Tuesday Reads And Reading Women
Posted: March 6, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Foreign Affairs, Republican politics, U.S. Politics 42 Comments
Blue Girl Reading, 1912, by August Macke
Good Afternoon!!
I’m still digesting the news from yesterday and preparing myself for the upcoming nor’easter. This one will drop snow on us. Luckily I got out to the store yesterday, so I have plenty of supplies.
Could Wednesday’s nor’easter unleash 2 feet of snow on Massachusetts? Newly released weather maps have dropped a load of fresh information on the upcoming storm, including rapidly increasing snow forecast totals that are beginning to get out of control.
The National Weather Service on Tuesday morning released a new snow total map that increases the high-end totals in parts of northern Mass. to 18-24 inches while moving the rain/snow line farther east, meaning heavier snow totals in parts of Eastern Mass. Communities north and west of Boston could now be getting up to 18 inches, while the Boston area itself is still looking at 6-8 inches.
Areas south of Boston, many of which make up the more than 20,000 still without power from the last storm, are expected to get primarily rain.
Our beloved Pat will be dealing plenty of white stuff on Thursday.
I woke up early this morning and made the mistake of turning on MSNBC. Joe Scarborough thinks it’s impossible for anyone not to feel sorry for Sam Nunberg, whom he refers to as “a kid.” Nunberg is 36. Scarborough also empathizes with Michael Flynn because he’s selling his house to cover his legal fees. ABC News:
Michael Flynn, the retired Army general and ex-Trump national security adviser who pleaded guilty last year to lying to FBI agents about his Russian contacts, has put his Virginia home up for sale to pay mounting legal fees, friends and family members told ABC News.
Inspiration, by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky
Flynn’s 13-year-old, three-bedroom townhouse in Old Town Alexandria outside Washington, which he bought three years ago, was listed for sale in December with an asking price of $895,000 — money he will use to pay his high legal defense debts, his brother Joe Flynn said Monday.
The retired three-star general and former Defense Intelligence Agency director withdrew to his hometown of Middletown, R.I., last year after he was dismissed by President Donald Trump 24 days into his role as national security adviser, later becoming embroiled in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
In other words, Flynn is trying to sell his second home? Well, boo hoo. I don’t care if he ends up in a trailer park. Maybe he should have thought twice before acting as a foreign agent for Russia and Turkey, not to mention leading “lock her up” chants at Trump rallies.
As for Nunberg, McKay Coppins reports that “the kid” was celebrating his publicly televised meltdown last night: Sam Nunberg’s Spectacular Stunt.
“By the way, you know I’m the number one trending person on Twitter?”
It was just after 8:00 p.m. on Monday night, and the suddenly-famous Sam Nunberg had phoned me from Dorrian’s Red Hand Restaurant, a yuppie hangout on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where he was reveling in his triumph.
After announcing earlier that day his intention to defy a grand-jury subpoena he says he received in the Russia investigation (“Arrest me,” he’d dared prosecutors), the former Trump aide had spent the day conducting a manic media blitz—popping up on multiple cable-news programs, granting interviews to dozens of journalists, and hijacking the news cycle with a car-crash procession of blustery soundbites. Legal experts were warning that his failure to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation could put him in serious legal jeopardy—but at this moment, it seemed, Nunberg was in a celebratory mood.
Woman Reading, by Vasile Ion
As we spoke, Nunberg alternated between this unalloyed bravado and a kind of meta amusement at the media frenzy his performance had commanded. He seemed to take special pleasure in speculating about how Mueller might be reacting to the spectacle. “You know what the funny thing is?” he boasted. “He’s thinking I’m, like, playing eight-dimensional chess with Donald Trump.”
Well, I asked, are you?
He guffawed. “No!”
Nunberg seems to think he’s become a junior version of his mentor Roger Stone. Coppins:
The mystery of his motivations had hovered over the day’s astonishing events, and theories attempting to explain his bizarre behavior had proliferated quickly. Some believed he was responding to being caught in a genuine conspiracy—auditioning for immunity, perhaps, or covering up crimes committed by allies in the president’s orbit….
I won’t venture a guess as to which theory best explains his actions. But as anyone who’s known Nunberg for a while can attest, his behavior Monday doesn’t necessarily require special explanation. He’s been pulling stunts like this for years—this is just the first time he’s gotten the kind of audience he’s always craved.
Whatever. But do I feel sorry for Nunberg like Joe Scarborough does? Hell no! I hope Mueller throws the book at him.
CNN has a shocking story out of Tennessee: Tennessee school removes Confederate flag, lynching murals.
A painting of a Confederate flag and a mural depicting a lynching have been removed from the walls of a Tennessee school gymnasium.
The mural showed a white man, dressed in blue, hanging from a rope tied to a tree branch. Another person was standing nearby, in a red jersey, and holding a Confederate flag.
The painting was intended to depict an athletic team rivalry.L’edition deluxe, Lillian Westcott Hale 1910
It’s unclear how long the paintings have been inside the South Cumberland Elementary School, located 100 miles east of Nashville, but a complaint was first made in December by a concerned janitor of a nearby elementary school.
On Friday, after months of calls and emails to the superintendent and the school board, David Clark, took his concerns public.
“Germany does not display Nazi symbols. This is not heritage, it is racism,” he wrote on a Facebook post.“No action has been planned or taken as of today so I am asking people to call and let them know in a respectful manner, how you feel about these racist symbols being on full public display where children can see them.”
Less than 24 hours later, the post had at least 500 comments and more than 200 shares. Later that same day, the Confederate flag was gone and the mural was repainted to scrap the lynching.
WTF?! What happens to kids who are exposed to images like this in elementary school? Here’s a story from NPR that should serve as a warning: 5 Killings, 3 States And 1 Common Neo-Nazi Link.
At first glance, five killings in three states since last May appeared to be unrelated, isolated cases.
But a common thread is emerging. Three young men have been charged, and all appear to have links to the same white supremacist group: the Atomwaffen Division.
Atomwaffen is German for “atomic weapons,” and the group is extreme. It celebrates Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson, its online images are filled with swastikas and it promotes violence.
A video on its website shows young men in face scarves and camouflage firing rifles during military-style training. The video begins with group members shouting in unison, “Race War Now,” and concludes with the tag line, “Join Your Local Nazis.”
Josef Loukota (Czech, 1879-1967). Reading Girl in Studio
“Atomwaffen no doubt takes some of the white supremacist rhetoric to another level. The views that they articulate are white supremacists on steroids,” said Joanna Mendelson, who follows extremist groups for the Anti-Defamation League in Los Angeles.
“And what is the change they want to see? Real-world violence. Real-world apocalyptic violence,” she added.
Read the rest at NPR.
Of course, as long as we have a white supremacist in the White House, nothing is going to be done about these white extremist groups.
Nothing will be done about Russian influence in our elections or on our foreign policy either. At Crooked Media, Brian Beutler makes some important points: If Russia Owns Trump, It Owns American Policies. Beutler notes that for the first time Paul Ryan is making a half-hearted attempt to stand up to Trump–over trade issues.
For the first time in the two years since people began asking questions about Trump’s relationship with the Russian government, Ryan has taken a lonely stand against the president and his benefactors in Moscow. Not by forcing Trump to divest from his businesses, or to disclose his opaque finances, or by replacing House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes with a competent investigator who hasn’t himself been compromised.
Instead, Ryan is using at least some of his official heft to oppose Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. His office has publicly implored Trump to reverse himself, and is distributing news articles to reporters tying the tariffs to bad economic and financial news.
But the reason it probably won’t work is that Trump doesn’t care. He’s making U.S. policy based on what’s best for Russia.
The problem, for Ryan and the rest of us, with treating Trump’s behavior as mere heterodoxy, is that it offers no redress for the likelihood that Trump isn’t making policy in the public interest. Ryan can slap back at unwelcome policy proposals as they arise, but as long he allows Trump’s underlying corruption to go unaddressed, they will keep coming, and we’ll have no way of knowing what Trump’s true motives are.
Woman Reading, by Felix Edouard Vallotton
What do steel and aluminum tariffs have to do with Russia? Possibly nothing! But straining ties within the Western alliance, and specifically between the U.S. and Europe, has been a Russian geopolitical goal for decades. Fostering a trade war between America and the E.U. fits that bill perfectly.
And because people like Ryan have allowed Trump to reach the pinnacle of global power without submitting to the most basic transparency norms, we’re all left to wonder whether Trump is being stubborn about tariffs for legitimate political reasons, or for genuinely corrupt ones.
That’s the problem all right. At this point, I’m completely convinced that Trump is acting as an agent of Putin and his oligarchs. We’d better hope the Democrats can win big in the midterms, despite Russian interference.
More headlines to check out:
BBC News: Emails show UAE-linked effort against Tillerson
The Guardian: Woman in Russian spy mystery is Sergei Skripal’s daughter
ABC News: Senator on NRA’s ties to Russia: ‘I remain concerned’
Dana Millbank at the Washington Post: President Trump is blessedly weak
Vanity Fair: “I Don’t Think There’s Anything…Gates Doesn’t Know”: Why Manafort’s Lackey Now Holds All The Cards
The Washington Post: Trump’s name is stripped from Panama hotel
ABC News: Police evict Trump staff from Panama hotel amid ongoing dispute
Vanity Fair: “All The Money Is His”: At Mar-A-Lago, Trump Polls Guests About Kushner’s Bad Press
So . . . What stories are you following today? Please share!
Lazy Saturday Reads
Posted: March 3, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Boston, child brides, Donald Trump, flooding, golf outings, Hope Hicks, Jared Kushner, John Kelly, Kentucky "Christians", nor'easter, Roy Moore, Texas Democrats, Trump's diet, weather, West Virginia Teachers strike, Winter Storm Riley 24 Comments
Newsstand, by Max Ginsburg
Happy Saturday!!
I spent yesterday in my cozy apartment with uninterrupted electricity, TV, and internet; but outside my refuge, the Boston area was hit by a massive storm. Some parts of Massachusetts had 90 mph wind gusts, and wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph will continue through the day today. Today’s noon high tide is still likely to be dangerous.
The Boston Globe has a collection of photos from the storm if you’re interested. One example:
Water floods from Boston Harbor onto Seaport Boulevard in the Seaport district of Boston. — Greg Cooper EPA-EFE REX Shutterstock
Here’s a video from downtown Boston that I found on Twitter that will give you an idea of what the winds were like.
https://twitter.com/kschroeter1/status/969659147137568768
I hope all you Sky Dancers along the East Coast are safe and warm today!
In other news, Trump has decamped to Florida, and I hope he’ll be busy enough with golf to leave the rest of us alone for awhile. This golfing trip represents a “milestone” for him though.
CNN: A presidential milestone: Trump has spent 100 days in office at one of his golf clubs.
President Donald Trump reached a presidential milestone at his Palm Beach County, Florida, golf club on Saturday: One hundred days in office at a golf club that bears his name.
Trump, once a critic of presidential golfing, has ignored his own advice and made a habit of visiting some of the many golf courses emblazoned in his moniker. The habit is part of the broader trend of the President and first lady making frequent trips to properties owned and operated by the Trump Organization.
Bill Day / Cagle Cartoons
According to CNN’s count, Trump has exclusively visited four golf clubs he owns during his presidency: Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida; Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida; Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia; and Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Trump has spent 36 days at his Florida club and 40 days at his New Jersey course and made the short trip from the White House to his Virginia club 23 times. He golfed once at his Jupiter course with professional golfers Tiger Woods, Dustin Johnson and Brad Faxon.
In total, Trump has spent nearly 25% of his days in office at one of his golf clubs. It is impossible to know whether Trump golfs every time he visits one of his golf clubs because White House aides rarely confirm that he is golfing, and Trump has, at times, visited his golf clubs to eat a meal or meet with people.
Melania went to Florida with Trump, and here’s how he treated her while he rushed to get out of the wind and onto Air Force One.
Imagine if Obama had done that to Michelle? But it’s nothing new for our asshole in chief.
One reason Trump may have been so “unglued” lately (besides the Russia investigation) is that he’s apparently on a diet. Bloomberg: Trump Swaps His Beloved Burgers for Salads and Soups in New Diet.
The president whose trademark campaign-trail dinner consisted of two McDonald’s Big Macs, two Filet-o-Fish sandwiches and a chocolate milkshake is cutting back on doctor’s orders to drop a few pounds, according to three people familiar with the matter. Less red meat, more fish.
One person said it’s been two weeks since he saw the president eat a hamburger.
It’s not just the president, though. Jackson and the vice president’s doctor, Jennifer Pena, are pushing healthy food choices throughout the West Wing.
Trump so far has embraced the new regimen, giving aides the impression he feels he is thriving on his new diet, they said.
Still, he is allowing himself indulgences. He ate bacon at breakfast one day this week.
Something very newsworthy has been happening in West Virginia, but national news outlets are only just beginning to cover it.
The New York Times: ‘All-In or Nothing’: How West Virginia’s Teacher Strike Was Months in the Making.
GILBERT, W. Va — Home from a long day teaching English last month at Mingo Central High School, Robin Ellis told her husband the latest talk among the teachers. They were tired of low pay and costly health benefits — and they were mulling a “rolling strike,” in which teachers in a few counties would walk out each day.
“You don’t want to do that,” Donnie Ellis, her husband, said. As a veteran of strip mines and the intense labor conflicts that often came with them, he knew what made some strikes succeed and others crumble.
“It’s got to be all-in or nothing,” he said.
It has definitely been all-in in West Virginia. For seven days now, teachers have refused to work in all 55 counties, shutting down every school in the state.
Teachers and supporters rally outside West Virginia State House Photograph by Craig Hudson Charleston Gazette AP
Every school day since last Thursday, thousands of red- and black-clad teachers, bus drivers and cooks have descended on Charleston to fill the halls of the State Capitol, chanting and singing defiantly in one of the few statewide teachers’ strikes in American history.
On Friday, as thousands crowded into the Capitol, all of the energy was directed at the State Senate, which has yet to take up a bill that would grant teachers a 5 percent pay raise — despite support for the measure by the governor, the Republican-controlled House and the state’s superintendents.
Click on the NYT link to read the rest.
More from the AP via The Chicago Tribune: Statewide West Virginia teacher strike enters day 7 without classes; state Senate nixes vote.
The West Virginia teachers’ strike rolled into its second weekend with the state Senate planning to meet Saturday after declining to take a vote on whether the teachers will get the 5 percent pay raise negotiated by Gov. Jim Justice and union leaders.
Senate Republicans have repeatedly emphasized spending restraint while saying the teachers and West Virginia’s other public workers are all underpaid.
Hundreds of teachers and supporters, including students, rallied at the Capitol on Friday, the seventh day they’ve shuttered classrooms.
Teachers are protesting pay that’s among the lowest in the nation, rising health care costs and a previously approved 2 percent raise for next year after four years without any increase.
“We’re still not close to resolving this critical issue,” said Sen. Roman Prezioso, the Democratic minority leader, requesting the vote Friday. “Let’s send the teachers and superintendents that I’ve seen here from all the different counties, send them home this weekend for a cooling off period. Let’s start school Monday and say this Senate does support education in West Virginia.”
Read the rest at the link.
Here’s another local story that is getting more attention–this is for you, JJ. The Louisville Courier-Journal: Kentucky’s ‘child bride’ bill stalls as groups fight to let 13-year-olds wed.
FRANKFORT, Ky. — A bill to make 18 the legal age for marriage in Kentucky has stalled in a Senate committee amid concerns about the rights of parents to allow children to wed at a younger age, according to several lawmakers.
Known as the “child bride” bill, Senate Bill 48 was pulled off the agenda just hours before a scheduled vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee for the second time in two weeks.
Donna Pollard, who married an older man at age 16, is working for a bill that would raise the legal age for marriage to 18 in Kentucky.
“SO disappointed! My SB 48 (outlaw child marriage) won’t be called for a vote,” sponsor Julie Raque Adams, a Louisville Republican, said in a Tweet early Thursday. “It is disgusting that lobbying organizations would embrace kids marrying adults. We see evidence of parents who are addicted, abusive, neglectful pushing their children into predatory arms. Appalling.”
Eileen Recktenwald, the executive director of the Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs, was more outspoken.
“This is legalized rape of children,” she said. “We cannot allow that to continue in Kentucky, and I cannot believe we are even debating this is the year 2018 in the United States.”
The bill’s supporters have said underage marriages most often involve a teenage girl marrying an older man and may have involved sexual exploitation of the girl.
Guess who’s getting credit for killing the bill? If you guessed right wing “Christians,” you’re right. Patheos:
According to reports, a bill to outlaw child marriage in Kentucky has been indefinitely delayed after opposition from the conservative Family Foundation of Kentucky, a powerful lobbying group backed by conservative Christians in the state.
The Courier-Journal reports Senate Bill 48, Known as the “child bride” bill, has been stalled in committee after the conservative Christian group expressed “concerns about the rights of parents to allow children to wed at a younger age.”
Sherry Johnson, Florida based anti child marriage campaigner who was forced to marry aged 11 in 1971. Photograph by Katharina Bracher
Raw Story explains the legislation:
The modest bill would not totally ban child marriages, but would require a judge to review records to make sure that the child was not the victim of abuse, that there are not domestic violence incident involving either party and that the adult is not a registered sex-offender. The bill would require that the judge deny the right to marry if there was a pregnancy that resulted from the adult spouse molesting the child.
However, this “modest bill” protecting children from being forced into marriage by their parents, is perceived as a threat by conservative Christian lawmakers in Kentucky.
These “Christians” claim the bill would interfere with “parental rights.” The rights of young girls are of course irrelevant.
I have more stories to share; I’ll give them to you links only.
The Week: Hope Hicks apparently kept a White House diary. (I imagine Bob Mueller is already working on the subpoena!)
Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair: “She’s in Immense Personal Jeopardy”: Even for Hope Hicks the White House Got Too Hot.
Jessica Valenti at The Guardian: With Hope Hicks’ exit, we can’t let Trump’s female allies off the hook.
The Washington Post: Days before the election, Stormy Daniels threatened to cancel deal to keep alleged affair with Trump secret.
ABC News: Jared Kushner entanglements increasingly concern President Trump: Sources.
CBS News: John Kelly’s comment about God punishing him with chief of staff job aggravated Trump.
The Washington Post: Trump picks tough-on-crime crusader with history of racial remarks for criminal justice post.
The Washington Post: Trump pushes Republicans to oppose crucial New York-New Jersey tunnel project.
The Dallas News: Texas early voting numbers a ‘wake-up call’ for GOP as Democrats double their 2014 turnout.
Associated Press: Roy Moore pleads for money, saying resources ‘depleted.’
So . . . What’s on your mind? What stories are you following today?
At your local casino, an exciting release from Play’n Go is released. Check it out now at nyeste casino.
Thursday Reads: Let’s Hear It For the Kids!
Posted: March 1, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics 21 Comments
Jamie Margolin (foreground) and other young climate activists in Olympia on Monday
COURTESY OF 350 SEATTLE/ALEXANDRA BLAKELY
Good Afternoon!!
We had another unbelievable breaking news day yesterday. I’m beginning to think this is going to continue until we somehow get rid of Trump. Tomorrow is Friday–the day when the news comes in a flood. Remember the old days when Friday was “news dump” day because people supposedly weren’t paying attention?
But today I want want to begin with an important story that isn’t about Trump and his incredibly dysfunctional White House. I get so obsessed with the Russia investigation news, that I forget there are other life and death issues to examine.
Teenagers are not only leading the way on gun control, they are fighting to save the environment. Grist: Meet the teens schooling us on climate.
Generation Z — millennials’ younger brothers and sisters — are increasingly finding their voices in the Trump era, expanding media-savvy campaigns for racial equality and gun control to encompass climate change. A group of high school students are now planning a nationwide series of climate marches on July 21, when they will confront lawmakers in Washington, D.C., with a list of their demands for a livable climate.
Jamie Margolin
“I’d say I do about three hours of conference calls every single day,” says the lead organizer of the march, Jamie Margolin, a 16-year-old high school sophomore in Seattle. “I’m not new to the climate activism world.”
It’s true. Margolin is one of 13 young plaintiffs suing Washington state government for not taking sufficient action to address climate change. She frequently spends lunches answering emails instead of hanging out with friends. And the Seattle teen is not an anomaly: Statistically, young women of color like Margolin are the demographic most engaged on climate issues.
Margolin started planning the upcoming climate march, which she calls “Zero Hour,” last August, after the Trump administration announced its plans to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. She recruited Mrinalini Chakraborty, head of strategy for the national Women’s March, to help the students file for permits and plan logistics. Now, the organizing committee includes dozens of youth from Connecticut to California. The official website for the march launched last week.
Now, the group is drawing inspiration from the teen-led movement for federal gun control in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Margolin was particularly impressed when the Parkland students confronted lawmakers about accepting money from the NRA — which produced some predictably awkward stammers. Her team is considering making similar demands for politicians to refuse money from the fossil fuel industry.
Read more at Grist..
More on the lawsuit from KUOW: 13 kids sue Washington state for life, liberty and a livable climate.
Thirteen kids are suing the state of Washington and its governor to protect their generation from climate change.
The plaintiffs range in age from 7 to 17.
Their suit, filed Friday in King County Superior Court, says Gov. Jay Inslee and state agencies are violating the constitutional rights of a generation by continuing to let dangerous amounts of carbon dioxide into the sky.
“They are not taking nearly enough action to fight climate change, which my generation is going to suffer from,” 16-year-old plaintiff Jamie Margolin of Seattle said.
The high-school sophomore at Seattle’s Holy Names Academy also founded the group Zero Hour, which is organizing a youth climate march this summer in Washington, D.C.
Somerville, MA High School students sat in silence Wednesday morning to honor the Florida high school shooting victims and call for gun control reform (WBZ-TV)
The students in my nephew’s high school–Cambridge Rindge and Latin–are walking out today to show solidarity with the Parkland kids. Students from other schools around Massachusetts and the rest country had walkouts yesterday. Good for them! I had dinner with my “Generation Z” nephews last night, and they are very concerned about the gun issue. Their mother is quite involved in environmental activism, so they have already participated in many of her activities.
I know we can’t expect kids to save us, but I’m glad to see this youth activism. I hope it translates to voting in the years to come.
Unfortunately, no issue these days is really divorced from the Russia story. It appears that Russians have even gotten involved in trying to influence Americans’ attitudes about climate change. The Washington Post: These provocative images show Russian trolls sought to inflame debate over climate change, fracking and Dakota pipeline.
Russian trolls used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to inflame U.S. political debate over energy policy and climate change, a finding that underscores how the Russian campaign of social media manipulation went beyond the 2016 presidential election, congressional investigators reported Thursday.
The new report from the House Science, Space and Technology Committee includes previously unreleased social media posts that Russians created on such contentious political issues as the Dakota Access pipeline, government efforts to curb global warming and hydraulic fracturing, a gas mining technique often called “fracking.”
One Facebook post created by a Russian-controlled group called “Native Americans United” shows what appears to be a young girl in a braid peering out over an unspoiled prairie. “Love Water Not Oil, Protect Our Mother, Stand With Standing Rock,” a reference to an Indian tribe that opposed the Dakota Access pipeline. The post also said, “No Pipelines. No Fracking. No Tar Sands.”
Internet Research Agency (troll factory) in St. Petersburg, Russia
The 21-page report drew from documents submitted in the fall by Twitter and Facebook, which owns Instagram, for congressional investigations into the social media influence campaign during the 2016 presidential election. Those probes focused on the efforts by the Internet Research Agency, a troll farm in St. Petersburg that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III indicted in February for disrupting and influencing U.S. politics.
The committee’s report found that between 2015 and 2017, more than 9,000 posts and tweets dealt with U.S. energy policy produced by 4,334 Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts controlled by the Internet Research Agency. Twitter told the committee that more than 4 percent of tweets produced by the Russians dealt with energy and climate issues.
And as we know, Trump is not going to do anything to discourage this Russian manipulation.
Another life and death issue that we don’t focus on enough is what Trump might do in North Korea. National security expert Gordon Kahl highlighted is scary NYT story on Twitter: U.S. Banks on Diplomacy With North Korea, but Moves Ahead on Military Plans.
A classified military exercise last week examined how American troops would mobilize and strike if ordered into a potential war on the Korean Peninsula, even as diplomatic overtures between the North and the Trump administration continue.
The war planning, known as a “tabletop exercise,” was held over several days in Hawaii. It included Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Army’s chief of staff, and Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of Special Operations Command.
They looked at a number of pitfalls that could hamper an American assault on North Korea’s well-entrenched military. Among them was the Pentagon’s limited ability to evacuate injured troops from the Korean Peninsula daily — a problem more acute if the North retaliated with chemical weapons, according to more than a half-dozen military and Defense Department officials familiar with the exercise.
Large numbers of surveillance aircraft would have to be moved from the Middle East and Africa to the Pacific to support ground troops. Planners also looked at how American forces stationed in South Korea and Japan would be involved.
Pentagon officials cautioned that the planning does not mean that a decision has been made to go to war over President Trump’s demands that North Korea rein in its nuclear ambitions.
Gordon Kahl’s interpretation:
https://twitter.com/ColinKahl/status/969184555293925376
As I said at the beginning of the post, there is an unbelievable amount of Trump mess/Russia News. Here are some links to check out today:
The New York Times: Senate Intelligence Leaders Say House G.O.P. Leaked a Senator’s Texts.
Olivia Nuzzi at New York Magazine: The White House Didn’t Break Hope Hicks Overnight.
CNN: Former Trump campaign official said Mueller’s team asked about Hicks.
CBS News: Hope Hicks refused to answer whether “a litany” of Trump associates asked her to lie.
CNN: White House furious at embarrassing stories about HUD, Secretary Ben Carson.
Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine: How Trump’s Saturday Night Massacre Might Start With Jeff Sessions.
The Washington Post: Is Jared Kushner using the White House as his own personal boardroom?
Marcy Wheeler at The New York Times: Has Jared Kushner Conspired to Defraud America?
The Washington Post: Questions linger about how Melania Trump, a Slovenian model, scored ‘the Einstein visa.’
What stores are you following? Please share!
Tuesday Reads: “I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t have a weapon”
Posted: February 27, 2018 Filed under: just because 49 CommentsGood Morning!!
If anyone had any doubts about Trump’s mental health they should be put to rest today. You probably saw his ridiculous speech to governors yesterday in which he bragged that he would have run in and confronted the school shooter in Parkland–even if he were unarmed.
After that Governor Jay Inslee of Washington explained why Trump’s plan to arm teachers is incredibly stupid. Trump didn’t like that.
Poor baby Donnie. Some press reactions:
The New York Times: Trump Says He Would Have Rushed in Unarmed to Stop School Shooting.
President Trump asserted Monday that he would have rushed in to save the students and teachers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School from a gunman with an assault weapon, even if he was unarmed at the time of the massacre.
Speaking to a meeting of the country’s governors at the White House, Mr. Trump conceded that “you don’t know until you test it.” But he said he believed he would have exhibited bravery “even if I didn’t have a weapon, and I think most of the people in this room would have done that, too.”
The president’s remarks came during an hourlong televised conversation with the governors in the State Dining Room, during which Mr. Trump continued to grapple publicly with how best to respond to the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., discussing such things as arming teachers and reopening mental institutions.
As Mr. Trump skipped from one possible solution to another, he mused about the “old days,” when potential criminals could be locked in mental hospitals, and he vowed to ban “bump stocks,” an accessory that can make a semiautomatic weapon fire rapidly, more like an automatic rifle. But he dropped any mention of raising the age required to purchase a rifle to 21 from 18, something he said last week he supported, despite opposition from the National Rifle Association.
Yes, Trump “dropped any mention of raising the age to purchase a rifle” because he found out the NRA doesn’t want that, and he’s scared of the NRA. But he’d run unarmed into a building where a gunman is fired an AR-15. Suuuuuurrre he would.
Humorist Alexandra Petri at The Washington Post: Donald Trump possesses rare powers. Didn’t you know?
Donald Trump would have run in there, unarmed. He would have done that. And it would have worked.
Donald Trump is the greatest hero of our time.
He did not get involved in Vietnam because it would have been unfair to the other combatants, and he wanted to give them a sporting chance. Donald Trump would have been literally unstoppable, especially when angry. The whole country would have been flattened in an instant. Donald Trump was being merciful.
That eagle that seemed to frighten him so much at that photo shoot? Trump could not raise a hand against it, or the beautiful creature would surely have died. Those were his only options. He knows his own strength.
This is a world of cardboard, and it is all Trump can do to contain himself. This is why his handshakes are so formidable. This is as gentle as it is possible for him to be, and he is trying, so hard, to be gentle.
He could end all terrorism, not just domestic, if he ever chose to parachute in there in his signature tie and jacket, but he hasn’t. He has had other things on his mind.
He could end sexism with a swift kick to the teeth, but, again, he has been busy. The same with racism, but he has gotten attached to it, over the years.
Click on the link to read the rest. You won’t be sorry.
Eli Rosenberg at The Washington Post: Trump said he would charge a gunman. Here’s what he’s actually done in the face of danger.
The most frightened that Trump has ever seemed in public was perhaps a moment during a campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio, in March 2016.
The then-candidate was in the midst of speaking about manufacturing, when a man hopped the barrier behind him and rushed the stage. Trump stopped speaking, looked nervously behind him and grabbed and started to duck behind his lectern.
He was then swarmed by Secret Service agents, who steadied him.
Trump continued his speech after the disruption, and gave the audience a thumbs-up, claiming that he could have handled the attacker himself, despite his first reaction.
“I was ready for him,” Trump said, “but it’s much easier if the cops do it.”
Later that year at another rally, Trump was hustled off a stage in Nevada, after the someone in the audience yelled “gun.” No weapon was found.
There are several more examples of Trump’s “courage” at the link. Remember Sam the eagle?
And that time Trump was so afraid of rain on his hair that he left Barron and Melania in the lurch?
More examples at the WaPo link.
One more on Trump’s idiotic boast: Tevor Noah Mocks Trump’s Absurd Claim That He’d Run Into a School Shooting Unarmed.
“You don’t know until you test it, but I think, I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t have a weapon,” the president declared. “And I think most of the people in this room would have done that too.”
That statement stopped Noah in his tracks. “I like that he’s honest enough to say, ‘Look, I haven’t tested this, but I think would run in, without a weapon, yeah, I think I would,’” the host joked.
“To be fair, if Donald Trump ran into a school during a shooting, I do believe he would actually stop the shooting,” he continued, imagining the scenario in which a school shooter all of sudden sees the president walking toward him in the hallway. “How distracting would that be?” he asked.
“‘That’s right, it’s me, Donald Trump,’” he said, imitating the president. “‘I don’t have a gun, but what I do have is an amazing Electoral College victory.’”
“Eight minutes later, the police show up and Trump is still talking,” Noah said. “And the kid is like, ‘What is happening here?’”
Watch the video at The Daily Beast.
Trump Hotel and Tower, Panama
I’ve been following another strange Trump story. It’s about the Trump hotel in the Panama. You may recall that last year a major investigative story about the Trump’s business was published at Global Witness: Narco-Lago: Money Laundering at the Trump Ocean Club Panama. Here’s a Newsweek article that discusses the investigation: Trump Made Millions of Dollars from Drug Money Laundering in Panama.
President Donald Trump made tens of millions of dollars in profits by allowing Colombian drug cartels and other groups to launder money through a Trump-affiliated hotel in Panama, according to a new investigation by the organization Global Witness.
In the early 2000s, Trump was having financial difficulties and began selling his high-profile name to real estate developers around the world, the report said. One of these developed Panama’s Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower.
The report said the drug cartels purchased hotel units to hide the origins of money earned through drug trafficking and other criminal activity, and Trump is estimated to have earned tens of millions of dollars from the deals….
The report said the Panama project is a textbook case of money laundering.
“Investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely,” the report noted. “Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere.”
“In the case of the Trump Ocean Club, accepting easy – and possibly dirty – money early on would have been in Trump’s interest; a certain volume of pre-construction sales was necessary to secure financing for the project, which stood to net him $75.4 million by the end of 2010.”
A few days ago the Associated Press reported: Trump officials fight eviction from Panama hotel they manage.
One of President Donald Trump’s family businesses is battling an effort to physically evict its team of executives from a luxury hotel in Panama where they manage operations, and police have been called to keep the peace, The Associated Press has learned. Witnesses told the AP they saw Trump’s executives carrying files to a room for shredding.
Representatives of the hotel owners’ association formally sought to fire Trump’s management team Thursday by hand-delivering termination notices to them at the Trump International Hotel and Tower, according to a Panamanian legal complaint filed by Orestes Fintiklis, who controls 202 of the property’s 369 hotel units. Trump’s managers retreated behind the glass walls of an office where they were seen carrying files to an area where the sounds of a shredding machine could be heard, according to two witnesses aligned with the owners. The legal complaint also accused Trump’s team of improperly destroying documents.
The Trump people are still in the hotel refusing to leave and and the new owner is still trying to evict them. The Washington Post: Bizarre legal brawl intensifies at Trump hotel in Panama.
Since that first confrontation, police have been called multiple times to referee disputes between owner Orestes Fintiklis — who blames the company’s poor management and damaged brand for the hotel’s declining revenue — and the Trump Organization, which says it still has a valid contract to manage the place.
Offices have been barricaded. Several yelling matches have broken out. The power was briefly turned off, in a dispute over the building’s electronic equipment. At one point, Fintiklis — denied a chance to fire the hotel staff or even check into a room — played a tune on the hotel’s lobby piano as an apparent show of defiance.
On Monday, Panama’s federal prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into the Trump Organization, after Fintiklis complained that he had been unlawfully blocked from his own property.
With that, this bizarre standoff turned a theoretical concern about the Trump administration — that, someday, the president’s private business might be investigated by a foreign government — into a reality.
Republicans in Congress should have been investigating this situation long ago, but they couldn’t be bothered. Now Panama is doing it. The Week: Panama is investigating Trump’s business, vindicating ethics watchdogs.
Panama’s federal prosecutors opened an investigation into the Trump Organization on Monday following the escalation of a dispute over the management of Panama City’s Trump International Hotel, The Washington Postreports. The probe has sparked concerns because President Trump still technically owns the organization that shares his name, although his sons oversee the day-to-day operations. “The fear has always been that there would be an international incident involving the finances of the president, and the president would have his loyalties questioned,” explained Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)….
The local investigators made clear that they are willing to request information from foreign entities as needed. CREW’s Libowitz has wondered “what kind of pressure would [Trump] be willing to place” on the Panamanian government as president.
“Panama’s government receives financial support for counter-narcotics work from the United States,” notes the Los Angeles Times, and “Panama is currently seeking to extradite its former president, Ricardo Martinelli, from the United States to face espionage and embezzlement charges.”
How much more of this shit will happen before the Republicans get off their asses and do something?
What stories are you following today? Please share!
Lazy Saturday Reads: It’s Been A Very Newsy Week!
Posted: February 24, 2018 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 20 Comments
Happy Saturday!!
This has been quite a week for the Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation. Here’s a good recap of all that has happened from NPR: The Russia Investigations: More Pleas, More Charges — Any More Preparation?
Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller broke his own record this week for guilty pleas. On Tuesday, Dutch attorney Alex van der Zwaan appeared in federal court and admitted he had lied to investigators about his contacts with Donald Trump’s former campaign vice chairman, Rick Gates.
On Friday, Gates himself appeared before a federal judge and confirmed that he is changing his plea to guilty. He had been fighting the case brought against him and the former Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, which alleged they laundered millions of dollars and broke other laws related to their work for clients in Ukraine.
That makes the fourth and fifth pleas in the Russia imbroglio — but how much closer does it bring an answer to the question about whether the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians who attacked the 2016 election?
NPR points out that we still don’t know. We still haven’t seen any indictments for the hacking of DNC and Clinton campaign emails, although I’ll bet those will be coming.
Gates and Manafort have not been charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. by “impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes.” That was the charge Mueller leveled at 13 Russians and three Russian companies he says did interfere with the election.
Or the special counsel’s office could be laying down one brick in a larger structure. At the very least, Gates’ future testimony against his longtime business partner raises the likelihood that Manafort could be convicted of some or all of the charges he continues fighting.
NPR also details some mild efforts by the Feds to help prepare states for what the Russians might do in the upcoming mid-term elections and asks whether anyone is going to do anything about the extensive propaganda activities that were revealed in the indictments of individual Russians and Russian companies. It’s a good summary of a busy week of Russia news.
Meanwhile, after the Gates guilty plea, Mueller filed more new charges against Manafort. NBC News:
Further squeezing Manafort, Mueller lodged new accusations in a five-count superseding indictment Friday that charges him with conspiracy, money-laundering, being an unregistered agent for a foreign entity and making false statements.
The most significant allegation is that Manafort assembled what he called a “Super VIP” group of highly influential Europeans who could push Ukraine’s agenda “without any visible relationship” with the Ukrainian government, according to an email obtained by Mueller.
Manafort paid the politicians 2 million euros from offshore accounts in 2012 and 2013 to lobby members of Congress and other U.S. officials. It’s illegal for Americans to direct foreigners to lobby the U.S. without informing the Justice Department.
The so-called “Hapsburg Group” was managed by a former European chancellor, who was not named in the indictment.
The term chancellor is used in only a small number of countries, including Germany and Austria. The Associated Press reported last year that Mercury LLC, which was involved in the Manafort lobbying effort, employed former Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer as an expert.
Gusenbauer told Austrian public radio that he had never heard of the Hapsburg group and had met Manafort only twice. “I had nothing to do with the activities of Paul Manafort in Ukraine,” he said.
Manafort is still claiming he’s innocent of all charges. My guess is he is more afraid of his former Russian employers than anything Mueller can do to him. Manafort has to know a lot that could hurt Vladimir Putin and other Russian oligarchs. Those guys don’t fool around; they just poison their enemies or make it look like they had heart attacks or committed suicide.
It also looks like Jared Kushner could be in trouble. We know he can’t get a security clearance, and John Kelly is going to have to figure out what to do about it. Kelly recently set a deadline for yesterday for White House staff without permanent security clearance to be cut off from access to top secret information.
Trump was asked about Kushner’s situation yesterday.
President Donald Trump dodged questions on the status of his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s security clearance during a press conference Friday, saying it is “up to General Kelly” if Kushner will keep his access.
The widespread use of the interim clearances in the Trump White House came under scrutiny after revelations that former White House staff secretary Rob Porter was operating under a temporary pass amid an investigation into allegations of domestic abuse from two of his ex-wives.
The fallout led chief of staff John Kelly to issue new guidance on the use of the interim clearances, including restricting access to confidential information.
Among those White House members working under an interim clearance is Kushner, who has reportedly pushed backagainst the new rules.
“That’ll be up to General Kelly,” Trump told reporters during a press conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. “General Kelly will make that call. I will let the general make that call.”
Shortly after Trump’s remarks yesterday, The Washington Post broke this news: Top Justice Dept. official alerted White House 2 weeks ago to ongoing issues in Kushner’s security clearance.
A top Justice Department official alerted the White House two weeks ago that significant information requiring additional investigation would further delay the security clearance process of senior adviser Jared Kushner, according to three people familiar with the discussion.
The Feb. 9 phone call from Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to White House Counsel Donald McGahn came amid growing public scrutiny of a number of administration officials without final security clearances. Most prominent among them is Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, who has had access to some of the nation’s most sensitive material for over a year while waiting for his background investigation to be completed….
In his phone conversation with McGahn, Rosenstein intended to give an update on the status of Kushner’s background investigation. He did not specify the source of the information that officials were examining, the three people said.
Justice Department officials said Rosenstein did not provide any details to the White House about the matters that needed to be investigated relating to Kushner.
It seems likely that Jared’s problem stems from something to do with the Russia investigation. Why else would the call have come from Rosenstein instead of Jeff Sessions, who is recused from involvement in the Mueller probe? It should also be noted that neither Ivanka Trump nor Don McGahn has a permanent security clearance yet.
The New York Times released its own story about Jared: White House Told Kushner’s Security Clearance Will Be Delayed.
The Justice Department informed the White House this month that there were substantial issues related to Jared Kushner that still needed to be investigated and would significantly delay a recommendation on whether he should receive a permanent security clearance, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The White House was not told what the issues were involving Mr. Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. But the notification led White House lawyers and aides to believe that they were more problematic than the complexity of his finances and his initial failure to disclose contacts with foreign leaders — the reasons Mr. Kushner’s lawyers have said are holding up the process, the two people said.
Doesn’t that sound like it’s probably about the Mueller investigation? The Times story also examines the ways in which this sets up big problems for John Kelly.
Mr. Kelly, who has tried to inject discipline and order into Mr. Trump’s freewheeling West Wing, has bristled from the start at Mr. Kushner’s amorphous and omnipresent role, and Mr. Kushner has been angered in turn at what he regards as challenges to his authority and access.
The strains have deepened in recent days, as Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have privately disparaged the chief of staff to Mr. Trump, faulting his handling of the scandal surrounding Mr. Porter, the staff secretary who resigned under pressure after spousal abuse allegations became public.
Mr. Kelly’s memo further inflamed the situation, essentially suggesting that Mr. Kushner might lose the high-level clearance — including to view the presidential daily brief, a summary of intelligence and other sensitive information — that he has enjoyed for more than a year.
Will Kelly be the next White House employee to get the boot from Trump?
Bernie Sanders has been on the defensive after the indictments of Russians last week included the news that Russia tried to help the Sanders campaign during the 2016 primaries, and the resemblances between Sanders and Trump are coming into focus for the press. Here’s the latest from Edward-Isaac Dovere: Sanders promoted false story on reporting Russian trolls.
Bernie Sanders is taking credit for action to combat the Russian incursion into the 2016 election that he didn’t have anything to do with — and didn’t actually happen.
Twice this week, in response to questions about whether he benefited from the Russian effort, as prosecutors allege, or did enough to stop it, Sanders said a staffer passed information to Hillary Clinton’s aides about a suspected Russian troll operation.
It turns out that the purported Sanders’ staffer who said he tried to sound the alarm was a campaign volunteer who acted on his own, without any contact or direction from the Vermont senator or his staff. When the volunteer, John Mattes of San Diego, said he communicated with the Clinton campaign in local press accounts, he was confusing it for a super PAC supportive of Clinton.
He also doesn’t know why Sanders is taking all the credit. “I’m going to send him a bill for my back pay,” Mattes joked.
Read more at the link.
So . . . what do you think? And what stories are you following?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments