The Commentariat -- May 4, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Senate Race 2020. Emily Cochrane of the New York Times: "Senator Michael B. Enzi, Republican of Wyoming, said on Saturday that he would not seek re-election at the end of his term, the third Republican senator to do so ahead of the 2020 campaign. Mr. Enzi, 75, who leads the Senate Budget Committee, has held his seat since 1997, making him the longest-serving Wyoming senator in modern times.... It is unclear if Representative Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican who once challenged Mr. Enzi in a primary race, will take another shot at the seat -- a decision that would reshape Republican leadership in the House. Mr. Enzi, in his remarks, said he could see Ms. Cheney becoming speaker one day."

~~~~~~~~~~

The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Max Boot in the Washington Post: "While conferring legal immunity upon himself, Trump is eager to weaponize the legal system against his opponents. The Mueller report documents three separate occasions when Trump demanded a Justice Department investigation of Hillary Clinton. Now, the New York Times reports, Trump and his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, are attempting to instigate a criminal probe of his leading 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, on what appear to be trumped-up charges of corruption. In one of the more chilling exchanges during his Senate testimony, Barr would not say whether 'the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested' that he open an investigation. If the answer were 'no,' he would have said so. It is hard to think of any president in the past 230 years, including Nixon, who has ever sabotaged the rule of law so flagrantly or so successfully to protect his own hide. And, sadly, it is hard to imagine that anything can be done about it before Nov. 3, 2020.... So for the next 18 months, at a minimum, this nation is at the mercy of a criminal administration."

Invitation to a 2020 Russian Election Intervention. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Friday that he discussed the 'Russian Hoax' with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in their first conversation since the release of the special counsel's report, which found that 'the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.' In a pair of midday tweets, Mr. Trump said he and Mr. Putin had a 'long and very good conversation' in a phone call that lasted over an hour and covered a wide range of issues.... He made no mention of the growing tensions between the United States and Russia over Venezuela, where other senior American officials have accused the Kremlin of intervening to prop up President Nicolás Maduro, whom the Trump administration is working to remove from power. Mr. Trump also gave no indication that he warned Mr. Putin against Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election, a prospect that has unnerved some of his own top aides, including the recently departed secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen. To the extent that the findings of the Mueller report figured at all in their conversation, Mr. Trump suggested that he dismissed the intense focus on Russian interference as a politically motivated effort by Democrats to discredit his victory in 2016." ...

We discussed it [Mueller's investigation]. He actually sort of smiled when he said something to the effect that it started off as a mountain and it ended up being a mouse. But he knew that, because he knew there was no collusion whatsoever. -- Donald Trump, at a press availability Friday

Reality Chek. It was a telephone call. It was not a video call. Trump could not see Putin. Presumably, Trump was listening to a translator, not to Putin, when he heard the mountain-mouse remark. There was no way for Trump to know or even infer Putin "actually sort of smiled." Trump imagines stuff & he says what he has imagined as if his imaginings accurately reflect reality. It's not clear to me he can tell the difference between fantasy & fact. Weird. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie ...

... Tucker Higgins of CNBC: "... Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin discussed the Mueller report, Venezuela and North Korea during a lengthy phone call on Friday, the White House said. The two talked on the phone for more than an hour, according to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The leaders also discussed trade and a potential nuclear agreement including China, Sanders said. Regarding the investigation by ... Robert Mueller, which concluded in March, Sanders said 'both leaders knew there was no collusion.' The discussion on the matter was brief, she said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) According to MSNBC, Sanders released information about the phone call only after TASS had reported it. ...

... David Graham of the Atlantic: "Two weeks after Mueller's report laid out even more detail about the dimensions of Russian interference in the election, Trump didn't bother to condemn Putin or complain about the interference. He didn't even bring it up. But don't expect this reprise to elicit the same reaction as Helsinki. Whereas Trump's refusal to defend U.S. elections against foreign interference was once shocking, it's now become expected.... No one in government other than Trump denies the Russian attack.... One reason Trump can't bring up the hacks is that he is a terrible negotiator. Because he is bad at one-on-one discussions and eager for Putin's approval, he is unable to discuss other issues with Putin while also holding a firm line on election interference.... Trump's failure to bring up the interference is also terribly hypocritical. During an interview with Fox News on Thursday, he criticized former President Barack Obama for not doing more to push back on Russia during the election." ...

... Li Zhou of Vox: "Trump's resistance to directly press Putin about Russia's role in election interference is an issue that's come up again and again.... In refusing to openly address this threat, however, Trump raises an alarming concern: He' avoiding the question of how he'd effectively be able to prevent it from happening again." Mrs. McC Note to Zhou: Trump definitely does not want "to prevent it from happening again." Reports & opinion pieces about Russia's interference in 2016 spout as a given the theory that the reason Trump resists preventing foreign interference in U.S. elections is that he is too vain to admit Russia's interference may have given him the edge to win in 2016. But the real reason, IMO, is that Trump is tacitly soliciting the same kind of help again. ...

... Update. Mimi Rocah, former chief of the organized crime and racketeering unit at SDNY, backed me up -- and then some -- in remarks she made yesterday on MSNBC: "This phone call between Trump and Putin today reminded me of what we would call -- when we were on wires of criminals and listening to their conversations and they didn't know it — the 'get your story straight call. They would do something..., they robbed a bank or whatever, then they're on the phone, sort of talking, kind of sort of in code, but it's a yeah, 'when we went to the store earlier and I bought the milk,' you know, they're making their cover story, congratulating each other, patting each other on the back, saying 'it's all good, we made it, we didn't get caught.'... If you look at the obstruction that Trump, I think, clearly committed, it was obstruction of the investigation into Russia, not just Trump, but into Russia's actions." ...

... Also, Julián Castro. Katie Galiato of Politico: "Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro on Friday said he thinks ... Donald Trump wants Russia to interfere on his behalf again in 2020, after special counsel Robert Mueller reported that Moscow sought to boost him in 2016. 'I bet he's hoping they're going to do it again in 2020,' Castro said of Trump in an interview on MSNBC. 'It's incumbent upon Congress to help ensure that we do everything that we can to get to the truth that the Mueller report tried to lay out and also hold this administration accountable to make sure that we do take steps to secure our 2020 election.'" ...

... Justin Sink of Bloomberg News: "Donald Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin isn't seeking to 'get involved' in the crisis in Venezuela, despite assertions by the American president's top national security advisers that the Kremlin is offering critical support to Nicolas Maduro's regime. 'He is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela other than he'd like to see something positive happen for Venezuela,' Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday, following a call with the Russian leader earlier in the day.... The conversation, which Trump went on to describe as 'very positive,' appeared to be yet another example of Trump taking Putin's claims at face value despite contrary evidence from his own government. The White House national security adviser, John Bolton, and U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo both said earlier this week that the Kremlin talked Maduro out of leaving Venezuela after U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido attempted to end his regime on Tuesday by calling for a military uprising." ...

... Anne Gearan, et al., of the Washington Post: "Trump appeared to take Putin at his word that Russia wants to help ease a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. 'And I feel the same way. We want to get some humanitarian aid,' Trump told reporters at the White House. 'Right now, people are starving. They have no water. They have no food.' In a statement issued late Wednesday, the White House had said that Russia 'must leave' Venezuela and 'renounce their support of the Maduro regime.' Russia has significant investments in Venezuela and has been a strong backer of Maduro."

We Saw This Coming. Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "The White House on Friday seized on revelations that the FBI during the 2016 campaign sent an undercover investigator to meet with an aide to then-candidate Donald Trump, with the president calling the news 'bigger than Watergate.' Trump praised one of his most frequent media foes, The New York Times, for its reporting, while his reelection campaign lit into investigators and Vice President Mike Pence called the bureau's actions' very troubling.'" See yesterday's Commentariat for context. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Lindsey Has a Change of Heart.* Marianne Levine of Politico: “Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham on Friday asked Robert Mueller if he'd like to testify about any 'misrepresentation' by Attorney General William Barr concerning a phone call they had about the special counsel's report. 'Please inform the Committee if you would like to provide testimony regarding any misrepresentation by the Attorney General of the substance of the phone call,' Graham wrote to Mueller in a letter dated Friday." Mrs. McC: On Wednesday, Graham told reports he would not call Mueller to testify: "'I'm not going to do any more. Enough already. It's over,' Graham told reporters, asked why he wasn't calling Mueller to appear before his committee." Graham's invitation to Mueller to call Barr a liar seems like a set-up. Mueller would have to really want to testify, and very few people, least of all those who have done so before, really want to testify before Congressional committees. ...

     ... *Update: Actually, after Barr refused to provide copies of contemporaneous notes on the phone call he had with Robert Mueller about the way Barr characterized the special counsel's report, Graham did cut into the Q&A to say that he would write to Mueller that if there was anything Barr said about the conversation that Mueller disagreed with, "he can come in & tell us." So not a change of heart. Graham was just following up on a commitment he made during the hearing.

Manu Raju & Jeremy Herb of CNN: "House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler on Friday sent his latest offer [to] Attorney General William Barr to try to reach an agreement in his effort to obtain the unredacted special counsel report and the underlying evidence before Nadler moves forward with holding the attorney general in contempt of Congress. Nadler sent Barr a new letter proposing that the committee could work with the Justice Department to prioritize which investigative materials it turns over to Congress, specifically citing witness interviews and the contemporaneous notes provided by witnesses that were cited in ... Robert Mueller's report. Nadler wrote that he was 'willing to prioritize a specific, defined set of underlying investigative and evidentiary materials for immediate production.' But Nadler's letter does not budge on Democrats' insistence that the Justice Department allow Congress to view grand jury material that's redacted in the report, which Barr has argued he's not allowed by law to provide. Nadler set a deadline of 9 a.m. ET Monday for Barr to respond and said he would move to contempt proceedings if the attorney general does not comply." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "On some of the weightiest questions about obstruction of justice, Barr has made pro-Trump arguments that are at odds with what Robert S. Mueller III wrote in his report.... The first is his emphasis on the supposed lack of an underlying crime.... The Mueller report itself seems to rebut Barr's point -- rather directly.... '... the evidence does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns.... The second strange claim Barr keeps revisiting is Mueller's private comments about whether he found a crime. Mueller in his report said he was not making a 'traditional prosecutorial judgment'..., but he said it was because of Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) policy against indicting a sitting president -- not the evidence. Barr said in his news conference before the release of the Mueller report: 'We specifically asked him about the OLC opinion and whether he was taking a position that he would have found a crime but for the existence of the OLC opinion. And he made it very clear several times that that was not his position....' Barr echoed this twice in his Wednesday testimony...." Emphasis Blake's.

Mrs. McCrabbie: Yesterday I wrote that Bill Barr's remarks have undermined the work the Mueller team has done. But I am reminded today that Barr is creating a clear & present danger in the 14 ongoing Mueller-related cases, cases that are of course being investigated or brought to trial by men & women who work for Barr. Here's one instance:

... Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Federal prosecutors argued Friday that special counsel Robert Mueller did not need to prove conspiracy between the Russian government and the Trump campaign to show that longtime Trump ally Roger Stone obstructed Congress' investigation of the matter. 'To establish the defendant's guilt of the crimes with which he is charged, the government is not required to prove the existence of a conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere in the U.S. presidential election,' Mueller's team, along with the U.S. attorney in Washington D.C., wrote in response to filings Stone submitted on March 28. That argument has been the subject of controversy in recent weeks, following Attorney General Bill Barr's suggestion that evidence collected by Mueller implicating ... Donald Trump for multiple efforts to thwart his probe fell short, in part because Mueller didn't establish the existence of a criminal conspiracy. 'The evidence now suggests that the accusations against him were false and he knew they were false,' Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.... Stone had pointed to these arguments to undercut Mueller's prosecution against him.... In support of his argument to dismiss the case against him, Stone pointed to a 19-page memo Barr wrote and forwarded to Justice Department leaders when he was outside of government." ...

... Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) in a Washington Post op-ed: "In the furor around Attorney General William P. Barr's testimony on the Mueller report before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, one issue has flown under the radar: the potential for Barr to undermine more than a dozen ongoing criminal matters that sprang from the special counsel's investigation.... Given Barr's own statements and actions with respect to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation, his credibility and his independence are in doubt. For that reason, he must recuse himself from any ongoing investigations involving evidence referred by the special counsel's office. Barr has made clear that he believes it is appropriate for an attorney general to protect the president's political interests.... The more we learn about Barr's handling of the Mueller investigation, the more cause there is for concern." ...

... Ana Radelat of the Connecticut Mirror (May 1): At the Senate hearing Wednesday, Sen. Richard "Blumenthal [D-Ct.] ... asked Barr if he would recuse himself from [ongoing] investigations. 'No,' was Barr's terse response. Barr told Blumenthal he was finished with the Mueller report. 'The job of the Justice Department is now over ... we're out of it,' Barr said. 'We've got to stop using the political process as a weapon.'"

Marianne Levine: "Sen. Kamala Harris called on the Justice Department inspector general to look into whether Attorney General William Barr had received or complied with any requests from the White House to investigate ... Donald Trump's 'perceived enemies.' In a letter sent Friday to Inspector General Michael Horowitz, the California Democrat, who is also running for president, wrote she had 'grave concern about the independence of the Department of Justice under the leadership of Attorney General William Barr.' Harris cited her exchange with the attorney general at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this week, in which Barr did not explicitly answer her question about whether Trump or anyone in he White House asked to or suggested the DOJ investigate someone. 'I'm trying to grapple with the word "suggest,"' Barr said at the hearing. 'I mean there have been discussions of, of matters out there that uh ... they have not asked me to open an investigation.'... In her letter, Harris described Barr's response as 'alarming' and noted that 'such inappropriate requests by the President have been well documented.'"

Diss Barr. Kyle Cheney: “Two House Democrats on Friday urged the bar associations in Washington and Virginia to launch an ethics investigation into Attorney General William Barr's public comments on ... Robert Mueller's report. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) -- both former prosecutors -- say they believe Barr 'at best misled Congress' and 'at worst perjured himself' when he told lawmakers this week he was unsure why some members Mueller's team were reportedly dissatisfied with his public portrayal of Mueller's report.... 'By deceiving Congress and the American people, who vested their trust in both the Office of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice at large, Attorney General Barr must be subject to a professional review for the sake of the legal profession and the public,' Lieu and Rice wrote in a letter to the bar associations. The two Democrats say the rules of the Virginia and D.C. bars require 'candor' toward official tribunals and that engaging in 'dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation ... reflects adversely on the lawyer's fitness to practice law.'"

Cap'n. Rod "Lands the Plane." Marcy Wheeler finds some clues that suggest to her that at early as last August Rod Rosenstein was pressuring Bob Mueller to wrap up his investigation before Mueller was ready to do so. "If he was, that would change the import of Trump's tactic to avoid testifying -- first stalling through the election, and then refusing any real cooperation -- significantly."

Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "The scribe keeping track of the president's actions was Annie Donaldson, [Don] McGahn's chief of staff, a loyal and low-profile conservative lawyer who figures in the Mueller report as one of the most important narrators of internal White House turmoil. Her daily habit of documenting conversations and meetings provided the special counsel's office with its version of the Nixon White House tapes: a running account of the president's actions, albeit in sentence fragments and concise descriptions. Among the episodes memorialized in Donaldson's notes and memos: the president's outrage when FBI Director James B. Comey confirmed the existence of the investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, Trump's efforts to pressure Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from overseeing the probe and his push to get Mueller disqualified and removed as the special counsel.... House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) has already signaled that he intends to subpoena Donaldson as a critical witness.... She left the White House in December...."

Camp Cohen. Michael Sisak & Jim Mustian of the AP: Michael Cohen is due to report Monday to "a federal prison 70 miles (113 kilometers) from New York City where white-collar and D-list scoundrels can do time while playing bocce ball and noshing on rugelach.... Tucked in the lush countryside south of the Catskill Mountains, [the Federal Correctional Institution,] Otisville is actually two federal facilities with a total of about 800 inmates: a medium-security prison where former NFL star Darren Sharper is serving a 20-year rape sentence, and a satellite camp for non-violent offenders like Cohen.... About 115 inmates sleep in bunks lined up in barrack-style halls, instead of individual or two-man cells.... There are lockers to store personal belongings, washers and dryers for laundry, microwaves to heat up food and ice machines to keep cool.... Otisville is also known as a favorite among prison-bound Jews for its Kosher meals and Shabbat services. Add in recreational amenities like tennis courts, horseshoes and cardio equipment, and it sounds like the closest thing the federal prison system has to sleepaway camp."

Quint Forgey of Politico: "... Donald Trump tweeted Friday that his administration is' looking into' the banning of right-wing media personalities from prominent social media platforms -- following a purge by Facebook of accounts belonging to several controversial political figures. The president lamented the apparent suspension of actor and Trump supporter James Woods' Twitter account, as well as the shuttering of Infowars contributor Paul Joseph Watson's Facebook profile this week.... Infowars chief Alex Jones, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, and activist Laura Loomer were among the other incendiary characters booted Thursday from Facebook and its subsidiary, Instagram."

Jesse Eisinger & Paul Kiel of ProPublica in the New York Times: "The hot policy in Democratic circles these days is raising taxes on the rich.... But before this country raises taxes, it should grapple with something much more prosaic but equally important for tackling inequality: saving the Internal Revenue Service. Already, wealthy people and corporations easily get around today's rules. However tough any new laws might seem, they'd soon be undercut. Slowly and quietly over the past eight years, the I.R.S. has been eviscerated. It's lost tens of thousands of employees. It has fewer auditors now than at any time since 1953.... Fixing the problem will require more than increasing the I.R.S.'s budget (though that would certainly help). It's about having the right personnel with the right skills.... The top 0.5 percent of highest-earning Americans account for about a fifth of the income that's hidden from the I.R.S., according to a University of Michigan study, or more than $50 billion a year in today's dollars.... It's much easier to enforce the tax laws for the bottom 90 percent of earners. Wages are reported straight to the I.R.S., and computers can easily check that tax returns accurately report that income. This means that inadequate enforcement of the tax laws necessarily has a regressive effect...."

Step 1. Get government job. Step 2. Help design & enforce hard-line policies that increase need for housing immigrants. Step 3. Get fired. Step 4. Get high-paying, low-work job with private company providing housing for immigrants. ...

... Send These, the Homeless, Tempest-tost to Me ... and I'll Make a Buck off Them. Graham Kates of CBS News: "... Friday, Caliburn International confirmed to CBS News that [former DHS secretary & White House chief-of-staff John] Kelly had joined its board of directors. Caliburn is the parent company of Comprehensive Health Services, which operates Homestead and three other shelters for unaccompanied migrant children in Texas. Prior to joining the Trump administration in January 2017, Kelly had been on the board of advisors of DC Capital Partners, an investment firm that now owns Caliburn.... In the past year, Comprehensive Health Services, the only private company operating shelters, became one of the most dominant players in the industry. Last August, it secured three licenses for facilities in Texas, totaling 500 beds, and in December, the Homestead facility began expanding from a capacity of 1,250 beds to 3,200. Located on several acres of federal land adjacent to an Air Reserve Base, the facility is the nation's only site not subject to routine inspections by state child welfare experts.... Government officials are barred from benefiting from their involvement in matters that involve specific parties, meaning that while serving at the White House, Kelly could not directly influence any decision to award a contract to a DC Capital company."

Erik Prince Is Always up to No Good. Daily Beast: "Blackwater founder Erik Prince arranged for political activist James O'Keefe's conservative group Project Veritas to receive more than one round of 'training in intelligence and elicitation techniques,' The Intercept reports. In 2016, the self-styled 'guerrilla journalist' group reportedly got lessons from a retired military intelligence operative. The training lasted several weeks and ended with the operative, Euripides Rubio Jr., reportedly quitting because the group 'wasn't capable of learning.' In 2017, Prince next set Project Veritas up with a former British MI6 officer in hopes of turning the organization into 'domestic spies,' according to report." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: The Intercept report, by Matthew Cole, is a long look at Erik Prince's comeback in the Age of Trump. Based on my spotty scan, I would say the article is quite readable. I'm just not going to read it.

Presidential Race 2020

Matt Dixon of Politico: "In an early show of force, more than a third of Florida's Democratic state legislators endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden in his bid for president. The endorsements, from 23 of the Legislature's 64 Democrats, were gathered over the past month by state Rep. Joseph Geller, a Broward County Democrat and longtime Biden supporter. Geller said Biden has the best shot at bridging a growing divide between progressive Democrats and those representing the party's more moderate, traditional wing." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Beyond the Beltway

Florida to Impose Steep Poll Tax. Patricia Mazzei of the New York Times: "In November, Florida voters approved a groundbreaking ballot measure that would restore voting rights for up to 1.5 million people with felony convictions. But the Republican-led Legislature voted on Friday to impose a series of sharp restrictions that could prevent tens of thousands of them from ever reaching the ballot box. In a move that critics say undermines the spirit of what voters intended, thousands of people with serious criminal histories will be required to fully pay back fines and fees to the courts before they could vote. The new limits would require potential new voters to settle what may be tens of thousands of dollars in financial obligations to the courts, effectively pricing some people out of the ballot box.... The vast majority of criminal defendants are poor when they are arrested and even poorer after they are released from prison.... the legislation goes next to Gov. Ron DeSantis [R], who had called on the Legislature to set additional standards for registering ex-felons to vote....."

Ohio. Trip Gabriel & Michael Wines of the New York Times: "A federal court on Friday tossed out Ohio's congressional map, ruling that Republican state lawmakers had carved up the state to give themselves an illegal partisan advantage and to dilute Democrats' votes in a way that predetermined the outcome of elections. The ruling, by a three-judge panel from the Federal District Court in Cincinnati, ordered new maps to be drawn by June 14 to be used for the 2020 election, when Democrats will fight to preserve their House majority. The ruling will go directly to the United States Supreme Court for review. The ruling follows decisions by four other federal courts striking down partisan gerrymanders in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Maryland and, last week, in Michigan. All but Maryland were gerrymandered by Republicans."

Way Beyond

England. Palko Karasz of the New York Times: "Researchers seeking evidence of chemical 'micropollution' in five rural English rivers have found pesticides in many of the freshwater shrimp they tested. And cocaine in all of them. The presence of the illegal drug was unexpected because the sites where the researchers gathered their samples, in the eastern coastal county of Suffolk, were miles away from any large city, said the study's lead author, Thomas Miller, a researcher at King's College London."

North Korea. Choe Sang-Hun of the New York Times: "North Korea fired several short-range projectiles off its east coast on Saturday, in a move likely to raise tensions as denuclearization talks with the United States remain stalled. The South Korean military said in a statement that the North had fired several short-range projectiles between 9:06 a.m. and 9:27 a.m. from near Wonsan, a coastal town east of Pyongyang, the capital. The projectiles flew 70 to 200 kilometers before they landed in the sea between North Korea and Japan, it said."

News Lede

USA Today: "All passengers and crew aboard a Boeing 737 traveling from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are safe after the plane crashed into a river at the end of a runway at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, authorities reported late Friday. At least 136 people were on board the charter plane at the time of the 9:40 p.m. crash, sending Navy security and emergency response teams to the scene. Photos show the plane landed in a shallow dredge of water with minimal damage." Mrs. McC: CNN reported that animals traveling in the hold probably did not survive.

Comments

[PD Pepe]

BIGLY NEWS:
The President of the U.S. has the ability to see through phones. He can tell, during a conversation, whether you are smiling, looking bored, scratching your behind or simply frowning. In his latest phone conversation with his best buddy, Petit Putti, he claimed a smile crossed Putti's face when his metaphorical mountain was being discussed. Such abilities–-who knew? Rumor has it Trump kissed the phone just before he hung up.

Bastards! Both.

[Patrick]

A relatively short article from the NYT Magazine describes how Cerberus Capital Management (private equity) bankrupted Remington (oldest continuous manufacturer in the U.S.) using standard financial sleight of hand techniques.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/01/magazine/remington-guns-jobs-huntsville.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=The%20New%20York%20Times%20Magazine

This is worth reading because it is not about an aberration, rather a fairly straightforward description of how private equity firms make money by creating debt and by stripping out mid-level jobs and replacing union workers with temp workers in right-to-work states. They describe it as "creating efficiencies."

The article does not get into pension issues, but often when PE firms restructure their acquired companies they also saddle the pension fund with the new debt. Not only jobs are lost, but pensions and benefits of already-retired workers and middle management get liquidated in Chapter 11. In essence, investors take the money and the employees hold the bag.

And it is all legal.

[unwashed]

I thought that Drumpf's telephone call with Pootie might have started like this old clip from Our Gang.

[Marie Burns]

@Patrick: Thanks. Gives me fond memories of Mitt Romney, who now seems to see himself as the conscience of the Republican party. And you know what? He is.

[PD Pepe]

As I was finishing my Cheerios and Great Grains with bananas this morning I was thinking of "patterns"–-how throughout my life I've always had a decent breakfast and how all my sons have carried on with this ritual.But then I thought how important for mental health professionals to look for patterns in their patients and families.

Mueller wrote that "it is important to view the President's patterns of conduct as a whole. That pattern sheds light on the nature of the President's acts and the inferences that can be drawn about his intent. Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting under influence over law enforcement investigations."

We also ran into this pattern business in Dexter Filkin's piece about Bolton:

"We saw a pattern of Mr. Bolton trying to manipulate intelligence to justify his views" –– this from a staff director in the Senate Foreign Relations Com. during the H.W. Bush's nomination of Bolton to be the ambassador of the U.N.

"If it had happened once–-maybe. But it came up multiple times, and always it was the same underlying issue: he would stake out a position, and then, if the intelligence didn't support it, he would try to exaggerate the intelligence and marginalize the officials who had produced it."

And he's still operating the same way only this time he is working for a guy who runs circles around his mendacity. Just yesterday Trump contradicts both Bolton and Pompeo when he announces Putin is not involved with Venezuela. What's a loyal soldier gonna do?

Patterns–-"it's the way of it" as the Irish are wont to say.