The Commentariat -- October 10, 2018

Afternoon Update:

... Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: "President Trump wrote an opinion article for USA Today on Oct. 10 regarding proposals to expand Medicare to all Americans -- known as Medicare-for-All -- in which almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood."

Devlin Barrett & Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "FBI Director Christopher A. Wray defended his agents' handling of a background investigation into then-Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh, saying that it was 'limited in scope' and followed standard procedures. Wray was pressed at a Senate hearing by Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) about how much direction FBI agents received from the White House when they conducted a supplemental background investigation into claims by a California professor that Kavanaugh attempted to sexually assault her when the two were teenagers.... Harris then asked if the FBI examined whether Kavanaugh may have misled Congress in his public testimony. 'That's not something I could discuss here,' Wray said.... He could not answer whether White House counsel Donald McGahn played a role in discussions between the White House and the FBI about the investigation, saying only that he was told the FBI's Security Division coordinated the effort with the White House Office of Security."

Lee Moran of the Huffington Post: "Don't expect to find any flattering biographical information about newly-minted Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on his namesake website domain. Instead, visitors to BrettKavanaugh.com are invited to click on links to resources for survivors of sexual assault. Kavanaugh ... failed to secure his name's URL and it was scooped up by Fix The Court, a judicial reform organization. The site also links to the websites of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, the End Rape on Campus organization and the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN)."

Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeed News: "A California man who pleaded guilty to selling fraudulent bank account numbers -- information that special counsel Robert Mueller's office says was used to finance Russian election interference efforts -- was sentenced Wednesday to six months in prison followed by six months of home detention. Richard Pinedo, 28, wasn't accused of knowingly helping Russian companies and individuals accused of orchestrating campaigns to influence the 2016 presidential election. But his fraud scheme nevertheless landed him in the middle of the special counsel's investigation."

Natasha Bertrand of the Atlantic: "In a motion to dismiss a new lawsuit accusing ... Donald Trump's campaign team of illegally conspiring with Russian agents to disseminate stolen emails during the election, Trump campaign lawyers have tried out a new defense: free speech. The lawsuit, filed last month by two donors and one former employee of the Democratic National Committee, alleges that the Trump campaign, along with former Trump adviser Roger Stone, worked with Russia and WikiLeaks to publish hacked DNC emails, thereby violating their privacy. But the Trump campaign -- represented by [attorneys] of the law firm Jones Day -- responded in a brief filed Tuesday that the campaign can't be held legally responsible for WikiLeaks's publication of the DNC emails. Furthermore, the Trump lawyers argued, the First Amendment protects the campaign's 'right to disclose information -- even stolen information -- so long as (1) the speaker did not participate in the theft and (2) the information deals with matters of public concern.' The motion's language seems to further an argument made by Trump and his allies...: namely, that collusion, even if it involved the coordinated release and exploitation of a candidate's emails during the presidential election, is not a crime."

Jesse McKinley & William Rashbaum of the New York Times: "The operator of a limousine company at the center of an investigation of the crash in upstate New York that killed 20 people was arrested Wednesday and charged with criminally negligent homicide, according to the State Police. Nauman Hussain, the son of a Shahed Hussain, the owner of Prestige Limousine, was taken into custody by the State Police during a traffic stop on a highway in the Albany area."

What $25MM in Campaign Donations Will Get You. Justin Elliott of ProPublica: The morning after he dined at the White House with Trump, Kushner & Rex Tillerson, Sheldon Adelson "attended a breakfast in Washington with [Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo] Abe and a small group of American CEOs, including two others from the casino industry." Japan has recently legalized casinos, & Adelson wanted a big piece of the action. "Adelson and the other executives raised the casino issue with Abe, according to an attendee.... During a meeting at Mar-a-Lago that weekend, Trump raised Adelson's casino bid to Abe, according to two people briefed on the meeting.... Trump told Abe he should strongly consider Las Vegas Sands for a license.... The president raising a top donor's personal business interests directly with a foreign head of state would violate longstanding norms.... [Adelson's] reputation as an Israel advocate has obscured a through-line in his career: He has used his political access to push his financial self-interest.... Not only has Trump touted Sands' interests in Japan, but his administration also installed an executive from the casino industry in a top position in the U.S. embassy in Tokyo. Adelson's influence reverberates through this administration.... Adelson has spent the Trump era hustling to expand his gambling empire. With Trump occupying the White House, Adelson has found the greatest political ally he's ever had."

Mrs. McCrabbie: I would be a pretty horrible person if I picked on 8-year-olds. But, but what if the 8-year-old grew up to be a guy who saw fit to imprison 8-year-olds and separate them from their parents? So... Nikki Fiske, third-grade teacher, as told to Benjamin Svetkey of the Hollywood Reporter: "Do you remember that character in Peanuts, the one called Pig Pen, with the dust cloud and crumbs flying all around him? That was Stephen Miller at 8. I was always trying to get him to clean up his desk -- he always had stuff mashed up in there. He was a strange dude. I remember he would take a bottle of glue -- we didn't have glue sticks in those days -- and he would pour the glue on his arm, let it dry, peel it off and then eat it.... He had such strange personal habits. He was a loner and isolated and off by himself all the time."

*****

Stephanie Ebbs of ABC News: "The day after an international panel of scientists issued a stark warning about the short window in which world leaders can act to avoid catastrophic climate change, the president of the United States didn't comment on whether the U.S. accepts or will act on the findings. A panel of more than 90 scientists under the United Nations published a report warning that the world has about 12 years to drastically reduce carbon emissions before the impact of climate change could become irreversible. When asked about the report on the White House lawn..., Donald Trump said he will be looking at it. 'It was given to me. And I want to look at who drew it. You know, which group drew it. I can give you reports that are fabulous, and I can give you reports that aren't so good. But I will be looking at it, absolutely,' he told reporters." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Of course "looking at it" does not mean "reading it," because Donald Trump never reads anything, and the report has a lot of words in it. Also graphs & charts, which are technically pictures, but they're complicated. Also, too, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which prepared the report, not only has the words "climate" and "change" in its name, it shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. So, you know, not a chance the Trump administration will endorse it. Ebbs' report, BTW, suggests Trump left the report "on the White House lawn," so that's nice it can biodegrade. ...

... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Kyla Mandel of ThinkProgress: "The majority of the top 50 newspapers across the country did not feature any homepage coverage of a landmark United Nations climate change report after its release. Analysis by nonprofit Media Matters for America looked at the highest-ranked newspapers (according to their Sunday circulation) in the U.S. to see whether the websites' main page linked to coverage [of the report].... But on Monday morning, just 22 out of the 50 papers had a prominent story about the report on their homepage.... Of the 28 newspapers that did not feature coverage of the report, many are published in areas at high risk of suffering some of the worst effects of climate change, Media Matters points out." --s

Jill Colvin & Zeke Miller of the AP: "Chants of 'Lock her up!' rang once again throughout an Iowa arena as ... Donald Trump rallied supporters Tuesday night. But this time, the staple of Trump's 2016 campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton had a new target: California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Trump, who was in the state boosting Republican candidates ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections, claimed that Feinstein, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had leaked a letter written by California professor Christine Blasey Ford alleging Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. Feinstein has denied her office was the source of the leak. 'Can you believe that?' Trump said, as his supporters turned the chant once deployed against the former secretary of state on another Democratic woman. 'Did she leak that? 100 percent,' Trump said, adding: 'I don't want to get sued, so 99 percent.' In a statement, Feinstein called Trump's remarks 'ridiculous and an embarrassment.'" ...

... Matthew Choi of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Tuesday further outlined his conspiracy theory that protesters were hired to oppose Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation.... 'The paid D.C. protesters are now ready to REALLY protest because they haven't gotten their checks - in other words, they weren't paid! Screamers in Congress, and outside, were far too obvious - less professional than anticipated by those paying (or not paying) the bills!' Trump tweeted.... Trump has yet to put forth any evidence to back up his claim of widespread paid protesters." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... The POTUS* Really Is Very Stupid. Avi Selk of the Washington Post, upon doing some sleuthing, has figured out where Trump got this bit of nonsense. "The base layer is the false premise that hundreds of protesters who swarmed the Capitol during Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings were 'paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad,' as Trump put it in another pronouncement last week, in contradiction to all known facts." Trump sent the tweet about a half-hour after "Fox & Friends" held a discussion about the protests. As part of the discussion, in what was clearly a joke, guest Asra Nomani said: "People have sent me lots of messages that they're waiting for their check." Dense Donald took that seriously.

Greg Sargent: "When Trump purports to apologize to Kavanaugh on behalf of the 'nation' while sneeringly dismissing those claims, eve as a majority opposes Kavanaugh and believes those charges, Trump is -- unwittingly or not -- highlighting the degree to which this episode represents the further entrenchment of minority rule. With Kavanaugh now on the court, this could very well get worse. The New York Times reports that Trump's unusual public apology to Kavanaugh is actually part of a broader strategy of using the battle over his confirmation to enrage and galvanize conservative voters in the midterm elections. Trump injected partisan politics into the swearing in of a Justice who is supposed to remain neutral, for the explicit purpose of polarizing the country in ways he thinks will benefit his party. But when Trump uses the term 'nation,' it should be understood in the way that exclusionary populist demagogues (of which Trump is one) generally employ such formulations: Trump is, in effect, defining the nation to exclude the Americans who are deeply troubled by Kavanaugh, the charges against him, and the larger debate it encompasses." (Also linked yesterday.) See also Eric Levitz's post, linked below.

Matt Zapotosky, et al., of the Washington Post: "Soon after Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein suggested using a wiretap to record President Trump's communications, then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe went to the bureau's top lawyer seeking advice on what he had just heard. Rosenstein, McCabe told the lawyer, wanted to furtively tape the president to help explore whether Trump had obstructed justice. How, McCabe asked, should the FBI respond to the outlandish proposition? The lawyer, James Baker, dismissed the idea, according to people familiar with the episode.... But importantly, Baker told congressional investigators last week that the deputy attorney general's suggestion was presented to him by senior FBI officials as being serious -- raising questions about Rosenstein's assertions to the contrary.... This week, Rosenstein is scheduled to talk to congressional investigators about the 2017 episode that nearly cost him his job after it was revealed in news accounts last month. The high-stakes interview with some of the president's closest Republican allies could again put the deputy attorney general in the hot seat...."

Jonathan Chait: "[T]he scope of possibilities for what Robert Mueller might uncover continues to broaden. Saturday, The Wall Street Journal updated one of the most curious side plots in the investigation: the role of Peter W. Smith, a Republican activist who in 2016 sought Hillary Clinton's emails from the State Department on behalf (according to Smith) of Trump's then-adviser Michael Flynn.... Smith died in 2017, very shortly after being contacted by a reporter, bearing a suicide note.... But it is looking increasingly plausible that somebody in fact killed him. Monday, The New Yorker published an investigation by Dexter Filkins [linked below] into the connection between the Russian Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.... The final and perhaps most intriguing development is last week's explosive New York Times account of Donald Trump's fraudulent tax schemes.... It shows that Trump is willing not merely to skirt the law but to blatantly violate it. It reveals that he has been able to harbor enormous secrets even in the face of constant media coverage. And, most directly, it raises unanswered questions about his mysterious financial methods." --s ...

... Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker has a long piece on what we know (and don't) about the shady Trump. Org.-based server communicating only with the Russian Alfa Bank and "Spectrum Health ... closely linked to the DeVos family". A highlight: "For some, the most baffling part of the puzzle was the way that the lookups [of the servers] stopped. The Trump domain vanished from the Web on the morning of Friday, September 23rd, two days after the Times presented its data to B.G.R., Alfa Bank's lobbyists in Washington, but before it called Trump or Cendyn. In [an anonymous data specialist] view, this was evidence of direct contact between Alfa Bank and Trump. One researcher ... put it vividly: 'The knee was hit in Moscow, the leg kicked in New York.'... Alfa Bank's servers continued trying to look it up.... Spectrum Health's machine kept trying, too.... Spectrum never succeeded in relocating the Trump server -- but Alfa did. On the night of Tuesday, September 27th... it looked up the domain name trump1.contact-client.com -- which was, it turned out, another route to the same Trump server." --s ...

... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Rachel Maddow did a segment on the Alfa Bank-Trump server connection that (a) put it in context & (b) should make you even madder at Jim Comey than you already were, even tho Maddow doesn't mention Comey's name. The New York Times, despite its infamous headline "clearing" Trump, knew in October 2016 that the FBI had an open investigation of that connection. However, the FBI asked the Times not to report out what it knew about the investigation because the FBI said it would compromise that investigation. This was at the very same time the FBI director wrote a letter to Congressional Republicans, 100% guaranteed to be leaked immediately, that the FBI was reopening -- for no good reason, BTW -- its investigation of Hillary's server. So one server investigation was a deep, dark secret, & the other one had to be announced to Congress immediately. And thanks, Obama, for appointing a Republican FBI director. ...

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "President Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, said on Tuesday she would resign at the end of the year, marking a high-profile departure of one of the few women in the president's cabinet.... The timing irked some West Wing aides, who saw the announcement as taking attention away from the swearing-in of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and his first day at the Supreme Court." (Also linked yesterday.) The story has been updated with Mark Landler & Edward Wong added to the byline. ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "President Trump and [Ambassador] Haley held a quickly arranged media availability Tuesday morning in the White House, shortly after Axios's Jonathan Swan broke the news of her impending exit. Haley said her resignation was simply about needing a break after six years as South Carolina governor and two at the United Nations, and Trump said Haley even previewed a desire to leave as long as six months ago. The two were obviously eager to downplay the idea that this was hasty. But if it wasn't, that might make the timing even odder.... Haley's exit is due at the end of the year, which means she'll be around for as many as 12 more weeks. But she and the White House chose to announce this four weeks before the 2018 election?... Update: Haley's resignation letter is dated Oct. 3..., which ... was also a day after Trump mocked Christine Blasey Ford at a rally, though there's no indication this had anything to do with Haley's departure." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Maybe Haley quit because the remote didn't work on the $52K curtains just installed in her NYC residence.

Tierney Sneed of TPM: "An appeals court on Tuesday filed an order allowing the deposition of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross [about his decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census] to proceed, but put the order on hold for 48 hours so that it could be appealed to the Supreme Court." --safari: Quick Kavanaugh, help out your team and stick it to Hillary!!! ...

     ... Update. Andrew Chung of Reuters: "The U.S. Supreme Court late on Tuesday temporarily blocked an order forcing Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to be questioned this week by lawyers for states suing over his decision to ask respondents to the 2020 census whether they are citizens. In a brief order issued on Tuesday night, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put the looming depositions of Ross and a top Justice Department official, John Gore, on hold while the high court further considers the government's request to shield the officials from questioning." Newly-seated Justice Bart O'Kavanaugh appended a concurring opinion, which he titled "Let's Toast Notorious RBG," commending Ginsburg for "recognizing that unfettered presidential power extends to Cabinet officials, administration staff and all Fox News personnel except Shepard Smith and Neil Cavuto."

Alexander Kaufman of the Huffington Post: "Andrew Wheeler, the acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, repeatedly engaged with inflammatory content on his personal Facebook and Twitter accounts over the past five years, including some in the past month. The previously-unreported interactions include liking a racist image of former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama on Facebook and retweeting an infamous 'Pizzagate' conspiracy theorist.... The most incendiary interactions occurred before Wheeler, whose past social media activity has drummed up controversy before, became acting administrator.... In an email to HuffPost on Tuesday, Wheeler said he didn't recall liking the image of the Obamas and clicked on tweets from conspiracy theorists without reviewing the source.... American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic political action committee, first uncovered the social media posts...."

** Peter Sullivan of the Hill: "The Trump administration is planning hours-long downtimes for maintenance on healthcare.gov during the coming ObamaCare sign-up period. The administration drew criticism for a similar move last year from advocates who said the downtime would hinder efforts to sign people up for coverage.... The maintenance schedule is the same as last year, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Tuesday, meaning healthcare.gov is scheduled to be offline for maintenance from 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. each Sunday during the sign-up period, except for the final Sunday, for a total of 60 hours of downtime."

Strangers in a Strange Land. If the Trump Administration Can Muck up a Process, It Will. Julia Ainsley of NBC News: "Hundreds of migrant families seeking asylum in the U.S. were released from detention in Arizona this week without warning and without instructions on where to go, how to find relatives or travel to their court hearings. A senior Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News the release is 'the start of a dam breaking' as family detention facilities, which now hold thousands of migrants, reach capacity. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are releasing the families from detention en masse without following their usual protocol that ensures immigrants have a means to travel to their court hearing and reunite with potential relatives in the U.S. The adults have ankle monitors to track their whereabouts until their scheduled court date to make their case before a judge for asylum."

Eric Levitz of New York: "The Republican Party is the only thing standing between you and 'the left's angry mob' of ideological zealots (who are all, also, the hired hands of a foreign Jewish billionaire, and thus, aren't genuinely angry, or ideological, or zealous).... On one level, this is just bog-standard, bad-faith Republican messaging.... Republicans know that their best bet is to stoke the paranoid fears and cultural resentments of their base, through demagogic lies if necessary.... But if the GOP's arguments are hypocritical and ever-shifting, their actions are nonetheless consistent with an overriding principle: When conservatives exercise political power it is by definition legitimate [see: Tea Party turds, Bundy fuckups, etc.], when their opponents do, it is not." --s

Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "As the nation watched the Senate Judiciary Committee meet to consider whether to rush through the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, the House Republican majority was quietly passing the Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act of 2018 -- a bill to make the Trump tax cuts for the rich permanent. According to the GOP-controlled Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would add another $545 billion to the federal budget deficit over the next decade.... A ThinkProgress review found that many of the vulnerable Republicans who voted for this latest unfunded legislation are also among those campaigning on their commitment to a balanced budget and/or a constitutional amendment to require one." --s

Elise Viebeck & Gabriel Pogrund of the Washington Post: "Long before Congress was consumed by the wrenching fight over sexual assault allegations against Brett M. Kavanaugh, lawmakers had promised to make the process fairer for those who accuse lawmakers or staffers of sexual misconduct. But nearly a year after the #MeToo era began, lawmakers have failed to deliver on that pledge -- and it is not clear when they will. Aides on Capitol Hill still have no choice but to report abusive behavior through a system that was widely decried last year as favoring lawmakers over employees who allege mistreatment. After lawmakers could not agree on a package of changes, they punted the issue until after the midterm elections -- which are now shaping up as a battle between the #MeTo movement and Republicans who say many accusations have gone too far.... The House and Senate each passed bills to address [staffers'] objections earlier this year, but key differences between them held up the process...."

Election 2018

For What It's Worth. Ella Nelson of Vox: "Nearly two-thirds of registered women voters polled by CNN said they were more likely to vote for Democrats this November: 63 percent voting for the Democratic candidate, compared to 33 percent who said they're more likely to vote for the Republican. Men, on the other hand, are narrowly more likely to vote for Republican candidates -- 50 percent of male voters said they were more likely to vote Republican, compared to 45 percent [for Democrats]." --s

Mitch Could Be in for a Surprise. Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "There are certainly signs that the partisan fight over Brett M. Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court goosed Republican enthusiasm for the midterm elections. 'This has actually produced an incredible surge of interest among these Republican voters going into the fall election,' Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said to USA Today after the final vote to confirm Kavanaugh.... A survey by NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist released last week indicated that McConnell's excitement might be warranted: After trailing Democrats in enthusiasm during the summer, Republican enthusiasm for voting has caught up. But that is only half the picture. More important is how those energized voters plan to cast their ballots -- and a new CNN-SSRS poll suggests that the most enthusiastic voters are not those Americans most interested in rising to Kavanaugh's defense.... Disapproval of Trump is higher among those who are more enthusiastic to vote, as is opposition to Kavanaugh's confirmation.... Those most enthusiastic about voting are much more negative on Kavanaugh [himself] than those not very enthusiastic about voting next month."

Elizabeth Dias of the New York Times: Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke, who is challenging Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Nasty) may garner support from "an under-the-radar web of white, evangelical women in Texas whose vote in November may be more up for grabs than at any time in the recent past. They are angry with many of Mr. Trump's policies, and frustrated because they feel their faith has been weaponized to support his agenda.... [Some] described Mr. O'Rourke as providing a stark moral contrast to Mr. Trump, whose policies and behavior they see as fundamentally anti-Christian, especially separating immigrant children from their parents at the border, banning many Muslim refugees and disrespecting women."

Lynzy Lab makes an argument for voting. The lyrics are here. Thanks to P.D. Pepe for the link:

Pema Levy of Mother Jones: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a lower-court order requiring voters in North Dakota to present certain forms of identification and proof of their residential address in order to cast a ballot in next month's elections. A case challenging this requirement on behalf of the state's sizable Native American populations alleged that the requirement would disenfranchise tribal residents, many of whom lack the proper identification and do not have residential addresses on their identification cards. The Supreme Court's order will likely make it harder for Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, considered the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate, to retain her seat in November.... Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan dissented.... Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was sworn in on Monday, did not partake in the decision...." But he did a war whoop anyway.

Adam Liptak & Noah Weiland of the New York Times: "... Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joined his new colleagues on the bench for the first time on Tuesday morning, taking a seat on the far right side of the bench, in the spot reserved for the most junior justice.... The court heard two hours of arguments in three cases, all concerning a complicated and ambiguous federal law that has long vexed the justices. The cases did not raise questions of high constitutional moment or involve deeply contested social issues, which may be just as well for a court that has sustained collateral damage from a confirmation fight marked by bitterness, distrust and raw partisanship.... The law under consideration in Tuesday's arguments, the Armed Career Criminal Act, is a kind of three-strikes statute. It requires stiffer sentences for people convicted of possessing firearms in federal court if they have earlier been found guilty of three violent felonies or serious drug charges." Although the subject was firearms, Justice Kavanaugh sat through arguments in all three cases without shooting anyone. ...

... Kelly Virella of the New York Times: "After the Senate's confirmation of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court on Saturday, we asked women across the country to tell us how they were reacting. We heard from 40,000 people. Many of the women -- lawyers, teachers, home-schoolers, military spouses -- expressed anger and bitterness over the nomination fight and those on the other side of the political divide. They also told us what lessons from this confirmation they will pass down to the next generation. Here is a selection of their responses...."

Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic: "The law is magic, and perhaps nowhere is this more obvious than in environmental law. Through the consent of the people and the government's monopoly on violence, the mere words of American environmental law have reshaped matter, exerted mastery over nature, and granted an incredible gift -- extra years of healthy life -- to unknown and unknowing souls.... By the government's own accounting, the 1990 Clean Air Act has prevented 160,000 American adults from dying before their time....[Kavanaugh's] appointment will likely rank as President Donald Trump's most effective, longest-lasting, and most profound contribution to environmental law — which is no small feat, as the president has spent most of his time in office trying to dismantle the entire edifice.... On environmental questions ... [retired Justice] Kennedy held the swing vote: The Court only ruled on one environmental case during Kennedy's three-decade tenure, in which he did not vote in the majority.... Kavanaugh, a veteran of Republican party politics, will not prove as persuadable, and ... he favors an extremely strict reading of the laws that empower the EPA." --s

Jordan Robertson of Bloomberg: "A major U.S. telecommunications company discovered manipulated hardware from Super Micro Computer Inc. in its network and removed it in August, fresh evidence of tampering in China of critical technology components bound for the U.S.... The security expert, Yossi Appleboum, provided documents, analysis and other evidence of the discovery following the publication of an investigative report in Bloomberg Businessweek that detailed how China's intelligence services had ordered subcontractors to plant malicious chips in Supermicro server motherboards over a two-year period ending in 2015.... Bloomberg is not identifying the company due to Appleboum's nondisclosure agreement with the client.... Appleboum said his concern is that there are countless points in the supply chain in China where manipulations can be introduced, and deducing them can in many cases be impossible." --s

Beyond the Beltway

Benign Bribery. Todd Richmond of TPM: "A new Kimberly-Clark lobbyist and his wife gave [Wisconsin] Republican legislators and their supporters more than $4,000 in late August, a little more than a month before GOP leaders decided to reconvene to consider tax incentives for the Texas-based papermaker, campaign finance reports show. The donations came just weeks before ... the Legislature [was ordered to] reconvene in a lame-duck session following the Nov. 6 elections to consider a $100 million tax incentive bill for Kimberly-Clark. The company has said if it doesn't get the tax credits it will close a Fox Crossing plant that employs about 500 people." --s

Andy Newman, et al., of the New York Times: Shahed Hussain, the owner of the Upstate New York limo company whose unlicensed chauffeur ran a stop sign in a limo with multiple mechanical problems & killed 20 people (including himself), is an FBI informant with an extremely dodgy past. "An examination of Mr. Hussain's history, based on court records and interviews with those who dealt with him, shows a man who has spent the better part of two decades crossing back and forth from one side of the law to the other." Hussain is currently in Pakistan "dealing with health issues." Mrs. McC: Uh-huh. In case you are of the misimpression that the FBI recruits solid citizens for its sting ops, you will want to read the full article.

"Babysitting While Black." Brittany Miller of CBS 46 News Atlanta: "A white woman called the police on a black man as he babysat two white children. Corey Lewis documented the entire ordeal on Facebook Live.... He told CBS46 that the woman first stopped him in the parking lot of a Cobb county Walmart and asked him if the children were okay. He said she then came back and asked if she could speak with them. Lewis said no and that’s when the police were called. He said the woman continued to follow him.... Lewis said the woman followed him all the way home. Then a Cobb County police officer showed up. The officer questioned the 10-year-old and the 6-year-old before calling their parents. David Parker and Dana Mango were in disbelief.... Parker and Mango said they don’t believe that the woman was trying to protect their children because they never showed any signs of being in danger."

Way Beyond

David Kirkpatrick & Carlotta Gall of the New York Times: "Top Turkish security officials have concluded that the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on orders from the highest levels of the royal court, a senior official said Tuesday. The official described a quick and complex operation in which Mr. Khashoggi was killed within two hours of his arrival at the consulate by a team of Saudi agents, who dismembered his body with a bone saw they brought for the purpose. 'It is like "Pulp Fiction,"' the official said. Saudi officials, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have denied the allegations, insisting that Mr. Khashoggi left the consulate freely shortly after he arrived. President Recep Tayyib Erdogan of Turkey has demanded that the Saudis provide evidence proving their claim." ...

... Martin Chulov of the Guardian: "Security camera footage was removed from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and Turkish staff were abruptly told to take a holiday on the day the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared while inside the building, Turkish authorities have claimed.... Two corporate jets rented from a company frequently used by the Saudi government arrived in Istanbul on 2 October and left separately the same evening. One jet ... left for Cairo, and the second ... flew to Dubai. Flight tracking records show they both later continued to Riyadh.... There were signs that Turkish officials were unwilling to further incriminate the kingdom, with which Turkey has lucrative trade ties and attempts to maintain a delicate regional relationship.... Yasin Aktay, an adviser to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, claimed 'the Saudi state is not blamed here', a marked shift in rhetoric that had earlier called for the kingdom to explain what had happened. 'We have our own problems with a deep state,' he told al-Araby in an interview. Earlier, Aktay had pointedly claimed that Khashoggi had been murdered by people sent from Riyadh." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: So is Donald Trump's no-nothing stance coincidental? It looks suspiciously as if our Dear Leader is colluding with the Saudis, just as the Guardian suggests Turkey is. Autocrats stick together (until they don't). ...

     ... Dana Milbank: "'I know nothing right now [about Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance and probably murder],' Trump [said], as if the world's most powerful man, with a vast intelligence apparatus on retainer, were just another passive consumer of Fox News.... At the United Nations just a couple of weeks ago, he called King Salman 'a great guy' and praised the kingdom's 'bold new reforms.' His administration previously cleared the Saudis to buy billions of dollars in U.S. military hardware.... Khashoggi's disappearance puts on display the utter amorality of Trump's foreign policy, a transactional policy befitting a real estate developer, not a superpower.... Trump has already looked the other way as Saudi Arabia effectively kidnapped Lebanon's prime minister, provoked confrontation with Qatar and caused mass carnage in Yemen's civil war. In August, after a Saudi-led missile strike killed dozens of schoolchildren, a U.S. official, asked by reporters about the American role in the strike, replied: 'Well, what difference does that make?'" ...

... Washington Post Editors suggest Trump's embrace of the Saudi leadership has encouraged their lawlessness. Mrs. McC: Yesterday, Nikki Haley called Jared Kushner a "hidden genius" (but misunderstood!). Does that include Jared's being "in the pocket" of Prince-and-then-King Salman?

Isabel Debre of the AP: "In a groundbreaking case, Israel has detained an American graduate student at its international airport for the past week, accusing her of supporting a Palestinian-led boycott campaign against the Jewish state.... The grassroots campaign has made significant inroads in recent years, particularl among university students and millennials. Lara Alqasem, a 22-year-old U.S. citizen with Palestinian grandparents, landed at Ben-Gurion Airport last Tuesday with a valid student visa. But she was barred from entering the country and ordered deported, based on suspicions she is a boycott supporter. An Israeli court has ordered that she remain in custody while she appeals. The weeklong detention is the longest anyone has been held in a boycott-related case.... In the meantime, she has been spending her days in a closed area with little access to a telephone, no internet and a bed that was infested with bedbugs, according to people who have spoken to her. Alqasem, from the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Southwest Ranches, Florida, is a former president of the University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The group is a branch of the BDS movement, whose name comes from its calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel."

News Ledes

The New York Times is live-updatting Hurricane Michael coverage here. "Hurricane Michael opened its bombardment of the Florida Panhandle on Wednesday morning, with wind and rain beginning to batter the coastline hours before the strengthening Category 4 storm was expected to make landfall with astonishing power. The authorities warned that it was too late to flee the storm, which the National Hurricane Center described as 'potentially catastrophic' with maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour." ...

... New York Times: "Hurricane Michael strengthened into a Category 4 storm on Wednesday, packing 130 mile-per-hour winds and on a path to make landfall in the Florida Panhandle as the most powerful hurricane to strike the mainland United States so far this year.Forecasters expect its lashing winds to become more powerful along the coastline on Tuesday, worsening as the storm draws closer and makes landfall on Wednesday. Governors in at least three states have declared emergencies, and the local authorities are urging people to evacuate or to fortify their homes ahead of the storm." ...

... The Washington Post "has removed article limits on coverage of Hurricane Michael to make these stories available without a subscription."

The Commentariat -- October 9, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "President Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, said on Tuesday she would resign at the end of the year, marking a high-profile departure of one of the few women in the president's cabinet." ...

... Jonathan Swan of Axios: "President Trump has accepted Nikki Haley's resignation as UN Ambassador, according to two sources briefed on their conversation. The timing of her departure is still unclear, the president promised a 'big announcement' with her at 10:30 a.m.... Haley discussed her resignation with Trump last week when she visited him at the White House, these sources said. Her news shocked a number of senior foreign policy officials in the Trump administration." Update: It's happened. CNN is reporting she just notified her top staff of her resignation this morning. She'll be leaving at the end of this year. The move came as a surprise to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo & National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Matthew Choi of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Tuesday further outlined his conspiracy theory that protesters were hired to oppose Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation.... 'The paid D.C. protesters are now ready to REALLY protest because they haven't gotten their checks - in other words, they weren't paid! Screamers in Congress, and outside, were far too obvious - less professional than anticipated by those paying (or not paying) the bills!' Trump tweeted.... Trump has yet to put forth any evidence to back up his claim of widespread paid protesters."

Greg Sargent: "When Trump purports to apologize to Kavanaugh on behalf of the 'nation' while sneeringly dismissing those claims, even as a majority opposes Kavanaugh and believes those charges, Trump is ... highlighting the degree to which this episode represents the further entrenchment of minority rule. With Kavanaugh now on the court, this could very well get worse. The New York Times reports that Trump's unusual public apology to Kavanaugh is actually part of a broader strategy of using the battle over his confirmation to enrage and galvanize conservative voters in the midterm elections. Trump injected partisan politics into the swearing in of a Justice who is supposed to remain neutral, for the explicit purpose of polarizing the country in ways he thinks will benefit his party. But when Trump uses the term 'nation,' it should be understood in the way that exclusionary populist demagogues (of which Trump is one) generally employ such formulations: Trump is, in effect, defining the nation to exclude the Americans who are deeply troubled by Kavanaugh, the charges against him, and the larger debate it encompasses."

*****

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Matt Gertz of Media Matters: "Donald Trump rose to prominence and the presidency on the strength of his self-proclaimed mastery of 'The Art of the Deal.' It was that business acumen, Trump claimed, that allowed him to turn a paltry loan from his father into a vast empire. But last week, The New York Times revealed that Trump was not the self-made billionaire he had claimed to be but rather the recipient of at least $413 million from his father, in part through tax schemes the paper described as 'outright fraud.' The painstaking investigation ... is not just a skillful demolition of the origin story Trump told. It's also a rebuke to generations of journalists who bolstered Trump's tale. Trump provided the myth, but he needed the press to trumpet it out to the public. The result was a lie so durable that no single story, however brilliant, can unravel it.... the Times article names four journalists and biographers whose work was particularly vital: Gwenda Blair, David Cay Johnston, Timothy L. O'Brien, and the late Wayne Barrett. But on balance, reporters were taken in by Trump's skillful manipulation, vulnerable to his understanding that they were 'always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better.'... No longer relying on the press to burnish his image, Trump has convinced his supporters that critical news outlets can't be trusted." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Wouldn't it be great if media outlets had spent as much money & effort chasing down Trump's fake business successes as they did chasing down every nuance -- real & imaginary -- of Hillary Clinton's e-mails!!!?

Isabel Dobrin of Politico: "... Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that he has no plans to fire deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who will accompany the president on his day trip to Orlando aboard Air Force One. 'I look forward to being with him. That'll be very nice,"'Trump said of Rosenstein. 'We're going to be talking. We'll be talking on the plane. I actually have a good relationship, other than there's been no collusion, folks, no collusion. But I have a very good relationship.' Asked directly if he has plans to fire Rosenstein, Trump said 'no, I don't.' He added later that he 'didn't know Rod before, but I've gotten to know him and I get along very well with him.'" Mrs. McC: Rosenstein probably reminds Trump every time they see each other about his great service to the country as a member of the Ken Starr team. (Also linked yesterday.)

Mark Mazzetti, et al., of the New York Times: "A top Trump campaign official [Rick Gates] requested proposals in 2016 from an Israeli company to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation and to gather intelligence to help defeat Republican primary race opponents and Hillary Clinton, according to interviews and copies of the proposals. The Trump campaign's interest in the work began as Russians were escalating their effort to aid Donald J. Trump. Though the Israeli company's pitches were narrower than Moscow's interference campaign and appear unconnected, the documents show that a senior Trump aide saw the promise of a disruption effort to swing voters in Mr. Trump's favor.... The proposal to gather information about Mrs. Clinton and her aides has elements of traditional opposition research, but it also contains cryptic language that suggests using clandestine means to build 'intelligence dossiers.'... There is no evidence that the Trump campaign acted on the proposals.... It is unclear whether the Project Rome proposals describe work that would violate laws regulating foreign participation in American elections."

Byron Tau of the Wall Street Journal: "A veteran Republican operative and opposition researcher solicited and raised at least $100,000 from donors as part of an effort to obtain what he believed to be emails stolen from Hillary Clinton, activities that remain of intense interest to federal investigators working for special counsel Robert Mueller's office and on Capitol Hill. Peter W. Smith, an Illinois businessman with a long history of involvement in GOP politics, sought and collected the funds from at least four wealthy donors as part of the plan to obtain Clinton's stolen emails from hackers just weeks before election day in 2016.... Smith's effort to find what he believed were some 33,000 deleted emails Clinton said were personal was first reported by the Journal in a 2017 story, but the extent of his planning went far beyond what was previously known. Smith died 10 days after describing his efforts to a reporter for the Journal." Not firewalled; a "digest" version available via MarketWatch.

Mark Landler & Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "A day after the United Nations issued its most urgent call to arms yet for the world to confront the threat of climate change, President Trump boarded Air Force One for Florida -- a state that lies directly in the path of this coming calamity -- and said nothing about it. It was the latest, most vivid example of Mr. Trump's dissent from an effort that has galvanized much of the world. While the United Nations warned of mass wildfires, food shortages and dying coral reefs as soon as 2040, Mr. Trump discussed his successful Supreme Court battle rather than how rising seawaters are already flooding Miami on sunny days."

On behalf of our nation, I want to apologize to Brett and the entir Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure. Those who step forward to serve our country deserve a fair and dignified evaluation, not a campaign of personal and political destruction based on lies and deception. What happened t the Kavanaugh family violates every notion of fairness, decency and due process. In our country, a man or a woman must always be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. And with that, I must state that you, sir, under historic scrutiny, were proven innocent. -- Donald Trump, at Brett Kavanaugh's third swearing in, Monday evening

Um, no to all that, you lying dirtbag. But, say, Donald, why don't you swear in Brett every damned day between now & November 6 to keep this perfidy fresh in our minds? -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie ...

... Ashley Parker & John Wagner of the Washington Post: "President Trump further politicized an already contentious Supreme Court confirmation battle Monday evening, beginning a ceremonial swearing-in for Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh by apologizing to both Kavanaugh and his family 'for the terrible pain and suffering' he said they were forced to endure.... Since Kavanaugh was confirmed on Saturday, Trump has seemed more interested in inflaming rather than reducing the tensions over his Supreme Court pick amid questions over whether the high court is becoming too politicized.... The White House ceremony, which included cocktails and a band, in some ways felt like a cross between a campaign rally and a wedding reception. In addition to all of the high court justices, attendees included conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein." As the night wore on, Trump went up to the residence to watch Hannity, and Kavanaugh drank Rosenstein under the table. (Okay, maybe I made up that last bit.) ...

... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump went further on Monday than he has before in dismissing sexual misconduct allegations against Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh as the creation of political opponents, calling them 'a hoax' and 'fabricated.' With Justice Kavanaugh now confirmed and sworn in, Mr. Trump moved beyond simply questioning the credibility of his accusers to asserting that their stories were made up entirely. Last week he mocked the main accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, for gaps in her memory but did not explicitly suggest that her account was invented.... When he boasted about Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation to the police chiefs in Orlando, they applauded enthusiastically.... 'It was very unfair what happened to him,' Mr. Trump went on. 'False charges, false accusations. Horrible statements that were totally untrue.' He added: 'It was a disgraceful situation brought about by people who are evil. And he toughed it out. We all toughed it out together.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump -- and apparently some police chiefs -- find something heroic and "tough" in not only sexually assaulting women, but lying about it & trashing their victims. ...

... Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump said Monday that he expects a lot of Democratic voters to support Republican candidates in the upcoming midterms because of how the party's lawmakers handled sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.... Trump dismissed the allegations against Kavanaugh -- including that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when the two were in high school — as 'a hoax that was set up by the Democrats.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Democrats must stand up to this line of attack, and it's not that haaaard. "Sexual assaults are hoaxes" is easy to counter, especially when the Number 1 messenger is also the country's Number 1 sexual assaulter (and by his own admission). One blind spot Democratic candidates have -- think the swiftboating of John Kerry -- is that they view Republicans' attacks as so ridiculous the attacks aren't necessary to address. Unfortunately, that's giving wa-a-a-ay too much credit to voters. Run a 30-second (or 15-second!) spot all over the country of Trump's grab-'em-by-the-pussy (bleep!) moment with a voiceover: "This man says sexual assault is a hoax." Sleazy? Yes, I think it's called fighting fire with fire. ...

... Becky Bohrer of the AP: "Alaska Republican party leaders plan to consider whether to reprimand U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski for opposing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation. The party has asked Murkowski to provide any information she might want its state central committee to consider. Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock says the committee could decide to issue a statement. Or he says it could withdraw support of Murkowski, encourage party officials to look for a replacement and ask that she not seek re-election as a Republican. He says the party took that more extreme step previously with state legislators who caucused with Democrats. He says all this follows outrage from Alaska Republicans." ...

     ... digby: "By the way, Sarah Palin is threatening to run against [Murkowski] in 2022 over the Kavanaugh vote. But she'll quit before it ever gets started." ...

... ** Paul Krugman: "... the readiness with which senior Republicans embraced crazy conspiracy theories about the opposition to Kavanaugh is a deeply scary warning about what might happen to America, not in the long run, but just a few weeks from now.... When people on the political fringe blame shadowy forces -- often, as it happens, sinister Jewish financiers -- for their frustrations, you can write it off as delusional. When people who hold most of the levers of power do the same thing..., it's a tool: a way to delegitimize opposition, to create excuses not just for disregarding but for punishing anyone who dares to criticize their actions. That's why conspiracy theories have been central to the ideology of so many authoritarian regimes.... The G.O.P. is an authoritarian regime in waiting." This is a must-read by somebody who's usually right. ...

... Cass Sunstein in Bloomberg: "... it is unspeakably cruel to ignore the intensity and the depth of the feelings of those who identify with [Christine Blasey] Ford. To treat Kavanaugh’s confirmation as an occasion for celebration, or for glee, is to twist a knife. It deepens both public and private wounds.... Political gloating is normal. Mocking human suffering is not."

Election 2018

North Dakota Senate. Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Representative Kevin Cramer of North Dakota has repeatedly made headlines this year in his race against Senator Heidi Heitkamp because of off-the-cuff comments that range from inflammatory to indelicate. But his latest provocation on sexual misconduct sparked a furious and tearful rejoinder from Ms. Heitkamp on Sunday, one day after she voted to oppose the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.... He ripped into the #MeToo movement. 'That you're just supposed to believe somebody because they said it happened,' Mr. Cramer said, alluding to Christine Blasey Ford ... and, more broadly, women who have come forward to claim that they were sexually abused or assaulted. Invoking his wife, daughters, mother and mother-in-law, Mr. Cramer said: 'They cannot understand this movement toward victimization. They are pioneers of the prairie. These are tough people whose grandparents were tough and great-grandparents were tough.'... Heitman responded, 'I think it's wonderful that his wife has never had an experience, and good for her, and it's wonderful his mom hasn't.... 'My mom did. And I think it affected my mom her whole life. And it didn't make her less strong.... She got stronger and she made us strong. And to suggest that this movement doesn't make women strong and stronger is really unfortunate.'"

Okay, So Taylor Swift Does Matter. Claudia Rosenbaum & Michael Blackmon f BuzzFeed News: "Since Taylor Swift flexed her star power Sunday with an Instagram post that encouraged her 112 million followers to register to vote, Vote.org has experienced an unprecedented flood of new voter registrations nationwide. 'We are up to 65,000 registrations in a single 24-hour period since T. Swift's post,' said Kamari Guthrie, director of communications for Vote.org. For context, 190,178 new voters were registered nationwide in the entire month of September, while 56,669 were registered in August. In Swift's home state of Tennessee, where Swift voiced support for two Democratic candidates running in this year's midterms, voter registrations have also jumped." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Gee, I never thought of voting till Taylor Swift said it was cool. ...

... So You Thought Wingers Were Nuts. Avi Selk of the Washington Post: "Taylor Swift's declaration that she plans to vote for Democrats next month fell like a hammer across the Trump-worshipping subforums of the far-right Internet, where people had convinced themselves, for reasons it will take some time to explain, that the world-famous pop star was a secret #MAGA fan.... In some ways, it's not much different from how every other conspiracy theory arises out of nonsense on that anonymous message board[.]... The delusion traces back to the middle of the Obama administration, 2011, when a certain fraction of 4chan users convinced themselves that Swift had let them name her cat.... [She didn't.] Amateur sleuths began sifting through the website in search of more supposed secret messages from the pop star [all of which were bogus].... A few years later..., a neo-Nazi blogger came across a joke meme that mashed up photos of Swift with quotes from Adolf Hitler. He apparently mistook these as authentic and published them on the Daily Stormer under the headline: 'Aryan Goddess Taylor Swift: Nazi Avatar of the White European People.'... The mood was more foul than usual after the forum's imaginary protege declared her real feelings. The Washington Post's language policies prevent linking to most of what 4chan had to say. Suffice to say, a meme of Pepe the Frog openly weeping with a gun to his head appeared in one of the most popular threads, more or less summing up the mood." ...

... AND Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Monday fired back at Taylor Swift over her endorsement of Democrats in next month's midterms, declaring that his enthusiasm for the pop megastar's music has waned by 'about 25 percent.'" ...

... So you got your enthusiastic Taylor Swift fans, you got your sad & angry ex-Taylor Swift fans, and now you got your Christopher Columbus & Marco Polo fans. Thanks to PD Pepe for introducing us to some more of America's well-informed electorate. (That bit there at the top of the page: "Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance"? Yeah, it's relevant. Every day:

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Justin Wise of the Hill: "Former White House communications director Hope Hicks is joining Fox as its chief communications officer. The media company made the announcement on Monday, saying that Hicks will be based in Los Angeles." Mrs. McC: Great! I'm sure Hopey-Dopey will make Fox "News" even more fair and balanced. Trump probably insisted the Trump Media outlet hire Hicks. (Also linked yesterday.)

Craig Timberg, et al., of the Washington Post: "Google kept quiet for more than six months about its discovery of a bug that put at risk the personal data of hundreds of thousands of Google+ users, the company said Monday, a delay that could spark a new round of regulatory and political scrutiny. The decision to not immediately report the software bug -- in a process that included briefing chief executive Sundar Pichai -- was discussed in an internal document that expressed concerns about the company's reputation and the possibility of increased scrutiny from regulators, said a person familiar with internal deliberations at Google. Google said Monday that it did not immediately announce the data leak because it was unsure which users were affected."

Beyond the Beltway

Jesse McKinley, et al., of the New York Times: "A driver with an improper license. A limousine company with a trail of failed inspections and ties to a scheme to illegally obtain driver's licenses. And a limousine itself that had also been deemed unsafe. Two days after a devastating limousine crash in upstate New York that killed 20 people, officials revealed new details about their inquiry that suggested that the trip never should have been allowed to happen.The mounting questions about the accident increasingly centered on the limousine company, Prestige Limousine, which had a shoddy record, operated out of a back room in a low-budget hotel and had a history of dealings that seemed to extend to Dubai. On Monday, officials moved to suspend the company's operations and seize its vehicles. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo told reporters that the limousine involved in the accident had failed an inspection last month and 'was not supposed to be on the road.'" See also yesterday's Ledes.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Hurricane Michael approached a fortified Florida Panhandle on Tuesday and strengthened into a Category 3 storm that is expected to make landfall on Wednesday as the most powerful tropical cyclone to strike the mainland United States so far this year. The National Hurricane Center said that the storm had maximum sustained winds of 120 miles per hour, and would reach the Florida coastline on Wednesday. Emergency declarations were issued for parts of Alabama, Florida and Georgia, and the authorities ordered tens of thousands of people to evacuate as they opened storm shelters and shut down schools."

The Washington Post "has removed article limits on coverage of Hurricane Michael to make these stories available without a subscription."

The Commentariat -- October 8, 2018

... Forgot what day it was till I went to the Post Office. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

     ... Thanks to Bobby Lee & Akhilleus for IDing an appropriate song for the day.

Late Morning Update:

Isabel Dobrin of Politico: "... Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that he has no plans to fire deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein, who will accompany the president on his day trip to Orlando aboard Air Force One. 'I look forward to being with him. That'll be very nice,"'Trump said of Rosenstein. 'We're going to be talking. We'll be talking on the plane. I actually have a good relationship, other than there's been no collusion, folks, no collusion. But I have a very good relationship.' Asked directly if he has plans to fire Rosenstein, Trump said 'no, I don't.' He added later that he 'didn't know Rod before, but I've gotten to know him and I get along very well with him.'" Mrs. McC: Rosenstein probably reminds Trump every time they see each other about his great service to the country as a member of the Ken Starr team.

Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump said Monday that he expects a lot of Democratic voters to support Republican candidates in the upcoming midterms because of how the party's lawmakers handled sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.... Trump dismissed the allegations against Kavanaugh -- including that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when the two were in high school -- as 'a hoax that was set up by the Democrats.'"

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Justin Wise of the Hill: "Former White House communications director Hope Hicks is joining Fox as its chief communications officer. The media company made the announcement on Monday, saying that Hicks will be based in Los Angeles." Mrs. McC: Great! I'm sure Hopey-Dopey will make Fox "News" even more fair and balanced. Trump probably insisted the Trump Media outlet hire Hicks.

*****

Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "A landmark report from the United Nations' scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has 'no documented historic precedent.' The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 -- a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.... The report was the first to be commissioned by world leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight global warming.... President Trump, who has mocked the science of human-caused climate change, has vowed to increase the burning of coal and said he intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement. And on Sunday in Brazil, the world's seventh-largest emitter of greenhouse gas, voters appeared on track to elect a new president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has said he also plans to withdraw from the accord." ...

... Kevin Sack & John Schwartz of the New York Times: "FEMA's public assistance program has provided at least $81 billion ... to state, territorial and local governments in response to disasters declared since 1992, according to a New York Times analysis.... But an examination of projects across the country's ever-expanding flood zones reveals that decisions to rebuild in place, often made seemingly in defiance of climate change [and at the whims of local officials], have at times left structures just as defenseless against the next storm.... Local officials desperate to restore normalcy to disoriented communities will get to decide how to spend those federal dollars -- choices made more consequential, and costly, as sea levels rise and Atlantic storms generate greater surge and rainfall because of climate change." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: It doesn't help that the majority of natural disasters seem to occur in the South, where "local official" means Mayor Joe Bob Know-Nuthin.

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "... the GOP secured its greatest amount of political power and leverage since at least the Great Depression.... Assuming the court is more tilted toward the GOP going forward, that delivers the GOP the last vestige of power in Washington that had thus far eluded it. While justices are technically nonpartisan, experts say this is shaping up to be the first reliably conservative Supreme Court since at least the New Deal era more than 75 years ago. By some measures, the court was already more conservative than it was then.... Republicans control 33 out of 50 governor's seats.... The GOP also holds complete control of the governor's seat and the state legislature in 25 states (compared to eight for Democrats).... The GOP controlled 4,104 out of 7,383 state legislative seats as of July.... In Washington, the GOP's House majority currently includes 235 seats.... Republicans' narrow 51-49 Senate majority ... when ... combine[d] with the GOP's control of the House and the presidency, it gave the GOP unified control of policymaking in Washington for just the fourth Congress since the Great Depression." ...

... Josh Marshall: "We should now be looking at a very different 6 to 3 progressive majority in which Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are absent and Merrick Garland and another Justice are present. In little more than two years, the theft of the Garland seat and the tainted 2016 election have together forced a massive redirection of the jurisprudential course of the country. Mitch McConnell shows up again and again in the process, first as the key driver of the theft of the Garland seat and second as a significant player blocking a bipartisan response to Russian intervention in the election. His fingerprints cover both events.... I point this out merely to illustrate the dramatic and far-reaching consequences of rule-breaking, over a very short period of time, that will ramify out decades into the future." ...

... ** Garrett Epps of the Atlantic: "The long revolution of the civil-rights movement, and the social revolution of the 1960s and '70s, changed our national life, largely for the better. The changes came not from elites, but from ordinary Americans -- African Americans who refused to accept subordinate status; women who would no longer accept male domination; young people who rebelled at the killing in Vietnam.... During this part of our history, when ordinary citizens demanded change from their governments, the Supreme Court often stood ready to guarantee their right to do so.... As the turn of the century came and went, [the Court's] decisions still often pointed the way to a more perfect union.... [But the Republican] party made the Supreme Court a partisan issue." Read on. This is, as the headline declares, "a requiem for the Supreme Court." Mrs. McC: The prologue especially is precisely what I had been thinking. ...

... Mary Papenfuss of the Huffington Post: "... Donald Trump said Saturday he's 'a hundred percent' certain that Christine Blasey Ford named the wrong person when she said Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, he told reporters on Air Force One. He also called Kavanaugh, who was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice today after being confirmed in a 50-48 Senate vote, 'squeaky clean.' Beyond the sexual assault accusation, a number of his Yale classmates have said Kavanaugh lied under oath about his drinking habits.... Trump also insisted women were 'extremely happy' about Kavanaugh's confirmation because they're apparently relieved the men in their lives are less likely now to be accused of sexual assault. 'Women were outraged at what happened to Brett Kavanaugh,' he added, according to pool reports." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As Ken W. pointed out yesterday, this is the same jerk who was 100 percent certain he saw A-rabs celebrating in Jersey on 9/11 & Barack Obama was born in Kenya. It's also the same guy who is 100 percent certain the women who accused him of sexual assault are gold-digging liars.

... Christal Hayes of USA Today: "Hours after his Supreme Court pick was sworn in Saturday..., Donald Trump said on Fox News that those who made up 'false' stories about Brett Kavanaugh should be penalized. Trump, talking with Fox News' Jeanine Pirro, said he hated watching the slew of sexual assault allegations grow against Kavanaugh and dubbed all the accusations 'fabrications' with 'not a bit of truth.' 'I think that they should be held liable,' Trump told Pirro. 'You can't go around and whether it's making up stories or making false statements about such an important position, you can't do that. You can destroy somebody's life.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The bitter partisan fury that engulfed Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation was the fiercest battle in a political war over the judiciary that has been steadily intensifying since the Senate rejected Judge Robert H. Bork in 1987. But an even greater conflagration may be coming.... Facing a Supreme Court controlled by five solidly conservative justices, liberals have already started to attack the legitimacy of the majority bloc and discussed ways to eventually undo its power without waiting for one of its members to retire or die. Some have gone as far as proposing -- if Democrats were to retake control of Congress and the White House in 2020 or after -- expanding the number of justices on the court to pack it with liberals or trying to impeach, remove and replace Justice Kavanaugh.... Today, the majority five on the Supreme Court are all movement conservatives -- Republican lawyers who came of age after an ideological backlash a generation ago to decades of liberal court rulings." ...

... Emily Atkin of the New Republic (Oct. 6): "A Morning Consult/Politico poll released Monday showed that 69 percent of Republican women favor [Brett Kavanaugh's] confirmation.... 'As Susan Collins just proved, it’s not enough to elect more women,' [Ethan Todras-Whitehill, founder of advocacy group SwingLeft, wrote on Friday. 'We have to elect more DEMOCRATIC women.'" ...

... Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: "You cannot say a party that embraces a deeply misogynistic president who bragged about sexually assaulting women and mocked and taunted a sex-crime victim; accepted a blatantly insufficient investigation of credible sex crimes against women in lieu of a serious one that the White House counsel knew would be disastrous; repeatedly insulted and dismissed sex-crime victims exercising their constitutional rights; has never put a single woman on the Judiciary Committee (and then blames its own female members for being too lazy); and whips up male resentment of female accusers is a party that respects women. Its members resent women. They scorn women.... The Republican Party no longer bothers to conceal its loathing of immigrants, its contempt for a free press, its disdain for the rule of law or its views on women. Indeed, these things now define a party that survives by inflaming white male resentment." ...

... Sarah Kendzior, in the [Canadian] Globe & Mail: Brett Kavanaugh's "flaws are so many, his unfitness so obvious, that he achieved what is often said to be impossible in the Donald Trump era: He united Americans of different backgrounds and political persuasions in common cause. After Saturday's official Senate vote, naming him to the Supreme Court, we are united in common anguish. The confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh was, at heart, a referendum on the integrity of U.S. institutions and of the impunity of elites -- and the U.S. failed. Senators who purport to believe in rule of law vouched for a judge who sees himself as above it. Senators who purport to believe in democracy honoured a man who degrades it, and did so in deference to a man seemingly attempting to destroy it -- President Trump.... This is now Mr. Trump's Supreme Court of the United States, run on white male entitlement and alternative facts." ...

... A Couple of Republicans Kinda Catch on:

... Tom Nichols in the Atlantic: "Unlike Senator Susan Collins, who took pages upon pages of text on national television to tell us something we already knew, I will cut right to the chase: I am out of the Republican Party.... Small things sometimes matter, and Collins is among the smallest of things in the political world.... Her speech on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh convinced me that the Republican Party now exists for one reason, and one reason only: for the exercise of raw political power, and not even for ends I would otherwise applaud or even support.... She had clearly made up her mind weeks earlier, and she completely ignored Kavanaugh's volcanic and bizarre performance in front of the Senate.... But during the Kavanaugh dumpster fire, the performance of the Democratic Party -- with some honorable exceptions like Senators Chris Coons, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Amy Klobuchar -- was execrable.... The Republicans, however, have now eclipsed the Democrats as a threat to the rule of law and to the constitutional norms of American society.... Raw power, wielded so deftly by Senator Mitch McConnell, is exercised for its own sake, and by that I mean for the sake of fleecing gullible voters on hot-button social issues so that Republicans may stay in power." ...

... Sophia Nelson (also a Republican), in an NBC News opinion piece: "Collins' decision to vote to confirm Kavanaugh put a dispiriting exclamation point on something I've known for quite some time: The Republican party has turned its back on women.... Of course, we know that those 'rights,' [described in the Declaration of Independence] ... were only granted to white, Protestant men or white male landowners.... In short, white men -- by birthright -- were entitled to everything.... As I watched a parade of Republican women line up to cast their vote for a sitting federal judge credibly accused of drunkenly sexually assaulting multiple peers in his youth..., I saw women upholding male power and privilege.... Ultimately, the vote on Saturday was about preserving the status quo. It was about keeping women in our place.... They are a party run by white men, for white men, with the tacit support of a certain kind of white woman."

Mrs. McCrabbie: Sorry, I forgot the funnies yesterday, because nothing seems funny:

Hmm. Katie Benner of the New York Times: "Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and President Trump planned to travel to Florida together on Air Force One Monday morning, a week and a half after the two were scheduled to discuss remarks Mr. Rosenstein had made about the president's fitness for office and an offer to secretly tape conversations with him."

Jennifer Keil of the New York Post: "A sprawling mansion on the Upper East Side has been frozen as part of a hard-core battle between the US government and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.... US officials say Deripaska, an aluminium billionaire, is close both with Russian mob leaders and Russian president Vladimir Putin -- and that he is on the sanctions list because he is allegedly involved in murder, money-laundering, bribery and racketeering. Deripaska also had President Trump's ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort -- who has been convicted of crimes including money-laundering and who is cooperating with US special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe -- on his payroll for years."

Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "The disappearance and alleged killing last week of dissident Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi while he was visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul is only the latest challenge to a U.S.-Saudi relationship that both governments have diligently cultivated. The Trump administration has said little beyond expressing public concern over Khashoggi's fate, and the kingdom has sharply denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. In private, officials from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on down have been frustrated with the lack of a substantive response to direct high-level queries, according to administration officials. Confirmation that Khashoggi was killed -- as some senior Turkish officials have charged -- or even his disappearance at Saudi hands is likely to spark a new round of congressional pressure to reassess the relationship with Riyadh."

Election 2018

Kansas. Idiocracy. Patrick Smith of ThinkProgress: "Trump rallies are rarely uneventful, and Saturday night's event in Topeka, Kansas was no exception. This time it was [Kris] Kobach -- the state's Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate -- who was responsible for some of the controversy. Kobach made the claim that tougher immigration policies, like the ones put in place since Trump took office, would have saved the lives of the roughly 3,000 people who perished in the 9/11 attacks.... Kobach also tied his anti-immigration sentiments to one of his favorite subjects: voter ID laws. Claiming that they 'created trust in our elections,' he suggested that a voter fraud epidemic is hurting the country. Kobach also claimed that Democrats are allowing it to happen, saying 'they don't care about U.S. citizens' votes being canceled out.' There is little to back up Kobach's claims." --s

Tennessee. Sarah Mervosh of the New York Times: "Taylor Swift, the pop music titan who has been notably apolitical in turbulent political times, broke her silence on Sunday and endorsed two Democratic candidates running for election in Tennessee. In a post on Instagram, Ms. Swift said she planned to vote for Phil Bredesen, who is competing in a tight Senate race against a Republican candidate backed by President Trump, and Representative Jim Cooper, an incumbent who represents the Nashville area.... She pledged support for L.G.B.T.Q. rights and racial and gender equality.... The singer is beloved by some white supremacists, who claim her as an Aryan goddess, and in 2017, her lawyers fought back against a blog post that portrayed her as a white supremacist figurehead." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Should we care what entertainers think? Not much. But the media care & are making a big deal of Swift's endorsements, so there you go.

Sam Levin & Carey Gillam of the Guardian: "In an historic verdict in August, a jury ruled that Monsanto had caused a man's terminal cancer and ordered the agrochemical corporation to pay $289m in damages. The extraordinary decision exposing the potential hazards of the world's most widely used herbicide, has paved the way for thousands of other cancer patients and families to seek justice and compensation in court.... Monsanto has filed an appeal, and a hearing is scheduled for Wednesday in San Francisco.... A snowballing series of courtroom challenges are now threatening the legacy and finances of the corporations -- and the future of a chemical that is ubiquitous around the globe." --s

Beyond the Beltway

Buh-Bye, First Amendment. Now You Can't Even Protest in Your Own Front Yard. Blake Montgomery of BuzzFeed News: "Police in Texas removed an anti-Republican political sign from a woman's yard Tuesday night last week, amid nationwide rancor over the Senate's vote on Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court. The poster, made by Marion Stanford of Hamilton, Texas, and placed in her yard, shows an elephant painted in red, white, and blue with stars, a well-known symbol of the Republican Party. The elephant is sticking its trunk up the skirt of a young blonde girl with pigtails crying for help. Beside the image is the slogan 'Your vote matters.'... 'Police told me to remove the sign or they would take it and would arrest me,' Stanford said. 'So I let them take the sign.' The city manager of Hamilton has denied that the police seized the sign, telling the newspaper that Stanford gave it away.... Stanford said [the poster was] ... a version of a Washington Post editorial cartoon [by Ann Telnaes, who drew the original cartoon in response to the Republican Party's support of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.... Telnaes ... responded ... on Twitter: 'Good thing I'm not cartooning in Texas.'" Both Stanford's sign & Telnaes' cartoon are pictured with the story. Thanks to Akhilleus for the lead.

Way Beyond

O Trumpo Brasileiro. Ernesto Londoño & Manuela Andreoni of the New York Times: "Brazilians on Sunday expressed their disgust with politics as usual and endorsed an iron-fist approach to fighting crime and corruption by giving the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro an ample lead in the first round of the presidential election. Mr. Bolsonaro stunned the political establishment by rising to the top of a crowded presidential field despite a long history of offensive remarks about women, black people and gay people. He also offered an emphatic defense of the country's old military dictatorship. The victory was all the more remarkable because Mr. Bolsonaro lacked the backing of a major party and campaigned on a shoestring budget, relying mainly on social media to build a base. As of mid-September, the Bolsonaro campaign reported having spent about $235,000, a small fraction of the $6.3 million Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers' Party disclosed having spent. Mr. Haddad, who also made the runoff, came in a distant second." ...

... Tom Phillips of the Guardian: "Fernando Haddad, [Jair] Bolsonaro's opponent in the pivotal second-round vote on 28 October, has a mountain almost as high as Brazil's Pico da Neblina to climb if he is to scupper the right-wing populist's dramatic political ascent.... Just to draw level with Bolsonaro, Haddad would need virtually every single one of the voters who opted for the third and fourth-placed candidates, Ciro Gomes and Geraldo Alckmin, to switch to his side. 'The path for Haddad to close that gap looks almost impossible,' said Brian Winter, the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, describing Bolsonaro as a 'huge favourite' to win. 'If you simply add Bolsonaro plus two-thirds of Alckmin's [5m] votes, it's over.'" --s

Edward Wong & Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "In a stunning move that could set back the country's efforts to expand its global presence, the Chinese Communist Party announced late Sunday that the missing president of Interpol, Meng Hongwei, was under investigation on 'suspicion of violating the law' and was 'under the supervision' of an anticorruption watchdog tied to the party. The announcement that Mr. Meng, a Chinese national, was being detained was posted online by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party's watchdog against graft and political disloyalty, on Sunday night. A few hours later, Interpol said it had received Mr. Meng's resignation 'with immediate effect.'... The detention of Mr. Meng, 64, is an audacious step by the party, even by the standards of the increasingly authoritarian system under the leadership of President Xi Jinping."

Barbie Nadeau of the Daily Beast: "The face of 30-year-old Bulgarian investigative journalist Victoria Marinova had been beaten with such brutal force that the popular television journalist was not recognizable. Her semi-nude body was found in a remote area along the River Danube in Ruse, Bulgaria on Saturday, but it took hours to positively identify her. Initial reports in local Bulgarian media indicated that she had been raped, according to Interior Minister Mladen Marinov. She was also strangled and and suffocated. Her car keys, mobile phone, glasses and much of her clothing had been removed from the remote wooded area. Marinova is the fourth journalist to be killed in Europe in the last 14 months.... Bulgarian prosecutor Georgy Georgiev says investigators are now considering whether Marinova's efforts to expose corruption in Bulgaria were a motive in her murder."

News Lede

New York Times: "The 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was awarded on Monday to a pair of American economists, William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer for their work highlighting the importance of government policy in fostering sustainable economic growth. Mr. Nordhaus was honored for pioneering the assessment of the economic impact of climate change, including his advocacy for governments to tax carbon emissions. Mr. Romer was honored for his work on the role of policy in encouraging technological innovation.... The announcement of the award came on the same day that a United Nations panel on climate change released a report warning of dire consequences from climate change and urging governments to respond to the problem with greater urgency. The Nobel Prize committee said that its choice of laureates underscored the need for governments to cooperate."