The Washington Post offers tips on how to keep your EV battery running in frigid temperatures. The link at the end of this graf is supposed to be a "gift link" (from me, Marie Burns, the giftor!), meaning that non-subscribers can read the article. Hope it works: https://wapo.st/3u8Z705
Monday
Apr292019
The Commentariat -- April 30, 2019
Late Morning Update:
John Wagner of the Washington Post: "House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that his panel would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding potential false testimony by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the private military contractor Blackwater and an ally of President Trump. 'The evidence is so weighty that the Justice Department needs to consider this,' Schiff said during a Washington Post Live event.... Schiff pointed to a meeting that took place nine days before Trump took office between Prince and a Russian financier close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles islands. Prince later told congressional officials examining Russia's interference in the presidential election that the meeting happened by chance and was not taken at the behest of the incoming administration.... Prince told special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigators a version of the Seychelles meeting that is at odds in several key respects with his sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017."
Emily Shugrman of the Daily Beast: "President Trump's latest rant about babies being executed after birth is riling up neonatal nurses, who say he's twisted the palliative care they provide for the sickest of infants into an anti-abortion rallying cry that could endanger health providers. Anna Schmidt, who has worked in a neonatal intensive care unit for five years, told the Daily Beast she was livid when she heard about Trump's comments at a political rally in Wisconsin on Saturday. 'The families that I've worked with, where I've handed them their babies for the first and last time, they don't deserve this kind of thing,' she told The Daily Beast.... Trump's remark was a continuation of his attacks on later abortions, which he describes as 'ripp[ing] babies from their mothers' wombs right up until the moment of birth.'... The nurses claim what they do is sensitive, personal, and has absolutely nothing to do with abortion." Mrs. McC: Trump is not attacking abortion rights; he is attacking grieving families & the neonates who never had a chance. See also Michelle Goldberg's column on Trump's remarks, linked below.
Let's Go to ... Romania! Michael Birnbaum & Ioana Burtea of the Washington Post: "The day before special counsel Robert S. Mueller III submitted his report to the Justice Department last month..., Brad Parscale, was ... delivering a paid speech to a room full of Romanian politicians and policy elites.... 'It appears the Trump political organization has learned nothing from 2016 about the dangers of senior campaign personnel's entanglement with foreign money,' said Trevor Potter, president of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.... I didn't know much' about Romania before, Parscale told the country's Antena 3 broadcaster during the visit. 'Romania seems to be a very pro-Trump country and a pro-America country, and that's why it's a great honor to come visit,' Parscale said.... Romania ... has been criticized for attempts to weaken judicial independence and labeled by Transparency International as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.... Parscale [told the Washington Post its story was ] '... yet another effort by the biased fake news media to systematically target another person in President Trump's orbit.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Parscale also said, "We did not grow up with the opportunity to travel internationally," so he was making up for that by travelling now. Yeah, well, growing up, I didn't have much of an opportunity to travel internationally, either, and I can tell you that I did not choose Romania as one of the first foreign places to visit when at long last I decided to see more of the world.
Scott Smith & Christopher Torchia of the AP: "Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó took to the streets with activist Leopoldo Lopez and a small contingent of heavily armed troops early Tuesday in a bold and risky call for the military to rise up and oust socialist leader Nicolas Maduro.... Lopez said he has been freed from house arrest by members of the security forces responding to an order by Guaidó, whom the U.S. and dozens of other governments recognize as Venezuela's rightful leader. As he spoke on a highway overpass, troops loyal to Maduro sporadically fired tear gas from inside the adjacent Carlota air base as the crowd of a few hundred civilians, some of them brandishing Venezuelan flags, scurried for cover. The crowd swelled to a few thousand as people sensed what could be their strongest opportunity yet to overthrow the government after months of turmoil that has seen Maduro withstand an onslaught of protests and international pressure with the support of his top military command and allies such as Russia and Cuba."
~~~~~~~~~~
Jonathan Chait: "Last week, President Trump repeated his absurd claim that he had never called the Nazi protesters who descended on Charlottesville in 2017 'very fine people.' On Saturday, yet another white-supremacist attack, on a synagogue in California, demonstrated the point that Trump and his allies wish to obscure: Right-wing terrorism is a more extreme version of Trump's own political style. It draws inspiration from his ideas and some measure of protection from his political power.... Trump's rhetoric has excited and mobilized white supremacists because it teases the same theories that they make explicitly.... In contrast to his rhetoric about ISIS or other Islamist terrorism, which he insists must be labelled Islamic, Trump shrinks from placing white-supremacist terror in its ideological context. Just a handful of crazy nuts with big problems.... Republicans do not wish to defend white supremacists, but they feel enough kinship with them to treat them as political allies and to consider measures directed against them as a shared threat. The way you can tell Republicans are soft on white-supremacist terrorism is that white-supremacist terrorism is a partisan issue." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Chait writes, "Trump is not a white supremacist; if I showed you a block of text from one of his speeches side by side with a speech by David Duke, you would be able to tell the difference." Maybe so. But I disagree with the operative statement that Trump is not a white supremacist. As Andrew Gillum famously said of Ron DeSantis, "I'm not calling Mr. Desantis a racist. I&'m simply saying the racists believe he's a racist." Trump has called himself a "nationalist" & excused white supremacists as "very fine people," something he said last week was a "perfect answer" to a reporter's question about the, uh, history buffs marching on the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville. It's true that Trump is not directly murdering people of color on Fifth Avenue, but few white supremacists are murderers.
The Trump Scandals, Ctd.
Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "Rod Rosenstein..., who has run the Justice Department's day-to-day operations for most of the Trump presidency, submitted his resignation to the White House on Monday. The letter said he will stay on until May 11. In the letter, Rosenstein thanked ... Donald Trump — who once retweeted a picture of him behind bars -- for 'the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations.' Rosenstein also made what appears to be a vague allusion to special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. 'Our nation is safer, our elections are more secure, and our citizens are better informed about covert foreign influence efforts and schemes to commit fraud, steal intellectual property, and launch cyberattacks,' he wrote.... At the end of the letter, he discussed the importance of protecting the Department from political influence -- which Trump himself has often tried to exert, as the Mueller report detailed. '[T]he Department bears a special responsibility to avoid partisanship,' he wrote. 'Political considerations may influence policy choices, but neutral principles must drive decisions about individual cases.'" ...
... Here's Rosenstein's sycophantic letter of resignation. A team player! He's sure to get a very lucrative gig at a top Washington law firm!
Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump, his three eldest children and his private company filed a federal lawsuit on Monday against Deutsche Bank and Capital One, in a bid to prevent the banks from responding to congressional subpoenas. In the suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, the president and his family members argue that the Democratic House committee leaders who issued the subpoenas engaged in a broad overreach.... Representative Maxine Waters of California, the chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee, and Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, called the lawsuit 'meritless' in a joint statement, and said it demonstrated 'the depths to which President Trump will go to obstruct Congress's constitutional oversight authority.'" Mrs. McC: The Trumps surely are afraid of something. We already learned from Michael Cohen & other reporting that Trump & Co. grossly inflated their assets in financial statements submitted to lending institutions. So what else?
Why Does Bill Barr Fear Congressional Lawyers? Manu Raju & Jeremy Herb of CNN: “The House Judiciary Committee is moving forward with its plan for staff attorneys to question Attorney General William Barr at a Thursday hearing on special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, even as the attorney general is threatening not to attend the hearing over the proposed format. House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, scheduled a Wednesday committee vote to allow an additional hour of questioning at Thursday's hearing. The vote would allow members or staff to question Barr during the extra hour, which would be divided between Democrats and Republicans. But Barr has objected to a format that allows staff to ask questions." ...
... AP: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Attorney General William Barr will be 'obstructing Congress' if he chooses not to appear before the House Judiciary Committee.... Pelosi says the attorney general or any other witnesses can't 'tell the committee how to conduct its interviews.' She adds, 'The attorney general of the United States is not the president's personal lawyer, and he should act as the attorney general of the United States and honor his responsibilities.'"
Rachel Bade & Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "Frustration among House Democratic investigators is intensifying after President Trump's refusal to cooperate with congressional inquiries, leading some to privately question whether they should try to pressure Speaker Nancy Pelosi into launching impeachment proceedings. The chairmen and members of the six panels investigating the president are increasingly angered by the White House's unwillingness to comply as they carry out their oversight role.... 'The Mueller report and this assault on the legislative branch made Nancy's call to avoid impeachment much more difficult for rank-and-file members,' said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), a member of the Oversight Committee. 'We've moved from [Trump's] culpability laid out in the Mueller report to an assault on the institution and constitutional framework that is the legislative branch.' During a House leadership meeting Monday night, Pelosi (Calif.) argued Trump was 'making the case' for obstruction with his own actions but also urged Democrats to be prudent in focusing on the agenda."
Ben Wittes of Lawfare does a close reading of the Mueller report. He concludes: "The president committed crimes.... The president also committed impeachable offenses.... Trump was not complicit in the Russian social-media conspiracy.... Trump's complicity in the Russian hacking operation and his campaign's contacts with the Russians present a more complicated picture.... The counterintelligence dimensions of the entire affair remain a mystery."
Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker, on the eve of Michael Cohen's incarceration, recounts Cohen's part in the Trump scandals. "F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, about the fictional Buchanan family, that they 'smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.' For a decade, Michael Cohen cleaned up Donald Trump's messes. He embraced Trump so uncritically that he wound up committing crimes on his behalf. Thus far, Trump, like the Buchanans, has escaped the wreckage he leaves behind."
Darren Samuelsohn, et al., of Politico: "... Robert Mueller notched yet another legal victory on Monday even though his Russia investigation is over, as a federal appeals court rejected a bid to reexamine a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of his appointment. In a one-sentence order, a three-judge panel from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals turned back a request for a rehearing of a case it decided in February arguing that Mueller should have been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Separately, the D.C. Circuit on Monday also denied a petition for a rehearing before the full court."
Do Not Speak to Donald Trump. He Will Lie about What You Said. Ken Meyer of Mediaite: "Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano accused ... Donald Trump of mischaracterizing their conversations when the president took a torch to him over the weekend. On Saturday, Trump attacked the 'dumb legal argument' from Napolitano, accusing the Fox analyst of requesting a Supreme Court appointment and asking for a 'pardon for his friend.' The tweets were a retaliation to Napolitano's commentary on how Robert Mueller's report revealed 'unlawful, defenseless and condemnable' actions from Trump that amounted to obstruction of justice.... Napolitano said ... when [Trump] was president-elect..., Napolitano said that when he described how Neil Gorsuch had the judicial qualities Trump was looking for [in a Supreme Court justice], the president-elect supposedly turned to him and said: 'sounds like you're describing yourself.'... Napolitano said Trump once asked for his opinion about the conviction of a 'mutual friend' of theirs. Napolitano said he thought that the conviction was just, to which, Trump offered 'a very strong term' to express his disagreement."
Zolan Kanno-Youngs & Caitlin Dickerson of the New York Times: "President Trump on Monday ordered new restrictions on asylum seekers at the Mexican border -- including application fees and work permit restraints -- and directed that cases in the already clogged immigration courts be settled within 180 days. In a memo sent to Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security, and Attorney General William P. Barr, the president took another step to reshape asylum law, which is determined by Congress, from the White House. The restrictions do not take effect immediately. Mr. Trump gave administration officials 90 days to draw up regulations that would carry out his orders.... The memo did not make clear how the plans would be carried out in immigration courts. More than 800,000 cases are pending, with an average wait time of almost two years. The Trump administration added to that backlog when it directed immigration authorities to reopen thousands of nonviolent removal cases.... After the memo's release on Monday night, Julián Castro, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and former Obama administration housing secretary, called the orders 'truly sickening.' 'Families are fleeing violence and turmoil to seek refuge at our borders and Donald Trump wants to charge them a fee to gain asylum,' he said on Twitter."
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I'm not convinced Trump can get away with this, since it's Congress, not the executive branch, that sets immigration policy. Adding "application" & work permit fees for asylum-seekers seem to be material changes to existing laws. Of course Bill Barr likely will jump in with some fake "justification" for Trump's "sickening" unilateral move. Also, do these asylum fees apply only to immigrants coming in via the Mexican border? What about asylum-seekers who apply at a Canadian border crossing or at airports or elsewhere? If Trump's order applies only to people coming in via the U.S.-Mexico border, this looks like a clear case of racial discrimination.
Ryan Devereaux of The Intercept: "[In] mid-June [2018, LookingGlass Cyber Solutions, a Virginia-based firm] gathered information on more than 600 demonstrations across the country [protesting the supposed 'zero tolerance' policy of separating migrant children from their families], information that was then shared with DHS and state-level law enforcement agencies.... For immigration attorneys working with families directly impacted by the administration's 'zero tolerance' regime, news of protests being monitored makes an ugly situation even worse. 'The public rightly expressed outrage when they learned of the Trump administration's shocking policy of ripping children away from their parents,' Lee Gelernt..., lead [ACLU] attorney in a lawsuit challenging family separation, told The Intercept. 'They'll again be outraged to learn that, rather than focusing resources on reuniting these families, the administration was instead spying on them for expressing themselves.'" --s
The "Sickening" Liar. Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times: "As his raucous crowd booed and screamed, Trump described a hideous scenario that he insists Democrats approve of. 'The baby is born,' said Trump. 'The mother meets with the doctor, they take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully' -- at this, he seemed to mime rocking an infant -- 'and then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.' He made a chopping motion with his hand.... It's tempting to ignore the president's mendacity, since, as with so much of Trump's malicious propaganda, it's hard to counter it without amplifying it.... Besides their potential to inspire violence, Trump's words are a cruel insult to parents who have to make agonizing decisions about end-of-life care for babies that are born extremely prematurely, or with serious anomalies.... It's hard, after all these months, to get worked up about Trump's fantasies, but there are still people in America unbalanced enough to believe their president tells the truth." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: It's worth noting that Trump, according his own statement, used to be "very pro-choice." Trump's lies about late-term abortion don't come from some fanatical but principled stand; they're nothing but incendiary political opportunism. And the cheering crowds? You can bet some among them had, or caused to be carried out, abortions.
Julian Borger & Patrick Wintour of the Guardian: "Egyptian and Emirati influence on Donald Trump has thrown US policy on Libya into turmoil at a moment when Tripoli is under attack and the country is on the brink of a full-scale war once again. The state department went from encouraging a UN security council resolution calling for a ceasefire ... to threatening to veto the same resolution a few days later. The sudden change of policy followed a Trump meeting with Egyptian leaderAbdel Fattah al-Sisi, and a phone conversation with the Abu Dhabi crown prince, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, [Libyan warlord, Khalifa] Haftar's principal backers. They persuaded him to call Haftar and to then issue a statement praising him, diplomats and a former official said. According to Bloomberg news, Trump and his national security adviser, John Bolton, expressed support for Haftar's offensive, directly contradicting a formal statement a few days earlier from the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo." --s ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I've been wondering for a week why Trump capriciously upended U.S. policy on Libya. Now we know. Needless to say, "because some dictators wanted me to" is a horrible way to make international policy decisions. But that is exactly how it's happening. It's not clear to me that Trump consulted Bolton before he expressed his support for Haftar. Sorry, GOP, this is worse than Benghaaaazi! where a young diplomat made a mistake that led to his own death of that of three other Americans. This is the POTUS* -- with a vast intelligence & policy-making apparatus at his disposal -- ignoring (or unaware of) all that & instead taking the advice of regional dictators. ...
... AND that's not the only topic on which al-Sisi got Trump to try to change U.S. policy:
... Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "The Trump administration is pushing to issue an order that would designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization, bringing the weight of American sanctions against a storied and influential Islamist political movement with millions of members across the Middle East, according to officials familiar with the matter. The White House directed national security and diplomatic officials to find a way to place sanctions on the group after a White House visit on April 9 by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, for whom the Brotherhood represents a source of political opposition. In a private meeting without reporters and photographers, Mr. el-Sisi urged Mr. Trump to take that step and join Egypt in branding the movement a terrorist organization.... But the proposal has prompted fierce debate within the administration, including at a senior-level meeting of policymakers from various departments convened last week by the White House's National Security Council, the officials said."
D. Parvaz of ThinkProgress: "On Monday morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked about the report that North Korea had billed the United States $2 million for the hospitalization of American student Otto Warmbier.... Pompeo ... neither confirmed that the bill was issued, nor denied that an agreement was made.... According to a Washington Post report last week..., Donald Trump had reportedly signed an agreement* ... to pay Pyongyang the money.... But on Friday..., Trump tweeted about it. 'No money was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, not two Million Dollars, not anything else.'... But two days later...,John Bolton ... speaking on Fox News Sunday ... contradicted the president, saying that he was 'told' that an agreement was, in fact, made via a 'U.S. representative.'" --s ...
... * Mrs. McCrabbie: That's not quite true. According to the Post report, "... the main U.S. envoy sent to retrieve Warmbier signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions passed down from President Trump [via then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson]."
Juan Cole: "On Monday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted again that support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen is in the US interest.... While Washington plays political games, the situation has become the most grave humanitarian crisis in the world, outstripping even Syria and Afghanistan.... Meanwhile, a new United Nations Development Program report is apocalyptic, concluding that 233,000 people have died in the war, with 102,000 combat deaths and 131,000 indirect deaths owing to lack of food, exposure, etc. Over half the deaths consisted of children under 5. Mr. Pompeo, no 'national interest' is worth that." --s
Joni Is Not Enthused. Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "The White House is reviewing past writings by Stephen Moore, the conservative commentator whom President Trump plans to nominate to the Federal Reserve Board, amid criticism that many of his opinion columns denigrated women, and enthusiasm for his candidacy appeared to be waning among Republicans on Capitol Hill.... As they returned to the Capitol from a two-week recess, few Senate Republicans expressed outright support for Mr. Moore, who has suggested that he would bow out if a fight over his nomination posed a political problem for incumbents seeking re-election. 'I'm not enthused about supporting him,' said Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, who is one of those seeking re-election in 2020. 'Look at his writings! I'm not enthused. I'm a woman.'&"
Paul Krugman: "What the right's positioning on inequality, climate and now Russian election interference have in common is that in each case the people pretending to be making a serious argument are actually apparatchiks operating in bad faith. What I mean by that is that in each case those making denialist arguments, while they may invoke evidence, don't actually care what the evidence says; at a fundamental level, they aren't interested in the truth. Their goal, instead, is to serve a predetermined agenda.... The public deserves to know that the big debates in modern U.S. politics aren't a conventional clash of rival ideas. They're a war in which one side's forces consist mainly of intellectual zombies."
Presidential Race 2020
Coalition of the Cautious. Joe Biden seems to be assembling a coalition combining 'People who'd just be more comfortable with an older white guy' and 'People who figure other people would just be more comfortable with an older white guy.' -- Paul Waldman, in a tweet ...
... Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Joseph R. Biden Jr. used his first address as a presidential candidate Monday to sketch out his economic plans, vowing to rebuild the country's middle class in a state that helped hand President Trump the White House three years ago. Appearing in a Teamsters hall, Mr. Biden scorned corporate greed, pledged to revive unions and said the minimum wage should be lifted to $15 an hour nationwide. He also centered his message squarely in the state of his birth, telling a few hundred supporters who greeted him with 'We Want Joe' chants that Pennsylvania is key to Democrats' chances of reclaiming the White House."
Lachlan Markay, et al. of The Daily Beast: "A Republican source told The Daily Beast that lobbyist Jack Burkman and internet troll Jacob Wohl approached him last week to try to convince him to falsely accuse [Democratic presidential candidate Pete] Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, of engaging him sexually while he was too drunk to consent. The source who spoke to The Daily Beast said Burkman and Wohl made clear that their goal was to kneecap Buttigieg's momentum in the 2020 presidential race. The man asked to remain anonymous out of a concern that the resulting publicity might imperil his employment, and because he said Wohl and Burkman have a reputation for vindictiveness.... The source provided The Daily Beast with a surreptitious audio recording of the meeting, which corroborates his account.... But after The Daily Beast contacted [Wohl & Burkman] last week, traces of the scheme disappeared from the web and social media." --s ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Read the whole post. The young man who appeared to have made the false claim against Buttigieg (a claim which it appears Burkman & Wohl wrote), has denied he knew anything about the charge & wrote a Facebook post saying that Buttigieg never assaulted him. P.S. to Stephen Moore: See, Stephen, you ignorant prick, this is what character assassination looks like.
Greg Bluestone of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Stacey Abrams said Tuesday that she won't run for the U.S. Senate in 2020 but left open the possibility she could launch a presidential campaign."
Kelly Weill of The Daily Beast: "The alleged killer at a Southern California synagogue this weekend worked alone, according to law enforcement, but behind him is a sprawling, digital network of white supremacists spurring each other on to murder.... The calls for violence also spread across fringe platforms like Gab, and messaging apps like Telegram. It's reminiscent of calls online for followers of ISIS and al Qaeda to strike out at the enemy, counter-terrorism experts said.... [O]ver the past six months..., at least three white supremacists announc[ed] attack plans on 8chan or Gab, before opening fire at Jewish or Muslim houses of worship. Three such attacks -- at a Pittsburgh synagogue, a Christchurch mosque, and at the Poway synagogue -- have killed a combined 62 people in the past six months." --s
"Capitalism is Awesome," Ctd.
Amy Harris & Shoshana Walter of Mother Jones: "A nationally renowned drug rehab program in Texas and Louisiana has sent patients struggling with addiction to work for free for some of the biggest companies in America, likely in violation of federal labor law. The Cenikor Foundation has dispatched tens of thousands of patients to work without pay at more than 300 for-profit companies over the years. In the name of rehabilitation, patients have moved boxes in a sweltering warehouse for Walmart, built an oil platform for Shell and worked at an Exxon refinery along the Mississippi River ... Cenikor's success is built on a simple idea: that work helps people recover from addiction. All participants have to do is surrender their pay to cover the costs of the two-year program. But the constant work leaves little time for counseling or treatment, transforming the rehab into little more than a cheap and expendable labor pool for private companies[.]" --s
Justin Elliott of ProPublica: "This week, we reported on how TurboTax uses deceptive design and misleading advertising to trick lower-income Americans into paying to file their taxes, even though they are eligible to do it for free. There's a new wrinkle: It turns out, Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, is deliberately hiding the truly free edition -- TurboTax Free File -- from Google Search.... 'It's deliberately saying: "Google, we don't want you here. Do not bring us traffic,"' said Jared Spool, a veteran web design and user experience expert." --s
Beyond the Beltway
California. CBS-LA/AP: "Federal investigators say a San Fernando Valley man was planning to detonate a bomb at a white nationalist rally in Long Beach. Mark Domingo of Reseda was arrested Friday on a charge of providing material support to terrorists. Domingo, a U.S. Army vet who served in Afghanistan, was arrested after he received what he thought was a bomb, but was actually an inert device supplied to him by an undercover law enforcement officer, federal officials said. In a news conference Monday, authorities with the U.S. Attorney's Office, FBI, and LAPD said Domingo discussed several types of attacks with an informant that included targeting Jews, churches and police officers and that he 'wanted to kill Jews as they walked to synagogue ... or attack crowds at the Santa Monica Pier'. He is also accused of plotting to place improvised explosive devices on L.A.-area freeways.... He said he wanted revenge for attacks on mosques in New Zealand that killed 50 people last month."
Way Beyond
Japan. Simon Denyer of the Washington Post: "Japan's popular Emperor Akihito formally abdicated on Tuesday in a short ceremony at the Imperial Palace, giving way to his son after the weight of official duties became too much for the 85-year-old. Dressed in a morning coat with his wife, Empress Michiko, just behind him, Akihito gave a short televised speech in the Imperial Palace's Pine Chamber or throne room, encapsulating the humble and peaceful values that marked his rule." ...
... Motoko Rich of the New York Times has a multi-episode report on Akihito, beginning here.
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Reader Comments (18)
... And I'll bet that, when it comes to a pregnant mistress, trump is as pro-abortion as it gets. And I don't mean pro-choice, because like everything else in trump world, the woman doesn't get a choice.
@Nisky Guy: I agree. I didn't write that in the body of the Commentariat because I don't KNOW Trump has forced any woman to get an abortion, but if his claims of his sexual activity are anywhere nearly true, it seems likely some unfortunate woman found herself in a family way with no family in sight, so Trump came up with a solution which involved a "medical procedure." Accidents happen.
Like everything that comes out of his fat mouth, it can be discerned when something has been written for him to say-- he can't read anything with the correct emphasis or phrasing, and even his tone changes, to that whiny sound that makes one want to slam him upside the head. He doesn't care a whit about babies (or children, for that matter, and we can point at his own neglected teenager) , and he has been tutored by a party which also only loves fetuses. Once babies are actually born, no one of his ilk cares, and if they are brown, then Yemen statistics don't matter and Central Americans are crammed into cages. Yup, the prez, his cabinet loonies, and the entire repugnant party are, "I assume, very fine people..."
The interactions between Trump and Andrew Napolitano are more clear evidence of Trump’s proclivities for lying, self-promotion, ass-covering, and projection.
I certainly don’t know either party personally, but given the fact that Trump is a proven pathological liar and I’ve never read of Napolitano being caught even fudging the truth, it’s not exactly a coin flip as to whom to believe.
As for the lie about a request to be made a Supreme Court justice, Napolitano’s version of events sounds eminently plausible and Trump’s sounds eminently, well, Trumpy, with a large helping of projection on the side.
Trump always thinks of himself first, before everyone and everything. He is always angling for a way to shove his way to the center of the stage ahead of all others (recall, if you will, those photo-ops of world leaders whereat Trump, originally in the back, elbowed his way to front and center, almost knocking over other heads of state to force his way in). Why, he must reason, doesn’t everyone else behave that way? Napolitano’s comments about Gorsuch must, therefore, have been his way of saying “What about me?”. I wouldn’t have thought that, but Trump did, right away.
That’s what he’d do, so that must have been Napolitano’s “less skillful” way of singing Trump’s favorite song “Me, me, me, me, me, what about me?”.
The ass-covering part is crystal clear. Trump is always ready to attack any and all who tell the truth about him, especially if that truth is, as the Sage of the Senate, Susan Collins is apt to put it, “unflattering”.
The bit about asking for a pardon on behalf of some mutual friend is more projection. Trump clearly, with his “very strong language”, demonstrated his own feelings on the matter quite clearly even if Napolitano didn’t agree. Besides, other opinions are invalid and not worth a second’s consideration if they differ from those of the Great Donald.
All in all, Marie’s advice is solid. Trump will lie about whatever you say, even if it was in public being recorded for broadcast. Don’t even talk to him. Even a “Good morning, Don” would be recast as some plea for special treatment, or the opening salvo for some cagey con to be revealed down the road. That’s how he’d do it. Everyone else must be equally shady, manipulative, and grasping.
What a horrible human being. It must be painful to be around such a human wrecking ball all the time.
Jeanne,
Your thoughts about how the Pretender presents himself (you're right; he can't read naturally; he sounds like a wind-up toy whose springs have lost their tension; his reading is jerky and perhaps because the material has been provided by someone else, he seems disinterested and even inattentive to the material he is reading) reminds me of a thought I had the other day about his more typical speech pattern when at his rallies he lurches randomly from one of his favorite "sets" to the next. That mode, as odd as it is to someone interested in content, seems his natural metier. Someone else much have said it somewhere, but I have come to call it "stream of unconsciousness." And since his admirers seem to eat it up, he must be speaking directly to their own unconsciousnesses. He surely connects with them in a way I don't begin to understand.
All I'm sure of it any thinking at all would wreck the effect.
Don't know if I'll get badk to RC today. so will say now that I'm again leaving the country and the net, this time for most of the next three weeks. Last time I left, I avoided most of the news for a two week stretch. This time I'll try to push it to three. Tough for an addict, but sometimes it's just gotta be done. Since I will be paying for the trip, and I'm told I will be bicycling up some hills, an activity which strikes me as real work, I'll think of it as a kind of news junkie Cenikor experience, tho' I don't hold out much hope that I will come home wholly "cured."
Dexter Filkins has written a long piece on John Bolton for the New Yorker and has titled it: "Bolton on the Warpath". Filkins gives us not only the history of Bolton's early beginnings and ascendancy into the political arena but fills us in on the machinations of previous administrations that Bolton had his big foot in. This is a fascinating read.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/06/john-bolton-on-the-warpath
A Western diplomat who knows Bolton well told Filkins:
" The trouble for Bolton is Trump does not want war. He does not want to launch military operations. To get the job, Bolton had to cut his balls off and put them on Trump's desk."
@AK: Yes, I would think it must be a strain to be around Trump especially if you have just a little part of your soul intact. How people who work for this monster manage to quell their frustration (and disgust?) is a mystery ( of course we did hear of voda shots and vaping being done behind closed doors).
Dear Ken: We will miss you but know you will be breathing some other air that will perhaps fill you with a different sense of "being."
Take care–-especially on that bike.
So I finally broke down and took a gander at the Rosenstein resignation letter.
Yeeks. Is he kidding with this stuff?
"The Department of Justice made rapid progress in achieving the Administration's law enforcement priorities -- reducing violent crime, curtailing opioid abuse, protecting consumers, improving immigration enforcement, and building confidence in the police -- while preserving national security and strengthening federal efforts in other areas."
Opioid abuse has been curtailed? Since when? Did I miss that amazing achievement? And protecting consumers? PROTECTING CONSUMERS??!? Last I heard, Mick Mulvaney had sent all the CFPB employees not hired with the Trump seal of approval to a gulag, set fire to the original mandate, changed the number to unlisted, and set office hours for the public to between 3am and 4am on every Wednesday during a total eclipse. Protecting consumers isn't the last thing on the Trumpy list. It isn't even on the list.
Oh yeah, and confidence in police? Seems like that's at, maybe not an all-time low, but certainly not anywhere near a level fit to brag about. He also goes on to say something about how the public now has great confidence that elections are free and fair. Sure, and Assistant Attorney General Vladimir Putin will make sure they stay that way.
So buh-bye Rod. You know what the worst thing about Rosenstein's departure is?
The toadying crook Trump will replace him with.
Ken,
Enjoy your time away from the maelstrom. And remember, get out of the saddle on those hills, it's the best way up. Have some fun!
Catch you when you return, Ken! I'm sure you will catch up handily then...
Rosenstein: the parts of the letter I have heard sound like the crapola flung around the table on the trump praise-a-thons with cabinet people! Stockholm, anyone???? Jeeeesus...
The story about spying on the child separation demonstrations is especially worrying because of the fact that border patrol created lists of advocats and lawyers to harass at several of the border crossings.
Krugman "The public deserves to know that the big debates in modern U.S. politics aren’t a conventional clash of rival ideas. They’re a war in which one side’s forces consist mainly of intellectual zombies."
Maybe CNN should change their name to the walking dead
with all the intellectual zombies they employ there. At least at Faux you know what you are getting. CNN pretends that they are trying to inform their audience. There is a reason that in the poll last week only 50% of people who watch CNN thought the Mueller Report showed Trump was unfit to be president compared to 83% of people who watch MSNBC.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/23/18512347/mueller-report-polling-fox-news-trump
Syzygy
Krugman's piece today helps to answer the question almost every sane person on the planet has been asking for the last three years or so, which is how in the holy hell Trump gets away with everything.
Krugman's point, that politicians and pundits and apparatchiks on the right don't care about facts or logical argument serves as the first step in a syzygy of chicanery that helps explain the acute Trumpitis afflicting the nation.
This initial position, that facts don't matter as long as a predetermined outcome can be obtained using whatever means are at hand (lying, making stuff up, invalid, willful negation of logical counter positions, etc.), is bolstered by several other conditions: a largely supine mainstream press, a right-wing media machine that presents its arguments as fair and balanced but will go to the ends of the universe to protect and defend whichever winger position is being threatened by facts and logic, the 24 hour news cycle in whose maw each new scandal disappears more completely than socks in the dryer, and a largely inert electorate which seems thoroughly confused and depressed most of the time.
The alignment of these conditions forms a perfect platform for the protection and structural support of a deceitful actor like Trump. So, you have a political party that doesn't care about facts as long as they can claim victory, one side of the press that tries to present itself as even handed but ends up bending over backwards to be fair to liars, the other side of the press which lies all the time, willfully and knowingly, a news cycle that spins so rapidly that it becomes impossible to keep up with each day's new outrages, and a large enough bloc of voters who have mostly given up.
All of these contribute to the difficulty of anyone or anything challenging a criminal and traitor like Trump. It's like a Petri dish for a horrible infection for which the strongest antibiotics barely make a dent.
And to top it off, two bodies that COULD intervene, congressional Republicans and the controlling Republicans on the Supreme Court, are both hopelessly infected.
The only hope, at this point, for the country, is democracy in action. If enough voters who aren't perpetually perplexed and intellectually logy go out to vote, there is a chance. A slim one, but a chance, nonetheless at curing this raging Trumpitis. Which is why Republicans and Trump will stop at nothing to make sure that voting becomes one of the most difficult rights of citizenship to practice, and barring that, will simply discount as many votes as possible.
Parting shot:
The Pretender displays so much pleasure picking on people, on his opponents, women, minorities, the poor, and now even reveling in the grue of imagined baby killing, he has demonstrated incontrovertibly that he is not only a terrible person, an awful president who is an embarrassment to the nation and more generally humanity, but a sad, sick, sadistic fuck who should be in an institution for the criminally insane.
The Mueller report missed that one.
On that note, it's definitely time for me to leave.
https://www.politicususa.com/2019/04/30/the-media-helps-trumps-power-grab-by-enabling-his-relentless-lies.html
The neonatal staff at the hospital where my family member tragically gave birth to a 4 month premature baby who survived for 20 minutes were incredibly sensitive and caring professionals. This happened 4 years ago but it is still pretty raw for me. Again, the healthcare professionals were wonderful while our family coped with the tragedy.
What is wrong with President Trump? What a benighted individual he is.
Donna,
So sorry to hear about your loss and that of your family, but it's good to hear that the medical staff was so caring and professional, especially for that poor little thing, the parents and the extended family, all severely tested by such a sad outcome.
What's wrong with Trump? It sounds like it could be a complicated question with an equally convoluted answer, as it might be for most normal humans. For Trump, the answer is very simple:
He.Doesn't.Care.
He doesn't give a shit about babies or families or the pain and suffering brought on by difficult pregnancies (or the migration of families running from beatings and murder) and the agonizing choices presented to hard-pressed women. He.Doesn't.Care. (Recall, for a moment, his avowed and well documented disgust at the sight of pregnant women. For most dads-to-be, it's the most wonderful thing they've ever seen, the greatest thing they've ever been a part of in life. Not for Trump. It's gross and disgusting and time to find another non-pregnant hot new babe to bang.)
The only pain Trump cares about is his own imaginary suffering. He has lived his entire life in the soft hammock of fake-bone-spur luxury, he has had everything handed to him, all that adds up to a life of superb comfort and extravagance. Thus, the slightest discomfiture, such as someone not kowtowing to his ignorance, or not acquiescing to his intemperate, dissolute lifestyle, is interpreted as extreme suffering and degradation not to be countenanced under any circumstance, and a reason for no-holds-barred attacks.
He is a braggart, a coward, a lowlife, a serial philanderer, and a disgustingly amoral opportunist who sees the suffering of others as naught more than a lucky occurrence for him, a chance to make himself out to be a great man by sniffing around the edges of human pain like a dog eviscerating a dead rabbit.
What's wrong with him? Let me count the ways. No. On second thought, it would take days.
What's wrong with him--the short version--is that he is a sterling example of a shameless, indecent, corrupt, depraved, inhuman asshole, whose concern for other human beings stops dead at the point where they--and their very real sufferings--no longer serve his interests.
He.Doesn't.Care.
Akhilleus, agreed!