this point.)

Lawmakers were briefed in December on Rump's mental state. The 25th Amendment (removal of president due to mental or physical unfitness) is still the most ephemeral option given Rump's loyal following in the Cabinet (see above), but interesting to note nonetheless:

Lawmakers concerned about President Donald Trump’s mental state summoned Yale University psychiatry professor Dr. Bandy X. Lee to Capitol Hill last month for two days of briefings about his recent behavior. 

In private meetings with more than a dozen members of Congress held on Dec. 5 and 6, Lee briefed lawmakers — all Democrats except for one Republican senator, whom Lee declined to identify. Her professional warning to Capitol Hill: “He’s going to unravel, and we are seeing the signs.”

Rump disbands his bogus Voter Fraud Suppression commission. This one's mercifully dead, but don't expect Republicans to give up trying to disenfranchise Democratic- leaning voters:

President Trump on Wednesday announced that he is disbanding a controversial panel studying alleged voter fraud that became mired in multiple federal lawsuits and faced resistance from states that accused it of overreach. 

The decision is a major setback for Trump, who created the commission last year in response to his claim, for which he provided no proof, that he lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 because of millions of illegally cast ballots. 

The commission met only twice amid the series of lawsuits seeking to curb its authority and claims by Democrats that it was stacked to recommend voting restrictions favorable to the president’s party.

We worry, though, about the voter data from those states that complied with Kobach's requests -- and what mischief can still be accomplished with that.

UPDATE:  Rump's mouthpieces are also trying to stop publication of Wolff's book --

NEW this am: Trump attorneys send cease-and-desist letter this morning to Wolff and book publisher @HenryHolt  demanding they stop publication and issue an apology to @realDonaldTrump for defamatory statements made thus far.

— Carol Leonnig (@CarolLeonnig) January 4, 2018

Reportedly, Wolff has interviews on tape.  This won't end well... for Rump.

Making Voter Suppression (And Russia's Job) Easier

By now, most are aware of the voter suppression commission that was launched after sociopathic liar Donald "Rump" Trump claimed falsely that some 3 million people voted illegally in the 2016  Presidential elections. To head the commission Rump chose none other than Kris "KKK" Kobach, the right-wing Secretary of State of Kansas who is the nation's leading proponent of election rigging through voter suppression. Kobach met with resistance across party lines when he attempted to gather voting data from secretaries of state, who initially declined to provide the information (the Rethuglican secretary for Mississippi famously told Kobach's commission that it could "go jump in the Gulf of Mexico" before he'd provide voter data).

The Kobach commission's computerized tool for managing his voter suppression initiative is something called the "Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program", and ProPublica is reporting that the system is so badly flawed that it cannot protect the sensitive voter data that it's collecting from hacking and manipulation:

"The voter-fraud-checking program championed by the head of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity suffers from data security flaws that could imperil the safety of millions of peoples’ records, according to experts. (snip) 'It blows my mind — this is complete operational security incompetence,' said Joe Hall, the chief technologist for the Center for Democracy & Technology, an organization that promotes internet freedom. 'You should consider all of that stuff in the hands of people who are clever enough to intercept someone’s email.'"

ProPublica's report is detailed, technical and compelling, and points to the casual sloppiness of Kobach's data security. Putting voting data in one flawed system highly vulnerable to intrusion is dangerous to our democracy, not to mention the commission's glaring attempts at voter suppression. Then again, given Russia's interest in our voter rolls and elections to help Rethuglicans, making it easy for them to hack that data may be Kobach's plan after all.

Fraudster Kicks Off Fraudulent Commission

Popular vote loser and malignant narcissist Donald "Rump" Trump kicked off the first meeting of his voter suppression commission today (more on that at the end of this post). We've selected some reads on the topic (these are just snippets; as always, please read the entire pieces).

Washington Post editorial today:

THE PRESIDENTIAL Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, set to hold its inaugural meeting Wednesday, is already better known as the voter fraud commission, owing not only to its explicit mission but also to the fact that so many of its members, including its chairman, Vice President Pence, and vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, are on record as subscribing to or defending President Trump’s unfounded view that millions of fraudulent votes were cast in last fall’s elections. In fact, the real fraud is the commission itself. 

Mr. Kobach, a Republican running for governor of Kansas, professes indignation and phony puzzlement over the jaundiced eye that Democrats, voting rights experts and some Republicans have aimed at the panel. 

Yet how could it be otherwise, given that Mr. Kobach himself has for years made a political cottage industry of his (repeatedly debunked) claims of fraud in Kansas and national elections? If ever a federal commission embarked on a “study” with a predetermined outcome, this is it.

Charles Pierce traces its origins at least back to the Florida recount in 2000 that the Republican- majority Supreme Court decided to stop before Al Gore could be named the winner:

That mockery of a presidential commission sat for the first time Wednesday morning, but it was years in the making. John Paul Stevens saw it coming. In 2000, the Supreme Court blessed official ratfcking with a constitutional imprimatur. Famously, it held that its decision in that case was "limited to the circumstances" of the 2000 election and, therefore, had no precedential value. That may be true in the nation's courts, but it has proven to be a deadly precedent in our politics. It is going to take a generation, at least, to reverse.

Vanita Gupta, former head of the Civil Rights division in the Justice Department, goes beyond the commission's efforts to disenfranchise voters:

The Trump administration’s election-integrity commission will have its first meeting on Wednesday to map out how the president will strip the right to vote from millions of Americans. It hasn’t gotten off to the strongest start: Its astonishing request last month that each state hand over voters’ personal data was met with bipartisan condemnation. Yet it is joined in its efforts to disenfranchise citizens by the immensely more powerful Justice Department. 

Lost amid the uproar over the commission’s request was a letter sent at the same time by the Justice Department’s civil rights division. It forced 44 states to provide extensive information on how they keep their voter rolls up-to-date. It cited the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, known as the Motor-Voter law, which mandates that states help voters register through motor vehicle departments. 

The letter doesn’t ask whether states are complying with the parts of the law that expand opportunities to register. Instead it focuses on the sections related to maintaining the lists. That’s a prelude to voter purging. 

As if to accentuate what propelled this effort now, we hear from the deranged man himself:

While introducing the first public meeting in his “voter fraud” commission on Wednesday, the president said that it was likely that the 44 states [Ed.: a large chunk Republican -run]were reluctant to hand over all requested information on voters — including the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers — because they were trying to conceal wrongdoing. 

“If any state does not want to share this information, one has to wonder what they’re worried about?” the president asked rhetorically. “What are they worried about? There’s something, there always is.” 

Several things live rent free in Rump's small but fevered brain. One of them is his being a loser to Hillary Clinton in the popular vote column. It burns like an intense flame inside him, side by side with the intense flame of Obama envy.  As these two vengeful obsessions play out, untold damage is being done to peoples' confidence in their voting franchise and to the social fabric of our society. And there is no shortage of charlatans like Kris Kobach and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to enable him in inflicting that damage.

Kobach's Voter Suppression Commission Running Into Resistance (UPDATED)

Resistance to the voter information request from conspiracy monger Donald "Rump" Trump's commission on non- existent voter fraud (being run by the likes of Kris Kobach and Hans von Spakovsky) is building, so far with 21 State secretaries of state refusing to turn over all of the requested voter information:

A growing number of states are refusing to cooperate fully with President Trump’s voter fraud commission, setting the stage for a showdown over the nation's elections. 

The White House commission, led by Vice President Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, has asked all 50 states and Washington D.C. to turn over publicly [sic] information on its voters, including names, birthdays, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and party affiliation if the state law allows in the hopes of shoring up the nation’s election systems. [snip]

A bipartisan list of officials in at least 20 [21] states, including reliably red states like Mississippi and Oklahoma, had pushed back on the request as of Friday afternoon.  

“In the event I were to receive correspondence from the Commission...My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great State to launch from,” Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, said in a Friday statement. 

Top Democratic officials in California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York and Virginia have all released statements blasting the commission and refusing to turn over any information. [snip]

The 21 states are California, Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. 

This commission is a transparent effort by Republicans to identify and dis-enfranchise Democratic constituencies (not "shoring up the nation's election systems") by erecting barriers to voting, purging voting registers and by other means of voter suppression. The commission grew out of ludicrous right- wing conspiracy mongering about "millions" of illegal votes being cast in the 2016 election, which was then taken up by Rump to assuage his ego that he hadn't really lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million. The Rump regime quickly pivoted from repeating lies about voter fraud in the last election to creating a commission that would work to suppress primarily Democratic voting under the guise of ensuring "electoral integrity."  The obvious question being, if these treasonous slugs were truly interested in "electoral integrity" instead of voter suppression, they'd be rather more curious about how and why the Russian government jiggered our electoral system, and how that system can be protected in the future. Curious that they're not curious, no?

UPDATE:  The number keeps growing --

24 states won't provide voter data to Kobach: AZ, CA, CT, IN, KY, MA, MN, MS, NC, NM, ND, NV, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SD, TN, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) June 30, 2017

UPDATE II: Make that 27 (and counting) --

27 states now opposing Kobach: AZ, CA, CT, IN, KY, MA, MN, MS, MT, NC, NM, ND, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) July 1, 2017 

Trump's Vote Fraud Lie Is The Opening Gambit In Voter Suppression Drive

The adoption by neo- fascist loser Donald "Rump" Trump of far- right claims of massive voter fraud in the recent election (see Rump's tweet in the post below) is being seen as not only the wounded reaction of a narcissistic sociopath who sees himself as a "winner" in all things, but the opening shot in an aggressive voter suppression drive by his forming administration.  Instituting restrictive voter ID laws, which do nothing to prevent (non-existent) voter fraud but do everything to keep Democratic- leaning constituencies away from the polls, will likely be the first step. Here are the tells:

-- The involvement in the transition of Kansas Secretary of State Kris "Starts And Ends With Koch" Kobach.  Kobach is the nation's number one voter suppression expert, who's been out encouraging fellow right- wing election officials to adopt Kansas' methods of keeping right- wing office holders in place.  The Koch brothers' darling has been advising Rump on matters involving establishing a database of Muslims as well.

-- The involvement of the "True the Vote" racist voter suppression goons in ginning up the false claims.  As the "True the Vote" cranks say in a press release (via Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog, who has more on how the vote fraud conspiracy theory originated):

“True the Vote absolutely supports President-elect Trump’s recent comment about the impact of illegal voting, as reflected in the national popular vote. We are still collecting data and will be for several months, but our intent is to publish a comprehensive study on the significant impact of illegal voting in all of its many forms and begin a national discussion on how voters, states, and the Trump Administration can best address this growing problem.”

"... begin a national discussion..." on the non- existent voter fraud threat.  Yeah, we see where that's going.

-- Racist Attorney General- designate Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, soon to be in charge of what's left of Voting Rights Act "enforcement" -- 'nuff said.

When fascists come to power (and if you don't see nascent fascism here, you're not paying attention) they don't like to give it up through such messy niceties like democratic elections.  What we are beginning to see are the first steps in consolidating white nationalist/ fascist power in America;  there will be more as power is handed over to these knuckle- draggers. We've been warned.

BONUS: What Gene says.

BONUS II:  Ezra Klein on what is really scary about Rump's detachment from reality.

BONUS III:  Greg Sargent has more along the same lines.

(Photo:  The picture of Rump that he objected to as "unflattering" in his meeting with the New York Effing Times one week ago today - please disseminate far and wide.)

Of Barricades And Walls

E.J. Dionne, Jr., writes about what America needs to remember before false narratives are written by Republicans and their media accomplices:

Let’s be clear: The United States of America is not Donald Trump’s country. 

When all the returns are in, Hillary Clinton will emerge with a popular vote lead of some 1.5 million to 2 million votes, according to estimates by both Nate Cohn of the New York Times and Henry Olsen, a conservative voting analyst whose pre-election predictions were close to the actual results. 

Given what Trump has said in the past about the electoral college, we know what he would say if the roles were reversed. 

To point out Clinton’s popular-vote advantage is not a form of liberal denial. It’s a way of beginning to build a barricade against right-wing triumphalism — and of reminding immigrants, Muslims, African Americans, Latinos and, yes, our daughters that most Americans stood with them on Election Day. 

It is also not true that the emerging political coalition that elected President Obama died on Nov. 8. That alliance maintained its national advantage, as the popular vote shows, and came within a whisker in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan of delivering the election to Clinton despite an onslaught of partisan congressional investigations, Russian meddling and the last-minute political intervention of the FBI. (our emphasis)

This is all the more important to note with the rising right- wing violence and intimidation since the election.  Another reason for vigilance concerns the staffing of the Rump transition team and administration:

President-elect Donald Trump's decision to appoint Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist in the White House has drawn a sharp rebuke from political strategists who see in Bannon a controversial figure too closely associated with the “alt-right” movement, which white nationalists have embraced.  [snip]

The announcement has produced intense hand-wringing in Washington and sharp denunciations from political observers and strategists critical of Breitbart News's close association with the alt-right, a fringe conservative movement saturated with racially insensitive rhetoric and elements of outright white nationalism. 

If the despicable Bannon weren't enough, there's this slug:

Kris Kobach, the secretary of state of Kansas and a leading architect of draconian anti-immigrant and voter suppression laws around the nation, will reportedly be serving on Donald Trump’s presidential transition team as an immigration adviser. As the Wall Street Journal notes, Trump “has vowed to cancel President Obama’s promise to protect from deportation undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, and start deporting as many as two million undocumented immigrants with criminal records.” 

According to the Journal, the transition team “includes a unit dedicated to figuring out how to build Mr. Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.” Back in April, Kobach took credit for Trump’s plan to blackmail Mexico into paying for a border wall by impounding remittances that immigrants send home to their families. A few months later, he was responsible for getting the wall into the Republican Party platform. 

So far, with these appointments and his pledge to begin the "immediate" deportation of up to 3 million immigrants, neo- fascist shitstain Donald "Rump" Trump is on his way to fulfilling the wet dreams of every low- information knuckle dragger that voted for him. Now is not the time to give up or despair, but rather fight this ugliness with all our energies.

BONUS:  A Republican strategist's take --

The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant America.

— John Weaver (@JWGOP) November 13, 2016

Actually, there's a representative soon to be in the Oval Office itself.

Quote Of The Day

There is real voter fraud going on in Kansas and across America. Ironically, the perpetrator is Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a noted voter-fraud alarmist, joined by his allies. Their goal is not to fraudulently cast votes, but to fraudulently suppress them. - Michael A. Smith, Associate Professor of Political Science, Emporia State University, in the Wichita Eagle.  Kobach is another Koch brothers office boy, who is also a major player in the right-wing, anti-democracy operation ALEC.  Although Republican voter suppression efforts apparently have been blunted in Wisconsin and Texas, they continue apace in other states.  (our emphasis)

(h/t Daily Kos)