The Commentariat -- April 9, 2018
Afternoon Update:
Uh-Oh. Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "The F.B.I. on Monday raided the office of President Trump's longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, seizing records related to several topics including payments to a pornographic-film actress. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen's lawyer, who called the search 'completely inappropriate and unnecessary.' The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller's investigation, but likely resulted from information he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York.... The payments [Cohen says he made] to [Stephanie] Clifford are only one of many topics being investigated, according to a person briefed on the search. The F.B.I. also seized emails, tax documents and business records, the person said." ...
... Carol Leonnig & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "Among the documents seized were privileged communications between Cohen and his clients -- including those with Trump, according to a person familiar with the investigators' work. Investigators took Cohen;s computer, phone and personal financial records as part of the search of his office at Rockefeller Center, the person said.... Under Department of Justice regulations governing the special counsel's work, Mueller is required to consult with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein if his team finds information worth investigating that does not fall under his mandate." Mrs. McC: I'm hearing on the teevee that the FBI raided other locations -- like Cohen's homes. ...
... Also, Trump has made a statement; I'll get up a video of that when it becomes available.
Peter Baker of the New York Times: At the start of a Cabinet meeting, "President Trump on Monday denounced the suspected chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of people in Syria over the weekend as 'atrocious,' and said he will make a decision in the next 24 to 48 hours about whether to retaliate militarily as he did to a similar assault last year."
Greg Sargent: "Trade is one area in which Trump's crude understanding of the issue (it is all about a zero-sum struggle for dominance in which there are only winners and losers), is particularly destructive, given how nuanced and complicated it is.... Other countries have called for a multilateral response to [China's unfair trade practices], something that is at odds with Trump's worldview, which holds that international cooperation is a sucker's game. On 'Fox News Sunday,' Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow claimed the administration is assembling such an international coalition. But under intense questioning from Fox's Chris Wallace, it quickly became apparent that this is far from a reality."
Zeke Miller & Jill Colvin of the AP: Donald Trump "has never been one to stick to a script, but that ... speech [he tossed in the air at least week's event in West Virginia] illustrates a new phase in Trump's presidency. He is increasingly at odds with his staff -- and growing wise to their tactics. One favored staff strategy: Guide the president to the right decision by making the conventional choice seem like the only realistic option. Except now, 14 months into his administration, Trump is on to them, and he's making clear he won't be boxed in.... The shift has as much to do with changes in personnel as changes in the president's attitude. Former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, for one, was viewed as a person Trump could trust to be an honest broker and make sure that all options were being faithfully presented to him.... Some aides, convinced that Trump puts more stock in what he sees on TV than in his own aides' advice, regularly phone prominent commentators and news hosts to provide talking points on everything from tax policy to Syria in hopes of influencing Trump. Similar strategies have also been embraced by foreign governments and outside groups trying to sway the president's thinking." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Oh, if only Trump still had an "honest broker" like Rob Porter around.
Robert Burgess of Bloomberg: "... Donald Trump likes to equate the rally in stocks since the November 2016 elections with confidence in him and his policies. And yes, the S&P 500 Index has surged 22 percent since then -- but a deeper look at equities, bonds and the dollar reveals anything but trust in his stewardship. Here's the executive summary: U.S. companies are valued less now than before Trump was elected, despite the run-up in stocks, big corporate tax cuts, reductions in regulations, and booming earnings. The cost to borrow for the U.S. has soared relative to other governments, a sign investors are worried about America's creditworthiness. The dollar's share of global currency reserves has dropped by the most since 2002. Investors are losing faith because Trump is turning into the type of president many always feared: unpredictable, volatile and tempestuous."
Ksenia Galouchko of Bloomberg: "Russian stocks had their biggest drop in four years and the ruble slumped the most in the world after the U.S. slapped new sanctions on Kremlin-connected billionaires and tensions with the U.S. spiraled following the latest chemical attack in Syria. The benchmark MOEX Russia Index sank 8.7 percent on Monday, the steepest slide since March 2014, when Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula triggered international penalties. The ruble and local bonds had their biggest drop since 2016 and the cost of insuring sovereign notes against default was set for the sharpest increase since December 2014."
Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "The federal government's top ethics official has taken the unusual step of sending a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency questioning a series of actions by Administrator Scott Pruitt and asking the agency to take 'appropriate actions to address any violations.' The letter, sent to Kevin Minoli, the E.P.A. official designated as the agency's top ethics official, addresses questions about Mr. Pruitt's rental for $50 a night of a condominium linked to an energy lobbyist, as well as his government-funded flights to his home state of Oklahoma. The letter also cites reporting last week in The New York Times that agency staff members who raised concerns about these and other actions found themselves transferred or demoted.... The Office of Government Ethics does not have the power to punish Mr. Pruitt or to demand that he respond to the letter. But as the chief ethics officer for the executive branch of the federal government, [David] Apol's point of view has clout and he can ask that President Trump take action to punish a federal official who has violated federal rules." ...
... Jack Holmes of Esquire: "EPA spokespeople have repeatedly claimed that Pruitt receives a huge number of death threats. This has been shared widely by media outlets friendly to the administration.... It was also trumpeted in a presidential tweet this weekend that sought to defend Pruitt amid an avalanche of scandal.... Except when BuzzFeed reporter Jason Leopold submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to EPA asking for records of the threats, the agency could not produce a single one.... And not a single person has been charged nationwide for making death threats to a cabinet secretary? Or is the more likely explanation, as things stand, that officials simply started saying there were a ton of threats to try to escape the spending scandals?" Thanks to Keith H. for the link. ...
... Mrs. McC: The original excuse the EPA produced to justify Pruitt's bump to first class was that he was "'approached in the airport numerous times' and had profanities 'yelled at him'..." Guess that lame excuse wouldn't fly, so to speak, so "You're fucking up the environment!" became "death threats."
Sara Salinas of CNBC: "Congress has released Mark Zuckerberg's prepared testimony ahead of a Wednesday hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee." Salinas reproduces the prepared remarks. ...
... Blah Blah. Craig Timberg & Tony Romm of the Washington Post: "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed contrition for allowing third-party apps to grab the data of its users without their permission and for being 'too slow to spot and respond to Russian interference' during the U.S. election, according to his prepared remarks published by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Zuckerberg plans to open his remarks with a familiar recitation of the social media platform's ability to link far-flung people together but then pivot into an acknowledgement of Facebook's increasingly visible dark side."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Paul Krugman: "The hiring-then-firing of Kevin Williamson followed a familiar script. A mainstream media organization [-- the Atlantic --] hires a conservative in the name of intellectual diversity, then is shocked, shocked to discover that he's dishonest and/or holds truly reprehensible views -- something that the organization could have discovered with a few minutes on Google. But when the bad hire is let go, the right treats him as a martyr, proof of liberal refusal to let alternative viewpoints be heard.... The real problem here is that media organizations are looking for unicorns: serious, honest, conservative intellectuals with real influence.... The left has genuine public intellectuals with actual ideas and at least some real influence; the right does not. News organizations don't seem to have figured out how to deal with this reality, except by pretending that it doesn't exist. And that's why we keep having these Williamson-like debacles."
Patricia Mazzei of the New York Times: "Gov. Rick Scott made official on Monday what Floridians have suspected for months: He is running for the United States Senate against Bill Nelson, the incumbent Democrat, in a premier race that will return the nation's largest swing state to its familiar role as the political vortex of a tumultuous election year."
There Are Two Michigans. Bill Chappell of NPR: "In a much-watched case, a Michigan agency has approved Nestlé's plan to boost the amount of water it takes from the state. The request attracted a record number of public comments -- with 80,945 against and 75 in favor. Nestlé's request to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to pump 576,000 gallons of water each day from the White Pine Springs well in the Great Lakes Basin was 'highly controversial,' member station Michigan Radio reports.... The company bottles the water for sale under its Ice Mountain label." Emphasis added. BUT as Adrienne Varkiani of ThinkProgress reported (linked below), the state will no longer provide free drinking water to residents of Flint, which still pumps water through lead pipes, tho some pipes have been replaced. Thanks to Nisky Guy for the link. Mrs. McC: Wouldn't you think the poor people of Flint would would some state pride & just buy bottles of Nestle's Ice Mountain?
*****
Ben Hubbard of the New York Times: "Big power tensions in the Syria conflict, already running high after an apparent chemical weapons attack, ratcheted up again on Monday as Syria and Russia blamed Israel for early morning airstrikes on a Syrian military base that a conflict monitoring group said had killed 14 people, including fighters from Iran.... American and French officials denied that their countries had carried out the airstrikes, and a spokesman for the Israeli military declined to comment." ...
... Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Trump on Sunday promised a 'big price' to be paid for what he said was a chemical weapons attack that choked dozens of Syrians to death the day before, and a top White House official said the administration would not rule out a missile strike to retaliate against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. In a tweet, Mr. Trump laid the blame for the attack partly on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the first time since his election that he has criticized the Russian leader by name on Twitter. Mr. Putin's forces have been fighting for years to keep the Assad government in power amid Syria's brutal civil war.... 'Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price...' '...to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!'... 'If President Obama had crossed his stated Red Line In The Sand, the Syrian disaster would have ended long ago! Animal Assad would have been history!'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Ben Hubbard & Julie Davis: "Days after President Trump said he wanted to pull the United States out of Syria, Syrian forces hit a suburb of Damascus with bombs that rescue workers said unleashed toxic gas. Within hours, images of dead families sprawled in their homes threatened to change Mr. Trump's calculus on Syria, possibly drawing him deeper into an intractable Middle Eastern war that he hoped to leave. His homeland security adviser, Thomas P. Bossert, said the White House national security team had been discussing possible responses and would not rule out a missile strike." ...
... Robin Wright of the New Yorker: "The truth is that little is likely to markedly change the military balance on the ground -- or the outcome of the war. With the help of Russian airpower, as well as Iranian and Hezbollah manpower, the Assad regime has simply retaken too much territory, including most of Syria's major cities.... Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, called on Trump to reconsider his decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria. She also urged him to take the unprecedented step of imposing sanctions on Moscow for its long-standing aid to Damascus." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Sorry, Susan, according to Axios, even Trump's BFF Bibi "Netanyahu could not convince Trump to rethink his decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria." However, that was before the chemical strike. ...
... Conor Finnegan & Patrick Reevell of ABC News: "Russia is warning the U.S. against any 'military intervention' in Syria over the government's alleged chemical attack against civilians this weekend, saying any such response would be 'unacceptable' and lead to the 'most serious consequences'. The foreign ministry in Moscow also says in a statement on its website that allegations of the chemical attack are 'fabricated,; suggesting the claims were invented by rebel forces and the Syrian Civil Defense known as the White Helmets." ...
... Eli Watkins of CNN: "Republican Sen. John McCain said Sunday that ... Donald Trump's comments that the US military would leave Syria 'very soon' had emboldened Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, resulting in the reported chemical weapons attack Saturday that killed dozens of the country's civilians." ...
... digby: Trump "even called out his pal Vlad, in the process betraying the fact that he still, after being in office all this time, sees all relationships between world leaders as personal, rather than strategic.... He believes that war should be 'short and brutal' and should not spare civilians so this is frustrating to him because pictures of toddlers suffering and dying make him look bad.... He does not want any pictures of children dying from chemical attacks on the front pages or on cable news. He thought if he withdrew troops from Syria, Assad wouldn't have to gas kids and it won't be on the front page because he'd win and it would all be over."
David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "North Korea has confirmed directly to the Trump administration that it is willing to negotiate with the United States about potential denuclearization, administration officials said Sunday, a signal that the two sides have opened communications ahead of a potential summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un next month. The message from Pyongyang offers the first reassurance that Kim is committed to meeting Trump. The U.S. president accepted an offer made in March on Kim's behalf by South Korean emissaries during a meeting at the White House, but Pyongyang had not publicly commented."
** From One Banana Republic to Another. Juan Zamorano of TPM: "Lawyers representing U.S. President Donald Trump's family hotel business appealed to Panama's president [Juan Carlos Verela] for help days before an emergency arbitrator declined to reinstate the Trump management team to a luxury waterfront hotel.... The letter asks Varela to intervene, complaining that Panama's courts denied the organization due process in violation of a bilateral treaty.... The letter goes on to say that the eviction violates the Bilateral Investment Treaty ... suggesting that the government, not the new management team, could be blamed for wrongdoing. The letter raises questions about the president's family business matter-of-factly requesting another president's help in a private business matter by invoking a treaty signed by the two countries. [T]he front page of Panama's La Prensa newspaper Monday ... described the letter as a warning that there could be consequences for Panama if the old management team was not reinstated." --safari
Michelle Lee, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump and his allies again assured the country on Sunday morning that they do not expect China to actually implement threatened tariffs that could rock the U.S. economy and hurt American farmers, especially those who grow soybeans or raise hogs. 'China will take down its Trade Barriers because it is the right thing to do,' Trump said in a tweet on Sunday morning. 'Taxes will become Reciprocal & a deal will be made on Intellectual Property. Great future for both countries!' In interviews on Sunday morning talk shows, administration officials defended the president's trade approach and emerging policy with regard to China. China and the United States have threatened to levy new tariffs on each other in an escalating trade dispute."(Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Jonathan Swan of Axios: "When the president threatened China with $100 billion in new tariffs, there had hardly been any White House discussion.... There wasn't one single deliberative meeting in which senior officials sat down to debate the pros and cons of this historic threat. Trump didn't even ask for advice from his new top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, instead presenting the tariffs as a fait accompli. Chief of Staff John Kelly knew Trump wanted more tariffs but was blindsided by the speed of the announcement. And Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short -- the White House's liaison to Capitol Hill -- was totally in the dark.... The topic came up at the senior staff meeting the morning of the announcement. And he personally ordered Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to put together the threat and to get it done by Thursday.... For some White House officials, the moment was jarring: Trump had melted down Capitol Hill and roiled the markets with zero substantive internal debate."...
...Kevin Yao & Christian Shepard of Reuters: "China stepped up its attacks on the Trump administration on Monday over billions of dollars worth of threatened tariffs, saying Washington is to blame for trade frictions and repeating it was impossible to negotiate under 'current circumstances'. The comments come after U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday predicted China would take down its trade barriers, and expressed optimism that both sides could resolve the issue through talks. Chinese state researchers and media ... described the Trump administration's posturing on trade as the product of an 'anxiety disorder'." --safari
Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "... there were two accounts of the fire Saturday night that tore through a 50th-floor apartment in Trump Tower, President Trump's namesake building on Fifth Avenue in New York. The first narrative unfolded through official alerts and images from the New York Fire Department, which painted a picture of an extraordinarily challenging -- and ultimately fatal -- blaze to contain and extinguish.... For the president, however, the fire seemed first a chance to boast of the construction quality of Trump Tower on Twitter.... Trump also declared that the fire had been extinguished -- before it actually had been.... Though Trump thanked the 'firemen (and women)' who responded to the blaze, his tweet made no mention of those who had suffered injuries.... Trump's Saturday evening tweet has remained the only comment he has made regarding the fire in his building.... On Sunday morning, Trump posted about a half-dozen tweets on a variety of subjects.... But he has not revisited the Trump Tower fire, even after news of [resident Todd] Brassner's death.... Several residents also spoke of the fear and chaos that erupted after they realized their building was on fire." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Wang might has well have written, "The President of the United States is a flaming ass." At any rate, she let readers know it. ...
... Trump Lobbied against Safety Sprinklers. Caroline Linton of CBS News: "The fire on the 50th floor New York City's Trump Tower that left 67-year-old Todd Brassner dead and six firefighters injured was the second fire in the building in 2018. President Trump's centerpiece Manhattan skyscraper opened in 1984, but does not have sprinklers on its residential floors, a measure required in new buildings since 1999. President Trump, then a private citizen and property developer, lobbied to try and prevent the mandate at the time.... Two civilians suffered minor injuries and a firefighter was hurt by debris in a fire on Jan. 8 on the top of the building. That blaze was sparked by an electrical issue, Mr. Trump's son, Eric, said at the time. Eric Trump said the fire had been in a cooling tower. [The FDNY commissioner] said in a press conference that the cause of Saturday's fire is still unclear." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Esha Ray of the New York Daily News: "Todd Brassner, a 67-year-old art dealer who lost his life Saturday in the Trump Tower fire, despised building owner Donald Trump, a friend of the victim told the Daily News. The feeling was evidently mutual, with now-President Trump allegedly calling Brassner a 'crazy Jew' soon after the art dealer moved into the Fifth Ave. high-rise more than two decades ago, Brassner pal Patrick Goldsmith said Sunday. A fellow art dealer, Goldsmith said he heard the vile remark in 1996 as he entered the building and passed by the exiting Trump." Mrs. McC Note: Obviously, a one-source story.
Washington Post Editors: "The American people do not have a right to know all the details of what went on between Mr. Trump and Ms. Clifford in their personal lives many years ago. They do have a right to know, however, whether their president is lying to them now, or if he has received what amounts to a large financial subsidy from a secret personal benefactor. Unless and until Mr. Trump directs his lawyer to identify the source of the $130,000, both of these sorry scenarios will remain within the realm of plausibility." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
I love the poorly educated. -- Donald Trump, February 2016 ...
... King of the News Deserts. Shawn Musgrave & Matthew Nussbaum of Politico: "... Donald Trump's attacks on the mainstream media may be rooted in statistical reality: An extensive review of subscription data and election results shows that Trump outperformed the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, in counties with the lowest numbers of news subscribers, but didn't do nearly as well in areas with heavier circulation.... The results show a clear correlation between low subscription rates and Trump's success in the 2016 election, both against Hillary Clinton and when compared to Romney in 2012.... That gives new force to the widely voiced concerns of news-industry professionals and academicians about Trump's ability to make bold assertions about crime rates, unemployment and other verifiable facts without any independent checks.... Politico's analysis suggests that Trump did, indeed, do worse overall in places where independent media could check his claims.... Voters in so-called news deserts -- places with minimal newspaper subscriptions, print or online -- went for him in higher-than-expected numbers. In tight races with Clinton in states like Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, the decline in local media could have made a decisive difference." ...
... For What It's Worth. Sharon Bernstein & Chris Khan of Reuters: "Older, white, educated voters helped Donald Trump win the White House in 2016. Now, they are trending toward Democrats in such numbers that their ballots could tip the scales in tight congressional races from New Jersey to California, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll and a data analysis of competitive districts shows. Nationwide, whites over the age of 60 with college degrees now favor Democrats over Republicans for Congress by a 2-point margin, according to Reuters/Ipsos opinion polling during the first three months of the year. During the same period in 2016, that same group favored Republicans for Congress by 10 percentage points." --safari
Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post (who is no liberal): "... as [H.R.] McMaster suggested [in a speech last week], the democratic model is under more pressure than at any time since the Cold War.... Ordinarily, at such a time, the world would look to America for leadership. But, Freedom House said, the United States has 'retreated from its traditional role as both a champion and an exemplar of democracy. That retreat has been woven from dozens of statements, policy changes and missed opportunities from a president who famously seems to admire and, yes, glamorize dictators more than democrats: cheering when China's ruler declared himself president for life ('I think it's great'); laughing with the Philippines' strongman as he demonized reporters; congratulating Egypt's dictator for his sham reelection; itching to withdraw from Syria to leave that field to Iran and Russia; abandoning human rights improvement as a policy objective anywhere in the world...; and so on." See also Roger Cohen's essay, linked at the bottom of the page.
** Judd Legum of ThinkProgress: Jared Kushner apparently is getting an extraordinary $1.2 billion loan (or something) for his underwater behemoth at 666 Fifth Avenue in what is described in an SEC filing as a "handshake" agreement. In the filing, the company that bought out the Kushner family's retail & some residential space notes that "the situation continues to be fluid -- there can be no assurance that a final agreement will be reached...." Here's the kicker: whoever shook Kushner's hand in a promise to fork over $1.2 billion is secret. Mrs. McC: Over to you, SEC. ...
... Tangled Web, Ctd. Stephanie Kirchgaessner of the Guardian: "A senior private equity executive was approached about taking the job of US budget director a year before his company agreed to loan Jared Kushner's private family business tens of millions of dollars, according to two sources who spoke to the Guardian. Joshua Harris, the billionaire co-founder of Apollo Global Management, was considered to be a candidate for the job of director of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) shortly after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, according to the sources.... The sources told the Guardian that Harris ... backed out of the potential job because it would have been too difficult to unravel his personal finances in the short amount of time required to accept the government position. The sources said the alleged approach was initiated and backed by Kushner.... The circumstances surrounding the $184m loan by Apollo to Kushner Companies, Kushner's private family business, is currently the subject of an internal inquiry by the White House counsel's office after the 2017 loan was revealed in a New York Times report in February."
Uh-Oh. Vladdy's Gonna Be Pissed. AFP: "Shares in Russian aluminium giant Rusal collapsed on Monday after Washington targeted it with sanctions, putting the metals major at risk of defaulting on part of its debt. On the Hong Kong stock market, one of the exchanges where Rusal's shares are listed, it closed 50 percent down at HK$2.34. The fall wiped more than 3.5 billion euros ($4.3 billion) off the market capitalisation of the company which is headed by billionaire Oleg Deripaska and accounts for some seven percent of the world's aluminium production.... The latest wave of sanctions also saw Russian stock market indices plummet around 10 percent...Russia's currency also took a hit.... In all, Trump's administration targeted seven oligarchs, 12 companies they own or control, 17 senior Russian officials and a state-owned arms export company." --safari
Brad Reed of RawStory: "On Monday, Ret. Gen. Mark Hertling humiliated first daughter Ivanka Trump after she showed ignorance of federal child nutrition and fitness programs that her own father has short changed. Ivanka Trump on late Sunday sent out a tweet saying that the United States needs to do a better job of promoting physical activity among American children or else risk raising a generation of unhealthy kids.... Hertling ... proceeded to school Ivanka about ways she could easily help promote child fitness just by having her father do his job and appoint people to important positions within his administration. 'Ummm... there's this thing called the President's Council on Fitness, Sport, and Nutrition,' he wrote. 'Been around 60 years. Used to have 25 appointees... I was one of them. Michelle Obama helped and generated momentum in this area. No one is on the Council now.'" --safari
Alice Ollstein of TPM: "A high-ranking official at the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation has repeatedly shared conspiracy theories on his personal Facebook page ... including posts calling the students who survived the Parkland school shooting 'Nazis' and alleging the massacre was a staged false flag. Kevin Sabo, who was originally hired for a career position in budget analysis at the DOI in 2016, was promoted to the political role of acting chief of the Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs t the Bureau of Reclamation when the Trump administration came into power.... [I]n 2000, when he was convicted of 'attempted malicious wounding' for cutting the brakes on his ex-girlfriend's car, causing her to crash." --safari: Sounds like a perfect résumé to get into the White House.
Eliana Johnson of Politico: "National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton said Sunday that he plans to leave the White House -- a move that will leave ... Donald Trump without one of the earliest and sharpest defenders of his 'America First' foreign policy. Though Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, brought Anton into the administration, he spent the majority of his tenure serving as spokesman for Flynn's replacement, H.R. McMaster."
Michelle Costillo of CNBC: "Facebook is suspending a data analytics firm called CubeYou from the platform after CNBC notified the company that CubeYou was collecting information about users through quizzes. CubeYou misleadingly labeled its quizzes 'for non-profit academic research,' then shared user information with marketers. The scenario is eerily similar to how Cambridge Analytica received unauthorized access to data from as many as 87 million Facebook user accounts to target political marketing. The company sold data that had been collected by researchers working with the Psychometrics Lab at Cambridge University, similar to how Cambridge Analytica used information it obtained from other professors at the school for political marketing. The CubeYou discovery suggests that collecting data from quizzes and using it for marketing purposes was far from an isolated incident. Moreover, the fact that CubeYou was able to mislabel the purpose of the quizzes -- and that Facebook did nothing to stop it until CNBC pointed out the problem -- suggests the platform has little control over this activity." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Once again, Facebook is acting only because a media outlet exposed its bad practices.
** Franklin Foer of The Atlantic: " In a dank corner of the internet, it is possible to find actresses from Game of Thrones or Harry Potter engaged in all manner of sex acts.... An artificial intelligence has almost seamlessly stitched the familiar visages into pornographic scenes.... The genre [called 'deepfakes'] is one of the cruelest, most invasive forms of identity theft invented in the internet era. At the core of the cruelty is the acuity of the technology: A casual observer can't easily detect the hoax.... The internet has always contained the seeds of postmodern hell. Mass manipulation ... is the currency of the medium.... In this respect, the rise of deepfakes is the culmination of the internet's history to date -- and probably only a low-grade version of what's to come...But soon this may seem an age of innocence. We'll shortly live in a world where our eyes routinely deceive us. Put differently, we're not so far from the collapse of reality." --safari
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Terri Gerstein in the Guardian: Why did anchors & reporters across the country recite an Orwellian Sinclair Broadcast Group script rather than quit in disgust? "Among other things, Sinclair contracts contain a requirement that employees must pay their employers if they leave their jobs before their contract terms end. For example, an employee making $50,000 annually might have to pay in the ballpark of $10,000 if she wanted to leave after one year of a two-year term. While it's plainly illegal to impose a penalty on employees for leaving a job, the contract describes this requirement as 'liquidated damages'.... The Sinclair contracts also contain a non-compete clause, barring employees from working for competitors for a set time period after separation."
Beyond the Beltway
Let Them Drink Lead. Adrienne Masha Varkiani of ThinkProgress: "Michigan won't be giving the city of Flint free bottled water anymore, Gov. Rick Snyder (R) announced, claiming that water quality is now 'well within the standards.'... But many other city officials and public health experts think it's too soon to end the program ... Steve Branch, the acting city administrator, told the Times that about 6,200 lead or galvanized steel waterlines have been replaced so far, but an estimated 12,000 could still be in the city. Water going through those pipes might still pick up lead and could be dangerous for consumption." --safari
Way Beyond
Marc Santora of the New York Times: "Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who has set about transforming this former Soviet bloc member from a vibrant democracy into a semi-autocratic state under one political party's control, appeared to have won a sweeping victory in national elections on Sunday, with 93 percent of the vote counted. By securing two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, Mr. Orban's Fidesz party -- along with its ally, the Christian Democrats -- now has the power to change the Constitution and further bend the nation to his will.... Mr. Orban's victory is likely to embolden other leaders who have used a similar playbook, including those in neighboring Poland, where the governing party has openly emulated his tactics." ...
... Roger Cohen of the New York Times (April 6): "Hungary and Poland are turning the clock back to Europe's darkest hours. Today they are all about erecting borders -- real and imagined -- against Islam, migrants and refugees, Jews, the European Union, the United Nations, [George] Soros and what they portray as a pluralistic international conspiracy. Hungary erected an actual barrier on its southern border following the refugee crisis of 2015.... It was precisely the measures taken to construct and preserve a homogeneous society that lay at the core of the most heinous crimes of the last century. The illiberal trend represents a rejection of the core postwar insight that borders should be dismantled to save Europe from its repetitive suicides.... Taken to its end point, the new Hungarian and Polish authoritarianism means danger. It is more dangerous because Trump's despot-coddling America has disappeared as a countervailing force. The president has ceased upholding the values that advance liberty."
Share Article 
