Month: May 2017

He’s got very clean money. The cleanest.

by digby

So President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen is under investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Shocker. You’ll recall that he’s the guy who said to the Daily Beast:

“I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know … So I’m warning you, tread very f—ing lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting.”

He’s a very classy fellow with great integrity who would never do anything untoward so this is all just part of the Democratic plot to deny Donald Trump his yuge victory.

In case you were wondering what kind of things Cohen might do for Trump, he seems to be the type of fellow who “handles” money for clients in ways that might look suspiciously like money laundering:

Long before he became Donald Trump’s feared attack dog, or began to visit the White House as the president’s personal attorney, or took a position with the Republican National Committee, or partnered with powerhouse lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs, Michael Cohen ran a small legal practice in Hell’s Kitchen.

He was a one-man show and handled a little bit of everything, from personal injury cases to a Ukrainian investment fund to a fleet of taxis to a trust account he managed for clients.

One day in 1999, a check for $350,000 was deposited into that trust account, to be disbursed to a woman living in South Florida. As the lawyer in charge of the account, Cohen was supposed to ensure that she got the money.

But he didn’t.

Why not? And what ultimately happened to all that money?

“I don’t recall,” Cohen said in a deposition.

The missing $350,000 — which has never been recovered — became the centerpiece of a 2009 lawsuit in Miami, where Cohen was accused of civil fraud. After years of litigation, Cohen prevailed, in part because the suit was filed past the statute of limitations.

Cohen, in an interview with BuzzFeed News, said he was first questioned about the money eight years after it was deposited, by which time he said he could not recall much about it. “I honestly don’t remember who gave me the deposit at the time,” he said. “This is another poor attempt to malign my impeccable reputation and attempt to connect me to a Russian conspiracy.”

But Cohen’s own testimony in the case reveals that the man who is now the president’s personal lawyer failed to execute one of the core duties of an attorney — properly handling money placed in his trust — and was cavalier about that failure.

“One of the things lawyers are most likely to be disciplined for is misusing clients’ funds,” said Deborah Rhode, a legal ethics expert from Stanford University, who said that properly accounting for and disbursing funds is a critically important obligation for many attorneys.

[…]

The $350,000 mystery involves four other important characters: Vladimir Malakhov, a professional hockey player who wrote the original check; Yulia Fomina, a Russian woman who asked Malakhov to loan her the money and put her condominium up as collateral; Vitaly Buslaev, a Russian businessperson who was Fomina’s boyfriend; and Symon Garber, a Ukrainian-born taxi baron who was Cohen’s business partner.

In 1999, Malakhov was playing defense for the Montreal Canadiens. He would play in the NHL for a decade, win a Stanley Cup, and collect about $30 million in salary. Along the way, he attracted the attention of Russian organized crime. During Senate hearings, a former gangster testified that someone tried to shake down Malakhov at a restaurant in Brooklyn’s heavily Russian neighborhood, Brighton Beach. The man who made the threats reportedly worked for Vyacheslav Ivankov, a notorious Russian mafia boss who was later assassinated in 2009.

“Malakhov spent the next months in fear,” according to the testimony, “looking over his shoulder to see if he was being followed, avoiding restaurants and clubs where Russian criminals hang out.”

Malakhov was playing for Montreal in 1999 when Buslaev and Fomina entered the picture.

Yuri Felshtinsky, a Russian-American historian, reports that Buslaev was dating Fomina and supported her in the United States, helping her purchase a condominium, an Aston Martin, and a Mercedes-Benz. There are few public records available on Buslaev, but Russian business registrations show him as a manager of at least three companies near Moscow.

Court records show that around that time, Buslaev encouraged her to ask Malakhov and his wife, with whom she was friendly, for a loan.

Buslaev was looking for a hedge against “the instability of the Russian ruble on the foreign exchange market,” Malakhov’s sports agent wrote in an affidavit. At the agent’s suggestion, Malakhov demanded some collateral. (The agent, Paul Theofanous, did not return a message left at his office last week.)

So Fomina put up the deed to her condo and Malakhov wrote the check.

But he didn’t write it to her. At what he would later say was Fomina’s request, Malakhov wrote it to the trust account that Cohen controlled.

Two years later, claiming that Fomina failed to repay the loan, Malakhov’s wife went to court to take possession of the condo.

Fomina was in Russia at the time. When she returned to Florida, she filed suit, claiming she had been taken advantage of and didn’t speak enough English to understand the loan documents she signed. She and the Malakhovs did not return phone calls seeking comment, and Buslaev could not be reached. But Fomina’s lawsuit set off more than five years of litigation, and Malakhov’s lawyers eventually questioned Cohen about his role in the matter.

During a deposition, they showed him the check that Malakhov wrote, which had been endorsed with what appeared to be Cohen’s signature. Cohen declined to say whether it really was his.

“It could be,” he allowed.

He said that he didn’t know Malakhov, Fomina, or Buslaev.

The trust account, he explained, was used for “negligence settlements” or “property damage claims.” Perhaps the money was meant for the Ukrainian investment fund he managed, Cohen said.

Again and again — at least six times — Cohen said he didn’t recall why the $350,000 was deposited or what became of it.

Russians just keep turning up everywhere you look with this crew. Normally one wouldn’t think too much of that. But under the circumstances it is bound to draw scrutiny.

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Tweet o’ the day

by digby

Trump of course:

Russian officials must be laughing at the U.S. & how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2017

Think about that. He’s saying AGAIN that they didn’t actually meddle in the election. I think we’ve all assumed that he was doing this out of defensiveness over his lack of a popular vote win and a partisan explanation for the Russian probes.  But after Comey, after his behavior in Europe and everything else we’ve learned, that isn’t looking much like a reasonable explanation anymore is it? It’s looking like he’s publicly defending the Russian government against the analysis of his own in spite of tremendous pressure to simply keep his mouth shut.

If it were anyone but this cretinous imbecile we’d simply assume that he was doing the bidding of this foreign government. Everything points in that direction. But since he IS a cretinous imbecile, we still cannot be sure that he isn’t just acting in a totally self-destructive, moronic fashion.

My God, what a mess.

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The man in the tinfoil hat

by digby

Rundgren and Fagan have The Donald’s number:

They’re always the victim, no matter what

by digby

This first person account of the stabbing in Portland from the Oregonian is just harrowing:

Even with headphones on, Rachel Macy said, she heard a man shouting and spewing foul language as soon as he boarded the eastbound MAX Green Line train Friday night at Lloyd Center.

“He was just being really belligerent and loud,” she said.

The man, since identified as Jeremy Joseph Christian, entered through doors on one side of the train, and stepped across the aisle to a pole by the doors on the opposite side of the train.

“He was screaming that he was a taxpayer, that colored people were ruining the city, and he had First Amendment rights,” Macy said.

Then he made anti-Muslim slurs.

“I didn’t want to look. I was too afraid. It felt really tense,” said the 45-year-old Southeast Portland resident of Native American descent. “I’m a woman of color. I didn’t want him to notice me.”

The seats on the train were all taken, and other passengers were standing but it hadn’t reached the rush-hour crush yet as the train headed toward the Hollywood station around 4:30 p.m., she said.

Macy noticed a young man quickly brush past her seat, while talking on the phone. He looked nervous and was moving away from Christian. Something didn’t feel right, she said. She’d later learn that was Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23.

Rick Best, 53, stood closest to Christian. He was trying to calm Christian down, by letting him know he had heard him.

“He was repeating back what this guy was saying. Like, ‘I know you’re a taxpayer. But this is not OK, that he was scaring people,’ ” recalled Macy, whose account provides the most detailed chronology of the chaos that ensued.

Christian didn’t seem to respond; just kept shouting. “He was not hearing anybody, just talking louder,” she said.

At one point, the train operator got on the loudspeaker, saying something like whoever is creating the disturbance needed to exit the train immediately, Macy said. The operator also threatened to call police.

Christian screamed out that he was getting off the train at the next stop, and that “if anyone (expletive) followed, they were going to die,” Macy recalled.

Namkai-Meche turned back toward Christian and briskly walked over to him, and loudly implored him, “You need to get off this train. Please, get off this train.”

Passengers Best, Namkai-Mache and a third man, Micah David-Cole Fletcher, 21, were trying to deescalate the tense situation, intervene and get Christian off the train, she said. Macy said she didn’t know where the two teenage girls who were the target of his racist rants were seated. She said it appeared as if the men who were stabbed “were trying to be a barrier” between Christian and the girls.

Someone attempted to move Christian away from the girls he was verbally harassing with a slight push or shove. “Touch me again, or I’m going to kill you,” Macy heard Christian respond.

Namkai-Meche was holding up his phone, Macy said. She wasn’t sure if Namkai-Meche was trying to show Christian something on the phone or was recording the interaction.

Suddenly, Christian hit the phone away and stabbed Namkai-Meche in the neck, she said.

“It was just a swift, hard hit,” she said. “It was a nightmare.”

Macy said she didn’t know which man was slashed with the knife first but believes the train may have been just pulling into the Hollywood station or had just stopped when the stabbings occurred.

The attacker looked at the other passengers, cursed at them and then fled.

“One minute people were on the train, and the next minute, next to nobody,” she recalled.

Best didn’t take more than a few steps and fell to the floor, she said. At least two men came to his aid. “Stay with us. You are strong. Stay with us,” she recalled them saying.

Michael Kennedy was one of those men. He came up to the front car from the second car of the train, as other passengers raced away from the commotion. In written messages to The Oregonian/OregonLive, he said he and two other men started CPR chest compressions on Best until emergency medics arrived.

“It never occurred to me to do otherwise,” wrote Kennedy. He said his training as a paramedic from more than a decade ago kicked in.

Namkai-Meche stumbled along the aisle away from Christian past Macy. She turned to face him. His flannel shirt was covered with blood; his face pale.

Holding his neck, he said, “I’m going to die,” according to Macy.

“I looked at him and said, ‘we can handle this. Lay down.’ ”

He lay on the floor of the train. Macy crouched beside him, pulled off her black tank top and gave it to Namkai-Meche. He pressed the shirt to his neck wound. She placed her hand over his.

She noticed a deep, long gash along Namkai-Meche’s neck.

Another man who she described as a veteran also tried to comfort Namkai-Meche and keep him from panicking. He told Namkai-Mache that his heart was beating, and he was OK, pointing out the sound of sirens and help on its way.

“I just kept telling him, ‘You’re not alone. We’re here,” Macy said. “What you did was total kindness. You’re such a beautiful man. I’m sorry the world is so cruel.”

And she prayed.

“When I said ‘pray with me,’ he just closed his eyes and tried to keep breathing,” she recalled.

Fletcher stumbled off the train holding his neck, she said.

Macy remained on the train until police and emergency medics arrived. Medical personnel tried to work on Best but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Medics put Namkai-Meche on a stretcher. Macy stayed by his side. Before he was carried away, he had a last message, she said: “Tell everyone on this train I love them.

It speaks for itself. These people were heroes.

The president finally weighed in saying that the stabbings are “unacceptable” which is nice. Now, take a look how one local Republican leader is responding:

Multnomah County GOP chair James Buchal told the Guardian that recent street protests had prompted Portland Republicans to consider alternatives to “abandoning the public square”.

“I am sort of evolving to the point where I think that it is appropriate for Republicans to continue to go out there,” he said. “And if they need to have a security force protecting them, that’s an appropriate thing too.”

Asked if this meant Republicans making their own security arrangements rather than relying on city or state police, Buchal said: “Yeah. And there are these people arising, like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters.”

Asked if he was considering such groups as security providers, Buchal said: “Yeah. We’re thinking about that. Because there are now belligerent, unstable people who are convinced that Republicans are like Nazis.”

Buchal ran for Oregon attorney general in 2012 and has stood for election to Congress and the state legislature. The Oath Keepers are described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the US”, recruiting current and former military and law enforcement personnel. They have recently appeared at rallies from Berkeley, California, to Boston, standing with activists from the far right, activists holding what were once fringe positions who have recently risen to national prominence.

The Three Percenters are described by Political Research Associates as “a paramilitary group that pledges armed resistance against attempts to restrict private gun ownership”. They were a highly visible presence in Burns, Oregon, before and during the occupation of the Malheur wildlife refuge by rightwing militia early in 2016.

Buchal told the Guardian it was important not to become involved with extremists, and said that on the Three Percenters website, “right there on the front page there is what looks like a solid commitment to this not being about race at all.

Evidently the stabbing of three men who were standing up against a right wing fanatic is seen as a threat to right wing fanatics. There is no circumstance in which these people are not victims. Just look at the whiner in chief who has never once taken responsibility for anything in his life.

And by the way, he calling for a private brownshirt “militia.” It’s just a local thing at the moment and probably not a big deal. But it’s worth noting.

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The grown-ups are enablers

The British Empire sends its sympathies
by Tom Sullivan

Donald Trump didn’t have the guts to exit the Paris Climate Accord and say so, in person, to the faces of real world leaders.

The G7 summit ended a few days ago without the United States in the person of President Donald J. Trump pledging its commitment to the Paris accord, and without an affirmative U.S. commitment to Article 5 of the NATO charter that pledges allies to mutual defense.

“I will make my final decision on the Paris Accord next week!” President Trump tweeted on Saturday. This is Donald Trump we’re talking about, the man who makes decisions based on the opinions of the person with whom he last had a conversation.

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods sent a letter to Trump urging him to keep the United States a part of the accord. Other business leaders, fossil fuel companies among them, have urged Trump to remain, including, “IT firms Intel and HP, the Dow Chemical Company, sportswear maker Nike, hotel chain Hilton, auction website Ebay, and food giants Mars and Mondelez, maker of Oreo’s,” reports Deutsche Welle:

Finally, and not least importantly, Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who both act as close advisors to the president, have reportedly urged Trump to stay in the climate deal. White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, on the other hand, is pushing for an exit, along with Scott Pruitt, the director of the Environmental Protection Agency, who doubts that carbon dioxide emissions are a primary contributor to climate change.

Axios reported Saturday that Trump privately told several people, including Pruitt, that he plans to leave the accord.

“I’m quite certain the president is wide open on this issue as he takes in the pros and cons of that accord,” Defense Secretary James Mattis told CBS on Sunday. Meaning there is no telling what he might actually do or who might talk to him about it last.

The upshot of the president’s Tour de Chance is that under Trump the United States has exited the stage as a world leader. What’s left is a petulant adolescent armed to the teeth. From this side of the Atlantic, Trump-in-Europe seemed more interested in measuring his manhood than in doing the job for which he was hired: in this instance, mastering complex policy issues and reinforcing historical alliances that have stabilized the world for nearly seven decades. The impression Trump left was not one of strength or resolve, but lack of seriousness and preparation. That he found time on his trip to block a comedy writer on Twitter puts exclamation point to that impression.

OH. MY. EFFING. GOD.
The President of the United States just blocked me on Twitter because I hurt his feelings. #MAGA pic.twitter.com/oB5zTAs7In— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) May 29, 2017

For the official record, here’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. Kalb out. pic.twitter.com/piv7T5wCC3— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) May 29, 2017

German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the G7 talks as “six against one” and “very difficult, if not to say very unsatisfactory.” In a speech upon her return from the summit she said:

The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over. I’ve experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands.

The Hill reports that after Trump’s European meetings, a former U.S. envoy to NATO concluded the same:

“This seems to be the end of an era, one in which the United States led and Europe followed,” Ivo H. Daalder told The New York Times. “Today, the United States is heading into a direction on key issues that seems diametrically opposite of where Europe is heading.”

“The president’s failure to endorse Article 5 in a speech at NATO headquarters, his continued lambasting of Germany and other allies on trade, his apparent decision to walk away from the Paris climate agreement – all suggest that the United States is less interested in leading globally than has been the case for the last 70 years.”

The British Empire sends its sympathies.

These modern day Borgias are something else

by digby

This is what the president’s top adviser and dutiful daughter’s “brand” is selling on Memorial Day:

Make champagne popsicles this #MemorialDay: https://t.co/1m6ceESqnS

— Ivanka Trump HQ (@IvankaTrumpHQ) May 28, 2017

They really don’t have a clue do they? The first daughter and top presidential adviser has an ongoing “lifestyle” business even as she works in the White House. On Memorial Day, a federal holiday to mourn America’s war dead, her business is hawking champagne popsicles.

You cannot make this stuff up.

Stop, hey, what’s that sound?

by digby

Politico reports:

Two White House officials said Trump and some aides including Steve Bannon are becoming increasingly convinced that they are victims of a conspiracy against Trump’s presidency, as evidenced by the number of leaks flowing out of government — that the crusade by the so-called “deep state” is a legitimate threat, not just fodder for right wing defenders.

Step out of line, the men come and take you away …

These are people who pimped the birther nonsense and Pizzagate and Clinton Cash and dozens of other bogus stories designed to discredit and destroy their political rivals. They have benefited from foreign propaganda and disinformation.

Live by the conspiracy theory, die by the conspiracy theory.

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The conservative crush on Vladimir Putin

by digby

Trump isn’t alone in his fondness for the strongman types. Back in December of 2015 when he was still the hilarious gadfly all the pundits assured us would flame out any minute, I wrote this piece for Salon. I thought it was a good time to re-up it as we wait patiently for the Republicans to locate their consciences:

Despite the fact that this past weekend featured a Democratic Party presidential debate, the news continues to be Donald Trump and the GOP race. One assumes the press was not interested in the debate simply because the three candidates are professional, intelligent, well-informed and serious. In other words they are not a circus act. Luckily we still have Trump to entertain them, and he’s doing a bang up job.

For instance, when “Fox and Friends” ran a clip on Sunday of Clinton criticizing him in the debate the night before, Trump, on the phone, responded, “could you imagine that as president? I’m just watching and to see that as president just doesn’t work.” That got a big smile from one of the hosts, Tucker Carlson, who is know for a famous quip about Clinton which he repeated often in the last election:

“She scares me. I cross my legs every time she talks…every time, involuntarily. It is like those pictures you see of the soccer goalie when they’re about to get the free kick. That’s me when she talks. I can’t help it.”

But Trump’s comment about Clinton was a throwaway line. What the Sabbath Gasbags were most interested in were his comments about Vladimir Putin. Trump has been saying for some time that he and Putin would get along great. Months ago he told Anderson Cooper, “I think the biggest thing we have is that we were on ’60 Minutes’ together and we had fantastic ratings. One of your best-rated shows in a long time. So that was good, right? So we were stable mates.” They weren’t actually on “60 Minutes” together, there were simply stories about each of them on the same program, but that’s Trump. They made ratings together so that makes them blood brothers.

In fact, they’ve never met.

Nonetheless, on that and on numerous other occasions, Trump has said that he believed he and Putin would  “probably work together much more so than right now.” And last week, Putin returned the compliment. In an end of year press conference he called Trump “a very bright and talented man,” and an “absolute leader.”

Trump nearly swooned at the compliment saying, “it is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.” It didn’t matter in the least that the media was gobsmacked, he was thrilled, telling Joe Scarborough “when people call you brilliant, it’s always good, especially when the person heads up Russia.” He even went out of his way to defend him against the charges that Putin had been responsible for the deaths of opposition journalists, saying “our country does plenty of killing.”

On ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday he went to the mat for him:

“They are allegations. Yeah sure there are allegations. I’ve read those allegations over the years. But nobody’s proven that he’s killed anybody, as far as I’m concerned. He hasn’t killed reporters that’s been proven.”

He said it would be terrible if true, but “this isn’t like somebody that stood with the gun and taken the blame or admitted that he’s killed. He’s always denied it. He’s never been proven that he’s killed anybody. You’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, at least in our country.”

This is the same man who calls for the summary execution of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in every stump speech, usually followed by a nostalgic comment about how we used to do such things “when we were strong.” It’s also the same man who routinely points to the press in the back of the hall at his rallies and calls reporters disgusting and “scum,” sometimes even naming names.

The GOP establishment is clutching their pearls over all this under the assumption that saying you admire Vladimir Putin surely will be the ultimate put-away shot. After all, we just had a debate in which the candidates were variously vowing to “punch Russia in the nose” and to shoot Russian planes out of the sky. Perhaps the most bellicose was Chris Christie who has long criticized President Obama for being soft, saying a few months back, “I don’t believe, given who I am, that [Putin] would make the same judgment. Let’s leave it at that.” Evidently, “who he is” is so macho that Putin will roll himself into a ball and have a good old fashioned cry if Christie looks at him sideways.

Mitt Romney tweeted furiously about Trump’s coziness with Putin and his former advisers were all up in arms throughout the week-end calling him a “seriously damaged individual.” Trump responded by saying, “they’re jealous as hell because he’s not mentioning” them.

Trump doesn’t care one whit about any of this carping. His reasoning is clear in this one comment:

“

He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.”

Later he said, “I think that my words represent toughness and strength.”

Trump understands the base of the GOP a lot better than Mitt Romney and the Sunday talking heads. These GOP base voters like Putin. Like so much else, Trump is just channeling an existing right wing phenomenon. Marin Cogan at National Journal wrote about the right wing Putin cult two years ago:

Putin­phil­ia is not, of course, the pre­dom­in­ant po­s­i­tion of the con­ser­vat­ive move­ment. But in cer­tain corners of the In­ter­net, ad­or­a­tion for the lead­er of Amer­ica’s No. 1 frenemy is un­ex­cep­tion­al. They are not his coun­try­men, Rus­si­an ex­pats, or any of the oth­er re­gion­al al­lies you might ex­pect to find al­lied with the Rus­si­an lead­er. Some, like Young and his read­ers, are earn­est out­doorsy types who like Putin’s Rough Rider sens­ib­il­ity. Oth­ers more cheekily ad­mire Putin’s cult of mas­culin­ity and claim re­l­at­ive in­dif­fer­ence to the polit­ic­al stances — the anti-Amer­ic­an­ism, the sup­port for lead­ers like Bashar al-As­sad, the op­pres­sion of minor­it­ies, gays, journ­al­ists, dis­sid­ents, in­de­pend­ent-minded ol­ig­archs — that drive most Amer­ic­ans mad. A few even ar­rive at their Putin ad­mir­a­tion through a strange brew of an­ti­pathy to everything they think Pres­id­ent Obama stands for, a re­flex­ive dis­trust of what the gov­ern­ment and me­dia tells them, and polit­ic­al be­liefs that go un­rep­res­en­ted by either of the main Amer­ic­an polit­ic­al parties…

[T]he Obama’s-so-bad-Putin-al­most-looks-good sen­ti­ment can be found on plenty of con­ser­vat­ive mes­sage boards. Earli­er this year, when Putin sup­posedly caught — and kissed — a 46-pound pike fish, posters on Free Re­pub­lic, a ma­jor grass­roots mes­sage board for the Right, were over­whelm­ingly pro-Putin:

“I won­der what photoup [sic] of his va­ca­tion will the Usurp­er show us? Maybe clip­ping his fin­ger­nails I sup­pose or maybe hanging some cur­tains. Yep manly. I can’t be­lieve I’m sid­ing with Putin,” one wrote. “I have Pres­id­ent envy,” an­oth­er said. “Bet­ter than our met­ro­sexu­al pres­id­ent,” said a third. One riffed that a Putin-Sarah Pal­in tick­et would lead to a more mor­al United States.

Is it any wonder that Trump is saying he’s “honored” that Putin thinks highly of him?

But the pearl clutching about all this Putin love from the other presidential candidates is seriously hypocritical. They may not be tapping into the macho Putin cult as directly as Trump, but they are very much on Putin’s authoritarian wavelength. Just like Putin they are very upset at the idea gay people might have equal rights and they are prepared to use government power to discriminate against them:

Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee vowed to push for the passage of the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), legislation that would prohibit the federal government from stopping discrimination by people or businesses that believe “marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman” or that “sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

The pledge is supported by three conservative groups: the American Principles Project, Heritage Action for America, and Family Research Council Action.

Apparently, Bush, Graham, Paul and Trump, have also publicly expressed support for FADA. In the name of freedom, of course, just as the old Soviets would have done. These liberty lovers may shake their fists and pretend they are in opposition to Putin’s tyrannical ways, but when you get down to it they’re all on the same page.

And the rest of us should probably stop laughing and start paying attention according to a warning from someone who knows what she’s talking about, Maria Alekhina, aka Masha of Pussy Riot:

“When Putin came to his first term or second term, nobody [in Russia] actually thought that this is serious. Everybody was joking about it. And nobody could imagine that after five, six years, we would have a war in Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, and these problems in Syria,” in which Russia has become involved.

“Everybody [is] joking about Donald Trump now, but it’s a very short way from joke to sad reality when you have a really crazy president speaking about breaking every moral and logic norm. So I hope that he will not be president. That’s very simple.”

Strongman cults of the likes of Putin and Trump are often dismissed as silly and unserious at first. And then, all at once, it’s too late.

Some words from that up and coming young man, Frederick Douglass


by digby

The Unknown Loyal Dead

Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1871

Friends and Fellow Citizens:

Tarry here for a moment. My words shall be few and simple. The solemn rites of this hour and place call for no lengthened speech. There is, in the very air of this resting-ground of the unknown dead a silent, subtle and all-pervading eloquence, far more touching, impressive, and thrilling than living lips have ever uttered. Into the measureless depths of every loyal soul it is now whispering lessons of all that is precious, priceless, holiest, and most enduring in human existence.

Dark and sad will be the hour to this nation when it forgets to pay grateful homage to its greatest benefactors. The offering we bring to-day is due alike to the patriot soldiers dead and their noble comrades who still live; for, whether living or dead, whether in time or eternity, the loyal soldiers who imperiled all for country and freedom are one and inseparable.

Those unknown heroes whose whitened bones have been piously gathered here, and whose green graves we now strew with sweet and beautiful flowers, choice emblems alike of pure hearts and brave spirits, reached, in their glorious career that last highest point of nobleness beyond which human power cannot go. They died for their country.

No loftier tribute can be paid to the most illustrious of all the benefactors of mankind than we pay to these unrecognized soldiers when we write above their graves this shining epitaph.

When the dark and vengeful spirit of slavery, always ambitious, preferring to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, fired the Southern heart and stirred all the malign elements of discord, when our great Republic, the hope of freedom and self-government throughout the world, had reached the point of supreme peril, when the Union of these states was torn and rent asunder at the center, and the armies of a gigantic rebellion came forth with broad blades and bloody hands to destroy the very foundations of American society, the unknown braves who flung themselves into the yawning chasm, where cannon roared and bullets whistled, fought and fell. They died for their country.

We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal admiration those who struck at the nation’s life and those who struck to save it, those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty and justice.

I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant; but may my “right hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,” if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict.

If we ought to forget a war which has filled our land with widows and orphans; which has made stumps of men of the very flower of our youth; which has sent them on the journey of life armless, legless, maimed and mutilated; which has piled up a debt heavier than a mountain of gold, swept uncounted thousands of men into bloody graves and planted agony at a million hearthstones – I say, if this war is to be forgotten, I ask, in the name of all things sacred, what shall men remember?

The essence and significance of our devotions here to-day are not to be found in the fact that the men whose remains fill these graves were brave in battle. If we met simply to show our sense of bravery, we should find enough on both sides to kindle admiration. In the raging storm of fire and blood, in the fierce torrent of shot and shell, of sword and bayonet, whether on foot or on horse, unflinching courage marked the rebel not less than the loyal soldier.

But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause. We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to the republic. We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation’s destroyers. If today we have a country not boiling in an agony of blood, like France, if now we have a united country, no longer cursed by the hell-black system of human bondage, if the American name is no longer a by-word and a hissing to a mocking earth, if the star-spangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army who rest in these honored graves all around us.