;)
The Commentariat -- March 21, 2018
Afternoon Update:
Kaitlan Collins & Jeff Zeleny of CNN: "... Donald Trump was infuriated after it quickly leaked that he had been directly instructed by his national security advisers in briefing materials not to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin on his recent election victory during their call Tuesday morning, a source familiar with the President's thinking said. Trump was fuming Tuesday night, asking his allies and outside advisers who they thought had leaked the information, noting that only a small group of staffers have access to those materials and would have known what guidance was included for the Putin call, the source said. White House chief of staff John Kelly also is furious that a confidential presidential briefing became public knowledge, a White House official said, and intends to address the matter Wednesday as aides try to figure out who disclosed the warning. 'If this story is accurate, that means someone leaked the President's briefing papers. Leaking such information is a fireable offense and likely illegal, another senior White House official told CNN Wednesday." ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "What if the leakers are trying to help rather than embarrass Trump?... Ignoring or disregarding key talking points while on a call with an antagonistic foreign leader like Putin has got to be cause for concern. We forget how bonkers that is because everything about this presidency has been so bonkers and unprecedented. But aides have to be worried Trump might repeat this behavior in more fraught situations — like, say, a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.... The line between trying to save America from Trump and trying to save Trump from himself is a very thin one — as is the line between leaker and whistleblower. In this case, as in these others, it's worth Trump asking whether he's created an environment in which his advisers feel they have no choice but to leak their cries for help to the media. (Not that he will.)" ...
... Digby in Salon: "As always, the question when it comes to Trump's stubborn unwillingness to speak to or about Putin in anything but obsequious, sycophantic terms is: Why? This bizarre and uncharacteristic behavior remains the most compelling and convincing piece of evidence that Putin must be holding something over his head. Not even the narcissistic Trump would take on this much blatant risk or be willing to look this bad simply because a man once flattered him." ...
... Margaret Hartmann comes up with eight reasons Trump may have ignored his advisors' warnings about what-all to say to Putin. Mrs. McC: But she doesn't include my theory that he may kowtow to Putin to shore up his Putin-lovin' base, elaborated below. ...
The president is, as you know — you’ve seen his numbers among the Republican base — it’s very strong. It’s more than strong, it’s tribal in nature. People who tell me, who are out on trail, say, look, people don’t ask about issues anymore. They don’t care about issues. They want to know if you’re with Trump or not. -- Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn) on why Congressional Republicans don't protect the Mueller investigation
... ** Eric Levitz: "Donald Trump has never been more dangerous than he is now. 1) The “adults” in the West Wing have never had less influence over the president.... 2) Trump’s path to a war with North Korea has never been easier to envision.... 3) Trump has never had a stronger incentive to undermine rule of law in the United States.... 4) It’s never been clearer that Congressional Republicans are unwilling to act as a check on Trump’s worst impulses." Read the details, where Levitz makes his case.
Ben Lefevbre of Politico: "Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his wife took security detail on their vacation to Greece and Turkey last year, official documents show, in what one watchdog group said could be a "questionable" use of taxpayer resources. Unlike Pruitt, Zinke was not conducting government business during his two-week vacation, which included stops in Istanbul and the Greek Isles. The documents do not reveal exactly how many security personnel accompanied the couple, who paid for them, how much they cost or whether they traveled with Zinke and his wife, Lola, for the entire trip.... Lola Zinke shared photos of their vacation on her Twitter page and wrote that the couple was celebrating 25 years of marriage. At the time of the trip, Interior would say only that Zinke was out of the country and provided no indication of when he left or would return." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: These people really don't give a flying fuck, do they? Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets, I guess, including taxpayer-funded vacations.
Senate Race. Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "White House officials this week told Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant that ... Donald Trump did not plan to campaign for or endorse Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith if she was appointed to the state’s open Senate seat, saying they were worried that the former Democrat would lose. Bryant responded that he intended to go ahead and pick Hyde-Smith for the post, anyway. He’s expected to formally announce the selection of the state agriculture commissioner on Wednesday."
Matt Dixon of Politico: In Florida, "The Scott administration quickly worked to distance itself from the collapse of a Florida International University pedestrian bridge that left six dead, but documents from the state’s transportation department and the university paint a different picture. From the selection of the politically powerful firm that led the project to the days leading up to the collapse, the Florida Department of Transportation, overseen by Gov. Rick Scott, had direct involvement in a project whose collapse has rocked South Florida and sparked a federal investigation.... FDOT has oversight responsibility."
Oregon Closes the "Boyfriend Loophole." Melanie Sevcenko of the Guardian: "While Washington[, D.C.,] stalls over gun reform even as thousands prepare for the March for Our Lives rally for gun control, Oregon just passed [its] first gun control law since the attack in Parkland, Florida. The new measure makes it more difficult for people with domestic violence convictions to purchase or even possess a firearm.... Since 1996, federal law has largely prohibited people with domestic abuse misdemeanors from accessing guns. But what Oregon did was close a gap in the federal statute, by expanding the definition of domestic partner to 'intimate partner'. Under the new state law, someone who is convicted of a domestic abuse misdemeanor – who only dated their victim, never lived with them, and never had children together – cannot buy or own a gun."
*****
Trump Congratulates BFF on Big "Win." of the Washington Post: "President Trump congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin on his reelection victory in a phone call on Tuesday, the Kremlin said. The White House confirmed that the call took place but had no immediate comment on the Kremlin’s characterization of it. Some world leaders have hesitated to congratulate Putin, since his reelection occurred in an environment of state control of much of the news media and his most prominent opponent was barred from the ballot.... Beyond the congratulations, [the Kremlin] said, the two leaders discussed Syria, Ukraine, North Korea and arms control. The two also discussed a potential meeting, the Kremlin said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McC: Once again, the Trump White House lets Putin define the nature of the call. Is letting the Kremlin define their conversations one of the concessions Trump made to Putin on accounta the dirt Putin has on Trump? Or is it because White House staff aren't allowed to interrupt Trump during his extensive time, so they haven't been able to act out the call for his approval? Whatever, it's weird. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Update. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Trump on Tuesday congratulated President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for his recent re-election victory and [told reporters] the two are likely to meet soon to discuss the arms race between the United States and Russia.... Republican lawmakers, even those who have resisted criticizing Mr. Trump, faulted him for congratulating Mr. Putin. 'When I look at a Russian election, what I see is a lack of credibility in tallying the results,' said ... Mitch McConnell.... 'Calling him wouldn’t have been high on my list.' Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was quick to criticize Mr. Trump’s call to Mr. Putin. 'An American president does not lead the free world by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections,' Mr. McCain said in a statement issued by his office." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... ** "DO NOT CONGRATULATE." Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump did not follow specific warnings from his national security advisers when he congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday on his reelection, including a section in his briefing materials in all-capital letters stating 'DO NOT CONGRATULATE,' according to officials familiar with the call. Trump also chose not to heed talking points from aides instructing him to condemn Putin about the recent poisoning of a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom with a powerful nerve agent, a case that both the British and U.S. governments have blamed on Moscow. The president’s conversation with Putin, which Trump called a 'very good call,' prompted fresh criticism of his muted tone toward one of the United States’s biggest geopolitical rivals amid the ongoing special counsel investigation into Russia’s election interference and the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials.... Trump’s applause of Putin’s victory was in line with other congratulatory calls he has made, including to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for winning a much-disputed referendum that increased his already autocratic powers and to China’s President Xi Jinping for his 'extraordinary elevation' after Xi last month engineered the Communist Party’s elimination of presidential term limits.... It was not clear whether Trump read the NSA's notes, administration officials said." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Oh, it's clear to me. He didn't. The note writers might have sent copies of their cheat sheets to "Fox & Friends," even if the notes contained top-secret info. The folks on the Fox couch are the only people who can get thru to Trump. ...
... Update: Carol Leonnig in a discussion with Rachel Maddow, said there was "an OMG moment" & a "kurfuffle" in the White House after Trump got off the phone with Putin, as staffers debated how to deal with Trump's foolish remarks, a decision that was shorted out by the Kremlin's readout. BUT it looks as if Trump's remarks were not a mistake; he said exactly what he wanted to: in later remarks to reporters, as Mark Landler reports (linked above) Trump repeated that he had congratulated Putin, & he didn't criticize Putin for the poisoning of Russian ex-pats living in the U.K. The POTUS* is digging into his role as Putin stooge. Remarkable.
Robert Costa & Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "President Trump’s legal team reached out in recent days to Theodore B. Olson, one of the country’s most high-profile and seasoned litigators, to join forces amid mounting challenges in the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to three people familiar with the discussions.... But after reviewing the offer and weighing potential conflicts with his clients at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he is a partner, Olson is not planning to join Trump’s team, a top executive at the firm said Tuesday.... The talks with Olson are part of a broader disruption in the president’s legal circle." Mrs. McC: That's funny because just a couple of weeks ago, Trump assured us that "Everybody wants to work at the White House."
The President & the Playboy Model. Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "A former Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with Donald J. Trump sued on Tuesday to be released from a 2016 legal agreement requiring her silence, becoming the second woman this month to challenge Trump allies’ efforts during the presidential campaign to bury stories about extramarital relationships. The model, Karen McDougal, is suing the company that owns The National Enquirer, American Media Inc., which paid her $150,000 and whose chief executive is a friend of President Trump’s.... Ms. McDougal, in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims that [Trump's personal attorney Michael] Cohen was secretly involved in her talks with A.M.I., and that the media company and her lawyer at the time misled her about the deal." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mark Berman & Frances Sellers of the Washington Post: "A New York judge said Tuesday that a defamation lawsuit against President Trump related to an allegation that he sexually harassed a former 'Apprentice' contestant may go forward. Summer Zervos filed the suit last year after Trump said publicly that she and other women making similar claims made them up. Trump sought to block the legal action, but New York Supreme Court Judge Jennifer G. Schecter, citing court precedent that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998, said that 'a sitting president is not immune from being sued in federal court for unofficial acts.' Trump has repeatedly said that all of the women who accused him of touching them inappropriately were lying — a sentiment his White House reiterated as questions resurfaced about the allegations.” (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Sarah Fitzpatrick & Tracy Connor of NBC News: "Adult film actress Stormy Daniels underwent a polygraph exam in 2011 about her relationship with Donald Trump, and the examiner found there was a more than 99 percent probability she told the truth when she said they had unprotected sex in 2006, according to a copy of the report obtained by NBC News Tuesday. Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, took the lie detector test at the request of a magazine that interviewed her in 2011, but didn’t publish the content at the time."
Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "With a particular focus on social media, Melania Trump, the first lady, has long said she wants to curb online bullying and harassment as part of a nascent effort to improve the lives of American children. There’s one problem: Mrs. Trump’s efforts often clash with the president’s longtime habit of using social media to insult people. Despite the criticism, she has continued to develop an agenda around cybersafety. On Tuesday, Mrs. Trump invited representatives from Facebook, Snap, Google, Amazon and Twitter to the White House for a round-table discussion on the topic. 'I am well aware that people are skeptical of me discussing this topic,' Mrs. Trump said on Tuesday." Rogers points out numerous instances in while Mrs. Trump has addressed cyberbullying at about the same time Mr. Trump has been cyberbullying his perceived enemies. Mrs. McC: Melania's campaign, IMO, is definitely a shot at her husband. I think she dislikes him more than I do, which is a lot. The news linked immediately above the link to Rogers' report is likely part of her incentive to continue pressing an issue that highlights one of Donaldo's many faults.
Trump Goes to New Hampshire. Benjamin Wallace-Wells of the New Yorker: President Trump made a speech in Manchester about the state's opioid crisis & outlined some thing his administration would do -- some cribbed from Obama administration policies -- to reduce the problem. "Even so, the President’s focus strayed. 'Toughness is what they most fear,' Trump said, when he got to the part of his speech about drug dealers. Among his policy proposals, he wanted the death penalty extended to apply to drug dealers.... Trump needs familiar villains. He blamed the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, whose population is nearly three-quarters Hispanic, for supplying Fentanyl to New Hampshire, and then segued into a discussion of the street gang MS-13.... Often, with Trump, there is a wincing feeling that he is quoting from old episodes of our collective history."
Paul Lewis of the Guardian: "Hundreds of millions of Facebook users are likely to have had their private information harvested by companies that exploited the same terms as the firm that collected data and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica, according to a new whistleblower. Sandy Parakilas, the platform operations manager at Facebook responsible for policing data breaches by third-party software developers between 2011 and 2012, told the Guardian he warned senior executives at the company that its lax approach to data protection risked a major breach.... Asked what kind of control Facebook had over the data given to outside developers, he replied: 'Zero. Absolutely none. Once the data left Facebook servers there was not any control, and there was no insight into what was going on.'” (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Zuckerberg Still MIA. Spencer Ackerman of the Daily Beast: "Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg declined to face his employees on Tuesday ... for an internal briefing and question-and-answer session ... to explain the company’s role in a widening international scandal over the 2016 election.... Nor ... did chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg attend the internal town hall.... Zuckerberg has been publicly silent since the Observer and the New York Times reported on Saturday that Facebook has for years been aware that a third-party app, billing itself as collecting user data for research purposes, exploited sufficiently weak privacy settings on unsuspecting user accounts to accumulate 50 million profiles." ...
... Mike Allen of Axios: "Axios is told that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to speak out in the next 24 hours on the data-harvesting revelations that have hammered his stock price, inflamed lawmakers in D.C. and Europe, and trapped his social network in a crisis of trust." ...
... Sarah Frier of Bloomberg: "Facebook Inc. tried to get ahead of its latest media firestorm. Instead, it helped create one. 'Open in private window.] The company knew ahead of time that on Saturday, the New York Times and The Guardian’s Observer would issue bombshell reports that the data firm that helped Donald Trump win the presidency had accessed and retained information on 50 million Facebook users without their permission. Facebook did two things to protect itself: it sent letters to the media firms laying out its legal case for why this data leak didn’t constitute a 'breach.' And then it scooped the reports using their information, with a Friday blog post on why it was suspending the ad firm, Cambridge Analytica, from its site.... The statement gave the impression that Facebook had looked into the matter [though it had not]... [Then Facebook tried to intimidate the newspapers.] 'Yesterday Facebook threatened to sue us. Today we publish this,' Carole Cadwalladr, the Observer reporter, wrote as she linked her story to Twitter, in a post shared almost 15,000 times.... Silence on the part of Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg didn’t help." ...
... Craig Timberg, et al., of the Washington Post: "Conservative strategist Stephen K. Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s early efforts to collect troves of Facebook data as part of an ambitious program to build detailed profiles of millions of American voters, a former employee of the data-science firm said Tuesday. The 2014 effort was part of a high-tech form of voter persuasion touted by the company, which under Bannon identified and tested the power of anti-establishment messages that later would emerge as central themes in President Trump’s campaign speeches, according to Chris Wylie, who left the company at the end of that year. Among the messages tested were 'drain the swamp' and 'deep state,' he said.... In an interview Tuesday with The Washington Post at his lawyer’s London office, Wylie said that Bannon — while he was a top executive at Cambridge Analytica and head of Breitbart News — was deeply involved in the company’s strategy and approved spending nearly $1 million to acquire data, including Facebook profiles, in 2014." ...
... AND there's this: "Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group, has an ongoing contract with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. The company was paid almost $500,000 to interview people overseas to understand the mind-set of Islamist militants as part of an effort to counter their online propaganda and block recruits. Heather Nauert, the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy [Mrs. McC: and former 'Fox & Friends' co-host], said Tuesday that the contract was signed in November 2016, under the Obama administration, and has not expired yet. In public records, the contract is dated in February 2017.'... Nauert said that the State Department had signed other contracts with SCL Group in the past." ...
... There's this, too: "The firm also tested views of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'The only foreign thing we tested was Putin,' [Chris Wylie] said. 'It turns out, there’s a lot of Americans who really like this idea of a really strong authoritarian leader and people were quite defensive in focus groups of Putin’s invasion of Crimea.'” Mrs. McC: I hate to say it, but this looks like exculpatory evidence in the Trump "collusion" case. Maybe Trump's affinity for Putin & other authoritarian leaders is just a means of catering to his base.
... Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times: "Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm with ties to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, on Tuesday, amid the furor over the access it gained to private information on more than 50 million Facebook users. The decision came after a television broadcast in which Mr. Nix was recorded suggesting that the company had used seduction and bribery to entrap politicians and influence foreign elections." ...
... Cecilia Kang of the New York Times: "The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into whether Facebook violated an agreement with the agency on data privacy, after reports that information on 50 million users was improperly obtained by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiry. The investigation, started in recent days, adds to the mounting pressure against Facebook in the United States and in the United Kingdom about its handling of the data. Cambridge Analytica used the information to help President Trump’s presidential campaign profile voters during the 2016 election." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Not much new here, except Nix claims he has met with Donald Trump "many times":
... Well, for Sure Nix Has Met Some Big Shots. Mother Jones: "The footage [in the Channel 4 undercover videos] was a bit grainy. [Mother Jones publishes] ... a clearer shot of Nix, snapped during a polo match ... on July 28, 2016. He happens to be posing with Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian ambassador to the United Kingdom. The photo was taken days after Democratic National Committee files and emails hacked by Russian intelligence were dumped online by WikiLeaks at the start of the Democratic Party’s convention. The previous month, the Trump campaign had hired Nix’s company, and by this point, it had been widely reported that Russian intelligence was behind the DNC hack."
Stephanie Petit of People: "In a 'hare'-raising turn of events for Mike Pence, John Oliver‘s parody children’s book about the vice president’s pet falling in love with an another male rabbit is outselling its inspiration.... In addition, Oliver’s book has earned a five-star rating on the site with over 3,000 reviews. The Pences’ competing story has been reviewed only 60 times and holds a four-and-a-half-star rating.... The TV host added that all proceeds from the book, written by Jill Twiss and illustrated by Indiana artist E.G. Keller, will go to The Trevor Project and AIDS United." Thanks to MAG for the lead. MAG heard on the teevee that Oliver's parody has pushed Jim Comey's book -- to be published next month -- down to No. 2 on Amazon's list. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "The White House said Tuesday that a string of deadly bombings in Texas has 'no apparent nexus to terrorism' and vowed to bring the bomber to justice [according to a tweet by Sarah Sanders].... Police said the bombing [early Tuesday] was related to four others in the Austin area that have killed two people and injured four others over the course of three weeks." See also Tuesday's & Wednesday's News Ledes. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Texans, according to Fabian's report are "fearful," which is fairly sensible. I would call these Texans "terrified" & the perp or perpss "terrorists," whatever the races & religious beliefs of said bombers. So would Rep. Brian Babin (R), according to Fabian. But I guess Sanders thinks these bombers are white Christian-seeming people. So they can't be "terrorists."
Emily Holden, et al., of Politico: "EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt spent more than $105,000 on first-class flights in his first year on the job, according to records EPA provided to the House Oversight Committee and obtained by Politico on Tuesday.... That $105,000 figure doesn't include an additional $58,000 Pruitt rang up on charter flights and a military jet to carry him and his staff from an event with President Donald Trump in Cincinnati to catch a connecting flight to Europe out of New York, according to previously released records." ...
... Brady Dennis & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "The Environmental Protection Agency turned over documents to Congress late Tuesday detailing nearly $68,000 in newly disclosed travel costs for Administrator Scott Pruitt during the past seven months. The records, which came at the request of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and were obtained by The Washington Post [Mrs. McC: because Gowdy is a primo leaker], show dozens of first-class domestic and overseas flights for Pruitt and other trip expenses between August and last month. That figure, which includes stays at high-priced hotels in New York City and Paris, does not include the travel expenditures of the personal security detail and aides who typically accompany him. EPA officials attribute the elevated costs of Pruitt’s travels to the security precautions they have undertaken because of the number of threats he has received...." Mrs. McC: Because when it comes to "security precautions," only the Ritz (or a similar "high-priced hotel") will do. ...
... A Few Hours in Bologna. Michael Biesecker of the AP: "... Scott Pruitt spent more than $120,000 in public funds last summer for a trip to Italy that included a meeting of G-7 ministers and a private tour of the Vatican. The known cost of Pruitt’s previously reported trip grew this week after the agency disclosed a heavily censored document showing expenses for Pruitt’s security detail cost more than $30,500. That’s on top of nearly $90,000 spent for food, hotels, commercial airfare and a military jet used by Pruitt and nine EPA staff. Last June, Pruitt flew to Bologna, Italy, for a meeting of environmental ministers from the world’s top seven economies. Pruitt attended only the first few hours of the summit before leaving early to jet back to Washington for a Cabinet meeting at the White House." ...
... It's Candy's Fault. Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, told a House committee on Tuesday that he had 'dismissed' himself from the decision to buy a $31,000 dining room set for his office last year, leaving the details to his wife and staff.... 'I invited my wife to come and help,' he said. 'I left it to my wife, you know, to choose something. I dismissed myself from the issues.' And it was Mrs. Carson, he said, who 'selected the color and style' of the furniture, 'with the caveat that we were both not happy about the price.'... But emails released under a Freedom of Information Act request last week seemed to contradict that account.... 'Setting aside the issue of whether it is appropriate for Secretary Carson to delegate decisions regarding the use of taxpayer funds to his wife, this is now at least the third version of Carson’s story about the furniture, said Clark Pettig, [of American Oversight].... Democrats on the committee argued that Mr. Carson’s timeline suggested that he was simultaneously outraged by the high cost of the set — and ignorant of the price tag.”
Heidi Przybyla of NBC News: "The Trump administration’s abrupt cancellation of a federal program to prevent teen pregnancy last year was directed by political appointees over the objections of career experts in the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the program, according to internal notes and emails obtained by NBC News. The trove shows three appointees with strict pro-abstinence beliefs — including Valerie Huber, the then-chief of staff for the department's Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health — guided the process to end a program many medical professionals credit with helping to bring the nation’s teen pregnancy rate to an all-time low.... Last month, Democracy Forward, a nonprofit law firm and advocacy group, sued the administration for unlawfully terminating the program after the agency took months to respond to its Freedom of Information Act request.... It is also part of a broader narrative about programs benefiting women and children becoming political targets under a president who insists he is an advocate for women’s rights and health." Read on. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Yeah, well, the teen pregnancy program is largely educational. And the entire Trump administration is sworn to oppose any type of education:
... Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: "President Trump is obsessed with trade surpluses. In his zero-sum view of the world, if we don’t sell more than we buy in a given industry, we must be losing. Yet he seems hellbent on destroying one of our winningest exports: higher education. Unlike with toys or televisions, the United States sells much more higher education to the rest of the world than we buy from it.... We have an educational trade surplus of nearly $32 billion.... [BUT] Multiple reports show the spigot of international students has been turned off.... There are a lot of things government, at all levels, can do to make sure one of our most successful export industries continues to succeed. Instead, at virtually all levels, our political leaders are doing the opposite of those things."
Illinois Primary Races
Gubernatorial Race. Julie Bosman & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "The race for Illinois governor has come down to this: the multimillionaire versus the billionaire. Gov. Bruce Rauner, a private-equity executive seeking a second term in office, prevailed in a tough battle for the Republican nomination on Tuesday, while J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire philanthropist and venture capitalist from a prominent Chicago family, won the Democratic nomination for governor, according to the Associated Press. Their victories promise a contest that will be fiercely fought and dominated by big money, with each candidate controlling tremendous sums of personal wealth to spend on his campaign. The two men have already raised more than $150 million, on track to become one of the most expensive governor’s races in history.... Mr. Rauner, 61, survived a challenge from Jeanne Ives, a Republican legislator and Army veteran who took a hard-right stance on social issues and attacked him for being insufficiently conservative.... Mr. Pritzker, who has donated close to $70 million to his own campaign, fell short of 50 percent of the Democratic vote, but still outpaced Chris Kennedy, a businessman and a son of Robert F. Kennedy, and Daniel Biss, a suburban state senator. In an acceptance speech before a crowd of supporters here on Tuesday night, Mr. Pritzker, 53, called for universal health care, fair wages, protections for labor unions and the legalization of marijuana."
Congressional Race. AP: "Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, narrowly won a primary Tuesday over a progressive newcomer who argued the congressman's views no longer reflect the Chicago-area district he has represented for seven terms. Marie Newman, who was little-known when she decided to challenge Lipinski for the seat he inherited from his father, had backing from progressive groups as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won Illinois' 3rd Congressional District by 9 points over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary. With 97 percent of precincts reporting votes, Lipinski's margin over Newman was less than 2 percentage points." Lipinski will face this guy in November:
... Nazi Wins GOP Primary in Illinois. Liam Stack of the New York Times: "Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier described as a Nazi by the Illinois Republican Party, won the Republican primary on Tuesday in the state’s Third Congressional District, a heavily Democratic district that includes part of Chicago and its suburbs, according to The Associated Press. Mr. Jones, 70, unsuccessfully sought the nomination five times before, and his victory on Tuesday was a foregone conclusion after the Republican Party failed to draft another candidate to enter the race against him."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Tom Namako of BuzzFeed: "A retired United States Army lieutenant colonel and Fox News contributor quit Tuesday and denounced the network and ... Donald Trump in an email to colleagues. 'Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration,' wrote Ralph Peters, a Fox News 'strategic analyst.' 'Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed,' he wrote." ...
... Kevin Drum calls Peters "a warmonger’s warmonger": "... after a decade of taking their money, he finally pretends to have just noticed that Fox News is a lunatic propaganda machine, not a news outlet."
Mrs. McCrabbie: I made a snide, politically-incorrect remark in yesterday's Comments suggesting that mike pence's fan base was too ignorant to read "real books." Turns out I was kinda right. (BTW, I don't really think that college degrees are necessarily evidence of superior intelligence [but depending upon the course of study, a college education may increase a person's analytical skills]):
... Pew Research Center: "As the 2018 midterm elections approach, women and especially college graduates have moved toward the Democratic Party. By contrast, the Republican Party’s advantage in leaned party identification among white voters without a college degree has never been greater, dating back more than two decades. While partisanship among voters usually does not change much on a yearly basis, some differences have widened over time, especially by educational attainment, gender and age. And these gaps are even larger when categories are combined, such as education, race and gender." Mrs. McC: So one good reason Donald Trump says, "I love the poorly-educated.")
Beyond the Beltway
Bryan Lowry of the Kansas City Star: "Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach could be facing a contempt order from a federal court after a judge on Tuesday tore into the Kansas Republican about repeatedly skirting her orders. U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson chastised Kobach, a candidate for governor, at a contempt hearing for suggesting that her previous orders have left any room for ambiguity. 'I've had to police this over and over and over again,' Robinson said with frustration during the hearing in Kansas City, Kan. Robinson in 2016 ordered Kobach to fully register thousands of Kansas voters who had registered at the DMV but had failed to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, as required by a Kansas law that Kobach crafted. 'The real question is why has the secretary of state not complied with it until he's called on it. ... There's been no change of rules. There's been no ambiguity,' Robinson said. The contempt hearing capped two weeks of courtroom battles between Kobach and the American Civil Liberties Union as Robinson weighs whether federal law allows Kansas to impose the requirement."
Reid Wilson of the Hill: "A Pennsylvania state representative has introduced resolutions to impeach four of the five state Supreme Court justices who voted to override congressional district maps they said were unfairly gerrymandered on partisan lines. The resolutions, introduced by state Rep. Cris Dush (R), accuse Justices Kevin Dougherty, Christine Donohue, Debra McClosky Todd and David Wecht of misbehavior in office. A fifth resolution to impeach Supreme Court Justice Max Baer is pending introduction. In a memo to fellow House members, Dush said the ruling overriding Pennsylvania’s U.S. House district lines amounted to an overstep of judicial authority under the state Constitution, which lays out the path by which a bill becomes a law — in this case, a bill to delineate the district lines after the decennial Census and reapportionment process."
Scott Travis & Tonya Alanez of the (Florida) Sun-Sentinel: "Two students were arrested Tuesday for bringing knives to the Parkland school where 17 were killed by a gunman on Feb. 14 and a third is being mentally evaluated for making online threats. Compounding the anxiety and tension emanating from the campus, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School deputy was suspended for sleeping on the job after being caught by a student on Monday evening, according to the Broward Sheriff's Office. The student notified a sergeant patrolling the school that Deputy Moises Carotti was asleep in his patrol car, said Veda Coleman-Wright, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office. The sergeant knocked on Carotti’s window to wake him up, she said. Carotti was suspended with pay while an internal affairs investigation is launched."
News Ledes
Washington Post on how law enforcement officials zeroed in on Mark Anthony Conditt, the man who planted & detonated bombs in the Austin, Texas, area. "Conditt made a 25-minute video recording on his cellphone describing how he built seven explosive devices, [Austin Police Chief Brian] Manley said. He said the video, which was made between 9 and 11 p.m. Tuesday, seemed to be created because Conditt 'felt like we were getting very close to him.' 'He does not at all mention anything about terrorism, nor does he mention anything about hate, but instead it is the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his personal life that led him to this point,' he said, adding, 'there was no reason given for why he selected' the victims.” ...
... NBC News: "The suspect in a spate of bombings across Austin, Texas, has been killed following a confrontation with police early Wednesday, two law enforcement sources told NBC News. The police, FBI, and personnel with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have been deployed on the section of I-35 where the incident happened, the ATF said in a tweet.... The Austin Police Department described the incident as an 'officer involved shooting' on a section of highway in Round Rock area, a city in the Austin metropolitan area." ...
... New York Times Update: "A suspect in the series of bombings that have terrorized the city of Austin, Tex., died early Wednesday after he blew himself up in his car as he was being chased by the police, the authorities said. The Austin Police Department reported in the early morning that an officer had been involved in a shooting on Interstate 35 in Round Rock, just north of Austin, and people in the area reported hearing an explosion. The scene was quickly swarming with law enforcement officers.... The suspect, who has not been identified, was believed to be involved in the case of at least five bombs that have detonated this month in Austin and San Antonio, killing at least two people and wounding five. It was not immediately clear whether the suspect was acting on his own or working in concert with others." ...
... Austin American-Statesman: "5:50 am update:... The name of the suspect, described only as a 24-year-old white man, has not been released, pending notification of his family, [Austin Police Chief Brian] Manley said. Although police are still investigating the possibility of accomplices, he said, 'we believe this individual is responsible for all of the incidents in Austin.'”
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Don't feel badly for your snideness on my behalf, Bea. I was snide long before I met you.
Two of tonight's minor snides.
In addition to your take on the deplorably uneducated, I'm guessing the Cambridge Analytica techniques were deliberately and most effectively deployed in the least educated parts of the country, the areas where the political truism that people vote with their hearts or bellies and not with their heads is, for lack of an alternative, most likely to be the case.
And another snark: Hope the women trying to break the chains of their non-disclosure agreements succeed if only for the discomfort the raunchy tales they tell will cause the Pretender.
But regardless of the business they might have been in or how they made their way in the world, I (the prudish I?) have to wonder what in the world was wrong with them.
So manly of Ben Carson to throw his wife under the bus. “What furniture? Oh that furniture? Candy picked it out, I had nothing to do with it.” You know what? Even if she did, man up and take the hit yourself. Jesus, these people. Next we’ll hear that the cat picked it out online and ordered it while they were sleeping.
@Akhilleus: "Candy did it" is a great excuse, & I don't doubt ole Doc Ben has pulled it before. There's no reason a Cabinet secretary's spouse would be required to know there was a $5,000 statutory limit on furniture purchases for the secretary's office. But Carson -- at some point in the purchase process -- would have been informed. (And in fact he was.)
I like the blame-the-spouse defense. I'm going to start using it myself. (There is a slight wrinkle in that Medlar is a fictional character, but I don't sweat the small stuff.)
Trump -- who already always blames somebody else for his fuck-ups -- could use it, too. "I congratulated Putin on his sham election because Melania told me she read in Emily Post that is what was appropriate." "Eric is stupid because Ivana used to lock him in the closet instead of letting him go to school." "I wrote a tax bill for billionaires because Melania thinks I'm a billionaire ha ha so she told me Paul Ryan's bill was a good one." "I bombed North Korea because Melania said it would make me look manly & powerful." (Or, alternatively, "Melania sneaked into my bedroom when I nodded off while tweeting & stole the nuclear football & that notecard taped to it with the codes. Then ka-boom!")
By pure chance, yesterday I ran across my only published letter to the NYT. It's a nice fit for today's reminder that education in much of America is considered bad for Republican politics.
Behind in Education
Published: September 11, 2005
To the Editor:
Having taken a beating in manufacturing, America's greatest hope for the economy relies on science and technology. But we are rapidly losing that battle.
Over the last 10 years, I have hired five scientists, all from foreign countries. There was no hope in finding a single candidate from the United States who could compete with these excellent, well-trained people.
While the rest of the world trains scientists, we create scientific illiteracy by debating the nonsense of intelligent design.
Marvin Schwalb
Livingston, N.J., Sept. 6, 2005
Nick Bilton over on Vanity Fair re the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica debacle notes that one tech investor put it more succinctly: (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/facebook-will-never-be-the-same-after-the-cambridge-analytica-scandal)" They're fucked."
Bilton writes: Back in his Harvard days, Zuckerberg told a friend that he could use The Facebook (as it was called back then) to find out anything on anyone. “I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS,” Zuckerberg proudly wrote to his friend. Then pointed out that, “People just submitted it. I don’t know why. They ‘trust me.’ Dumb fucks.”
He knew all along????????
As for Alexander Nix, (who looks the part) if they were making a movie from a script like this...isn't he perfectly cast?
What's with Alan Dershowitz these days?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/03/21/dershowitz_trump_100_right_there_never_should_have_been_special_counsel_no_probable_cause.html
Has he traded pundit places with Jennifer Rubin, who has been making sense lately? My country (Israel), right or wrong? Or is that too reductive?
More proof that smart, even well-educated, and sensible are not always congruent?
@Ken: Alan D., in my estimation, has lost a lot of credibility after he went on CNN months ago praising Trump and/ or defending him for something or other while denouncing certain facts in the case.
And speaking of lawyers: Here is a windy exchange (video) between Stormy Daniel's lawyer and Michael Cohen's lawyer: If you have the time to wade through this it's an interesting back and forth between a lawyer who you'd probably like for yourself and a scammy hustler, lying piece of shit kind. Anderson Cooper does a nice job of being Mr. in-between.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stormy-daniels-lawyer-cnn-michael-cohen_us_5ab1daabe4b008c9e5f28b40
With all the outrage about T calling Putin with congrats, I'm wondering in what universe he could have handled that conversation adequately and what script his advisors may have written for him. It's not in his skill set to handle something like that. What should that script have said? "America won't tolerate election interference from you!" I'm not seeing any good outcome from any of this. Was there ever any expectation other than fawning over Putin and creating chaos?
Ken,
Years ago, sitting in my office at a technology group, I got a call from Alan Dershowitz. At the time he was writing a syndicated newspaper column on what I guess you might call "Legal Outrages" and he thought he had one with that group. He had been given a tip that my group, working in a very liberal enclave, was engaged in a form of scandalous censorship. Even better, there was a bit of pornography thrown in to make the whole thing nice and juicy for legal--and liberal--outrage.
He was very nice. He thought he had me (us) cold, so he carefully ran down the list of supposed breaches of a liberal worldview. I listened politely then informed Alan that he had been scammed. I knocked off each of his outrages and, into the bargain (this was fun), read him chapter and verse of the applicable contract laws which indicated that what we were accused of was not only wrong, but impossible for us to have accomplished. I told him if he liked, I'd be happy to send him a copy of the documents (this was before email). He declined, realizing that he'd been digging a dry hole. But he was pleasant. We chatted a bit then he hung up.
Even though this was before the OJ circus, it was after the Claus von Bülow murder trial, and he was very well known, so I was extremely happy I was prepared and didn't have to "get back to him" (always looks bad). Alan has always been one for self-promotion. He has never minded going to a different side if he thought it would make him look somewhat more of a noble and iconoclastic character. Trying to ingratiate himself with Trump might be one of those things, or it just might be a chance for him to separate himself from everyone else who views the Mueller investigation as not only the right thing to do, but absolutely necessary to the health of the nation.
Even though Alan has enjoyed his liberal/Democratic image (if you've ever seen the film "Reversal of Fortune", covering the von Bülow trial, Dershowitz, played by Ron Silver, is depicted as a hip, basketball playing civil rights knight who gets his man off by employing equally hip, counterculture Harvard Law School students who sit on the floor and eat Chinese take-out in between mounting the moral high ground, you know what I mean), he also enjoys, I think, the notoriety he gets by taking an unexpected tack.
Backing off Alan Dershowitz is one my personal favorite memories. His defense of Trump won't be one of those.
I noticed a headline for one of the ubiquitous "story ideas" you see these days, "Top Takeaways from the Illinois Primary". Well, that's an easy one: Number one: bring money. Number two: bring more money.
The gubernatorial candidates, Rauner and Pritzker, spent $120M between them. Yikes.
No wonder regular people can't get into politics. If we were in need of a Cincinnatus to save the republic, we wouldn't find him behind a plow, we'd have to look for him in a corporate corner office.
There are exceptions, of course, but on average, it'll cost you over $10M to win a Senate seat. About $1.7M to rub elbows with the loonies in the House.
And once there, it's tough to dislodge the dead weight. Remember the so-called Gingrich Revolution, in which a pile of winger idiots clambered aboard the gravy train but promised to abide by the new fad for term limits? Well, they actually meant term limits for the other guys. A lot of those people are still around mooching off the taxpayers, 24 years later. A few, of course, are in jail, more should be. But the point is that even wingers who promise to return to their plows, like Cincinnatus, after serving a term, stay on and burrow in like ticks.
So the takeaway is money, money, money. Oh, illegal gerrymandering helps too.
A Panoply of Inept Knaves (aka the Trump campaign)
As bad as the Cambridge Analytica scandal sounds (and it is bad), it may not have been quite as effective as advertised.
David Graham, in The Atlantic, has an interesting take on it that's worth your time. His contention, which sounds pretty solid, is that CA was offering an abundance of flim-flam. If their psychometric whatchamacallit stuff really was the real deal, why suggest honeytraps, gotcha videos, and dirty tricks?
As Marie suggests, Trump legitimately got the votes of the knuckledraggers. That's not a surprise. But that also doesn't mean that the CA-Facebook-Russia-Wikileaks nexus isn't important or didn't have an effect, but in the case of CA, it appears that, like almost everything else Trumpy, it's a clusterfuck of grandiosity, lies, backstabbing, illegality, and downright bumbling bumfucked bullshit.
The more important revelation is that it points out how low Trump, and those around him, are always prepared to stoop. It also illustrates the limits of Bannon's so-called genius. And it demonstrates that, for Trump, his privacy is of paramount importance. Yours? Not at all. He'll happily sniff the soles of your shoes if he thinks he might find something he can use.
In the game of political limbo, nobody goes lower than Trump, even when he does it with losers and nincompoops. And he's still doing it, in office.
Well here's some good news for a change, and change, me lassies and laddies, is the operative word.
"If you had asked a young child 50 years ago to draw a picture of a scientist, about 99% of the drawings would be of men.
Ask children to do the same drawing today, and close to a third of the pictures would be of women.
This change through the decades was charted in a new study that examined how children develop gender stereotypes in science."
So, okay. Progress. Yeah!
Kids are the hope of the future, and even after they've been socialized to an extent, it's good to see that stereotypes of past generations are losing traction. Of course, this could also be because more women are working in various scientific fields (also a good thing), and pop culture narratives show women in labs far more often than they used to.
My little guy, when he was 2, had a favorite color: pink. This was looked at with some alarm by certain relatives (older males, and even some women) but I thought it was perfectly fine. Nothing wrong with pink. It's a great color. Of course, his tastes in colors have changed but when we color now he doesn't avoid pink as being a "girl's color". And when we illustrate our stories, there are as many girls as there are boys. For our latest group of stories he's come up with a female antagonist, but she's not only smart and cool, she's badass.
I guess we take what we can get.
Akhilleus,
Yeah, things to change, just not quickly enough for my impatient self.
Sent that same article on to my daughter in law whose own third grade daughter (a long-winded way to say "granddaughter") is quite taken by the story of Katherine Johnson of "Hidden Figures." She saw the movie, read a young adult book about her, dressed as her at Halloween and used her persona in a school report. I'd say that for her third grade is the Year of Katherine Johnson.
On another subject, this sent to me by another RC'er. Raised some damn good questions which the entire nation is reluctant to ask, let alone answer.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/03/andrew-bacevich-shellacks-the-new-york-times-usefully-idiotic-coverage-of-americas-never-ending-wars.html
It's directed at the NYTimes, but I intend to send it along to my United States senators and my representative and request a response. We'll see if I get any.
Ken, thanks for that link. Baron Rothschild is credited for saying "the best time to buy is when blood is running in the streets", referring to taking advantage of distressed stock sales during a bear market. Lately political commentators have misappropriated the saying to refer to the boom in US munitions and weapons industry since the 'war on terrorism'. I think one of the reasons that our nation (and the NYT) is reluctant to ask questions about our never-ending wars is that we are all invested. Every working man and woman who has pinned their retirement hopes on the growth of market indexed funds is wittingly or unwittingly invested in the military industrial complex. The same can be said of environmental destruction. Morality is a thing that is soluble and completely miscible with money.
Trump's recent deal to arm the Saudis with nuclear weapons (you know, for 40,000 jobs and billions of dollars), and the "arms race with Russia", should be far more alarming than any 'dick measuring contest' Trump is trying to pull off with Kim Jung-Un. We are paying attention because Un's dick is pointed at the USA. Fortunately we have the Joint Chiefs to defuse that situation. But give one Islamic sect nukes to keep another Islamic sect with nuclear capability in check - there will be no way to defuse this. This is a religion where those that give up their life for their tribal faith by killing infidels are venerated as martyrs. Why not push the button?
Your 401(k) dollars are hard at work to bring peace to the middle east and fight terrorism everywhere. Americans (1) don't want to know where their investments are spent; (2) don't have many options to do otherwise.
@Ken: Wow! Bacevich throws some solid punches––-although he has always done this–--wonder if this will get A.G.'s attention or will he dismiss it as just another complaint.
"So that’s my take. I’m sure, A.G., that journalists in your employ could sharpen my questions and devise more of their own. But here’s a small proposition: just for a single day, confine Donald Trump to page A17 and give our no-name war the attention that the Times normally reserves for the president it loathes."
And I loved that he used Hitchcock's "Foreign Corespondent" to make his point.
Thanks for this and whomever you got this from. Have always thought Bacevich was true blue and through all his rants he never once mentioned that he lost his son in that stupid war called "Iraqi Freedom."