Over the weekend, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) noted that he believed Lev Parnas was "crooked as a snake."  Many, if not most Republicans out front defending Trump said pretty much the same thing to undercut the interviews Parnas has given.  Not to mention the documents and texts he has presented, something a bit more difficult to position as "Crooked," though seemingly easy to ignore, even when staring you in the face.  Further, they have been very pointed in making clear that everyone remember that Parnas is under federal indictment.

There are, unfortunately for Republicans, about all this, even if the first part was true (and it may be), and especially because the second part is.

The problem with the charge that Lev Parnas is "crooked as a snake" is that the only reason we're even talking about Parnas is because he was working with with TRUMP's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine.  Either paid by Giuliani, or himself employing Giuliani with Russian funds, which one isn't clear.  Either are damning.  This isn't a case of Lev Parnas being some partisan Democrat or lone wolf coming up with these random charges against the Trump administration. No, this is someone working with Trump's lawyer, something even Giuliani openly acknowledges.

One can deny what he's saying about Ukraine extortion if that's what a person wishes, since some of his charges are unproven based only on his word (which is indeed open to question) but one can't deny who he was working for.  Which is specifically why we are talking about him.  Mind you, if one does choose to deny all his charges, which is fair enough given his history, but the problem with that means also denying all the physical evidence he's presented to the FBI.  We can certainly debate the interpretation of what that evidence means -- or at least, we can debate what some of the evidence means, since a great deal of it is too irrefutable -- but we cannot debate that it exists. It exists, much as Republicans do seem to want to ignore that.

Which brings up the problem with the second part of Trump defenders slams against Lev Parnas, that he is under federal indictment.

Forget for a moment that he's innocent until proven guilty, so just being under indictment is not damning unto itself.  But let's even accept for the sake of argument that Parnas is indeed guilty.  It's a fair assumption to make, given that problematic history noted above, though not inherently true.  But let's just say it is indeed true.  That Lev Parnas is guilty of what he is indicted for.  Okay.  So -- what is Lev Parnas indicted for?

While I'm certain many people know, I'm equally sure that most people don't have a clue.

Lev Parnas is under federal indictment -- something Republican defenders of Trump are pointing  to as evidence they want to be sure you know of what a truly Bad Guy he is -- because of the charge that he was giving illegal campaign money from Russia to Republicans!!  Really.

Seriously, now, if you were a elected Republican official, isn't that like the very last thing you'd want to highlight in making sure everyone know how disreputable Lev Parnas is???  That he has been illegally giving Russian money to the party that's trying to convince the American public Trump is not guilty.  Y'know -- "Trump," the All Roads Lead to Putin guy.

So, then, just to be transparent, let's put the dismissals by Lindsey Graham and Trump supporters about Lev Parnas in a fully open, more accurate perspective.  What they all want you to know (they actually want you to know this!) is that the man working in Ukraine intimately with Trump's own personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani -- who is working for Trump on Ukraine which we absolutely know for a fact because Trump himself said so in his "perfect" call -- is "crooked as a snake" and shouldn't be trusted at all because he is under federal indictment for using Russian money for making illegal campaign donations to Republicans.

Fair enough.  I'm happy to accept all that.

I'm also happy to think that that might be why there are so many photos of Lev Parnas with Republican officials because -- whether or not they all got money -- they all know he's a good someone for a Republican to know.  Even if he's "crooked as a snake."  And under federal indictment.

Fun fact:  as the Washington Post and New Yorker reported a few months back, 30 years ago Lev Parnas sold real estate for the Trump Organization.  One can only wonder if he was "crooked as a snake" then, too.  We do know that the Trump Organization was under indictment, though that's a separate matter.

"I know the best people."
-- Trump

The title for this week’s Al Franken podcast with guest Lawrence O’Donnell is pretty funny – “MSNBC’s Second Most Popular Host.”  Franken describes the show this way, very simply – “Lawrence O’Donnell – Son of Dorchester, West Wing writer, Moynihan Senate Staff director – tears Trump and CNN a new one.”  It's a very enjoyable, interesting show, made all the more fun as Al keep giving O'Donnell good-natured grief throughout.
 

Once again, Trump reiterated his insistence that he doesn't know Lev Parnas, doesn't know where he's from, doesn't know anything about him.  Yes, there are photos of him with Parnas, quite a few, but (for the sake of argument) it's certainly possible that all those are just quick, random "Here, take a photo with this guy" things.  No, it's not likely or probable, given how many of them are, but -- just to bend over backwards for argument's sake -- sure, it's possible.

But then last night on Rachel Maddow's interview with Parnas with see what crushes that argument completely into dust.  It's an email from Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow to his former lawyer John Dowd who had said he probably had a conflict defending Parnas since he (Dowd) had been Trump's lawyer.  And so Dowd asked Sekulow if there was, in fact, a conflict.

There you have it.  Not only does that show Trump knows Lev Parnas, but well-enough to give approval to his former lawyer to represent him.

There was also something related to all this that leaped out loudly yesterday.

Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway was on Jake Tapper's show on CNN and said something that Trump defenders have been saying for a long time time, but yesterday it took on especially-substantive meaning given that it was the day the Articles of Impeachment were signed and officially transferred to the Senate, where Chief Justice John Roberts swore all senators in for the trial of "Donald John Trump."

In the interview, Ms. Conway said two two things of note.  The first was to remind everyone that Lev Parnas had been federally indicted, something that was a talking point by Trump spokespeople all day.  And as I wrote yesterday, Parnas is not a good guy.  Indeed, he has a seedy past.  But what is important to point out, just to be fair, is that being indicted is not the same as being convicted.  It is reasonable for anyone to say that someone has under indictment when they are.  It is equally proper to make clear that in the United States, a person is innocent until proven guilty.  Furthermore, it is fair to respond that while "He is under federal indictment" is an accurate charge, it is not a denial that what the person said isn't true.

But it was the other thing she said that I think stands out far more.  Not just because we've heard it so often from Team Trump in the past, but especially since (as I noted) today was the beginning of Trump's trial.  And that's when Ms. Conway's response to Jake Tapper was that we all have to remember that everything Lev Parnas had been saying was not under oath in a court of law.

Very true.

And here's the thing -- as much as she and all Trump defenders want to properly stand on this reality as something the American public should consider profoundly important, they are digging their own hole, because what is equally true is that that point, that what Lev Parnas say is not under oath so we should be skeptical about believing him, is exactly just as true for Trump.

And Mike Pompeo.  And William Barr.  And Rick Perry.  And Mick Mulvaney.  And Mike Pence.  And -- yes, Kellyanne Conway.  And indeed every single person in the Trump administration who Trump has been blocking from testifying under oath.

If we are not to take as absolute fact that what Lev Parnas as said was the truth because he was not under oath, then we cannot take as the absolute truth the denials of any of these people who are not under oath.

For that matter, by that very argument of Trump's spokesperson, the only way we can determine if what Lev Parnas is saying is the truth is to have him testify under oath.  And it follows that the only way we can determine if the denials of Trump officials are true is to have them all testifying under oath, as well.

It is not to be expected that this latter will happen.

But it's good to know that the Trump administration's lead spokesperson wants us to know that it should.  Because whether or not she said that -- it is exactly what she was saying.

For the record: Joseph Bondy is the attorney for Lev Parnas.
​

As I periodically note here, some days I just get worn out and don't have it in me to write anything about the Trump-created hell hole, even if it concerns the Democratic debate, or the release of private texts from Trump's personal lawyer, the henchmen he worked with and members of the administration team which underscored the threats to our nation's own ambassador and that Trump was all involved with this as a personal matter.

Quick side note:  as much as the texts suggest that the threats to Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch could conceivably have been life-threatening, and as much as I understand why they had to be treated that way, I don't think that they were, actually, threats on her life.  Never mind that the GOP Congressional candidate Robert Hyde who was communicating appears to have a history as a crass, pompous blowhard who it's hard to imagine would have contacts with Ukrainian assassins.  More to the point, given that the texts were willingly handed over to the F.B.I by Parnas himself, it seems improbable that he would do so if he was involved with a planned assassination of a U.S. official.

And a quick side note on the debate:  I watched for about a half-hour, was glad that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders seemed to get past the silly controversy about whether or not he ever told her that a woman couldn't be elected president -- though I'm sure their supporters won't let it die -- I thought it was all very dull since the candidates seemed tense, not wanting to screw up anything just days before the election.

Okay, so those are the quick side notes.

Instead I thought I'd write about some fluffery, in this case related to the Oscar nominations.  Mind you, as I write this, I don't know what the nominations were.  I'll check them out at some point.  But I have an addendum to a very good piece that my pal Mark Evanier wrote here on his site.

The short version is that someone had written him all frenetic that Little Women had received a Best Picture nomination, but not one for Best Director, and how in the world could this injustice possibly be?!  Mark explained (at more detailed length) that a) two different groups vote for those two categories, and b) there were nine nominations for Best Picture but only five for Best Director.  So by pure math, there had to be at a minimum four directors of a Best Picture nominee who couldn't get a Best Director nomination.

At its foundation, Mark's excellent explanation is all that you needed to know to answer the question.  There was one additional point that I thought should also be addressed which I think (especially as a screenwriter) is important --

When Academy directors are voting on Best Director, they are looking obviously at the direction and the direction only.
 
When Academy members are voting are Best Picture, they are looking at the direction…and the writing -- and acting, and editing, music, costuming, production design and how it was all produced.  So, the voters are looking at two totally different things.  A film can be wonderfully directed but just not interesting on several levels.  Or be just professionally directed though no more than that, but be a wonderful experience overall
 
I always like to point out two movies, released around the same time.  The 1982 film One from the Heart was one of the most inventively-directed and well-produced movies, but so boring to audiences and flopping so hugely that Francis Ford Coppola (who financed the film himself) lost his studio.  Two years earlier, The Gods Must Be Crazy from South Africa, shot on a shoestring budget was a terribly-made, jumble of an amateurishly-made movie with disjointed jump cuts that was a total, utter, unabashed joy and such a big hit that it spawned a sequel
 

There has been serious discussion for a short while that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) might conceivably accept a motion to dismiss the articles of impeachment and have them voted on with a Republican majority to end the Senate trial before it even began.  Then came a story today that reports McConnell wouldn't have enough votes to have that motion passed.

My first reaction was -- gee, what a shock.

This whole "Republicans may dismiss the articles of impeachment" story has struck me as one of the most idiotic of the impeachment period.  And there have been a lot of idiotic stories during the impeachment period,

If Republicans actually voted to shut down the impeachment trial of Trump before it even began, I would suggest that they'd not only lose control of the Senate, but they'd lose so many seats they wouldn't have the ability to filibuster, it would empty the House of even more Republicans, and would risk destroying the Republican Party.  That's the reason that McConnell wouldn't have enough votes to have that motion passed.  Because all Republican senators know that, too.  And so does Mitch McConnell.  Why people suggesting this possible result don't know that, too, is beyond me.

No, not every Republican voter would be outraged.  But I'd imagine pretty much every independent voter would be.  And that would leave the GOP with only about 30% support.  And it's that much only if every Republican voter would be okay with the action, and given that we know that 60% of Republicans have said there should be witnesses, that means that at the very least 60% of Republicans think there should be a trial.  So, maybe we'd be down to 12% GOP support.  And some of those probably think there should at least be a trial, if only to exonerate their beloved Dear Leader.

Honestly, I don't necessarily think that only 12% of the public would vote for Republicans this year if the GOP Senate blocked there being a trial.  It certainly could be lower than 30%, but let's say even say more than that, let's say that even if as much as 35% of the country was okay with it, a number that low alone would be enough to crush the party to the breaking point in the November election.

Could I be wrong about this?  Absolutely.  But the risk to me being wrong compared to the risk to the GOP of me being right is so heavily-weighted to me that that is why this was simply never going to happen.

Mitch McConnell is not going to block there being a trial.  He never was.  That was a merely a lunatic wish from a lunatic fringe.  But as the saying goes -- be careful what you wish for.

Okay, I'm not exactly out of the loop in world news.  I'm able to watch the news when I crash in my hotel room at night, and I hear MSNBC on Sirius/XM radio driving to and from CES every day.  But I do miss a lot.  Like not hearing Trump's comments to the nation on Wednesday morning.  In fairness, I wouldn't have watched it anyway, since my time-limit on hearing him speak is about 30-45 seconds.  And my level of willing to be knowingly lied to is very low.  Especially by someone who doesn't know what he's talking about.  I can always pick up the lowlights from clips on the news.

I did at least hear about his tweet that all is just fine.  And that was pretty much all I needed to know for the time being.  Not that "all is just fine," but that he doesn't know what he's talking about and lying.  Since clearly everything is not okay.  Even if another attack is not made by either side, all is not okay.  It's an incredibly dangerous area, terrorist groups aligned with Iran can attack whenever they chose to, the Iraq Parliament has voted unanimously to have the United States leave their country, and all our allies in the area are now at risk as targets.  And that's just for starters.  How bad is it?  Vladimir Putin flew to Iran, presumably to be a peacemaker.  So, no all is not well.  And we have major Iran hawks Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence having the most influence on the empty, ignorant Trump.  And I can tell that from not especially being much in the loop.

I'll be more in the loopish on Friday when I return.  At least I know that the elves who are taking care of the homestead while I've been away say that all is fine there...  Which, on second thought, doesn't give me great comfort either.

You may recall a few months back in October when there was a story about how after an executive of Deutsche Bank died of a suicide, his son came across papers related to Trump loans and turned them over to the FBI.

Now comes a story directly related to late about a connection between those loans and VTB, which is a Russian state-owned bank.

As the reporters for Forensic News note, they are not saying that evidence shows the loans were backed by Russia.  However, they are saying that some of Trump's loans were issued by a subsidiary to Deutsches Bank that does have business connections to VTB.

The report isn't very long, and you can read the full thing here.

We have an uncommon and particularly enjoyable Al Franken podcast today.  There's no guest, but instead it's a 50-minute monologue.  As Al himself describes it, "This week, I rant about the dishonesty (and/or stupidity) of House Republicans during the impeachment debate. Also, about the shameless bad faith exhibited by Mitch McConnell. And the unraveling of Donald Trump’s mind – to the extent it was ever raveled. Plus, my frustration with the Democratic presidential debate our candidates failing to lay a glove on Trump. And with the Democratic candidates, who beat up each other, but failed to lay a glove on Trump.