Last Call For The GOP Mask Slips Again...

 ..and Republicans finally admit that their "cure" for the antisemitism wave that they started is increased Islamophobia and collective punishment of Palestinians in the US.

 

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) introduced a bill Thursday that could ban Palestinians from entering the U.S. and possibly expel those who are already here.

Zinke, who served as secretary of the Interior Department under former President Trump, introduced legislation called the Safeguarding Americans from Extremism Act.

The legislation would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to halt granting visas, asylum and refuge for people who have a Palestinian Authority-issued passport. The bill would revoke the entrance or visa for individuals who came to the U.S. after Oct. 1.

“This legislation keeps America safe,” Zinke said. “I don’t trust the Biden Administration any more than I do the Palestinian Authority to screen who is allowed to come into the United States. This is the most anti-Hamas immigration legislation I have seen and it’s well deserved. Given the circumstances, the threats to our immigration system and the history of terrorists abusing refugee, asylum and visa processes all over the world, the requirements in this bill are necessary to keep Americans safe. This bill does exactly that.”

Zinke’s bill would bar DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas from granting Temporary Protected Status to people with the passport, along with refugee status and asylum. It would direct DHS to work with Customs Enforcement and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to “identify” and remove individuals “without lawful status, including newly revoked status.”

The legislation comes after GOP lawmakers issued a letter earlier in October to Mayorkas and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to revoke and deport students on temporary student visas who “have expressed support for Hamas” in the aftermath of the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel that left more than 1,400 people dead.

Zinke’s bill has 10 co-sponsors — Reps. Andy Harris (R-Md.), Aaron Bean (R-Fla.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), Clay Higgins (R-La.), Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), Bill Posey (R-Fla.), Barry Moore (R-Ala.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.).

 

Of course, that's nothing compared to all the Republicans running for the White House, who all want to deport millions already in the country no matter where they are from, including Nikki Haley. 

OK, of the six to seven million that have come over since Biden did this — this is going to sound harsh — but you send them back. And the reason you send them back, the reason you send them back is because, my parents, they came here legally. They put in the time, they put in the price. I take care of my parents. They live with us. They’re 87 and 89. There’s not a time I’ve had dinner with my mom when she doesn’t say, ‘Are those people still crossing the border?’ And the reason is, they are offended by what’s happening on the border. And when you allow those six or seven million to come, to all those people who’ve done it the right way, you’re letting them jump the line.

 

So yeah, national immigration raids, mass deportations, families ripped apart. You may not like Biden. You should see the other guys, though...

Last Call For That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

Polling from this summer indicated that RFK Jr.'s spoiler third-party run was drawing more Trump voters than Biden voters, but this time a poll from Harvard/Harris finds RFK Jr. is throwing the race to Trump.

 

Former President Trump is leading President Biden and Democrat-turned-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a three-way race, a new poll found.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey, shared with The Hill, showed Trump receiving 39 percent support, Biden receiving 33 percent support and Kennedy receiving 19 percent support in a three-way race. A separate 9 percent of voters said they did not know or were unsure.

When those who were unsure were asked who they would vote for if they had to choose, Trump received 42 percent support, Biden received 36 percent and Kennedy received 22 percent.

In a two-way race, Trump holds a 5 percentage point lead over Biden, with the former president receiving 46 percent and Biden receiving 41 percent. Fourteen percent of respondents said they were unsure or didn’t know.

The survey noted that Biden gained 1 percentage point since a similar survey was conducted in September, while Trump gained 2 percentage points.

Biden still leads Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in separate head-to-head match-ups.

Between Biden and DeSantis, Biden received 44 percent support while DeSantis received 40 percent. Between Biden and Haley, the president sat at 42 percent while Haley received 38 percent support.

The survey also indicated that Trump received the highest percentage of support when GOP voters were asked who they would vote for if the 2024 Republican primary were held today. Trump received 60 percent while DeSantis received 11 percent; all others received less than 10 percent, according to the poll.

“Trump’s polling continues to defy gravity both in the primary and the general election. Kennedy right now doesn’t change the result — an election held today would elect Donald Trump,” Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll, said. “There is a lot of time and events to go, but Trump has a significant edge at the starting line.”

 

Again, a poll 12 months out from an election is about as predictive as a bucket of warm spit, but it continues to show that Trump facing 90+ counts in four separate criminal trials doesn't matter to half the country and that they'll vote for him anyway.  The polls have consistently shown him with a 40-50 point lead in the primaries despite the dozens of felony charges, to the point where I believe being indicted has actually helped him, not that Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley would have a chance in hell even without the criminal charges.

 

Trump continues to have a 46-point lead in the GOP primaries in the latest USA Today/Suffolk U poll, too.

Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley has surged nationally in a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, challenging a faltering Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the top alternative to Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.

Haley's support has risen to 11% of registered voters who plan to vote in GOP primaries or caucuses, up from 4% in the USA TODAY/Suffolk poll taken in June and just one percentage point below DeSantis. His 12% standing was a steep fall from his 23% support four months ago.

Trump continues to dominate the field, backed by 58%, up 10 points.

 

However, the USA Today/Suffolk U poll shows again that RFK Jr. would turn a tie into a one-point Biden lead.

One in four voters, 26%, said they would seriously consider supporting a bipartisan ticket of a Republican and a Democrat that a centrist group called No Labels may field. Another 23% said they might consider it, depending on who the nominees were. Biden voters were more likely than Trump voters − 28% compared with 18% − to say they would take a serious look.

The poll of 1,000 registered voters, taken by landline and cell phone Tuesday through Friday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Not since billionaire businessman H. Ross Perot drew 19% of the vote in 1992, enabling Bill Clinton to defeat President George H.W. Bush with just 43% of the popular vote, has the prospect of independent bids threatened to upend the standard two-party calculations of campaigns.

Without Kennedy in the mix, Trump would edge Biden by 41% to 39%, a lead within the survey's margin of error, with West at 7%. Without West in the mix, Biden would edge Trump by an even narrower margin, 38% to 37%, with Kennedy at 14%.

With neither Kennedy nor West on the ballot, Biden and Trump would tie at 41%-41%.

 

Polls aren't accurate this far out, but they are consistent, and there's more than enough polling data to show that the real problem is that Trump is anywhere close to winning, and that a good 40%+ of Americans are still willing to vote for the guy given the last seven years.

 

Trump's the symptom, sure. The root cause remains the people who still support him.

Last Call For Trump Cards

 For a guy constantly complaining about "rigged elections" it seems Donald Trump is doing everything he can to ensure total victory in GOP primary races, with multiple states changing their primary rules in order to, well, rig the elections for Trump's win next spring.

Not long after the new chairman of the Republican Party in Hawaii was elected in May, he received a voicemail from none other than Donald J. Trump.

“It’s your all-time favorite president,” Mr. Trump told the chairman, Tim Dalhouse. “I just called to congratulate you.”

The head of the Kansas G.O.P. received a similar message after he became chairman. The Nebraska chairman had a couple of minutes and a photo arranged with the former president during an Iowa stop. And the chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, Michael McDonald, who had served as a fake elector for Mr. Trump after the 2020 election, was among a group of state party officials who were treated to an hourslong Mar-a-Lago meal in March that ended in ice cream sundaes.

Months later, Mr. McDonald’s party in Nevada dramatically transformed the state’s influential early contest. The party enacted new rules that distinctively disadvantage Mr. Trump’s chief rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by effectively blocking the super PAC he relies upon from participating in the state’s new caucus.

Mr. McDonald has tilted the rules so significantly that some of Mr. Trump’s opponents have accused the party of manipulating the election for him — and have mostly pulled up stakes in the state entirely.

As Mr. Trump dodges debates and is regularly seen on his golf courses in branded white polo shirts and red MAGA hats, it can seem that he is bypassing the 2024 primary fight entirely. He has done relatively few public campaign events until recent weeks. But Mr. Trump and his political team have spent months working behind the scenes to build alliances and contingency plans with key party officials, seeking to twist the primary and delegate rules in their favor.

It amounts to a fail-safe in case Mr. DeSantis — or anyone else — scores a surprise victory in an early state. And it comes as Mr. Trump faces an extraordinary set of legal challenges, including four criminal indictments, that inject an unusual degree of uncertainty into a race Mr. Trump leads widely in national polling.

“They’ve rigged it anywhere they thought they could pull it off,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official who founded Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC that was essentially ousted from the Nevada caucus.

The maneuvering is the type of old-school party politics that Mr. Trump, who cut his teeth in the machine politics of 1970s and 1980s New York, relishes and knows best: personal calls and chits, glad-handing, relationships and reprisals. Advisers say that in contrast to some tasks, getting him to make those calls is a breeze. Plus, the seemingly arcane issue of delegate accumulation — tallying up formal support in the states to secure the nomination at the party convention next summer — is deeply personal to Mr. Trump after he was outflanked in exactly this fight in 2016.

Then, a better-organized Senator Ted Cruz of Texas worked Trump-skeptical state parties to win more delegates even in some places where he had lost at the ballot box. Mr. Cuccinelli was one of Mr. Cruz’s top delegate hunters at the time. Now, surrounded by a more experienced team and the authority of a former president with loyalists entrenched nationwide, Mr. Trump is doing to Mr. DeSantis exactly what he once accused Hillary Clinton of doing to Bernie Sanders: bending the system in his favor.

Mr. Trump’s backroom campaign reveals the extent to which he has become the establishment of the Republican Party.

“This is the kind of stuff that’s not talked about in the news,” said Scott Golden, the chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, who was invited to speak briefly in private with Mr. Trump when the former president visited his state this spring. “This is important stuff. It is ultimately about making sure your person is the nominee.”

The primary rules in the early states leading up to Super Tuesday, and the biggest sSuper Tuesday prize of them all -- California -- have put entire bodies on the scales in Trump's favor, to the point where his opponents are literally refusing to spend money in those states at all anymore.

Short of Trump having a massive health issue in the next three months, the 2024 GOP primary is already over. 

GOP Goes Down Mexico Way

At this point multiple GOP candidates for President are promising to commit acts of outright war in Mexico in order to try to stop the flow of drugs and migrants into the US, and even if somehow Trump isn't the candidate by some miracle, the also-rans are more than willing to run on invading our southern neighbor.

Ron DeSantis wants suspected drug smugglers at the U.S.-Mexico border to be shot dead. Nikki Haley promises to send American special forces into Mexico. Vivek Ramaswamy has accused Mexico's leader of treating drug cartels as his "sugar daddy" and says that if he is elected president, "there will be a new daddy in town."

Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for the 2024 nomination and long the person who has shaped his party's rhetoric on the border, has often blamed Mexico for problems in the United States and promises new uses of military force and covert action if he returns to the White House.

Many of the GOP presidential candidates say they would carry out potential acts of war against Mexico in response to the trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. More than 75,000 people in the U.S. died last year from overdoses of synthetic opioids, an annual figure more than 20 times higher than a decade ago.

The candidates' antagonism toward Mexico is welcomed by some families who have lost loved ones to fentanyl and have argued that Washington has not done enough to address the worst drug crisis in U.S. history. However, analysts and nonpartisan experts warn that military force is not the answer and instead fuels the racism and xenophobia that undermine efforts to stop drug trafficking.

"You've got politicking on this side. And then on the Mexican side of the border, you've got a president who is turning a blind eye to what's going on in Mexico and who has completely gutted bilateral collaboration with the United States," said Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S. from 2007 to 2013. "That's a very combustible mixture."

Andrea Thomas' daughter died at age 32 after taking half of a counterfeit pill laced with fentanyl that looked like her prescription pills for abdominal pain. Thomas started the foundation Voices for Awareness in Grand Junction, Colorado, to raise the alarm about fentanyl.

Thomas says people she knows are interested in what the candidates are proposing and feel that President Joe Biden's administration has not properly responded to the crisis. In a letter to the presidential candidates, Thomas and an assembly of other groups urge the politicians to do "all that can be done" to stop the manufacturing and smuggling of the drug.

"This drug is like no drug we have ever seen before," she said. "We need some strong measures. We have no more time to waste."

Democrats also face immense political pressure on border issues heading into next year's election. The White House has funded national programs to reduce fentanyl overdoses and sanctioned Chinese companies blamed for importing the chemicals used to make the drug.

Mexico has failed to address its problem with fentanyl production and trafficking. Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador repeatedly denies his country is producing the synthetic opioid despite enormous evidence to the contrary.

Border agents seized nearly 13 tons (12,000 kilograms) of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico border between September 2022 and August, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

At the second GOP primary debate late last month, candidates reiterated that they would use military forces to go after drug gangs in Mexico.

"As commander in chief, I'm going to use the U.S. military to go after the Mexican drug cartels," said DeSantis, the Florida governor. He has promised that people suspected of smuggling drugs across the southern border would end up "stone cold dead." That raises the prospect of border agents being authorized to shoot people on sight before any investigation into whether those people were carrying drugs.

Of course if DeSantis, Trump, Haley and the rest really want to stop drugs from Mexico, we need to go after Americans, not Mexicans...

U.S. government data undercuts the claim that people seeking asylum and other border crossers are responsible for drug trafficking. About 90% of fentanyl seizures were made at official land crossings, not between crossings where people entered illegally. At a hearing in July, James Mandryck, a CBP deputy assistant commissioner, said 73% of fentanyl seizures at the border since the previous October were smuggling attempts carried out by U.S. citizens, with the rest being done by Mexican citizens.

Something tells me that the next Republican administration really will shoot first and ignore questions, or at least ignore answers that questions might raise. 

Trump Cards, Con't

Congrats to Team WIN THE MORNING who have finally figured out what any ZVTS reader could have told you a decade ago: the only thing that matters to Republican voters is owning the libs.

 

The mesh trucker hats, “Bud Right” koozies and “Abolish the FBI” yard signs Republican presidential candidates are feverishly hawking are, on the surface, all about amassing enough small-dollar donors to qualify for the first debate.

But there’s something else revealing about the candidates’ emporiums of red meat. In the modern GOP, owning the libs is what sells.

“Forty years ago, it would’ve been ‘Free Ukraine,’ next to Reagan’s picture,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist. “Freedom and liberty for all is not … the incentive structure in our politics, unfortunately.”

In the merchandising arms race of today, it’s not the economy, stupid. It’s Ron DeSantis’ $37.47 “Build the Wall” trucker hat, Nikki Haley’s “Strong & Proud, Not Weak & Woke” t-shirt or a Perry Johnson “I identify as non-Bidenary” sticker.

Once the “party of new ideas,” the culture wars are the new platform, not simply a plank.

“We’re kind of anti-woke,” said Johnson, the businessperson and longshot presidential contender from Michigan who is selling a mug with the promise to “keep kids off socialism.” “In fact, I think the whole party is pretty much anti-woke.”

It’s not hard to understand why Republicans are emphasizing cultural issues — not Reagan’s image — in their sales. They’re following the example of a more recent president, who seven years ago turned his red MAGA hat into a ubiquitous symbol of the right. Whole wardrobes materialized in homage to his Hillary Clinton-inspired chants of “Lock her up!”

 

The difference as to why Trump is winning by 20 points in Florida over DeSantis in Florida, 30 points in South Carolina over Nikki Haley and Tim Scott and 30 points in Iowa is very simple. Trump's the guy who won't just own the libs, he'll destroy them using the power of the US government.

Trump voters want "those people" destroyed to the point where the Obama/Biden coalition never dares to lift a voice to speak, a hand to vote, or eyes to see. They're voting for Trump so that happens. They want revenge, retaliation, and revanchism. and Trump will give it to them. A war is coming and they want to be on the winning side.

Politico seems to think it's just about merchandising.

It is not.

Last Call For Another Hat In The Ring, Con't

Former GOP SC Governor and Trump UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announced her entry into the 2024 race to the thunderous nothingness of near universal derision and apathy.

 

Haley has about as much chance of being president as, say, Bobby Jindal. What's Jindal up to these days? Nobody cares.

 

How do I know Haley is doomed? Sippy Cupp thinks she has a real chance, folks!

In her video announcement on Tuesday Haley boasted of the need for “generational change,” an obvious knock on both Trump and President Biden’s ages — Haley is 51, indeed a generation behind both.

That distinction will likely serve her well in creating contrast with her former boss, now a septuagenarian Florida retiree, who’s often sounded very much like a sitcom character out of the 1950s, bemoaning today’s women for straying from the Donna Reed archetype. His obsession with a woman’s place — in the kitchen, doing the dishes and cooking dinner — is well-documented.

Haley’s broken all of the regressive stereotypes Trump routinely leans on to stoke the grievances of his right-wing base. At 38 she wasn’t in the kitchen but busy becoming the youngest governor in the country, and South Carolina’s first female and minority governor. Her family hails from a country Trump has called “filthy,” and he’s repeatedly used a fake Indian accent to imitate Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and an imaginary Indian call center representative.

Her impressive and inspiring immigrant story flies in the face of Trump’s penchant for casting immigrants as “criminals” and “animals” from “sh*thole countries,” undeserving of basic human dignity.

And Haley was raised in the Sikh faith before converting to Christianity as an adult — Trump has repeatedly insulted the Sikh community, mistaking Sikhs for Muslims, throwing Sikhs out of his rallies, retweeting racist and bigoted memes, and conflating Sikhs with Islamic terrorism.

All of this is sure to come up as Trump takes her on as a competitor. If his past performances with women and minorities is prologue, he’ll likely zero in on her looks as he did with Carly Fiorina and her un-American-ness as he did with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in 2016. He even went after Ben Carson’s Seventh-Day Adventist faith.

But her poise and measured speaking style are also a contrast to Trump and his preferred approach of ranting and raving, uncontrollable blurting and late-night Twitter tirades. In her Tuesday announcement she seemed to send him a preemptive warning, saying, “I don’t put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.”

All of her background and bio aside, she’s a formidable candidate — a smart and skilled retail politician who’s very popular in her home state of South Carolina. If she can do well there in the Republican primary she’ll be off to a promising start.

 

DeSantis will simply call her "woke". And Trump is busy dreaming of mass executions of those people. 

Republican primary voters want blood and punishment of anyone who isn't a Republican primary voter. Trump and/or DeSantis will give them what they want. Haley will be gone by this time next year, if not much sooner.

The Adults In The Room Are Grounded

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is out of time and Donald Trump is out of patience as it appears Kelly is the next regime staffer staked out on the tracks for the careening Trump train to run over on the way off the cliff.

John Kelly is expected to resign as White House chief of staff in the coming days, two sources familiar with the situation unfolding in the West Wing tell CNN. 

Seventeen months in, Kelly and President Donald Trump have reached a stalemate in their relationship and it is no longer seen as tenable by either party. Though Trump asked Kelly over the summer to stay on as chief of staff for two more years, the two have stopped speaking in recent days. 

Trump is actively discussing a replacement plan, though a person involved in the process said nothing is final right now and ultimately nothing is final until Trump announces it. Potential replacements include Nick Ayers, Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, who is still seen as a leading contender. 

The expected departure would end a tumultuous tenure for Kelly, who was brought on to bring order to the White House but whose time as chief of staff has often been marked by the same infighting and controversy that has largely defined Trump's presidency from its beginning. Many of the storms in which Kelly became embroiled were by his own making. 

CNN reported last month that Trump was considering potential replacements for several senior positions in his administration as part of a post-midterms staff shakeup. 

News of Kelly's imminent departure was first reported by Axios.

Yes, Kelly has been "fired" before, so many times it feels like he should be managing the Yankees in the 80's, so who knows if this one actually sticks.  Still, it feels like this time is the one where Trump actually does tell Kelly to hit the bricks.

Of course, Trump is also expected to announce replacements for UN Ambassador and Attorney General today as well, along with new WH legal counsel Pat Cipollone replacing Don McGahn starting Monday, so we'll see if the new "adults" fare better than the old ones.

Spoilers: they won't.

Get The Hence, Pence

Vanity Fair's Gabe Sherman informs us of the latest rumblings from the Trump bunker, where things have gotten so crazy that people are starting to ask if VP Mike Pence has outlived his usefulness.

But the ominous signs of Mueller’s progress have not completely overwhelmed other subplots. On Monday, Trump hosted a 2020 strategy meeting with a group of advisers. Among the topics discussed was whether Mike Pence should remain on the ticket, given the hurricane-force political headwinds Trump will face, as demonstrated by the midterms, a source briefed on the session told me. “They’re beginning to think about whether Mike Pence should be running again,” the source said, adding that the advisers presented Trump with new polling that shows Pence doesn’t expand Trump’s coalition. “He doesn’t detract from it, but he doesn’t add anything either,” the source said. Last month, The New York Times reported that Trump had been privately asking advisers if Pence could be trusted, and that outside advisers have been pushing Nikki Haley to replace Pence. One veteran of Trump’s 2016 campaign who’s still advising Trump told me the president hasn’t been focused enough on 2020. “What he needs to do is consider his team for 2020 and make sure it’s in place,” the adviser said. “He has to have people on his team that are loyal to his agenda.”

I think this is hysterical, considering Trump is going to have much larger problems than "whether or not Mike Pence helps him on the 2020 ticket."  Trump isn't thinking about 2020 enough?  He needs to be thinking about 2019 and whether or not he's in an orange jumpsuit.

A Haley Bail-y Tale-y

The latest departure from the Trump regime is UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who apparently blindsided everyone in the White House when she submitted her resignation last week, effective at the end of the year.

Haley discussed her resignation with Trump last week when she visited him at the White House, these sources said. Her news shocked a number of senior foreign policy officials in the Trump administration.

Background: Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was easily confirmed four days after President Trump's inauguration in 2017.

She has overseen Trump's shift in dealing with the UN, including the U.S. exit from the UN Human Rights Council, which Haley called the organization's "greatest failure."

Worth noting: Haley wrote a public op-ed in September challenging the N.Y. Times' anonymous op-ed:

• "I don’t agree with the president on everything. When there is disagreement, there is a right way and a wrong way to address it. I pick up the phone and call him or meet with him in person."
• "Like my colleagues in the Cabinet and on the National Security Council, I have very open access to the president. He does not shut out his advisers, and he does not demand that everyone agree with him. I can talk to him most any time, and I frequently do."
• "If I disagree with something and believe it is important enough to raise with the president, I do it. And he listens."

Not anymore, he does.   And why would Haley up and leave?  Like most Trump regime officials, if you're not actually Trump, being openly corrupt still gets you busted.

Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley should be investigated to determine if she complied with ethics regulations when she accepted seven free flights for herself and her husband on luxury private aircraft from three South Carolina businessmen, according to a request filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) with the State Department’s Inspector General.

Ambassador Haley’s 2017 public financial disclosure report listed her acceptance of gifts of seven free flights on private aircraft from three South Carolina businessmen for herself and her husband. Those flights were between New York, Washington, DC, and three cities in her home state of South Carolina, and appear to have been worth tens of thousands of dollars to her. In her financial disclosure report, Ambassador Haley asserted that each gifted flight qualified for an exception based on a personal relationship with the giver. The report, however, does not provide enough information to demonstrate that this exception was applicable to the flights. Whether the exception applies depends partly on whether the three businessmen were the only sources of the gifts; if business entities were sources of the gifts, the exception was inapplicable.

Federal ethics regulations prohibit employees from soliciting or accepting gifts given because of the employee’s official position. They also direct employees to consider declining otherwise permissible gifts if they believe a reasonable person would question their integrity or impartiality as a result of accepting the gifts. At a minimum, Ambassador Haley should have been conscious of the appearance concerns surrounding her acceptance of gifts of private luxury air travel at a time when her colleagues in the administration were making news with their own lavish air travel.

“By accepting gifts of luxury private flights, Ambassador Haley seems to be falling in line with other Trump administration officials who are reaping personal benefits from their public positions,” said CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder. “Our ethics laws are clearly written to prevent even the appearance of corruption and improper influence. We’re calling on the State Department’s inspector general to further investigate the nature of these gifts, determine whether they are in line with ethics rules, and ensure that employees like Ambassador Haley are fully trained on the application and importance of ethical standards.”

This CREW legal request came today, the same day Haley's resignation was announced, so there's about a 99% chance that we actually found the one person in the regime who still is capable of shame when it comes to ethics violations.

And if you believe that, well...

Haley joins a long list of corrupt Trump regime officials who overstayed their welcome by grifting on the public dime, of course the biggest violator is Trump himself, and he could not care less about that.

Here's my gut feeling:  Jeff Sessions is done as AG as soon as the midterms are over.  Trump will need a new AG.  My money is on Lindsey Graham.  Which means Graham's Senate seat will be open.  Both Haley and Graham are from SC.

It's not hard to be this cynical, but that's what is coming.  Graham becomes Trump's hatchet man, the Saturday Night Massacre happens, and Haley gets appointed to fill out Graham's term.

I hope I'm wrong, but to me, Haley's sudden resignation screams that this is in the works.

We'll know soon enough.

The War On The Impoverished

The latest UN report on world poverty is out and the Trump regime is livid that anyone would dare mention the fact that poverty not only exists in America but that the Trump regime is actively trying to lower to standards of living of Americans and working to destroy anti-poverty programs.

A United Nations report condemning entrenched poverty in the United States is a "misleading and politically motivated" document about "the wealthiest and freest country in the world," the Trump administration's top U.N. official said. 

U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley criticized the report for critiquing the United States' treatment of its poor, arguing that the United Nations should instead focus on poverty in developing countries such as Burundi and Congo Republic. The U.N. report also faulted the Trump administration for pursuing policies it said would exacerbate U.S. poverty. 

"It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America," Haley wrote in a letter to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday. "In our country, the President, Members of Congress, Governors, Mayors, and City Council members actively engage on poverty issues every day. Compare that to the many countries around the world, whose governments knowingly abuse human rights and cause pain and suffering."

The rebuke comes two days after Haley announced the United States' resignation from the U.N. Human Rights Council over that body's perceived bias against Israel and toleration of human rights abusers.

"There are really poor people in Africa you know!" is actually kind of funny coming from the former governor of South Carolina, a state constantly at or near the bottom in national poverty statistics, especially for black folk.  Sure, being poor and hungry in America isn't as awful as Yemen or South Sudan, but it doesn't mean people don't die in America because they can't afford to live here.

In May, U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston released a report saying the United States has the highest rates of youth poverty, infant mortality, incarceration, income inequality and obesity among all countries in the developed world, as well as 40 million people living in poverty. Alston accused President Trump and the Republican Congress of deepening poverty and inequality in the country, citing the Republican tax law passed last fall.

"The policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege," Alston wrote in the report.

Haley pushed back in Thursday's letter, arguing that the administration had created a strong economy that would lift people out of poverty and that Alston's report was premised on misleading statistics. Haley said the U.N. special rapporteur had "categorically misstated" the progress America had made reducing poverty, but she gave no examples.

"I am deeply disappointed that the Special Rapporteur used his platform to make misleading and politically motivated statements about American domestic policy issues," Haley said. "Regrettably, his report is an all too common example of the misplaced priorities [of the U.N.]."

Haley's response is exactly what I'd expect out of China's Communist bureaucracy, North Korea's state media, or India's technocratic dog and pony show.  Poverty in the US is very real for tens of millions of people, but we live in the richest country ever to exist, and being poor here still means you can be homeless, you can go hungry, and you can die from not being able to afford basics.

Of course she's going to scream and pretend like that's not happening.

Human Rights, Very Human Wrongs

America under the Trump regime continues the spiral into dangerous rogue nation status as we join countries like North Korea, Libya and Iran in refusing to be a part of the UN Human Rights Council.

The United States announced it is leaving the U.N.’s Human Rights Commission on Tuesday. 

The move comes at time when the U.N. Human Rights Commission (a 47-member body with rotating terms) and refugee agency have both condemned the president’s policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border before they get the chance to apply for refugee status. On Monday, the U.N. rights chief called the Trump administration of splitting migrant families “unconscionable.” 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced the U.S. departure from the U.N. rights body at the State Department. 

“We have no doubt there was once a noble vision for this council, but we need to be honest, the Human Rights Council is a poor defender of human rights,” Pompeo said. 

“For too long the human rights council has been a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias. Regrettably, it is now clear that our call for reform was not heeded,” Haley said. At last year’s session, she announced that the United States would consider withdrawing from the council unless some changes were made and spoke about a “biased” stance against Israel.

In explaining the decision, both Pompeo and Haley also said that the council repeatedly singled out Israel. 

Haley has had a contentious relationship with many at the U.N., not only within the Human Rights Council (which is investigating U.S. ally Saudi Arabia for its killing civilians in the war in Yemen), but with the General Assembly as well, which Haley has accused of having an anti-Israel bias. 

With the exception of Libya, who was kicked off the U.N. rights council, no country has ever left the body, and the United States would be the first to drop out.

So yes, having the head of the UN HRC call Trump's child interment policy out as a human rights violation on Monday resulted in America leaving the council on Tuesday, this wasn't an accident.

As we continue to careen down the path towards authoritarian state, I wonder...

When will the rest of the world decide to do something about us?

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

As I long suspected would happen (as the GOP wants to get to the campaign trail for 2018 midterms as soon as possible) Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are now closing up the investigation into Trump and Russia and will undoubtedly find no evidence that anything was wrong.

The House Intelligence Committee has concluded its interviews for the investigation into possible collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign operation and Russia, a move that signals the beginning of the end for the panel's Russia probe, according to a source familiar with the matter. 

Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican leading the Russia investigation, is expected to announce Monday that the committee has concluded its interviews and will now be moving onto writing a final report summarizing its findings. 

The decision is expected to be met with sharp criticism from Democrats, who have said there are still scores of witnesses the committee should call, and argue that Republicans have failed to use subpoenas to obtain documents and require witnesses to answer questions that are central to the investigation. 

The committee is widely expected to issue two competing reports: one from Republicans that concludes no evidence of collusion was found, and another from Democrats that argues a case for collusion, as well as spells out all the avenues the committee did not investigate. 

Monday's expected announcement is likely to further inflame the partisanship that's consumed the House Intelligence Committee for the better part of a year, amid fights over Chairman Devin Nunes' role in the investigation and more recently over competing memos about alleged surveillance abuses at the FBI during the Obama administration. 

In another sign of the partisan tensions, the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, had not been told as of midafternoon Monday that Republicans planned to end the witness interview portion of the Russia investigation, according to a Democratic source. Conaway and Schiff do plan to speak on Monday, another source said. 

A spokeswoman for Conaway declined comment.

The last thing House Republicans want right now is an investigation going into September or October.  They want their final report written and out of the way as quickly as they can so that Mueller can be fired and the outrage that generates will be long forgotten by voters come November.

They want Mueller gone, the investigation gone, and stories like this to go away.

One of the Arab world's top spies and a shadowy conduit to Vladimir Putin's Kremlin were present at a meeting in the Seychelles being probed by Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, DailyMail.com can disclose. 

The meeting between Erik Prince, the Trump donor and billionaire Blackwater founder whose sister is education secretary Betsy DeVos, and Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian banker close to the Kremlin, was convened by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohamed bin Zayed, who is the de factor joint ruler of the United Arab Emirates. 

But DailyMail.com can disclose that also present were bin Zayed's spy chief and a Palestinian seen as the crown prince's personal conduit to Putin's Kremlin. 

The two men - Hamad al Mazroie, the de facto head of the UAE intelligence service, and Mohammed Dahlan, a bin Zayed adviser who is fluent in Russian - were never named by Prince when he testified to the House intelligence committee about the meeting. 

It emerged last month that George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman and Middle East expert with ties to the Trump administration was present.

Nader is now co-operating with Mueller after being stopped as he entered the U.S. in January and being served with a subpoena. 

The identities of the two newly-named attendees at the meeting were confirmed to DailyMail.com by a source close to bin Zayed, and a Kuwaiti lawmaker with access to intelligence on the UAE. 

The source close to bin Zayed said: 'Hamad supervises all these things. Those guys supervise major secret operations.'

Ending the House Intelligence Committee investigation is the first step in creating enough cover to fire Mueller.  Besides, come November, we're probably going to have not one but two wars to worry about.

The United States is "prepared to act if we must" to stop indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Syria, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned Monday as she circulated a new draft resolution demanding an immediate cease fire. 

Addressing the Security Council 16 days after it passed a resolution demanding a cease fire that largely has failed to stop the bombing or allow humanitarian access, Haley compared the situation on Monday to last year when the United States launched airstrikes against a Syrian military base after a deadly chemical weapons attack. 

"When the international community consistently fails to act, there are times when states are compelled to take their own action," Haley said. 

This is one of those times, she added.

"We warn any nation determined to impose its will through chemical attacks and inhuman suffering, but most especially the outlaw Syrian regime, the United States remains prepared to act if we must," she said. "It is not a path we prefer. But it is a path we have demonstrated we will take, and we are prepared to take again."

No doubt our good Russian friends want us to do just that.

Heart Of Coal

The Trump regime is cutting the UN budget by $300 million for 2018 because really, Trump is a terrible landlord.

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations announced Sunday that it negotiated a major reduction in the U.N.’s budget for the upcoming fiscal years.

According to a statement from the mission, the 2018-2019 U.N. budget will have a $285 million reduction from the previous two years.

“In addition to these significant cost savings, we reduced the UN’s bloated management and support functions, bolstered support for key U.S. priorities throughout the world, and instilled more discipline and accountability throughout the UN system,” the statement reads.

One of the Trump administration’s goals has been to reduce the amount of contributions that the U.S. makes to the U.N. The U.S. currently provides for about 22 percent of the annual budget, or about $3.3 billion per year, according to PolitiFact.

The U.N. General Assembly previously approved a $5.4 billion operating budget for 2016 and 2017. The regular budget is separate from the body's budget for its sprawling peacekeeping operations, which totaled $7.8 billion for 2017 alone.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said that the budget cut announced Sunday is a “big step in the right direction” for the U.S., and that she will continue to pursue “ways to increase the UN’s efficiency‎ while protecting our interests."

“The inefficiency and overspending of the United Nations are well known,” Haley said. “We will no longer let the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of or remain unchecked. This historic reduction in spending – in addition to many other moves toward a more efficient and accountable UN – is a big step in the right direction.”
Conservatives have long criticized the U.N. as not being in the U.S.’s interests, and many have amplified their concerns after the global body overwhelmingly voted for a resolution last week to oppose President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

No doubt in my mind that this happened in retaliation for last week's vote, but this is the American leadership this country chose to elect out of racism, hatred, and fear. And note Haley's words that this is only a step: more cuts are coming, I guarantee it.

Trump Cards, Con't

So as I was talking about earlier this week, Thursday's UN General Assembly vote happened on America's stupid decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and yes, the world absolutely called out Trump's bluff.

In a stinging rebuke of President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel earlier this month, 128 countries, including some of the US’s most trusted and reliable allies, voted in favor of a United Nations resolution on Thursday calling for a reversal of his position. Only nine countries voted against it. 

Though the resolution doesn’t explicitly refer to the US, it’s clearly directed at the White House. The measure declares that any changes to the status of Jerusalem “have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded.” 

It also “calls upon all States to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem” — another shot at the administration, which announced plans to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. 

The closest thing the US got to support from allies was 35 abstentions. Friends of the US like Canada, Mexico, and Australia refrained from voting on the resolution — which means that while they didn’t support the US with a vote against it, they didn’t criticize the US either with a vote in favor of it. 

While the passage of the resolution isn’t binding — meaning the US doesn’t actually have to reverse its position — it’s a stark illustration of just how isolated the United States is in its stance toward Israel.

While Canada and Mexico understandably abstained (after all they both share very large borders with a dangerous and ludicrously armed rogue nation helmed by a madman) and Australia looked the other way, the other member nations of the UN Permanent Security Council all told Trump to go screw himself.  China, Russia, the UK and France all voted in favor of the resolution, as did India, Japan, Germany, Brazil, Spain, the Scandinavian countries, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia and Turkey.

We look like stupid assholes right now unless you think Honduras, Togo and the Marshall Islands are the arbiters of global diplomatic opinion.  Meanwhile, the rest of the world will simply deal with us and move on.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Sunday that he intends to open an embassy in East Jerusalem — the part of the city that Palestinians officially want as the capital of a future Palestinian state. That came days after he convened a gathering of Muslim leaders to call for the world to see East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. 

A statement signed by more than 50 Muslim-majority countries at that summit declared that the US had lost its role as a “sponsor of peace” in the Middle East. And Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in a speech last week that Trump’s Jerusalem announcement was a “crime” and that he no longer wants the US to broker peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

The other major nations of the world will step up in our absence, most notably China.  We're handing them the reins apparently, because we're now headed by a petulant toddler.

Trump Cards, Con't

The United States of America inches closer towards rogue nuclear nation status under the Trump regime as Dear Leader decides he's going to take UN votes against the US as personal insults. Those offending countries will be subjected to a heavy price.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favor of a draft United Nations resolution against his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. 

“They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we’re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care,” Trump told reporters at the White House. 

The 193-member U.N. General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim countries on the controversial U.S. decision.

The US can't veto a General Assembly resolution, but who is exactly going to enforce it?  Russia?  China?  The EU?  UN Ambassador Nikki Haley (now back on Trump's good side) has all but issued a guaranteed threat.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warns the US will be "taking names" of the countries that vote in favor of a resolution that condemns the Trump administration's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. 

"At the UN, we're constantly asked to do more and give more -- in the past we have. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American people, about where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us," Haley wrote on Facebook and Twitter on Tuesday evening. "On Thursday, there will be a vote at the UN criticizing our choice. And yes, the US will be taking names."

We'll see what happens with Thursday's vote, but if we won't stand up to Trump, why should anyone else?

In addition to her admonition on social media, Haley also sent a letter to fellow nations warning them of the potential impact of their vote. 

"As you consider your vote, I want you to know that the President and U.S. take this vote personally." she wrote. "The President will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us."

The answer to that question is "We're a dangerous rogue nation that has to be stopped."

Haley And The Comments, Con't

Nobody should be surprised right now that the White House is trying to simply wish away Trump's documented sexual misconduct.  He doesn't understand why this is still "a thing" and why anybody cares, after all he was elected and he won, this goes away now, right?  Of course, the answer is that the accusations aren't going anywhere.

Donald Trump sailed past a raft of allegations of sexual misconduct in last year’s presidential election.

Now the national #MeToo spotlight is turning back to Trump and his past conduct. Several of his accusers are urging Congress to investigate his behavior, and a number of Democratic lawmakers are demanding his resignation.

With each day seeming to bring new headlines that force men from positions of power, the movement to expose sexual harassment has forced an unwelcome conversation on the White House. In a heated exchange with reporters in the White House briefing room on Monday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders steadfastly dismissed accusations against the Republican president and suggested the issue had already been litigated in Trump’s favor on Election Day.

But to Trump’s accusers, the rising #MeToo movement is an occasion to ensure he is at last held accountable.

“It was heartbreaking last year. We’re private citizens and for us to put ourselves out there to try and show America who this man is and how he views women, and for them to say, ‘Eh, we don’t care,’ it hurt,” Samantha Holvey said Monday. The former beauty queen claimed that Trump ogled her and other Miss USA pageant contestants in their dressing room in 2006.

“Let’s try round two,” she said. “The environment’s different. Let’s try again.”

Holvey was one of four women to make her case against Trump on Monday, both in an NBC interview and then in a news conference. Rachel Crooks, a former Trump Tower receptionist who said the celebrity businessman kissed her on the mouth in 2006 without consent, called for Congress to “put aside party affiliations and investigate Trump’s history of sexual misconduct.”

“If they were willing to investigate Sen. Franken, it’s only fair that they do the same for Trump,” Crooks said.

And as I said over the weekend, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley's comments that Trump's accusers should be heard has now put a target on her back, I would expect she isn't much longer with this regime.

White House aides have warily watched the movement sweep Capitol Hill, opting to repeat rote denials about allegations against the president. The president’s advisers were stunned Sunday when one of the highest-ranking women in the Trump administration broke with the White House line and said the accusers’ voices “should be heard.”

“They should be heard, and they should be dealt with,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in a CBS interview. “And I think we heard from them before the election. And I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up.”

Haley’s comments infuriated the president, according to two people who are familiar with his views but who spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. Trump has grown increasingly angry in recent days that the accusations against him have resurfaced, telling associates that the charges are false and drawing parallels to the accusations facing Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.

Of course, Roy Moore's denials (did/did not) work for Roy Moore, yes?  They were working up until now for Trump. Whether they will keep working, we're going to find out.

Last Call For Haley And The Comments

After being made to look stupid and foolish by being the Trump regime grunt to float the notion that the US would be dropping out of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea in February because of "security issues with North Korea" (and totally not because Putin and the Russians were kicked out for doping and Russia demanded Trump abandon them in order to delegitimatize the Games) UN Ambassador Nikki Haley suddenly has an issue with her boss, the serial abuser of women.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Sunday, in light of a growing number of probes into sexual misconduct against lawmakers, that "the time has come" to start bringing "a conscience" to the situation surrounding the treatment of women in the workplace as well as on Capitol Hill.

When asked what she thinks of the "cultural shift" taking place in the U.S., Haley said she is "incredibly proud of the women who have come forward." 

"I'm proud of their strength. I'm proud of their courage," Haley said on CBS News' "Face the Nation."

Haley's comments came after three lawmakers in one week, including Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan and Rep. Trent Franks, R-Arizona, announced they would step down from office following allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment. 

When asked to assess similar allegations of misconduct leveled against President Trump during the 2016 campaign, Haley replied, "Women who accuse anyone should be heard. They should be heard and they should be dealt with."

"I think we heard from them prior to the election. And I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up," she added.

Considering the White House's official position on the more than dozen women accusing Trump of sexual misconduct is "every single one of these women is lying and should not be believed" Haley's statement is a serious problem for the Trump regime now.

How much of a problem remains to be seen, but this is the first real crack in the unified regime defense of Trump's admitted sexual assault.  I have a feeling that the first woman that the regime will "hear and deal with" is Haley herself.

Meanwhile, Democrats are at least starting to say in the post-Franken era that Trump should actually resign, to his credit, Bernie Sanders did on Twitter last week but now NJ Dem Sen. Cory Booker has called for Trump to resign.

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker called on President Donald Trump to resign Saturday night over the allegations of sexual harassment that have dogged him since the presidential campaign.

Booker made the comments at a campaign appearance in Alabama for Democratic candidate Doug Jones, who is locked in a tight race against a Republican candidate facing his own allegations of sexual abuse, former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore. 

Sen. Al Franken resigned this week under growing pressure from members of his own party after multiple women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against him. But Booker said Trump’s record was worse. 

“I just watched Sen. Al Franken do the honorable thing and resign from his office. My question is, why isn’t Donald Trump doing the same thing — who has more serious allegations against him, with more women who have come forward. The fact pattern on him is far more damning than the fact pattern on Al Franken,” Booker said in an interview with VICE News.

Oregon Dem. Sen Jeff Merkley is also calling for Trump's resignation.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley on Thursday called on President Trump to resign due to accusations by multiple women that Trump sexually harassed or sexually assaulted them. 

"The president should resign because he certainly has a track record with more than 17 women of horrific conduct," Merkley said during an appearance on MSNBC's Meet The Press. Merkley joins Sen. Bernie Sanders in calling for Trump to quit his office. Sanders said Thursday that Trump should "think about resigning" because he faces multiple sexual misconduct allegations.

This is a no-brainer for all Democrats in DC right now:  Al Franken and John Conyers (and Republican Trent Franks now) resigned over much less.  When does Trump step down?

Olympic Levels Of Trolling

I'm sure there's still readers out there who still don't believe that the Trump regime is taking orders from the Russians, but I'm going to make another case for that here: this week the Russians were kicked out of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games in South Korea in February as the International Olympic Committee dropped the hammer on Putin and Russian sports doping in Sochi in 2014. The Atlantic's Julia Ioffe:

In rigging the Olympics, Putin got what he wanted—a successful event and a winning medal count—but the conspiracy that Russia needed to get there inevitably surfaced, and now 11 of those 33 medalists have been stripped of their prizes. Others will be given medals in their stead at Pyeongchang Olympics. Russian sport officials, like Mutko, are now banned from the Olympics for life. Russian athletes won’t be able to compete in Winter Olympics under their flag—athletes proven to be clean can compete under a neutral flag. In fact, neither the Russian anthem nor the Russian flag will appear in Pyeongchang.

In October, Putin, anticipating the IOC’s decision, said that this would be “a humiliation for the country.” Humiliation, a word echoed by many Russians when the punishment was handed down on Tuesday, the same word in the mouths of so many Russians in the wake of the Vancouver flop. Humiliation is a particular obsession for Putin, the fear of it informing his posturing at home and abroad. Before Americans spoke of making America great again, Russians spoke of Putin raising Russia up off its knees, a two-decade exercise of expunging the humiliation of the Soviet collapse. Sochi and the elaborate doping scheme used there was intended to do just that, to erase the humiliation of Vancouver, to show that Russia had restored its historic glory, to end the international mockery and disdain. Instead, like so many of Russia’s moves under Putin, it achieved the opposite. Yet again, the glitz turned out to be a sloppy front for the rot.

It may have been an impressive, FSB-orchestrated operation, but what did it get them? After Vancouver, Russia may have been smarting with the perceived humiliation of performing below their own expectations—but after Sochi, the Russian flag won’t fly at the next Olympics at all. Russian officials are busy denouncing this kind of Olympic Games as hopelessly “hobbled” and “not even the Olympics,” while others call for a full boycott by the clean Russian athletes. This wasn’t what Sochi was supposed to achieve. This is a humiliation far worse than Vancouver’s; this is pariah status. Except that Russia was already a pariah for its actions in Ukraine and for meddling in America’s 2016 presidential election, both of which made Russia’s position in the world more complicated, not less. If Putin is the omniscient mastermind many Americans imagine him to be, surely he would have anticipated this?

When I was last in Moscow, a military analyst told me that, after two decades of post-Soviet Western mockery, Russia had decided that, since no one in the West was going to love it, at least they’d fear it. But what comes after that, when the consequences set in and the fear turns to loathing condescension? Isn’t that … humiliating?

So where am I going with this?  The Olympic world humiliated Putin, so now Putin will do everything he can to turn the 2018 Winter Games into an international joke.  That apparently starts with the US suddenly floating the idea to drop out of the Olympiad.

Whether US athletes will be able to attend the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea remains an "open question," US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Wednesday night. 

The Winter Olympics are set to be held Feb. 9-25 in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The situation with neighboring North Korea, which has grown increasingly hostile while pursuing its nuclear ambitions, is "changing by the day," Haley said on Fox News, making the security of US athletes uncertain. 

Still, Haley said she believes President Donald Trump's administration will work to "find out the best way" to make sure the athletes are protected. 

"I think those are conversations we are going to have to have, but what have we always said? We don't ever fear anything, we live our lives," Haley said. "And certainly that is a perfect opportunity for all of them to go and do something they have worked so hard for. What we will do is, we will make sure that we're taking every precaution possible to make sure that they're safe and to know everything that's going on around them." 

Asked if it's a "done deal" that US athletes will be able to attend the Olympics, Haley said: "There's an open question. I have not heard anything about that, but I do know in the talks that we have -- whether it's Jerusalem or North Korea -- it's about, how do we protect the US citizens in the area?"

Suddenly, a day after the Russians were banned from the 2018 games in South Korea, the security of US athletes at the games is "an open question".  And if the security of the mightiest nation on earth is in question, maybe nobody else will be safe at the games either.  If the Trump regime may not send a delegation because of "security" then what do they know is coming? Maybe that makes everyone else nervous.  Maybe they shouldn't send delegations either, it's "too risky".

And suddenly it's not Russia being punished.  It's everyone, starting with host nation South Korea.

Putin may have his revenge.  And he may very well get it now if the US drops out of the Games.  Now, it's maybe a trial balloon, but I'm betting if the IOC were to change its mind about Russia, maybe the US would decide that the Games have to go on in the Olympic Spirit.

I can't prove of course that this is what happened, that Putin picked up the phone and called Trump and said "You need to threaten to pull out of the Olympics over North Korea".

But there are never coincidences this big at this level of the game.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

America's status as global pariah under the Trump regime worsens as the United States continues to bail on UN agreements.

The United States has walked away from a United Nations effort to ease the global migration and refugee crisis, with the Trump administration saying it was no longer compatible with U.S. principles or priorities. 

In a statement, the U.S. Mission said the U.N.'s New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants — recognized by the United States last year under the Obama administration — "contains numerous provisions that are inconsistent with U.S. immigration and refugee policies." 

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said President Donald Trump made the decision after noting that "America is proud of our immigrant heritage and our long-standing moral leadership in providing support to migrant and refugee populations across the globe." 

"But," Haley continued, "our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone. We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter the country."

The rest of the world, including China and Russia, will go on without us as Trump continues to abdicate from any sort of global leadership.

World leaders and dignitaries from 193 U.N. member states adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants in September 2016, paving the way for the global compact for migration. 

The compact, expected to be adopted in 2018, is aimed at facilitating safe and orderly migration around the world. It will present a framework for comprehensive international cooperation on migrants, set out a range of actionable commitments and tackle issues such as protecting the safety, dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of migrants. 

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson applauded Trump's decision to exit the agreement and said "strengthening global governance" would run afoul of U.S. laws and policies. 

"While we will continue to engage on a number of fronts at the United Nations, in this case, we simply cannot in good faith support a process that could undermine the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders," Tillerson said in a statement.

No longer.  A nation of immigrants has turned its back on the people of the rest of the planet.  Only about 4% of the world's population is American. The other 96% of the globe is realizing that they can get along without us for the time being, and will gladly do so.

And speaking of refugees, we seem to be headed for creating a few million more on the Korean Peninsula as Trump national security adviser is openly warning of war with Pyongyang and GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham is calling for the US to begin removing the families of American soldiers stationed in South Korea.

Let’s be clear about what McMaster and Graham are saying. The US and North Korea appear to be on the path to war, and there’s no solution for peace in sight. Therefore, Graham argues, the US should stop sending family members of American military personnel to South Korea — and start taking those already there out of the country.

Graham’s commentary doesn’t come out of nowhere, however. There are serious reasons to worry about the damage North Korea could do to South Korea, where 28,500 US troops and their dependents reside.

If the US attacks North Korea, experts believe Pyongyang will retaliate not just against America but also against Seoul and Tokyo. Simulations of that possibility produce pretty bleak results. One war game convened by the Atlantic back in 2005 predicted that a North Korean attack would kill 100,000 people in Seoul — a city of around 25.6 million people — in the first few days alone. Others put the estimate even higher. A war game mentioned by the National Interest predicted Seoul could “be hit by over half-a-million shells in under an hour.”

It’s worth noting that McMaster has long talked about the growing prospect of war with North Korea, and Graham nonchalantly discusses “thousands” dying on the Korean Peninsula during a conflict. And of course Trump himself once said he would unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea if it continued to develop its nuclear program.

This rhetoric is supposed to remind North Korea that the US is serious when it says it needs to stop building a missile that can hit America. But now that North has one, it seems like the US is threatening war with no real chance of getting North Korea to do what America wants, experts tell me.

“If McMaster, Graham, and Trump are serious, God help us,” Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, told me in an interview today. “If they're bluffing, it's not working to bring North Korea to the table, and threatening preventive war just further solidifies North Korea's determination to continue advancing its arsenal and increases unintended war risks.”

Either way, we're getting closer to becoming a dangerous rogue state, one the rest of the world will have to deal with.

Last Call For Diplomacy Is Hard You Guys

It seems after 8 months on the job that Trump regime UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has given up on her job or something, and really when it comes to dealing with North Korea, shooting things is just probably easier am I right?

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Sunday the U.N. Security Council has run out of options on containing North Korea’s nuclear program and the United States may have to turn the matter over to the Pentagon.

“We have pretty much exhausted all the things that we can do at the Security Council at this point,” Haley told CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that she was perfectly happy to hand the North Korea problem over to Defense Secretary James Mattis.

As world leaders head to the United Nations headquarters in New York for the annual General Assembly meeting this week, Haley’s comments indicated the United States was not backing down from its threat of military action against North Korea.

North Korea launched a missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday in defiance of new U.N. Security Council sanctions banning its textile exports and capping imports of crude oil.

China has urged the United States to refrain from making threats to North Korea. Asked about President Donald Trump’s warning last month that the North Korean threat to the United States will be met with “fire and fury,” Haley said, “It was not an empty threat.”

“If North Korea keeps on with this reckless behavior, if the United States has to defend itself or defend its allies in any way, North Korea will be destroyed. And we all know that. And none of us want that. None of us want war,” she said on CNN.

“We’re trying every other possibility that we have, but there’s a whole lot of military options on the table,” she said. 

Please remember that all of those military options lead to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of casualties on the Korean Peninsula, along with possibly Japan and China and Guam, and if nuclear weapons come into play, possibly everywhere.

There is no "military solution" to North Korea right now that avoids a truly staggering number of dead and injured civilians.

Now the UN Ambassador is saying that there is no diplomatic solution either.  Keep in mind Trump will address the UN General Assembly Tuesday morning, and it's going to be a disaster.

There's a very good chance that by this time next year we'll be in a shooting war (or worse a nuclear one) with North Korea. If Haley can't handle the job, she needs to resign and make way for someone who can.

Of course, same goes quadruple for Trump.