The Commentariat -- April 15, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Just got a call from my accountant. She estimates that, all things being equal, my taxes will go up $4,000 next year. So Trump, the fake billionaire will get a multi-million-dollar tax break while Marie, the relativelely poor widow, will pay several thousand more in taxes. Thanks, Trump. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Mitch. Fuckers. -- Marie

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Barbara Bush, the wife and mother of presidents who has long been among the most popular members of her famous family, has decided to stop seeking medical treatment to prolong her life as she faces a variety of ailments, people close to the family said on Sunday. Mrs. Bush, who is 92 and frail, has been in and out of the hospital but has now forsworn further interventions and 'will instead focus on comfort care,' according to a statement issued by her husband's office in Houston."

It's a Gloomy Day in D.C., & the Twitterbird-in-Chief Is Stuck in the White House. Phil McCausland of NBC News: "... Donald Trump fired off a barrage of angry tweets early Sunday morning, directing much of his ire at the the former head of the FBI, whom he called 'the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!'... Trump's tweets included numerous allegations that are unproven and unverified.... 'I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty. I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies. His "memos" are self serving and FAKE!'... Trump dedicated most of his morning to Comey, whom he called a "Slimeball!" in his first tweet.... 'The big questions in Come's badly reviewed book aren't answered, like how come he gave up classified information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give server to the FBI (why didn't they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabe's $700,000 & more?' Trump tweeted.... 'Comey throws AG Lynch "under the bus!" Why can't we all find out what happened on the tarmac in the back of the plane with Wild Bill [Clinton] and Lynch'" Trump wrote, referring to a summer 2016 meeting between Lynch and former president Bill Clinton. 'Was she promised a Supreme Court seat, or AG, in order to lay off Hillary. No golf and grandkids talk (give us all a break)!'" Here's Trump's Twitter feed.

Wag the Dog???

Last night the President put our adversaries on notice: when he draws a red line he enforces it. (Inside the Situation Room as President is briefed on Syria - Official WH photos by Shealah Craighead) pic.twitter.com/GzOSejdqQh -- Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) April 15, 2018

... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: So what's wrong with this picture? Sanders tweeted it out on Saturday, announcing that "Last night the President put our adversaries on notice...." And who's the guy sitting on the right hand of the Lord? Why, its mike pence. And where was mike pence on Friday night? In Peru. In another hemisphere. Everything about the Trump administration is fake. Did the U.S. really lob missiles at Syria? I'm beginning to wonder.

If you'd like to see a real picture of the President & his national security team in the Situation Room during an international crisis, here's one:

During the raid on the Osama bin Laden compound. Photo by Pete Souza./p>

     ... Update. Brenth Griffiths of Politico: "... Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended a Saturday night tweet from her official account, saying the message that contained an official photo of ... Donald Trump and his team being 'briefed' on Syria is not misleading. 'It's from Thursday meeting when he was briefed on Syria,' Sanders said in an email to POLITICO. 'So no, not misleading at all.'" Mrs. McC: Uh, you wrote, "last night" on Saturday, Mrs. Liarby. Did I miss an executive proclamation changing the order of the days of the week?

Carol Morello of the Washington Post: "Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday the United States will place more sanctions on Russia this week related to its support for Syria's chemical weapons program. Speaking on CBS News's 'Face the Nation' program, Haley said the sanctions are imminent, targetng Russian companies that have helped the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad make and deploy chemical weapons like those that spurred the United States and its allies to launch more than 100 missiles at Syria over the weekend." ...

... Liz Sly of the Washington Post: "Syrian President Bashar al-Assad praised Russian weaponry on Sunday as his government celebrated victory over rebels in the town where an alleged chemical attack took place, triggering U.S. airstrikes over the weekend. Assad made the comments during a meeting in Damascus with Russian lawmakers, who later told reporters that he was in a 'good mood,' according to Russian news reports. Footage of the meeting broadcast by state television showed an animated Assad smiling and laughing as he met with the Russians.... Despite claims by President Trump that the operation was an 'enormous success,' it is being interpreted in Syria as a win for Assad because the limited scope of the strikes suggested that Western powers do not intend to challenge his rule. The extent to which the volleys of cruise missiles set back Assad's chemical weapons program is also in doubt, because the Pentagon acknowledged that the strikes had not targeted all of the facilities involved in the development and production of such weapons."

Sitting in Starbucks While Black. Patricia Madej of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Philadelphia's mayor's office and Police Department have begun separate investigations into the arrest of two African American men waiting to meet an acquaintance at a Center City Starbucks on Thursday after a video of the incident was widely shared on social media, triggering national outrage.... The video, which was posted by Philadelphia-based author Melissa DePino on Thursday, shows at least six Philadelphia police officers taking the two men into custody without resistance. By 5 p.m. Saturday, the video had gathered nearly 4.3 million views.... In the clip, the two men can be seen being escorted from a table a the cafe in handcuffs while a white man, who has been identified as Philadelphia real estate investor Andrew Yaffe, asks why officers were called and attempts to explain to police that the two men were waiting for him.... DePino said she was told by Yaffe that the men were family friends of his and that they had been waiting to meet him about a real estate deal." Includes video.

*****

In case you think today is your last day to get your income taxes filed, it isn't. The filing deadline is Tuesday, April 17. You have actual slaves to the man to thank for that.

Helene Cooper & Ben Hubbard of the New York Times: "Defense Department officials said on Saturday that American-led strikes against Syria had taken out the 'heart' of President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons program, but acknowledged that the Syrian government most likely retained some ability to again attack its own people with chemical agents. Warplanes and ships from the United States, Britain and France launched more than 100 missiles at three chemical weapons storage and research facilities near Damascus and Homs, the officials told reporters, in an operation that President Trump and Pentagon leaders hailed as a success. 'A perfectly executed strike last night,' Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. 'Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Perfect! Trump is so stupid he doesn't understand the irony attached to Bush's "Mission Accomplished!" (In fact, Trump may not understand irony at all.) ...

... Benjamin Hart of New York: "Is Trump really unaware of 'Mission Accomplished's history and implications? Or is he just demonstrating that no matter what ahistorical thing he says, no matter how ignorant he demonstrates himself to be, no matter how much he contradicts himself, he'll still be labeled presidential for ordering an airstrike, while retaining an approval rating in the high 30s? It's probably the first one, but there's really no way of knowing." ...

... Carol Morello, et al., of the Washington Post: "The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations told the Security Council on Saturday that the United States is 'locked and loaded,' ready to launch another military strike if the Syrian government ever uses chemical weapons again. 'I spoke to the president this morning, and he said, "If the Syrian regime uses this poisonous gas again, the United States is locked and loaded,"' Nikki Haley said at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting called by Russia after the U.S. and allies struck three targets in Syria." "Locked and loaded"? Mrs. McC: Please, more inapt macho cliches. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Robin Wright of the New Yorker: "... Trump's strike was a tactical response that lacks a long-term strategy to help restore stability to turbulent Syria. A country that is the geostrategic center of the Middle East, Syria has been ravaged by seven years of a war that has killed an estimated half million people and displaced more than half of its twenty-three million citizens. The U.S.-led military operation did nothing to change those realities -- or even challenge Assad's brutal rule or his growing military grip on the country.... The operation could even produce the 'appearance of impotence' among Western nations. 'What damage did we really do?' [former Ambassador to Syria Ryan] Crocker..., asked. 'You can strike once, which we did. The second time around is less meaningful. The Syrians keep using -- chemical weapons -- 'and we say, "Naughty, naughty." It tees up a great opportunity for Assad to show how impotent and irrelevant we are.'"

Adam Davidson of the New Yorker: "We don't know the precise path the next few months will take. There will be resistance and denial and counterattacks. But it seems likely that, when we look back on this week, we will see it as a turning point. We are now in the end stages of the Trump Presidency.... The narrative that will become widely understood is that Donald Trump did not sit atop a global empire. He was not an intuitive genius and tough guy who created billions of dollars of wealth through fearlessness. He had a small, sad operation, mostly run by his two oldest children and Michael Cohen, a lousy lawyer who barely keeps up the pretenses of lawyering and who now faces an avalanche of charges, from taxicab-backed bank fraud to money laundering and campaign-finance violations."

Julia Conley of Common Dreams: "Nearly 250 former Justice Department officials have signed a letter posted on Medium, denouncing ... Donald Trump's months of attacks on the department and the investigation it is carrying out to determine whether Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election -- and whether Trump's campaign was involved in the interference -- and called on Congress to protect the rule of law.... The letter called on Congress to take action against Trump should he attempt to fire Rosenstein or Mueller -- as hundreds of thousands of Americans also pledged to take to the streets in protest if he does so." ...

     ... The letter from DOJ alums is here.

Chas Danner of New York: "Michael Cohen is denying a new McClatchy report which said that the Mueller investigation has uncovered evidence that he visited Prague in summer 2016, which, if true, may confirm one of the key claims made in infamous Steele dossier. Cohen, President Trump's longtime personal lawyer and fixer, tweeted on Saturday that the story was 'bad reporting, bad information and [a] bad story.' 'No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague,' he continued. 'I was in LA with my son. Proven!'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Unless Cohen visited his son for an extended stay in the summer of 2016, even this story doesn't hold up. McClatchy puts the time frame of his visit in August or early September -- so he might have gone any time during a five-plus-weeks period. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Mueller's stock just spiked. Does Trump have the guts to fire De Niro? Since Trump is so fond of cliches, what if Mueller stared down Trump & said,

... Laura Nahmias & Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Lawyers for ... Michael Cohen went to court Friday trying to stop federal prosecutors from getting at private material -- but wound up with a judge ordering them to disclose Cohen's client list in public. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood on Friday ordered attorneys for Cohen to hand over a list of Cohen's law clients and proof of their relationship by 10 a.m. Monday, so she can decide whether materials seized from Cohen's office by federal law enforcement agents last week should be protected by attorney-client privilege." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Tiny violin courtesy of safari.Tarini Parti of BuzzFeed: "Trump administration officials looking to escape to the private sector are getting a rude awakening: No one wants to hire them. Companies and firms who used to recruit from presidential administrations and brag when they were successful in poaching an aide are making the calculation that the risks of bringing on a Trump administration official outweigh the rewards, according to interviews with 10 current and former administration officials, top recruiters, and lobbyists who did not want to be named to talk candidly.... The leadership at a prominent, bipartisan Washington public affairs firm went as far as to make an active decision not to hire from the Trump White House because of the 'reputational risk' associated with it, a former White House official was recently told."

Jeffery Mays of the New York Times: "A lawyer nationally known for being a champion of gay rights died after setting himself on fire in Prospect Park in Brooklyn early Saturday morning and leaving a note exhorting people to lead less selfish lives as a way to protect the planet, the police said. The remains of the lawyer, David S. Buckel, 60, were found near Prospect Park West in a field near baseball diamonds and the main loop used by joggers and bikers. Mr. Buckel left a note in a shopping cart not far from his body and also emailed it to several news media outlets, including The New York Times."

Beyond the Beltway

Nasty Confederate Skinflint Says the Darndest Things. Alex Horton of the Washington Post: "Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) lashed out against teachers participating in a statewide protest Friday, saying educators exposed some of the 'hundreds of thousands' of children to sexual assault and drug use by walking out of class. 'I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today, a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them,' Bevin told reporters Friday evening after teachers swarmed the Capitol by the thousands over a battle to raise education funding in the state. 'I guarantee you somewhere today, a child was physically harmed or ingested poison because they were left alone because a single parent didn't have any money to take care of them.' 'Children were harmed -- some physically, some sexually, some were introduced to drugs for the first time -- because they were vulnerable and left alone,' he added." ...

... Yeah, well, those lazy, selfish, negligent, teachers who exposed the kiddies to every manner of depravity got a raise anyway. ...

... Bruce Schreiner & Adam Beam of the AP: "With the chants of hundreds of teachers ringing in their ears, Kentucky lawmakers voted Friday to override the Republican governor' veto of a two-year state budget that increases public education spending with the help of a more than $480 million tax increase. The votes came as thousands of teachers rallied inside and outside the Capitol, forcing more than 30 school districts to close as Kentucky continued the chorus of teacher protests across the country." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Comments

[Ken Winkes]

Maybe now Mr. Bevin will be working hard to raise pay for single parents so they can afford childcare in the event the teachers walk out again.... which could well happen, because I would guess that on a per capita basis, Bevin and his party still consider his state's teachers, even after their raise, pretty cheap babysitters.

[Akhilleus]

The rant against teachers in Kentucky by Confederste governor and former tax cheat Matt Bevin is more than your typical wingnut screed. It’s an assault of breathtaking intellectual dishonesty and viciously overwrought, Trump-style thuggery. Bevin is stating outright that because teachers had the temerity to stand up for themselves against his royal decrees against them and their families and financial futures AND against his attempt to further impoverish the capabilities of public educators (Bevin is all in on ignorant Betsy DeVos type corporate owned and run for-profit charter schools), they should be blamed for all the sexual and physical abuse visited upon children while they were at the state capitol and not in school.

The fact is, you could say the exact same thing about any day off, any snow day, any holiday, any weekend day. The sort of abuse blamed by Bevin on teachers is, too often, more representative of the culture instilled in mooching red states saddled with benighted Republican cultures of enforced ignorance and lack of family social safety nets.

Bevin can try, like Trump, to lash out at Americans finally fed up with winger policies who stand in the way of his further denigrations, but it is the truth that those policies and anti-democratic world views are far more responsible for the dirty state of much of the country.

Irresponsibly and falsely labeling teachers enablers of childhood sexual and physical abuse in a state that has handicapped so many of its residents by following and enforcing regressive wingnut policies is another example of the moral depravity of the Party of Traitors.

[safari]

Let's all take out our tiny fiddles and play a sad, sad song for all of Trump's "best people". Chernobyl comes to mind.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/tariniparti/trump-aides-jobs?utm_term=.cszGdKdLB#.jy2VDYDqa

[unwashed]

Here's something I never knew about rednecks.

[Marie Burns]

@unwashed: Nonetheless, the term "redneck" has other origins. I would say the coal miners adopted it, rather than coined it. But I also didn't know that about the miners.

[PD Pepe]

@Unwashed: found your link to the Guardian piece interesting–-thanks–-and this I did not know:

"In 1921, black, white and immigrant mineworkers took up arms to battle the coal companies that controlled and exploited every aspect of their lives. United, they wore red bandannas to identify each other in battle. They called themselves the “Redneck Army”.

[MAG]

Working in the fields was the story I'd always heard, but:

Note: there are many stories about the origins of the term "redneck". Most scholars agree that the term probably was originally used at least a century before the Mine Wars, to refer to southern farmers who were exposed to long hours in the sun while working in the fields...

For more: http://wvpublic.org/post/do-you-know-where-word-redneck-comes-mine-wars-museum-opens-revives-lost-labor-history#stream/0

[PD Pepe]

@Marie: Re: Pence in the picture. Seems to me I heard that he was flying back–-cutting his trip short so that he could be part of the shock and awe, but whether he returned in time to be in that meeting I don't know. Huckelberry's wee dig about the red line ––she did this in a presser several times––drives me crazy! It's never mentioned that after Obama drew that line he went to Congress to get affirmation and McConnell refused to bring it to the floor.

[Mrs. Bea McCrabbie]

@PD Pepe: Pence flew to Peru on Friday. According to Fox "News," "In Peru on Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence plans to address Latin American leaders on Friday's U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria, which were a response to last week's suspected chemical attack by the Assad regime.... [And I saw a clip on the teevee where he did just that.] Pence was at his hotel in Lima when Trump announced the retaliatory airstrikes on Friday night from the White House."

It's a long way from Washington to Peru. There's no way pence could have been in the Situation Room Friday night, absent a Christian miracle. AND if it turns out pence can be two places at one time, mrs. pence had better quit feeling so assured that she's in the room every time hubby meets with a female person.

[MAG]

And from the NYTimes: (https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/04/15/world/americas/ap-lt-pence-latin-america.html )
LIMA, Peru — Thousands of miles from home, Vice President Mike Pence was thrust into a new, more immediate, role on the world stage Saturday: explaining President Donald Trump's military strike in Syria to a summit of Latin America leaders.

Pence left Peru on Saturday evening and arrived home in Washington early Sunday.

[PD Pepe]

Pence in Peru: Looks like the info I heard was incorrect unless, as Marie imagines, through the magic of Christian chimerical our Vice Pence can be two places at once. Sometimes though, when you look at him always looking adoringly at Trump, he may just be putting himself in two places at once––"soon, very soon, I'll be standing in HIS place."