Winter Solstice Reads: The Cold Moon and the New Light
Posted: December 21, 2018 Filed under: Afghanistan, Federal Government Shutdown, morning reads, Syria | Tags: Winter Solstice 19 Comments
Yule and Solstice Greetings Sky Dancers!
Today we have the longest night, the Ursid Meteor Showers. and a Full Moon for Saturday. Yes, Saturday is the full moon. It wasn’t yesterday but don’t tell that to the lunatic in the Oval Office. Tomorrow is the new light. I think that’s an important symbol for those of us that are overwhelmed with the Chaos Demon dwelling in the White House.
So what’s going on with this full moon?
Our last full moon of the year will come less than a day after the solstice. Again, for those of you who love precision, it will occur on Saturday, December 22, at 17:49 Universal Time (that’s 12:49 p.m. ET), EarthSky says.
However, when you’re looking out into a clear sky on Friday night, the moon will appear full to you — and could be so bright that people with pretty good eyesight could read by it.
Over many centuries, this moon has been called several names: Cold Moon, Cold Full Moon, Long Night Moon (by some Native American tribes) or the Moon Before Yule (from the Anglo-Saxon lunar calendar).
If you’re wondering how special this Cold Moon is so close to the solstice, it will be 2029 before it happens again. So it’s not a once-in-a-lifetime event, but still, you don’t see this too often.
Now what about that meteor shower?
The annual Ursids meteor shower is expected to peak a day or two after the solstice. You might be able to see up to 10 “shooting stars” per hour depending on your location.
The website In the Sky has a great feature that helps you figure out where to watch and how many meteors you might see. For instance, people in South Florida might expect just three per hour while people in Juneau, Alaska, might expect seven per hour.
One caveat: That Cold Moon will be so bright that it could outshine some of the meteors as they streak in, making them harder to spot.
And then there’s the lunatic in the Oval Office who is ensuring the end of the year is utter chaos. From Sarah Grillo at Axios: “Pre-Christmas Trump: Rebuked, rampaging”.
The last member of an informal alliance of top Trump officials with enough swat or stature to stand up to President Trump — the Committee to Save America, as we called these officials 16 months ago — resigned in epic fashion.
The bottom line: Unlike most others, who pretended to leave on fine terms, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis bailed with a sharp, specific, stinging rebuke of Trump and his America-first worldview.
It’s really difficult to document all the shit hitting the fan today. The withdrawals from both Syria and Afghanistan are getting press play. The equity markets are nosediving again. Then, there’s the entire debacle about keeping the government open and paying people that do things like stand watch on battle fields, process social security checks, and take eager tourists through national parks and historic sites.
Aren’t we all getting tired of budget brinkmanship? Last night, the House sent forward the budget with KKKremlin Caligula’s $5 million wall craziness. Many voted for it just to spite Pelosi. Paul Ryan cannot get out of town quick enough for me. He’s a blob with no spine, no guts, and no brains. The Senate has the blob ball today.
GOP Hardliners are okay with a shut down. What about the rest of the country?
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows picked up the phone early Thursday morning and dialed up a frustrated Donald Trump for yet another pep talk.
The president was agitated over suggestions in the conservative media that he was caving on his border wall campaign promise. He had just taken to Twitter to downplay the importance of securing new wall funding before Christmas and suggested he’d fight for the wall next Congress — GOP leadership’s preferred strategy to avoid a shutdown.
But Meadows, who is close with the president and was recently in the running to be his next chief of staff, urged Trump to make a stand now before Democrats took the House in January — just as he had the night before and multiple times earlier in the week. Stick to your guns, the North Carolina Republican told the president, according to a source familiar with the conversation. We conservatives will have your back. And now is the last best chance to fight.
Never mind that half the Senate had left town for the holidays having voice-voted passage of a temporary funding bill without wall money, all while Democrats sang Christmas carols on the floor. And never mind that House GOP leaders were already twisting arms in their caucus to support a proposal they thought the White House wanted.
Not four hours later, the president hauled Speaker Paul Ryan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other GOP leaders to the West Wing and instructed them to change course. And they did.
“I’m OK with a shutdown,” Trump told the group, according to two sources in the room.
The hard-liners had defeated leadership once again, and Washington was barreling into another crisis of its own making with no endgame in sight.
All of this has the markets dropping like it’s 1929 and the US government is disrupted. This is likely Bannon’s wetdream come true. From the big guns and WAPO:
President Trump began Thursday under siege, listening to howls of indignation from conservatives over his border wall and thrusting the government toward a shutdown. He ended it by announcing the exit of the man U.S. allies see as the last guardrail against the president’s erratic behavior: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, whose resignation letter was a scathing rebuke of Trump’s worldview.
At perhaps the most fragile moment of his presidency — and vulnerable to convulsions on the political right — Trump single-handedly propelled the U.S. government into crisis and sent markets tumbling with his gambits this week to salvage signature campaign promises.
The president’s decisions and conduct have led to a fracturing of Trump’s coalition. Hawks condemned his sudden decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. Conservatives called him a “gutless president” and questioned whether he would ever build a wall. Political friends began privately questioning whether Trump needed to be reined in.
fter campaigning on shrinking America’s footprint in overseas wars, Trump abruptly declared Wednesday that he was withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria, a move Mattis and other advisers counseled against. And officials said Thursday that Trump is preparing to send thousands of troops home from Afghanistan, as well.
The president also issued an ultimatum to Congress to fund construction of his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall, a move poised to result in a government shutdown just before Christmas. Trump and his aides had signaled tacit support for a short-term spending compromise that would avert the shutdown, but the president abruptly changed course after absorbing a deluge of criticism from some of his most high-profile loyalists.
Leon Panetta, who served as defense secretary, CIA director and White House chief of staff for Democratic presidents, said, “We’re in a constant state of chaos right now in this country.” He added, “While it may satisfy [Trump’s] need for attention, it’s raising hell with the country.”
Putin must love these Trumpertantrums. He already got a big gift with the Syria surrender. All the ” adults in the room” have left the building. The guardrails are gone. What’s left? None of the folks left are likely to do the 25th Amendment. This is getting stomach wrenching and this AP article describes the vestiges of those media memes.
Mattis will be the last to go, and his abrupt resignation Thursday marks the end of the “contain and control” phase of Trump’s administration — one where generals, business leaders and establishment Republicans struggled to guide the president and curb his most disruptive impulses. They were branded in Washington as the “troika of sanity,” the “axis of adults” and the “committee to save America.”
But as Trump careens toward his third year in office, their efforts are in tatters and most are out of a job.
The early consequences of the new era were already apparent at year’s end, with Trump on the verge of a government shutdown over the advice of GOP leaders and ordering the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria over Mattis’ objections. A similar pull-back in Afghanistan appeared to be in the works. The financial markets, spooked by uncertainty from a nearly yearlong trade war, tanked.
“We are headed toward a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances & empower our adversaries,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., tweeted after Mattis’ resignation.
The shrinking circle around Trump is now increasingly dominated by a small cadre of longtime Trump loyalists and family members, ex-Fox News talent and former GOP lawmakers who were backbenchers on Capitol Hill before being elevated by the president. Attracting top flight talent will only get more difficult as more investigations envelop the White House once Democrats take over the House in January.
To some of Trump’s most ardent supporters, the exodus leaves the president with a team that is more in line with his hardline campaign promises. They viewed some of his early advisers as obstacles to enacting the unabashed nationalist agenda they believe Trump had been elected to implement.
These are really trying days but the new light is coming. Maybe that will be in an Omen. I mean this has always been the ancient symbolism of winter. It’s long, dark, and cold wait but with some good food, friends, and fun then we can wait it out. That’s always my question these days thought. How long can we wait this out because things are getting super crazy out there.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today? Have a warm and snug longest night!!!
Thursday Reads: Putin Gets Payback from Puppet
Posted: December 20, 2018 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 55 Comments
Mrs. Winslows Soothing Syrup with Morphine
Good Morning!!
So I’m still coughing constantly, my ribs ache from it, and I’m so tired. I’ve gone through three boxes of Kleenex in the past few days. How much longer can this go on, Dr. Luna? If only the old-fashioned remedies pictured in this post were still available (just kidding).
Meanwhile, it’s looking like Putin is pressuring Trump to pay up for all the help he’s been getting from Russia. Is this what they discussed in the private meeting in Helsinki? And Turkey’s Erdogan may be threatening to take Trump’s name off his Istanbul properties.
Yesterday, the Trump administration announced plans to lift sanctions from Oleg Deripaska’s companies. Deripaska is the Russian oligarch with ties to Paul Manafort. In addition Trump ordered all U.S. troops removed from Syria; he did this without consulting anyone at the Pentagon or the State Department and without warning our allies.
Reuters: In Syria retreat, Trump rebuffs top advisers and blindsides U.S. commanders.
U.S. President Donald Trump overrode his top national security aides, blindsided U.S. ground commanders, and stunned lawmakers and allies with his order for U.S. troops to leave Syria, a decision that upends American policy in the Middle East.
Bayer heroin bottle. From 1898 to 1910 heroin was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough medicine for children!
The result, said current and former officials and people briefed on the decision, will empower Russia and Iran and leave unfinished the goal of erasing the risk that Islamic State, or ISIS, which has lost all but a sliver territory, could rebuild.
Trump was moving toward his dramatic decision in recent weeks even as top aides tried to talk him out of it, determined to fulfill a campaign promise of limiting U.S. involvement militarily abroad, two senior officials said.
The move, which carries echoes of Trump’s repudiation of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate change accord, is in keeping with his America First philosophy and the pledge he made to end U.S. military involvement.
A former senior Trump administration official said the president’s decision basically was made two years ago, and that Trump finally stared down what he considered unpersuasive advice to stay in.
Read much more at the link.
Vladimir Putin is ebullient. The Washington Post: Putin backs Trump’s move to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, says Islamic State dealt ‘serious blows.’
Russian President Vladimir Putin praised President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, describing the American presence there as illegitimate and the Islamic State as largely defeated on the ground.
Putin told journalists at his annual year-end news conference that the Islamic State has suffered “serious blows”in Syria.
“On this, Donald is right. I agree with him,” Putin said.
Cough syrup with alcohol, cannabis, chloroform, and morphine.
Trump said Wednesday that the Islamic State has been defeated in Syria, although analysts say the militant group remains a deadly force. Russia — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s most powerful ally — turned the tide of the civil war in Assad’s favor in 2015 and has maintained its military presence there.
The United States and many of its allies denounced Russia’s military intervention in Syria. But Trump’s withdrawal is viewed by many — including some Trump backers — as an indirect boost for Moscow and its status as the main foreign power in Syria.
Putin is so full of himself that he’s even lecturing Theresa May. The Guardian: Putin tells May to ‘fulfil will of people’ on Brexit.
Vladimir Putin has said the UK should not hold a second referendum on Brexit, insisting Theresa May must “fulfil the will of the people”.
Offering public support that the embattled British prime minister may rather do without, Putin said he “understood” May’s position in “fighting for this Brexit”.
“The referendum was held,” the Russian president said from Moscow during his annual press conference, which is broadcast on national television. “What can she do? She has to fulfil the will of the people expressed in the referendum.”
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Russia is seen as a possible beneficiary of the UK’s exit from the EU, and a prominent financial backer of the leave campaign, Arron Banks, met Russian embassy officials repeatedly during the run-up to the referendum in June 2016.
In a nod to recent accusations of election meddling, Putin coyly suggested he was hesitant to give advice on Brexit “lest they accuse us once again of something”.
But he then went on to criticise the idea of a second referendum or “people’s vote”, which could offer the possibility of Britain staying in the EU. A no-deal Brexit has recently become significantly more likely, with May’s deal expected to be rejected by the UK parliament.
“Was it not a referendum?” the Russian president said. “Someone disliked the result, so repeat it over and over? Is this democracy? What then would be the point of the referendum in the first place?”
Putin, the expert on democracy.
And then there’s Erdogan. What does he have on Trump? The two spoke on Friday. The Military Times reports: Erdogan: Positive answers in call with Trump, but says Turkey could act against US-backed Syrian Kurds ‘anytime.’
Turkey’s leader said Monday he received “positive answers” from President Donald Trump on the situation in northeastern Syria, where Turkey has threatened to launch a new operation against American-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters.
Turkey has vowed to launch a new offensive against the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which is the main component of a U.S.-allied force that drove Islamic State militants out of much of eastern Syria. U.S. troops are based in the area, in part to reduce tensions.
7UP containing lithium
Turkey views the YPG as a terrorist group because of its links to the Kurdish insurgency within its territory. Ankara views Washington’s support as empowering of the Kurdish militia, which is seeking an autonomous region in northern Syria….
Erdogan said Turkey is waiting for the U.S. to keep its promises but could launch a new offensive “anytime.” He said the Turkish army has completed preparations and planning.
The two countries reached an agreement last summer over the town of Manbij, whereby the Kurdish militia would leave and Turkish and American troops jointly patrol the area. Turkey says the U.S. has stalled on implementing the agreement.
Yahoo News: Trump’s ‘Green Light’ to Erdogan on Syria Leaves Dilemma on Iran.
(Bloomberg) — Turkey and Iran are wasting little time as they seek an advantage in Syria after President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw American troops from the war-torn country.
Less than an hour after Trump’s abrupt decision on Wednesday, President Hassan Rouhani’s plane touched down in Ankara for a previously planned visit. The Iranian leader was given a gun salute at a welcoming ceremony with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the following day.
“There are many steps that Turkey and Iran could take together in order to end the conflict in our region and establish an atmosphere of peace,” Erdogan said during a joint news conference with Rouhani.
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Trump tweeted that it’s “time for others to finally fight,” questioning if the U.S. wants “to be the Policeman of the Middle East.”
Erdogan and his Russian and Iranian counterparts, Vladimir Putin and Rouhani, have emerged as the key arbiters of Syria’s fate. Now the dilemma for Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, is whether to deepen ties with Iran or try to curtail its influence.
Trump’s order represents another shift in the rapidly changing landscape around Syria, with the U.S. this week making a proposal to sell the Patriot missile-defense system to Turkey. Days earlier, Erdogan threatened to start a military operation targeting America’s Kurdish allies, a group known as the YPG, in northeastern Syria.
I thought Trump despised Iran, but I guess not.
More stories to check out:
NBC News: Trump’s withdrawal from Syria is victory for Iran and Russia, experts say.
Politico: Trump defends surprise Syria withdrawal despite withering GOP criticism.
The Washington Post: The Islamic State remains a deadly insurgent force, analysts say, despite Trump’s claim it has been defeated.
In other news, Robert Mueller appears to be gearing up to indict Roger Stone. He requested a transcript of Stone’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, and the Committee voted this morning to give it to him, according to MSNBC.
In other breaking news, Matthew Whitaker has been told he doesn’t need to recuse himself from supervising the Mueller investigation. CNN exclusive:
Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker has consulted with ethics officials at the Justice Department and they have advised him he does not need to recuse himself from overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, a source familiar with the process told CNN Thursday.
The source added Whitaker has been in ongoing discussions with ethics officials since taking the job in early November following the ouster of Jeff Sessions, who had stepped aside from overseeing the investigation due to his role as a Trump campaign surrogate during the 2016 election.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein oversaw the investigation following Sessions’ recusal and his office is still managing the investigation on a day-to-day basis, as CNN has previously reported.
When, exactly, ethics officials signed off on Whitaker’s role was not immediately clear, but as of last month, he had not stepped aside from participating in significant developments in the Russia investigation. He was informed ahead of time that Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen would plead guilty to lying to Congress about the proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow.
Whitaker is expected to inform senators, many of whom have raised ethics concerns given his past criticism of Mueller’s investigation, about this development later Thursday, the source said.
No wonder Mueller seems to be in a hurry lately.
That’s all I have for you today. What stories are you following?
Tuesday Reads
Posted: December 18, 2018 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 67 Comments
Lady on a Sofa, Harold Gilman, c 1910
Good Morning Sky Dancers!!
I’m still struggling with a bad cold. I’ve been coughing so much that I’m not getting enough sleep. I finally decided to go to a doctor yesterday, and the good news is my lungs are clear despite all the coughing and some wheezing. So I’m just resting, drinking fluids and hoping I’ll be OK by Christmas Eve.
I have to agree with Daknikat’s post yesterday. I don’t see how much longer Trump can go on with the daily revelations of his criminality. In just 17 days, the Democrats will take over the House and Trump will face investigations on another front; he is already facing 17 separate investigations that we know of.
Trump is nothing but a common criminal. It’s sickening that he’s still living in the people’s house. If you missed this essential summary on Deadline White House last week, please watch.
Before the Friday deadline, Trump will have to decide if he really wants to shut down the government over his ridiculous border wall. NBC News: Trump sounds defiant note on wall funding ahead of Friday shutdown deadline.
Days before a Friday night deadline to fund the government and prevent a partial shutdown, the workweek began Monday with no plan to resolve the impasse.
No further conversations occurred over the weekend between Democratic leaders and the White House, aides said.
“They have not responded to our offers,” said an aide to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, who’s poised to be formally elected speaker in January….
During an Oval Office meeting last Tuesday, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York gave the president two options to keep the government open: Either Congress passes six remaining appropriations bills and a one-year spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security that maintains current funding levels, or it passes a one-year spending bill extending current levels for half of the government.
A Lady Reading, Gwen John, 1909-11
The White House, however, hasn’t entertained either idea — and Democrats have made clear they don’t plan to budge. Top White House adviser Stephen Miller doubled down Sunday on Trump’s threat to shut down the government in order to secure his requested $5 billion in funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We’re going to do whatever is necessary to build the border wall to stop this ongoing crisis of illegal immigration,” Miller said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” And asked if that means a shutdown, he replied, “If it comes to it, absolutely.”
We’ll see. Trump is about to go on a 16 day vacation in Florida, and if the government shuts down, he’ll be golfing while the Secret Service agents who protect him work without pay. HuffPost:
President Donald Trump, clad in a golf shirt and golf hat under a warm South Florida sun, hitting a drive off the tee while Secret Service agents protecting him are forced to work without paychecks, possibly for weeks, because Congress wouldn’t pay for Trump’s “Great Wall.”
Such is the nightmare public relations scenario facing the White House less than a week before the Department of Homeland Security and other key government agencies run out of money at midnight Friday while Trump is scheduled to fly that day to his Mar-a-Lago resort for a 16-day vacation.
The U.S. Secret Service is among the half-dozen agencies in the quarter-million-employee DHS, which also includes the U.S. Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration. Other major agencies facing a shutdown include the departments of state, treasury and interior. Many of the affected employees would be deemed essential and be forced to work anyway. None would be paid during the shutdown and would have to get by on savings or short-term loans.
The Railway, Edouard Manet, 1873
Rick Tyler, a former aide to the man who engineered the last extended government shutdown in 2013, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, said that Trump will cave in the days to come.
“The only leverage in shutting down the government is who gets the blame for it. And he’s already taken the blame for it,” Tyler said, predicting that Trump will approve whatever Congress gives him.
My guess is he’ll cave. If not, his already weak approval ratings will suffer.
Meanwhile, news is breaking several times a day in the various investigations. Some stories to check out:
The Washington Post Editorial Board: Russia’s support for Trump’s election is no longer disputable.
TWO REPORTS prepared for the Senate on Russian disinformationunfold a now-indisputable narrative: The Kremlin engaged in a coordinated campaign to elevate Donald Trump to the presidency, and this country’s technology companies were central to its strategy.
The Russia operation is staggering in its scale, precision and deceptiveness. Pages generated by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency elicited nearly 40 million likes and more than 30 million shares on Facebook alone, reeling in susceptible users with provocative advertisements and then giving them propaganda to spread far and wide. The aim was not to toss the country into tumult, but to put the preferred candidate of a foreign adversary in the Oval Office. All the while, Americans were entirely unaware of what was happening: What seemed like local Black Lives Matter activists were actually Russian trolls well-versed in the buzzwords of social justice. Ostensible patriots for Second Amendment rights were broadcasting from St. Petersburg.
A Woman Reading a Newspaper, Norman Garstin, 1891
Republicans have protested over the past year that election interference is neither unusual nor important. This week’s reports comprehensively put both arguments to rest. Russia waged an unprecedented campaign, targeting Americans across all segments of society, on platforms large and small. The studies do not even cover the entirety of Russia’s online tampering: The hack-and-leak operation that led to the release of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s private emails, orchestrated by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, was another crucial salvo in a pro-Trump onslaught.
The Daily Beast: Mueller Ready to Pounce on Trumpworld Concessions to Moscow.
For more than a year, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office has questioned witnesses broadly about their interactions with well-connected Russians. But three sources familiar with Mueller’s probe told The Daily Beast that his team is now zeroing in on Trumpworld figures who may have attempted to shape the administration’s foreign policy by offering to ease U.S. sanctions on Russia.
The Special Counsel’s Office is preparing court filings that are expected to detail Trump associates’ conversations about sanctions relief—and spell out how those offers and counter-proposals were characterized to top figures on the campaign and in the administration, those same sources said.
The new details would not only bookend a multi-year investigation by federal prosecutors into whether and how Trump associates seriously considered requests by Moscow to ease the financial measures. The new court filings could also answer a central question of the so-called “Russia investigation”: What specific policy changes, if any, did the Kremlin hope to get in return from its political machinations?
The Short-Sighted Woman, Alfred Stevens, 1903
“During his investigation Mueller has shown little proclivity for chasing dead ends,” said Paul Pelletier, a former senior Department of Justice official. “His continued focus on the evidence that members of the Trump campaign discussed sanction relief with Russians shows that his evidence of a criminal violation continues to sharpen. This has to come as especially bad news for the President.”
Mueller’s interest in sanctions arose, at least in part, out of his team’s investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The Special Counsel’s Office noted in a court filing last week that Flynn had lied to the FBI about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak concerning U.S. sanctions. But other portions of this court filing were left redacted.
Mueller’s team is looking closely at evidence—some of it provided by witnesses—from the transition period, two individuals with knowledge of the probe said.
Read the rest at the link.
At Emptywheel, Marcy Wheeler explains why documents released by Mueller’s office yesterday show that Michael Flynn “lied to protect trump.”
In response to Judge Sullivan’s order, the government filed Flynn’s 302 under seal. After Sullivan reviewed it, he deemed it pertinent to Flynn’s sentencing, and had the government release a redacted version.
And it is unbelievably damning, in part because it shows the degree to which Flynn’s lies served to protect Trump.
The 302 shows how the FBI Agents first let Flynn offer up his explanation for his conversation with Kislyak. He lied about the purpose for his call to Kislyak on December 29 (he said he had called to offer condolences about the assassination of Russia’s Ambassador to Turkey) and he lied about the purpose of his call about Israel (he claimed he was, in part, doing a battle drill “to see who the administration could reach in a crisis” and in the process tried to find out how countries were voting on the Israeli motion; Flynn denied he had asked for any specific action).
Young Woman Reading an Illustrated Journal, Auguste Renoir, c. 1880
Then, after the Agents specifically asked whether he recalled any conversation about the Obama actions, Flynn doubled down and claimed he did not know about those actions because he was in Dominican Republic….
He was hiding two things with this claim: first, I believe Susan Rice had given the Trump Administration a heads up on what Obama was going to do (at the very least the Obama Admin had asked the transition not to send mixed messages, and at least one person on the transition says they agreed not to). More importantly, he was hiding that he had already talked about the actions with KT McFarland, who was at Mar-a-Lago relaying orders from Trump.
And Flynn again denied having had a heads up from Susan Rice when he claimed he didn’t know that Russia’s diplomats were being expelled.
That’s just a the gist. You’ll need to read the whole thing at the link.
One more from The Hollywood Reporter, if you can stomach it: Woody Allen’s Secret Teen Lover Speaks: Sex, Power and a Conflicted Muse Who Inspired ‘Manhattan’
Sixteen, emerald-eyed, blond, an aspiring model with a confident streak and a painful past: Babi Christina Engelhardt had just caught Woody Allen’s gaze at legendary New York City power restaurant Elaine’s. It was October 1976, and when Engelhardt returned from the ladies’ room, she dropped a note on his table with her phone number. It brazenly read: “Since you’ve signed enough autographs, here’s mine!”
Soon, Allen rang, inviting her to his Fifth Avenue penthouse. The already-famous 41-year-old director, still hot off Sleeper and who’d release Annie Hall the following spring, never asked her age. But she told him she was still in high school, living with her family in rural New Jersey as she pursued her modeling ambitions in Manhattan. Within weeks, they’d become physically intimate at his place. She wouldn’t turn 17, legal in New York, until that December.
Young Woman Reading an Illustrated Journal, Auguste Renoir, c. 1880
The pair embarked on, by her account, a clandestine romance of eight years, the claustrophobic, controlling and yet dreamy dimensions of which she’s still processing more than four decades later. For her, the recent re-examination of gender power dynamics initiated by the #MeToo movement (and Allen’s personal scandals, including a claim of sexual abuse by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow) has turned what had been a melancholic if still sweet memory into something much more uncomfortable. Like others among her generation — she just turned 59 on Dec. 4 — Engelhardt is resistant to attempts to have the life she led then be judged by what she considers today’s newly established norms. “It’s almost as if I’m now expected to trash him,” she says.
Time, though, has transfigured what she’s long viewed as a secret, unspoken monument to their then-still-ongoing relationship: 1979’s Manhattan, in which 17-year-old Tracy (Oscar-nominated Mariel Hemingway) enthusiastically beds Allen’s 42-year-old character Isaac “Ike” Davis. The film has always “reminded me why I thought he was so interesting — his wit is magnetic,” Engelhardt says. “It was why I liked him and why I’m still impressed with him as an artist. How he played with characters in his movies, and how he played with me.”
That’s all I’ve got for today. What stories are you following?
Monday Reads: The End is Nearing!
Posted: December 17, 2018 Filed under: 2018 elections, 2020 Elections, morning reads | Tags: National Butterfly Center, Russian interference in US elections 24 CommentsGood Morning Sky Dancers!
I believe the end of our national nightmare may be coming to an end. Yes, part of me really wants this to happen badly because I’m extremely tired of reading things like that useless wall plowing through a National Butterfly refuge and that children are dying in ICE custody because his base is a bunch of racist xenophobes and all plus the rest of the horrid things he’s been up to. But, I’m old and I’ve been through this before. Nixon resigned right after I graduated High School. I’m seeing many of the same signs that his days may be numbered. Oh, yes, the pictures are from our National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas (Hildago County along the Rio Grande).
As President Donald Trump and his lawyers turn toward the new year, they’ll have to contend with a legal narrative that’s taken fuller shape through a flurry of court filings and news reports that began landing about three weeks ago and extended through Friday afternoon: Members of Trump’s presidential campaign – and possibly “Individual 1” himself – may have orchestrated a number of criminal conspiracies that took root before and during the 2016 presidential campaign, continued after Trump won the election, and have tainted the White House’s policies and torn at its operations ever since.
The breadth of investigations is so sweeping – as many on social media and reporters with the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and Bloomberg News have already noted – that few of the worlds Trump inhabits have escaped prosecutors’ attention. The Trump Organization, the Trump Foundation, the Trump family, the Trump campaign, the Trump transition, the Trump inauguration, and the Trump White House are all being probed for wrongdoing.
The Trump team’s possible collusion with Russia to sabotage and tilt the 2016 election, a probe spearheaded by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, pulls many strands of the investigations together. Trumplandia’s intersection with Russia may have started with business propositions more than a decade ago (such as the Trump SoHo hotel and condominium), and included more recent undertakings like a project in Moscow, before evolving into a political partnership during the 2016 campaign after Trump’s presidential prospects brightened.
A senate report details the incredibly complex and twisted the interference of Russian in the 2016. The presidential election was so tight in key electoral states that it’s very difficult to not see that the Trump Presidency is not a legitimate one. I can only imagine what the final Mueller report will elucidate.
Seriously, did he legitimately achieve the office? This is by Marc Fisher writing for WAPO. Between the Russian interference and the payoffs and suppression of affairs, who can say?As if the country didn’t have enough to be divided about, now the forces aligned for and against President Trump are battling over whether his presidency is legitimate.
The evidence emerging in recent days and months of crimes committed to help Trump win the presidency is fueling arguments from Democrats and other Trump critics that the man in the Oval Office got the job through nefarious means. Even without proof that those crimes swayed votes, the critics say Trump has no moral hold on the office.
In the past week, the legitimacy debate has swelled with each new court filing in cases stemming from the investigations into Trump’s 2016 campaign.
First came the statement by federal prosecutors in New York that Trump attorney Michael Cohen “sought to influence the election from the shadows” by arranging to pay hush money to women who said they had extramarital affairs with Trump. Then, on Tuesday, executives at the National Enquirer’s parent company admitted paying hush money to prevent news of the candidate’s alleged infidelities “from influencing the election.”
In Congress, in the media and among activists, criticism of Trump is increasingly taking the form of arguments that he won office fraudulently — especially as the hush-money revelations have landed atop allegations by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team that Russian agents engaged in a criminal scheme to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy.
“People don’t actually really consider Trump a legitimate president,” former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said on MSNBC last month. “He was obviously elected and all this business, but he does not represent American values.”
Back to the Senate report on Russian Interference via WAPO. It’s pretty clear why Trump feels illegitimate and seeks to prove his election every time he speaks.
A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office.
The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat. The bipartisan panel hasn’t said whether it endorses the findings. It plans to release it publicly this week.
The research — by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm — offers new details of how Russians working at the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials have charged with criminal offenses for interfering in the 2016 campaign, sliced Americans into key interest groups for targeted messaging. These efforts shifted over time, peaking at key political moments, such as presidential debates or party conventions, the report found.
The data sets used by the researchers were provided by Facebook, Twitter and Google and covered several years up to mid-2017, when the social media companies cracked down on the known Russian accounts. The report, which also analyzed data separately provided to House Intelligence Committee members, contains no information on more recent political moments, such as November’s midterm elections.
“What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump,” the report says. “Trump is mentioned most in campaigns targeting conservatives and right-wing voters, where the messaging encouraged these groups to support his campaign. The main groups that could challenge Trump were then provided messaging that sought to confuse, distract and ultimately discourage members from voting.”
It appears they specifically targeted Black voters. This is from NBC News’ Ken Delianian
Two separate reports on the operation were prepared for senators, both of which were obtained by NBC News. Both sets of researchers found, as Mueller did, that the Internet Research Agency set out in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, in part by inflaming right-wing conspiracy theories and seeking to engender distrust among — and suppress the vote of — left-leaning groups, including African-Americans.
The Russians set up 30 Facebook pages targeting black Americans, the researchers found, and 10 YouTube channels that posted 571 videos related to police violence against African-Americans. YouTube, which is part of Alphabet, the holding company for Google, was not correct when it said in a statement last year that Russian content did not target a segment of U.S. society, the researchers concluded.
The Russians also set up hotlines that encourage people to discuss sexual or other personal problems the researchers found, raising the possibility they could use the information later to blackmail people. Through deceit, the Internet Research Agency recruited many Americans to take various political actions, the researchers found.
The post that drew the most attention featuring Trump emerged on Jan. 23, 2017, after his inauguration — a conspiracy theory asserting that President Barack Obama had refused to ban Sharia Law and encouraging President Trump to take action. It was shared 312,632 times from a page created by Russian propagandists.
The top post featuring Clinton came a month before the election, the researchers found — a soup of conspiracy theories alleging that she would win because of voter fraud and alluding to an armed uprising. It received 102,253 engagements, which can be anything from likes and shares to comments.
“This newly released data demonstrates how aggressively Russia sought to divide Americans by race, religion and ideology, and how the IRA actively worked to erode trust in our democratic institutions,” said Senate Committee on Intelligence chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C.
Frankly, Senator Burr, the same could be said about the Republican Party. This is why I agree with Melissa at Shakesville
https://twitter.com/Shakestweetz/status/1074703236597235714
What’s crucial to understand about this dynamic is that none of it would have been possible without decades of groundwork laid by the Republican Party.
It would not have been possible had the Republican Party not, for example, critically undermined the sort of corporate regulation that would have prevented the monopolies and the vacuum of oversight in which social media giants proliferated, with zero accountability to the populations they exploited in reckless cash grabs.
It would not have been possible had the Republican Party not, for example, ruthlessly fomented divisions among the U.S. populace, which created fissures into which any bad actor could shove their own crowbar to create massive breaks.
It would not have been possible had the Republican Party not, for example, abandoned their responsibility of good governance, willing instead to compromise the security of the nation — and ultimately its sovereignty — in order to win.
We’re just beginning to see the connections between the NRA, Russian Money, the Republicans, and elections. What other Republicans will be found with Russian money and connections besides Dana Rohrbacher? A new poll suggests no one believes Trump now. When will that extend to the rest of his cronies? From NBC News: Poll: 62 percent say Trump isn’t telling the truth in Russia probe. More Americans want Democrats — not Trump — in charge of setting policy, a new national NBC News/WSJ poll finds.
Six in 10 Americans say President Donald Trump has been untruthful about the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, while half of the country says the investigation has given them doubts about Trump’s presidency, according to a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
The survey, conducted a month after the results of November’s midterm elections, also finds more Americans want congressional Democrats — rather than Trump or congressional Republicans — to take the lead role in setting policy for the country.
And just 10 percent of respondents say that the president has gotten the message for a change in direction from the midterms — when the GOP lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives but kept its majority in the U.S. Senate — and that he’s making the necessary adjustments.
Polls like these are likely to stick the more news we get from all these investigations. How long can the party ignore them? The Plum line argues that Trump’s been weakened.
Stephen Miller, the Trump kingdom’s Immigration Iago, wants you to believe that his boss retains great leverage in the ongoing government shutdown fight — so much so that he will, repeat will, get his great border wall. Miller, a top White House adviser, said Sunday that President Trump will “do whatever is necessary” to force Democrats to cough up the $5 billion he wants for the wall and will “absolutely” shut down the government to get it.
In reality, it’s not even clear that Trump has sufficient Republican support to get his wall money out of Congress. The New York Times now reports that Republicans aren’t even sure that this funding would pass the House, because many Republicans who were defeated in the midterms might not bother showing up to vote for it.
Wait, this cannot be! Miller, after all, spent much of his “Face the Nation” appearanceexcoriating Democrats over the wall. Democrats have instead offered far less in border security funding, with restrictions against spending it for that purpose. Miller suggested Democrats have the weaker position, claiming they must “choose to fight for America’s working class, or to promote illegal immigration.”
Wow, what a powerful message! That must be the same message that carried Trump and House Republicans to a great midterms victory! Oh wait, the opposite happened. This has gone down the memory hole, but last summer, Miller vowed that precisely that same contrast on immigration would prove potent for Republicans. They ran the most virulently xenophobic nationalist campaign in memory — and lost the House by the largest raw-vote margin in midterm elections history.
The meta-message that Miller hoped to convey is that Trump retains formidable strength in the shutdown battle over the wall, but the real story right now is that Trump is weakened. He lacks leverage in the shutdown fight, and it’s plausible that he’s losing influence over congressional Republicans.
So, how far can the party take the policy of dead and imprisoned immigrant children with tattoed numbers waiting to seek legal refuge and ravaged butterfly sanctuaries? My guess is that everything but the tweets go dark in the six week hold up at Mar a Lago. The NJ one is under investigation by the state so it seems he’s got few options to hide out these days. He’ll have sixteen days to stew and discuss what to do with all the other out of touch greedos.
Meanwhile, I just hope we clear him out before he can do any more damage. But, then there’s Pence …
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Saturday Reads: Why do they want us to Die?
Posted: December 15, 2018 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Affordable Care Act, Pre existing conditions 23 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
I have a pre-exisiting condition. I developed cancer when I was pregnant with my youngest and was diagnosed about 5 months after her birth with inoperable 4th stage cancer. I asked my ob/gyn if she had to choose a type of cancer would this be it. She said no because, to this day, I’m the only one who appears to have recovered from this form of leiomyosarcoma. Many cancer survivors–like me and the children in these pictures– as well as many others living with other illnesses breathed a sigh of relief when the Affordable Healthcare Act passed. I was no longer at the mercy of an employer with a stellar health plan. I could get health care.
Many Republican controlled states and the Republicans throughout all levels of government have sworn to kill the ACA. The weird thing is a lot of them ran this last election promising they supported this feature of the ACA while they were actively supporting the very lawsuit that would put people like me and these kids in jeopardy.
Here’s how one crazy judge in Texas has put many lives in danger. At the very least, it will head back to SCOTUS. This is the bottom line via Axios.
The Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature achievement, may be headed back to the Supreme Court after a conservative federal judge in Texas struck down the individual mandate as unconstitutional last evening.
Be smart: This really could end with the Affordable Care Act being wiped out. There’s no guarantee that a more conservative Supreme Court won’t just let the law die.
How did one judge rule the entire ACA unconstitutional? Here’s the coverage from WAPO by Amy Goldstein.
A federal judge in Texas threw a dagger into the Affordable Care Act on Friday night, ruling that the entire health-care law is unconstitutional because of a recent change in federal tax law.
The opinion by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor overturns all of the sprawling law nationwide.
The ruling came on the eve of the deadline Saturday for Americans to sign up for coverage in the federal insurance exchange created under the law. If the ruling stands, it would create widespread disruption across the U.S. health-care system — from no-charge preventive services for older Americans on Medicare to the expansion of Medicaid in most states, to the shape of the Indian Health Service — in all, hundreds of provisions in the law that was a prized domestic achievement of President Barack Obama.
President Trump, who has made the dismantling of the ACA a chief goal since his campaign, swiftly tweeted his pleasure at the opinion. “As I predicted all along, Obamacare has been struck down as an UNCONSTITUTIONAL disaster!” the president wrote just after 9 p.m. “Now Congress must pass a STRONG law that provides GREAT healthcare and protects pre-existing conditions.”
That’s right. One small change through many lives in jeopardy. We now have rampant uncertainty in the health insurance market. Here’s more information via Bloomberg.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth agreed with a coalition of Republican states led by Texas that he had to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act, the signature health-care overhaul by President Barack Obama, after Congress last year zeroed out a key provision — the tax penalty for not complying with the requirement to buy insurance.
“Today’s ruling is an assault on 133 million Americans with preexisting conditions, on the 20 million Americans who rely on the ACA’s consumer protections for health care, and on America’s faithful progress toward affordable health care for all Americans,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement, leading a chorus of Democrats who blasted the decision. A spokeswoman for Becerra vowed a quick challenge to O’Connor’s ruling.
Obamacare was struck down by a Texas federal judge in a ruling that casts uncertainty on insurance coverage for millions of U.S. residents.
The decision Friday finding the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional comes at the tail end of a six-week open enrollment period for the program in 2019 and underscores a divide between Republicans who have long sought to invalidate the law and Democrats who fought to keep it in place.
So, that’s all I have time to post today as I’m covering for our BB who is under the weather. Also, I’m headed out to see what’s available to me on this last day of ability to apply for coverage under the ACA.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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