Month: May 2019

Election security is clearly not a priority

by digby

This is astonishing, but I suppose it shouldn’t be:

On Friday, the deputy director of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) sent out an email asking employees to consider a “short-term deployment to the southern border,” ranging from 30 to 45 days, due to the “ongoing surge of migrants.”

“It is never easy to ask colleagues to take on extra challenges, but as DHS employees, serving the needs of the homeland is the cornerstone of what we do,” wrote Matthew Travis, CISA deputy director, to agency employees.

“If it is in your capacity to deploy, please give serious thought to volunteering,” he added.

Earlier this spring, top officials asked employees from all DHS entities to go volunteer at the border, according to a DHS official. The email went out because CISA is still working to send as many people as DHS Headquarters has asked for, the official added. In other words, not enough CISA employees want to step away from their cybersecurity work to focus on border security—at least, not yet.

“As we have consistently said, the Department is considering all options to address the humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border,” said Tyler Houlton, DHS acting assistant secretary for public affairs, in a statement.

“We will continue to work with our workforce to find dynamic solutions and funding to address this very serious problem. As part of this effort, it is our responsibility to explore fiscal mechanisms that will ensure the safety and welfare of both our workforce and the migrant population, which is also reflected in the supplemental request submitted to Congress.”

Among the officials who were asked on Friday to assist the federal government at the border are those tasked with protecting the U.S. government’s cyber infrastructure—including election systems considered vulnerable in the run-up to 2020.

There is no crisis at the border. To the extent we are seeing a surge of migrants, it’s largely Trump’s fault for insisting that we are going to close the border and build walls while punishing their own countries to make things even worse there. Desperate people are thinking they’d better try to save themselves now, reunite with families in the US and secure some kind of decent future before this monster cuts off aid and makes everything worse.

But now I have to wonder if maybe Trump and his henchmen aren’t actually doing something even more nefarious — using the border as pretext to hobble the efforts to stop election interference in 2020. That really is a crisis — for the majority of the country. For Trump, the crisis may be that he won’t receive the help he’s expecting.

That sounds conspiratorial but sadly I could easily see Trump and Miller and some of his campaign cronies seeing this as a clever way to kill two birds with one stone. Don’t forget, a super-hawkish Republican White House once sold arms to an enemy and used the money to circumvent a congressional ban against aiding rebels in Central America. It’s not as if Republicans were ever above such shenanigans.

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He doesn’t know that foreign automakers manufacture in the US

by digby

He really doesn’t. He talks about cars being unloaded on the docks in Long Beach and they don’t pay while “our” cars pay big tariffs in their country — because it’s something he saw back in 1986. He is clueless. Now he’s the president and he’s doing stupid stuff like this:

President Donald Trump attacked foreign carmakers on Friday — while postponing a tariff increase for six months — which led Japanese carmaker Toyota to make what could be a veiled threat by pointing out that they are the force behind 475,000 jobs in the United States, one way or another.

According to a report in Bloomberg, “In an unusually strong-worded statement, Japan’s largest automaker said Trump’s proclamation Friday that the U.S. needs to defend itself against foreign cars and components ‘sends a message to Toyota that our investments are not welcomed.’ The company said it has spent more than $60 billion building operations in the country, including 10 manufacturing plants.”

In the statement, Toyota made a pointed reference to how many Toyotas are on the road in the U.S., to say nothing about how the American’s depend on the company for jobs — including in states Trump needs in the 2020 election.

“Toyota has been deeply ingrained in the U.S. for over 60 years. Between our R&D centers, 10 manufacturing plants, 1,500-strong dealer network, extensive supply chain and other operations, we, directly and indirectly, employ over 475,000 in the U.S.,” the statement read, adding, “Most every American has a Toyota story and we are very proud of the fact that over 36 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles are still on U.S. roads today. Our operations and employees contribute significantly to the American way of life, the U.S. economy and are not a national security threat. “

Trump is sacrificing farmers to his ridiculous trade war. Why not auto manufacturers too?

The man is so thoroughly ignorant and yet arrogant on trade that it makes your head hurt. The fact that all these supposed laissez-faire, free trading Republicans are acting like a bunch of potted plants and the Democrats are flailing about ineffectually is a very big clue as to how all this will go if Trump gets validated in 2020. This lunacy will know no bounds.

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So what was wrong with that Trump Moscow project? Oh nothing…

by digby

Here’s another example of the kind of graft and corruption that Trump and his cronies think is just fine and “anyone would do it.”

Austria appeared on Saturday to be headed for snap elections after the country’s far-right vice chancellor resigned over a secretly filmed video that showed him promising government contracts to a woman claiming to be the niece of a Russian oligarch. The episode raised questions about whether Russia has a direct line to a government in the heart of Europe.

The Austrian national news agency A.P.A., citing information from Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache’s Freedom Party, reported that a snap election was being called. A government official did not confirm that report, but said that snap elections were likely. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz was expected to make an announcement on Saturday evening.

The video was the worst in a series of missteps that have threatened the stability of Austria’s governing coalition. It has also raised concerns about whether the Freedom Party has been helping Mr. Kurz govern with an active agenda to undermine liberal democracy in the country.

The latest Austrian scandal comes at a big political moment in the European Union. Across the Continent, far-right, populist leaders are campaigning hard before next week’s elections for the European Parliament and seem poised to increase their share in the chamber. Many of Europe’s populists share the agenda of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia: fragmenting the Continent’s political landscape and weakening the European establishment’s power in Brussels.

Not long ago, these far-right parties were on the fringes of European politics, but like Austria’s Freedom Party, several are now part of coalition governments. Some populist leaders, particularly in the Scandinavian countries and Poland, are wary of Russia, but others are outspoken in their desire for closer ties to the Kremlin.

The Freedom Party has longstanding ties with Russia and a formal cooperation agreement with Mr. Putin’s United Russia party. The video of Strache’s meeting, which was filmed in a villa on the Spanish island of Ibiza three months before the 2017 election, exposed in a raw fashion Mr. Strache’s apparent eagerness to help Russia with unethical promises for government contracts in exchange for donations to his party.

There’s new info about Russian Brexit funding too.

This is an international campaign by Russia and the far right. And we’re right in the middle of it with our law enforcement having its hands tied by Trump and his cronies. It’s right in front of our eyes.

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Nevada with women in the majority
by Tom Sullivan

Nevada State Capitol. Photo by Amadscientist, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Plenty of commentary has addressed the cultural clash between Baby Boomer workaholics and millennials faced with a declining life prospects and a warming planet. Recent legislation in multiple states targeting Roe v. Wade as well as the Me Too Movement point up a much deeper, more longstanding conflict: male domination of the political and cultural space.

That old order is passing, but will not go gentle into that good night. Wise men (and not so wise). Good men (and not so good). Men both wild and grave, and those not so much of either. But men all, mister poet.

Nevada’s state legislature, however, is the first in the country with a majority of women in office. A combined 52 percent between the Assembly and the Senate. When a Republican stood to defend a hoary piece of legislation requiring doctors to ask a woman seeking an abortion if she is married, newly elected senator Yvanna Cancela shot back, “A man is not asked his marital status before he gets a vasectomy.” The Washington Post reports the hearing room fell silent.

In Alabama, women make up just 15 percent of the legislature that just passed a near-complete ban on abortion.

But times have changed in Carson City:

The female majority is having a huge effect: More than 17 pending bills deal with sexual assault, sex trafficking and sexual misconduct, with some measures aimed at making it easier to prosecute offenders. Bills to ban child marriage and examine the causes of maternal mortality are also on the docket.

“I can say with 100 percent certainty that we wouldn’t have had these conversations” a few years ago, said Assembly Majority Leader Teresa Benitez-Thompson (D). “None of these bills would have seen the light of day.”

The change did not occur by accident nor organically. Women organized, ran for office, and won. The “boys club” that in 2015 refused to schedule a hearing for Sen. Patricia Ann Spearman’s (D) bill on pay equity for women is over.

Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University observes, “it’s probably a lot more significant that we have 49 legislatures left to go.”

It is not simply their politics and ethnicity conservative opponents of Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) oppose. It is their gender and the challenge they and their female colleagues in Congress represent to a “man’s world.” Even in these Trumpishly incorrect times, revanchists do not have the manliness to say so aloud. Except in locker rooms surrounded by other naked men.

If male politicians could get pregnant, there would be as many Planned Parenthood clinics as there are Post Offices. 💌📬 https://t.co/2YUR8Htpqm— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 16, 2019

Friday Night Soother

by digby

Nashville Zoo is pleased to announce that a Clouded Leopard named River gave birth to three cubs, two males and one female, on April 29.

Nashville Zoo is part of the Clouded Leopard Consortium and also part of the Clouded Leopard Species Survival Plan® in zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA). The species is under threat in its native habitat.

“These three cubs are important because they will go on to pair with other Clouded Leopards and increase this species’ captive population,” said Dr. Heather Robertson, Nashville Zoo Director of Veterinary Services. “The two males are particularly important because there were no males born at AZA facilities last year, which means there were few, if any, cub pairings.”

Clouded Leopards are paired with unrelated mates born at other zoos within the first year so the couple will grow up together. This process lowers aggression from the males and increases the chance of successful mating and birth in the future.

After the care team noticed that three-year-old River appeared to be neglecting her cubs, the veterinary team removed the cubs to hand rear. Clouded Leopard cubs are often hand-reared in zoos because females often neglect their offspring. Hand rearing also lowers stress for future hands-on care and helps with introductions to mates in the future.

The cubs will stay at Nashville Zoo for now with plans to eventually introduce them to a potential mate at another zoo.

The cubs weigh between 220-265 grams each. With the addition of these cubs, the Zoo is now home to 13 Clouded Leopards. Nashville Zoo has been working with these cats since 1992 and has welcomed 38 cubs since 2009. There are currently 74 Clouded Leopards in the AZA facilities and 295 in accredited facilities globally.

Dr. Robertson is the nationwide vet advisor for this species. Much of the information known about this species is because of the collaboration between Nashville Zoo, Smithsonian’s National Zoo, Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand and The Zoological Parks Organization of Thailand.

Clouded Leopards are listed as Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Though they are protected by law in most range countries, enforcement of these laws is weak in many places. Precise data on Clouded Leopard population numbers in the wild is not known. The reduced number of pelts encountered at markets and reduced sightings of Clouded Leopards by people within its range suggest the species is in decline.

Via Zooborns

QOTD: William Barr

by digby

“We should be worried about government officials who put their thumbs on the scale.”

He would know:

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, specifically to September 1992, when Attorney General William Barr, top-ranking FBI officials and — believe it or not — a Treasury Department functionary who actually sold “Presidential Bitch” T-shirts with Hillary Clinton’s likeness from her government office, pressured the U.S. attorney in Little Rock to open an investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Whitewater investment.

The Arkansas prosecutor was Charles “Chuck” Banks, a Republican appointed by President Reagan, and recently nominated to a federal judgeship by President George H.W. Bush. It was definitely in Banks’ interest to see Bush re-elected.

The problem was that Banks knew all about Madison Guaranty S&L and its screwball proprietor Jim McDougal. His office had unsuccessfully prosecuted the Clintons’ Whitewater partner for bank fraud. He knew perfectly well that McDougal had deceived them about their investment, just as he’d fooled everybody in a frantic fiscal juggling act trying to save his doomed thrift.

The “Presidential Bitch” woman’s analysis showed a shaky grasp of banking law and obvious bias — listing virtually every prominent Democrat in Arkansas as a suspect. So when FBI headquarters in Washington ordered its Little Rock office to proceed on L. Jean Lewis’ criminal referral, Banks decided he had to act. He wrote a stinging letter to superiors in the Department of Justice, refusing to be party to a trumped-up probe clearly intended to affect the presidential election. “Even media questions about such an investigation … he wrote, “all too often publicly purport to ‘legitimize what can’t be proven.’ “

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Fabric swatches, fireworks and fences

by digby

The latest obsession of the most powerful man on earth:

The barrier that President Trump wants to build along the Mexico border will be a steel bollard fence, not a concrete wall as he long promised, and the president is fine with that. He has a few other things he would like to change, though.

The bollards, or “slats,” as he prefers to call them, should be painted “flat black,” a dark hue that would absorb heat in the summer, making the metal too hot for climbers to scale, Trump has recently told White House aides, Homeland Security officials and military engineers.

And the tips of the bollards should be pointed, not round, the president insists, describing in graphic terms the potential injuries that border crossers might receive. Trump has said the wall’s current blueprints include too many gates — placed at periodic intervals to allow vehicles and people through — and he wants the openings to be smaller.

At a moment when the White House is diverting billions of dollars in military funds to fast-track construction, the president is micromanaging the project down to the smallest design details. But Trump’s frequently shifting instructions and suggestions have left engineers and aides confused, according to current and former administration officials.

Trump has demanded Department of Homeland Security officials come to the White House on short notice to discuss wall construction and on several occasions woke former secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to discuss the project in the early morning, officials said.

Trump also has repeatedly summoned the head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Todd T. Semonite, to impart his views on the barrier’s properties, demanding that the structure be physically imposing but also aesthetically pleasing.

“He thinks it’s ugly,” said one administration official familiar with Trump’s opinions, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being fired.

The president sees himself as “a builder,” said David Lapan, a former Homeland Security official who worked at the department when it spent more than $3 million on the construction of eight border barrier prototypes near San Diego.

“But building high-rises in New York City is not the same as putting up a barrier at the border,” said Lapan, now at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. “You’re not looking for aesthetics; you’re looking for functionality.”

Homeland Security officials had settled on the steel bollard design many years earlier, but Lapan said many of the prototypes were built using concrete to suit the president’s tastes — and demonstrated that the material was impractical and vulnerable to breaches.

Homeland Security officials declined to comment on the president’s design requests for the barriers and about his conversations with engineers and border officials. An Army Corps spokesman confirmed that Semonite has met several times with Trump and referred inquiries to the White House.

The president — who repeatedly promised to force Mexico to pay for his desired border wall — has pledged to build 400 miles of new barriers by next year, a goal he reiterated during an immigration speech at the White House on Thursday afternoon. The plan would probably require him to reprogram additional taxpayer funds from military budgets.

Trump’s changing tastes are potentially driving up the price. He remains adamant that the barrier should be painted black, despite warnings that it would significantly increase construction costs and maintenance budgets.

“Once you paint it, you always have to paint it,” said another administration official.

Trump also has changed his mind repeatedly about the structure’s height, urging engineers to make it as tall as possible, though his desires have been tempered by cost concerns and engineers’ worries about structural integrity.

He’s watching Fox news obsessively, planning for his Dear Leader fireworks show on the 4th and designing a border wall with sharp pikes on it so that migrants will impale themselves upon them.

He doesn’t need to be impeached, he needs a fucking straight-jacket.

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When abortion was banned in Romania

by digby

This piece in Foreign Policy by Amy MacKinnon about what it was like in a country that outlawed abortion is pretty chilling. And it makes a very good point: what will happen to all the unwanted children?

As lawmakers in Alabama this week passed a bill that would outlaw abortion in the U.S. state entirely, protesters outside the statehouse wore blood-red robes, a nod to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, in which childbearing is entirely controlled by the state. Hours later, the book was trending on Twitter.

But opponents of the restrictive abortion laws currently being considered in the United States don’t need to look to fiction for admonitory examples of where these types of laws can lead. For decades, communist Romania was a real-life test case of what can happen when a country outlaws abortion entirely, and the results were devastating.

In 1966, the leader of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, outlawed access to abortion and contraception in a bid to boost the country’s population. In the short term, it worked, and the year after it was enacted the average number of children born to Romanian women jumped from 1.9 to 3.7. But birthrates quickly fell again as women found ways around the ban. Wealthy, urban women were sometimes able to bribe doctors to perform abortions, or they had contraceptive IUDs smuggled in from Germany.

Yet Romania’s prohibition of the procedure was disproportionately felt by low-income women and disadvantaged groups, which abortion-rights advocates in the United States fear would happen if the Alabama law came into force. As a last resort, many Romanian women turned to home and back-alley abortions, and by 1989, an estimated 10,000 women had died as a result of unsafe procedures. The real number of deaths might have been much higher, as women who sought abortions and those who helped them faced years of imprisonment if caught. Maternal mortality skyrocketed, doubling between 1965 and 1989.

“Sometimes a woman couldn’t even tell her husband or best friend that she wanted to have an abortion as it would put them at risk as well,” said Irina Ilisei, an academic researcher and co-founder of the Front Association, a Romanian feminist group, and the Feminist Romania website.

“For many women, sexuality represented a fear and not a part of life that can be enjoyed,” Ilisei said.

Another consequence of Romania’s abortion ban was that hundreds of thousands of children were turned over to state orphanages. When communism collapsed in Romania in 1989, an estimated 170,000 children were found warehoused in filthy orphanages. Having previously been hidden from the world, images emerged of stick-thin children, many of whom had been beaten and abused. Some were left shackled to metal bed frames.

Nor did the Romanian law do much to achieve Ceausescu’s goal of dramatically increasing the population. “Making abortion illegal will not lead to women having more babies. So if the goal is to bring about more lives and to protect more lives, this is not the instrument to use,” said Maria Bucur, a professor of history and gender studies at Indiana University.

Don’t think there wouldn’t be such orphanages in the US. The people who are trying to end abortion have never shown the slightest interest in children. They only care about women being forced to endure childbirth against their will. What happens after that is someone’s else’s problem.

“We need to take into consideration the long-term consequences of legislation like this,” said Charles Nelson, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and the author of Romania’s Abandoned Children.

Starting in 2000, Nelson examined the impact that Romania’s orphanages had on children in post-communist Romania and found that many were left with severe developmental impairment and mental health issues. For some, their confinement in orphanages even had a physical impact on the size of their brains.

Nelson said that Romania offers a cautionary tale of what happens when a state tries to control reproductive rights. The new Alabama law raises questions about what kind of support the state would provide if someone doesn’t have the option of ending a pregnancy when the fetus is found to have profound birth defects.

“Does the state have the bandwidth to take care of those kids and support the families?” he said in an interview.

Clearly not. We’re housing migrant kids in camps in the desert right now and nobody seems to even bother keeping track of them. Half this country doesn’t care about any kids that are not their own. That’s a harsh comment but I think it’s true. And they are pretty selfish even when it comes to the future of their own families. They are destroying education and ignoring the immense threat of climate change. They couldn’t even stand to have the First Lady do a program that encouraged children to eat their vegetables and go outside to play. They are motivated entirely by blind opposition to their political enemies and the discomfort they feel with modernity.

The abortion debate is about keeping women in a traditional role and elevating religious belief to the guiding principle in society. It’s about turning back the clock. Fetuses are just a tool, not a real concern. If it’s children they cared about they’d be protesting what’s being done by the government in their name to hurt so many of them.

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William Barr is a real piece o’ work. Much worse than we thought.

by digby

Chris Wallace: Trump probably pumped he finally has an AG focused on protecting his interests. pic.twitter.com/XEGJVNy2aF— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 17, 2019

Barr went on Fox this morning. It was as bad as can possibly be.

During his confirmation hearings, Attorney General William P. Barr’s memo objecting to the probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s obstruction of justice investigation got the most attention. But another of his curious arguments got short-shrifted. It was the time he suggested there was less evidence to support a Russia-collusion investigation than there was to support some other investigations.

Except some of the potential investigations he cited were largely regarded as conspiracy theories.

“I have long believed that the predicate for investigating the [Hillary Clinton] uranium deal, as well as the [Clinton] Foundation, is far stronger than any basis for investigating so-called ‘collusion,’ ” Barr wrote to the New York Times’s Peter Baker in 2017. “Likewise the basis for investigating various ‘national security’ activities carried out during the election. . . . To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the Department [of Justice] is abdicating its responsibility.”

That William Barr is beginning to rear his head.

Barr tried to downplay this exchange during his confirmation hearings, and even in raising questions about how the Russia investigation was launched recently, he has emphasized he has no proof of wrongdoing.

But in a couple of new interviews, Barr leans in on the idea that these “various ‘national security’ activities” were nefarious — pretty hard.

In both a Wall Street Journal interview and another with Fox News, Barr cited the need to understand whether the U.S. government had put its “thumb on the scale” during the 2016 election. He told Fox that “there were some very strange developments” during the 2016 transition period. He said the answers he’s getting have been “inadequate” and “not sufficient.”

One of his more noteworthy and telling comments was about the Steele dossier. This was the document used to secure a FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. “It’s a very unusual situation to have opposition research like that, especially one that on its face had a number of clear mistakes and a somewhat jejune analysis, and to use that to conduct counter-intelligence against an American political campaign is a strange —,” he said.

Barr then seemed to check himself and scale back his connecting of the dots, “— would be a strange development. I’m not sure what role it played, but that’s something we have to look at.”

Barr’s most curious comment, though, might have been this: When he was asked about why Democrats have suggested Barr lied in his testimony, he speculated that “they may be concerned about the outcome of a review of what happened during the election.”

So here we have a guy who emailed a reporter in 2017 raising questions about “various ‘national security’ activities” — note the quotation marks he himself used there, suggesting skepticism. He then adopts President Trump’s “spying” rhetoric while announcing the Justice Department would look into such allegations. He taps a U.S. attorney to look into these matters. And now he’s calling the use of the Steele dossier both “strange” and “unusual,” and saying the answers he’s getting aren’t adding up.

It sounds a lot like the guy who believed in the plausibility of this conspiracy theory even before many in his own party adopted it. And it sounds like he’s gradually becoming more comfortable saying so.

Basically, Barr is signaling that his “review” is going to be favorable to Trump and that former FBI officials (and the rest of us, for that matter) should be looking over our shoulders. This new sheriff in town is is a banana republican. Bigly.

Here’s how the president reacted:

My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2019

Actually, treason carries the death penalty, which he loves.

Obviously, unless the FBI officials were working on behalf of a government with which we’re at war to sabotage Trump’s campaign — oddly by trashing Hillary Clinton’s — treason isn’t applicable. But I’m sure Barr can come up with something to keep Dear Leader happy.

Fox News says Comey, Brennan and Clapper will have to pay:

It’s obvious that if anyone is counting on the FBI and the Intelligence agencies to stop any foreign interference on behalf of Trump in the next election they had better get over it. Barr is sending a clear message to the troops to lay off Trump no matter what they see.

The good news is that the Democrats will be talking about the kitchen table issues people really care about so we won’t have to

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My Salon column this morning: