Australia has had a turbulent week in politics, one that saw prime minister Malcolm Turnbull ousted on Friday. Scott Morrison was voted in by parliament as the country’s 30th prime minister.
Morrison’s political views are socially conservative (he abstained from the vote for legalizing same-sex marriage earlier this year). I read in Wikipedia that Morrison is from the Liberal Party of Australia, ‘a major centre-right liberal conservative political party in Australia’ .. a description which I find confusing! Anyway: the centre-left party in Australian politics, is the Australian Labor Party (ALP).
Let me try to interpret this political cartoon: That’s new Australian PM Scott Morrison (nickname ScoMo) on the far right. He is offering detergent (a play on a popular detergent called Omo) to his main challenger that lost, Peter Dutton (middle). On the left might be James McGrath, a Turnbull supporter that turned against him (Turnbull). The ‘big on whiteness’ might be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the almost-all white constituents in the Division of Cook that Morrison has been representing since 2007 before becoming Prime Minister. (At least I hope that is all that it is). [Source: The Weekend Australian; by cartoonist Liement].
Key moments from John McCain’s life. [Source: The Weekend Australian]Legendary US Senator John McCain (81) passed away on Saturday after a long battle with brain cancer. I did not agree with the man’s politics*, but he was a survivor, for sure. Even before he was shot down in Vietnam as a Navy pilot, there was the 1967 USS Forrestal aircraft carrier fire disaster. And in his political career, he survived the Keating Five corruption scandal in 1989.
*There was that famous midnight thumbs-down for the ‘Skinny Repeal’ of Obamacare. But the reason McCain gave, was that it was not done by ‘regular order’. Or it could have been motivated purely by revenge against Trump, for disparaging him as a war hero.
There are many more revealing details about his life in this article that Tim Dickinson wrote for Rolling Stone in 2008 when McCain ran against Obama.
Whoah. There is now irrefutable evidence that Trump conspired to influence (read: steal) the election in November 2016. (And this does not even involve the Russians or the June 2016 Trump tower meeting).
Per sworn testimony in court today: Trump instructed his ‘fixer’ personal lawyer Michael Cohen to pay hush-money to two women in October of 2016, so that they would not reveal their sexual relationships with him. This was in the wake of the tape with the infamous Billy Bush ‘locker-room’ banter. Then Trump lied about it on Air Force One, saying that he doesn’t know anything about it. (Sidenote: Trump lies to everyone, and his supporters lie to themselves).
Meanwhile, over in Virginia, the jury found Paul Manafort guilty on 8 of 18 charges today. There are now five close Trump associates that have plead guilty or have been found guilty. (‘I hire the best people’). They are National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, Campaign Aide George Papadopoulos, Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, Deputy Campaign Chairman Rick Gates, and Personal Lawyer Cohen.
What should happen next, is that the Republican-controlled House and the Senate hold hearings, and then start impeachment proceedings.
I’m not holding my breath, though.
.. in the Manafort* case. They have been deliberating for two days, and will resume on Monday. Court-watchers say that if the deliberations drag on into Wednesday, there would be cause for concern.
‘If Trump pardons Manafort (after maybe having promised a pardon to get him not to cooperate) and gets away with it, then we’re in a banana republic. We just are’. – Senator Chris Murphy (Connecticut)
*Paul Manafort (69), Trump’s ex-campaign manager. The jury is deciding his guilt or innocence on 18 tax and bank fraud charges, related to his consulting work for pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine.
The evidence presented against Manafort is very strong. His defence lawyers really did not have much to work with. So why did Manafort not make a plea deal with Special Investigator Robert Mueller? is the question. He very well might spend the rest of his life in jail.
President Trump could offer him a pardon (which would be pretty outrageous, to be sure).
Asked about it, Trump said ‘I don’t talk about that. I think it’s very sad what they’ve done to Paul Manafort’.
The 6th floor in Seattle Central Library houses large collections of bound magazines, some more than 100 years old.
Oops! I realized today, my library books are overdue, better take them back. I hopped on the bus to the Seattle Central Library downtown. Mission accomplished as far as returning the books, I meandered through the treasure trove of magazine racks on the 6th floor. Hmm, here’s Weyerhaeuser World magazine. I worked there for four years, when I first came to the Seattle area, so let’s see what happened in 1969.
Check it out below: a report of a student protest at the University of Washington here in Seattle. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) protested against American imperialism – in the time of the Vietnam war and all that, after all. This protest was specifically against Weyerhaeuser’s ‘exploitation of 12 million black South Africans’. I’m not sure if the workers deemed not to be paid fair wages, or if it was about their working conditions. It could have been both. For a long time in those years, wage earners in South Africa, especially in the mining industry, were treated very unfairly.
Anyway: the SDS splintered up and disbanded at the end of 1969, but was an important influence on student activist groups in the decades that followed. A new incarnation of SDS was founded in 2006. My advice to young people: protesting is fine and well, but the nature of the beast is : youreally have to vote. Only 40% of eligible voters typically vote in midterm elections. For young people, it could be as low as half that again: 20%.
Trump’s ex-senior advisor Omarosa* must have struck a nerve, the way he viciously lashed out at her, in a tweet this morning. Who talks like this? Is this the way a President should talk? asked journalists of Press Secretary Huckabee-Sanders. Her answer was basically that Trump is an equal-opportunity insulter.
Mr President: your term will end, or you will be impeached – and then many of us (most of us) will celebrate in the streets, all over America. And then these tweets will remain as a monument to the classless and ugly President you have been, every single day.
*Her full name is Omarose Manigault-Newman. She became famous on Trump’s Apprentice reality TV show. She was fired from the White House in December 2017. It turned out she has a recording of the firing, done by Chief of Staff John Kelly in the Situation Room. She says she has other recorded conversations, as well. She has also just published a book called ‘Unhinged’ .. a reference to Trump, of course.
Perhaps the art world’s most iconic blue wave: ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’, Katsushika Hokusai’s most famous print (early 1830s); the first in the series ’36 Views of Mount Fuji’.
So .. 90 days now, until the 2018 midterm elections. Political pundits point to all kinds of special elections the past 18 months, as evidence that a lot of Republicans will be run out of office (enough to make the Democrats the majority in the House of Representatives). In many cases where Republicans had a 10 or 15% advantage before Trump’s election, that is now all gone. In places that used to be a toss-up – well, those will go blue (Democratic).
Time is running out for Special Investigator Mueller to make some radical moves ahead of the election. If he had not issued a report or more indictments by Labor Day (Sept. 3), he will have to wait until the election is over (Nov. 6).
In the meantime, the Trump Administration scandals never stop. Today: early Trump 2016 endorser, New York Republican Congressman Chris Collins. He was indicted for brazen insider trading crimes. (Got confidential news of a failed drug trial, developed by a company he had shares in, and was a board member of*. Frantically dialed up his family and told them to sell their shares).
*Just an aside: why are members of Congress allowed to sit on boards of publicly traded companies?
The Ohio 12th District is a closely watched special election that was held on Tue Aug 7. Republican Troy Balderson is barely in the lead against his Democratic opponent. No matter: Trump tweeted that Balderson had won, and that his (Trump’s) uninvited visit there to stump for Balderson, made a huge difference (it did not). This is a special election for a vacated seat, and these two contenders, Balderson and O’Conner, will be running against each other again in November. [Graphic from the New York Times].
(The plot thickens). Just tonight, it was reported by CNN and NBC that President ‘No Collusion’ Trump knew ahead of time (and presumably approved) the meeting that Don Trump Jr had had with the Russians, in June 2016 in Trump Tower. This was the infamous meeting to get ‘dirt’ from Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. The meeting first became public knowledge in the spring of 2017. Trump Sr repeatedly denied he knew about the meeting beforehand. Don Jr told Congress under oath, that his dad did not know.
Did Presidential Candidate Trump know that the Russians had hacked Clinton’s e-mail?Or tried to hack it, or planned to hack it? – and secretly sent his son to meet with them? If so – boom! that would surely be conspiring with the Russians against the United States, as well as seal the case for obstruction of justice.
Michael Cohen is Trump’s ex-fixer. Cohen’s office was raided and the FBI now has millions of records and about 100 voice recordings (from Cohen) to pore over. Here is Michael Cohen’s attorney saying that the Cohen camp did not leak the information that President Trump knew about the Clinton ‘Dirt’ meeting. So who leaked it? Someone on the Trump side? The plot thickens.
First of all, Trump should have canceled the meeting with Putin (after the FBI’s indictment on Friday, of 12 Russian agents, for hacking the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee’s computers). That was too much to hope for, of course. So there he was: perfectly happy to stand next to Putin – the former KGB agent and a lying thug – and take his side, and throw the United States under the bus. (Tweeted this morning: Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!).
It really is hard to wrap one’s mind around: a President of the United States that grovels to Vladimir Putin.
‘The ego has landed’ says Friday’s Daily Mirror of Trump’s visit to the UK (and the Trump baby blimp is ready for take-off).
Can the visit from the United States President-That-Is-A-Traveling-International-Embarrassment, be anything more than an exercise in damage control? (No). Trump’s visit coincides with turmoil in the UK around the proposed details of Brexit .. which (of course?) Trump criticized. President Stable Genius always knows best.
Trump wanted a ‘hard’ Brexit. (Does not care about NATO & European unity. Putin must be very happy). The deal that The Sun refers to is a new trade deal that would be needed post-Brexit between the US and the UK. Those other bullets on the bottom of the page are all Trump: make Boris Johnson PM (Johnson resigned as May’s Foreign Minister just on Monday, over May’s Brexit proposal); no immigration (does Trump know the word asylum?); all UK terrorism is London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s fault. Meanwhile, the USA has what I would call domestic terrorism – mass shootings – every other week: in high schools, in newsrooms, at concerts, in shopping malls.
(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:
