Friday Reads: Bang The Drum Slowly but Loudly!
Posted: June 14, 2019 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Iran, just because | Tags: Trump Era Anxiety 20 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
Do you remember the lead up to the needless invasion of Iraq? Having flashbacks yet? According to The UK Independent, “Trump administration providing ‘false’ information about Gulf of Oman attack, says Japanese tanker owner.”
The owner of the Japanese tanker attacked on Thursday said US reports have provided “false” information about what happened in the Gulf of Oman.
The ship operator said “flying objects” that may have been bullets were the cause of damage to the vessel, rather than mines used by Iranian forces, as the US has suggested.
Yutaka Katada, chief executive of the Japanese company operating the ship called Kokuka Courageous, one of two vessels attacked near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, said the damage could not have been caused by mines or torpedos that are shot underwater, since the damage was reportedly above the ship’s waterline.
“It seems that something flew towards them. That created the hole, is the report I’ve received,” Mr Katada said at a press conference in Tokyo on Friday, the Financial Times reported.
Donald Trump’s administration has meanwhile insisted the attacks were carried out by Iran, which has denied having any involvement in either of the two incidents.
The US insists that they have video of Iran taking a mine off of one of the ships. This story line makes no sense to me. What does Iran have to gain from attacking Japanese tankers and goods at a time when the regime is speaking to the leader of Japan for the first time since its revolution? Also, there is continuing evidence that Iran has been living up to its agreements with the rest of the World. Is this a false flag operation or some other weirdish situation Trump has set up to look like the role he loves to play most which is the aggrieved victim fighting back against some evil force?
Iran accused Washington of waging an “Iranophobic campaign” against it, while Trump countered that the country was “a nation of terror.”
“Iran did do it,” he said of the attack, in remarks Friday morning to “Fox & Friends.”
The black-and-white U.S. video of the Iranians alongside the Japanese-owned tanker Kokuka Courageous came after its crew abandoned ship after seeing the undetonated explosive on its hull, said Capt. Bill Urban, a spokesman for the U.S. military’s Central Command. It separately shared photos of the vessel, which showed what appeared to be a conical limpet mine against its side.
In the video, the boat from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard pulls alongside Kokuka Courageous at 4:10 p.m. Thursday. The Iranians reach up and grab along where the limpet mine could be seen in the photo. They then sail away.
Limpet mines, which are magnetic and attach to a ship’s hull, are designed to disable a vessel without sinking it.
Analysts say Iran, if involved, wouldn’t want investigators to find an unexploded mine because they could check its serial numbers and other attributes to trace it.
Banging drums and making empty noises have always been a thing for religious nuts. Adam Serwer discusses the role of culture wars by the religious right in Trumpistan at The Atlantic. I don’t understand why these folks don’t get we don’t want to live within the parameters of their mythology. Wanting them and their awful ways out of secular life and government is not an act of discrimination or oppression.
By the tail end of the Obama administration, the culture war seemed lost. The religious right sued for détente, having been swept up in one of the most rapid cultural shifts in generations. Gone were the decades of being able to count on attacking its traditional targets for political advantage. In 2013, Chuck Cooper, the attorney defending California’s ban on same-sex marriage, begged the justices to allow same-sex-marriage opponents to lose at the ballot box rather than in court. Conservatives such as George Will and Rod Drehergriped that LGBTQ activists were “sore winners,” intent on imposing their beliefs on prostrate Christians, who, after all, had already been defeated.
The rapidity of that cultural shift, though, should not obscure the contours of the society that the religious right still aspires to preserve: a world where women have no control over whether to carry a pregnancy to term, same-sex marriage is illegal, and gays and lesbians can be arrested and incarcerated for having sex in their own homes and be barred from raising children. The religious right showed no mercy and no charity toward these groups when it had the power to impose its will, but when it lost that power, it turned to invoking the importance of religious tolerance and pluralism in a democratic society.
That was then. The tide of illiberalism sweeping over Western countries and the election of Donald Trump have since renewed hope among some on the religious right that it might revive its cultural control through the power of the state. Inspired by Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Vladimir Putin in Russia, a faction of the religious right now looks to sectarian ethno-nationalism to restore its beliefs to their rightful primacy, and to rescue a degraded and degenerate culture. All that stands in their way is democracy, and the fact that most Americans reject what they have to offer.
The past few weeks have witnessed a nasty internecine fight among religious conservatives about whether liberal democracy’s time has passed. Sohrab Ahmari, writing at First Things, attacked National Review’s David French for adhering to a traditional commitment to liberal democracy while “the overall balance of forces has tilted inexorably away from us.” Would the left have stood by liberal democracy in the face of such circumstances? In fact, the balance of forces tilted away from the left’s cultural priorities for most of my lifetime, and the left’s response was to win arguments—slowly, painfully, and at incalculable personal cost.
Many religious conservatives see antidiscrimination laws that compel owners of public accommodations to serve all customers, laws that might compel priests to break the seal of confession if they are told of child abuse, and the growing acceptance of trans people as a kind of impending apocalypse. It is no surprise that among their co-partisans, Ahmari seems to have the upper hand here; in such circles, “Crush your enemies” almost always plays better than “The other side has rights too.”
What follows is a diatribe that you’ll really suffer through but must read.
We may be rid of Sarah Huckabee shortly but “The Queen of Gaslighting” is being encouraged to run for Arkansas Governor.
When Sarah Sanders said Thursday that she hopes to be remembered for her transparency and honesty, the first impulse was to laugh.
But lying to citizens while being paid by them really isn’t all that funny.
Sanders took on an impossible job when she became Trump’s spokeswoman, a job that’s about to reach a welcome conclusion.
She would claim to represent the truth on behalf of a president who lies.
She did it disrespectfully, and apparently without shame or an understanding of what the role of White House press secretary should be.
She misled reporters or tried to, and through them, misled the American people. And all with her distinctive curled-lip disdain.
Thus, she delivered on what New York University professor Jay Rosen has called the “brand promise” of the Trump administration’s treatment of the press: “Watch, we will put these people down for you.”
Watching the Hatch Act go do in flames has another distressing bit of today’s news. Conway’s violations have been punished with fines but sneering and asking about the court dates and handcuffs is just over the top It is also a place where the Russian Potted Plant in the White House shows complete ignorance of the US Constitution and law.
Kellyanne Conway’s potential Hatch Act violations are anything but surprising. Even less of a shock is President Donald Trump’s blatant apathy that a senior staffer openly and routinely flouts federal law. Realistically, none of us expected Trump to fire Conway simply because it’s the recommended course of action. Still, though, it’s always jarring when the president proves that he doesn’t actually understand how the law works.
Trump’s official comment about Conway’s Hatch Act violations was that he’d submit himself to a “very strong briefing,” but that, “It looks to me they’re trying to take away her right from free speech, which is not fair.”
Trump might be interested to learn that a great many statutes abridge free speech. Defamatory, inciteful, or obscene speech is properly prohibited by law. So is speech that violates a person’s medical privacy, that which violates court orders, and many, many other categories of communications. Equating “free speech” with “absolutely unrestricted speech” is an error usually relegated to grade-schoolers who are still learning the words to the Star-Spangled Banner.
The purpose of the First Amendment was never to create a country in which any person could say anything at any time without consequences – it was to create one in which political discourse was unstifled by government. In fact, the Hatch Act is an example of a statute that abridges free speech for the purpose of keeping the government from inserting itself too much into politics.
Meanwhile, grifters continue to grift. The Trump Family Crime Syndicate also doesn’t believe the emollients clause of the US Constitution applies to Trump’s holdings. From Bloomberg: “Ivanka Trump Made $4 Million From President’s Washington Hotel”.
Ivanka Trump made $4 million from her investment in her father’s Washington hotel last year, according to a disclosure released by the White House on Friday.
She also made at least $1 million from her line of branded apparel, jewelry and other merchandise, down from at least $5 million in the previous year. Trump, 37, announced in July that she was closing her fashion businesses amid controversies over her role in the White House and after some big-name department stores dropped the brand.
Together, Trump and husband Jared Kushner earned between $28.8 million and $135.1 million in outside income while working as unpaid senior advisers to her father, President Donald Trump, their disclosures, which covers 2018, show.
The reports, which list the assets and sources of income for Ivanka Trump, her husband and dependent children, have yet to be approved by the White House counsel’s office. They will also be reviewed by the Office of Government Ethics.
Well, here’s something from US New Today. What do we do with “Trump Era Anxiety” ?’ The wisdom beings know I have no clues. I meditate. I try to grade and limit my exposure to newspapers and TV but I’ve never been one to be attracted to reading anything or watching anything much but nonfiction. I’m actually stumped but I can tell you that I’ve said the Mani Mantra so much over the last few years it should have liberated something. We’ve gone from near war with North Korea to bromance and now near war with Iran. We keep losing voting and civil rights. WTF can calm us?
More than two years after Donald Trump took the oath of office, many Americans find themselves not just taking sides – sometimes vehemently – but growing mentally anxious and exhausted, experts say.
“We know the polarization has been growing for decades but I think it’s spiking now because there’s so much division around and about this president,” said Bill Doherty, a long-time family therapist who has been watching the anger up close. “I think it’s worse now because there’s a central figure. A lot of reds did not like Obama at all, but their loathing of Obama wasn’t even close to the loathing blues have for Trump.”
“Reds” are Republicans and “Blues” are Democrats according to a group called Better Angels, which Doherty helped start in 2017 when it became clear half the country was having trouble getting over the election result and the other half resented them for not being able to accept it gracefully.
Doherty, a family social science professor who also runs the Couples on the Brink Project at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, has tried to resolve a number of family splits over political differences.
There was the adult son living abroad, who upon finding out his mother and father voted for Trump, told them “you’re no longer my parents.” In another case, a wife told her husband that she would divorce him if he voted for Trump.
To her, “it was like voting for Chancellor (Adolf) Hitler,” Doherty recalled. “We don’t share values.”
A study last year by political science researchers from four different universities found that many Americans are “dehumanizing” the political opposition. More than three-quarters of respondents rated their political opponents as less evolved than members of their own party, the study concluded.
One of its authors, Alexander Theodoridis of the University of California-Merced, calls efforts such as Better Angels an “encouraging” step to lower the temperature of political discourse. But he’s not optimistic.
“There is little reason to expect dinners and meet-ups to overcome the divides in our body politic,” he wrote in an email to USA TODAY. “For many Americans, they are a clash between people like ‘us’ and people like ‘them.’ It becomes increasingly easy to attribute pernicious motives to our opponents, and increasingly difficult to stomach compromise with them.”
In January, 87% of Republicans approved of Trump’s performance during 2018 versus only 8% of Democrats who did, according to a Gallup poll. That 79-percentage-point difference is the largest Gallup has measured in any presidential year to date.
Yes, Yes it’s a problem but wtf can we do? Evidently, there’s a few groups trying to bridge the gap. You can read more about them. Meanwhile, I’m going to throw myself into work and find some fantasy fiction. I can’t handle this world right now.
So, that’s it for me today. What’s on you reading and blogging list?
Thursday Reads: D-Day 75th Anniversary
Posted: June 6, 2019 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics 17 Comments
D-Day: U.S. navy patrol torpedo boats cross the English Channel as B-1s, known as Flying Fortresses, fly overhead.
Good Morning!!
Today is the 75th anniversary of D-Day. From History.com:
During World War II (1939-1945), the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe.
Read more at the link.
To our eternal shame, our representative at the D-Day anniversary ceremonies is Donald Trump. I tried to watch his speech this morning, but I had to turn it off. In a maudlin monotone he read words that he likely had never seen before, expressing emotions he doesn’t have the capacity to feel.
AP: D-Day 75: Nations honor veterans, memory of fallen troops.
OMAHA BEACH, France (AP) — With the silence of remembrance and respect, nations honored the memory of the fallen and the singular bravery of all Allied troops who sloshed through bloodied water to the landing beaches of Normandy, a tribute of thanks 75 years after the D-Day assault that doomed the Nazi occupation of France and portended the fall of Hitler’s Third Reich.
Troops on a landing craft approach a Normandy beach.
French President Emmanuel Macron and President Donald Trump praised the soldiers, sailors and airmen, the survivors and those who lost their lives, in powerful speeches Thursday that credited the June 6, 1944 surprise air and sea operation that brought tens of thousands of men to Normandy, each not knowing whether he would survive the day.
“You are the pride of our nation, you are the glory of our republic and we thank you from the bottom of our heart,” Trump said, of the “warriors” of an “epic battle” engaged in the ultimate fight of good against evil.
In his speech, Macron praised the “unthinkable courage,” ″the generosity” of the soldiers and “the strength of spirit” that made them press on “to help men and women they didn’t know, to liberate a land most hadn’t seen before, for no other cause but freedom, democracy.”
He expressed France’s debt to the United States for freeing his country from the reign of the Nazis. Macron awarded five American veterans with the Chevalier of Legion of Honor, France’s highest award.
“We know what we owe to you vets, our freedom,” he said, switching from French to English. “On behalf of my nation I just want to say ‘thank you.’”
Nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy on D-Day. Of those 73,000 were from the United States, 83,000 from Britain and Canada.
From USA Today: European allies made the D-Day landing at Normandy possible. 75 years later, Trump questions those bonds, by John Fritze
President Donald Trump shared in a modern presidential tradition that dates back four decades when he stood Thursday at the edge of Omaha Beach in Normandy to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.
While under attack from heavy machine gun fire from the German coastal defense forces, American soldiers wade ashore off the ramp of a U.S. Coast Guard landing craft.
While the ceremony honored the sacrifices made on June 6, 1944, Trump’s “America First” presidency and the international drama he has carried with him duringhis third trip to France meant the president delivered an address less heavily focused on international alliances than many of his predecessors.
Like past presidents, Trump paid homage to the 160,000 American and Allied troops who landed on D-Day, altering the course of World War II. But he offered little embrace ofinstitutions such as NATO that rose out of the ashes of the fighting. Trump did not mention NATO by name in his address….
The American president has in the pastaccused allies and NATO partners of “ripping off” the United States.
“It’s going to be a tough challenge for him,” Nicholas Burns, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who served presidents of both parties, said before the speech. “What we learned from D-Day and the Second World War is that we need allies.”
Read more at the link.
For a personal remembrance of D-Day, I highly recommend this piece in The Washington Post Magazine by Barry Svrluga: My Grandfather’s Secret D-Day Journal.
In the summer of 1992, my family gathered in central Minnesota for my grandfather’s 70th birthday. We were there to celebrate William J. Svrluga Sr. — father, golfer, husband, engineer, grandfather, Cubs fan, cheapskate, retiree. Seven of us joined in the celebration: Bill Sr.’s wife, Ruth, my grandmother; his two sons, my father, Bill Jr., and my uncle Dick; their wives; my younger brother, Brad, and me.
From left, Bill Svrluga Jr., Barry Svrluga, Dick Svrluga and Bill Svrluga Sr. at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Normandy, France, on June 6, 2003. (Photo courtesy of the author)
At one point, maybe between the walleye and the turtle cheesecake, the conversation hit a lull. Uncle Dick filled it. “Okay, Dad,” he asked. “What are you most proud of in your life?” I think I half expected my grandfather to say the time he shot even-par 72. What could be better than that? This was chitchat, brag-about-the-family stuff, set up on a tee. Instead, he knocked us over with his response. “D-Day,” he said.
I remember it as both matter-of-fact on his part and jarring to the rest of us. Why, if D-Day had been so important to him, had we never heard about D-Day? We knew he had been there, part of the Allied invasion of Normandy. Right then, it became apparent how little else we understood. As the 75th anniversary of D-Day approaches, I’m again aghast that I thought he could have answered anything else.
After his grandfather’s death, Svrluga’s father Bill Jr. discovered the written record his father had kept of the D-Day preparations and fighting. Excerpts are included in the article. I hope you’ll read it.
So many men remained silent about their experiences in WWII. My father never talked about the horrors of Guadalcanal until the last couple few years of his life. Even then, he didn’t share many details of the fighting. But apparently many soldiers recorded their experiences of D-Day, as I learned when I googled “d-day diary” while searching for the WaPo story.
Another interesting story from The New York Times Magazine about journalist Ernie Pyle: The Man Who Told America the Truth About D-Day, By David Chrisinger
Most of the men in the first wave never stood a chance. In the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, thousands of American soldiers crawled down swaying cargo nets and thudded into steel landing craft bound for the Normandy coast. Their senses were soon choked with the smells of wet canvas gear, seawater and acrid clouds of powder from the huge naval guns firing just over their heads. As the landing craft drew close to shore, the deafening roar stopped, quickly replaced by German artillery rounds crashing into the water all around them. The flesh under the men’s sea-soaked uniforms prickled. They waited, like trapped mice, barely daring to breathe.
A blanket of smoke hid the heavily defended bluffs above the strip of sand code-named Omaha Beach. Concentrated in concrete pill boxes, nearly 2,000 German defenders lay in wait. The landing ramps slapped down into the surf, and a catastrophic hail of gunfire erupted from the bluffs. The ensuing slaughter was merciless.
But Allied troops kept landing, wave after wave, and by midday they had crossed the 300 yards of sandy killing ground, scaled the bluffs and overpowered the German defenses. By the end of the day, the beaches had been secured and the heaviest fighting had moved at least a mile inland. In the biggest and most complicated amphibious operation in military history, it wasn’t bombs, artillery or tanks that overwhelmed the Germans; it was men — many of them boys, really — slogging up the beaches and crawling over the corpses of their friends that won the Allies a toehold at the western edge of Europe.
That victory was a decisive leap toward defeating Hitler’s Germany and winning the Second World War. It also changed the way America’s most famous and beloved war correspondent reported what he saw. In June 1944, Ernie Pyle, a 43-year-old journalist from rural Indiana, was as ubiquitous in the everyday lives of millions of Americans as Walter Cronkite would be during the Vietnam War. What Pyle witnessed on the Normandy coast triggered a sort of journalistic conversion for him: Soon his readers — a broad section of the American public — were digesting columns that brought them more of the war’s pain, costs and losses. Before D-Day, Pyle’s dispatches from the front were full of gritty details of the troops’ daily struggles but served up with healthy doses of optimism and a reliable habit of looking away from the more horrifying aspects of war. Pyle was not a propagandist, but his columns seemed to offer the reader an unspoken agreement that they would not have to look too closely at the deaths, blood and corpses that are the reality of battle. Later, Pyle was more stark and honest.
Read the rest at the NYT.
More reads, links only:
David Frum at The Atlantic: The Ghosts of D-Day.
HuffPost: Trump Finally Arrives In Ireland For Taxpayer-Funded Visit To His Golf Resort.
The Washington Post: Trump to stay at Doonbeg, his money-losing golf course threatened by climate change.
The New York Times: Migrant Children May Lose School, Sports and Legal Aid as Shelters Swell.
The Intercept: Joe Biden worked to Undermine the Affordable Care Act’s Coverage of Contraception.
Politico: Pelosi tells Dems she wants to see Trump ‘in prison.’
NBC News: Warren wishes handcuffs for Trump, says Biden is wrong on abortion.
The Washington Post: Trump’s catastrophic fashion choices in England were not just a sign of bad taste.
Politico: Who’s in — and out — of the first Democratic debates.
Axios: Trump’s incredibly empty Cabinet.
Tuesday Reads: Trump Visits the Queen and Other News
Posted: June 4, 2019 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics 39 Comments
Trump manages to look like a slob in white tie and tails.
Good Morning!!
As I write this, Trump and PM May are giving a joint press conference in London. One of the questions Trump was asked about was the massive protests against his visit. Trump claimed that he didn’t see any protests and that there were thousands of people in the streets cheering for him. Reports of protests are “fake news.” He reiterated his attacked on London Mayor Sadiq Kahn, praised May on Brexit said it would be good for the UK. He also ranted about immigration. Of D-Day, Trump said it was “a liberation like few people have seen before.” I doubt if Trump knows anything about D-Day or World War II.
The Washington Post reported on the “fake news” protests early this morning: Baby Trump and the Trump robot headline London protests against U.S. president’s visit.
After a day of pomp and pageantry with the British royals, Tuesday was shaping up to be a day of politics and protests. Trump is scheduled to have meetings at Downing Street and protesters are hoping that they can be close enough — and loud enough — to be heard.
The road outside of Downing Street was sealed off with steel barricades, and there was a heavy police presence.
But in nearby Trafalgar Square, one of the main gathering places in central London, the so-called “Carnival of Resistance” was in full swing.
One of the main features was a talking Trump robot who as sitting on a toilet and saying, “You’re fake news! I’m a very stable genius!”
What an embarrassment Trump is! Any why on earth did all his children–even Tiffany–go with him on the trip? Why were they at the state dinner yesterday?
The great British tradition of creating witty — and sometimes rude — placards was on full display. One protester held aloft a sign that read: “British Humour: the gift of a book to an illiterate man — well played Your Majesty.”
Another man was pushing a shopping cart filled with toilet paper featuring Trump’s face on it. “Come on down to Trafalgar and get your Donald Trump toilet paper,” he said.
The protests come a day after a lavish state banquet hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
Here’s what happened when Ivanka Trump and then her father emerged from the PM’s residence.
Why was Ivanka there? Even more to the point, why were Donald Trump Jr., Eric, and Tiffany there? I heard someone on TV say it looked like a Trump family visit to Disneyland.
CNN: Trump’s children make play for royal treatment.
At a grand banquet table in a red-carpeted Buckingham Palace ballroom, the Queen, a couple of princes, dukes and duchesses, and lords and ladies were intermixed with the Trump family: a President, a first lady, four of his five children, and two of their spouses.
Queen Elizabeth II formally invited just President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump to travel to London for an official State Banquet at Buckingham Palace. But the event became more of an extended family affair, with Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and his wife Lara, and Tiffany Trump all joining the exclusive party.
Protesters fill the streets in London
The President’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, was already set to attend in her capacity as a formal adviser to the President, and a senior member of his administration. Her husband, Jared Kushner, is also part of the United States delegation attending the ceremonial events.
For the President, bringing his adult children, in his view, is akin to showcasing his version of royalty. In an interview ahead of the trip with the British tabloid newspaper The Sun, Trump said he wanted Ivanka, Donald Jr., Eric and Tiffany to hold a “next generation” meeting with the Prince William and his wife, Kate, and Prince Harry.
“I think my children will be meeting them,” said Trump. “It would be nice.”
Though they mingled at the State Banquet, there were no plans for a sit-down meeting, a royal source told CNN International correspondent Max Foster.
“Next generation?” These people actually think Trump will pass on the presidency to his offspring?
Buzzfeed has a report on what everyone wore at last night’s state dinner: Here Are All The Looks That Were Served At Queen Elizabeth’s State Banquet For The Trumps. Why were Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Sanders there? Trump is such an embarrassment.
Back in the USA,
Yesterday George Nader, who was interviewed for the Russia investigation, was arrest on child pornography charges.
The Washington Post: Figure linked to Trump transition charged with transporting child pornography.
George Nader and Trump in 2017
A key witness in former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian election interference has been charged with transporting child pornography last year, according to court documents.
George Nader, who has a previous conviction on such charges, was charged in federal court in Virginia and is expected to make an initial court appearance in New York.
Nader played an unusual role as a kind of liaison between Trump supporters, Middle East leaders and Russians interested in making contact with the incoming administration in early 2017.
Officials said Nader, 60, was charged by criminal complaint over material he was traveling with when he arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport on Jan. 17, 2018, from Dubai. At the time, he was carrying a cellphone containing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, officials said. The charges were unsealed after his arrest Monday morning at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
The charges carry a penalty of 15-40 years in prison.
Nader was known to Trump associates as someone with political connections in the Middle East who could help them navigate the diplomacy of the region.
He helped arrange a meeting in the Seychelles in January 2017 between Erik Prince, a Trump supporter who founded the private security firm Blackwater, and a Russian official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The purpose of the meeting was of particular interest to Mueller’s investigators, and some questions about it remain unanswered, even after Mueller issued a 448-page report on his findings.
The New York Times: Paul Manafort to Be Sent to Rikers, Where He Faces Solitary Confinement.
Trump and Manafort during the campaign
Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman who is serving a federal prison sentence, is expected to be transferred as early as this week to the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City, where he will most likely be held in solitary confinement while facing state fraud charges, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Mr. Manafort was convicted last year on federal bank fraud, tax and conspiracy charges in two related cases and is serving a seven-and-a-half-year federal prison sentence in Pennsylvania. The Manhattan district attorney obtained an indictment of Mr. Manafort on state mortgage fraud charges in an effort to ensure he would still face prison if Mr. Trump pardoned him for his federal crimes.
Mr. Manafort, 70, will most likely be arraigned on the new charges in State Supreme Court in Manhattan later this month and held at Rikers, though his lawyers could seek to have him held at a federal jail in New York, the people with knowledge said….
A law-enforcement official familiar with the correction department’s practices, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss security measures, said Mr. Manafort would most likely be housed in a former prison hospital on the island. That is where most high-profile detainees are held, including police officers, those accused of killing police officers, politicians and celebrities.
And Trump can’t pardon Manafort for those state charges.
The Washington Post reports: GOP lawmakers discuss vote to block Trump’s new tariffs on Mexico, in what would be a dramatic act of defiance.
Trucks passing the border from El Paso into Juárez, Mexico. Paul Ratje/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Congressional Republicans have begun discussing whether they may have to vote to block President Trump’s planned new tariffs on Mexico, potentially igniting a second standoff this year over Trump’s use of executive powers to circumvent Congress, people familiar with the talks said.
The vote, which would be the GOP’s most dramatic act of defiance since Trump took office, could also have the effect of blocking billions of dollars in border wall funding that the president had announced in February when he declared a national emergency at the southern border, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are private.
Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on Mexico — with which the United States has a free-trade agreement — rely on the president’s declaration of a national emergency at the border. But the law gives Congress the right to override the national emergency determination by passing a resolution of disapproval.
Congress passed such a resolution in March after Trump reallocated the border wall funds, but he vetoed it. Now, as frustration on Capitol Hill grows over Trump’s latest tariff threat, a second vote could potentially command a veto-proof majority to nullify the national emergency, which in turn could undercut both the border-wall effort and the new tariffs.
We’ll see if they have the guts to do it.
What else is happening? What stories have you been following?
Lazy Caturday Reads: Trump’s Endless Trail of Destruction
Posted: June 1, 2019 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Foreign Affairs, U.S. Politics 20 Comments
Do Not Disturb – Persis Clayton Weirs
Good Afternoon!!
It’s the weekend, and I hope all you Sky Dancers are finding ways to take care of yourselves as Trump works to destroy democracy and civility in our country. We can only hope that House Democrats in the House will find some way to rid us of the evil monster.
Thanks to Trump and the NRA funded GOP, we have a mass shooting just about every day in the U.S. Yesterday’s was a horrific one in which a “disgruntled employee” murdered 12 co-workers and injured others. The new twist in this one was that the shooter used a silencer so that people wouldn’t be warned by hearing gunshots.
The Washington Post: Virginia Beach officials name shooting victims as investigation continues.
The man who shot and killed 12 people at a government building Friday was identified as a 15-year employee of the city Department of Public Works and all but one of his victims were city employees, authorities announced Saturday.
DeWayne Craddock, of Virginia Beach, was an engineer who served as a project manager and contact for a number of utility projects, according to posts on the Virginia Beach web site.
Authorities solemnly read the names of each of the victims at the outset of a press conference on Saturday morning, saying all worked for the Department of Public Works and the Department of Public Utilities, except for one contractor.
They were listed as Laquita C. Brown of Chesapeake; Tara Welch Gallagher of Virginia Beach; Mary Louise Gayle of Virginia Beach; Alexander Mikhail Gusev of Virginia Beach; Katherine A. Nixon of Virginia Beach; Richard H. Nettleton of Norfolk; Christopher Kelly Rapp of Powhatan; Ryan Keith Cox of Virginia Beach; Joshua A. Hardy of Virginia Beach; Michelle “Missy” Langer of Virginia Beach; Robert “Bobby” Williams of Chesapeake; and Herbert “Bert” Snelling of Virginia Beach.
“They leave a void we will never be able to fill,” city manager Dave Hansen said at the press conference.
Police Chief James A. Cervera declined to discuss a motive for the spree, but said Craddock was still a city employee at the time of the shooting and used a city issued badge to gain entry to a building in the city’ sprawling municipal complex.
Trump’s latest effort to destroy the economy is his “plan” to impose tariffs on good from Mexico. That could mean we’ll be paying a lot more for fruit and vegetables at the grocery store. But that’s only the beginning of the damage Trump is trying to do.
Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post: Justm a few of the reasons that Trump’s Mexico tariffs are deeply stupid.
Amid calls for impeachment, a persistently underwater approval rating, subpoenas for financial records and an. ever-growing list of scandals, the strong economy is pretty much the only thing President Trump has going for him right now. It’s his best shot at reelection.
And for some reason he seems keen on destroying it.
On Thursday evening the Trump administration announced that it would impose a new 5 percent tariff on Mexican imports, ratcheting up in increments to 25 percent by Oct. 1. This is allegedly to pressure Mexico to stop the flow of immigrants coming to the United States.
This decision is so mind-bogglingly stupid, it’s hard to keep track of all the reasons it’s dumb.
Here’s the list of stupid reasons Rampell discusses. Go to the article to read the details.
- Americans are paying these tariffs.
- This will seriously screw up supply chains and hurt American companies.
- We don’t know the full economic cost of the tariffs, but it would be painful for the United States.
- It’s not clear the tariffs are legal.
- Mexico does not have power to do the thing Trump seems to be asking the country to do.
- There is no plan. There was never a plan.
- This new self-inflicted trade-war wound gives us less leverage in negotiating a new trade deal with China (and the European Union and Japan, both of which we’re alsosimultaneously trade-warring with).
- It will also damage our ability to negotiate with China (and the E.U. and Japan) because it proves, once again, that Trump can’t be trusted to keep his word, including in the form of a signed international agreement.
- The decision to impose tariffs — and thereby harm red-state farmers and manufacturers — could cause a rift with the Republican lawmakers who have been protecting him.
- If Trump does indeed manage to wreck the Mexican economy, that would likely increase the flow of immigrants trying to cross the border into the United States.
Business Insider offers 2 maps show how every US state’s economy could be affected by Trump’s proposed Mexico tariffs.
If the proposed tariffs come into effect, certain states where trade with Mexico makes up a big part of the economy could be hardest hit.
The US Census Bureau publishes annual figures for the total amount of goods imported and exported in each US state and DC. The Bureau breaks out import and export volumes for the 25 biggest trading partners for each state.
Big state economies that border Mexico exported a large volume of goods to that country in 2017. Texas had nearly $98 billion in exports, and California had nearly $27 billion. While it doesn’t border Mexico, auto-industry supply chains contribute to Michigan’s $12.5 billion in exports in that year.
Meanwhile, states with smaller economies and that are geographically further away from Mexico exported fewer goods. Hawaii’s goods exports to Mexico in 2017 came to only about $1.4 million, and Alaska exported just $21 million in goods.
Click on the link to check out where your state stands. It looks like states that voted for Trump in 2016 will suffer the greatest damage.
Next week Trump takes his trail of destruction to Europe, beginning with a state visit to the UK. After that he’ll visit Ireland and wrap up the trip at the D-Day commemoration in France.
The Atlantic: Don’t Expect Trump’s Europe Trip to Go Smoothly.
Facing troubles at home, beleaguered presidents often look abroad for a reset. Richard Nixon dashed off to the Middle East to “wage peace” as his presidency wobbled during Watergate. Bill Clinton flew to Russia and northern Europe a couple of weeks after admitting his affair with Monica Lewinsky….
With congressional Democrats mulling impeachment, the Europe trip should be a welcome reprieve. What’s different in the Trump era is that the president doesn’t necessarily want one. Seldom do Trump trips go smoothly. In past visits to Europe he’s ignited international incidents of varying degrees, insulting his hosts or threatening to unravel historic alliances. But always, his mind seems elsewhere.
Heading into the four-day trip, the president appears squarely focused on the domestic scandals that his predecessors seemed only too happy to escape. That much was clear from his recent trip to Tokyo, where Trump toasted the new Japanese emperor at a banquet in the Imperial Palace. At different moments in his stay he mocked Democrats for considering impeachment, tweeted that he “smiled” when North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un insulted his potential rival in the 2020 election, Joe Biden, and boasted that he’d weathered Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. “No obstruction, no collusion, no nothing,” Trump said at a news conference, standing beside his host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.President Donald Trump has taken this trusty playbook for deflecting domestic scandal and turned it inside out: When traveling overseas, Trump makes clear that he’d just as soon cannonball right back into the morass he left behind.
I have no doubt Trump will embarrass himself and make sane Americans shudder.
NBC News: Trump creates diplomatic headache for U.K. even before state visit.
LONDON — Britain and the U.S. may have a special relationship but President Donald Trump’s state visit will be a diplomatic balancing act for the U.K., where Trump is deeply unpopular.
Cat sleeps in vineyard
Trump’s trip comes as the U.K. is facing its most significant crisis since the Second World War.
Even before his arrival on British shores, the president caused a stir by wading into the contest to replace Theresa May as prime ministerand criticising Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex….
In an interview Friday with the British tabloid The Sun, Trump said Boris Johnson — the divisive populist and ex-foreign secretary who is favorite to replace May — would make an “excellent” prime minister.
“I think Boris would do a very good job. I think he would be excellent,” Trump said.
The president also referred to the American-born Duchess of Sussex as “nasty” over comments she made in 2016 threatening to move to Canada if Trump won the White House.
But he wished her well in her new life as a princess. “I am sure she will do excellently,” he added.
The comments threatened to overshadow the build up to Trump’s long-awaited state visit.
Back here at home, Trump’s personal Attorney General Bill Barr will likely be stirring up trouble as he tries to defend Trump’s indefensible criminal behavior and help him destroy what’s left of our democracy. The latest:
Jonathan Chait: In Terrifying Interview, William Barr Goes Full MAGA.
After the legal Establishment had granted him the benefit of the doubt, Attorney General William Barr has shocked his erstwhile supporters with his aggressive and frequently dishonest interventions on behalf of President Trump. The spectacle of an esteemed lawyer abetting his would-be strongman boss’s every authoritarian instinct has left Barr’s critics grasping for explanations. Some have seized on the darker threads of his history in the Reagan and Bush administrations, when he misled the public about a secret Department of Justice memo and helped cover up the Iran-Contra scandal.
But Barr’s long, detailed interview with Jan Crawford suggests the rot goes much deeper than a simple mania for untrammeled Executive power. Barr has drunk deep from the Fox News worldview of Trumpian paranoia….
Barr, as he has done repeatedly, provides a deeply misleading account of what Robert Mueller found. “He did not reach a conclusion,” he says. “He provided both sides of the issue, and … his conclusion was he wasn’t exonerating the president, but he wasn’t finding a crime either.”
As Mueller stated in the report and again at his press conference, he felt bound by a policy preventing him from charging the president with a crime, or even saying the president had committed a crime. Mueller’s view is that his job vis-à-vis presidential misconduct is to describe the behavior and leave it up to Congress to decide if it’s a crime. Several hundred former federal prosecutors have stated, and Mueller clearly signaled, the actions he described in the Mueller report are crimes, or would be if the president could be charged with a crime.
Thursday Reads: Another Crazy Day in Trump World
Posted: May 30, 2019 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Donald Trump, iran, Iraq War, John Bolton, John McCain, MAGA patches, Mike Pompeo, Robert Mueller, shock and awe, Twitter, USS John McCain, USS Wasp 20 CommentsGood Morning!!
Trump apparently worked himself up into a frenzy last night. He woke up an sent out a series of angry tweets, in one of which he admitted for the first time that Russia helped him get elected. He actually deleted the first tweet but sent out another in which he made the same admission.
A little later Trump emerged from the White House and unleashed a rage-filled 17 minute rant in which he angrily denigrated Robert Mueller. He also contradicted his own tweet, claiming that Russia didn’t help him in 2016.
The Washington Post: Trump attacks Mueller, says he would have brought charges if he had evidence of a crime.
“Robert Mueller should have never been chosen,” Trump said of the former special counsel, who was appointed by former deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein, a Republican Trump appointee.
Trump told reporters that he considered Mueller “totally conflicted” because he had discussions about the position of FBI director early in the Trump administration and is friendly with former FBI director James B. Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017.
“He loves Comey,” Trump claimed. “Whether it’s love or a deep like, he was conflicted.” [….]
Trump also cited a “business dispute” with Mueller on which he did not elaborate. In the past, White House aides have pointed to an alleged dispute over membership fees at Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia….
“You know who got me elected? I got me elected,” he said. “Russia didn’t help me at all. Russia, if anything, I think, helped the other side.” [….]
In his comments to reporters, Trump downplayed the prospect of impeachment. A growing number of Democrats were advocating that course on Wednesday after Mueller’s appearance.
“It’s a dirty, filthy disgusting word and it has nothing to do with me,” Trump said. “There was no high crime and there was no misdemeanor.”
This morning’s rant continued as Trump unleashed a number of insults about McCain and how Trump was “never a fan.” He also denied demanding that John McCain’s name be hidden on the U.S. Navy battleship named after McCain’s father and grandfather while Trump was in Japan.
The New York Times: White House Asked Navy to Hide John McCain Warship During Trump’s Visit.
The White House asked the Navy to hide a destroyer named after Senator John McCain in order to avoid having the ship appear in photographs taken while President Trump was visiting Japan this week, White House and military officials said Wednesday.
Although Navy officials insisted they did not hide the ship, the John S. McCain, they did give all of the sailors aboard the day off on Tuesday as Mr. Trump visited Yokosuka Naval Base.
USS Battleship John McCain
Two Navy sailors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that the McCain sailors were not invited to hear Mr. Trump speak that day aboard the amphibious assault ship Wasp, while sailors from other American warships at the base were.
A Navy service member based on Yokosuka said that all of the American warships in the harbor were invited to send 60 to 70 sailors to hear Mr. Trump’s address, with the exception of the McCain. When several sailors from the McCain showed up anyway, wearing their uniforms with the ship’s insignia, they were turned away, the service member said.
White House aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly, confirmed the request was made but said that Mr. Trump did not know about it. A United States official said on Wednesday that the White House sent an email to the Navy with the request on May 15.
[Emphasis added] Raise your hand if you believe Trump had nothing to do with the request.
On the other hand, sailors wearing MAGA patches in support of Trump were allowed to attend the speech.
CNN: Navy reviewing ‘Make Aircrew Great Again’ patches worn by sailors during Trump visit.
The Navy is conducting a review to examine whether President Donald Trump-themed patches worn by sailors on their uniforms during the President’s visit to the USS Wasp violated Navy rules.
“Navy leadership is aware of the incident and reviewing to ensure the patch doesn’t violate DoD policy or uniform regulations,” US Navy spokesperson Lt. Sam Boyle told CNN.Several service members aboard the USS Wasp were seen wearing the patches when Trump addressed sailors on Tuesday. The patches showed a Trump-like image and the slogan “Make Aircrew Great Again.” [….]Close-up of the MAGA patch
Military personnel often wear unofficial unit patches, sometimes imbued with humorous images, as part of an effort to build unit cohesion and morale.
However, service members are prohibited from exhibiting political messages while in uniform.Unit commanders are usually responsible for ensuring that the unofficial patches do not violate military regulations.Department of Defense guidelines say that “active duty personnel may not engage in partisan political activities and all military personnel should avoid the inference that their political activities imply or appear to imply DoD sponsorship, approval, or endorsement of a political candidate, campaign, or cause.”
Trump faces more legal trouble about that massage parlor owner in Florida Cindy Yang.
The Miami Herald: Federal prosecutors demand Cindy Yang records from Mar-a-Lago, Trump campaign.
Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., this week sent subpoenas to Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, and Trump Victory, a political fundraising committee, demanding they turn over all records relating to Republican Party donor Li “Cindy” Yang and several of her associates and companies, the Miami Herald has learned.
Cindy Yang with Donald Trump
Yang, a South Florida massage-parlor entrepreneur, is the target of a public corruption investigation seeking to determine if she funneled money from China to the president’s re-election campaign or otherwise violated campaign-finance laws. She became a GOP donor in the 2016 election cycle and opened a consulting company that promised Chinese businesspeople the chance to attend events at Mar-a-Lago and gain access to Trump and his inner circle. Some of those events were campaign fundraisers that required guests to buy tickets for entry, payments that are considered political contributions. Foreign nationals are prohibited from donating to U.S. political campaigns.
Investigators are seeking evidence from Mar-a-Lago and Trump Victory as they build a potential case against Yang and possibly others close to her. The president’s club and the fundraising committee are not the targets of the investigation. The subpoenas cover records from January 2017 to the present. A spokeswoman for Yang did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One subpoena, issued by a federal grand jury in West Palm Beach, compels Mar-a-Lago to turn over all documents, records and communications relating to Yang, as well as 11 other people, one charity and seven companies affiliated with her, according to a person familiar with the investigation who asked for anonymity to discuss an ongoing probe. The people named in that subpoena include Yang’s family members, former employees at her massage parlors and several donors to Trump Victory. Prosecutors were trying to serve the subpoena to Mar-a-Lago through a South Florida law firm, the source said.
Click the link to read the rest.
As Trump focuses on attacking the people on his enemies list, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are moving us closer to war with Iran.
USA Today: Escalating Iran crisis looks a lot like the path US took to Iraq war.
March 20, 2003 – War With Iraq – Shock & Awe . . . And Then Invasion.
The U.S. military’s guided bombs brought “shock and awe” to Baghdad in 2003 when American forces invaded Iraq 16 years ago to hunt for weapons of mass destruction. They never found any. Many observers, today, consider that war a failure.
Now, half of all Americans believe the U.S. will go to war with Iran “within the next few years,” according to a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll released in late May amid increased tensions between the two countries, longtime geopolitical foes.
The escalating Tehran-Washington crisis comes as the White House claims, without providing detail or public evidence, that Iran poses an increased threat to American forces and facilities in the Middle East – one year after Trump withdrew from an accord between Iran and world powers aimed at limiting Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
Is Iran doomed to be an Iraq redux? This is just one of the questions raised by a crisis that has eerie parallels to the missteps that led to the Iraq War in 2003, where the buildup to conflict was precipitated by faulty intelligence and confrontational foreign policymakers such as John Bolton in President George W. Bush’s administration.
Read all about it at the link above. Meanwhile, does anyone know what Trump foreign policy is?
Fred Kaplan at Slate: Who Speaks for the United States?
Tuesday’s New York Times story on the serious disagreements between President Donald Trump and national security adviser John Bolton misses the bigger picture—namely, that Trump is having disagreements with his entire foreign policy team. To put it another way, it is impossible to say just what U.S. foreign policy is—or, to put it more starkly still, the United States has no foreign policy.
The Times story focuses on disputes over Iran and North Korea.
Bolton has described North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s latest short-range missile tests as violations of a U.N. Security Council resolution; Trump says they’re no big deal. Bolton has called for regime change in Iran; Trump said last week in Japan that he’s fine with the current regime, as long as it stays away from nuclear weapons.But this dispute involves more players than Trump and Bolton. State Department spokespeople, as well as National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, have said—in agreement with Bolton—that the North Korean tests violated a Security Council resolution. Trump stands utterly alone in his view that Kim is an honorable, trustworthy partner.
On Iran, in contrast with what Trump says now, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently laid out 12 preconditions for holding talks. Among the demands were that Tehran stop testing ballistic missiles, stop assisting militias in the region, and make several other concessions that would amount, in effect, to a regime change.
And of course, there are his long-standing disputes, over a host of issues, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, various combatant commands, and pretty much the entire intelligence community.
Imagine if you were a world leader who wants to align, or improve relations, with the United States. What do you do? Do you agree with—and act in ways that advance the policies of—the president, the secretary of state, or the national security adviser? It’s impossible to placate all of them simultaneously. So you begin to wonder: Who speaks for the United States?
Please read the whole thing.
So . . . that’s what’s happening so far this morning. What stories are you following?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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