;)
The Commentariat -- March 26, 2018
Afternoon Update:
Katie Rogers & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump ordered the expulsion of 60 Russians from the United States on Monday, adding to a growing cascade of similar actions taken by western allies in response to Russia's alleged poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. Poland, Italy, Denmark, France and Germany were among 14 European Union member nations announcing plans to expel Russians from their countries in solidarity with Britain, which previously expelled 23 Russian diplomats after the poisoning. Canada also said it would expel four." (Linked earlier, new lede.)
Alan Rappeport & Prashant Rao of the New York Times: "President Trump secured his first major trade deal on Monday as the United States and South Korea reached an agreement to renegotiate their trade pact, with Seoul agreeing to reduce its steel exports and open its market to American cars in exchange for an exemption from Mr. Trump's global tariffs on steel and aluminum. The deal ... appears to end a dispute that had strained ties between Washington and a reliable Asian ally. It also seemed to confirm Mr. Trump's 'America First' approach to trade, in which he has sought to extract concessions in return for exemptions and revisions to the blanket steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the White House this month."
James McAuley of the Washington Post: "The Paris prosecutor's office is investigating whether anti-Semitism was a motivation for killing of an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor that has outraged France's Jewish community. Mireille Knoll was stabbed multiple times and left in her burning Paris apartment on Friday. French authorities have taken two suspects into custody, according to a judicial official...."
CBS News: "A night before CBS News' '60 Minutes' aired its interview with Stephanie Clifford, better known as the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, President Trump had dinner with Michael Cohen, his longtime personal attorney." Mrs. McC: Just wanted to chat about his golf game. ...
... Jay Michaelson of the Daily Beast has a theory: "Pretty much all [non-disclosure agreements] become voided once the confidential information becomes widely known.... In this case, when the Wall Street Journal revealed the details of the contract on January 12, 2018, that information stopped being confidential. So why not just say that?... [Because t]his dispute isn't about the affair: it's about ... pictures or texts.... The only question Daniels refused to answer [in her interview with Anderson Cooper] was about whether she's got more evidence of the affair. [Daniels' attorney Michael] Avenatti suggested the answer is yes: he tweeted a photo of a DVD inside a safe.... If Daniels has retained copies of pictures or texts, then she is in clear violation of the central parts of the confidentiality agreement.... If that DVD has pictures of Trump, it is literally Trump's copyrighted property. Unless, of course, the agreement is null and void.... Now you can see why Avenatti is pursuing this weird and unlikely strategy to say that the agreement was never valid in the first place: that's the only way for that DVD to matter."
Charles Pierce comments on the Trump/Mnuchin request that Congress send the Presidunce* a line-item-veto bill. "[Mnuchin] doesn't know. Worse, he doesn't care. Worst of all, he's sitting in the position he's in right now because he doesn't know and he doesn't care. About the country. About its Constitution. About anything that is outside the safety-deposit box he has for a soul." Read the whole post, because it's a hoot.
Andy Kroll of Mother Jones: "The acting director of the Federal Trade Commission confirmed Monday that the agency has an open investigation into Facebook's data privacy practices.... In 2011, the company settled charges brought by the agency alleging that the social network misleadingly told its users they could keep their information private. As part of the settlement, Facebook agreed to no longer make 'further deceptive privacy claims' and to better inform its users going forward about how it shares their information. The question now is whether Facebook violated the terms of that FTC agreement when it allowed Alex Kogan, the Russian-American academic, to extract huge amounts of personal data from Facebook and then pass it to Cambridge Analytica. Facebook's stock price had lost as much as 6 percent of its value on Monday after the FTC confirmed its investigation." ...
... Lauren Pearle of ABC News: "Government watchdog group Common Cause Monday filed a pair of legal complaints with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Department of Justice accusing Cambridge Analytica LTD, its parent company SCL Group Limited, CEO Alexander Nix, SCL co-founder Nigel Oakes, data scientist Alexander Tayler, and former employee-turned-whistleblower Christopher Wylie of violating federal election laws that prohibit foreigners from participating directly or indirectly in the decision-making process of U.S. political campaigns. The defendants are all non-U.S. citizens, according to the complaints.... The legal filings allege that Cambridge Analytica and its executives ignored [their attorney's] advice and allowed foreigners to be involved in 'management decisions of U.S. political committee clients concerning expenditures and disbursements during the 2014 and 2016 elections.'"
Gal Lotan & Krista Torralva of the Orlando Sentinel: "Pulse nightclub gunman Omar Mateen was considered by the FBI for development as a possible informant prior to carrying out the 2016 mass shooting, an agent testified today during the trial of Mateen's widow, Noor Salman. That revelation came hours after Salman's defense filed a motion seeking to have the case dismissed or declared a mistrial due to information that Mateen's father was an informant for the FBI for more than a decade and sent money out of the country in the months before the attack."
*****
Josh Lederman of the AP: "The Trump administration expelled 60 Russian diplomats on Monday and ordered Russia's consulate in Seattle to close, as the United States and European nations sought to jointly punish Moscow for its alleged role in poisoning an ex-spy in Britain. Senior Trump administration officials said all 60 Russians were spies working in the U.S. under diplomatic cover, including a dozen at Russia's mission to the United Nations. The officials said the administration was taking the action to send a message to Russia's leaders about the 'unacceptably high' number of Russian intelligence operatives in the U.S The expelled Russians will have seven days to leave the U.S." --safari ...
... NEW. Katie Rogers & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump ordered the expulsion of 60 Russians from the United States on Monday, including 12 people identified as Russian intelligence officers who have been stationed at the United Nations in New York, in response to Russia's alleged poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. The expulsion order, announced by administration officials, also closes the Russian consulate in Seattle. The Russians and their families have seven days to leave the United States, according to officials. The expulsions are the toughest action taken against the Kremlin by President Trump...."
Emma Brown & Frances Sellers of the Washington Post: "Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who alleges that she had an affair with Donald Trump in 2006, says that she was threatened for attempting to tell her story publicly and accepted money through a Trump attorney to remain silent because she was scared for her family.... Trump and his wife were 1,000 miles apart as Daniels told her story: Shortly before the interview aired on Sunday, Trump flew back to Washington from a weekend trip to Mar a Lago. First lady Melania Trump remained in Florida, where she usually spends spring break...." ...
... Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "Ms. Clifford said during the interview that while she had seen Mr. Trump more than once, she had had sex with him a single time, unprotected. That happened shortly after they met at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006.... Mr. Trump was 60 at the time; Ms. Clifford was 27." ...
... Here's the transcript, via "60 Minutes," of Anderson Cooper's interview of Stephanie Cohen/Stormy Daniels. AND a clip from the WashPo ...
... Brandon Patterson of Mother Jones: "Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the FEC, told Cooper he thinks [Trump attorney Michael] Cohen's payment to Daniels could amount to an illegal campaign contribution. 'It's a $130,000 in-kind contribution by Cohen to the Trump campaign, which is about $126,500 above what he's allowed to give. And if he does this on behalf of his client, the candidate, that is a coordinated, illegal, in-kind contribution by Cohen for the purpose of influencing the election, of benefiting the candidate by keeping this secret.' The payment could also have implications for the Russia investigation, Potter said. If [Robert] Mueller believes Cohen's payment was improper, he could charge Cohen with a crime in an effort to get him to dish on Trump." ...
This is about the cover-up. This is about the extent that Mr. Cohen and the president have gone to intimidate this woman, to silence her, to threaten her, and to put her under their thumb. It is thuggish behavior from people in power. And it has no place in American democracy. -- Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels' attorney, to Anderson Cooper, aired Sunday ...
... Dylan Matthews of Vox: "A decent person who had an affair would, when faced with the prospect of that affair going public, tell their spouse what happened, apologize, and accept the consequences. That is not what Trump did. And it's not what Trump is still doing. Even now that the affair is public knowledge, Trump and his legal team are seeking $20 million or more in damages from Daniels, out of retribution more than anything else. A billionaire (or near-billionaire, depending on who you ask) using expensive lawyers to try to extract tens of millions of dollars from a working mother, out of anger that she refused to keep silent -- that is bullying. It's disgraceful behavior. And it's illustrative of the way that Trump has treated other people throughout his entire career in business and politics." ...
... Fox "News": "The lawyer for Michael Cohen, President Trump's personal attorney, sent adult film star Stormy Daniels a cease and desist letter late Sunday following her interview with '60 Minutes' where she spoke about her alleged affair with Trump and claimed she faced threats to her safety. Brent Blakely, Cohen's attorney, demanded that Daniels apologize for insinuating that his client was behind the threat she described that allegedly took place in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "Intimidating and threatening people who get in Trump's way seems to be a recurring theme in his business interactions.... There is a lot of reason to suspect [Michael] Cohen had something to do with the threat [to Daniels].... [Cohen's] true value is as a goon. 'If somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn't like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump's benefit,' Cohen said in 2011. 'If you do something wrong, I'm going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I'm not going to let you go until I'm finished.' In 2015, he told a reporter, 'I'm warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I'm going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?'... It may be difficult to imagine Cohen, the ultimate Trump loyalist, turning on his patron and idol. But mafiosos turn on their friends and mentors all the time. And Trump's organization was run in many respects like a crime family, with a sprawling web of shady and probably illegal activity.... If Stormy Daniels' account holds up, then it opens a vast new avenue for potential risk to Cohen, and ultimately Trump." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: It turns out the Daniels interview was not the biggest media event of the night. According to POTUS* (at 8:26 pm ET Sunday), what "everyone is talking about" is Howie Carr's book on "the most amazing political campaign of modern times." I am so out of it, I didn't even know.
Swamp Creature. Ken Vogel & David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: "For Elliott Broidy, Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign represented an unparalleled political and business opportunity. An investor and defense contractor, Mr. Broidy became a top fund-raiser for Mr. Trump's campaign when most elite Republican donors were keeping their distance, and Mr. Trump in turn overlooked the lingering whiff of scandal from Mr. Broidy's 2009 guilty plea in a pension fund bribery case. After Mr. Trump's election, Mr. Broidy quickly capitalized, marketing his Trump connections to politicians and governments around the world, including some with unsavory records, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Broidy suggested to clients and prospective customers of his Virginia-based defense contracting company, Circinus, that he could broker meetings with Mr. Trump, his administration and congressional allies. Mr. Broidy's ability to leverage his political connections to boost his business illuminates how Mr. Trump's unorthodox approach to governing has spawned a new breed of access peddling in the swamp he vowed to drain." ...
Desmond Butler, et al., of the AP: "A top fundraiser for President Donald Trump received millions of dollars from a political adviser to the United Arab Emirates last April, just weeks before he began handing out a series of large political donations to U.S. lawmakers considering legislation targeting Qatar, the UAE's chief rival in the Persian Gulf.... George Nader ... wired $2.5 million to the Trump fundraiser, Elliott Broidy, through a company in Canada.... [Two informants claim] Nader paid the money to Broidy to bankroll an effort to persuade the U.S. to take a hard line against Qatar, a long-time American ally but now a bitter adversary of the UAE.... In October, Broidy also raised the issue of Qatar at the White House in meetings with Trump and senior aides. The details of Broidy's advocacy on U.S. legislation have not been previously reported." --safari
Hilarious News. Everything Is Going So Smoothly. Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump has decided not to hire two lawyers ... Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing ... who were announced last week as new additions to his legal team, leaving him with a shrinking stable of lawyers as the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, enters an intense phase.... The president met with Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing, who are married, in recent days to discuss the possibility that they would join his legal team.... According to two people told of details about the meeting, the president did not believe he had personal chemistry with Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing. But beyond that, Ms. Toensing is representing Mark Corallo, who was the spokesman for Mr. Trump's legal team in 2017 before they parted ways. Mr. Corallo has told investigators he was concerned that a close aide to Mr. Trump, Hope Hicks, may have been planning to obstruct justice during the drafting of a statement about a meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr. during the campaign." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Josh Dawsey & Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "Trump's legal team has now shrunk to two: Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer who does not personally represent the president and occasionally draws grumbles from him, and [Jay] Sekulow, an outside conservative attorney and radio host. Trump had not closely researched di Genova or even consulted with top aides, including Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and White House counsel Donald McGahn, before hiring him." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "... Donald Trump's legal team is bigger than it looks. Two sources familiar with the president's team have told The Daily Beast that about half a dozen attorneys affiliated with a conservative non-profit have been helping Jay Sekulow represent the president.... Andrew Ekonomou, Mark Goldfeder, and Ben Sisney are among the attorneys who have helped him handle legal matters related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.... The fact that these men have worked on Trump's legal team has not been previously reported." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: As noted in yesterday's Commentariat, Trump tweeted Sunday morning that "Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case...." So no problem. On the other hand, if Trump fires Mueller, destroys the documentation the Mueller team has assembled & pardons himself, he doesn't need any Russia-related lawyers. ...
NEW. Darren Samuelsohn of Politico: "Though it is a virtual given that [Rick] Gates will sell out his business partner and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, less understood is the direct threat Gates could pose to President Donald Trump.... 'He saw everything,' said a Republican consultant who worked with Gates during the campaign. The consultant called Gates one of the 'top five' insiders whom Mueller could have tapped as a cooperative government witness. One defense attorney in the case said that Gates';s plea has triggered palpable alarm in Trump world.... Worst of all for the White House, Gates lacks hard-wired loyalty." --safari
Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "Treasury SecretarySteven Mnuchin has urged lawmakers to give President Trump a line-item veto, saying on 'Fox News Sunday' that it might prevent Democrats from stacking more nondefense discretionary spending into the next must-past budget bill. But Mnuchin's short exchange with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace also underlined the problem with the idea -- a 20-year-old Supreme Court ruling that struck down the line-item veto, finding 'no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the president to enact, to amend or to repeal statutes,' after President Bill Clinton used it 82 times.... Mnuchin did not discuss an idea that has circulated on the right -- simply not spending money appropriated by Congress. The 'impoundment' process also has been struck down by the Supreme Court.... But the Trump administration already has played around the edges of impoundment." Trump called for the line-item veto in his announcement Friday afternoon that he would sign the "ridiculous" bill. ...
... NEW. James Downie of the Washington Post: "For Mnuchin to make this mistake days [after Trump made it] means two things: 1.) The treasury secretary, more than a year into his tenure, is not aware of basic budget-making procedure; 2.) Either no one else senior enough at the White House to prepare Mnuchin knew those basics, or no one was organized enough to prep the one Cabinet member to appear on any of the Sunday shows this weekend. In the president's first 400 days, we've seen plenty of government by amateurs. But as 'record-setting turnover' in Trump's White House continues apace, his administration seems determined to mine new levels of incompetence. Mnuchin would play a critical role in the next economic crisis. If he can't get something so basic right, what chance does the country have when things get tough?"
Hope Yen & Ken Thomas of the AP: "... Donald Trump is planning to oust embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin amid an extraordinary rebellion at the agency and damaging government investigations into his alleged spending abuses, three administration officials told The Associated Press on Sunday."
Thanks for Your Service. Love, ICE. Theresa Waldrop of CNN: "A US Army veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan has been deported to Mexico, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. The deportation follows an earlier decision by US authorities to deny Miguel Perez's citizenship application because of a felony drug conviction, despite his service and the PTSD he says it caused.Perez, 39, was escorted across the US-Mexico border from Texas and handed over to Mexican authorities Friday, ICE said in a statement. Perez, his family and supporters, who include Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, had argued that his wartime service to the country had earned him the right to stay in the United States and to receive mental health treatment for the PTSD and substance abuse."
Question: Who actually said this on national TV about the March for Our Lives?: "How about kids instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that."
Answer: Close yo' mouth. It was this guy. (Sorry, his most famous page is down.) Now you're not so surprised, are you?
Benjamin Hart of New York: "As morbidly risible as [this] opinion is, it doesn't really diverge from the mainstream Republican position on guns. On the right, it is an article of faith that gun violence in America is inevitable, regulations be damned. (The mountain of evidence showing that America is an extreme outlier in this arena precisely because of its lax gun laws is ignored.)"
Martin Longman of Booman Tribune contrasts the remarks this weekend of "the man who likes to think of himself as the world's biggest Catholic" (above) and those of "the man who actually is the world's biggest Catholic."
Benjamin Hart of New York: "As morbidly risible as [this] opinion is, it doesn't really diverge from the mainstream Republican position on guns. On the right, it is an article of faith that gun violence in America is inevitable, regulations be damned. (The mountain of evidence showing that America is an extreme outlier in this arena precisely because of its lax gun laws is ignored.) ...
... Martin Cizmar of the Raw Story: "Gun-lovers in red Trump hats showed up at many of the rallies carrying AR-15s and sidearms, an effort they dubbed 'March For Our Guns.'... A search of social media finds images of heavily armed people -- including Utahans in a military-style vehicle with a mounted machine gun -- showing up to rallies." ...
... Talel Ansari of BuzzFeed: "... as Parkland massacre survivor Emma González and hundreds of thousands rallied at events across the US, on the internet, a fake photo claiming to show González tearing apart the Constitution was beginning to make the rounds.... The real photo is from a Teen Vogue photo shoot, and shows Emma González ripping up a shooting target poster, not the Constitution." Mrs. McC: Let's not just bully & threaten student activists; let's spread lies about them, too. ...
... Here's One Way Trump Really Is Making Us Safer. Matthew Haag of the New York Times: "Remington Outdoor, one of the oldest firearm manufacturers in the United States, filed for bankruptcy protection on Sunday amid mounting debt and declining sales. The gun maker had said last month it was nearing a bankruptcy filing, which it made on Sunday in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. In its Chapter 11 filing, Remington said it had between $100 million and $500 million in debt and would continue to operate while under bankruptcy protection.... After 20 children and six adults were killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., public outrage zeroed in on Remington after the authorities reported that the gunman had used an AR-15-style rifle made by the company.... The company expected a ... bump in sales if Hillary Clinton had won the presidential election in 2016 because of her possible pursuit of gun control legislation. But in the first nine months of Donald J. Trump's presidency, Remington's sales were down 27.5 percent."
NEW. Mark Stern of Slate: "On Friday night, the Trump administration released its plan to exclude transgender troops from the armed forces ... federal courts have found that discrimination against trans service members violates the Constitution, and the new proposal does nothing to ameliorate the ban's grave constitutional flaws.... Yet behind the scenes, a 'panel of experts' has been crafting a report, also released on Friday, designed to provide pretextual justification for Trump's ban. According to multiple sources, Vice President Mike Pence played a leading role in the creation of this report, along with Ryan Anderson, an anti-trans activist, and Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBTQ lobbying group. Mattis actually supports open transgender service, but he was effectively overruled by Pence, and chose not to spend his limited political capital further defending trans troops." --safari
Care for a Glass of Coal Ash Water? Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker reviews Scott Pruitt's illustrious career & his "administration" of the EPA.
Russell Berman of the Atlantic: "President Obama finally got a Republican-controlled Congress to fund his domestic budget. All it took was Donald Trump in the White House to get it done. In the $1.3 trillion spending bill that President Trump reluctantly signed on Friday, lawmakers did more than reject the steep cuts in dollars and programs that Trump proposed for domestic agencies a year ago. Across much of the government, Republican leaders agreed to spending levels that matched or even exceeded what Obama asked Congress to appropriate in his final budget request in 2016 -- and many of which lawmakers ignored while he was in office." Thanks to P.D. Pepe for the link. Mrs. McC: As Berman points out, you can thank the filibuster for this. Also, too, IMO, the Freedom Caucus, who made it necessary for Paul Ryan to get votes from Democrats.
Congressional Races. Alexander Burns & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "The passionate gun control rallies Saturday that brought out large crowds around the country sent a vivid signal that the issue is likely to play a major role in the 2018 midterm elections, and that Republicans could find themselves largely on the defensive on gun issues for the first time in decades.... State and local Democrati parties across the country also used the marches to register voters and sign up volunteers."
Craig Timberg & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "Cambridge Analytica assigned dozens of non-U.S. citizens to provide campaign strategy and messaging advice to Republican candidates in 2014, according to three former workers for the data firm, even as an attorney warned executives to abide by U.S. laws limiting foreign involvement in elections.... That year, Cambridge Analytica documents show it advised a congressional candidate in Oregon, state legislative candidates in Colorado and, on behalf of the North Carolina Republican Party, the winning campaign for Sen. Thom Tillis.... 'Its dirty little secret was that there was no one American involved in it, that it was a de facto foreign agent, working on an American election,' [whistleblower Christopher] Wylie said.... U.S. election regulations say foreign nationals must not 'directly or indirectly participate in the decision-making process' of a political campaign, although they can play lesser roles. Those restrictions were explained in a 10-page memo prepared in July 2014 by a New York attorney, Laurence Levy, for Cambridge Analytica's leadership at the time, including President Rebekah Mercer, Vice President Stephen K. Bannon and chief executive Alexander Nix."
Alex Hern of the Guardian: "As users continue to delete their Facebook accounts in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a number are discovering that the social network holds far more data about them than they expected, including complete logs of incoming and outgoing calls and SMS messages. The #deletefacebook movement took off after the revelations that Facebook had shared with a Cambridge psychologist the personal information of 50 million users, without their explicit consent, which later ended up in the hands of the election consultancy Cambridge Analytica." ...
... Zuckerberg Is Very, Very Sorry He Lost Billions for Using Your Personal Data. Sheena McKenzie of CNN: "Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took out full-page ads in several British and American newspapers Sunday to apologize for a 'breach of trust' in the Cambridge Analytica scandal." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Speaking of invasions of privacy, I just clicked on a page of the Hill & up popped an ad for a medication I'm taking. It is not a particularly common medication (I haven't seen ads for it on TV), so I have to assume the ad targeted me. I have never ordered the medication online & I have never looked up information online about my medication or underlying condition, so that means in all likelihood that the vendor -- a major commerical pharmacy -- or my health insurer -- also a major provider -- is selling information about my medical history to pharmaceutical companies. That's pretty disturbing.
NEW. "Capitalism is Awesome", Ctd. Joe Romm of ThinkProgress: "Car companies like GM, Ford, and Toyota are getting great publicity for touting a future of green cars. But at the same time, new reports show their lobbying group is pushing science denial to weaken U.S. clean car standards.... One of the report's authors is actually long-time climate science denier Joseph D'Aleo -- who has remained a policy adviser to the notorious anti-science Heartland Institute even after they put up a billboard comparing climate science believers and reporters to mass 'murderers and madmen.' The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has thoroughly debunked the car companies' report, which is straight out of the science denier playbook." --safari
Way Beyond the Beltway
Juan Cole: "The numbers on the Saudi-led Yemen War are apocalyptic, worse even than Syria. The total number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in Yemen is 22.2 million -- or 76% of the population -- including 11.3 million children. The Saudis and allies have hit Yemen with 15,000 airstrikes. 5,000 children have been killed. 8,700 civilians have been killed 50,000 civilians have been wounded 1.9 million children are not in school, and both sides have recruited children, some as young as ten, as fighters 11.3 million children need humanitarian assistance, with many on the verge of going hungry. All in all, 22.2 million Yemenis of all ages need humanitarian assistance, 3/4s of the population." --safari
Reuters: "The Saudi air force intercepted a missile over the northeastern part of the capital Riyadh late on Sunday night, Saudi state television said.... Yemen's Houthi-run SABA news agency reported that the group's missile force had targeted King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh with a Burkan H2 missile. The group also fired other types of missiles at airports in the southern Saudi cities of Abha, Jizan and Najran, according to the SABA report.... More than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen since March 2015 when Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim Arab states launched a military campaign against the Houthis, a group of Shi’ite fighters who had seized the capital and forced President Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi to flee."
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Reader Comments (16)
Stormy Daniels was composed, well spoken, and entirely believable on 60 Minutes. Now, being smooth and convincing isn’t in and of itself a sure index of authenticity, but at the very least, her claim that someone working in Trump’s interest approached her and threatened to hurt her infant (not to mention what appears to be a clear violation of campaign finance law) deserves further consideration, especially by those (Congressional Confederates) constitutionally charged with serving as a check on executive bad acts.
Will that happen? Never in life. When will enough be enough for these people? If some Democrat, a low level precinct captain, were charged with doing something that evil, Fox, and every living creature with an “R” after their name would be screaming bloody murder.
If threatening to kill or injure a little baby is not enough to move these traitors to at least look like they take their job and their oaths seriously, then nothing is.
@Akhilleus: The guy didn't threaten Daniels' daughter with physical harm. Rather, he threatened Daniels. From the WashPo story: "'A guy walked up on me and said to me, "Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,"' Daniels told journalist Anderson Cooper. 'And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, "That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom." And then he was gone.'”
What struck me was that a porn actor -- one who was willing to have sex on a first "date" with a man more than twice her age, and was unenthusiastic about it -- was far more believable, articulate, reasonable & composed -- than is the President* of the United States.
Marie,
You’re right. I think I got redirected because of the reference to the baby. I guess that let’s McConnell, Ryan, at al, off the hook. Hurting a porn star would be perfectly acceptable I their book.
I totally agree with Akhilleus' assessment of Stefani Clifford, aka, Stormy Daniels. She was credible and I must say, quite likable. But like Marie, I find it queer that she would have sex with Trump when, in her words, not being attracted to him at all. Looks to me to be more of a "this guy has connections and maybe will get me on his show" kind of calculation. And according to her they had only one sexual encounter so why all the drama? Why the hush money? Because she was a porn star? If he had dealt his cards differently he might have confessed to this ONE encounter while denying the others. His bus bragging about pussy grabbing had already labeled him a jerk and a cheat plus it was a known fact that he was bedding down babes––especially the young ones. Well, I'm rooting for Stormy , may she get whatever is due to her and with her dynamite lawyer she may just come out on top this time.
The Republican congress didn't just ignore Trump's proposals: the $1.3 trillion spending bill actually fulfilled or even exceeded many of the funding requests of his Democratic predecessor––you know, the one from Kenya who "did such a terrible job leading our country."
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/trump-obama-omnibus-spending-budget/556436/</
The biggest surprise, there was no 'affair'. He kept trying to get her attention but sex only once.
The most sickening non-surprise, Stormy is great because she reminds him of his daughter.
Follow up Trump plan, do nothing and make it go away. It will be easy since sex for POTUS only involves people named Clinton.
And PD, doing sex for business is Stormy's life. So doing the Trump was functionally routine for her. The best part is after doing it once, she avoided him.
It's so sad, just sad, when little donnie tweety-tweets about something "everyone is talking about", meaning--because no one is actually talking about it--him.
And not for nothin' but Howie Carr is in the pantheon of whiners and hacks. He's a real Trumper, that's for certain, a classic old school bigot who once complained that Barack Obama never worked for anything in his life, it was all handed to him, because black (a standard complaint of every white supremacist you'd ever hate to meet). He declared once that a woman who was raped deserved it "What did she think was gonna happen?"
Nice.
He promotes himself as a simple blue-collar working Joe but rakes in $800,000 a year on his Confederate screamer talk radio show and plenty more as a rag man for the right-wing Boston Herald (formerly owned by Rupert Murdoch). He attacks women, blacks, immigrants, Democrats, liberals--the standard hate line-up favored by Trump--and assorted other targets with equal ferocity and sarcastic defilement. He's been a Trump supporter for years so no wonder little donnie thinks "everyone is talking" about his latest hack-a-thon.
Sad.
At least she's legal...
The confluence of the stories about Trump's goons threatening Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford) and the revelations about Elliot Broidy, another shady operator working the scams inside the Trump carnival tent demonstrate (if any additional proof is needed) the repulsive baseness, the corrupt, mean and mean-spirited nature of the entire swinish Trump crime family. We've had plenty of presidents who were no Boy Scouts, but for the President of the United States to consort with crooks, goons, leg-breakers, foreign gangsters, and feral lawyers is beyond anything any of us could have imagined. It makes his connection to a porn star, who actually works in a lawful, above board profession, look eminent and commendable by comparison.
He's a crook, a con man, and a contemptible coward.
At least Stephanie Clifford is legal. More than you can say for the president* of of the Trumpist fools.
How delicious would it be for a porn star to be essential to the demise and comeuppance of Trump, Cohen, and the rest of the weasels, crooks, and swamp things with their snouts in the trough, knee deep in mud.
A member of Trump's base is in my exercise class (nice, otherwise sensible lady in her 50s). She saw Stormy's 60 Minutes interview last night and her response this morning: "So what, who cares. Clinton did worse." When someone else pointed out that it is the campaign finance violation that is the real issue, her response was a blank look. He will never lose these people no matter what.
To me, the most disgusting part of the whole 60 Minutes interview was using "you remind me of my daughter" as a pickup line. Ugh!
Joynone,
I texted that to a friend as soon as she mentioned it. He is such a pig. Not to mention that he told her she reminded him of Ivanka after she made him pull down his pants and spanked him with a magazine with his face on the cover! Freud would have put "Dora" on hold for a chance to unravel that creepy bullshit.
@joyone & @Akhilleus: Trump said nearly the same thing to Karen McDougal, with whom he had an affair at the same time. It seems Ivanka's hotness is really on Daddy's mind. Creepy? Ah, yeah. If Jared -- who doesn't look a bit like Dear Old Dad & whose main similarity with the Old Man is that they both over-leverage real estate investments -- is any indication, it seems the Donald-Ivanka attraction goes only one way.
It's well established that Trump is a con man, but there are other con men out there operating on their own without the benefit of goons, legbreakers, lawyers, and a protective media bubble.
A brilliant article in The Atlantic, by Rachel Monroe outlines the career of a con man whose riff was scamming women, draining their bank accounts and stealing their credit cards. He portrayed himself in identities such as an ex-Navy Seal and an investment banker. He bilked more than a million dollars from over a dozen women. He was caught several times but his knowledge of the justice system, and his sense (usually correct) that cops would not spend much time running down the complaint of middle age women who might or might not have been conned, allowed him to escape real punishment for years. Until the women began banding together and tracked him down.
It's a great story on its own, but as you read it you can't help but think of the connections to (and distinctions from) Trump.
This guy (Derek Alldred) presented himself as the real deal. He was smart and prolific. Monroe points out that "The writer and critic Luc Sante once wrote that 'the best [con men] possess a combination of superior intelligence, broad general knowledge, acting ability, resourcefulness, physical vigor, and improvisational skills that would have propelled them to the top of any profession.'"
Many famous con men are incredibly adept and possess a much higher than average intelligence. Frank Abagnale, who defrauded banks all over the world, passed himself off as an airline pilot and once passed the bar in Louisiana to become a lawyer, operated entirely on his own. Like the con artist in this story, these guys are like high-wire performers.
That's certainly not Trump. Where con men like Alldred operate on their own, relying on smarts and cunning, until things start to crash (whereupon they jump to another con already in the works), Trump relies on braggadocio, lawyers, and bullying. Everyone knows he's a carny barker but his act still works, even when people are apprised of his con, as is the case with joynone's workout acquaintance.
But here's something that does connect Trump with the expert lone wolf con artists:
"Con men thrive in times of upheaval. 'Transition is the confidence game’s great ally,' Maria Konnikova writes in The Confidence Game, an account of how swindlers manipulate human psychology. 'There’s nothing a con artist likes better than exploiting the sense of unease we feel when it appears that the world as we know it is about to change.'"
Alldred positioned himself to be the savior of many of the women he chose as his marks. Like Trump, he played the "I alone can fix it" card.
The con game can be so powerful that many women, all smart, accomplished women, by the way, even after they smelled a rat, were hard pressed to acknowledge that they had been conned, until the credit card bills for tens of thousands of dollars showed up.
Like Alldred and plenty of other con men, Trump promises the world, but picks the pockets of his marks, then disappears when the bill comes due.
Unlike Alldred, we'll probably never achieve the kind of catharsis his victims eventually experienced.
A good read. Unfortunately, those who need to read this, won't. And if they do, they'll probably say "Well, Bill Clinton (Obama, Hillary...etc.) was worse". In that way, they are the ones, after a while, who are conning themselves. If they, like the women in this article, ever banded together to go after the scammers, the jig would be up before Michael Cohen could grab anyone else by the throat.
Trying to figure out the S. Korean trade deal trumpeted this AM and, like the US, remain at a loss.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/business/south-korea-us-tariffs.html?
So, South Korea agreed to limit steel exports and, by lowering S. Korean safety and emission standards for them, admit twice the number of US cars into their market. Whadda win!
Except, S. Koreans don't want American cars. If they buy at the low end, according to "Forbes," they buy homemade; if they buy luxury, and many do, they go European. Add to that, half the S. Korean cars sold in the U.S. are made here and that part of the deal is a head-scratcher. So we can expect unsold American cars to litter S. Korean lots.
I’ve also noticed the new agreement doesn’t touch food or agricultural items, a category that was supposed to be a big win in the original agreement but has not worked out that way. More tears for red states...
Interestingly, S. Korean steel exports are way down on their list of total exports. Electrical machinery comes first, with autos in the middle somewhere and steel nearly bringing up the rear, valued a less than 4 percent of their total. So the limit on S. Korean steel imports will have little effect on the S. Korean economy.
Which is one of the reasons S. Korea feels it came out of the negotiations relatively unscathed.
NBC News reports, "While South Korea made some concessions to U.S. demands on the key auto trade issues, the revision of the free trade pact aligns with South Korea's own interests, experts said.”
It's a hell of a deal.
Can 't wait for the next round of negotiations by Phineas T.
And just read the slow-paced NAFTA negotiations hit another bump in the road over labeling junk food. Mexico and Canada think junk food should be labeled as such.
The Pretender (natch!) doesn't.
Thought that worthy of a Monday morning smile.
@Ken Winkes: Thanks for your analysis of Trumpy Gets a Trade Deal. I was wondering if being an obnoxious bully paid off. Apparently not here.