The Commentariat -- July 28, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

The "Mulvaney Discount". David Dayen of The Intercept: "There's a hot new trend in Donald Trump's Washington: the 'Mulvaney discount.' After pausing enforcement work when Acting Director Mick Mulvaney took over, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been on a relative tear.... But in at least three [civil settlements], CFPB has explicitly reduced the fine handed down against corporate offenders to a fraction of the initial amount.... 'A pattern is emerging of greater willingness [to discount fines] than we saw in bureau cases in the past,' said Christopher Peterson, former enforcement counsel of the CFPB during the Obama administration.... Peterson could only remember a couple of cases during the previous five years of the bureau's existence when fines were reduced. And in those rare cases, CFPB did so to maximize restitution to victims of fraud and abuse -- the smaller fine left more money for victims. Here, those victims are often being shortchanged." --safari

What is so disqualifying in [Brett Kavanaugh's] record from the White House that they would accede to the administration's wishes and ignore the precedent Republicans set in demanding exhaustive document productions by Obama nominees? -- Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Judiciary Committee member ...

... Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is escalating a battle with Democrats over documents tied to Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination, requesting that only some of the papers demanded by the minority be turned over. Grassley in a letter sent on behalf of the Judiciary Committee requested documents tied to Kavanaugh's work as a White House lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, but not tied to his work as staff secretary for the Bush White House. Democrats on the Judiciary Committee immediately criticized Grassley's decision, which came after days of rhetorical firefighting and a flurry of letters between senators.... Democrats argue documents from Kavanaugh's time as staff secretary are crucial for understanding his thinking on some of the most controversial policies of the Bush administration, including torture and surveillance."

David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: "A closely watched British parliamentary committee examining Russia’s exploitation of social media to try to influence elections has called for sweeping new regulations on tech companies, and has accused Facebook of providing 'disingenuous answers' to some questions while avoiding others 'to the point of obstruction. A report from the House of Commons panel, which is investigating 'fake news' on the internet, cited Facebook's resistance to disclosing information as evidence of the need for more stringent rules to hold social media giants accountable for content.... The panel -- the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee -- collaborated with the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington, which on Friday announced that it would hold its own hearing in the coming week on foreign influence operations over social media." ...

... ** The Big Picture. Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post: "A wing of the Republican Party is preparing to double down and support the Russian autocracy, which it believes, mistakenly, is 'Christian.' While the Pentagon and parts of the bureaucracy -- the State Department, the FBI -- certainly understand the need to push back in Europe, the White House certainly does not... Authoritarian tactics, from pressure on the media to pressure on the courts, clearly appeal to the party's base. This matters because [Mariia] Butina is at most the tip of the iceberg, one of the sillier, more junior players in a broader game. Far more important are Russian oligarchs bearing bribes or Russian hackers probing vulnerabilities in our political system as well as our electrical grid. To push back against them, as well as their equivalents from the rest of the autocratic world, we will need not only to catch the odd agent but also to make our political funding systems more transparent, to write new laws banning shell companies and money laundering, and to end the manipulation of social media. It took more than a generation for Americans to reject the temptations of communist authoritarianism; it will take more than a generation before we have defeated kleptocratic authoritarianism too -- if we still can."

Allan Sloan of the Washington Post demonstrates how Trump's tax-and-spend policies favor Republican-leaning states over blue states. For some reason, Sloan does think this is an unintended result. He points out how these policies pit Americans against Americans. Mrs. McC: That's the idea, too, isn't it?

"Capitalism is Awesome" Ctd. Michelle Conlin of Reuters: "Invitation Homes pitches itself as a singular landlord providing unprecedented ease and comfort for renters of its tens of thousands of single-family homes...As a Blackstone vehicle, Invitation Homes led Wall Street's charge into the single-family-home rental business, snapping up houses at fire-sale prices. After its merger last November with Starwood Waypoint Homes, another private-equity-backed foray into the market, Invitation Homes became the largest landlord of single-family homes in the United States by number of rental units...Affordable-housing advocates, real estate professionals and other critics of Wall Street's push into the rental market say.... Invitation Homes, like some of its Wall Street-backed peers, adheres to a business model that pressures it to lean hard on tenants to satisfy investors.... Industry critics say that to keep payments to bond investors rolling, companies like Invitation Homes must minimize maintenance costs and maximize rents and fees." A long piece filled with tenant horror stories. --safari

*****

Heather Long of the Washington Post: President "Trump cheered the [second-quarter economic] numbers Friday, holding an impromptu press conference outside the White House touting the 'amazing' growth from his tax and trade policies.... But economists cautioned the higher growth is likely a blip." See also NYT story in yesterday's Ledes. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Eric Levitz of New York: "... when the Commerce Department revealed Friday that the U.S. economy had grown 4.1 percent last quarter..., Trump assured Sean Hannity that the economy is 'going to get better'; that he will cut the trade deficit in half; deliver 8-to-9 percent GDP growth; and turn the projected $1 trillion budget deficit into a surplus. Conventional wisdom suggests that it is politically unwise for a president to promise a historically unprecedented (and nigh-mathematically impossible) economic boom. But when one remembers that Trump is perfectly capable of claiming credit for things that did not actually happen, his gambit starts to make a bit more sense." ...

... Eric Levitz: "That 4.1 percent growth rate is partially the product of temporary distortions in patterns of trade, and an ephemeral uptick in government spending.... Trump's various protectionist measures spurred a boom for U.S. exporters -- because foreign buyers were eager to stock up on American goods before their governments slapped retaliatory tariffs on such products.... Similarly, Congress's budget deal increased federal outlays by 3.5 percent in the second quarter, which also provided a short-term boost to GDP. Elevated levels of government spending should continue for a while longer, but economists expect its impact on growth to peak later this year. Meanwhile, private investment actually fell over the second quarter -- a development that contradicts the GOP's economic promises.... The Commerce Department's report offers some unambiguously good news. Consumer spending rose by 4 percent in the second quarter. And the report's revisions of 2017 economic data suggest that American households saved significantly more last year than previously believed...."

Trump Attacks the First Amendment, Ctd. Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump has sought repeatedly to punish journalists for the way they ask him questions, directing White House staff to ban those reporters from covering official events or to revoke their press credentials, according to several current and former administration officials. At various moments throughout his presidency, Trump has vented angrily to aides about what he considers disrespectful behavior and impertinent questions from reporters in the Oval Office and in other venues. He has also asked that retaliatory action be taken against them.... Until this week, the officials said, Trump's senior aides have resisted carrying out his directives. They convinced him that moves to restrict media access could backfire and further strain the White House's fraught relationship with the press corps, whose members the president routinely derides as 'fake news' and 'dishonest people.' On Wednesday, however, newly installed Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Shine and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders took action against CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins.... The move revealed a fresh willingness inside the West Wing to execute the president's wishes to punish reporters. It immediately drew a chorus of protest throughout the media, including from Fox News Channel, Trump's favorite network and Shine's former employer."

Putin Trolls Trump. Rebecca Morin of Politico: "Russia President Vladimir Putin on Friday said he invited ... Donald Trump to Russia for another face-to-face meeting -- a meeting the White House says Trump is open to.... The announcement comes two days after the White House announced it is delaying a second meeting between the two leaders." ...

... Jeff Stein of Newsweek: "Signs are that Vladimir Putin may already be hedging his bets on Donald Trump as a reliable tool for advancing several of Russia's key goals, including his drive to get U.S. sanctions lifted, sow chaos in America's elections and undermine NATO and the European Union, experts say. Following the controversial Helsinki summit between the Russian and American presidents, Moscow's media commentators greeted Trump's deference toward Putin with a mix of concern, pity and ridicule, none of which could have been uttered without the Kremlin's approval, , says Ukrainian-born Julia Davis, an expert on Russian propaganda." ...

... Fred Kaplan of Slate: "The latest example of seeking a rational template for Trump's bizarre behavior, in this case his Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is an article in the Daily Beast, reporting that it was Henry Kissinger who pushed Trump to revive good relations with Russia in order 'to contain a rising China.... It is hard to see how a budding U.S.-Russian alliance would contain China at all.... It's worth noting that Daily Beast's sources are mainly Trump administration officials. Their aim is clearly to present the president's actions as driven not just by a smart, rational strategy but by a Kissingerian smart rational strategy. Good luck on that.... Robert Mueller is looking into less intellectual roots for Trump's kowtowing toward Moscow."

Ken Dilanian of NBC News: "After nearly two years of calling Russian election interference a hoax and its investigation a witch hunt..., Donald Trump on Friday presided over the first National Security Council meeting devoted to defending American democracy from foreign manipulation.... But current and former officials tell NBC News that 19 months into his presidency, there is no coherent Trump administration strategy to combat foreign election interference -- and no single person or agency in charge. In [a] statement, the White House took issue with that, saying a strategy was put in motion when Trump took office. No such strategy has been made public -- or even mentioned before.... 'In a normal White House, there would be a point person on the National Security Council, to coordinate all the different agencies and to work with the states and the social media companies to make sure our electoral systems aren't so vulnerable to attack,' Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia ... told NBC News." ...

... Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "President Trump chaired a meeting Friday of his most senior national security advisers to discuss the administration's effort to safeguard November's elections from Russian interference, the first such meeting he's led on the matter, but issued no new directives to counter or deter the threat.... The meeting focused on the activities undertaken so far.... The meeting, which lasted less than an hour, covered all the activities by federal agencies to help state and local election officials, and to investigate and hold accountable Russian hackers seeking to undermine American democracy.... Ranking [House] Democrats on ... the Homeland Security, House Administration, Oversight and Government Reform, and Judiciary committees ... called on the White House to produce a 'solid plan of action.'"

Tom Hamburger, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Friday issued a fresh rebuttal against his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, maintaining that he did not know in advance about a June 2016 meeting in which Russians had promised to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton.... Cohen's credibility was immediately challenged Thursday evening by the president's current lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.... When asked if Trump would be willing to talk about the Russian meeting with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Giuliani said, 'I still have my doubts about the people around Mueller' and said the president's team remained undecided about whether to agree to a sit-down conversation with federal investigators about that topic and others. 'The president is willing to talk about anything, but it'd be wrong to subject him to that,' Giuliani said, adding that the Russian meeting 'hasn't come up in our conversations' with Mueller and his team." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... William Saletan of Slate points out how tentative were Rudy Giuliani's denials of Michael Cohen's claim that Donald Trump pre-approved the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russian operatives. ...

... Ramsey Touchberry of Newsweek: "Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are calling on Donald Trump Jr. to reappear before the committee and testify -- this time in public [and under oath]. This follows Thursday night's bombshell report that Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, claims the president knew in advance about a 2016 meeting between his aides and a Russian delegation offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont says Cohen's claims 'raise important questions,' according to NBC News.... Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein ... [said in] a statement ... that ... if recent reports were true, 'it would suggest that Donald Trump Jr. may have misled Judiciary Committee staff about the meeting when he was interviewed last fall. It further demonstrates the need to bring him before the committee to answer our questions.'" ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Cohen's apparent testimony merely fleshes the skeleton of a story we already knew. Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg has said, in an interview with Jake Tapper, that Trump knew about the meeting[.]... Steve Bannon has said the same thing. ('The chance that Don. Jr did not walk these Jumos up to his father's office on the 26th floor is zero.')... The night the meeting was set up (but before it took place), Trump excitedly told a crowd, 'I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we're going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons. I think you're going to find it very informative and very, very interesting.' After the meeting failed to produce the hoped-for dirt, the promised speech did not take place.... Trump, who has lied about his dealings with Russia so many times that his word has grown completely worthless, has to resort to the defense of pulling down the value of hostile witnesses to his own level.... The effort to impugn Cohen's credibility naturally impeaches Trump's own credibility." Chait just can't figure out why -- if Trump did nothing wrong -- he keeps lying about this stuff. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Brian Beutler of Crooked: "... someone is lying. And it's probably the guy who's been lying about the meeting all along. If forced to pick a side, I would pick Cohen's.... It ... strains credulity that Trump wouldn't know about a meeting that all of his campaign principals attended, or that he has walked back his initial denial over and over again, and the truth just happens to coincide on the last possible version of events that spares Trump himself any guilt.... The only thing we need to decide whose storyline is more plausible is to hold generous interpretations of both narratives up against one another and pick the one that fits the facts we already know most cleanly. It's Cohen's by a mile." ...

... AND There's This. Josh Marshall: "Mueller's investigators have focused closely on the fact that President Trump dictated a statement which was released in the name of his son Don Jr. about the meeting. It was a false cover story which quickly fell apart. He claimed [the meeting] was about adoptions.... Trump dictated that false statement, with the cover story about adoptions only hours after he had a one on one meeting with Vladimir Putin (with no other US persons involved) which was apparently also about adoptions.... If you put all this information together, there's a pretty strong case to be made that not only did President Trump know about the Trump Tower meeting in advance but that he concocted his false cover story with the assistance of Vladimir Putin." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Why, it's almost as if Vlad has been setting up Trump all along.

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Prosecutors plan to make their tax and bank fraud case against Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, by calling a string of accountants, bankers and luxury-goods vendors before a jury to demonstrate that Manafort's extravagant lifestyle was funded by offshore accounts he never disclosed or paid taxes on, a new witness list made public Friday indicates. Complying with a judge's order, special counsel Robert Mueller's team submitted a roster of 35 witnesses the prosecution may call at the longtime lobbyist and political consultant's trial, set to kick off next week." Gerstein names some of the potential witnesses. ...

... Theodoric Meyer of Politico: "New documents filed in court by Paul Manafort's lawyers appear to contradict his legal team's own claims that the former Trump campaign chairman's team only lobbied on behalf of the Ukrainian government in Europe.... According to prosecutors, Manafort and his longtime associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, pressed those involved in the lobbying campaign to stress that the effort was focused exclusively on the European Union.... Thursday';s documents ... seem to contradict Kilimnik's assertion that the Hapsburg group never lobbied in Washington."

Ken Klippenstein of TYT: "Close Trump associates have been quietly meeting with a controversial Iranian opposition group that was only recently removed from the U.S. terror list, TYT has learned. Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, and John Bolton, Trump's National Security Advisor, met with the group five separate times since Trump's inauguration, according to Justice Department documents reviewed by TYT. The documents were submitted to the Justice Department by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) -- MEK-s political wing -- under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, between July 20, 2017 and June 27, 2018. That group, the People's Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK for short, was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department until 2012, at which point it was removed from the State Department's terror list after an intense lobbying effort. The group was on the terror list for good reason: MEK has killed several American servicemembers and contractors; attempted to assassinate a top U.S. general; and attempted to kidnap the U.S. Ambassador to Iran, Douglas MacArthur II."

Donna Borak & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "The Trump administration is looking into lifting sanctions against a major Russian aluminum company founded by one of Vladimir Putin's closest allies. The Treasur Department is considering relieving Rusal of penalties even though its former owner, oligarch Oleg Deripaska, was sanctioned this year by the US in an attempt to punish the Kremlin for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election. The possible relief for Rusal comes as ... Donald Trump continues to deal with the fallout from his Helsinki summit with the Russian president.... Deripaska also has financial ties to Paul Manafort.... Democrats and Republicans urged Trump to ramp up sanctions -- not dial them back -- and strike at even more sectors of the Russian economy.... While seeking sanctions relief, Rusal has taken steps to water down Deripaska's involvement in the company.... The Treasury Department said a few weeks later that it was considering removing sanctions against the massive aluminum company after a surge in aluminum prices." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So let's see how this works. (1) Congress kinda forces Treasury to impose sanctions on Putin-pal Deripaska's aluminum company. (2) Trump imposes tariffs on aluminum imports from key allies Canada, Mexico & the EU, causing aluminum prices in the U.S. rise. (3) Treasury plans to remove sanctions on Russian aluminum company with ties to Putin because of rising aluminum prices. I'm sure there's nothing nefarious going on here -- like, say, Trump significantly altered world markets to help Putin.

Jonathan Blitzer of the New Yorker: "Earlier this week, attorneys with the Department of Justice provided [federal Judge Dana] Sabraw with a list of nine hundred and fourteen parents who were, in the words of a court filing, 'either not eligible, or not yet known to be eligible, for reunification.'... Some have been accused or convicted of a crime; others appear to have already been deported.... Still more, the government said, required 'further evaluation.'... On Wednesday night, the A.C.L.U. accused the Administration of planning to deport scores of parents immediately after they have been reunited with their children, before they could consult with lawyers to figure out what was best for them or their families. It's the latest crisis in Sabraw's court. In the meantime, the families whom the government has written off as 'ineligible' will continued to languish apart." ...

... ** Michael Grabell & Topher Sanders of ProPublica: "Using state public records laws, ProPublica has obtained police reports and call logs concerning more than 70 of the approximately 100 immigrant youth shelters run by the U.S. Health and Human Services department's Office of Refugee Resettlement.... [T]he records challenge the Trump administration's assertion that the shelters are safe havens for children. The reports document hundreds of allegations of sexual offenses, fights and missing children.... 'If you're a predator, it's a gold mine,' said Lisa Fortuna, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center. 'You have full access and then you have kids that have already had this history of being victimized.'" --safari ...

... Ari Honarvar of The Nation: "According to immigrant-rights advocates, a 6-year-old girl separated from her mother under the Trump administration's 'zero-tolerance' immigration policy was sexually abused while at an Arizona detention facility run by Southwest Key Programs. The child was then made to sign a form acknowledging that she was told to maintain her distance from her alleged abuser, who is an older child being held at the same detention facility. The girl, who is only identified by the initials D.L., and her mother had been fleeing gang violence in their native Guatemala." --safari

"Affordable Housing? Meh." -- HUD Secretary. Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "The country is in the grips of an escalating housing affordability crisis. Millions of low-income Americans are paying 70 percent or more of their incomes for shelter, while rents continue to rise and construction of affordable rental apartments lags far behind the need. The Trump administration's main policy response, unveiled this spring by Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, is a plan to triple rents for about 712,000 of the poorest tenants receiving federal housing aid and loosen the cap on rents on 4.5 million households enrolled in federal voucher and public housing programs nationwide.... As city and state officials and members of both parties clamor for the federal government to help, Mr. Carson has privately told aides that he views the shortage of affordable housing as regrettable, but as essentially a local problem.... When congressional Democrats and Republicans scrambled to save his department's budget and rescue an endangered tax credit that accounts for nine out of 10 affordable housing developments built in the country Mr. Carson sat on the sidelines...."

Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "In his first three weeks on the job, Andrew Wheeler, the acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has sought to halt two major efforts by his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, to roll back environmental regulations, arguing that the policies are legally vulnerable, according to people who have heard his reasoning. Mr. Wheeler's actions signal a strategic shift at the E.P.A., an agency at the heart of President Trump's push to strip away regulations on industry. Under Mr. Pruitt..., the agency pushed for ambitious but fast-paced rollbacks of environmental rules. At least a half-dozen of those have been struck down by federal courts. Mr. Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who served as Mr. Pruitt's deputy, has brought a more disciplined approach to dismantling environmental rules. It is an approach that may take longer, but it may be more effective in standing up to the inevitable legal challenges." See also links in yesterday's Commentariat. ...

... "The Resistance." Umair Irfan of Vox: "Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt's parting shot (or perhaps middle finger) to the environment ... moved to secure a loophole for some of the dirtiest, most polluting trucks on the road on his last day in office.... These trucks, known as 'gliders' ... can emit upward of 55 times the amount of pollutants of trucks that meet current standards. The Obama administration's EPA issued a cap of 300 new glider trucks per year that was supposed to take effect this year. Pruitt said the EPA would not enforce the cap until 2019 as it works to repeal it altogether. Environmental groups like the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defense Fund along with 16 state attorneys general immediately filed lawsuits.... In response, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a stay forcing the EPA to enforce the limit. And on Thursday, acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler ... conceded in a memo ;that the EPA is giving up the fight." --safari ...

... Mark Hand of ThinkProgress: "After less than a month on the job, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acting administrator Andrew Wheeler is already facing a call for an ethics investigation into allegations that he met with former lobbying clients when he was serving as deputy administrator. Wheeler, a long-time coal and industry lobbyist, met with former clients at least three times after being sworn in as deputy EPA administrator on April 20, E&E News reported Thursday." --safari

One of the Best People Has Left the Building. Dan Diamond of Politico: "Ximena Barreto -- a Donald Trump political appointee who used social media to spread conspiracy theories about a supposed pizza shop sex ring [run by Hillary Clinton & others] and made other inflammatory remarks [about President Obama & Clinton] -- was escorted from Health and Human Services Department headquarters Friday, according to an individual with knowledge of the situation.... After Barreto's posts became public this spring, she was placed on review and subsequently reassigned to HHS' Administration for Children & Families. Mrs. McC: Because Barreto seems eminently qualified to "help" children & families.

Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "The chair of the Republican National Committee [Ronna Romney McDaniel] complained on Friday morning that conservatives are being censored by Silicon Valley, citing the debunked conspiracy theory that Twitter and other net platformsBarack Obama explained.... McDaniel's party was outraged.... In an Orwellian 'Protecting Internet Freedom' section of the ... 2016 Republican National Committee platform, they vowed to repeal the protections and to allow companies to censor content as they saw fit.... When Donald Trump came in and appointed a new majority on the FCC, it moved quickly to kill net neutrality."

Tracy Jan of the Washington Post: "Melvin Watt, a former congressman from North Carolina who now heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is under investigation for allegedly sexually harassing a female employee. The woman, whose attorney said does not want to be named, has filed an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint alleging that Watt made unwanted sexual advances toward her on several occasions.... Watt said in a statement issued by the FHFA that he has not broken the law."

Senate Race. Samantha Michaels of Mother Jones: "The country's biggest private prison company may have run afoul of campaign finance law with a donation to Florida Gov. Rick Scott's campaign for US Senate, a campaign finance watchdog says." --safari

Alan Pyke of ThinkProgress: "Cities and states can refuse to answer questions from federal immigration officials, a federal judge ruled Friday in a decision that boosts resistance to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ... Donald Trump's crusade against immigrants -- and illustrates the contortionist flexibility of the law.... Less than a decade ago, it was Republicans and the far right who worshiped at the Tenth Amendment's altar, claiming that everything from Obamacare to the New Deal had violated the Constitution's controls on federal-state relationships.... Now, the same constitutional language that was invoked by Jefferson Davis fans to attack the country's first black president turns out to be useful to the most significant progressive bulwark against Trump's xenophobic cruelty."

Juan Cole: "You've seen the headlines. Dozens of people dead in Japan of heat stroke. Massive forest fires raging in Sweden. Dozens dead in Athens from wildfires. Record temperatures in Oman and Algeria. The world is suffering from heat waves on four continents all at once.... But now heat waves are twice as likely to occur as they used to, and this doubling is caused by you and me, according to a rigorous scientific study. You mostly won't be told this simple fact ... by corporate media. They report the more frequent and more intense heat waves, but do not for the most part tell you why they are happening. The corporations are owned by the rich, who have investments in Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, etc. If people realized that the product these companies sell daily is causing the earth to heat up dangerously, their stocks would suddenly become worthless. Corporate news is all about trying to prevent stocks from becoming worthless." --safari ...

... Scott Bransford, et al., of the New York Times: "Since 2012, according to [California] state emergency management officials, there has not been a month without a wildfire burning -- a stark contrast to previous decades, when fire officials saw the fall and winter as a time to plan and regroup. The recent historic drought and rising temperatures have heightened an already serious risk for widespread fires in the state.... Scientists say that severe wildfire seasons in California may occur more frequently because of climate change. Since the 1970s, temperatures have risen by two degrees Fahrenheit in the western United States." Mrs. McC: As you can see, the story does mention climate change -- in Paragraph 21. Most of the story is about the economic costs & human toll the fires take. ...

Julie Zauzmer of the Washington Post: "Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington and longtime globe-trotting diplomat of the Catholic Church, resigned his position as a cardinal, the Vatican announced Saturday. McCarrick, 88, was found by the church in June to be credibly accused of sexually abusing a teenager nearly 50 years ago. Since then, additional reports of sexual abuse and harassment by the cardinal, over a span of decades, have been reported. The victims include one then-minor and three adults, who were young priests or seminarians when McCarrick allegedly abused them."

Edmund Lee of the New York Times: "The CBS board of directors said on Friday that it would investigate allegations of misconduct against the company's chief executive, Leslie Moonves, the subject of an impending article in The New Yorker focused on claims about his behavior toward women. The statement, which did not specifically identify Mr. Moonves, was released after The Hollywood Reporter posted an article online saying that The New Yorker was poised to publish an article that detailed allegations of sexual misconduct against him. CBS shares fell by more than 6 percent after the report." ...

... Ronan Farrow of the New Yorker: "In recent months, [CBS CEO Leslie] Moonves has become a prominent voice in Hollywood's #MeToo movement.... But Moonves's private actions belie his public statements. Six women who had professional dealings with him told me that, between the nineteen-eighties and the late aughts, Moonves sexually harassed them. Four described forcible touching or kissing during business meetings, in what they said appeared to be a practiced routine. Two told me that Moonves physically intimidated them or threatened to derail their careers. All said that he became cold or hostile after they rejected his advances, and that they believed their careers suffered as a result.... Thirty current and former employees of CBS told me that such behavior extended from Moonves to important parts of the corporation, including CBS News and '60 Minutes,' one of the network's most esteemed programs.... Nineteen current and former employees told me that Jeff Fager, the former chairman of CBS News and the current executive producer of '60 Minutes,' allowed harassment in the division. 'It's top down, this culture of older men who have all this power and you are nothing,' one veteran producer told me. 'The company is shielding lots of bad behavior.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I can tell you from personal experience that "this culture of older men ... shielding lots of bad behavior" at CBS predates Moonves' career at the network.

Beyond the Beltway

Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times: "Sheldon Silver, the former speaker of the State Assembly who rose to become one of New York's most powerful politicians, was sentenced to seven years in prison on Friday for his conviction on federal corruption charges. Mr. Silver, a Democrat from Manhattan's Lower East Side, had served as speaker for more than two decades, and influenced nearly every major aspect of state politics. He was convicted in May after an earlier conviction, in 2015, was overturned on appeal."

Way Beyond

Alex Ward of Vox: "The UN announced that last year was the deadliest year for children in Syria since the war started seven years ago: 910 children were killed just in 2017 alone. And it looks like 2018 will be even worse: In March the UN said more than 1,000 kids were either killed or injured in just the first two months of 2018.... There are many reasons for the increase ... but the two main ones are a 25 percent in the use of child soldiers, and accelerated attacks on schools and medical facilities. All of that, of course, is illegal under international law." --safari

News Lede

AP: "In the small northern California community of Keswick, only a handful of homes remain. The air is thick with the smell of smoke and chemicals. The rubble of people's lives still smoldered a day after the so-called Carr Fire moved through Shasta County like a freight train. The flames so thoroughly ate up homes that it's difficult to tell how many once stood above the pile of ash and smoking rubble that remains.... At least 500 structures ... were destroyed by the fire, which also swept through the historic Gold Rush town of Shasta and hit homes in Redding, a city of 92,000 about 100 miles south of the Oregon border.... About 37,000 people ... remain under evacuation orders Friday. Nearly 5,000 homes in the area were being threatened by the 75-square-mile ... blaze, which is just 5 percent contained."

Comments

[PD Pepe]

To add another match to Juan Cole's tinder box, here is a PBS piece on these horrific wild fires (with video). In Judy Woodruff's introduction she says:

"and as Miles O'Brien reports climate change MAY (emphasis mine) be magnifying the problem in California and elsewhere."

Judy, Judy, Judy, I screamed, ––at very high pitch I may add–- not "may" but "IS"––and of course the report did indeed indicate that Climate Change was is a big factor.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/high-temperatures-and-dry-conditions-are-helping-wildfires-spread

[PD Pepe]

MichaelTomasky has written about the demise of the Republican Party, gives us a bit of history and then addresses it's current political face. Until today, he says, the R.P. remained committed to the basic idea of democratic allocation of power. Since the Civil War Democrats and Republicans have fought sometimes fiercely over their ideological goals, but they always respected the idea of limits on their power. But now that mounteback man on horseback, with unlimited power, who some have waited for, has finally arrived.

"It has often been written and I've written it myself, that the Republicans have been weak in the face of Trumpism. But I've come to think that's wrong. They're not weak at all. Most of them are perfectly happy to have become Trump's vassals. They were waiting for just such a man."

And he worries about the Supreme Court: Reminds us that during Watergate it was Lewis Powell, Nixon's own appointee, that ruled with the majority. He is not sanguine about outcomes now, especially if Kavenaugh lands on the bench. He sees no Cincinnatus among them.

[PD Pepe]

One more thing: Local news:
A Haddam,Ct. selectwoman knelt during the Pledge of Alliance at a recent town meeting. A state senator, a Republican running for state treasurer, had a hissy fit over this "disrespectful spectacle" and demanded that she resign. But his vitriol backfired. Ms Schlag received enormous support and best of all the editorial from the Hartford Courant" backed her wholeheartedly and said:

"Criticism of government is not only tolerated in this nation, it is welcomed and encouraged, that's what separates us from totalitarian states."

And Ms Schlag said: "I didn't kneel because I hate my country. I knelt because I love my country."

SoS––to Shine and that other Shining example of the guy who wants to put duck tape on reporters.

[Mrs. Bea McCrabbie]

@PD Pepe: Three cheers for Ms. Schlag & the Courant. I'm afraid our Presidunce* is smart enough to get their point, but he's too much the self-serving autocrat not to take advantage of the yokels who choose not to get it. Back in the day, I thought "America, Love It or Leave It" was the damned stupidest, most backward bumpersticker in the history of bumperstickers.

[Akhilleus]

Quick Saturday afternoon observation.

If I were being investigated for serious and multiple high crimes and misdemeanors by a professional, experienced, highly proficient, indefatigable and incorruptible bloodhound with decades of practice chasing down creeps, crooks, and liars, and I, as a guilty creep, crook, and liar had Rudy Giuliani as my mouthpiece and Sean Hannity as my simpleton cheerleader, I’d be getting my affairs in order and preparing for life in an orange jumpsuit. With a shaved head!

But then again, I’m not a lying traitor named Trump.

We shall see what we shall see.

And PD, the Hartford Courant, for years, has been one of the outstanding examples of professional journalism in action.