He’s famous because everybody talks about him because he’s famous

Mar 9th, 2018 5:09 pm | By

The New Zealand Herald reported on Lawrence Krauss’s absence from the tour there in May.

A celebrity atheist facing a raft of allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards women has backed out of a New Zealand tour.

Lawrence Krauss was due to speak on a double-bill with Richard Dawkins at the Science in the Soul tour in May in Auckland and Christchurch, but the promoter this morning announced he would no longer be on the bill.

Instead, Dawkins would appear at the two Science in the Soul shows alone, with a new co-host to be announced, Australia-based Think Inc said.

Then not alone but with a new co-host. Anyway – do we think there’s any chance the new co-host will be a woman?

Not a lot, is my view. They’re stuck in the loop – only men are famous enough to sell tickets, because only men get asked to do these things, because only men are famous enough to sell tickets, because only men get asked to do these things, etc. Women never get the chance to get famous enough to be asked to do these things, because everyone is too busy assuming that only men put bums on seats.

The move comes after Auckland University of Technology pulled its sponsorship of the tour, and New Zealand event management firm Loop had also backed out.

It’s not clear if they will change their minds now that he has decided not to go.

A number of Krauss’ public speaking arrangements have already been cancelled in America since allegations spanning over a decade about his inappropriate behaviour towards women were recently published by news website Buzzfeed.

Krauss has strongly denied all the allegations and responded at length to them today.

“Has my language or demeanour sometimes made others feel uncomfortable? Clearly yes, and for that I sincerely apologise,” he wrote.

“Nevertheless, the BuzzFeed article effectively paints a false picture of me and my relationships with others through a mosaic constructed largely out of anonymous hearsay and a web of often vague innuendo.”

So it’s pure coincidence that there are many such claims about Krauss while there are none (at least that I’ve ever heard of) about for instance Sam Harris?

I doubt it.

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A grab too many?

Mar 9th, 2018 12:08 pm | By

About this lawsuit that Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford) filed to break the NDA: it could be the thing that brings Trump down.

As any longtime legal hand in the capital remembers well, it was a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by an Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones, against Bill Clinton that led to his impeachment for lying about his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky.

The case of the adult film actress, Stephanie Clifford, who uses the stage-name Stormy Daniels, may not get past even the first considerable obstacles. But if her court case proceeds, Mr. Trump and his longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, may have to testify in depositions, several lawyers said in interviews on Thursday. Ms. Clifford’s suit could possibly also provide evidence of campaign spending violations, which would bolster a pending Federal Election Commission complaint against Mr. Trump’s campaign.

In a perfect world I’d rather see him fall for even worse things, but on the other hand, there’s a certain poetic justice if it’s the pussygrabbing habit that gets him. Pussy fights back.

David A. Super, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the lawsuit Ms. Clifford filed on Tuesday centered on a limited contract law matter, but he noted that it also specifically stated that Ms. Clifford would amend her complaint in the future to add the names of people who she said participated in wrongdoing with Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen.

He suggested that Ms. Clifford and her lawyer might be starting with a narrow argument aimed at getting the contract declared invalid, perhaps intending to broaden it later to include claims that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen coerced her into silence. “If that happened,” he said, “they certainly could seek to depose Trump.”

And in that case, he said, “I can certainly imagine how it might get broader. And if it did, the wide array of Trump’s sexual interactions could be addressed, just as the wide array of Clinton’s sexual interactions was addressed in the Paula Jones case deposition.”

In an interesting paradox, Ms. Clifford might be unable to sue because of the NDA, but on the other hand if the NDA is so sweeping it amounts to a gag order then it’s invalid.

“If the parties agreed to binding arbitration, they have waived their right to file a lawsuit,” said H. Christopher Bartolomucci, a law partner at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington who previously worked in the White House as associate counsel to President George W. Bush. Ms. Clifford’s signature on the contract, and acceptance of the money, could count as a clear sign of agreement.

But other legal experts were struck by the sweeping nature of the nondisclosure agreement Ms. Clifford signed, and expressed skepticism that it would hold up in court. Beyond the circumstances of the alleged sexual relationship, the agreement barred her from doing anything, even indirectly, to “publicly disparage” Mr. Trump.

“It actually presents a relatively clean issue for the court,” said Lawrence M. Noble, a former top lawyer at the Federal Election Commission who is now the general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group. “What she signed amounts to a gag order, and she has rights if this agreement is not found to be valid.”

It will be interesting to watch.

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21 people

Mar 9th, 2018 10:36 am | By

The Guardian reports:

The investigation into the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal has widened, as police sealed off the graves of his wife, Liudmila, and son, Alexander, and confirmed that a total of 21 people had been treated as a result of the incident.

The police officer who was exposed to the nerve agent used on the Skripals, named on Thursday as DS Nick Bailey, remained in a serious but stable condition.

…

Forensics officers began a major search for evidence at Skripal’s semi-detached house. They also cordoned off the graves in Salisbury cemetery where Liudmila and Alexander Skripal were interred in adjacent plots, and sealed off a garage and recovery service elsewhere in the city.

I wouldn’t want to be living in the other half of that semi.

Experts at the government’s laboratory at Porton Down have identified the poison used but are keeping shtum.

The use of a nerve toxin, usually only held in state military stockpiles, is being seen as a key indicator of possible Kremlin involvement. On Thursday, the Russian embassy in London sent a sarcastic tweet, saying of Skripal: “He was actually a British spy, working for MI6.”

Moscow has repeatedly denied it has anything to do with the attack, the same line used when the FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in 2006 with a radioactive cup of tea. A public inquiry a decade later ruled the Kremlin had ordered the hit.

I’m starting to think the Russian government is not a very benevolent outfit.

The Salisbury attack left Skripal and his daughter in a comatose condition last Sunday afternoon, on a bench in the Maltings shopping centre.

Detectives will be seeking to establish how the toxin was delivered – and, crucially, where. One source suggested that Bailey was exposed to the nerve agent from inside Skripal’s house and not in the city centre, as was previously thought.

It is understood that the cordon at the cemetery is in place primarily to keep media away from the graves of Liudmila Skripal, who died of cancer in 2012 aged 59, and Alexander Skripal, who died in March last year in St Petersburg, aged 43.

There was no sign of activity taking place on the site, but the family’s run of ominous bad luck is likely to prompt police to examine whether Liudmila and Alexander may have been victims of foul play.

Trump is wishing he had some of that stuff, whatever it is.

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Let’s make a deal

Mar 9th, 2018 9:37 am | By

The Times solemnly reports on Trump’s North Korea caper as if it were sane and normal and likely to produce excellent results, and doesn’t talk to anyone who sees it differently until the last few paragraphs. Waaaay down at the bottom we get:

Analysts expressed skepticism about Mr. Trump’s decision to meet Mr. Kim, saying there was no indication that North Korea had given up its determination to be a nuclear weapons state.

“There is every reason to believe that North Korea is attempting to blunt sanctions and secure de facto legitimacy for its nuclear weapons program with this gesture,” said Michael J. Green, a former Asia adviser to President George W. Bush, speaking by telephone from Tokyo.

Evan S. Medeiros, an Asia adviser to President Barack Obama, said that any direct talks would elevate Mr. Kim and legitimize him. “We got nothing for it. And Kim will never give up his nukes,” Mr. Medeiros said. “Kim played Moon and is now playing Trump.”

This week, administration officials had spoken in scathing terms about North Korea’s offer of direct talks. They noted that Mr. Kim said nothing about halting the production of nuclear bombs or missiles during negotiations — which meant the North could build its arsenal while stringing out the talks.

It seemed that the only thing that changed was Mr. Kim’s invitation to meet Mr. Trump himself. The president’s deal-making skills, one of his aides said on Thursday, could produce an outcome different from previous rounds of diplomacy, which have always ended in failure and disappointment.

And pigs might fly.

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Maga

Mar 9th, 2018 8:53 am | By

Trump fans.

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The waters are too clean

Mar 8th, 2018 4:51 pm | By

Catching up on one from a week ago:

[Editing to add: actually a year and a week ago. I should have realized. I knew he’d started doing it as soon as he got the chance, but I assumed this was a new phase. Reminder to self: check the year.]

President Trump stepped up his attack on federal environmental protections Tuesday, issuing an order directing his administration to begin the long process of rolling back sweeping clean water rules that were enacted by his predecessor.

……………………………What kind of fucking evil sack of shit gets rid of clean water rules?

Stupid question; I know; the fucking evil sack of shit who stole the election and now gets to destroy everything. I know. But making the water more toxic…god damn.

The order directing the Environmental Protection Agency to set about dismantling the Waters of the United States rule takes aim at one of President Obama’s signature environmental legacies, a far-reaching anti-pollution effort that expanded the authority of regulators over the nation’s waterways and wetlands.

…

“It is such a horrible, horrible rule,” Trump said as he signed the directive Tuesday aimed at the water rules. “It has such a nice name, but everything about it is bad.” He declared the rule, championed by environmental groups to give the EPA broad authority over nearly two-thirds of the waterways in the nation, “one of the worst examples of federal regulation” and “a massive power grab.”

It won’t be easy or quick for him though.

Both the climate and the clean water rules were enacted only after a long and tedious process of public hearings, scientific analysis and bureaucratic review. That entire process must be revisited before they can be weakened. It could take years.

…

Trump vowed Tuesday that he would continue to undermine the Obama-era environmental protections wherever he sees the opportunity, arguing they have cost jobs. “So many jobs we have delayed for so many years,” Trump said. “It is unfair to everybody.”

Many industries take issue with that interpretation. Tuesday’s order, for example, was met with a swift rebuke from sport fishing and hunting groups. They said the clean water rule has been a boon to the economy, sustaining hundreds of thousands of jobs in their industry.

“Sports men and women will do everything within their power to compel the administration to change course and to use the Clean Water Act to improve, not worsen, the nation’s waterways,” a statement from a half-dozen of the organizations said.

If there’s a shitty thing that can be done, you can be sure Trump will do it.

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What they call us

Mar 8th, 2018 2:05 pm | By

The Scottish National Party MP Mhairi Black read out some of the misogynistic abuse she gets, including liberal use of “cunt.”

For instance starting at about 1:00

She needs a kick in the cunt, guttural cunt, ugly cunt, wee animal cunt – there is no softening just how sexualized and misogynistic the abuse is.

Please tell us again how “cunt” is not at all misogynistic in the UK. Please; we’re listening.

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Farrakhan denounced “Satanic Jews”

Mar 8th, 2018 1:23 pm | By

To the surprise of no one who was paying attention, it turns out that the leaders of the Women’s March have a Farrakhan problem.

Mass movements are sewn together from a wide variety of sources, so they often sweep in unwanted companions as they move toward their goals. No one, however, expected to discover that three Women’s March co-chairs—Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez, and Tamika Mallory—had ties to Farrakhan.

No one at all? When Sarsour’s hijab was on all those March posters?

It all came to a head last week, after Farrakhan delivered his address to the annual Nation of Islam gathering for Saviours’ Day, the sect’s three-day holiday honoring its founder, Wallace Fard Muhammad. Farrakhan denounced “Satanic Jews,” said that “when you want something in this world, the Jew holds the door,” and at the climax of his speech, proclaimed, “White folks are going down, and Satan is going down, and Farrakhan by God’s grace has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew—and I’m here to say, your time is up.”

Naturally, this renewed interest in just what the Women’s March was thinking. Mallory further stoked controversy when a woman questioning her about Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism drew a response from a preacher asking her to condemn Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and praying for Jesus to cast out the “wicked spirit laying on her heart.” Linda Sarsour surfaced to say the man was “too blessed,” and Mallory tweeted, “If your leader does not have the same enemies as Jesus, they may not be THE leader!”

Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism has been an issue for decades. Tensions over Islam and Palestine and anti-Semitism have been a thing for decades. None of this is new or particularly surprising.

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A series of drunken falls

Mar 8th, 2018 12:41 pm | By

Part 5 of BuzzFeed’s big Russia series –

Vladimir Putin’s former media czar was murdered in Washington, DC, on the eve of a planned meeting with the US Justice Department, according to two FBI agents whose assertions cast new doubts on the US government’s official explanation of his death.

Mikhail Lesin’s battered body was discovered in his Dupont Circle hotel room on the morning of Nov. 5, 2015, with blunt-force injuries to the head, neck, and torso. After an almost yearlong “comprehensive investigation,” a federal prosecutor announced last October that Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls “after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.” His death was ruled an “accident,” and prosecutors closed the case.

Gee, what a striking coincidence that that happened just before he was supposed to meet with the Feds. Also…a series of drunken falls alone in a hotel room that left blunt-force injuries on the head, neck, and body? That would take some doing. Yes, people can fall down when drunk, but to fall repeatedly onto something hard enough to do all that would take work. Falling against a sink or table or chest of drawers could cause an injury like that, but over and over again? Always against the hard wood or porcelain as opposed to the bed or the carpet?

But the two FBI agents — as well as a third agent and a serving US intelligence officer — said Lesin was actually bludgeoned to death. None of these officials were directly involved in the government’s investigation, but they said they learned about it from colleagues who were.

“Lesin was beaten to death,” one of the FBI agents said. “I would implore you to say as much. There seems to be an effort here to cover up that fact for reasons I can’t get into.”

If that’s true it involves a federal prosecutor, and no doubt a bunch of other federal employees.

He continued: “What I can tell you is that there isn’t a single person inside the bureau who believes this guy got drunk, fell down, and died. Everyone thinks he was whacked and that Putin or the Kremlin were behind it.”

In another previously unreported revelation, the two FBI agents said it was the Department of Justice that paid for the hotel room where Lesin died. DOJ officials had invited the Russian to Washington to interview him about the inner workings of RT, the Kremlin-funded network that Lesin founded, they said.

But Lesin never made it to the interview. He died the night before it was scheduled to take place.

Last month, a two-year investigation by BuzzFeed News revealed explosive evidence pointing to Russia in 14 suspicious deaths on British soil that the UK government had largely ignored. Four high-ranking US intelligence officials confirmed that those deaths had been linked to Russian security services or mafia gangs, two groups that sometimes work in tandem, by “intelligence gathered in the field and analysed” by US spies and handed to Britain’s security services. But the UK police publicly declared that none of the 14 incidents involved foul play. As a result, the public has been kept in the dark about what national security officials have long suspected: Russian assassins may have murdered in the UK with impunity.

And now maybe they’ve started doing it here.

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None of us do

Mar 8th, 2018 11:22 am | By

Neither do I.

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Cosmopolitan

Mar 8th, 2018 11:14 am | By

The Huffington Post tells us the word “globalist” is the hot new thing in the White House right now…and not in a good way.

The term “globalist” has been used at the White House at least three times this week in reference to an outgoing Jewish Trump administration official, raising some eyebrows because the word is increasingly used in xenophobic and anti-Semitic contexts.

The word came up on Wednesday when a reporter asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders whether a similar candidate will take the place of Gary Cohn, the outgoing director of President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council.

“He was a noted free trader, a globalist. Will the president seek another globalist, another free trader?” Fox News reporter John Roberts asked.

Normally, we’d think of Republicans as fitting that description somewhat more than Democrats, at least left-leaning Democrats. The left is cautious about “free trade” because it can mean doing away with all regulations, including ones to protect workers, consumers, the environment, natural resources – that kind of thing. Normally free trade is bedrock principle with Republicans and ambivalent with Democrats. But we’re not in Normally any more.

Also, Fox News reporter.

Also, Fox News reporter apparently taking care to cue Sanders how she is supposed to respond. “Not the good kind of globalist, Sarah, but the kind who opposes something Our Dear Donald favors. The enemy kind. Nothing to do with the J-word, but enemy all the same.”

This followed Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, using the word “globalist,” in quotation marks, to describe Cohn in a statement that was tweeted by his department on Tuesday.

Business Insider also looked askance at Mulvaney’s creepy statement.

“As a right-wing conservative and founding member of the Freedom Caucus, I never expected that the coworker I would work closest, and best, with at the White House would be a ‘globalist,'” Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement.

He continued: “Gary Cohn is one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with. Having the chance to collaborate with him will remain one of the highlights of my career in public service.”

“Globalist” is often used as a derogatory term by opponents of free trade and internationally focused economic policies. In far-right circles, it often carries anti-Semitic undertones. Far-right news organizations like Breitbart, for example, have used globe emojis or “globalist” as a way to denote Jewish people, including Cohn.

So it’s a twofer – it’s an anti-Semitic dogwhistle and it frames an internationalist outlook as evil.

“Globalist” should be a compliment. “Globalist” should be to “nationalist” as altruist should be to egomaniac.

Business Insider again:

This isn’t the first time a White House official has used the term to disparage a colleague. Last April, The Daily Beast reported that then-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon vented about Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner “being a globalist.”

And Jared Kushner is what else? Oh yes…Jewish. What a coincidence.

Back to the Huffington Post:

The third instance came during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, when Trump lauded Cohn as “a globalist,” while adding, “but I still like him.”

“He’s been terrific,” Trump said. “He may be a globalist, but I still like him. He’s seriously globalist, there’s no question, but you know what, in his own way he’s also a nationalist because he loves our country.”

There’s a reason “America First” had stopped being a useful political label until racist Donald Trump came along: it was the slogan of a nativist anti-Semitic veering-into-pro-Nazi movement fronted by Charles Lindbergh up until Pearl Harbor. It kind of lost its luster once the Allied troops arrived at Auschwitz.

The term can be used to describe someone who has universal or open-world beliefs, particularly in regard to trade or public policies, but it can carry a more sinister meaning for members of the far right.

For the anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi members of the so-called “alt-right” white supremacist movement, “globalist” is a euphemism for “Jew.” It refers to the longstanding conspiracy theory about an international Jewish cabal working to undermine the traditional white family and Western culture by pushing for immigration and diversity.

A glossary of extremist language published by The New York Times places “globalism” among terms like “alt-right,” “antifa” and “cuck.”

“For the far right, globalism has long had distinct xenophobic, anti-immigrant, and anti-Semitic overtones,” the article states. “It refers to a conspiratorial worldview: a cabal that likes open borders, diversity and weak nation states, and that dislikes white people, Christianity and the traditional culture of their own country.”

In other words a cabal that does not exist.

When will this nightmare end.

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The real danger

Mar 8th, 2018 8:25 am | By

Ah Devin Nunes – the lying weasel who will commit any outrage to try to save his darling Don.

…last week, the California Republican was credibly accused of leaking texts from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking member to Fox News as part of an unusually misguided partisan stunt.

Patriotism at its finest.

Slate added last week that Nunes’ greatest hits include “being forced to admit that he hasn’t personally read the court documents that he based an FBI–Hillary conspiracy memo on, being forced to admit that the FBI actually did disclose the information about Trump ‘dossier’ author Christopher Steele that Nunes had accused it of not disclosing, and being forced to admit that he had coordinated his statements about the phony Obama ‘wiretapping’ story with the White House and then lied about it.”

Lying weasel, lying in the service of an even worse lying weasel. Let us now praise famous men.

Nunes spies the real danger:

One of the nation’s exercises in democracy can be found on late-night TV. Hosts crack sharply critical jokes about the country’s politicians without fear of retribution from said politicians.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) sees that exercise very differently. He told Fox News Channel that a skit Stephen Colbert did mocking Nunes’s memo alleging FBI bias in the Russia investigation is a danger to the country.

Isn’t that funny now – here’s me thinking the danger to the country is Representative Devin Nunes lying and leaking a senator’s texts to Fox News, when really it’s a late night talk show host mocking said Devin Nunes.

Nunes’s “danger” comment makes more sense when viewed through an authoritarian lens — that free speech can somehow undermine government that has been functioning for nearly 250 years.

Nunes’s allies in the White House have increasingly decided to see the world through the lens of authoritarianism. Instead of rebutting their critics, White House officials have resorted, a number of times, to saying it’s irresponsible to criticize the president and his staff. One of the most egregious examples came in October when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it would be “highly inappropriate” for journalists to fact-check Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, because he’s a general.

If all else fails I guess they could just poison us.

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A back channel for Putin to control Trump

Mar 7th, 2018 5:15 pm | By

Ohhhhhh god.

The Post, minutes ago – 8 p.m. their time, so it’s another one of these end-of-the-day booms that cause Maddow to tear up the show she and her people just spent the day writing and producing.

This one though…

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin — apparently contradicting statements made to lawmakers by one of its participants, according to people familiar with the matter.

Urk.

So it’s all true. Tillerson, and his demolition of the State Department and our ability to conduct a reasonable foreign policy – all Putin’s doing. Putin who saw to it that that double agent who retired to Salisbury got poisoned along with his daughter and the cop who got to them first. World of Oligarchs, here we are.

A witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

While Obama was still president, and not in plain view at Trump Tower or similar, but in deep secrecy in the Seychelles.

George Nader, a Lebanese American business who helped organize and attended the Seychelles meeting, has testified on the matter before a grand jury gathering evidence about discussions between the Trump transition team and emissaries of the Kremlin, as part of Mueller’s investigation into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.

They nabbed him at Dulles in mid-January and he’s been co-operating ever since.

While Mueller is probing the circumstances of the Seychelles meeting, he is also more broadly examining apparent efforts by the Trump transition team to create a back channel for secret talks between the new administration and the Kremlin. Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, whether any Americans assisted in such efforts, and any other matters that arise in the course of his probe.

Investigators now suspect that the Seychelles meeting may have been one of the first efforts to establish such a line of communications between the two governments, these people said. Nader’s account is considered key evidence — but not the only evidence — about what transpired in the Seychelles, according to people familiar with the matter.

Nader has long served as an adviser to the UAE leadership, and in that role he met more than once with Trump officials, including Stephen K. Bannon and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to people familiar with the matter. After the Seychelles meeting, Nader visited the White House several times, and met at least once there with Bannon and Kushner, these people said.

This is just awful. I still can’t get my head around it. We’ve been pitched into the filth and we can’t get out.

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So what did you guys talk about?

Mar 7th, 2018 4:32 pm | By

Another boom. The Times reports Trump doing something you’re really not supposed to do…something that a punctilious observer could consider witness tampering.

The special counsel in the Russia investigation has learned of two conversations in recent months in which President Trump asked key witnesses about matters they discussed with investigators, according to three people familiar with the encounters.

In one episode, the president told an aide that the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, should issue a statement denying a New York Times article in January. The article said Mr. McGahn told investigators that the president once asked him to fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. McGahn never released a statement and later had to remind the president that he had indeed asked Mr. McGahn to see that Mr. Mueller was dismissed, the people said.

In the other episode, Mr. Trump asked his former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, how his interview had gone with the special counsel’s investigators and whether they had been “nice,” according to two people familiar with the discussion.

The episodes demonstrate that even as the special counsel investigation appears to be intensifying, the president has ignored his lawyers’ advice to avoid doing anything publicly or privately that could create the appearance of interfering with it.

Like screaming about witch hunts on Twitter, or interrogating witnesses about their testimony.

Legal experts said Mr. Trump’s contact with the men most likely did not rise to the level of witness tampering. But witnesses and lawyers who learned about the conversations viewed them as potentially a problem and shared them with Mr. Mueller.

Not quite witness tampering, but witness pestering, witness teasing, witness bothering?

In investigating Russian election interference, Mr. Mueller is also examining whether the president tried to obstruct the inquiry. The former F.B.I. director James B. Comey said that Mr. Trump asked him for his loyalty and to end the investigation into his first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. After firing Mr. Comey, the president said privately* that the dismissal had relieved “great pressure” on him. And Mr. Trump also told White House officials after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation that he needed someone running the Justice Department who would protect him.

*And publicly! To Lester Holt on national television, and to the Russians in their oh so private meeting the next day. Private in the sense that the US news media were not allowed in, but public in the sense that any Russian who rolled up and asked was allowed in.

The experts said the meetings with Mr. McGahn and Mr. Priebus would probably sharpen Mr. Mueller’s focus on the president’s interactions with other witnesses. The special counsel has questioned witnesses recently about their interactions with the president since the investigation began. The experts also said the episodes could serve as evidence for Mr. Mueller in an obstruction case.

Because, if you didn’t do anything amiss, why are you asking all these questions? Hmmmmm?

Central figures in investigations are almost always advised by their own lawyers to keep from speaking with witnesses and prosecutors to prevent accusations of witness tampering. The president has not been questioned by Mr. Mueller; Mr. Trump’s lawyers are negotiating terms of a possible interview. Learning even basic details about what other witnesses told investigators could help the president shape his own answers.

Well, in theory. Trump isn’t smart enough for that.

Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. McGahn unfolded in the days after the Jan. 25 Times article, which said that Mr. McGahn threatened to quit last June after the president asked him to fire the special counsel. After the article was published, the White House staff secretary, Rob Porter, told Mr. McGahn that the president wanted him to release a statement saying that the story was not true, the people said.

Mr. Porter, who resigned last month amid a domestic abuse scandal, told Mr. McGahn the president had suggested he might “get rid of” Mr. McGahn if he chose not to challenge the article, the people briefed on the conversation said.

Mr. McGahn did not publicly deny the article, and the president later confronted him in the Oval Office in front of the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, according to the people.

Obstruct justice much?

The president said he had never ordered Mr. McGahn to fire the special counsel. Mr. McGahn replied that the president was wrong and that he had in fact asked Mr. McGahn in June to call the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, to tell him that the special counsel had a series of conflicts that disqualified him for overseeing the investigation and that he had to be dismissed. The president told Mr. McGahn that he did not remember the discussion that way.

And Donald Trump has never told a lie in his life, yeah?

Priebus got together with Don in December. Priebus’s friends have advised him to steer clear of Don, but Priebus wants to build up his law practice so he went ahead and schmoozed with the head honcho.

Keep it up, Don. You’re giving us hope.

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90 minutes

Mar 7th, 2018 3:38 pm | By

The Trump administration cares.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made a contentious visit to the site of last month’s Florida school shooting Wednesday, in which she was criticized by survivors and abruptly walked out of her own press conference.

Ok, the Trump administration cares about people who are deferential to them.

DeVos spent the morning at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where former student Nikolas Cruz gunned down 17 students and teachers on Valentine’s Day. Her visit immediately sparked criticism and backlash from shooting survivors and advocates on social media.

“Do something unexpected: answer our questions,” Aly Sheehy tweeted at DeVos. “You came to our school just for publicity and avoided our questions for the 90 minutes you were actually here. How about you do your job?”

I think she sees her job as privatizing as many public schools as possible and letting the others rot.

She also told reporters she toured the school with student journalists, and vowed to return to sit down with them and further delve into the issues. The editor of the school’s newspaper “The Eagle Eye,” however, said DeVos “refused to even meet/speak with students.”

So she tells an occasional lie – at least she didn’t open fire on them!

Plus she’s a good sport and listens to criticism.

When further pressed on the issue of arming school staff, with questions surrounding training standards and student opposition to such a program, DeVos walked away from her podium and ended the press conference.

Kids today are so disrespectful.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments


Vlad gets around

Mar 7th, 2018 10:27 am | By

It was a nerve agent.

A nerve agent was used to try to murder a former Russian spy and his daughter, police have said.

Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found unconscious in Salisbury on Sunday afternoon and remain critically ill.

A police officer who was the first to attend the scene is now in a serious condition in hospital, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, head of Counter Terrorism Policing, said.

Is that terrifying enough yet? Will Trump ever have second thoughts about his best friend Volodya?

There are 14 other deaths under scrutiny.

In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, another former Russian agent, was rushed to hospital after collapsing in London. As the world watched, a rare and highly radioactive isotope destroyed Litvinenko’s organs one by one, and he died three weeks later.

A British public inquiry found that the former Russian agent had ingested Polonium 210, and that his assassination was likely ordered directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

That is, Donald Trump’s dear darling beloved friend. Trump says Putin is trustworthy while Mueller is not. Trump believes whatever Putin tells him, while he treats Mueller’s investigation as a fraudulent attack on him by political enemies.

Russia has denied any involvement, but the case has put renewed scrutiny on a string of deaths in the UK in the past two decades. The chair of the home affairs select committee, Yvette Cooper MP, wrote to Home Secretary Amber Rudd on Tuesday calling for a review of 14 other cases.

Those cases were variously found to have been heart attacks, suicides, accidents, and deaths by natural causes, but some allege that they amount to a pattern of state-sponsored murder on British streets.

The CIA carried out some murders of that kind in the past. Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffat were blown up by a car bomb in Washington D.C. Our hands are not clean. Nevertheless…

There was Alexander Perepilichnyy.

Perepilichnyy was born in Ukraine and made his fortune as a financier in Russia, allegedly helping government-connected Russians launder money. In 2010 he fled to Britain and began to co-operate with British authorities. He collapsed during a run near his home, the day he returned from a short trip to Paris.

Initial toxicology tests on Perepilichnyy’s body revealed nothing suspicious and it was ruled to be a natural death. But two years later, a fresh round of tests arranged by a life insurance company found traces of a rare and deadly plant toxin in Perepilichnyy’s stomach.

Gelsemium, a flowering plant native to China and Southeast Asia, is known as “heartbreak grass”, because its leaves, if swallowed, cause cardiac arrest.

US intelligence sources told the BBC at the time that they believed Perepilichnyy was murdered. An extensive investigation by Buzzfeed News claimed that the businessman was one of at least 14 people US officials suspected were killed in the UK by Russia.

(BuzzFeed again. Just yesterday I was reminded that BuzzFeed broke the story of the Steele dossier. BuzzFeed is far from just a gossip rag.)

In Salisbury, counter-terror police have taken over the investigation. The park bench where Mr Skripal collapsed has been cordoned off and a restaurant where he ate lunch has been temporarily closed.

If it turns out to have been a Russian attack, part of the purpose will have been to warn those in Russia against betrayal, and those in exile that they are never safe, said Mr Browder. “It sends a message to the rank and file that terrible things can befall you and your family,” he said.

That’s the country Trump is in thrall to, either through blackmail or through bone-deep stupidity. That’s the country that is remaking the US in its own image.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 7 comments


Six months would be a start

Mar 7th, 2018 8:59 am | By

18 U.S. Code § 713: Use of likenesses of the great seal of the United States, the seals of the President and Vice President, the seal of the United States Senate,…United States House of Representatives, and the seal of the United States Congress

(a) Whoever knowingly displays any printed or other likeness of the great seal of the United States, or of the seals of the President or the Vice President of the United States, or the seal of the United States Senate, or the seal of the United States House of Representatives, or the seal of the United States Congress, or any facsimile thereof, in, or in connection with, any advertisement, poster, circular, book, pamphlet, or other publication, public meeting, play, motion picture, telecast, or other production, or on any building, monument, or stationery, for the purpose of conveying, or in a manner reasonably calculated to convey, a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the Government of the United States or by any department, agency, or instrumentality thereof, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

(b) Whoever, except as authorized under regulations promulgated by the President and published in the Federal Register, knowingly manufactures, reproduces, sells, or purchases for resale, either separately or appended to any article manufactured or sold, any likeness of the seals of the President or Vice President, or any substantial part thereof, except for manufacture or sale of the article for the official use of the Government of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Meanwhile, back at the Trump Tower gift shop:

https://twitter.com/BySteveReilly/status/971164396444684288

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments
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They filmed the abuse and then released it on social media

Mar 7th, 2018 8:37 am | By

The BBC:

The leader and deputy leader of far-right group Britain First have been found guilty of religiously-aggravated harassment.

Paul Golding, 36, and Jayda Fransen, 31, were arrested over the distribution of leaflets and posting of online videos during a Muslim gang-rape trial.

…

The court heard they had targeted homes and people in Kent whom they believed [to be] connected to a rape trial at Canterbury Crown Court where three Muslim men and a teenager were convicted of rape and jailed.

Is this a matter of free speech, or of targeted harassment?

I think it’s the second.

During their trial in January, Folkestone Magistrates’ Court heard the pair confronted people they believed were defendants in the gang-rape trial.

However, in each case, they instead targeted innocent members of the public.

They filmed the abuse and then released it on social media and through the Britain First website.

They also posted offensive leaflets through the letterboxes of houses in the area where the rape-trial defendants lived.

Up close and personal; that’s harassment.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »


Homeostasis and social justice

Mar 6th, 2018 5:05 pm | By

Antonio Damasio has a new book, and started a Twitter account apparently to promote it. Interesting thoughts.

That in a nutshell is what I tried to argue in a Free Inquiry column responding to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Twitter aphorism:

Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence.

I said no, evidence is necessary but not sufficient, you have to start farther back – with human needs and feelings. I learned that partly from reading Damasio, so I’m glad to see he has a new book.

Wanting to feel good rather than bad, in short, and then extending that to other people – that is, realizing they have the same need and want, and grasping that fairness means extending the good things to everyone. Fairness is part of homeostasis too, it’s the solution to the discomfort of seeing or enacting injustice – unless of course you’re like a Trump and genuinely see your own needs as the only needs that matter.

That’s the latest one.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 10 comments


Three strikes and you’re still in

Mar 6th, 2018 4:35 pm | By

Kellyanne Conway broke the law. Twice.

A federal ethics agency has ruled that one of President Trump’s closest White House aides twice broke the law separating government from politics.

Kellyanne Conway, who was Trump’s campaign manager in 2016, advocated for Republican Roy Moore in Alabama’s recent Senate election during live television interviews broadcast from the White House lawn.

The Office of Special Counsel found Conway violated the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from using their office for partisan politics.

The OSC is nothing to do with Mueller’s investigation. (They should use different names then. Have a heart.)

In two interviews on the Alabama race, one with Fox News and one with CNN, Conway spoke in front of the White House using her official title, counselor to the president, while repeatedly attacking the Democratic candidate, Doug Jones.

“Doug Jones in Alabama, folks, don’t be fooled. He will be a vote against tax cuts. He is weak on crime. Weak on borders. He’s strong on raising your taxes. He is terrible for property owners,” said Conway in a Nov. 20 appearance on Fox & Friends.

Unabashed campaigning, while brandishing the White House.

“While the Hatch Act allows federal employees to express their views about candidates and political issues as private citizens, it restricts employees from using their official government positions for partisan political purposes, including by trying to influence partisan elections,” the agency’s report says. “Ms. Conway’s statements during the Fox & Friends and New Day interviews impermissibly mixed official government business with political views about candidates in the Alabama special election for U.S. Senate.”

The agency says Conway never responded to its inquiries and says that it has submitted its report to the president for “appropriate disciplinary action.” Because Conway is a high-ranking presidential appointee, it’s up to Trump to decide what action is appropriate.

And because Trump is a narcissist who thinks he outranks the law, Trump won’t even bother to think about action. A deputy press secretary issued a statement saying nuh-uh she did not either shut up.

Conway also came under scrutiny for endorsing the fashion line of the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump during a February 2017 interview. Walter Shaub, the then-head of the Office of Government Ethics, criticized the president’s decision at that time not to discipline Conway.

Shaub, who has since left the government and now works for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said Tuesday that Trump needs to act on the OSC report about Conway. “The White House cannot continue to have one standard for the federal workforce generally and a lower standard for appointees who are close to this President.”

But it’s going to. Nothing will stop it.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 1 Comment »