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Tuesday Reads: Pelosi Is Winning On Impeachment, But Russia Is Still Helping Trump.Posted: January 14, 2020 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Burisma, Donald Trump, impeachment trial, Nancy Pelosi, Republican Senators, Russia is listening, Russian disinformation, Trump's gait issues, Vladimir Putin 50 Comments
Good Morning!!
Lots of tweeting about Trump and Melania at the LSU-Clemson game yesterday. Melania wore some kind of raincoat that looked like it was made out of garbage bags. More people are starting to notice Trump's odd standing and walking issues.
See more tweets at Raw Story: Internet speculates about Trump's strange gait at Clemson vs LSU championship.
There was disagreement about whether Trump or Melania released the other's hand, but Melania looks angry. Some people suggested she was digging her fingernails into his hand before he let go. Watch and see what you think.
Enough gossip, there is also breaking news on impeachment. CNN: Pelosi sets up floor vote as soon as Wednesday to name impeachment managers and send articles to the Senate.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that that the House will vote Wednesday on a resolution to name the impeachment managers for the Senate trial of President Donald Trump and transmit the articles to the chamber, two sources told CNN on Tuesday.
Pelosi told her Democratic colleagues Tuesday morning at a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill that she won't announce impeachment managers during that meeting, according to a source familiar with the remarks. Last week, Pelosi told Democrats she planned to discuss plans for sending over the articles of impeachment, which she's held following a vote last month.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said on Monday night that the House vote to name the impeachment managers "could be" on Wednesday, adding that the Senate has "practical problems" if they were to move sooner since three Democratic senators are participating in the presidential debate.
After a several week delay to formally send the articles, Pelosi's move will kick the impeachment fight officially into the Senate's court, where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is readying a resolution of his own to set out the rules of the trial.
It looks like Pelosi's decision to hold onto the articles for a few weeks is paying off. The New York Times: Republicans Rule Out Outright Dismissal of Impeachment Charges.
Senate Republicans indicated on Monday that they would not seek to summarily dismiss the impeachment charges against President Trump, proceeding instead to a trial with arguments and the possibility of calling witnesses that could begin as soon as Wednesday.
Dismissal was always a long shot given Republicans' narrow control of the Senate, but it was the subject of renewed discussion after Mr. Trump said on Sunday that he liked the idea put forward by some conservatives as a way to deny the House's case the legitimacy of a trial. Other Republicans had signed on to a resolution that would have dismissed the House's impeachment articles if they were not promptly brought to trial.
In interviews, rank-and-file senators and party leaders made clear on Monday that even if they wanted to pursue dismissal, the votes simply were not there to succeed — at least not at the outset of the trial. They did not rule out considering a motion to dismiss the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after opening arguments from both sides.
"Our members generally are not interested in a motion to dismiss," said Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, a top Republican leader. "They think both sides need to be heard. They believe the president needs to be heard for the first time in a fair setting."
Mitch doesn't have the votes for dismissal anymore. The Washington Post: Top Senate Republicans reject Trump's renewed call for immediate dismissal of impeachment charges.
On Monday, senior Republicans said immediate dismissal could not win approval in the chamber, where Republicans hold a 53-seat majority. And even some staunch Trump allies argued that the president's legacy would benefit from a robust trial.
"I don't think there's any interest on our side of dismissing," said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the fourth-ranking GOP senator. "Certainly, there aren't 51 votes for a motion to dismiss."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said that he wants the trial — only the third impeachment of a president in U.S. history — to follow the format used 21 years ago in the trial of President Bill Clinton. In that case, the Senate approved a resolution that would have allowed the Senate to vote to dismiss the charges.
But senior Republicans signaled Monday that they are not inclined to include such a provision in the resolution that will kick off Trump's trial, perhaps as soon as Thursday….
Another GOP senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss legislation that is not yet public, also said the inclusion of a provision to dismiss is unlikely.
Even the White House now admits there are going to be witnesses, according to CBS News: White House expects GOP defections on calling witnesses in Senate impeachment trial.
Senior White House officials tell CBS News they increasingly believe that at least four Republicans, and likely more, will vote to call witnesses. In addition to Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and possibly Cory Gardner of Colorado, the White House also views Rand Paul of Kentucky as a "wild card" and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee as an "institutionalist" who might vote to call witnesses, as one official put it.
Last week, Collins said she was working with a "fairly small group" of GOP senators to allow new testimony, adding that her colleagues "should be completely open to calling witnesses." Romney has expressed an interest in hearing from former national security adviser John Bolton, who has said he would testify under subpoena. Murkowski said last week that the Senate should proceed as it did during the 1999 Clinton impeachment trial.
Gardner and Alexander have both said the Senate trial should be fair and impartial. Paul has said the president should be able to call his own witnesses, including the whistleblower whose complaint about Ukraine sparked the impeachment inquiry in the first place.
More on Rand Paul from Politico: Republicans face reckoning on impeachment witnesses.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul offered a warning to his colleagues as they began debating whether to hear from witnesses like John Bolton in President Donald Trump's imminent impeachment trial.
"Don't think you can just vote for Bolton and not the witnesses Trump wants," Paul told senators at a party lunch last week, according to two attendees and two people briefed on the meeting. He advised that incumbent senators' conservative base would be enraged if vulnerable lawmakers were seen as undercutting Trump.
The blunt advice from Paul laid bare the GOP's perilous task in handling Trump's impeachment trial in an election year, all while the president delivers stage directions on his Twitter account. Trump over the weekend first requested that House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and even Speaker Nancy Pelosi appear as witnesses, then argued a few hours later that the trial should be dismissed summarily before it begins….
The GOP has tried to stay focused on its game plan to shut down Democratic hopes of locking in witnesses at the outset of the trial, but it's become increasingly clear the party will face an internal reckoning during the trial as it defends its Senate majority and faces a president who demands complete loyalty.
In other news, The New York Times broke this stunning story last night: Russians Hacked Ukrainian Gas Company at Center of Impeachment
With President Trump facing an impeachment trial over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, Russian military hackers have been boring into the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the affair, according to security experts.
The hacking attempts against Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served, began in early November, as talk of the Bidens, Ukraine and impeachment was dominating the news in the United States.
It is not yet clear what the hackers found, or precisely what they were searching for. But the experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens — the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment.
The Russian tactics are strikingly similar to what American intelligence agencies say was Russia's hacking of emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential campaign. In that case, once they had the emails, the Russians used trolls to spread and spin the material, and built an echo chamber to widen its effect.
Then, as now, the Russian hackers from a military intelligence unit known formerly as the G.R.U., and to private researchers by the alias "Fancy Bear," used so-called phishing emails that appear designed to steal usernames and passwords, according to Area 1, the Silicon Valley security firm that detected the hacking. In this instance, the hackers set up fake websites that mimicked sign-in pages of Burisma subsidiaries, and have been blasting Burisma employees with emails meant to look like they are coming from inside the company.
Russia is still listening to what Trump wants them to do. And don't forget, they could also have planted fake information to be released at appropriate times. They did that in 2016 when they hacked John Podesta's emails.
At The Washington Post, former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul warns: Be prepared to fight a dangerous new wave of disinformation during the Senate trial.
In a matter of days, U.S. senators will be exercising one of their most solemn constitutional duties as they take part in the second phase of the impeachment process. When they do so, they — and the rest of us — should take heed of Hill's warning. By now it should be amply clear that Russian-style disinformation tactics, whether employed by Russians or Americans, represent a major threat to American democracy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his proxies deploy several methods of disinformation to strengthen their power and influence. The first is to deny facts. For instance, Putin initially denied that Russian soldiers had seized control of Crimea in February 2014, denies Russian involvement in the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014, and denies any Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
A second tactic is to deflect attention from the facts, also known as "whataboutism." When criticized about Crimean annexing Crimea, Putin's media shoot back, what about Kosovo? Or New Mexico? When criticized about civilian casualties from Russian military intervention in Syria, Kremlin defenders retort, what about Iraq, Vietnam or Hiroshima? When confronted with evidence of Russian meddling in U.S. elections, the Russian standard refrain is, you do it all the time.
A third practice is the dissemination of lies. Russian state media once asserted that President Barack Obama and former Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi embraced the same ideology. I may be more sensitive than most about this tactic, because when I was serving as U.S. ambassador to Russia, Kremlin media outlets accused me of fomenting revolution against Putin's regime; perhaps most disgustingly of all, a video was circulated suggesting I was a pedophile. When Putin met with President Trump in July 2018 in Helsinki, the Russian president again lied about me, claiming I had broken Russian law while working in the White House.
Read the rest at the WaPo.
More stories to check out, links only:
The Daily Beast: Warren and Sanders' Famous Friendship Finally Ices Over.
Business Insider: Trump needed to show Soleimani was an imminent threat to assassinate him — and could be in dangerous legal territory now he's abandoned the argument.
The Daily Beast: Jitters at MSNBC as Brass Eyes Moving Chuck Todd and Talks to Shep Smith.
NPR: Here Are The Lawyers Who Will Defend President Trump Against Impeachment.
The Washington Post: Trump retweeted Pelosi in Muslim garb. The White House made it worse.
NBC News: Muslim groups denounce Trump retweet of fake Pelosi-Schumer photo.
Courthouse News Service: Trump Campaign Adviser Pleads Guilty to Child Porn, Sex Trafficking.
The Daily Beast: U.S. Embassies Were Never Told of Supposed Soleimani Threat Because It Didn't Exist: Officials.
So . . . what else is happening? What stories are you following today?
Tuesday Art and ReadsPosted: December 10, 2019 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Adam Schiff, art, articles of impeachment, Christopher Steele, Christopher Wray, Cover-Up General Barr, Do Fornier, Donald Trump, Eric Swalwell, FBI, Gerry Nadler, IG Michael Horowitz, IG report, Ivanka Trump, John Durham, Nancy Pelosi 39 Comments
Good Morning!!
The paintings in today's post are by Do Fournier, a contemporary French painter. Here's a little information about her:
Do Fournier (French, b.1951) is a Contemporary painter, originally from Guerande, Brittany, France. She began her career as a successful illustrator, and, in 1984, changed her focus to the creation of her own paintings. Her works were well received, and numerous prestigious exhibitions of her artworks have been mounted in France. In addition, she has frequently been invited to exhibit at the Salon d'Automne in Paris.
Fournier creates fantastic, colorful, and intimate works inspired by her home in France, which overlooks the sea. Her family and pets, as well as her collection of objects d'art, rugs, and textiles, are her primary subjects.
As the noted French critic Gerard Xuriguera has observed: "Her approach in an uneasy society is not to describe it's pain but the potential it still has for joy, it's fragile moments of charm and peacefulness stolen from a routine existence. To do this she expresses reality in its most intimate, sensual, peaceful and carnal form. Not as imitation but as a vision filtered through her observations and cast in the exuberance of her blazing colours. What she is trying to capture is fleeting emotion, to immobilize it and express it as simply as possible.
Breaking News
Right now I'm watching a press conference by House Leader Nancy Pelosi and the chairs of the five House committees involved in the impeachment investigation.
In yesterday's impeachment hearing, Rep Eric Swalwell spelled out the case against Trump in no uncertain terms.
Today's Reads
The New York Times: Another Inquiry Doesn't Back Up Trump's Charges. So, on to the Next.
President Trump and his allies spent months promising that a report on the origins of the F.B.I.'s Russia investigation would be a kind of Rosetta Stone for Trump-era conspiracy enthusiasts — the key to unlocking the secrets of a government plot to keep Mr. Trump from being elected in 2016.
On that point, the report by the Justice Department's inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, did not deliver, even as it found serious problems with how F.B.I. officials justified the surveillance of a Trump campaign aide to a federal court.
But by the time it was released, the president, his attorney general, his supporters in Congress and the conservative news media had already declared victory and decamped for the next battle in the wider war to convince Americans of the enemies at home and abroad arrayed against the Trump presidency.
They followed a script they have used for nearly three years: Engage in a choreographed campaign of presidential tweets, Fox News appearances and fiery congressional testimony to create expectations about finding proof of a "deep state" campaign against Mr. Trump. And then, when the proof does not emerge, skew the results and prepare for the next opportunity to execute the playbook.
That opportunity has arrived in the form of an investigation by aRea Connecticut prosecutor ordered this year by Attorney General William P. Barr — and the president and his allies are now predicting it will be the one to deliver damning evidence that the F.B.I., C.I.A. and even close American allies conspired against Mr. Trump in the 2016 election.
Read the rest at the NYT.
One startling revelation from the IG report was that Ivanka Trump has been friends with Christopher Steele for years.
ABC News: 'Dossier' author Chris Steele met Ivanka Trump years before Russia scandal, source says.
Nearly a decade before the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka met a British intelligence officer who ran the Russia desk — and when the agent left his covert service and moved into private practice in 2010, she stayed in touch, ABC News has learned.
The two exchanged emails but never worked together, and the man, Christopher Steele, would one day re-emerge in a most unexpected way, taking a central role in the Russia scandal that consumed the early years of her father's presidency, according to a source familiar with their past contacts.
The prior relationship came to light as investigators with the Department of Justice Inspector General's office was looking into allegations of political bias at the origins of the Russia investigation since May 2018….
In 2007, Ivanka Trump met Steele at a dinner and they began corresponding about the possibility of future work together, the source said. The following year, the two exchanged emails about meeting up near Trump Tower, according to several emails seen by ABC News. And the two did meet at Trump Tower according to the source. The inspector general's report mentions a meeting with a "Trump family member" there. They suggest Ivanka Trump and Steele stayed in touch via emails over the next several years. In one 2008 exchange they discussed dining together in New York at a restaurant just blocks from Trump Tower.
Ivanka Trump worked as an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, managing a range of foreign real estate projects, including in parts of the world where Steele's firm, Orbis Business Intelligence touted expertise. She and Steele discussed services Orbis could offer to the Trump Organization regarding its planned expansion into foreign markets, according to two sources familiar with the meetings.
Read more at ABC News.
Also from ABC News: FBI Director Chris Wray reacts to DOJ watchdog report on Russia investigation: Exclusive.
FBI Director Christopher Wray offered mixed reactions to a Justice Department watchdog report that uncovered "serious performance failures" on the part of agents involved in the Russia investigation but ultimately determined the bureau was justified in launching its probe.
In an exclusive broadcast interview with ABC News, Wray lamented "actions described in this report that [he] considered unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution." But, he said it was "important that the inspector general found that, in this particular instance, the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization." [….]
But the president and his allies have called it "a major SPY scandal" and accused those involved of working on behalf of the "Deep State."
Wray did not respond directly to the president, but pushed back on the "Deep State" characterization of the bureau's work.
"I think that's the kind of label that's a disservice to the men and women who work at the FBI who I think tackle their jobs with professionalism, with rigor, with objectivity, with courage," Wray said. "So that's not a term I would ever use to describe our work force and I think it's an affront to them."
Naturally, Trump is enraged at Wray's remarks. Will he fire another FBI Director?
The Washington Post: Trump lashes out at FBI director in wake of Justice Department inspector general's report.
President Trump lashed out Tuesday morning at FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, suggesting that "he will never be able to fix the FBI" based on his reaction to a Justice Department inspector general's report examining the bureau's investigation of Trump's 2016 campaign.
"I don't know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn't the one given to me," Trump tweeted. "With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!"
The 434-page report rebutted conservatives' accusations that top FBI officials were driven by political bias to illegally spy on Trump advisers as part of the probe into Russian election interference, but it also found broad and "serious performance failures" requiring major changes.
In a statement Monday, Wray, a Trump appointee, said he had ordered more than 40 corrective steps to address the report's recommendations," adding that he would not hesitate to take "appropriate disciplinary action if warranted."
Cover-up General Bill Barr is also attacking the report by his own independent Inspector General.
Talking Points Memo: How The DOJ Watchdog Forced Barr To Scramble To Undermine Trump-Russia Probe.
Attorney General Bill Barr scrambled on Monday to keep a main anti-DOJ conspiracy theory going, after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a 476-page report finding that the FBI was justified in opening its Trump-Russia investigation.
Horowitz found that there was unanimous support within the Justice Department and FBI in July 2016 for opening an investigation into potential contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and found no evidence that anti-Trump bias played a role in the investigation's start.
Horowitz opened his probe amid allegations from right-wing talking heads and politicos that partisan bias had propelled FBI officials into investigating the Trump campaign….
The result of the whirlpool of allegations arrived in the form of the Horowitz report, which substantively rebutted the accusations and affirmatively found that FBI officials were justified in opening an investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign.
So, upon the report's release, both Barr and Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham issued statements disagreeing with Horowitz's finding.
"Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened," Durham said in his statement, adding that he was relying on evidence beyond the "component parts of the Justice Department."
More details at the TPM link.
Vanity Fair: "It Is Not What The Department of Justice Does": Barr and Durham Go Rogue On The Inspector General's Report.
…what was truly surprising to some veterans of the Robert F. Kennedy building and the DC bar was the reaction from Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham, who Barr tapped to run a parallel investigation of Crossfire Hurricane and related investigations. Both issued statements throwing significant shade at Horowitz's report, though, technically, Barr is Horowitz's boss. "I've never seen such an internal DOJ effort to challenge and undermine the IG's findings," Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney, told me Monday. "It is not what the Department of Justice does." [….]
"The Inspector General's report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken," Barr wrote in a statement. "It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump's administration."
Barr's decision to publicly distance himself from Horowitz's findings was met with some astonishment. "No law enforcement purpose is served by the Attorney General announcing that he disagrees with the inspector general's conclusion that the FBI had an adequate predicate for its investigation of Russia's contacts with the Trump campaign," William Jeffress, a white-collar defense attorney who worked on the Valerie Plame leak case, told me. Barr's missive was reminiscent of the now infamous four-page summary of Robert Mueller's report, respinning the results of an exhaustive investigation in ways favorable to the president. "The statement by Barr will only deepen the sense that he is a Trump partisan who lacks the independence to lead the Department of Justice," Jeffress added.
What else is happening? What stories have you been following?
Thursday Reads: DNI Facing Intel Committees and Trump Facing ImpeachmentPosted: September 26, 2019 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Donald Trump, House Intelligence Committee, Joseph Maguire, Nancy Pelosi, Russia, Ukraine, whistleblowers, William Barr 30 Comments
Good Morning!!
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire is testifying before the House Intelligence Committee this morning. Maguire has given his opening statement and the questioning has begun. At about 8:30, the whistleblower complaint was released to the public. You can read it here.
So far Maguire is working pretty hard to obfuscate Adam Schiff's questions, but he has admitted that he first took the complaint to the White House counsel's office for advice. He keeps claiming that he can't violate executive privilege but he also admits that the "president" has not asserted executive privilege. Next he went to the DOJ even though Bill Barr is specifically mentioned in the whistleblower complaint as likely being involved in Trump's wrongdoing!
Anyway, if you're watching, please post your thoughts in the comments to this post.
Here's the latest:
The Washington Post: Whistleblower claimed Trump abused his office and that White House officials tried to cover it up.
The whistleblower complaint at the heart of the burgeoning controversy over President Trump's call with the Ukrainian president claims not only that the president misused his office for personal gain and endangered national security but that unidentified White House officials tried to hide that conduct.
"In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election," the whistleblower wrote in the complaint dated Aug. 12. The House Intelligence Committee released the document Thursday morning.
"This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals. The President's personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph W. Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General (William P.) Barr appears to be involved as well," the complaint states.
In that phone call, Trump pressed President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, one of his chief political rivals, and Biden's son Hunter — offering to enlist Barr's help in that effort while dangling a possible visit to the White House, according to a rough transcript of the call released by the White House on Wednesday.
Read the rest at the WaPo.
The New York Times: Whistle-Blower's Complaint Says White House Tried to 'Lock Down' Ukraine Call Records.
President Trump used the power of his office to try to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election to investigate a political rival "for personal gain," according to an explosive whistle-blower complaint released on Thursday after days of damning revelations about Mr. Trump's dealings with Ukraine.
Attorney General William P. Barr and the president's personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani were central to the effort, the complaint said.
In addition, the complaint says that whistle-blower, an unidentified intelligence officer, learned from multiple American officials that "senior White House officials had intervened to 'lock down' all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced as is customary by the White House Situation Room."
"This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call," the complaint said.
The whistle-blower's complaint was based on accounts from multiple White House officials who were "deeply disturbed" by what they heard on the call, the complaint said.
Read more at the link above.
The New York Times last night: Phone Call Showed Only a Slice of Trump's Obsession With Ukraine.
Long before the July 25 call with the new Ukrainian president that helped spur the formal start of impeachment proceedings against him in the House, Mr. Trump fretted and fulminated about the former Soviet state, angry over what he sees as Ukraine's role in the origins of the investigations into Russian influence on his 2016 campaign.
His fixation was only intensified by his hope that he could employ the Ukrainian government to undermine his most prominent potential Democratic rival in 2020, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
His personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, has undertaken a nearly yearlong, free-ranging effort to unearth information helpful to Mr. Trump and harmful to Mr. Biden.
And Mr. Trump has put the powers of his office behind his agenda: He has dispatched Vice President Mike Pence and top administration officials with thinly veiled messages about heeding his demands about confronting corruption, which Ukrainian and former American officials say is understood as code for the Bidens and Ukrainians who released damaging information about the Trump campaign in 2016. This summer he froze a package of military assistance to Ukraine even as the country, eager to build closer relations with Washington, continued to be menaced by its aggressive neighbor Russia.
HuffPost: Donald Trump Actually Has 2 Whistleblowers To Worry About.
…there's another whistleblower ― one with possible evidence that Trump tried to corrupt an Internal Revenue Service audit of his personal tax returns ― who has received relatively little attention.
The tax whistleblower…went straight to Congress ― specifically to the House Ways and Means Committee, which had sued the Trump administration for refusing to provide copies of the president's tax returns in response to a formal request. Democrats say they need Trump's returns to make sure the IRS properly enforces tax laws against the president.
But Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) is far less outspoken than Schiff, and his approach to the tax case has been cautious. He decided to stay focused on the lawsuit, using the whistleblower's material to bolster that case.
In a brief last month, the committee told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that a "federal employee" had approached them with "evidence of possible misconduct" and "inappropriate efforts" to influence an IRS audit of the president. The document provided no further detail about the whistleblower, but in a footnote, Democrats offered to tell U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden all about it in private.
A spokesman for the committee said this week that McFadden, a Trump nominee who donated to the Trump 2016 campaign and volunteered for the Trump presidential transition, has so far not asked to hear more about the whistleblower. He denied a Democratic motion to speed up the case.
Selected analysis:
This one is really interesting. I hope you'll read the whole thing by Murray Waas at the New York Review of Books: Trump, Giuliani, and Manafort: The Ukraine Scheme.
The effort by President Trump to pressure the government of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son had its origins in an earlier endeavor to obtain information that might provide a pretext and political cover for the president to pardon his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, according to previously undisclosed records.
These records indicate that attorneys representing Trump and Manafort respectively had at least nine conversations relating to this effort, beginning in the early days of the Trump administration, and lasting until as recently as May of this year. Through these deliberations carried on by his attorneys, Manafort exhorted the White House to press Ukrainian officials to investigate and discredit individuals, both in the US and in Ukraine, who he believed had published damning information about his political consulting work in the Ukraine. A person who participated in the joint defense agreement between President Trump and others under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, including Manafort, allowed me to review extensive handwritten notes that memorialized conversations relating to Manafort and Ukraine between Manafort's and Trump's legal teams, including Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
These new disclosures emerge as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that the House would open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump's conduct. What prompted her actions were the new allegations that surfaced last week that Trump had pressured Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Trump's potential 2020 campaign rival, Biden, and his son Hunter, placing a freeze on a quarter of a billion dollars in military assistance to Ukraine as leverage. The impeachment inquiry will also examine whether President Trump obstructed justice by attempting to curtail investigations by the FBI and the special counsel into Russia's covert interference in the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor.
New information in this story suggests that these two, seemingly unrelated scandals, in which the House will judge whether the president's conduct in each case constituted extra-legal and extra-constitutional abuses of presidential power, are in fact inextricably linked: the Ukrainian initiative appears to have begun in service of formulating a rationale by which the president could pardon Manafort, as part of an effort to undermine the special counsel's investigation.
Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine: The Ukraine Scandal Is Not One Phone Call. It's a Massive Plot.
On July 25, President Trump held a phone call in which he repeatedly leaned on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and Paul Manafort's prosecutors. The episode is so blatantly inappropriate even Trump's most fervent apologists are, with a few exceptions, having trouble defending it. What they are trying to do, instead, is define this phone call as the entire scandal. Trump emphasizes that he "didn't specifically mention the explicit quid pro quo" of military aid in return for the investigation.
That is true, as far as it goes. The quid pro quo in the call, though perfectly apparent, is mostly implicit. But the real trick in Trump's defense is framing the call as the entire scandal. The scandal is much more than that. The call is a snapshot, a moment in time in a months-long campaign that put American policy toward Ukraine at the disposal of Trump's personal interests and reelection campaign.
Last spring, Rudy Giuliani was openly pressuring Kiev to investigate Joe Biden. Giuliani told the New York Times, "We're meddling in an investigation … because that information will be very, very helpful to my client." The key word there was "we're." The first-person plural indicated Giuliani was not carrying out this mission alone. A series of reports have revealed how many other government officials were involved in the scheme.
Read more at the link.
A few more:
Susan Glasser at The New Yorker: "Do Us a Favor": The Forty-eight Hours That Sealed Trump's Impeachment.
Lawrence Tribe at USA Today: Donald Trump's call with Ukrainian president drips with impeachable crimes.
Neal Kaytal at The New York Times: Trump Doesn't Need to Commit a Crime to Be Kicked Out of Office.
Please post your thoughts and links on any topic in the comment thread below.
Terrifying Tuesday Reads: Impeach the MFer!Posted: September 24, 2019 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Abigail Spanberger, Chrissy Houlahan, Declan Walsh, Donald Trump, Elaine Luria, Gil Cisneros, impeachment, inherent contempt, Iuliia Mendel, Jason Crow, Mikie Sherrill, Nancy Pelosi, press freedom, reporters in danger, Ukraine, United Nations, Volodymyr Zelensky, Wilbur Ross 43 Comments
Good Morning!!
The Dotard is not looking or sounding good this morning. He must be missing his executive time watching Fox News this morning. Trump was at the UN trying out a new excuse for his corrupt bullying of Ukraine. Supposedly he secretly held back the aid because other countries weren't giving enough.
Then he gave a slow-motion speech full of slurred words. His face was bloated and expressionless, and he appeared to be struggling to read the teleprompter, squinting his eyes and craning his neck forward.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross appeared to be dozing off in his chair.
The Dotard's kids were in the audience, hoping he could somehow make it through the "speech" before he keeled over.
Here's a longer excerpt, posted by an expert on authoritarian regimes.
This robotic, senile, yet dangerous "person" is supposedly the president of the United States.
I'll get to Ukraine and impeachment talk in a minute, but first I want to highlight this op-ed by the publisher of The New York Times A.G. Sulzberger. I hope you'll go read the whole thing, but here's the breaking news part: the Trump administration refused to help a NYT reporter who was in danger of being arrested in Egypt.
Two years ago, we got a call from a United States government official warning us of the imminent arrest of a New York Times reporter based in Egypt named Declan Walsh. Though the news was alarming, the call was actually fairly standard. Over the years, we've received countless such warnings from American diplomats, military leaders and national security officials.
But this particular call took a surprising and distressing turn. We learned the official was passing along this warning without the knowledge or permission of the Trump administration. Rather than trying to stop the Egyptian government or assist the reporter, the official believed, the Trump administration intended to sit on the information and let the arrest be carried out. The official feared being punished for even alerting us to the danger.
Unable to count on our own government to prevent the arrest or help free Declan if he were imprisoned, we turned to his native country, Ireland, for help. Within an hour, Irish diplomats traveled to his house and safely escorted him to the airport before Egyptian forces could detain him.
We hate to imagine what would have happened had that brave official not risked their career to alert us to the threat.
Walsh wasn't alone.
Eighteen months later, another of our reporters, David Kirkpatrick, arrived in Egypt and was detained and deported in apparent retaliation for exposing information that was embarrassing to the Egyptian government. When we protested the move, a senior official at the United States Embassy in Cairo openly voiced the cynical worldview behind the Trump administration's tolerance for such crackdowns. "What did you expect would happen to him?" he said. "His reporting made the government look bad."
You have to wonder why NYT reporters like Ken Vogel and Maggie Haberman are so protective of Trump. Check out this example at The Daily Beast: Author of New York Times' Controversial Biden-Ukraine Story Becomes New Ukrainian President's Spokeswoman.
The New York Times last month published a controversial 2,500-word report raising questions about whether Joe Biden used his position as vice president to meddle in Ukrainian politics for the benefit of a company that employed his son.
Now one of the piece's authors has announced she has taken a job as the new Ukrainian president's spokesperson—sparking a new round of criticism of the Times' story.
"If you want changes—make them. I am glad to join Volodymyr Zelensky's team. We will do everything possible to be as open to the media and society as we can," Iuliia Mendel said Monday in a press release.
Her May 1 Times piece detailed how in 2016, then-Vice President Biden successfully pushed Ukraine to oust Viktor Shokin, the country's top prosecutor who'd been criticized by the U.S. as an impediment to corruption reform. The story suggested the possibility that Biden was motivated to push for Shokin's removal because the prosecutor investigated the head of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company where the veep's son Hunter Biden was a board member.
The article provided no evidence to support the accusations against Biden, but the NYT pushed Trump and Giuliani's false claims anyway.
Two important stories broke at The Washington Post last night:
Trump ordered hold on military aid days before calling Ukrainian president, officials say.
President Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine at least a week before a phone call in which Trump is said to have pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate the son of former vice president Joe Biden, according to three senior administration officials.
Officials at the Office of Management and Budget relayed Trump's order to the State Department and the Pentagon during an interagency meeting in mid-July, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They explained that the president had "concerns" and wanted to analyze whether the money needed to be spent.
Administration officials were instructed to tell lawmakers that the delays were part of an "interagency process" but to give them no additional information — a pattern that continued for nearly two months, until the White House released the funds on the night of Sept. 11.
Trump's order to withhold aid to Ukraine a week before his July 25 call with Volodymyr Zelensky is likely to raise questions about the motivation for his decision and fuel suspicions on Capitol Hill that Trump sought to leverage congressionally approved aid to damage a political rival.
Op-Ed by Seven freshman Democrats: Seven freshman Democrats: These allegations are a threat to all we have sworn to protect, by
Our lives have been defined by national service. We are not career politicians. We are veterans of the military and of the nation's defense and intelligence agencies. Our service is rooted in the defense of our country on the front lines of national security.
We have devoted our lives to the service and security of our country, and throughout our careers, we have sworn oaths to defend the Constitution of the United States many times over. Now, we join as a unified group to uphold that oath as we enter uncharted waters and face unprecedented allegations against President Trump.
The president of the United States may have used his position to pressure a foreign country into investigating a political opponent, and he sought to use U.S. taxpayer dollars as leverage to do it. He allegedly sought to use the very security assistance dollars appropriated by Congress to create stability in the world, to help root out corruption and to protect our national security interests, for his own personal gain. These allegations are stunning, both in the national security threat they pose and the potential corruption they represent. We also know that on Sept. 9, the inspector general for the intelligence community notified Congress of a "credible" and "urgent" whistleblower complaint related to national security and potentially involving these allegations. Despite federal law requiring the disclosure of this complaint to Congress, the administration has blocked its release to Congress.
This flagrant disregard for the law cannot stand. To uphold and defend our Constitution, Congress must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an upcoming election.
They go on to call for impeachment hearings and even using inherent contempt to force the administration to turn over documents and witnesses.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called a meeting of the Democratic caucus for this afternoon. CNN reports:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will meet with key committee chairmen who are leading investigations into President Donald Trump, ahead of a full caucus meeting Tuesday afternoon, according to Democratic sources, in what appears to be a crucial day for the party and their strategy on whether to impeach the President.
Amid a new slate of Democratic lawmakers opening the door to impeachment proceedings, Pelosi will consult with the six House Democratic leaders to discuss their presentation to the caucus later in the day, Democratic sources familiar with the issue say. The speaker has been on the phone with her colleagues over the last several days to take the temperature of the whistleblower complaint against Trump as she decides whether to embrace impeachment, Democrats say.
In an interview with CNN Monday night, Pelosi declined to say whether she would fully endorse initiating an impeachment inquiry when she meets with the caucus Tuesday.
But she left little doubt the developments around the whistleblower's complaint had dramatically escalated the standoff with Trump and a move toward impeachment proceedings was all but certain.
"We will have no choice," Pelosi said of ultimately getting behind an impeachment inquiry.
Some of Pelosi's closest allies, including House Reps. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Debbie Dingell of Michigan, have signaled their support for impeachment proceedings — a significant indicator that the speaker could be moving closer to backing the divisive political procedure.
The news is full of impeachment talk this morning. Here are some stories to check out:
The Washington Post: Pelosi quietly sounding out House Democrats about whether to impeach Trump, officials say.
Politico: 'Seismic change': Democratic hold-outs rush toward impeachment.
Joyce White Vance at Time: Trump Is Leaving Congress No Choice But to Impeach.
Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine: Why Trump Has Finally Forced the House to Impeach Him.
Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg: We're Likely Headed for Impeachment.
The Daily Beast: Trump Impeachment: House Dems Are Discussing a 'Select Panel' to Handle the Task.
What stories are you following on this Terrifying Tuesday?
Lazy Caturday Reads: We Are ScrewedPosted: September 21, 2019 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2020 Democratic primaries, Beryl Cook, cats, caturday, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, George W. Bush, Hunter Biden, impeachment, Iraq War, Jerry Nadler, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Media bias, Nancy Pelosi, off the table, Ukraine 24 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
This morning I'm having flashbacks to 2006. Democrats had just retaken the House and Nancy Pelosi became the first woman Speaker. But even before she took the gavel, she announced that "impeachment is off the table." Never mind that Bush and Cheney had lied us into an endless war.
The New York Times, November 8, 2006: Pelosi: Bush Impeachment `Off the Table.'
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi promised Wednesday that when her party takes over, the new majority will not attempt to remove President Bush from office, despite earlier pledges to the contrary from others in the caucus.
"I have said it before and I will say it again: Impeachment is off the table," Pelosi, D-Calif., said during a news conference.
Pelosi also said Democrats, despite complaining about years of unfair treatment by the majority GOP, "are not about getting even" with Republicans.
She said the GOP, which frequently excluded Democrats from conference committee hearings and often blocked attempts to introduce amendments, would not suffer similar treatment.
"Democrats pledge civility and bipartisanship in the conduct of the work here and we pledge partnerships with Congress and the Republicans in Congress, and the president — not partisanship."
She also extended an olive branch to Bush on the war in Iraq, saying she plans to work with him on a new plan but will not support the current strategy and supports beginning redeployment of troops by the end of the year.
Pelosi also said she supports the idea of a bipartisan summit on the war.
Now Pelosi is once again Speaker of the House and she's doing a repeat performance with an even worse "president." Until recently, I thought her arguments about "getting the facts" by holding hearings before rushing into impeachment made sense.
But the situation with Trump become an emergency. He is stonewalling any and all efforts to question witnesses in Congressional Committees. He is using mob tactics to force a foreign country into helping him get reelected. We can't wait for the 2020 election to get rid of him, especially because there's no guarantee that he won't successfully win by cheating.
Please check out this piece by Tom Scocca at Slate: Someone Should Do Something.
After seeing the events of the past few days, in the light of the events of the days before those, in relation to the events that took place in the weeks, months, and years before that, I am strongly considering writing something that would address the question of whether Nancy Pelosi is bad at her job. If I did, I would argue that the House of Representatives, under Pelosi's leadership, has come to function as a necessary complement to the corruption and incompetence of President Donald Trump—that a lawless presidency can only achieve its fullest, ripest degree of lawlessness with the aid of a feckless opposition party, which the Democrats are eager to provide.
My editor thinks that I should write this article. I understand that in a week when one of the president's most dedicated flunkies went before Congress to openly sneer at the idea that he should answer questions, making a show of obstructing what was supposed to be an investigation into obstruction of justice—a week now ending with reports, confirmed by the president's jabbering ghoul of a lawyer on television, that the president tried to force a foreign country to act against the Democrats' leading presidential candidate—there is good reason to feel that something needs to be written. It is certainly the sort of situation that someone could write about: the opposition party sitting on its hands and issuing vague statements of dismay while the entire constitutional order is revealed to be no match for the willingness of a president and his enablers to break the law.
At some point, in the future, it will probably be necessary to publish an article pointing out the terrifying mismatch between the ever-increasing speed with which our political system is falling apart and the slow trudge toward November 2020, when the Democratic Party hopes that voters will do what current elected Democratic officials will not do and take action to remove our visibly degenerating president from office. If someone did write an article like that, they could point out that by allowing Trump to remain in office unchallenged until the election, Pelosi and the Democratic leadership are saying that, although they hope the voters decide Trump is disqualified from office, they themselves do not think he has done anything wrong enough to merit his removal. If he had, they would do something, and they have not.
Scocca continues in this vein for several more paragraphs, ending with this conclusion:
Everyone in our democracy—citizens and officials alike, voters and writers, marchers and starers-at-screens—has a role to play, or to consider playing. If I were going to write about this, I would say that it might be time to plan on doing something.
Meanwhile, Jerry Nadler is supposedly thinking about maybe holding Corey Lewandowski in contempt for his disgraceful "testimony" several days ago.
We're screwed, folks.
Yesterday it became clear that the New York Times is likely to do to Joe Biden what they did to Hillary Clinton and other media outlets will follow suit. Trump actually tweeted a video that featured NYT reporters arguing that Trump's and Giuliani's charges about Biden are legitimate.
And Trump (and the media, especially the NYT) will do the same thing to any Democratic candidate who ends up running against him.
We can see the future right now. It's 2016 all over again.
Look at what happened to Kamala Harris at a forum on LGBT issues. Tommy Christopher at Mediaite: WATCH: 'Biased' LGBTQ Forum Question for Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren Goes Viral, Not in a Good Way.
On Friday, Democratic candidates participated in an LGBTQ forum in Iowa, moderated in part by Cedar Rapids Gazette columnist Lyz Lenz. Her first question to Senator Harris was about a case in which, as attorney general of California, she defended the state corrections department against a lawsuit seeking gender reassignment surgery for a transgender woman inmate named Michelle-Lael Norsworthy.
"During your time as attorney general in California, you did send a brief seeking to deny gender-affirmation surgery for trans inmates," Lenz said, adding "You stated that at the time you were just enforcing the existing law.:
"But with this history, the question is, how can trans people trust you will advocate for them, and not just enforce discriminatory laws?" Lenz asked.
Harris responded by noting the support she has received from LGBTQ organizations in her home state, and said "When that case came up, it was because as attorney general, I had clients, and one of them was the California Department of Corrections, and it was their policy. When I learned about what they were doing, behind the scenes, I got them to change the policy."
And here is how Lenz treat a nearly identical question to Elizabeth Warren:
But when Lenz brought up an arguably more damaging stance on the same issue with Elizabeth Warren, it wasn't framed as a matter of trust, or even as something for which Warren should answer.
"In 2012, you wrote that you did not support gender-affirming surgery for trans inmates," Lenz said — to a "Yeah" from Warren — then added "In January of this year, you reversed your opinion and said you had changed on this issue."
But instead of asking Warren how she could be trusted on an issue that she just got right on (checks notes) 8 months ago, Lenz said Warren's change "is great," then asked "So you just said we have to get everybody on board, how do we even do that?"
"So, the way I think about this, and America, equal means equal," Warren said, but did not address her prior comments in the remainder of her answer.
I guarantee you that if Warren is the nominee, she too will get the Hillary Clinton treatment from the media while Trump mocks her "Pocahantas" on an hourly basis.
Here is what the U.S. media should be doing about Trump.
Lenore Taylor at The Guardian: As a foreign reporter visiting the US I was stunned by Trump's press conference.
…watching a full presidential Trump press conference while visiting the US this week I realised how much the reporting of Trump necessarily edits and parses his words, to force it into sequential paragraphs or impose meaning where it is difficult to detect.
The press conference I tuned into by chance from my New York hotel room was held in Otay Mesa, California, and concerned a renovated section of the wall on the Mexican border.
I joined as the president was explaining at length how powerful the concrete was. Very powerful, it turns out. It was unlike any wall ever built, incorporating the most advanced "concrete technology". It was so exceptional that would-be wall-builders from three unnamed countries had visited to learn from it.
There were inner tubes in the wall that were also filled with concrete, poured in via funnels, and also "rebars" so the wall would withstand anyone attempting to cut through it with a blowtorch.
The wall went very deep and could not be burrowed under. Prototypes had been tested by 20 "world-class mountain climbers – That's all they do, they love to climb mountains", who had been unable to scale it.
It was also "wired, so that we will know if somebody is trying to break through", although one of the attending officials declined a presidential invitation to discuss this wiring further, saying, "Sir, there could be some merit in not discussing it", which the president said was a "very good answer".
The wall was "amazing", "world class", "virtually impenetrable" and also "a good, strong rust colour" that could later be painted. It was designed to absorb heat, so it was "hot enough to fry an egg on". There were no eggs to hand, but the president did sign his name on it and spoke for so long the TV feed eventually cut away, promising to return if news was ever made.
He did, at one point, concede that would-be immigrants, unable to scale, burrow, blow torch or risk being burned, could always walk around the incomplete structure, but that would require them walking a long way. This seemed to me to be an important point, but the monologue quickly returned to the concrete.
In writing about this not-especially-important or unusual press conference I've run into what US reporters must encounter every day. I've edited skittering, half-finished sentences to present them in some kind of consequential order and repeated remarks that made little sense.
But instead of focusing on Trump's obvious ignorance, incompetence, and actual psychopathy and dementia, the media with focus on tearing down whichever Democrat wins the nomination. If it's a black woman it will be even worse.
Finally, here's the latest on the Ukraine scandal.
The Washington Post: How Trump and Giuliani pressured Ukraine to investigate the president's rivals.
Politico: Trump tries to move Ukraine scandal's focus toward Biden.
Three Republicans call for impeachment.
Tom Nichols at The Atlantic: If This Isn't Impeachable, Nothing Is.
George Conway III and Neal Kaytal at The Washington Post: Trump has done plenty to warrant impeachment. But the Ukraine allegations are over the top.
Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread below. Have a nice weekend Sky Dancers!!
Thursday ReadsPosted: July 18, 2019 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bill Barr, Donald Trump, fascism, Ilhan Omar, impeachment, Jeffrey Epstein, Judge William H. Pauley, Michael Cohen, Nancy Pelosi, Rachel Maddow, Trump Nazi/KKK rally 29 Comments
Good Morning!!
It appears that Cover-Up General Bill Barr has struck again. He apparently ordered the Southern District of New York to end their investigation of campaign finance violations by Michael Cohen and Individual 1 (AKA Donald Trump).
The Washington Post: Prosecutors have 'concluded' Michael Cohen campaign finance probe, judge says.
Federal prosecutors have concluded the campaign finance investigation centered on President Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen, or at least key aspects of it, a federal judge overseeing the case wrote Wednesday, suggesting prosecutors will not charge executives in the Trump Organization or any others who have been linked to the matter.
The good news is that Judge William H. Pauley ordered the public release of search warrants and other documents related to the case. Prosecutors asked Pauley to allow some redactions of the materials, but the judge said no dice. The materials should be available sometime this morning.
He [Pauley] wrote that the government disclosed in a secret filing Monday that it had "concluded the aspects of its investigation that justified the continued sealing of the portions of the Materials relating to Cohen's campaign finance violations." He rejected their request to file the materials with redactions to protect "third-party privacy interests," because, by his telling, the case is over and the public deserves to see everything.
"The campaign finance violations discussed in the Materials are a matter of national importance," Pauley wrote. "Now that the Government's investigation into those violations has concluded, it is time that every American has an opportunity to scrutinize the Materials."
So Barr has made sure that the Trump Organization will no longer be in danger of prosecution. Will the investigations into Trump's inauguration be axed next?
Rachel Maddow talked about this last night.
Folks, this is getting scarier with every passing day. Trump now controls the Department of Justice and apparently can order investigations stopped or opened. Republicans control the Senate, so nothing the Democrats pass will even be considered there, including impeachment. The only protection we have left is the courts, and Trump and the GOP are working overtime to stock them with Trump judges.
Last night Trump held another Nazi/KKK rally in North Carolina, during which he attacked has latest target Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and encouraged the crowd as they screamed "send her back!"
And in case you thought Trump was ad libbing, here's the proof that the attack was orchestrated.
From The Charlotte Observer editorial board: 'Send her back': A dark reminder of who we are.
It happened in the first half of Wednesday's speech. Donald Trump, our president, began to talk about Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democratic from Minnesota who was among the four women of color he had attacked Sunday in a racist tweet. Everyone knew Trump would speak about the women at some point to the Greenville, North Carolina crowd. Did we know what would come next?
"Send her back."
The chant rose quickly from a handful of voices to a chorus of bigotry. It was a chilling moment. It was "lock her up" in a white hood. It was despicable.
It could have happened at any Donald Trump rally. It might have happened in any state, north or south. But it happened in Greenville, in our state, and it was one of North Carolina's darkest moments.
"Send her back."
Or perhaps not. Maybe the chant will be absorbed in the vortex that is Donald Trump. In a presidency of so many shameful moments, of so many new lows, the singularly awful ones tend to lose their significance. It's possible that North Carolina might be forgotten when the chant inevitably spreads to the next rally. But North Carolina shouldn't forget.
The Associated Press: Trump leans on issue of race in bid for a 2nd term in 2020.
President Donald Trump has placed racial animus at the center of his reelection campaign, and even some of his critics believe it could deliver him a second term.
Every successful modern presidential campaign has been built on the notion of addition, winning over voters beyond core supporters. But Trump has chosen division on the belief that the polarized country he leads will simply choose sides over issues like race.
He intensified his attacks on Wednesday, blasting four young congresswomen of color during a rally in Greenville, North Carolina . The crowd responded by chanting, "Send her back!" echoing Trump's weekend tweet in which he said the lawmakers, all American citizens, should "go back" to the countries from which they came.
"I do think I am winning the political fight," Trump declared at the White House. "I think I am winning it by a lot."
Not since George Wallace's campaign in 1968 has a presidential candidate — and certainly not an incumbent president — put racial polarization at the center of his call to voters. Though Trump's comments generated outrage and even a resolution of condemnation in the House, the president and his campaign believe the strategy carries far more benefits than risks.
The Irish Times: Fintan O'Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow.
To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget "post-fascist" – what we are living with is pre-fascism.
It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.
Fascism doesn't arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.
One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we've seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities. Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn't matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That's been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of "alternative facts" impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.
Read the rest at the link above.
Last night Trump also celebrated a meaningless vote in the house about impeachment. Politico suggests that he might actually think the vote has ended the threat.
IT BARELY TOOK THE PRESIDENT ANY TIME before he said this Wednesday evening at his campaign rally in Greenville, N.C.: "I just heard that the United States House of Representatives has overwhelmingly voted to kill the most ridiculous project I've ever been involved in: the resolution — how stupid is that — on impeachment. I want to thank those Democrats because many of them voted for us, the vote was a totally lopsided 332-95-1." … Upon arriving in North Carolina, President Donald Trump said the same thing: "We have just received an overwhelming vote against impeachment. And that's the end of it. Let the Democrats now go back to work….
a few smart, seasoned people in the White House wondered to us Wednesday night if TRUMP actually believes this vote ended impeachment. Of course, it didn't. This was a procedural vote that means nothing in the grand scheme of things. There are still nearly 90 Democrats who are now on record supporting an impeachment inquiry, and ROBERT MUELLER is coming to the Hill next week. There are Democrats who believe the impeachment caucus will swell as soon as he opens his mouth.
At Bloomberg, Jonathan Bernstein writes: That Strange Impeachment Vote? It May Be a Big Deal.
Representative Al Green, a Democrat from Texas, has regularly introduced articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. Usually, when a regular bill or resolution has been introduced, it's then referred to committee. If the majority party doesn't want to consider the bill, it will die with no further action. Under House rules, however, any member can force an impeachment resolution onto the floor as pending business. That's what Green did Wednesday.
This maneuver doesn't mean that impeachment gets a final vote, or even debate. What it does get is a "motion to table," which means that lawmakers can vote to either keep the resolution as pending business or kill it off. When Green did this in 2017, 58 Democrats voted to keep the impeachment measure alive. In 2018, 66 did so. This time, it was up to 95.
Of course, there are more Democrats in the current Congress than in the previous one. And we can't assume that all the votes to table were necessarily votes against impeachment (pro-impeachment independent Justin Amash voted to table, for instance). Some legislators may have objected to bringing the resolution straight to the floor on procedural grounds, or thought that Green's articles were poorly drafted. Still, the vote offers a decent proxy for where impeachment sentiment stands in the House: It divides Democrats and unites Republicans in opposition. For now.
What I found interesting was that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has said she opposes impeachment, apparently didn't whip the vote. If that's the case, what does it say about her real position? One interpretation is that she simply wanted to mollify pro-impeachment Democrats by giving them an easy opportunity to express their views. Another is that Pelosi isn't as opposed to impeachment as she has let on, and was using this vote to gauge sentiment within the caucus – or even to demonstrate that support for ousting the president is growing.
(Emphasis added.)
I'll end with this breaking news from The Miami Herald: Judge keeps Jeffrey Epstein in N.Y. jail as prosecutors build on sex trafficking case.
Wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein will have to wait out a sex trafficking trial from a jail cell after a federal judge in New York ruled Thursday against his request for release on bail.
Epstein, 66, had offered to put up any collateral the judge wished from his self-estimated $559 million fortune. He said he would live in isolation in his Manhattan mansion, and pay for private security to ensure he remains inside and that no one enters unless authorized by the courts.
But with prosecutors warning that Epstein could easily flee or attempt to interfere with their witnesses, Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Berman has ordered that Epstein remain at the Manhattan Correctional Institute as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York seeks his conviction on child sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. Berman, according to reporters covering the hearing in New York, cited concerns that Epstein is a "danger" to others.
Berman's ruling is a major victory for Epstein's accusers, who have grown by the dozens since he was first investigated on trafficking allegations in South Florida more than a dozen years ago. The wealthy financier was first arrested in Palm Beach County in the mid-2000s after police began to suspect that he was abusing underage girls.
I'll post anything I find about the release of Cohen materials from SDNY. What stories are you following today?
Thursday Reads: No Achomlishments!Posted: May 23, 2019 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Donald Trump, impeachment, infrastructure week, Nancy Pelosi, Trump tantrums 32 Comments
Good Morning!!
Another day, another Trump tantrum. Poor Donald. He just can't handle Nancy Pelosi. What is it about her that gets under his notoriously thin skin?
The Washington Post: A Trump Twitter-style diatribe — live from the Rose Garden.
Trump, ever the director and star of his own White House movie, staged his outburst in two acts.
Act 1: Blow up a White House meeting with Democratic lawmakers that was over before the first handshake. Bye-bye, Infrastructure Day.
Act 2: Stride to a podium at a hastily arranged Rose Garden news conference to say he won't work with Democrats on infrastructure or anything else while they pursue the "investigation track."
What set the president off was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saying earlier Wednesday that Trump has engaged in a "coverup" related to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's Russia investigation and other probes.
"I don't do coverups," Trump angrily told reporters who had been hustled outside with little notice and less information.
Trump — who with his allies is actively working to block more than 20 separate investigations by Democrats — called himself "the most transparent president, probably, in the history of this country," and said he had been ready to discuss infrastructure and other priorities before Pelosi's remark.
White House stenographer Peter Baker and his colleagues provide background on why Trump flipped out:
Mr. Trump and Democratic leaders were to meet on Wednesday morning to develop a $2 trillion plan to rebuild the nation's roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure. But Ms. Pelosi first met with Democrats on Capitol Hill to deflect pressure on impeachment, which she has opposed. Emerging from that meeting, she sought to signal sympathy with Democrats angry at the president's efforts to block their investigations, declaring that "the president of the United States is engaged in a cover-up."
Mr. Trump saw the comments and did not hide his fury when she and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, arrived at the White House. The president walked into the Cabinet Room and did not shake anyone's hand or sit down, according to people in the room. He said that he wanted to advance legislation on infrastructure, trade and other matters, but that Ms. Pelosi had said something "terrible" by accusing him of a cover-up.
After about three minutes, the president stalked out before anyone else could speak. From there, he headed to the Rose Garden, where a lectern had been set up with a preprinted sign that said "No Collusion, No Obstruction" along with statistics intended to show that the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, was more than thorough.
"Instead of walking in happily into a meeting, I walk in to look at people that have just said that I was doing a cover-up," Mr. Trump said. "I don't do cover-ups."
"I walked into the room and I told Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi: 'I want to do infrastructure. I want to do it more than you want to do it. I'd be really good at that, that's what I do. But you know what? You can't do it under these circumstances. So get these phony investigations over with,'" he said….
"He just took a pass and it just makes me wonder why he did that," Ms. Pelosi said. "In any event, I pray for the president of the United States and I pray for the United States of America."
Mr. Schumer expressed shock at the outcome. "To watch what happened in the White House would make your jaw drop," he said.
Mr. Schumer said Mr. Trump's eruption was hardly spontaneous, noting the preprinted sign on the lectern. Instead, he suggested that the president had staged it because he had not come up with a way to pay for such an enormous spending package.
Read the rest at the NYT.
Dana Millbank: Trump seems to be transparently mad.
This is not the work of an orderly mind.
President Trump stormed into the Cabinet Room 15 minutes late Wednesday morning and immediately proceeded to blow up a long-planned meeting with Democratic leaders about an infrastructure bill. He raged against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for the terrible, horrible things she has said about him, and he vowed not to work on any legislation until Democrats stop investigating his administration. He stomped out of the room before Democrats had a chance to reply, then marched into the Rose Garden for an unscheduled news conference — or, more accurately, a 12-minute parade of paranoia.
Positively everybody was out to get him. They were out to get him in the third person: "They hated President Trump. They hated him with a passion," he said. They were out to get him in the first-person plural: "These people were out to get us, the Republican Party and President Trump. They were out to get us." What's more, they have been after him "pretty much from the time we came down the escalator in Trump Tower." And now they probably will impeach him because they "do whatever they have to do."
He raged on. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) has "been an enemy of mine for many years." The "whole thing was a takedown attempt." The assembled press "ought to be ashamed of yourselves for the way you report it so dishonestly." And, even though he was the one who blew up the infrastructure meeting, he just knew that Democrats were "not really thinking they wanted to do infrastructure or anything else other than investigate."
He ricocheted randomly among inchoate thought fragments: Infrastructure. WITCH HUNT! Unemployment. NO COLLUSION! Drug prices. HOAX! A special election in Pennsylvania. ONE-SIDED HORRIBLE THING! Tax cuts. DON JR. HAS GONE THROUGH HELL! I love the American people. IMPEACHMENT! Regulations. A DISGRACE! ABUSE!
Read more at the WaPo.
INTERLUDE: Trump is a textbook case of malignant narcissism. It's as if we're all attending a psychiatric case conference. From Wikipedia:
On 11 May 1968, the psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg presented his paper Factors in the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personalities, from the work of the Psychotherapy Research Project of The Menninger Foundation, at the 55th Annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in Boston.[6] Kernberg's paper was first published in hard copy on 1 January 1970.[6] In Kernberg's 1968 paper, first published in 1970 in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA), the word 'malignant' does not appear once, while 'pathological' or 'pathologically' appears 25 times.
Developing these ideas further, Kernberg pointed out that the antisocial personality was fundamentally narcissistic and without morality.[6]Malignant narcissism includes a sadistic element creating, in essence, a sadistic psychopath. In his article, "malignant narcissism" and psychopathy are employed interchangeably. Kernberg first proposed malignant narcissism as a psychiatric diagnosis in 1984, but so far it has not been accepted in any of the medical manuals, such as the ICD-10 or the DSM-5.
Kernberg described malignant narcissism[7] as a syndrome characterized by a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial features, paranoid traits, and egosyntonic aggression. Other symptoms may include an absence of conscience, a psychological need for power, and a sense of importance (grandiosity). Pollock wrote: "The malignant narcissist is presented as pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism".
At Politico, John Bresnahan and Burgess Everett discuss: Why Pelosi is so good at infuriating Trump.
On Wednesday, for the third time in barely six months, a meeting between the president, the speaker and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blew up in spectacular fashion.
And in each case, Trump handed Pelosi a huge gift, a priceless moment that helped unify the Democratic Caucus behind her at a crucial time.
"She's smarter than him, and she's tougher than him, and I think that bothers him," said Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), a Pelosi ally. "It's hard to get inside that head of his and figure out what drives him, other than an oversized ego and an undersized sense of ethics."
Trump doesn't have a condescending nickname for the speaker as he does for other Democrats. He even appears to have a grudging respect for Pelosi, the first woman to serve as House speaker. He treats her as a peer who commands her chamber with a firm hand, and he knows she can deliver on votes, and that she is willing to call any bluff at any time….
"Guess what? He behaves like a child. This is what we have in the White House now," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who served under Pelosi in the House. "I'm used to it. I'm not expecting a grown-up any longer. I'm not expecting him to grow into the role."
And for Pelosi, the timing is perfect. As the drumbeat for impeachment grows within her caucus, she can argue that what they're doing is already working. Trump clearly doesn't know how to respond to the barrage of Democratic investigations; they're winning in the courts and he's throwing fits. So why bother with impeachment, especially when Democrats know that a GOP-run Senate isn't going to remove him from office?
Meanwhile, the Trump-Pelosi confrontations are getting to be recurring spectacles, and even Republicans know it hurts the president's image.
"It's a disaster," said a senior Republican who requested anonymity. "It plays right into her hands."
And on top of being smarter and tougher, she's a woman. And her strategy of encouraging investigations while supposedly "tamping down" talk of impeachment is working. All those impatient Democrats on Twitter are too dumb to see what Pelosi is up to. It's obvious that impeachment is very much on the table. Check out this assessment from a Republican political strategist.
Rich Wilson at The Daily Beast: Pelosi's Strategy Is Working, and Trump Is One Step Closer to Being F*cked.
I've been a deep skeptic of impeachment as a political strategy, putting me solidly in the Nancy Pelosi go-slow camp. I've argued time and again that the smart play is IIABN: Impeachment in All but Name, but the great beast of Washington shambles ever forward, its ponderous, inexorable tread leading it toward the inevitable impeachment proceedings against Donald John Trump, 45th president of the United States.
Can you make an impeachment case for obstruction based purely on the released information in the Mueller Report? Absolutely.
Are you there yet politically? Nope.
For my Democratic friends, I know how frustrating this seems to you. This week, forward progress on a number of fronts will help move the nation into the mental and political frame where impeachment could lead to the conviction of Trump, not just what he'll view as a wrist-slap and a campaign motivation point for his base. You cannot shame the shameless. You cannot make a man who is without a single ethical standard change the behavior that allowed him to grift his way into office and to monetize the presidency….
For all that, the Democrats chomping at the bit to hold Trump to account are having a good week already, whether they know it or not. It's so good, they'd be fools not to keep doing the things that are starting to work—the exercise of congressional power, the use of the courts to uphold the law, and the momentum building in the public mind for an accounting of Trump's full-spectrum lawbreaking, contempt, obstruction, and corruption.
The Pelosi-Nadler strategy is starting to shift that political battlefield, and the legal landscape is breaking in their favor. The judicial branch isn't yet a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump, Inc. Yet. Trump's own mistakes are helping move the investigation strategy forward and are beginning to ensure that when Congress does start getting testimony and documents from the White House and Department of Justice, Trump will have painted himself into a corner he can't tweet his way out of.
More interesting reads, links only.
The New Republic: Trump v. The "I" Word.
Kurt Bardella at NBC News: Trump's House investigations tantrum proves Pelosi and Democrats are gaining momentum.
Bloomberg: Mueller Probed Cohen Ties to Oligarch's Cousin, Filings Show.
The Daily Beast: Michael Cohen Called CEO Tied to Russian Oligarch Hundreds of Times, According to FBI.
Lawfare: Testimonial Immunity, Executive Privilege and the President's Authority Over Former Officials.
NBC News: Wells Fargo, TD Bank have already given Trump-related financial documents to Congress.
The New York Times: Trump's Financial Secrets Move Closer to Disclosure.
The Washington Post: Putin out-prepared Trump in key meeting, Rex Tillerson told House panel.
Forbes: The Truth Behind Trump Tower Moscow: How Trump Risked Everything For A (Relatively) Tiny Deal.


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|La tienda física permanecerá cerrada al público debido al CoronaVirus. Sólo se gestionará pedidos online con entregas a partir del 11 de abril, pasado el estado de alarma. Se atenderá email y WhatsApp. CÓDIGO DESCUENTO: VENCEREMOS - 20% dto en marcas seleccionadas.
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While most interactions with apps such as Uber and Lyft are positive ones, there are some tips on how to stay safe while doing so.
One tip is to sit in the back of the car to ensure you can exit safely and avoid oncoming traffic.
For more news your way, download The Citizen's app for iOS and Android.


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Bradshaw's pedestrian route-book for Switzerland, Chamouni, and the Italian lakes, ed. by J.R. Morell
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1st class a-day Aarau Aarberg Aigle Alpine Alps Altdorf Appenzell ascended Baden Bale bank Baths beautiful Bellinzona Berne Bernina Bienne bridge Brienz Canton carriage cascade centre Chalets Chamouni charming Chateau Chiavenna Chur Church Constance contains Dent descend district Engadin Engelberg English excursions feet foot Fribourg Gallen Geneva German Glacier Glarus Gothard Grand Grimsel Grisons Guide Herisau horse Hospice Hotel inhabitants Italian Joch kilometres lake Lausanne Lauterbrunnen leads Leagues Locarno Loesch Lucerne Lugano Macugnaga Martigny metres Miles Monte Rosa Morat mountain mule Neuchatel Orta Paris path Peaks and Passes Pension Ponte population Post principal rail Railway reach Rhine Rhone ridge Righi road rock Roman Romanshorn Romantsch Rorschach ROUTE Saint Gallen scenery Schaffhausen Schwyz Simmenthal Sion situated Sixt Solothurn station steamer summit Swiss Switzerland Tessin thence Thun town Unterwalden Valais valley Vevay village Visp waters wine Zermatt Zurich
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Page 37 - Prepared and Sold in Boxes, Is. l^d., and Tins, 2s. 9d., 4s. 6d., and 10s. 6d. each, by THOMAS KEATING, Chemist, &c., 79 St. Paul's Churchyard, London. Retail by all Druggists and Patent Medicine Venders in the World. NB, — To prevent spurious imitations, please to observe that the words "KEATING'S COUGH LOZENGES" are engraven on the Government Stamp of each Box, without which none are genuine.
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This Jerusalem cricket or potato bug as it is also known was on the trail from Kirk Creek campground up into the Ventana wilderness.
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The 2000–01 Croatian First Football League was the tenth season of the Croatian First Football League, Croatia's top association football league, since its establishment in 1992. It began on 30 July 2000 and ended on 27 May 2001. Dinamo Zagreb were the defending champions, having won their fifth consecutive title the previous season. The 2000–01 Prva HNL was contested by 12 teams and was won by Hajduk Split, who won their thirteenth title, after a win against Varteks on 27 May 2001, which was ended the Dinamo Zagreb (then Croatia Zagreb)'s five year dominance.
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Of Henges and Heritage
From July 25th through August 3rd the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is meeting in Brazil to consider additions to the list of World Heritage sites. In countries with limited resources or political will, having a site put on the World Heritage list can mean the difference between preservation and destruction (it can also mean welcome tourist dollars). Many of the sites that modern Pagans make pilgrimage to, or think of as their spiritual and religious heritage, the Acropolis, Delphi, Stonehenge, Avebury, and Bath, are all Heritage sites. This year Ireland's government is nominating the Hill of Tara, along with several other sites, for consideration. In anticipation of this, they've debuted a new website featuring the already-listed and "tentative" Heritage sites.


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Roanoke Greek Festival
30th annual. The Henry Street Heritage Festival started in 1989 to life up and share the art, history & culture of the African American community of the Roanoake Valley with presentations of visual and performing arts, ethnic cuisine, plus health and human service displays and more!
We are testing out the ability to have event owners update their own listings. If you own or run a festival, please use the link below to update. Thanks!Edit Henry Street Heritage Festival
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