Last Call For May Or May Not, Con't

The government of UK Prime Minister Theresa May was just handed a crippling loss on Brexit, and at this point the writing is on the wall for how long May stays in office.

Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal has been rejected by 230 votes - the largest defeat for a sitting government in history.

MPs voted by 432 votes to 202 to reject the deal, which sets out the terms of Britain's exit from the EU on 29 March.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has now tabled a vote of no confidence in the government, which could trigger a general election.

The confidence vote is expected to be held at about 1900 GMT on Wednesday.

The defeat is a huge blow for Mrs May, who has spent more than two years hammering out a deal with the EU.

The plan was aimed at bringing about an orderly departure from the EU on 29 March, and setting up a 21-month transition period to negotiate a free trade deal.

The vote was originally due to take place in December, but Mrs May delayed it to try and win the support of more MPs.

The UK is still on course to leave on 29 March but the defeat throws the manner of that departure - and the timing of it - into further doubt.

MPs who want either a further referendum, a softer version of the Brexit proposed by Mrs May, to stop Brexit altogether or to leave without a deal, will ramp up their efforts to get what they want, as a weakened PM offered to listen to their arguments.

At this point I don't see how May survives the next couple of weeks, let alone the year.  Corbyn's no-confidence vote may very well pass, and then it all goes into the scrap heap.  It's chaos on both sides of the pond right now, and it doesn't look like a solution is coming anytime soon.

Last Call For May Or May Not

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has survived a no-confidence vote by her own party and will remain PM, but the fact is Brexit is continuing to hurtle off a cliff, and it will eventually take May with it into oblivion.

Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, survived the gravest threat yet to her embattled leadership on Wednesday, winning a confidence motion called by Conservative Party lawmakers angry at her handling of the country’s troubled departure from the European Union.

But the victory celebration, if any, is likely to be short-lived. While Mrs. May survived to fight another day, her win did nothing to alter the parliamentary arithmetic that forced her this week to delay a critical vote on her plan for withdrawal from the European Union, or Brexit.

John Springford, deputy director of the Center for European Reform, a London-based research institute, said that the size of the vote against her “is an even clearer signal that she won’t be able to get her deal through Parliament, and makes it even more likely that when she puts the deal to the vote she will lose that.”

Mrs. May won the support of 200 Conservative lawmakers, while 117 voted against her. The protest vote exceeded many forecasts, and is expected to compound her difficulties in Parliament. Her enemies were already pressuring her.

“This was a terrible result for the prime minister,” said Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leader of the hard-line pro-Brexit faction.

She won only after promising that she would step aside soon after the Brexit agonies were over, according to reports from a meeting of Conservative Party lawmakers preceding the vote. That removed the generally unwelcome possibility that she would stand as party leader in the next general election.

One Conservative lawmaker, George Freeman, said that Mrs. May had made clear “that she has listened, heard and respects the will of the party that once she has delivered an orderly Brexit, she will step aside for the election of a new leader.”

The problem of course is that May cannot deliver anything close to an "orderly Brexit" and she doesn't have the votes and likely never will.  Yes, the bluff by the Tories was called and May survived the no-confidence measure, but there's no visible Brexit solution, and when it all blows up in a few months, it's going to be a disaster of epic proportions.

And somewhere, Vladimir Putin is laughing his ass off.

Facebook Gotta Face The Face

The British government has now grown tired of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's refusal to appear in front of Parliament, and it has grown tired of the Trump regime refusing to act to bring the tech giants to account, so our friends across the pond have taken matters into their own hands.

Parliament has used its legal powers to seize internal Facebook documents in an extraordinary attempt to hold the US social media giant to account after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer MPs’ questions.

The cache of documents is alleged to contain significant revelations about Facebook decisions on data and privacy controls that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It is claimed they include confidential emails between senior executives, and correspondence with Zuckerberg.

Damian Collins, the chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, invoked a rare parliamentary mechanism to compel the founder of a US software company, Six4Three, to hand over the documents during a business trip to London. In another exceptional move, parliament sent a serjeant at arms to his hotel with a final warning and a two-hour deadline to comply with its order. When the software firm founder failed to do so, it’s understood he was escorted to parliament. He was told he risked fines and even imprisonment if he didn’t hand over the documents.

“We are in uncharted territory,” said Collins, who also chairs an inquiry into fake news. “This is an unprecedented move but it’s an unprecedented situation. We’ve failed to get answers from Facebook and we believe the documents contain information of very high public interest.”

Zuckerberg should be absolutely terrified and for a very, very good reason.

The seizure is the latest move in a bitter battle between the British parliament and the social media giant. The struggle to hold Facebook to account has raised concerns about limits of British authority over international companies that now play a key role in the democratic process.

Facebook, which has lost more than $100bn in value since March when the Observer exposed how Cambridge Analytica had harvested data from 87m US users, faces another potential PR crisis. It is believed the documents will lay out how user data decisions were made in the years before the Cambridge Analytica breach, including what Zuckerberg and senior executives knew.

MPs leading the inquiry into fake news have repeatedly tried to summon Zuckerberg to explain the company’s actions. He has repeatedly refused. Collins said this reluctance to testify, plus misleading testimony from an executive at a hearing in February, had forced MPs to explore other options for gathering information about Facebook operations.

“We have very serious questions for Facebook. It misled us about Russian involvement on the platform. And it has not answered our questions about who knew what, when with regards to the Cambridge Analytica scandal,” he said.

“We have followed this court case in America and we believed these documents contained answers to some of the questions we have been seeking about the use of data, especially by external developers.”

At this point the Brits understand full well that the Trump regime will never investigate Facebook's ties to Russian propaganda and data misuse.  They are playing their own game of cricket now, and frankly they no longer care what the US thinks anymore.  Zuckerberg could end up in a UK prison at this rate.

Maybe the Brits will do us a favor and get rid of Google and Amazon too.

Trump Trading Blows, Con't

Yesterday I talked about how Donald Trump was planning to ditch the G-7 summit to go hang out with his new dictator pals in Singapore, and today he made good on that threat, but not before storming out with the ultimatum that all nations wanting to do business with the US must drop tariffs, or else.

President Trump told foreign leaders at the Group of Seven summit that they must dramatically reduce trade barriers with the United States or they would risk losing access to the world’s largest economy, delivering his most defiant trade threat yet to his counterparts from around the globe.

But there were numerous signs here that other leaders stood their ground, having stiffened after months of attacks and insults. Each leader now faces crucial decisions about how to proceed.

Trump, in a news conference before leaving for Singapore, described private conversations he held over two days with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Canada. He said he pushed them to consider removing every single tariff or trade barrier on American goods, and in return he would do the same for products from their countries. But if steps aren’t taken, he said, the penalties would be severe.

“We’re like the piggy bank that everybody is robbing,” Trump said. “And that ends.”

The U.S. leader described the meetings with his counterparts as cordial, and he repeatedly blamed past U.S. leaders for what he views as a trade imbalance. He also said other nations had taken advantage of decades of U.S. complacency with regards to trade, something that he planned to end.

The two-day session under crystalline blue skies in Charlevoix, Quebec, put Trump’s transactional view of alliances, economic leverage and trade relationships into sharp focus for other nations often frustrated by Trump’s ad hoc decision-making.

At this second G-7 gathering of Trump’s presidency, the question of whether the U.S. leader would follow through on campaign boasts about punishing international freeloaders has been largely answered.

He did not back away or blunt his critiques, and despite first-name references to “Angela,” and “Justin,” Trump did little to disguise his distrust of the international consensus model of world affairs that the G-7 represents.

The thing is, our allies?  They're going to chose "or else".   They're not putting up with Trump's crap, and they are calling the bluff of a wildly unpopular elected official whose party is about to get crushed at the polls in five months.  When the economic damage of these tariffs starts to show up in jobs reports about September or October or so, you'll know what caused it.

Meanwhile, Trump is more than happy to go meet his actual boss Vladimir Putin in Vienna later this year, all while telling the G-7 allies to go to hell.

He's the best agent Putin could have asked for.

Trump Trading Blows, Con't

Donald Trump's trip Thursday to the G-7 summit in Quebec -- or as French President Emmanuel Macron called it "the G-6 plus 1" -- was such an unmitigated disaster that Trump is picking up his ball and leaving early.

President Donald Trump continued to criticize Canada early Friday morning after the White House announced he will leave the G-7 summit before its conclusion following a day of back-and-forth with fellow world leaders that foreshadowed confrontations during the meeting of the world's largest advanced economies.

Trump will be depart the summit in Quebec at 10:30 a.m. Saturday and head directly to Singapore, the site of his June 12 meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. The G-7 summit is scheduled to wrap up later on Saturday.

Before the Thursday night announcement, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada both promised to confront Trump over his recent decision to impose tariffs on U.S. allies.

Trump, in response, laid into the two leaders on Thursday evening and Friday morning over those plans.

“Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau and President Macron that they are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “The EU trade surplus with the U.S. is $151 Billion, and Canada keeps our farmers and others out. Look forward to seeing them tomorrow.”

On Friday a little after 6 a.m., he tweeted, “Canada charges the U.S. a 270% tariff on Dairy Products! They didn’t tell you that, did they? Not fair to our farmers!” and “Looking forward to straightening out unfair Trade Deals with the G-7 countries. If it doesn’t happen, we come out even better!”

By pulling out early, Trump will skip sessions focused on climate change, the oceans and clean energy. He will also miss the traditional group-photo opportunity among fellow heads of state. The president may also miss the opportunity to host a summit-ending news conference, something world leaders traditionally do. The leader of the host nation, in this case Trudeau, also takes questions and gives closing remarks. Trump chose not to hold a news conference last year, becoming the only G-7 leader not to do so before leaving Italy, according to The Hill. He opted instead for a speech at a nearby naval air station.

The summit traditionally concludes with a joint statement spelling out the areas of agreement on the wide range of policy issues discussed. But before Trump's announcement, Macron urged the other five nations to hold strong and not let potential U.S. opposition water down their communiqué.

The 2017 statement, for example was notable for its explicit mention that the U.S. did not share its allies‘ support of the Paris Climate Accord. Less than a week later, Trump announced in the White House Rose Garden that the U.S. would be exiting the climate agreement.

“Maybe the American president doesn’t care about being isolated today, but we don’t mind being six, if needs be,” Macron said, part of his plea to confront Trump head-on.

Trump is such a petulant child, and his utter failure to even remain on the same continent with the G-7 leaders, our closest economic and military allies, proves beyond a doubt that the North Korean "summit" he's heading to next week in Singapore will be one of the most comical crash-and-burn cockups in US diplomatic history.

Our isolation from the world is proceeding at a brisk pace, and clearly the rest of the planet is willing to and prepared to operate without our "leadership" anymore.  It's probably the best option given the circumstances.

Oh, and Trump's biggest complaint?

Russia wasn't invited.  They haven't been since they, you know, invaded the Ukraine and took the Crimea region.

I wonder when we get kicked out?

Sunday Long Read: From Moscow To London

If you want to know why Putin and his oligarchs have been so successful at money laundering, and why Donald Trump is doing his best at emulating them to create a oligarchy where Trump is most powerful human being on the planet, the key has always been in Moscow's financial relationship with London, as Oliver Bullough of The Guardian explains in this week's Sunday Long Read.

In March, parliament’s foreign affairs committee asked me to come and tell them what to do about dirty Russian cash. As a journalist, I’ve spent much of my career writing about financial corruption in the former Soviet Union, but the invitation came as something of a surprise. After all, ever since I was at school in the 1990s, British politicians have welcomed Russian money to our shores. They have celebrated when oligarchs have bought our football clubs, cheered when they’ve listed their companies on our Stock Exchange. They have gladly accepted their political donations and patronised their charitable foundations.

When journalists and academics pointed out that these murky fortunes could buy influence over our democracy and undermine the rule of law, they were largely dismissed as inconvenient Cassandras warning MPs to beware Russians bearing gifts. But earlier this year, after the poisoning in Salisbury of the former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, those little-heeded prophecies jumped straight into the pages of Hansard. “To those who seek to do us harm, my message is simple: you are not welcome here,” Theresa May told the House of Commons on 14 March, in a speech that blamed Russia for the attack. “There is no place for these people, or their money, in our country.”

Britain’s entire political class joined the prime minister in this screeching handbrake turn. MPs who had long presented the nation’s openness to trade as a great virtue suddenly wanted to be seen as tough on kleptocrats, tough on the causes of kleptocrats. Having allowing so much Russian money into Britain, these MPs were now seized with concern that Vladimir Putin might, through his power over his nation’s super-rich, be able to influence our institutions. Were we selling Putin the rope with which he would hang us, they wondered.

That is why, on 28 March, I took a seat in committee room six, a chamber high up in the Palace of Westminster, with heavy furniture, a view over the River Thames, and a carpet like a migraine. The foreign affairs committee exists to monitor the work of the Foreign Office – essentially, to keep an eye on Boris Johnson – but its members can investigate any subjects they choose. This time, they had chosen to look into the money Putin and his cronies hold in Britain and its overseas territories, with a view to exploring fresh opportunities for sanctions.

I had brought along a list of things I wanted to talk about: how we should improve our defences against money laundering; how we need transparency about who owns property; how MPs themselves must stop taking money from dodgy ex-Soviet oligarchs if they want others to do the same.

But the first question, from Priti Patel, the former international development secretary, threw me: “Can you give the committee a sense of the scale of so-called ‘dirty money’ being laundered through London?” she asked.

It is a vast question, worthy of a book in itself, and one that even the National Crime Agency would struggle to answer, let alone me. Then came her second question: “What assets has that hidden money gone into?”

I tried my best – I mentioned property, private schools, luxury goods – but I think she and I both knew I’d fluffed it. I should have brought along specific examples, with times and dates and names. The embarrassing truth is that, although I have written about Russia and its neighbours for two decades, during which I have increasingly specialised in analysing corruption, it had never really occurred to me to ascertain precisely how much stolen Russian money had found a home in the UK, or to chart exactly where it had ended up.

If someone like me had been this culpably incurious, it is hardly surprising that politicians with dozens of other priorities have had to scramble to understand what we’re facing. But for the past couple of months, I have belatedly tried to discover an answer to the foreign affairs committee’s questions.

It turns out that the situation is even more worrying than I had suspected.

It is far too late for the UK, facing Brexit and financial catastrophe of their own making, being sliced off like a cut of prime beef and served to Putin and Moscow.  The rest of the EU is barely holding on, and all indications are that Italy and Spain will be the next to fall.  Putin has all but won, and his absolute dominance of Europe through a new Warsaw Pact is now only a matter of time.

But Putin has already gotten his hooks into the US with Trump, a willing agent who has worked out for the Kremlin apparatchiks beyond their wildest dreams.  Putin is carving up London Broil right now, but he has our country on the menu, and the knives are already out. Trump still thinks he can be Putin, and he'll destroy our democracy to get there.

And that's when Putin will take the reins.

Getting Tough With Vlad, Con't

The Russians are meeting every expulsion of one of their diplomats by the US, UK, EU and NATO with expulsions of their own as the game of retaliation continues for the chemical weapon attack on British soil earlier this month.

The Kremlin announced on Thursday that it would expel 60 Americans, and probably dozens of other diplomats, and close the American consulate in St. Petersburg, a move that intensifies Russia’s clash with Europe and the United States. 

The action was in retaliation for the expulsion of more than 150 Russian officials from other countries — which was itself a reaction to a nerve-agent attack on British soil that Britain and its allies have blamed on Moscow. 

The United States ambassador to Russia, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, announced. Sixty American diplomats will be expelled from Russia — the same as the number of Russian diplomats whom Washington is expelling. The Americans were given until April 5 to leave the country. 

In addition, Russia plans to expel an unspecified number of diplomats from the more than 20 other countries and NATO that joined Britain and the United States in expelling Russians. Mr. Lavrov said the number would “mirror” the number of expelled Russians, which suggested that the ultimate total might rise above 150. (Britain and Russia have already each expelled 23 of the other country’s representatives.)

The crisis over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter has driven tensions between the Kremlin and the West to their highest pitch in decades. The tit-for-tat responses raise the prospect of further, more serious escalations, either public or clandestine.

Things are only going to get worse from here.  I would expect that the next step will be Putin wanting a little chat with his orange friend and making it clear that things can get much, much more uncomfortable for Trump politically, and soon.

I would expect serious concessions to Russia, mostly involving Turkey and Syria.  We'll see what transpires, but this is the part of the proceedings where we find out just how much of Trump's ass Putin owns.

Last Call For Getting Tough With Vlad

Oh, we're not getting tough with Putin at all, as our government is chock-full of Russian sycophants and useful idiots in Moscow's orbit, but at least our closest and oldest ally isn't putting up with his crap anymore.

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday ordered the immediate expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats believed to be involved in espionage, in the first reprisals against Moscow for a chemical attack on a former double agent. 

May, speaking to Parliament, said the response would include a halt to high-level meetings with Russian officials and the cancellation of a planned visit to Britain by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. 

She also said the royal family and government ministers would boycott this summer’s World Cup soccer tournament in Moscow. More countermeasures — some clandestine — are under consideration. 

The prime minister repeated the conclusion of British investigators that Russia had either deployed or lost control of a dangerous nerve agent used in the attack targeting former spy Sergei Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia.

May said Russia’s dismissive response to her demand for explanation has “demonstrated complete disdain for the gravity of these events.” 

“Instead, they have treated the use of a military-grade nerve agent in Europe with sarcasm, contempt and defiance,” she told lawmakers.

The British leader gave no further details on the Russian diplomats ordered out of the country but said they were deemed “undeclared intelligence officers.” She called it the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats from Britain since Cold War-era retributions in the 1970s.

We're in a new Cold War folks, we've been in one for years, and we're losing it.  Badly.

Expect swift Russian retaliation on both the diplomatic and economic fronts.  Moscow can make things rather uncomfortable for Europe if they want to, not that Vladimir gives a damn about what May thinks. 

This is a fight Putin has wanted for a long time, and now that he's taken the US off the board with Trump and company, and cracked the EU open with Brexit while picking up a few things in the Ukraine, he can make his next move.  The Germans are on the ropes with Merkel barely hanging on, the French have bigger problems to worry about right now with Marine Le Pen's merry crew of racists, and the rest of the EU is trying to keep the nationalist cancer in Poland from spreading.

The Brits are standing up to him on this for now, but I expect that will change sooner rather than later, and Vlad knows how to play the long game.  He's not going anywhere anytime soon.

Terminus Mortuus Est Rex

The Trump regime spring cleaning dirtying continues, and this one's big: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is out, with CIA Director Mike Pompeo taking over.

President Trump has ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and plans to nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him as the nation’s top diplomat, orchestrating a major change to his national security team amid delicate negotiations with North Korea, White House officials said Tuesday.

Trump last Friday asked Tillerson to step aside, and the embattled diplomat cut short his trip to Africa on Monday to return to Washington.

Pompeo will replace him at the State Department, and Gina Haspel — the deputy director at the CIA — will succeed him at the CIA, becoming the first woman to run the spy agency, if confirmed.

In a statement issued to The Washington Post, Trump praised both Pompeo and Haspel.

“I am proud to nominate the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, to be our new Secretary of State,” Trump said. “Mike graduated first in his class at West Point, served with distinction in the U.S. Army, and graduated with Honors from Harvard Law School. He went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives with a proven record of working across the aisle.”

The president continued, “Gina Haspel, the Deputy Director of the CIA, will be nominated to replace Director Pompeo and she will be the CIA’s first-ever female director, a historic milestone. Mike and Gina have worked together for more than a year, and have developed a great mutual respect.”

Trump also had words of praise for Tillerson: “Finally, I want to thank Rex Tillerson for his service. A great deal has been accomplished over the last fourteen months, and I wish him and his family well.”

The president — who has long clashed will Tillerson, who he believes is “too establishment” in his thinking — felt it was important to make the change now, as he prepares for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as well as upcoming trade negotiations, three White House officials said.

Two things:  Trump definitely now feels he is unfettered and can do whatever the hell he wants to right now.  He's not wrong, nobody's going to try to stop him.  House Republicans surely proved that yesterday.  Trump says he told Rex on Friday that his services would no longer be required, Tillerson says that he was never told, but this announcement came just hours after Tillerson remarked that the State Department believed Russia was "clearly" behind the chemical weapon attack in Britain last week that put ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the hospital.

The second is that the odds of US military action against Syria and North Korea just went skyward.  Bringing in the CIA head as your new chief diplomat is not even pretending peace was ever on the table.  The only question now is the timeframe.

War is definitely coming.  In his own thoroughly corrupt but predictable way, Tillerson was the last holdout for diplomacy.  It's all swamp monsters now, and they're packing thermite and Everclear.

Donny Orders The Facism And Chips

America's "special relationship" with London is coming apart at the seams, and the vast majority of the growing rift between Washington and one of our oldest allies is the fact that Theresa May cannot stand Donald Trump's Ugly American act.

Over a meal of blue cheese salad and beef ribs in the White House banqueting room, Trump held forth on a wide range of topics. “The president had strong views on all of them,” recalls Chris Wilkins, then May’s strategy director, who was among the aides around the table. “He said Brexit’s going to be the making of us. It’s going to be a brilliant thing.”

Trump turned to May and told her he believed there were parts of London that were effectively “no-go areas” due to the number of Islamic extremists. May chose to speak up to “correct him,” Wilkins said.

Trump also discussed his British golf courses and his hopes that the relationship with May would be stronger than the Thatcher-Reagan alliance. “It was an hour of the president holding court and the PM being very diplomatic and not many other people saying anything,” Wilkins said.

It shows the contrast in personalities that make for an unusual relationship, albeit one still underpinned by enduring strategic military cooperation and cultural links. As one British official observed, Trump is a larger than life character and May is almost the complete opposite.

During formal phone calls between the two leaders, May finds it almost impossible to make headway and get her points across, one person familiar with the matter said. Trump totally dominates the discussion, leaving the prime minister with five or ten seconds to speak before he interrupts and launches into another monologue.

In one phone conversation during 2017, Trump complained to May over the criticism he’d been getting in British newspapers. Amid warnings that Trump would face protests in the streets when he arrived, he told the prime minister he would not be coming to the U.K. until she could promise him a warm welcome.
May responded to say such treatment was simply the way the British press operate, and there wasn’t much she could do. In the secure bunker underneath the prime minister’s office, her advisers listened in to the call in astonishment at Trump’s demand.

British officials suspect Trump’s displeasure still lingers. The president canceled a planned trip to London next month for the official opening of the new U.S. embassy building. He claimed he disapproved of a deal to sell the old U.S. diplomatic headquarters. Some in May’s team now regret their “nightmare” decision to offer Trump a state visit.

While the offer of a state visit still stands, British officials don’t expect him to take it up any time soon, or perhaps ever.

“The relationship has taken some knocks,” said Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to the U.S. “But there is so much substance to the relationship—commercial, defense, intelligence, foreign policy, cyber, culture, language and shared values—that we all have an interest in ensuring that it remains strong.”

It'll take decades for America to repair the diplomatic damage from Trump, especially due to the fact we were still repairing the damage from Dubya.  Why would anyone trust us with leaders like that, and a populace they know would happily elect somebody as odious as Donald Trump?

No wonder the rest of the world is moving forward without us, leaving America, and millions of potential jobs, behind.

Last Call For Mayday In November

Donald Trump's had a bad month or so, with indictments of his former campaign manager and his business partner and a foreign policy adviser cooperating with Mueller to turn states' evidence on his regime.  This week Trump's party got crushed in Virginia and New Jersey and Republicans are retiring in droves from Congress.

But across the pond UK Prime Minister Theresa May isn't exactly having a good November either, and suddenly her government has to be glad that Trump's failures are helping to take May and her massive bungles off the front page.

The saying goes that a week is a long time in politics. That’s all the time it took for May to lose Defence Secretary Michael Fallon in the sexual-harassment scandal rocking Westminster and her international development secretary, Priti Patel, over a stack of revelations about secret meetings with Israeli officials -- including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. To make matters worse, two other senior figures are in hot water. Officials are investigating harassment and pornography allegations against May’s deputy, Damian Green, which he strongly denies. Separately, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson faces calls to resign for a loose comment about a British woman currently in jail in Iran that may lengthen her sentence. 

By Monday afternoon, it was clear that Patel had been running a freelance foreign policy in one of the most sensitive, complex regions in the world. That on its own would under normal circumstances have been enough for her to be fired. On Tuesday morning, May learned from the BBC about a proposal Patel had made to give aid money to the Israeli military yet Patel was still allowed to get onto a plane to Kenya for a scheduled trip.
So when May finally took the plunge it didn’t come across as an act of strength. The question was whether she would fire Patel -- which could be humiliating -- or force a resignation that allowed her minister to leave with more dignity. She chose the latter though it looked a lot like a dismissal. 

Patel was summoned back early, arrived to 10 Downing Street via a back entrance and was kept waiting. Shortly after their 30-minute meeting, May’s office released two letters: Patel’s resignation and May’s acceptance of it as the right decision. 

“This situation demonstrates May’s weakness,” said Nick Anstead, a lecturer in political communication at the London School of Economics. “She is very vulnerable to political events that destabilize her government, because she only has very limited room for sacking and reshuffling ministers.” 

That Patel thought she could sit down with someone as high-profile as Netanyahu without first running the idea past her own prime minister feeds the impression that May has no control over her government. That is a marked change from her first year on the job, when ministers had to get permission from the premier’s office to say anything at all. Her authority, along with the ability to hold the reins, collapsed with June’s election drubbing.

“These type of events play into a broader narrative that the government is weak and the prime minister not in control,” Anstead said. 

Moreover, Patel’s letter contained a hint of menace. The pro-Brexit campaigner said she planned to “take an active role” representing local residents now she’s outside government and to “speak up for our country, our national interests and the great future that Britain has as a free, independent and sovereign nation.”

May is looking far less like the Iron Lady and more like a Monty Python sketch.  Cabinet members running around uncontrolled is something we're used to here stateside, but to see it in London is kind of frightening.  Trump gives us a valid excuse for the dysfunction at least.

What's May's excuse?

Iran It Into The Ground

Tang the Conqueror is about to unilaterally blow up President Obama's Iranian nuclear deal, wrecking our relations with the nations that supported us on the agreement and absolutely putting Iran on a North Korea-style path to a nuclear weapon.

President Trump plans to announce next week that he will “decertify” the international nuclear deal with Iran, saying it is not in the national interest of the United States and kicking the issue to a reluctant Congress, people briefed on an emerging White House strategy for Iran said Thursday. 

The move would mark the first step in a process that could eventually result in the resumption of U.S. sanctions against Iran, which would blow up a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear activities that the country reached in 2015 with the U.S. and five other nations. 

Trump is expected to deliver a speech, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 12, laying out a larger strategy for confronting the nation it blames for terrorism and instability throughout the Middle East.

Under what is described as a tougher and more comprehensive approach, Trump would open the door to modifying the landmark 2015 agreement he has repeatedly bashed as a raw deal for the United States. But for now he would hold off on recommending that Congress reimpose sanctions on Iran that would abrogate the agreement, said four people familiar with aspects of the president’s thinking.

Remember, the US didn't go into this alone, all five permanent members of the UN Security Council supported this deal, plus Germany (the so-called P5+1) which means if we sink the deal, we leave them in the lurch too.

That would start a 60-day congressional review period to consider the next steps for the United States. On its own, the step would not break the agreement among Iran, the United States and other world powers, but would start a clock on resuming sanctions that the United States had lifted as its part of the deal.

The administration has begun discussing possible legislation to “strengthen” the agreement, congressional aides and others said. That is the “fix it or nix it” approach suggested by both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a leading Republican hawk on Iran.

It is an uncertain prospect, and many supporters of the deal consider it a dodge.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said last month that he will not reopen the deal for negotiation. 

Separately, representatives of Iran, China and Russia told Secretary of State Rex Tillerson the same thing during a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session, two senior diplomats familiar with that meeting said.

So the deal would fall apart for sure, and there would be no reason for anyone to trust the Trump regime or the word of the US again in future negotiations, not that anyone would after Trump sank the Paris Climate Agreement.

We're rapidly joining the ranks of international pariahs, easily making us the most dangerous rogue state on Earth with our massive military and huge nuclear arsenal, not to mention our dangerous loose cannon of a leader.

As I've said before, when does the rest of the world move to act to contain us?

Another Tough Night For Europe

Another terrorist attack, this time in London itself as a van plowed through pedestrians on London Bridge before the people in the vehicle exited to take knives to bystanders and patrons.

The death toll rose to seven Sunday, following the latest terrorist attack to strike Britain, with Prime Minister Theresa May blaming the “evil ideology of Islamist extremism” and vowing to conduct a review of the nation’s counterterrorism laws.

London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick confirmed that seven people were killed in Saturday night’s incident that saw a van mow down pedestrians on London Bridge before the vehicle’s occupants got out and started stabbing patrons of nearby bars and restaurants. That toll does not include the three attackers, who were fatally shot by officers within eight minutes of the first emergency call, Dick said.

London Ambulance Service earlier said it had taken “at least 48 patients to five hospitals across London.”

As doctors and nurses tended to the wounded, police carried out raids in the east London neighborhood of Barking in a signal that authorities are probing at least the possibility that others may have been involved in the attack’s planning. A dozen people were arrested, police said.

The low-tech but high-profile attack will raise questions about how British security services failed to stop yet another mass-casualty strike after years of thwarting such attempts. May, who is running for another term in this week’s general election, said the nation needs to step up its fight against radical ideologies in response, asserting that there is “far too much tolerance for extremism in our country.”

“Things need to change,” May said Sunday, speaking outside of the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street

The recent spate of terrorist attacks — Saturday’s was Britain’s third in as many months — were not connected, May said. But she described it as “a new trend” in which terrorists are “copying one another and often using the crudest means of attack.”

May had returned from the campaign trail to 10 Downing Street late Saturday for emergency meetings with security officials. On Sunday morning, all the major parties, including May’s Conservatives, suspended campaigning ahead of an election due on Thursday.

The outcome of Thursday's UK general elections is at this point anyone's guess.  Polls are showing that the voters are not happy with the Tories, who promised safety and security along with Brexit, a disengagement from the EU that would protect Britain from the chaos in Europe.

Needless to say that has not happened.  Whether or not Jeremy Corbyn and Labour are ready, well who knows.  The Tory lead has dropped from 18 points in mid-April when May called for the elections to less than six now, and closing fast.

Things could get very dicey from this point on in the UK.  If May loses, what happens to Brexit negotiations?   We'll see shortly.

Intense International Incidents

This week the Trumpies managed to piss off the Brits and embarrass the Germans, and that was just the list of our major allies that we offended.  First, Mouth of Sauron Sean Spicer made London's spies so angry that they actually spoke up about it.

Out of the gate, Spicer stated that the president still stands by his allegation of wiretapping, even after both the House and Senate have pronounced it false, then proceeded to initiate verbal fights with journalists, which media outlets have fairly termed wild and angry. Next, Spicer rehashed the increasingly threadbare accusations of the right-wing media, backing up the White House’s claim against President Obama, making no impression on the gathered journalists.

Things went from bad to worse when Spicer cited one especially ridiculous far-right claim verbatim:

On Fox News on March 14th, Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement: “Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI, and he didn’t use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ—what is that? It’s the initials for the British Intelligence Spying Agency. So simply, by having two people saying to them, ‘the President needs transcripts of conversations involved in candidate Trump’s conversations involving President-elect Trump,’ he was able to get it and there’s no American fingerprints on this.”

As I explained a couple days ago, Napolitano has zero background in intelligence and has no idea what he’s talking about. His accusation against Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, London’s NSA equivalent, was patently absurd, as well as malicious, demonstrating that neither Napolitano nor Fox News have the slightest notion how intelligence works in the real world.

Yet here the White House was publicly endorsing this crackpot theory—and blaming perhaps our closest ally for breaking American laws at the behest of Barack Obama. Our domestic crisis thereby became an international one, for no reason other than the administration has gone global in its efforts to deflect blame from its own stupidity and dishonesty.

This is no small matter. NSA and GCHQ enjoy the most special of special relationships, serving since the Second World War as the cornerstone of the Anglosphere Five Eyes signals intelligence alliance (the others are Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) which defeated Hitler and won the Cold War. This constitutes the most successful espionage alliance in history, and just how close NSA and GCHQ are would be difficult to overstate.

Affectionately calling each other “the cousins,” they interchange personnel and, in the event of disaster—for instance a crippling terrorist attack on agency headquarters—NSA would hand most of its functions over to GCHQ, so that Five Eyes would keep running. It’s long been a source of consternation at Langley that NSA appears to get along better with GCHQ than with CIA. I once witnessed this issue come up in a top-secret meeting with senior officials, in which a CIA boss took an NSA counterpart to task when it became apparent that a piece of highly sensitive intelligence had been shared with “the cousins” before Langley was informed. The NSA senior official’s terse reply silenced the room: “That’s because we trust them.”

Publicly attacking the NSA-GCHQ relationship was therefore a consummately bad idea, particularly by a White House that has already gone so far out of its way to anger and alienate our own spies, and the British reply was one for the record books. Late yesterday, GCHQ issued a remarkable statement:

Recent allegations made by media commentator judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.
American spy services are famously tight-lipped in their public utterances, falling back on “we can neither confirm nor deny” with a regularity that frustrates journalists. And our spooks are positively loquacious compared to British partners, who seldom say anything on the record to the media. Calling out Fox News and the White House in this manner has no precedent, and indicates just how angry British officials are with the Trump administration. For Prime Minister Teresa May, whose efforts to build bridges with the new president have been deeply unpopular at home, this had to be galling.

If angering the entire British spy apparatus didn't win the prize for worst American diplomatic gaffe in decades, then insulting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to her face certainly did, only to have her quickly make Trump look like the uneducated buffoon he really is.

TO APPRECIATE how shocking President Donald Trump is to modern German sensibilities, consider the “America First!” slogan that so cheers his supporters. Then ponder how Germans—and indeed voters across Europe—would react if an avowed law-and-order nationalist were to seek the office of Bundeskanzler with the slogan: “Germany First!” Several issues divided Mr Trump and Chancellor Angela Merkel at their first meeting in the White House on March 17th. At an often awkward press conference in the East Room, the two leaders politely disagreed on everything from immigration to free trade and the value of seeking multinational agreements. Their comportment could hardly have been more different. Mrs Merkel was every inch the cool, reserved physicist-by-training, at moments giving her American host the icy stare of a Mother Superior told a dirty joke. Mr Trump was dyspeptic, defensive and visibly irritated by press questions about his latest controversial tweets.

But the real dividing line between the two involved the nature of political leadership. Mr Trump, being Mr Trump, presented himself as a tribune of the people, heeding and acting on public demands to end “unfair” treatment of America. He catalogued some of those resentments. He said it is time for members of the NATO alliance to pay their “dues”—countries “must pay what they owe”, he grumbled—though as members of NATO, governments do not technically “owe” anything but have merely made political commitments to spend the equivalent of 2% of GDP on defence. He cited public demands for tighter controls on immigration in the name of “national security,” adding that: “immigration is a privilege, not a right.” He condemned previous free trade deals and spoke of the need for American workers to come first from now on.

Mrs Merkel’s response was subtle but brutal. She noted that free trade agreements have “not always been that popular” in Germany, and referred to protests in her own country relating to free trade pacts that the European Union has either signed with foreign partners or wants to sign. She recalled the specific fears raised by an EU pact with South Korea, and the predictions that the German car industry would suffer from increased competition and more open markets. Instead, she said, the pact with South Korea “brought more jobs” and both sides won. “I represent German interests,” she said at one point, just as the American president “stands up for American interests.” Listen carefully and Mrs Merkel was telling Mr Trump that she, like every leader in the world, has domestic politics to think about. Left unspoken was the point that it is easy, even dangerously easy, to let such distinct national interests provoke a clash. Her core message to Mr Trump was that real political leadership involves seeking a co-operative solution that leaves everyone ahead, and that international relations do not have to be zero-sum.

Mrs Merkel had no desire to pick an open fight. She has long experience with swaggering male leaders who like to throw their weight around, from President Vladimir Putin of Russia to the former French leader, Nicolas Sarkozy. The German press corps that covers the chancellor has long swapped tales of the dry, off-the-record jokes that she cracks at the expense of such men, often under the cover of self-deprecation. After one European summit in Brussels at which the hyper-active Mr Sarkozy had been more manic than usual, Mrs Merkel told her press corps: “I think I am the most boring person that he has ever met.”

The German leader also came prepared. She is an atypical “Playboy” reader. But that magazine’s interview with Donald Trump in 1990 is one clue studied by Team Merkel before their first meeting. In that preview of his “America First” views, nearly 30 years ago, Mr Trump accused allies of subsidising exports while free-riding on American security, growling: "I'd throw a tax on every Mercedes-Benz rolling into this country.” The president remains an unlikely Merkel ally. He scorns detail, has praised Britain’s decision to leave the EU, obsesses over trade balances (Germany ran a $53bn trade surplus with America last year), and has called her decision to admit more than a million refugees into Germany “catastrophic”. He has appalled the German government with his open admiration for the iron-fisted nationalism of Mr Putin, his hints that he might lift sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and his suggestions that NATO is obsolete.

At their press conference Mrs Merkel managed to persuade Mr Trump to state his “strong support” for NATO. She also heard the American leader praise Germany’s schemes for job training and retraining, and apprenticeships in industry. Earlier, she had introduced Mr Trump to bosses from firms like Siemens and BMW, who talked up their American factories and investments. That was smart. Apprenticeships are a big part of Germany’s global brand, and an impressed-sounding Mr Trump noted from the podium that his government is “in the process of rebuilding the American industrial base.”

At this point Trump is bleating on Twitter that this week was fine and that his meeting with Merkel was great.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

May Or May Not In The UK

Welcome to the Theresa May era in British politics, where the new Tory government's first order of bsuiness is to rid the nation of that pesky department dealing with climate change.

The government has axed the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) in a major departmental shake-up. 

The brief will be folded into an expanded Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy under Greg Clark. 

Ed Miliband, the former energy and climate secretary under Labour, called the move "plain stupid". 

It comes at a time when campaigners are urging the government to ratify the Paris climate change deal. 

In his statement, Mr Clark appeared keen to calm concerns about the priority given to tackling global warming. 

He said: "I am thrilled to have been appointed to lead this new department charged with delivering a comprehensive industrial strategy, leading Government's relationship with business, furthering our world-class science base, delivering affordable, clean energy and tackling climate change."

Everything's fine, nothing to see here, please go about your business as May's Tories continue to take the country down the primrose path.  Expect more of this as the days, weeks, and months wear on and Brexit-era London decides more and more to pull out of international accords and apologize profusely, but it just can't be done, you see.  British wingnuts may be more polite, but they're just as awful.

New tag: Theresa May.

Sir Nigel Bravely Runs Away

Across the pond in Brexitville, UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage figures he's won by destroying the EU and the UK economy, so he's done with being the guy in charge of creating the disaster.

Nigel Farage says he is standing down as leader of the UK Independence Party.

Mr Farage said his "political ambition has been achieved" with the UK having voted to leave the EU.

He said the party was in a "pretty good place" and said he would not change his mind about quitting as he did after the 2015 general election.

Leading UKIP was "tough at times" but "all worth it" said Mr Farage, who is also an MEP. He added that the UK needed a "Brexit prime minister".

Mr Farage said the party would campaign against "backsliding" on the UK's exit from the EU, saying he planned to see out his term in the European Parliament - describing his party as "the turkeys that voted for Christmas".

He said his party's "greatest potential" lay in attracting Labour voters, adding that he would not be backing any particular candidate to replace him.

"May the best man or woman win," he said.

And why would Farage want to stick around?  He knows full well that Britain is headed into the jet intake and will get shredded and spat out against the wall at several hundred miles an hour. He won't be the guy who has to actually deal withthe rise of racist nationalism he's helped to create.

That's for the little people.  See you, suckers!

Last Call For The Gas Face

Gas is around $2.30 a gallon here in the Cincy/NKY area right now, and it looks like once again the Memorial Day - July 4th stretch will be the year's peak as gas prices are expected to fall again.

Gasoline prices may have peaked for the year, already falling as the busy Fourth of July travel weekend approaches, according to analyst projections. 

Prices at the pump typically top out near the end of June - absent major swings in crude oil costs - and this year gasoline prices likely will fall throughout the second half of 2016, according to a forecast by GasBuddy, which tracks fuel costs nationwide. Gasoline costs started decreasing just before the July 4 holiday in seven of the past 10 years.

"This defies the general consensus on Main Street that prices rise ahead of a major travel holiday," said Gregg Laskoski, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy. 

Motorists will enjoy the lowest Fourth of July prices since 2005, according to GasBuddy. The average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline on Tuesday was unchanged in the Houston area at about $2.11 from the past week, down from $2.54 for the same week last year and $3.48 in 2014. Nationally, pump prices fell an average of about 3 cents to $2.30. 

GasBuddy predicts the national average will dip to $2.27 per gallon on July 4, down significantly from 2014, when the national average hit $3.66 per gallon.

So why the good news?  Ask Nigel Farage.

The decision by United Kingdom voters to exit the European Union will add even more downward pressure to summer gasoline costs despite record-setting demand, Laskoski added. That's because the so-called Brexit is weakening global economies, depressing oil demand and prices. Cheaper oil - the primary feedstock of gasoline - means less expensive fuel. 

GasBuddy projects that average gas price nationally will again slip below $2 a gallon as early as November as demand falls after summer and refineries begin pumping out cheaper winter-blend fuels. The average U.S. price for gasoline is expected to fall to an average of $2.21 in August, $2.02 in October and $1.88 in December, according to GasBuddy.

Gas under $2 a gallon again this winter?  More than likely.  We'll see.

Anarchy In The UK

A little Sex Pistols this morning in honor of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson (who will most likely be the net PM) and the rest of the Brexit crew managing to convince the UK to leave the EU and wreck their own economy for a decade or so. 



I am an anarchist
Don't know what I want
But I know how to get it
I want to destroy the passerby

Apart from causing a sharp, short-term hit to Britain’s economy, the first consequence of Thursday’s vote to leave the EU will be a government crisis in London. David Cameron is now almost certain to resign as prime minister and Conservative party leader — most probably sooner rather than later. A new Conservative administration, distinctly more anti-EU in tone, would replace him.

Unless carefully managed, this process will damage relations between London and other EU capitals. The latter will interpret the Brexit vote as a hammer blow to Europe’s unity. For the sake of protecting that unity, they will be in no mood to offer generous post-Brexit deals for Britain. Negotiations will be in danger of turning into an acrimonious tug of war, distracting Europe from other urgent business.

Second, Brexit will make financial markets more sensitive to the vulnerabilities of the 19-nation eurozone. Sterling has already plunged to a 30-year low. Investors will ask whether, in the light of the Brexit shock, eurozone governments have the political will and public support to strengthen the architecture of European monetary union.

One test will be whether Europe’s banking union, including a plan for common deposit insurance, makes progress over the next 12 months. At present it is blocked. More ambitious proposals, such as an Italian plan for common EU “migration bonds” to finance the EU’s response to the refugee and migrant crisis, will have little chance of being turned into action.

Individual eurozone countries will be under intensified market scrutiny. Ahead of the British vote, yield spreads widened between German government bonds and those of less financially solid southern European countries.

The outlook for Portugal, which is ruled by a shaky coalition of the moderate and radical left, is unsettling investors. The deep-seated troubles of Greece have never gone away. In Spain, which holds a general election on Sunday, the prospects for stable government and economic reform are clouded by a fragmented political party system and Catalan separatism.

Not to mention the almost assured rise of Marine Le Pen and the French nationalists in Paris. Count on other countries to hold referendums as well, and it's not going to be pretty.

Now it's still possible that the next government will find a way to stay in and will not invoke Article 50 and leave the EU within two years, but the odds of that are pretty low.  We won't know the full damage from this for several years at the minimum, but this is a cautionary tale: fear of the other won an historic victory in the UK last night.  I'm thinking at some point it will win here in the US, too.  Maybe not Trump, but somebody far worse.

Last Call For Hitting The Pub

If you want to know what our friends from across the pond think of the US election, it's quite funny and worthy of a drink or two (or five).  Here's a short YouTube clip of the latest Financial Times Pub Quiz, the subject of course being our presidential election season. Your host is Demetri Sevastopulo, the FT's Washington bureau chief.



Considering how much I complain about the American press getting Trump wrong, being terribly critical of Hillary Clinton, pretending like Bernie Sanders still has some sort of magical chance to be the Democratic party's nominee, and how much of a true non-entity Sen. Ted Cruz would be in any other capacity, well it's nice to sit back and have a laugh at their expense, courtesy of the UK.

It's pretty interesting to see what non-American news sources think about our election process. I freely admit that Britain has had some doozies in the election department with newly-minted London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and the nasty pummeling that the Labour Party received this time last year, plus the upcoming referendum on whether or not the UK will even stay in the European Union, but as much of a mess as British politics are, they simply don't hold a candle to the near 18-month insanity of our modern presidential contests.

It's definitely worthy of a drink down at the pub to keep you sane.

If you're interested in the Financial Times coverage of the 2016 election, you can find a lot more here.

Last Call For London Calling

London has just elected Sadiq Khan, Labour Party candidate, as Mayor of the city, and the campaign was as brutal, as nasty, and as racist as you can imagine.

Sadiq Khan, a practicing Muslim and Labour Party politician, has been elected mayor of London, marking a political milestone in the Western world. 

Londoners voted in Khan, 45, as the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital city. He will take office in a metropolis where his fellow Muslims comprise about 12% of the population. 

His victory followed an unusually bitter campaign against Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith, the son of a billionaire, in which race and religion have proven ugly flashpoints. 

The London-born son of Pakistani immigrants, Khan grew up with his six brothers and sister in a three-bedroom, public housing apartment. He studied law, became a university lecturer and the chairman of a civil liberties group, and was elected to Parliament in 2005. 

Affordable housing in a city increasingly drawing the super-rich, aging infrastructure and transportation are top issues facing the new mayor. 

Khan is replacing incumbent Boris Johnson, a colorful and popular figure who took office in 2008 and was a rare Conservative mayor in the Labour-leaning British capital. 

Johnson is leading the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union at a referendum on June 23. He is clashing with Prime Minister David Cameron, who is in favor of the United Kingdom remaining.

By the way, Goldsmith definitely played the terror card as it became clear he was going to lose, accusing the Labour Party of allowing the city to fall to Islamic terrorists that had attacked the city on July 7, 2005.

If that wasn't bad enough, there's the whole separate issue of Labour's leader being Jeremy Corbin, somebody very much considered to be wildly far left with that party having definite problems with those who are anti-Semitic making some very ugly comments.

Even PM David Cameron stepped into the fight, openly accusing Khan of being an ISIS sympathizer.

In the end, Khan won by a nearly 60-40% margin, but I fear this is going to have a major effect on the referendum for the UK to exit the EU next month.

We'll find out soon.