(I added the question mark just before posting. I should have left it as a statement of fact). Former First Lady Laura Bush in a Washington Post op-ed: images of children being detained in a converted Walmart and a tent city are ‘eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history’. (Note: It took decades for the United States government to admit that policy was wrong).
Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had the gall today to play dumb & deny that separation of young kids from their parents amounts to a form of child abuse.
Tue 6/19: And on Tuesday, Nielsen was seen in the back of a Mexican restaurant in Washington D.C. She and her security detail had to leave 10 minutes later, amid shouts of Shame! and End family separation!
A retweet referring to what goes on at the border, that caught my attention today. Is there still hope that BigIndianGyasi’s statement is too strong for 2018 – ‘Destroying brown & black lives is 100% the American way?’.
*’Lock her up!’ (Hillary Clinton) was a favorite chant of the Trump supporters in 2016.
Trump campaign manager Manafort had his bail revoked today and is now in jail.
No sooner had that happened, when Trump appeared on the White House lawn. Hey! and just by coincidence, there was his propaganda network Fox News, at the ready for an interview. Manafort ‘had worked for me for a very short time’. On and on Trump babbled, spouting nonsense and lies, like only he can.
Manafort is in serious, serious, legal trouble (read: decades of jail time, for his well-documented crimes of conspiracy and money laundering). Trump cannot pardon him for state crimes (only federal ones). I cannot see how Manafort can continue to refuse to cooperate with the Russia investigation. It’s possible that he has nothing substantial to offer (as a witness against Trump). If that’s the case, his goose is cooked.
The G7 Twitter page header. Charlevoix is on the north shores of the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada. Who knows: next year the G7 might be the G6.
It’s Friday, and Trump is out of the country .. yay!
Our President-That-Alienates-Our-Allies suggested out of the blue, on the way to the G7 meeting, that Russia should be allowed back into the G7. (Haha. I think they will decline). Relations are so frayed, that the G7 may actually become the G6 – by throwing the United States out. (Hopefully not). Does Trump’s staff even tell him that? Does he even know that Russia was kicked out of the G8 in 2014 because Putin invaded Ukraine (and his army shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17)?
P.S. The indictments are piling up for Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. An additional indictment today lumps Manafort and suspected Russian intelligence operative Konstantin Kilimnik together, charging them both with obstruction of justice. (Manafort made numerous phone calls to Kilimnik while out on bail, while already indicted for a long list of serious crimes). Manafort needs to take his toothbrush with when he goes to court next Friday. Word is that his bail is going to be revoked – that he is going to sit in jail to await the start of his trial in July.
Update Sat Jun 9: At the conference ..
Trump’s body language speaking a thousand words (as the new leader of the Western world is addressing him?). Photo is by Jesco Denzel, official photographer of Germany’s federal government.
Picture and headline from the New York Times. Does it matter if it is legal or not? Taking children from migrant parents as punishment, is immoral. How can the United States possibly call itself a civilized country with this going on?
Trump’s support of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August last year was a particularly low point (‘very fine people’).
But what is going on now at the border is even uglier. The New York Times: ‘United States authorities had separated several hundred children, including toddlers, from their parents or others claiming to be their family members, under a policy of criminally prosecuting undocumented people crossing the border’.
And so what does Trump do today? Does he own it? Does he defend it? Does he explain it? Of course not. He peddles FOUR BRAZEN LIES in a single short tweet.
Here is thinkprogress.org’s analysis: 1. There is no legislation requiring the Trump administration to separate children from their parents; 2. The Trump administration is fully responsible for the family separation policy; 3. Republicans are the lawmakers standing in the way of immigration reform; 4. Trump has not started building the wall.
Not a day goes by, with no scandal or bad news, from the Trump administration. Today, President ‘Bring-Back-Law-and-Order’ Trump pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, a right-wing Twitter troll, that pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign contributions in 2014. It’s pardon No 6. Rumored to be next, are Martha Stewart, and a commutation of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s jail sentence he is serving. Why them? Former FBI director James Comey (fired by Trump) led Stewart’s prosecution, and Comey’s friend Patrick Fitzgerald, led Blagojevich’s.
Observation from David Roberts (blogger for news site Vox.com). Using the pardoning power excessively, or to obstruct justice, is not going to fly, though.
So Trump is using the presidential pardon power for revenge. Or even to signal to the criminals associated with him (think Micheal Flynn, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort) that he will pardon them as well, in the event the Russia investigation finds them guilty. (Flynn has already pleaded guilty, as a matter of fact).
Some analysts note though, that it is not out of the question that these pardons – and what they signal – could become part of the obstruction of justice evidence, collected by the Russia investigation.
My smart meter* showed a reading of 3 kW-h at 8 pm, after starting at 0 at lunch time, 12.30 pm. *I blanked out all the serial numbers and barcodes.
A contractor for Seattle City Light stopped by my house today, to install my ‘smart’ meter (for metering electricity usage). I see the device is from a Swiss vendor Landis+Gyr.
‘The meter will last you 20 years or more’, said the technician. (OK. But if vastly better technology becomes available, I’m sure it will be replaced).
Why a smart meter? The meter beams its readings to a collector tower nearby, and to the utility from there. So no more driving around by meter readers (that get bitten by the dog, or cannot get to the meter). The meter will automatically notify Seattle City Light of outages. Finally, once all the back-end systems are in place, customers (me) would be able to monitor their electricity usage remotely and in real time.
I like my coins & medallions, and I see this one is still for sale on the White House Gift Shop site for $24.95. Comes in a black velvet case. The site was so popular this morning, that it crashed. Now back up, sans picture of the coin, it notes: ‘If the summit does not occur, you can request a refund’. Good to know – but I’ll pass.
‘Dear Kim Jong Un: It’s just not working out between us. Sorry. Hope we don’t have to nuke you. Please call’. .. – the way the Los Angeles Times paraphrased the letter sent by Trump to Kim to cancel the planned meeting of June 12.
The timing of the announcement was terrible: American journalists were still in North Korea, witnessing the (apparent?) destruction of one of the nuclear test sites. The last part of the journey to the site was a two-hour walk.
It’s easy to look back now and realize: it never really was going to happen.
We’re into our second year of the Russia investigation into a. the ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia, and b. the question if Trump obstructed the investigation.
Meanwhile, Trump and his supporters (co-conspirators?) spout outright lies & conspiracy theories on Twitter, and to the media, almost every day. On Sunday, Trump ‘demanded’ by tweet that the FBI be investigated. (So the subject of the investigation, demands that the investigators be investigated).
Just today, Trump repeated allegations that federal investigators had used spies against his presidential campaign (‘Spygate’. OK .. evidence, please?).
Anyway, let’s focus. Below is a great comparison of special investigations since 1973. Take-away: Mueller has found a lot of wrongdoing already, but probably has a year – or more – to go.
Then today, the New York Times, laid out the main possible outcomes when Special Counsel Mueller eventually completes his investigation.
Outcome 1: Trump did nothing wrong. Outcome 2: Trump broke the law (many possibilities here). > 2.1: Mueller’s Least Aggressive Option: Mueller submits a report (to Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein). > 2.2: The ‘Nixon Option’: A grand jury from Mueller’s investigation deems Trump an un-indicted co-conspirator & sends a report to Congress. > 2.3: Mueller’s Most Aggressive Option (unlikely): Mueller indicts Trump.
Additional Notes: Note a. Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein is the gatekeeper for Outcome 2, and Mueller’s report goes to him first .. but if Mueller tries to indict (2.3), and Rosenstein says ‘No’, that triggers an automatic report to Congress. Note b. The Nov 2018 Mid-term Elections will likely happen before Mueller’s investigation is done.
> If Republicans then control the House: Impeachment proceedings will start only if the report has damning evidence of wrongdoing, or of breaking the law.
> If Democrats then control the House: They will face tremendous pressure to do something. They are likely to consider impeachment.
Reporter Michael Schmidt and a graphic behind him, of the main possible outcomes of the Mueller investigation and the next steps. [Source: New York Times].
‘Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!’ chanted Trump’s supporters at his rally last night in Elkhart, Indiana. Are they willfully and utterly ignorant? Or does ‘Drain the swamp’ mean drain everything into the Trump Swamp? I don’t understand.Michael Avenatti is Stephanie Clifford’s lawyer. Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) is a porn star that Trump had an affair with in 2011, and that Michael Cohen (Trump fixer) paid hush money to in October 2016 (right before the election in November). Avenatti published details of Michael Cohen’s LLC that had served as a slush fund for this hush money, thereby revealing other shady contributions as well. Basta, translated from Italian, means ‘That’s enough!’
We now know Trump’s Swamp Administrator and beleaguered Lawyer-Fixer, Michael Cohen, ran a slush fund* that had received large payments from the likes of AT&T, drug company Novartis and a Korean aerospace company.
*Cohen set up a limited-liability corporation called Essential Consulting LLC, that had no employees, and offered no official services.
Then there is the $500k contribution from investment firm Columbus Nova, with a connection to Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg (who is surely connected to Putin). The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Vekselberg and his Renova Group and reportedly froze between $1.5 billion to $2 billion of their U.S. assets.
Special Counsel Mueller’s investigators knew all of this months ago. It is not yet public knowledge what Trump’s involvement was in Cohen’s activities, and where all the slush fund money ultimately ended up. But we will surely find out.
WASHINGTON — President Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and is preparing to reinstate all sanctions it had waived as part of the accord. The administration is planning to impose additional economic penalties as well.
The decision unravels the signature foreign policy achievement of his predecessor, President Barack Obama, and isolates the United States from its European allies.
REPORTER: Mr. President, how does this make America safer? How does this make America safer?
TRUMP: Thank you very much. This will make America much safer. Thank you very much.
(ME: Answer the $%@# question).
Wikipedia’s map of the (many) major Iran- Saudi Arabia proxy conflicts. Is the USA’s unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal (with the USA, Germany, France, UK, Russia, China) a step towards American aggression towards Iran? Does the Trump Administration have a strategy? Many observers say there is none.
Here is President Obama’s response to the withdrawal from the agreement:
From today’s New York Times, in an opinion piece by it editorial board, called ‘Trump’s ‘Best People*’ Are the Worst‘ : Consider the Trump appointees who have been in the news lately. Let’s start with Dr. Ronny Jackson, the White House physician whom President Trump nominated to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides health care to more than nine million vets and is the second-largest federal department, after the Pentagon. More than 20 people who have worked with Dr. Jackson told senators either that he was drunk on the job, handed out sleeping pills, and even opioids, like Skittles, or screamed at his staff. The latest allegation is that he reportedly got drunk and wrecked a government car.
*Trump, ever the snake oil salesman on the campaign trail, repeatedly boasted that he will hire only the ‘best people’.
And here is the Washington Post weighing in, quoted by cable news channel MSNBC. Trump does not know what government officials do – and should do. And he does not care.
Finally, at 9 pm Eastern Time on Friday, President Trump announced that targeted strikes will be made against Syria by the United States, joined by Britain and France. Yes, the use of chemical weapons is evil, and a red line. (Dozens of people died in a suburb of Damascus in the latest such attack). But surely we can all agree that war is evil, too. The last comprehensive number of casualties, widely accepted internationally — 470,000 dead — was issued by the Syrian Center for Policy Research in 2016.
This map is from the New York Times. Defense Secretary James Mattis said at a press conference the military will do their utmost to limit the risk of civilian casualties in the strikes. It was not immediately clear specifically what was targeted, though.
The New York Times today: ‘Defense Secretary Jim Mattis took pains on Thursday to walk back President Trump’s threats of an imminent strike on Syria’. And: ‘President Trump’s fusillade of tweets about Syria, Russia and China this week set a new standard for contradictory and inconsistent positions in Mr. Trump’s approach to war, trade and relations with adversaries’.
Map by the WSJ of the US military assets in and around Syria. After 7 years of war, one wonders if anything but rubble, is found in those cities marked in red. (The country between Syria and the Mediterranean Sea is Lebanon).
Wall Street cheerleader CNBC put the FB ticker up for a long time while Zuckerberg testified. FB stock ended up 4% for the day, so I guess that means the stock market thought he did well. At least he wore a suit this time, and not a hoodie, the way he did for the Facebook IPO in May 2012!
‘We will deploy AI, we now have 20,000 content reviewers, we now ban fake accounts by the thousand, we support the Honest Ads Act’, testified Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today. (I’m paraphrasing). Well – let’s just say the road to another Facebook-assisted election catastrophe (such as the one we had in 2016), is paved with good intentions.
There were some sharp questions from Senators today, but Zuckerberg did a mea culpa in his opening statement, and could generally stick to his talking points (we messed up, we’re working on it, it’s complicated). He did leave the door open for supporting legislation from Congress, and admitted that the Europeans are doing some things right, when it comes to privacy protections.
Whether Congress can come up with legislation that will make a dent in better protecting data privacy, and rooting out fake news and hate speech – that also remains to be seen.
There President Trump was today, in the Cabinet Room with the press and TV cameras, flanked by his top military brass, and new National Security Advisor John Bolton. The media was invited to the start of discussions about what to do about the atrocities of the chemical attack on civilians in Syria over the weekend.
From today’s online New York Times. That’s VP Mike Pence on the left of Trump and new National Security Advisor John Bolton on the right. Bolton will probably advise Trump to bomb Syria. Bolton was a very controversial pick for NSA, with his role in promoting the Iraq War and a bluntness that makes him an extremely undiplomatic diplomat.
Instead, Trump launched into a four-minute rant about the news of the day: that his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, had his office, his home, and his Manhattan hotel room raided by the FBI. ‘They broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys .. ‘(um – the FBI had a search warrant); ‘It’s a disgraceful situation’(disgraceful, yes); ‘it’s an attack against the country, really’ (you are not a king, President Trump, you are not ‘the country’, and you are not above the law).
On and on it went, as he took swipes at Special Investigator Robert S. Mueller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and denounced the investigation again as a witch hunt by the Democrats. Is it November yet? – so we can vote all the Republicans out of the House and the Senate, and impeach Trump? For me it does not even matter anymore, what Mueller’s investigation finds.
Headline from politico.com. ‘Tillerson, a career oilman from blunt-spoken Texas, had come to the State Department with significant overseas business experience but was still very much a novice in the ways of international diplomacy’, writes Susan Glasser. Tillerson leaves the State Department understaffed and demoralized. There is a lot of work to be done to repair the damage.
Trump’s Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is out, fired via Trump tweet. (Tillerson got a heads-up on Friday that ‘something is up’, from Chief of Staff Kelley). Trump and Tillerson never got along, and Tillerson was fired almost immediately after contradicting the official White House line on the murder of a Russian double agent in London, though. Coincidence, or the last straw? (Tillerson called Trump an ‘f** moron’ last July).
Also: Trump’s personal aide (‘body man’) Johnny McEntee is also out over ‘serious financial crimes’ and security issues, escorted out of the White House today, not allowed to retrieve even his jacket or any personal stuff.
Finally: It looks like the Democrat will win the Special Election for House Representative in Pennsylvania’s 18th district, held today. This is a district that Trump carried by 20%. Trump, Don Trump Jr and VP Mike Pence were all there to campaign for the Republican. So the loss is not a good sign for the Republicans for the mid-term elections* in November this year.
*Representatives of the House have two-year terms, and Senators have six-year terms.
Brett Stephens writes in the NYT that we do not know if Trump’s Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn quit ‘out of horror of the president’s protectionist turn, or merely out of the pique of losing a policy argument’ (over the trade tariffs). What is certain, is that the Trump Administration is looking increasingly unstable and unable to retain key personnel.
The Republicans are finally getting worried that Trump’s economic and trade policies might make trouble. (They were not too worried about the tax cuts massively increasing the deficit). The House sent a letter today, signed by 107 representatives, asking Trump to refrain from implementing broad-based tariff measures that could trigger trade wars with Europe, China, and even Canada.
Will we be OK? It’s been 10 years since 2008’s global financial crisis. During a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ last week, Bill Gates was asked if, in the near future, the U.S. will have another crisis similar to 2008. ‘Yes’, he said, admitting that the question would be better directed at Warren Buffet. ‘It is hard to say when, but this is a certainty’.
The conclusion of Matt Taibbi’s article called ‘The Great American Bubble Machine’ that appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine in 2009. The article detailed the excesses and greed from the giant financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, and the lack of government oversight, that led to the 2008 crisis. Here we are in 2018, and I don’t think anything has changed.
It was another week of Trump chaos. (‘Never have we seen such chaos and corruption‘, opines Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post). As Alec Baldwin’s tweet says: we are hanging in there until we have the impeachment hearings, the resignation speech, and the farewell helicopter ride to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s long-time Communications Director (Hope Hicks) announced she is resigning, after admitting she tells ‘white lies’ for the President.
It’s been more than a year since Trump himself gave a press conference.
It now looks as if son-in-law Jared Kushner punished Qatar last April, by supporting a blockade against them, just weeks after they refused to invest in his private firm. Do these people do anything at all for American citizens, for the country? Kushner never, ever says anything on the record, and does not speak to the press, or in public.
On Thursday, Trump announced* trade tariffs of 25% and 10% on steel and aluminum imports, out of the blue, defying the advice of economic advisor Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. ‘Trump starts trade war’, said all the major European and Asian newspapers this morning. Economists universally agree: trade wars are bad. *Still to be signed into law, some time next week.
As many observers note:
1. It’s unsettling to have a President with no impulse control.
2. These crises are all of Trump’s making. What will he do when a real one hits?
This morning’s classic Trump tweet: petty, demeaning, lashing out. This Trump tweet is the one with the corrections Alex > Alec and dieing > dying. Our President does not read, and therefore cannot spell. Sad. (SNL is Saturday Night Live, a comedy show on which Baldwin frequently portrays President Trump).
From the front page of today’s on-line New York Times.
Special Investigator Robert Mueller has so far unsealed over 100 criminal charges against 19 people (13 are Russians).
Just today, Rick Gates (age 45), Trump’s deputy campaign manager in 2016-17, pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States, and to lying to FBI investigators.
Cable TV talk show host Chris Hayes’s Twitter musings on Manafort, the Trump campaign and the Russians.
Additional charges were also brought today against Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager for a few months in 2016. Manafort (age 68) now faces dozens of counts of money laundering* and bank fraud charges. He maintains his innocence (good luck with that). *We’re talking tens of millions of dollars here.
The most tantalizing questions remain. Why did Trump fire FBI Director James Comey in May 2017? Why did Trump lie about Don Jr’s meeting with the Russians in June 2016? Why does the FBI refuse to give son-in-law Jared Kushner a security clearance? Why has Trump still not implemented the bipartisan congressional Russia sanctions, passed over six months ago?
Deputy AG of the Dept of Justice Rod Rosenstein briefing reporters on Friday. Thirteen Russians were indicted. An American was separately indicted for identity theft. More indictments will surely come, since these did not address obstruction of justice, criminal hacking of the Clinton campaign servers, or money laundering.
Exactly how Russia interfered with the 2016 Presidential Election in the USA, became much clearer on Friday.
The Dept of Justice charged 13 Russian nationals with using stolen identities and exploiting YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, to wage a well-funded and well-coordinated campaign to promote Trump and to tear down Hillary Clinton.
What’s still not clear: to what extent Trump, Trump Jr and Trump campaign staff colluded with the Russians – and to what extent they obstructed the Mueller investigation. Yes, Deputy AG Rosenstein said bluntly on Friday: “There is no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge” of Russian involvement .. but surely more indictments are forthcoming.
Fake-News-President Trump launched a tweetstorm on Friday & Saturday full of denials and I-told-you-so’s. He quoted Rosenstein and others, claimed exoneration from colluding with the Russians, said this had no effect on the election, and again attacked the FBI.
Excerpt from the FBI’s 37-page indictment. The 13 Russians and their accomplices purchased Facebook advertisements, recruited US persons to appear as Hillary Clinton in prison garb at rallies, and urged US voters to attend pro-Trump rallies. Trump supporters eagerly retweeted and posted the fake Russian ads against Clinton.
