Month: April 2018

Friday Night Soother

An old blue heeler named Max remained by the side of a three-year-old girl and led searchers to her after she spent more than 15 hours lost in rugged bushland on Queensland’s Southern Downs overnight.

Aurora was reported missing about 3:00pm on Friday after she wandered off on her own, but a search of woodlands and hills on the rural property in wet weather on Friday night found no trace of her.

On Saturday morning, more than 100 State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers, police and members of the public resumed the search and found the girl safe and well with Max the dog at 8:00am.

For his good work in keeping the little girl safe, Max has now been declared an honorary police dog.

Kelly Benston, the partner of Leisa Bennett, who is Aurora’s grandmother, said Ms Bennett and other searchers heard the little girl faintly from the top of a mountain on Saturday morning.

“She found the dog first. Max led her to Aurora,” Mr Benston said.

“Max is 17 years old, deaf and partially blind.”

SES area controller Ian Phipps confirmed a family member spotted Aurora and Max about two kilometres from the house, still on the family property at Cherry Gulley, 30 kilometres south of Warwick.

“The area around the house is quite mountainous and is very inhospitable terrain to go walking in, so she’d travelled quite a distance with her dog that was quite loyal to her,” he said.

“The search was actually quite hard where the volunteers and the police were, amongst the very steep slopes full of lantana and other vegetation.”

Ms Bennett said she tracked her down after the three-year-old responded to her shouting.

“When I heard her yell ‘Grammy’ I knew it was her,” she said.

“I shot up the mountain … and when I got to the top, the dog came to me and led me straight to her.

“He never left her sight. She smelled of dog, she slept with the dog.”

Ms Bennett said it was an emotional reunion with “a lot of tears”.

“I think [Aurora] was a bit overwhelmed by the tears and the howling, but I explained to her how happy those tears were,” she said.

“It could have gone any of 100 ways, but she’s here, she’s alive, she’s well and it’s a great outcome for our family.”

Mr Phipps said Aurora suffered minor cuts and abrasions but was otherwise well and it was a wonderful outcome for the family and searchers.

“With the weather last night it’s quite lucky she is well because it was cold, it was cold and raining,” he said.

“She’s a very hardy young lass to survive that without any ill effects and everyone, all the volunteers are extremely happy.

“They had travelled from all over the region just to do the search and that’s one of the things they join the SES for is to look after the community and do these activities … and bring happiness to a family.

“There was a little bit of dread going into it with a cold night last night, but to get such a positive outcome the volunteers are very happy, and will be tucking into a bacon and egg sandwich very shortly.”

Oh good, we’re starting the Reformation Wars again

by digby

Paul Ryan fired the House Chaplain, a Catholic priest, apparently over this prayer:

God of the universe, we give You thanks for giving us another day.
Bless the Members of this assembly as they set upon the work of these
hours, of these days. Help them to make wise decisions in a good manner
and to carry their responsibilities steadily, with high hopes for a
better future for our great Nation.

As legislation on taxes continues to be debated this week and next,
may all Members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our
great Nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to
achieve great success, while others continue to struggle. May their
efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers
under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.

May Your blessing, O God, be with them and with us all this day and
every day to come, and may all we do be done for Your greater honor and
glory.

Amen.

How awful of him.

They are now saying that it would be better to have a chaplain who “has a family” which means no Catholics, obviously.

Now take a moment to imagine what would happen if the Democratic majority fired a Catholic chaplain for a prayer expressing perfectly anodyne Christian values?

I think this illustrates what the reaction would be:

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Fox and Yeezy

by digby

Honestly, I just don’t know what to say about all this:

Hannity greets “new political landscape in America” as Kanye endorses Trump. pic.twitter.com/3oyukxyaeG— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 26, 2018

Maybe Trump will solve our racial divide after all. As long as African Americans pledge their fealty to the Great God Trump, we can live in peace and harmony.

Think Progress caught up with another Trump worshiping hip-hop lover:

Kanye West made headlines this week by praising Donald Trump in a long series of unusual tweets, including one in which he says he and Trump are both “dragon energy.”

Kanye’s support of Trump is not new: He said he supported Trump over Hillary and met with Trump at Trump Tower during the presidential transition.

Nevertheless, on her show last night, Fox News host Laura Ingraham praised Kanye, calling him a “catalyst for an honest discussion about the coerced conformity of thought the celebrity culture imposed all of us.”

Ingraham said Kanye was “thinking for himself” and said that “he refused to let the mob shake his love for the president.”

“Kanye West is right. He’s right about this,” Ingraham said, agreeing with Kanye’s claim that John Legend and others were trying to stifle him.

There is one small issue with Ingraham’s position. She is the author of a book called “Shut Up & Sing,” which argues that entertainers should not express their political beliefs. It includes an entire chapter called Shut Up and Entertain Us.

It now appears that Ingraham holds this view — the entire premise of her book — only if celebrities express beliefs that are not in line with her own.

Ingraham briefly addressed the book on Thursday night. She said the imperative to “Shut Up & Sing” only applies to people “peddling political nonsense while lacking the credentials or experience to do so.” Kanye’s praise of Trump’s “dragon energy” apparently does not fit in that category.

Ingraham was far less charitable to LeBron James and Kevin Durant who recently offered some critical comments about Trump. “The number one job in America, the appointed person, is someone who doesn’t understand the people and really doesn’t give a fuck about the people,” James said in an interview with ESPN’s Cari Champion.

Fox News host slams Black NBA stars for talking politics, praises white coach for doing the same
“Look, there might be a cautionary lesson in LeBron for kids: this is what happens when you attempt to leave high school a year early to join the NBA. And it’s always unwise to seek political advice from someone who gets paid $100 million a year to bounce a ball,” Ingraham said of James. He graduated high school, successfully oversees a business empire, and has received critical acclaim as an actor.

“LeBron and Kevin, you’re great players, but but no one voted for you. Millions elected Trump to be their coach,” she said.

Ingraham said LeBron and Durant should “shut up and dribble,” adding “Must they run their mouth like that?”

After a rash of criticism, Ingraham released a statement, citing her book, that she has a principled objection to athletes and entertainers expressing their political views.

“In 2003, I wrote a New York Times bestseller called “Shut Up & Sing,” in which I criticized celebrities like the Dixie Chicks & Barbra Streisand who were trashing then-President George W. Bush. I have used a variation of that title for more than 15 years to respond to performers who sound off on politics,” Ingraham said.

Two months later, Kanye started tweeting about Trump and everything changed.

I know, I know. Hypocrisy is not an operative concept on the right. But the spectacle of Hannity and Ingraham cozying up to Kanye solely because he expresses his love for Trump is a stunning illustration of verything they have become.

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Did Donnie Jr call Dad?

by digby

Here’s an interesting scooplet from Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent at The Plum Line:

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee today released a report on Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election. Although it’s meant to exonerate President Trump and everyone around him, what it actually does is bring the utter degradation and disgrace of that committee to its fullest expression.

By contrast, there may be real news in the Democrats’ response to the report. In particular, the Democrats detail new information that appears to shed light on what Republicans would not do in their investigation.

The Dem response makes this important charge: That Republicans refused to follow up on a lead that could have demonstrated whether, despite his denials, Trump had advance knowledge of the infamous Trump Tower meeting between a group of Russians and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort.

In an interview with us today, Rep. Adam Schiff expanded on this claim.

The GOP report does address that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, allowing that it showed “poor judgment” on the part of the Trump campaign. As we learned from Don Jr’s emails, those top Trump campaign officials went to that meeting in the full expectation of receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton, supplied by the Russian government. But the GOP report brushes this off, concluding there was “no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded, coordinated, or conspired with the Russian government.”

But the Democratic response fills in some extremely important context — and it may involve the president himself, though we cannot know one way or the other right now.

According to the Democratic response, right after Donald Jr. set up the specifics of this meeting, he had two calls with a number in Russia belonging to Emin Agalarov.

Between those two calls, the Democratic response recounts, Donald Jr. made a third call to a blocked number. Who might Donald Jr. have been calling?

According to the Democratic response, Democrats wanted to find out — but Republicans blocked that from happening.

“We sought to determine whether that number belonged to the president, because we also ascertained that then-candidate Trump used a blocked number,” Rep. Schiff said in an interview. “That would tell us whether Don Jr. sought his father’s permission to take the meeting, and [whether] that was the purpose of that call.”

“The simple thing to do to find out whether Don Jr. called his father would be to subpoena the phone records to determine whether that phone number belonged to his father,” Schiff continued. “We asked Republicans to subpoena the records and they refused. They didn’t want to know whether he had informed his father and sought his permission to take that meeting with the Russians.”

It’s not proof, by a long shot. But when you combine it with this, it sure seems likely that Junior told Dad at some point:

By the way, there’s also this if you haven’t heard:

Newly surfaced emails indicate that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump campaign associates in 2016, once worked with Russia’s chief legal office in an effort to thwart the Justice Department, The New York Times reported on Friday.

The newspaper notes that the disclosure suggests that the lawyer had closer ties to the Kremlin than she had previously suggested.

The Times reported that, according to an NBC News interview with Richard Engel to be broadcast Friday night, Veselnitskaya disclosed that she was a “source of information” for Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied that there are ties between Veselnitskaya and the Russian government, and last year, Veselnitskaya denied having worked for the Russian government in an interview with NBC News.

But the newspaper now reports that in the interview with NBC News set to air on Friday, she says, “I am a lawyer, and I am an informant,” and that since 2013, she has been “actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general.”

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Trump family values

by digby

Trump characterizes all the accusations against failed VA nominee Ronny Jackson as false, & cites as evidence ….[checks notes] …the fact that his son is a "top student at Annapolis."

"I explained to him, you're an American hero because you've exposed the system." pic.twitter.com/1jVXZ6Mdam— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 27, 2018

This is the same man who did this:

In 1999, the family patriarch died, and 650 people, including many real estate executives and politicians, crowded his funeral at Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue.

But the drama was hardly put to rest. Freddy’s son, Fred III, spoke at the funeral, and that night, his wife went into labor with their son, who developed seizures that led to cerebral palsy. The Trump family promised that it would take care of the medical bills.

Then came the unveiling of Fred Sr.’s will, which Donald had helped draft. It divided the bulk of the inheritance, at least $20 million, among his children and their descendants, “other than my son Fred C. Trump Jr.”

Freddy’s children sued, claiming that an earlier version of the will had entitled them to their father’s share of the estate, but that Donald and his siblings had used “undue influence” over their grandfather, who had dementia, to cut them out.

A week later, Mr. Trump retaliated by withdrawing the medical benefits critical to his nephew’s infant child.

“I was angry because they sued,” he explained during last week’s interview.

That’s the kind of “values” he espouses. They are, to say the least, no better than Washington’s.
In fact, he has no values at all other than the phony value he puts on his fortune.

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The worst client in the world

by digby

I wrote about Trump’s little meltdown yesterday for Salon:

President Trump started off the week in a beautiful bromance with French President Emmanuel Macron and ended it with his nominee as Veterans Affairs secretary, White House physician Ronny Jackson, forced to withdraw under allegations of illegally dispensing drugs and passing out drunk on the job. In between, the media harangued Trump repeatedly about his growing legal troubles and his Parisian bestie appeared before Congress and declared in so many words that since the U.S. has a buffoon for a president its allies will take up the job of articulating the values of civilized nations. When the pressure builds up like this, Trump simply has to vent. And for some reason he has to do it in public.

Since Trump doesn’t give normal press conferences and is refusing to give many interviews, his only outlet in that case was his morning briefing team of Brian Kilmeade, Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt of “Fox & Friends,” who happily accepted his call on Thursday morning. He sounded unusually energized, speaking at twice his normal speed, and was obviously extremely agitated. The president doesn’t drink coffee or I might have suspected he’d had a couple of quad espressos before he picked up the phone. Perhaps he downs a six pack of Diet Cokes upon waking. Whatever the case, he was as manic and disjointed as we’ve ever heard him. And that’s saying something.

He started off by saying it was Melania’s birthday, admitting he had only gotten her a card. Then went on about how much France loves him and then something about Iran and small boats circling and “barrels” full of money. Next he launched into a long diatribe about the supposed Democratic obstructionists who are failing to confirm his appointees, followed by a big shout-out to people he called “warriors,” which included the extremists of the Freedom Caucus, his onetime campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and the pro-Trump performance art duo known as Diamond and Silk. (They happened to be testifying before Congress that morning and it was almost as surreal as Trump’s call.) Then he rambled on about Dr. Jackson and appeared to threaten Sen. Jon Tester, the Democrat who had released damaging allegations about Jackson, warning the senator that his constituents in Montana really love Trump.

Doocy then led Trump into an angry denunciation of James Comey, filled with what are apparently a bunch of Fox News conspiracy theories that only people deeply enmeshed in that cocoon can possibly unravel. Trump didn’t even seem to understand them so he just worked himself up into a frenzy culminating with this:

There’s no collusion with me and the Russians. Nobody’s been tougher to Russia than I am. You can ask President Putin about that. There’s been nobody. Between the military and the oil and all of the other things that I’ve done — the aluminum tax. They send us a lot of aluminum, and I put tariffs on aluminum coming in. The 60 people that we sent out — the 60 so-called diplomats. Nobody’s been tougher. Nobody’s even been close to as tough as me, and we hear this nonsense. So there’s no collusion whatsoever.

You have to love the idea that he says they should ask Putin.

He went on a bit more about Comey and then digressed to some old news about CNN having given debate questions to Hillary Clinton, at which point the “Fox & Friends” hosts started to look a bit green around the gills. He was rapidly melting down.

They chatted about Kanye West’s ecstatic support for Trump and the president asserted, on no evidence whatever, that African-Americans had voted for him. “People don’t realize, you know, if you go back to the Civil War it was the Republicans that really did the thing,” he said. “Lincoln was a Republican.” This appears to be one of those historical facts Trump learned only recently.

There was more craziness, most of it just vintage incoherent Trump rambling, escalating in tone and manic energy all the way through. But threading through the entire conversation was a lot of discussion about the Justice Department, the FBI, Michael Cohen and Robert Mueller, all of which are obviously very much on his mind. Some of what the president said immediately got him into trouble, and the rest may have far-reaching ramifications.

First, Trump said that Cohen only did “a tiny, tiny little fraction” of his legal work but that “Michael would represent me and represent me on some things, he represents me — like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal.” There happened to be a hearing in the Cohen case later in the morning and federal prosecutors used that quote in court to undermine Trump’s claim to attorney-client privilege, since he had said Cohen only did a small fraction of his legal work. They weren’t the only lawyers who jumped on it:

Stormy Daniels also used Trump’s Fox & Friends interview against him and Cohen in a court filing — the second same-day adverse filing by my count. https://t.co/iiWLyQU1a1 pic.twitter.com/5f8MfMH6mz— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) April 27, 2018

Trump also may have stepped in it with his comments maligning the Department of Justice and the FBI. Early in the conversation he said, “I have decided that I won’t be involved. I may change my mind at some point, because what’s going on is a disgrace.” Then he got very wound up and circled back to the topic later:

You look at the corruption at the top of the FBI. It’s a disgrace. And our Justice Department, which I try and stay away from, but at some point I won’t.

Later in the morning the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 14–7 to advance legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller from an unjustified firing. In an unprecedented move in this Congress, four Republicans joined with the Democrats to vote for it. Even some who didn’t, like Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, suggested that there could be an impeachment if Trump interfered with the investigation. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska called that possibility “politically suicidal,” and even Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, generally a loyalist, said it would be “disastrous” if Trump tried to shut down the Mueller probe.

Trump’s greatest mistake, however, may have been tossing Michael Cohen to the wolves by saying, “I have nothing to do with his business.” That’s a little hard to believe, since Cohen was an executive vice president of the Trump Organization for more than a decade. Cohen certainly had to hear it as his old boss casting him aside. It was also cruel of Trump to destroy Cohen’s claim of attorney-client privilege for his own sake. You can bet that prosecutors will remind Cohen of Trump’s words when they ask him if he might have some information he’d like to share with them.

Trump’s lawyers have to hope that his little venting session relieved some of the pressure and that he’ll keep his mouth shut for a while. They should all send a thank you note to the “Fox & Friends” producers (and maybe even Rupert Murdoch himself) for insisting that their hosts pull the plug on the president, something I’ve never seen happen before. Any other news organization would have kept on going as long as he wanted to talk. But Fox is on Trump’s team so they valiantly tried to save him from himself. Unfortunately for him, it was way too late.

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Nice little country you got there …

by digby

The thug president actually said “it would be a shame if …” HE ACTUALLY SAID IT:

President Donald Trump suggested Thursday evening that the U.S. consider removing support for certain nations if they lobbied against a joint bid by the U.S., Canada and Mexico to host the 2026 World Cup.

“The U.S. has put together a STRONG bid w/ Canada & Mexico for the 2026 World Cup,” the president wrote on Twitter. “It would be a shame if countries that we always support were to lobby against the U.S. bid. Why should we be supporting these countries when they don’t support us (including at the United Nations)?” He did not single out any countries by name.

Recent news reports have said the joint North American bid is in peril because of Trump’s rhetoric and a reluctance to grant the U.S. something at a time when the president has supported a travel ban against mostly Muslim countries and reportedly called unspecified African states “shithole countries.”

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Fake chief executive
by Tom Sullivan

“Doctor poses” from Cigna insurance “TV Doctors of America” ad

Donald Trump is not a real CEO, but he’s played one on TV. Now he’s playing president even less convincingly. Donald Trump is the late, fake Prof. Irwin Corey, “the World’s Foremost Authority,” without any of the humor, warmth, or winking at the joke.

Catherine Rampell writes about Trump’s phony savvy for the Washington Post:

“If we could run our country the way I’ve run my company, we would have a country that you would be so proud of,” he promised during one debate.

Well, he was half right. Trump has definitely run the country the way he ran his company. But, no, this is nothing anyone can be especially proud of.

That’s because the president is running the executive branch less like a “Six Sigma” efficiency machine and more like a crappy family business that went bankrupt six times.

Consider Trump’s personnel choices. In both private and public enterprise, he has loaded up the payroll with incompetents, self-dealers and family members — categories that are not mutually exclusive — whose top qualifications are ethical pliability and unwavering devotion to the boss.

Which is only one reason the Trump Organization looks so much like a crime family. The West Wing is another.

“Trump’s ‘Best People’ Are the Worst,” read the headline on the New York Times Editorial Board’s April 25 posting. From Trump EPA chief Scott Pruitt, whose personal corruption is totally the fault of staffers, to Mick Mulvaney who heads both the Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mulvaney blurts out in public that he runs a pay-to-play operation the way Trump threatens obstruction of justice on live TV. This week there is Dr. Ronny Jackson, the White House physician facing an “avalanche of allegations of questionable behavior” whom no one wants to work for. He’s almost as bad as his boss.

Then, of course, there is Michael Cohen, Trump’s “fixer.” The Trump attorney who is not really a Trump attorney. Other than the company he keeps and solving “problems,” Michael Cohen bears no resemblance to Winston Wolf. He just aspires to.

“I’m Winston Wolf. I solve problems.” Still from Pulp Fiction (1994).

Heck of a job, Trumpy.

West Wing poses.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

So victimized, so persecuted

by digby

The right wing has always had a persecution complex. The Trump personality cult has taken it to the next level. Via Right Wing Watch:

Rep. Jim Jordan joined Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton on Tuesday for a live-streamed “Deep State Update.” Other panelists included retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, radio host and Daily Caller editor Vince Coglianese, and Judicial Watch attorney Michael Bekesha. Judicial Watch was a major promoter of right-wing Benghazi and Clinton email obsessions.

“It’s an incredible story,” said Fitton about the supposed deep state conspiracy to protect Hillary Clinton and take down Donald Trump. In December, Fitton was honored, along with James O’Keefe, Frank Gaffney, Sean Hannity and other right-wing activists, by Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The narrative about Russian involvement in the U.S. election was designed from the beginning as a deep state campaign against Trump, said Shaffer, who had some surprisingly specific data to share from what he claimed were his own sources within the deep state. In 2016 and 2017, he said, 71 percent of the FBI’s foreign counterintelligence budget was diverted into efforts to absolve Clinton and convict Trump.

Shaffer, who has promoted Benghazi conspiracy theories and compared the FBI to the Gestapo last year after a raid on Paul Manafort’s home, suggested during the Judicial Watch discussion that the Defense Department should take over the FBI’s mission until everything is sorted out.

Fitton asked Coglianese to share his views from his “disinterested” perspective at the right-wing Daily Caller (Fitton did not appear to be joking). Coglianese said the recently released Comey memos were “relevatory,” making much of the fact that Trump’s demand for “loyalty” from Comey during a one-on-one meeting came after a discussion of leaks.

Jordan said he believed that the leak of information to CNN about the controversial Steele dossier was orchestrated by former Director of Intelligence James Clapper, who is now working for CNN. Fitton claimed that former President Barack Obama is “in the middle of this,” saying the Russia probe had been “orchestrated in the Oval Office” to defend Clinton and target Trump.

The Mueller investigation has found no evidence of Trump campaign coordination with the Russians, Jordan said, arguing that there is evidence of a money trail from Democrats to Russians over the Steele dossier.

Fitton and Bekesha complained that the FBI and Justice Department are not responding more quickly to their request for documents about the investigation and for emails that were found on Clinton’s private email server.

Fitton declared that Robert Mueller’s investigation is a “zombie investigation” and that the FBI’s leadership is “thoroughly corrupted” and complained that members of Congress are “afraid to take on Mueller.”

Judicial Watch’s panelists seemed sensitive about being called conspiracy theorists, with Shaffer insisting that his deep state statistics were “not tinfoil hat stuff.” Coglianese said he has “a natural aversion to conspiracy theories of any kind,” while insisting that the deep state should scare anyone who looks into it.

That rabbit hole is really, really deep.

It’s important to remember that Judicial Watch was one of the prime movers behind the Whitewater and Lewinsky scandals, working hand in glove with Starr’s investigation.

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by tristero

On many levels, this just breaks my heart. The human suffering is horrific. And the US is in no position to mitigate it, preoccupied as it is by an unhinged, corrupt president and a dominant political party whose only agenda is rewarding the wealthy while oppressing the powerless:

On April 18, Green and the ISCI released a report finding the Myanmar government guilty of genocidal intent toward the Rohingya, a finding which echoed a chillingly prescient report they issued in 2015. The 2015 report claimed the Rohingya had already been subjected to four of the six stages of genocide: “stigmatisation, harassment, isolation, and systematic weakening.” It warned that in Myanmar, just two stages remained for the Rohingya: “extermination, and ‘symbolic enactment,’” the removal of their existence from official state history.

At the Berlin Conference on Myanmar Genocide in February, Rainer Schulze, professor of modern European history at the University of Essex in the UK and founding editor of the journal The Holocaust in History and Memory, defined genocide as the “intention to destroy in whole or in part” a distinct community. The 1948 UN Convention On The Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, Schulze explained, “binds all signatories . . . that they must respond when genocide has been identified. The Genocide Convention gives us a very clear definition, and with regards to the Rohingya it is appropriate and must be used.”

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