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Month: July 2018

Sending populist cues by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 24, 2018

Sending populist cues
by Tom Sullivan


(Image: @JamesThompsonKS/Twitter)

Panic among Democratic moderates accustomed to sitting nearer the middle of the dais generated several concern-trolling columns over the weekend. Former FBI director James Comey joined in, tweeting, “Democrats, please, please don’t lose your minds and rush to the socialist left.” Despite much evidence to the contrary, Comey insists America wants “sensible, balanced, ethical leadership.”

Still, with “several outright Nazis and white supremacists” gracing Republican tickets this fall, Michelle Goldberg wonders why political insiders are worried: Has the Democratic Party become too extreme?

Democratic veterans are haunted by past electoral debacles, Goldberg writes, citing McGovern in 1972 and Dukakis in 1988. The Newt Gingrich-led, mid-term rout that in 1994 swept out incumbent Democrats across North Carolina still gives Democrats here of a certain age cold sweats. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to so obviously unqualified an opponent will hang in the corners for decades. From my vantage point, her field strategy failed to energize volunteers, reach beyond her base, and turn out Democrats who would actually vote as Democrats. If she won handily (as hoped), it might have become the default template for Democrats’ future national campaigns. Dodged that bullet.

As I shared from personal experience yesterday, moderates’ fears of lefty overreach are greatly exaggerated. Goldberg concurs:

After all, the economic demands that animate the left are generally quite popular. Though “Medicare For All” means different things to different people, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll from last year found that 62 percent of Americans view it positively. A recent Rasmussen poll found 46 percent of likely voters support a federal jobs guarantee, a more radical proposal that was barely present in American politics a couple of years ago.

Centrists might not think these are good ideas, but they are not wild fantasies; they represent efforts to grapple with the chronic economic insecurity that is the enemy of political stability.

Martin Longman argues at Washington Monthly that worries that national Democrats may start blasting a national message that sounds “more like the platform of the Working Families Platform” are not just overblown, but misplaced (as if they were capable of a unified message). In a mid-term election, local and regional candidates need to find “solutions and messages that can work in both Democratic and Republican strongholds.” That does not mean wasting time trying to appeal to voters in MAGA hats. But it does mean showing interest in reaching beyond their own base. As Paul Waldman knows (and my experience shows), voters do not vote based on some internal ideological score sheet:

People are much more apt to respond to cues that tell them whether you are on their side or not than to make that determination based on a careful analysis of policy proposals. It’s easy to let people know you have contempt for them and people like them, and that’s when they stop listening. If the national Democrats want to make life hard for their most crucial Senate candidates, they can send powerful signals that they don’t respect whole regions of the country or even want their votes. They won’t do that by proposing this health care bill or that one, but they might just say as much when talking to their own base.

If the Democrats are going to have a successful midterm, they have to respect the people whose votes they are going to need, and that’s not the same thing as running to the middle. Republican policies are generally unpopular in theory and even more so in practice, but that doesn’t prevent them from competing in most areas of the country. That’s because they really excel at convincing people that they’re on their side. That they do so by consistently appealing to people’s least generous and most fearful emotions isn’t something to emulate but it is something that has to be countered effectively in this upcoming election.

To turn out the base, to reach beyond it, and to rise above the daily din of Trumpism will take Democrats proposing solutions to real problems in health care costs, employment, and stagnant wages that are populist enough to rattle moderates’ comfortable cages. So be it. Democrats need to stop chasing public opinion and set to work changing it if they hope to win. Milquetoast proposals will do neither.

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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.

What you didn’t know about Bill Browder

Published by digby on July 23, 2018

What you didn’t know about Bill Browder

by digby

This is a fascinating piece by Andrew O’Hehir about Bill Browder, Vladimir Putin’s nemesis, the man who got the Magnitsky Act passed which put those pesky sanctions on Vlad and his oligarch buddies.

Putin only mentioned one individual by name: William F. Browder, a 54-year-old investor and financier, originally from Chicago, who reportedly made hundreds of millions of dollars in the Wild West marketplace of post-Soviet Russia.

Anyone who has intermittently tried to follow the shadowplay narrative of Russian history and politics during the Putin era heard alarm bells going off, and perhaps felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. This was a plot twist that requires some explication, in a story that quite likely no one will ever fully understand.

Several major publications supplied obligatory “Who is this guy?” articles almost immediately, and Browder himself wrote a piece for Time magazine, offering his own highly truncated version of his history with Putin. None of it was untrue, exactly, but for my money those accounts largely served to obscure the deeper historical currents that flow beneath this implausible tale. Neither man is likely to mention that they were once close allies; Browder was described as among Putin’s “most vocal cheerleaders” in a 2006 Economist article (which has become remarkably difficult to find). Furthermore, Browder becomes slightly more difficult to cast as an American hero once you notice that he renounced his U.S. citizenship 20 years ago, for reasons he has never adequately explained

I imagine both Browder and Putin would say that their shared connection to the pre-Putin past of Soviet Communism is irrelevant to their present-tense dispute. I’m not so sure: Russia has some of the same mythic qualities as William Faulkner’s Deep South, where the past is not dead and isn’t even past.

Putin was of course a KGB officer during the later years of the Soviet Union, who witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall from his post in East Germany. Bill Browder’s grandfather, Earl Browder, was perhaps the most famous American Communist during the decades before World War II. An all-American boy from a farm family in Kansas, Earl Browder became a socialist as a teenager, spent several years in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution and was leader of the Communist Party USA for 15 years, even running for president as the party’s nominee in 1936 and 1940. He was also almost certainly a Soviet spy and recruiter, meaning that he worked for the same organization that would educate and employ the young Vladimir Putin some years later.

Click over to the full story. It’s a much more intriguing and interesting story that I knew…

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Politics and Reality Radio with Joshua Holland, Amanda Marcotte, Mike Lux

Published by digby on July 23, 2018

Politics and Reality Radio

with Joshua Holland

Amanda Marcotte on a Long, Twisted Week in Trumpworld

Mike Lux Blows Up Conventional Wisdom About Democrats in the Age of Trump

This week, Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte joins us to talk about a week like no other in Trump’s “presidency.” Will his base ever be bothered by Marshal Tweeto’s incompetence and corruption?

Then we’re joined by Mike Lux, head of the non-profit American Family Voices and author of How to Democrat in the Age of Trump. Mike argues that many of the debates that fascinate the pundits are actually false choices.

Playlist:
The Band: “Long Black Veil”
Earl: “Tongue Tied”
Shaggy: “Oh Carolina”

As always, you can also subscribe to the show on iTunes, Soundcloud or Podbean.

They’re trying to kill us

Published by digby on July 23, 2018

They’re trying to kill us

by digby

Republicans hate California. And we aren’t fond of them either. So, they’re going to try to stop us from breathing clean air:

The Trump administration will seek to revoke California’s authority to regulate automobile emissions — including its mandate for electric car sales — in a proposed revision of Obama-era standards, according to three people familiar with the plan.

The proposal, expected to be released this week, amounts to a frontal assault on one of former President Barack Obama’s signature regulatory programs to curb greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. It also sets up a high-stakes battle over California’s unique ability to combat air pollution and, if finalized, is sure to set off a protracted courtroom battle.

The proposed revamp would also put the brakes on federal rules to boost fuel efficiency into the next decade, said the people, who asked to not be identified discussing the proposals before they are public. Instead it will cap federal fuel economy requirements at the 2020 level, which under federal law must be at least a 35-mile-per-gallon fleet average, rather than letting them rise to roughly 50 mpg by 2025 as envisioned in the plan left behind by Obama, according to the people.

As part of the effort, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will propose revoking the Clean Air Act waiver granted to California that has allowed the state to regulate carbon emissions from vehicle tailpipes and force carmakers to sell electric vehicles in the state in higher numbers, according to three people familiar with the plan.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will likewise assert that California is barred from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from autos under the 1975 law that established the first federal fuel-efficiency requirements, the people said.

I’m so old that I remember when the right fetishized states’ rights.

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A little jingle for the Trump cult

Published by digby on July 23, 2018

A little jingle for the Trump cult

by digby

Naturally, like all good Trumpies, they are living in an alternate universe in which their political enemies are all on the verge of being locked up. And they are very excited about it.

I do give these girls credit for being up on all the latest bullshit coming out of Sean Hannity and Trump’s twitter feed. That takes commitment.

*If this is a send-up, it’s so believable that the satire doesn’t work…

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Civil liberties for white Republicans

Published by digby on July 23, 2018

Civil liberties for white Republicans

by digby

My Salon column today is about the Carter Page flap:

Late on Saturday night the government released a trove of FISA warrant documents pertaining to the surveillance of suspected Russian informant/asset and former Trump adviser Carter Page. This release was highly unusual. In fact it was unprecedented. These were unclassified by accident when the president unilaterally declassified the notorious “Nunes Memo” leaving the door open for the Freedom of Information Act request that led to this release of the highly redacted underlying documents to which it referred.

For those following the rightwing “deep state” conspiracy, this was a big moment. Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) and his henchmen had charged that the FBI used the controversial Steele Dossier as the evidence to get permission to surveil Page during the presidential campaign. Their conspiracy theory is that the dossier is a partisan hit job which the FBI failed to reveal to the FISA judges and, therefore, the entire investigation into campaign interference in the 2016 election is discredited.

These documents do not prove their case. It’s hard to judge specifically what evidence was presented because of the heavy redactions but one can still discern that the request was not solely based on the dossier and neither did the FBI hide the fact that it had been paid for by an opposing party. Steele had been an informant in the past and had proven to be reliable but there was plenty of evidence from other sources. Indeed, Page had been on the FBI’s radar for several years as a possible Russian asset and when he started buzzing around a presidential campaign it naturally attracted their notice. In the documents, they describe him as possibly “collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.”

The FBI did not apply for permission to start surveillance until Page had left the campaign. And four successive (Republican appointed) FISA judges signed off on the warrant. There are plenty of reasons for civil libertarians to be suspicious of the FISA process but this really does not seem to be a case which merits it. A man who was long suspected of having been recruited by a foreign government was suddenly named as an adviser to a presidential campaign. The FBI would have been derelict in their duty if they hadn’t looked into it.

In a sane political world Congressman Devin Nunes would be facing a world of hurt following the release of these documents and the president would be facing serious political fallout for endorsing Nunes’ crude defense. But we do not live in sane world. This is what the president tweeted when the documents were released:

Yes, after having to choke out last week that the Russians did indeed interfere in the election he wound up his twitter tirade by once again saying that is all a big hoax — and we’re right back where we started.

Charlie Savage of the New York Times wrote:

Mr. Trump’s portrayal, which came as the administration is trying to repair the damage from his widely criticized meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, revived the claims put forward in February by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. But in respect after respect, the newly disclosed documents instead corroborated rebuttals by Democrats on the panel who had seen the top-secret materials and accused Republicans of mischaracterizing them to protect the president.

It doesn’t seem to matter. Page himself appeared on CNN on Sunday with a crazed smile on his face claiming that the whole thing is “spin” and that none of it was justified. After being repeatedly pressed by Jake Tapper, he admitted that he had once served as an “informal” adviser to the Russia government but that it was unreasonable to say that he was wittingly or unwittingly working for them during the campaign.

It may be that he’s innocent of the charges. But after reading the warrant application there is little doubt that the government had ample reason to be suspicious. And after Trump’s performance in Helsinki last week, all the suspicions about Russian involvement in the election have risen to new levels, so Page’s protestations ring even more hollow.

Republicans in congress demonstrated their spinelessness once again. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) played dumb saying on Face the Nation, “if the dossier is the reason you issued the warrant, it was a bunch of garbage. The dossier has proven to be a bunch of garbage.” Obviously he hadn’t read the documents or he would have known that the dossier wasn’t the reason they issued the warrant. Clever of him to put it that way though.

Marco Rubio was more rational telling Jake Tapper on CNN, “I don’t think they did anything wrong. I think they went to the court. They got the judges to approve it. They laid out all the information ― and there was a lot of reasons… for why they wanted to look at Carter Page.” He hemmed and hawed about the implications but at least he acknowledged reality.

Other Republicans are diving deeper into the rabbit hole. National Review’s Andrew McCarthy is all the way in, calling for the investigation of the Republican judges who signed the warrants:

After years of practice, Republicans have developed a knack for inventing scandals and getting the press to buy into them. Normally such scandals only involve Democrats, but Trump’s Russia collusion scandal requires a bit of fancy political jiu-jitsu. It remains to be seen whether they can pull it off. The formerly patriotic staunch defenders of law and order have had to turn on a dime and convince their voters and the media that the American justice system has engaged in a corrupt conspiracy against Donald Trump and created this Russia conspiracy theory out of whole cloth.

In this case, right-wingers latched on to an old leftist trope about the “deep state,” meaning the intelligence apparatus and other aspects of permanent government, and are running with it as if they were the second coming of Noam Chomsky. They feed the press cherry-picked bits of paranoid nonsense, which are then floated into the ether, supposedly providing a basis for an “investigation.” Regardless of the actual outcome, millions of people will be convinced that there is merit to the charge because “if there’s so much smoke, there must be fire.” Millions more will listen to Trump’s lies and believe them.

If these Republicans were acting from a set of constitutional principles, these concerns about the civil liberties of Trump campaign officials might wake them up to the offenses commonly committed against Muslim suspects and the ill-treatment of immigrants as well as other outrages of the American “carceral state ” Unfortunately, this is a one-time deal. It seems that wealthy Republicans are the real victims and the only true citizens whom the Bill of Rights was intended to protect.

“Independents prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress by more than 20 points”

Published by digby on July 23, 2018

“Independents prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress by more than 20 points”

by digby

Remember when the only people in the world who mattered were the vaunted “independents?” Suddenly, nobody cares. But they should:

The good news for President Trump in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll — half of which was conducted before and the day of the Helsinki presser with Putin, half of which was conducted afterward — is that his standing with the GOP base is stronger than ever.

Eighty-eight percent of Republican voters in the poll approve of Trump’s job — the highest of his presidency — and 29 percent of all voters strongly approve of his performance, which is another high for him. “The more Trump gets criticized by the media, the more his base seems to rally behind him,” says Democratic pollster Fred Yang, who co-conducted the NBC/WSJ poll with the Republican team from Public Opinion Strategies.

Trump’s approval rating in the poll is 45 percent among all registered voters (up 1 point from June), while 52 percent disapprove, including 44 percent who do so strongly.

The bad news for the president is that his standing — plus the GOP’s — is now worse with independents than it was a month ago. Just 36 percent of independents approve of Trump’s job (down 7 points from June). What’s more, independents prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress by more than 20 points, 48 percent to 26 percent. In June, the Dem lead among indies was just 7 points, 39 percent to 32 percent.

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The progressives are coming! by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 23, 2018

The progressives are coming!
by Tom Sullivan

Runferyerlives! used to be reserved for the woman in the colorful headscarf down the block.

Now a couple of weekend article warn predictably that “the ascending coalition on the left” threatens to pull the Democratic Party too far out of the mainstream, hurting chances for moderate party players to hold and expand their influence. Again.

The New York Times cautioned a new generation of activists promises “to grow as a disruptive force in national elections as younger voters reject the traditional boundary lines of Democratic politics.” Furthermore, Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, the Progressive Change Campaign, and Our Revolution “have helped propel challenges to Democratic incumbents.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ben Jealous. “Revolution on the left.” “A leftist political revolt.” The horror.

NBC News jumped in. The “angry left” may turn off centrist voters, you know, just ruining everything. Luckily, Democratic pragmatists and billionaires feeling unloved have mounted a moderate “counterrevolution“:

The invitation-only gathering brought together about 250 Democratic insiders from key swing states. Third Way unveiled the results of focus groups and polling that it says shows Americans are more receptive to an economic message built on “opportunity” rather than the left’s message about inequality.

“Once again, the time has come to mend, but not end, capitalism for a new era,” said Third Way President Jon Cowan.

For the left, Third Way represents the Wall Street-wing of the party and everything wrong with the donor-driven wet blanketism they’ve been trying exorcise since 2016. Thom Hartmann, a liberal talk radio host and Sanders friend, once called the group’s warning about Sanders “probably the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard,” before ticking through all the investment bankers on Third Way’s board.

Completely ignoring the fact that the Democrats’ invitation-only wing is one reason new activists are angry, elected officials in conservative districts caution that progressives with their big-city ways could mean disaster for Democrats elsewhere.

“We will be a permanent minority party in this country,” said Iowa state Sen. Jeff Danielson, a firefighter who represents an area that saw one of the biggest swings from Barack Obama to Trump during the 2016 election.

Rep. Cheri Bustos, a Third Way Democrat from an Illinois district Donald Trump won, argued on behalf of a Nixonian silent majority who just want normalcy. “There’s a lot of people that just don’t really like protests and don’t like yelling and screaming,” she added.

Which is why thousands showed up to scream “Lock her up” at Trump rallies in Dubuque and Davenport, Iowa across the Mississippi River from her district.

Ah, too be young(er) and foolish and to frighten insiders again. In 2005, that was us. “Those progressives” were going to ruin everything, they whispered. You know, they’re plotting a takeover? In fact, by 2007 we were in charge. In 2008, with the help of some guy from Illinois whose name would sound out of place in rural Moline, we swept the races here, winning 36 of 36, including reelecting a couple of the veterans who found us most threatening. This last Saturday, our local headquarters was a hive of activity and scheduling space is already becoming a problem. That’s how badly we wrecked the place by working harder.

As Hullabaloo alum David Atkins writes, we’re about solving problems and winning elections. The status quo cannot hold.

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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.

It’s better than the alternative

Published by digby on July 22, 2018

It’s better than the alternative

by digby

I’m speaking of Trump being forced into a typical “negotiation” with North Korea. After his antics in Singapore and the absurd pretense that his empty agreement with Kim Jong Un meant that the nuclear threat had been removed, it’s tempting to say “I told you so.” But the truth is that any day we aren’t in a nuclear crisis with North Korea is a good day, so stretching out the negotiations is better than hostility. (Needless to say, there was never much of a chance Kim would unilaterally disarm due to Trump’s non-existent negotiating talent.)

Anyway, he’s slowly accepting that his little pageant may not have settled the issue:

When he emerged from his summit with Kim Jong Un last month, President Trump triumphantly declared that North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat and that one of the world’s most intractable geopolitical crises had been “largely solved.”

But in the days and weeks since then, U.S. negotiators have faced stiff resistance from a North Korean team practiced in the art of delay and obfuscation.

Diplomats say the North Koreans have canceled follow-up meetings, demanded more money and failed to maintain basic communications, even as the once-isolated regime’s engagements with China and South Korea flourish.

Huh. How much money are they demanding? I thought Trump was against that sort of thing …

Meanwhile, a missile-engine testing facility that Trump said would be destroyed remains intact, and U.S. intelligence officials say Pyongyang is working to conceal key aspects of its nuclear program.

The lack of immediate progress, though predicted by many analysts, has frustrated the president, who has fumed at his aides in private even as he publicly hails the success of the negotiations.

“Discussions are ongoing and they’re going very well,” Trump told reporters Tuesday.

The accounts of internal administration dynamics come from conversations with a half-dozen White House aides, State Department officials and diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive ­negotiations.

Officials say Trump has been captivated by the nuclear talks, asking staffers for daily updates on the status of the negotiations. His frustration with the lack of progress has been coupled with irritation about the media coverage of the joint statement he signed on June 12 in Singapore, a document that contains no timeline or specifics on denuclearization but has reduced tensions between the two countries.

“Trump has been hit with a strong dose of reality of North Korea’s negotiating style, which is always hard for Americans to ­understand,” said Duyeon Kim, a Korea expert at the Center for a New American Security.

Trump’s interest in the issue has put a particularly bright spotlight on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has tried to wring concessions from his counterpart, Kim Yong Chol, a former spy chief viewed by the Trump administration as uncompromising and unable to negotiate outside the most explicit directives from Kim Jong Un.

A low point from the perspective of U.S. officials came during Pompeo’s third visit to Pyongyang on July 6 when he pressed North Korean officials for details on their plans to return the remains of U.S. soldiers killed during the Korean War, as they had agreed to do in Singapore. The issue had been discussed in several meetings and was viewed by the United States as an easy way for North Korea to demonstrate its sincerity.

But when Pompeo arrived in Pyongyang, the North Koreans insisted they were still not ready to commit to specific plans, according to diplomats familiar with the discussions.

The delay angered U.S. officials, who were under pressure to ­deliver given Trump’s premature ­announcement on June 20 that North Korea had already “sent back” the remains of 200 soldiers.

The sentiment worsened when Kim Jong Un chose not to meet with Pompeo during his stay as had been expected. Pompeo later denied that a meeting was planned, a claim contradicted by diplomats who said the secretary initially intended to see the North Korean leader.

Unable to secure an agreement on remains during his trip, Pompeo scheduled a meeting between the North Koreans and their Pentagon counterparts to discuss the issue at the demilitarized zone on July 12. The North, however, kept U.S. defense officials waiting for three hours before calling to cancel, the diplomats said. The North Koreans then asked for a future meeting with a higher-ranking military ­official.

“Leaving another U.S. official standing at the altar, waiting forlornly for the North Korean representative to show up adds insult to injury,” said Bruce Klingner, a North Korea scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “Pyongyang has reverted to its heavy-handed negotiating tactics.”

The Trump administration has maintained a strong public show of support for the negotiations, even as North Korea denounced the United States’ “unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization” after Pompeo’s last visit and described the discussions as “cancerous.”

On Wednesday, Trump said he secured a commitment from Russia to “help” with the North Korea issue. “The process is moving along,” he tweeted. “Big benefits and exciting future for North Korea at end of process!”

But late last week in meetings with his aides, Trump bristled about the lack of positive developments in the negotiations. And on Friday at the United Nations, his ambassador, Nikki Haley, accused Russia of blocking efforts to discipline North Korea’s illegal smuggling.

They are running them around like a gaggle of baby ducks.

You have to love this:

Trump and his senior team “haven’t given up entirely” on the goal of full denuclearization, but they are worried, said one person familiar with the discussions.

Climbing down from earlier soaring rhetoric, Trump told CBS this week that “I’m in no real rush. I mean whatever it takes, it takes,” he said.

That more patient approach stands in contrast to earlier Trump administration demands for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program within a year.

“Trump is too vested to walk away right now,” said Victor Cha, a North Korea expert who the Trump administration nearly selected to be the next U.S. ambassador to Seoul. “At least until after the midterms.”

U.S. officials lay some of the blame on Kim Yong Chol, who despite being North Korea’s chief negotiator has consistently stonewalled discussions by saying he is not empowered to talk about an array of pertinent issues.

That dynamic drew the ire of U.S. officials in an early July meeting in Panmunjom when he refused to discuss the opening of a reliable communications channel or even specific goals of Pompeo’s then-upcoming trip to Pyongyang, diplomats briefed on the meetings said.

The U.S. officials in the meeting, led by State Department official Sung Kim and the CIA officer Andy Kim, wanted to discuss Pompeo’s visit and make progress on returning the fallen soldiers’ remains. But Kim Yong Chol said he was authorized only to receive a letter Trump had written to Kim Jong Un.

When U.S. officials tried to raise substantive issues, Kim Yong Chol resisted and kept asking for the letter. Unable to make headway, the Americans eventually handed over the letter and ended the meeting after only an hour.

“[Kim] has a reputation for being extremely rude and aggressive,” said Sung-Yoon Lee, a North Korea scholar at Tufts University.

[…]
In the absence of progress on denuclearization, the Trump administration is likely to focus on the war remains.

At a meeting in the demilitarized zone on Sunday, the two sides agreed to recommence field operations to search for the remains of some 5,300 Americans still missing from the conflict in North Korea. Pompeo said this week that he believes the first sets would arrive in the United States “in the next couple weeks.”

U.S. officials familiar with the discussions said the North pledged to return 55 sets of remains on July 27, the 65th anniversary of the signing of an armistice that ended the war. But Pentagon officials, who sent transit cases to the demilitarized zone weeks ago, are wary of North Korea’s pledges given its previous cancellations.
[…]
“I worry that Trump might lose patience with the length and complexities of negotiations that are common when dealing with North Korea, and walk away and revert back to serious considerations of the military option,” said Duyeon Kim, the Korea scholar. “Getting to a nuclear agreement takes a long time, and implementing it will be even harder.”

Too bad about that Iran deal, eh?

God what a mess.

The biggest danger in all this is John Bolton who said ahead of time that it would be good to hold the summit in order to show they tried and then go for regime change when it doesn’t work. We had better pray that Bolton being exposed to the lunacy of Trump has tempered his attitude about this stuff.

I can’t believe I just wrote that. But honestly, I think it’s our best hope.

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