Last Call For Junior Senior

It turns out the other half of that Donald Trump Jr. meeting with the Russians story has a much, much bigger surprise ending than people thought, and it may be The Big One.

President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.

The meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner only recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in confidential government documents described to The New York Times.

The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it.

The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican nomination — points to the central question in federal investigations of the Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.

And while President Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed meetings between his associates and the Russians, the episode at Trump Tower is the first such confirmed private meeting involving members of his inner circle during the campaign — as well as the first one known to have included his eldest son. It came at an inflection point in the campaign, when Donald Trump Jr., who served as an adviser and a surrogate, was ascendant and Mr. Manafort was consolidating power.

It is unclear whether the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually produced the promised compromising information about Mrs. Clinton. But the people interviewed by The Times about the meeting said the expectation was that she would do so.

In a statement on Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. said he had met with the Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance. “After pleasantries were exchanged,” he said, “the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

He said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian children.

“It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,” Mr. Trump said.

So we've gone from "We never met with the Russians" to "OK we lied, we met with the Russians but it was something we forgot about" to "OK we lied, we met multiple times with the Russians but it had nothing to do with the campaign" to now "OK we lied, we met with the Russians about the campaign but hey they set us up."

It's amazing.  And this is again, Donald Trump Jr. himself making these statements, and White House people backing up his statements as true.  This is the story I think Trump has been dreading all week, he's been tweeting hard trying to distract us from something, and this is it.

We'll see where this goes.

Sunday Long Read: The Jobs Americans Won't Do

The one aspect of politics where the Trump regime has been wildly successful is spreading terror into immigrants, both documented and otherwise.  In rural blue state areas like upstate New York, where migrant farmers pick crops, Trump's ICE raids are threatening families, farms, and an entire sector of the agriculture industry.

Since Donald Trump took office in January, ICE has been newly empowered and encouraged to target undocumented immigrants with criminal records for deportation—a practice that winds up capturing a huge number of undocumented immigrants without criminal records, too. But, while the Trump administration may be more zealous about enforcement than previous administrations, they have not actually changed any laws. Existing immigration legislation has long been at odds with the U.S. economy and with farming communities across the country. Trump’s aggressive rhetoric is only having an impact because of the legal framework buttressing it. Which is why, after a string of ICE arrests cut through the local Hudson Valley farm community, word quickly spread among Hispanic farmworkers there that nobody is safe.

As in the rest of the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as much as half of the farm workforce in New York is undocumented. The fear of deportation looming over Hudson Valley farmworkers is also impacting farmers—what they’re willing to plant and what they think they’ll be able to harvest.

“My ancestors are Irish and they were called all sorts of names,” Pete, a 58-year-old farmer, told me. He said the country has swung back around to how it was a century ago. “Now people say Hispanics are taking their jobs,” Pete said. “Come on. You can’t get a kid who can flip a burger to come here and do this job for $15 an hour. If we had a workforce that was willing to do this work, I’d hire them, but we don’t.” A 2014 American Farm Bureau study backs that up: It shows that unemployed Americans regularly shun farm work, even preferring to stay unemployed.

Which is one reason why Pete told me he’s anticipating a rough year: He’s not sure he’ll have the hands to do the work on his berry, apple, and vegetable crops. “Word of mouth used to bring guys to the farm during the harvest, but now I don’t know,” he said. He wouldn’t agree to let me use his name because he said even talking to a reporter had him worried about repercussions from zealous ICE agents. (While we were talking, Pete’s wife yelled at him to hang up the phone. He didn’t.) Pete pointed to an ICE arrest of five farmworkers in western New York who did not have criminal records. He said it’s just that kind of unpredictability that adds another layer of uncertainty to a business already fraught with pressures farmers cannot control—like the weather or consumer appetites.

But besides the human aspect, the economic aspect is also causing harm to the same rural America Trump vowed to "make great again" in his campaign propaganda.

Pete points out that the undocumented community is a net contributor to taxes. It’s true: A recent report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that undocumented immigrants contribute billions of dollars to state and local taxes across the country. Deporting them, Pete added, will only hurt Americans. “If they just stopped contributing to the workforce, we’d have a major crisis,” he said. “Pretending [deportation] fixes the system that’s broken only means less food; it doesn’t fix how this works.”

The official, legal policy solution for farmers who need extra help has been in place in one form or another since World War II. The H2-A visa program asks farmers to apply to bring in foreign workers for the harvest season. Many farmers use the program, and some of the owners of the smaller farms I talked to use it exclusively. That knock on the door of Luis’s trailer at one in the morning? It was the arrival of an H2-A worker fresh off a flight from Jamaica. But the program was created in the 1950s, and it isn’t well suited to farm labor today—and for most farmers, it has become a bureaucratic nightmare.

The annual slog through red tape puts farms at risk. Every farmer I talked to about H2-A mentioned delays in getting workers—which imperils the harvest. In 2015, for instance, a computer glitch held up hundreds of workers from Mexico, partially ruining Washington state’s cherry crop that year. Yet, none of the Hudson Valley farmers I interviewed for this story who use H2-A would go on the record to criticize it. The farmers are scared they won’t get the workers they need if they do. Farmers told me that it seems like just about any pretext is used to prevent them from getting their labor supply legally. One farmer told me she’d critiqued the program in a blog post a few years back, and she was paranoid that’s why she didn’t get her workers that year. A vegetable producer told me: “One year I didn’t get an H2-A worker because I didn’t use the word drive, as in, ‘Must drivea tractor.’ I used operate on the application.” Apparently, the farmer’s wording was not precise enough. Add the recent deportations to the existing H2-A delays and application concerns, and you’ve got one nervous farming community. (When I asked the Department of Labor about these H2-A problems, a spokesman told me the Trump administration was still too new to have a policy position on the program or about the concerns farmers have voiced about the system.)

This year, the fear of not having enough undocumented labor or enough H2-A workers has farmers planting fewer crops across the Hudson Valley. “Farmers are afraid they won’t be able to harvest what they plant,” said Steve Ammerman of the New York Farm Bureau. Ammerman told me there’s a disconnect in Washington, D.C., between what the Trump administration thinks immigration enforcement means for America and what it really means. “It means food prices are going to go up, hurting national security,” he said. Ammerman pointed to a recent study that estimates the consequences if all undocumented New York agricultural workers are deported: There would be a 24 percent fall in farm production (amounting to $1.37 billion in commodity value lost) and a knock-on effect of nearly 45,000 lost jobs across the state.

Food prices go up, that hurts consumers and restaurants.  Those are hurt, people lose jobs or can't afford to buy other products because of food prices, that hurts even more sectors of the economy.  There's a reason why George W. Bush wanted immigration reform a decade ago, and his own party exploded in racist outrage when they realized what he was going to do: the same thing Reagan did 30 years ago.

It's complex stuff here, and the Trump regime has decided to let the racist zealots control things. The ICE squads are loose, the people are scared, and the farmers are going to suffer billions in losses.  Those steep price hikes are going to start coming to your grocery store very soon.

But this is what America voted for.

Especially out in rural farm communities.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Another day, another "previously unreported meeting" between Trump campaign personnel and Russian nationals, but this time we have a new player in the game: Trump's son, Donald Jr.

Two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination last year, his eldest son arranged a meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan with a Russian lawyer who has connections to the Kremlin, according to confidential government records described to The New York Times.

The previously unreported meeting was also attended by Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, as well as the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to interviews and the documents, which were outlined by people familiar with them.

While President Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed meetings between his associates and Russians, this episode at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, is the first confirmed private meeting between a Russian national and members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle during the campaign. It is also the first time that his son Donald Trump Jr. is known to have been involved in such a meeting.

Representatives of Donald Trump Jr. and Mr. Kushner confirmed the meeting after The Times approached them with information about it. In a statement, Donald Jr. described the meeting as primarily about an adoption program. The statement did not address whether the presidential campaign was discussed.

Once again, if the subject of the meeting was as harmless as the Trump regime describes, why lie about it for nearly a year?  At this point with Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, and now Donald Trump Jr. all having "previously unreported meetings" with Russians, there's no longer any veneer of "accidentally forgot" here.   It's deliberate, and the Trump team knows it.  So what's the real reason Don Jr. was meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya?

The Russian lawyer invited to the Trump Tower meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is best known for mounting a multipronged attack against the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The law so enraged Mr. Putin that he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian children.

The adoption impasse is a frequently used talking point for opponents of the Magnitsky Act. Ms. Veselnitskaya’s campaign against the law has also included attempts to discredit its namesake, Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer and auditor who died in mysterious circumstances in a Russian prison in 2009 after exposing one of the biggest corruption scandals during Mr. Putin’s rule.

Ms. Veselnitskaya is married to a former deputy transportation minister of the Moscow region, and her clients include state-owned businesses and a senior government official’s son, whose company was under investigation in the United States at the time of the meeting. Her activities and associations had previously drawn the attention of the F.B.I., according to a former senior law enforcement official.

In his statement, Donald Trump Jr. said: “It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.”

So she's a major player in getting rid of the chief US law being currently used against Russian oligarchs.  And she had this meeting with Trump's son just weeks after Trump won the GOP nomination. Such obvious corruption would be comical if it wasn't constant from the Trump regime, and it always, always seems to involve the Russians.

Just a massive coincidence, I'm sure.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

With Trump's 30-minute meeting with Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of this week's G20 suit in Hamburg turning into more than two hours, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed our worst fears: America under Trump is now nothing more than a client state of Russian interests.  Molly McKew at Politico Magazine:

President Donald Trump needed to accomplish two things this week during his visits to Poland and the G-20 Summit in Hamburg. First, he needed to reassure America’s allies that he was committed to collective defense and the core set of values and principles that bind us together. Second, he needed to demonstrate that he understands that the greatest threat to that alliance, those values, and our security is the Kremlin.

Trump delivered neither of these. In very concrete terms, through speech and action, the president signaled a willingness to align the United States with Vladimir Putin’s worldview, and took steps to advance this realignment. He endorsed, nearly in its totality, the narrative the Russian leader has worked so meticulously to construct.

The readout of Trump’s lengthy meeting with Putin included several key points. First, the United States will “move on” from election hacking issues with no accountability or consequences for Russia; in fact, the U.S. will form a “framework” with Russia to cooperate on cybersecurity issues, evaluating weaknesses and assessing potential responses jointly. Second, the two presidents agreed not to meddle in “each other’s” domestic affairs—equating American activities to promote democracy with Russian aggression aimed at undermining it, in an incalculable PR victory for the Kremlin. Third, the announced, limited cease-fire in Syria will be a new basis for cooperation between the U.S. and Russia; Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went so far as to say that the Russian approach in Syria—yielding mass civilian casualties, catastrophic displacement, untold destruction and erased borders—may be “more right” than that of the United States.

Each of these points represents a significant victory for Putin. Each of them will weaken U.S. tools for defending its interests and security from the country that defines itself as America’s “primary adversary.” Trump has ceded the battle space—physical, virtual, moral—to the Kremlin. And the president is going to tell us this is a “win.”

Trump's capitulation to Putin yesterday was nearly absolute.  If there's still somehow any doubt left that Putin has complete control over Donald Trump and with it US foreign policy, this disastrous meeting buried those doubts in the Marianas Trench.  Trump is basically saying that he will gladly look the other way on Russian hacking, look the other way on Ukraine, look the other way on Syria and Chechnya, on Putin's autocracy and most importantly on NATO.

Six months into his term and Trump has sold us out to his boss completely.  Maybe, just maybe this is enough to get the GOP to do something, but I doubt it.  They've refused to lift a finger so far and besides, they're too busy trying to kill off millions by destroying the health care system and it's not like they're worried about voters kicking them out thanks to successful massive voter suppression efforts soon coming to the entire country.

Unless something changes and fast, we're done as a democracy.  Or as Chuck Pierce puts it:

I used to wonder how somebody could go broke running a casino. I don't wonder that anymore.

I'll take Obama's "Smartest Guy in The Room" act, with all its pitfalls, over the "Dumbest Guy Ever In The Oval Office". Because right now, we're the most dangerous rogue nation on earth, and the rest of the planet isn't going to tolerate us for long.

We Forgot About Poland

Trump's speech in Warsaw on Thursday was pretty brutal, scary stuff, sounding more like an alt-right website comment section than a White House speech, but this is where we are in the Age of Trump.

Drafted by Steve Miller, the architect of the travel ban, Trump’s speech used the type of dire, last-chance language often utilized by the far right on both sides of the Atlantic: "The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.”

Gonna pause right there for a sec.  Not even Dubya and the Nameless One were were this blatant about casting the "West" lacking the will to power.

“Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost?” Trump asked. “Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?” 

Guys, this is an American leader using the direct rhetorical arguments of white supremacists in a speech given on foreign soil.  The above paragraph is flat out the exact case that Stormfront assholes make for having an armed militia of white purists to defend against "white genocide" by anyone darker than a Kardashian.

The rest of the speech was just as awful if not worse.

Trump arrived in Warsaw Wednesday night for a 16-hour visit in the runup to the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. Poland was a less-than-obvious choice for Trump’s first major public European speech. Typically, American presidents land in London, Paris, or Berlin before Eastern Europe. But Trump has been at odds with German Chancellor Angela Merkel over everything from climate change to migrant policy, and French President Emmanuel Macron has also positioned himself as a counterweight to the conservative American administration. The Polish leadership, on the other hand, seems to have more in common with Trump’s vision. 

In his address, Trump cast the West, including the United States and Europe, on the side of “civilization.” With an undercurrent of bellicosity, he spoke of protecting borders, casting himself as a defender not just of territory but of Western “values.” And, using the phrase he had avoided on his trip to Saudi Arabia, he insisted that in the fight against “radical Islamic terrorism,” the West “will prevail.” 

Again and again, Trump held up Poland as an example, saying their history reminds the world that “the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of the people to prevail.” He recalled the story of the Warsaw uprising against the Nazis in 1944: “The West,” he said, “was saved with the blood of patriots.” 

That battle, the president seemed to say, is ongoing. He called on a new generation to rise up, saying “every last inch of civilization is worth defending with your life.” 

“Just as Poland could not be broken, I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken,” Trump said. “Our values will prevail, our people will thrive, and our civilization will triumph.” 

He did not mention that in 1944, the Polish patriots, while valiant, were not, ultimately, the saviors of the state. Nor did he note that Europeans widely see the Polish ruling party of today, which has tried to clamp down on the media and judiciary, as itself a threat to Western values. Some 90,000 Poles marched against the Polish government in early May, protesting its anti-democratic trajectory. That Poland was absent in Trump’s speech.

This is pretty much boilerplate white power stuff.  And you'd better believe that the whole world noticed what Trump said, and where he said it.

Last Call For Mitch's Plan D

GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is running into the reality that Trumpcare doesn't have the votes to pass in his own party, as I mentioned this afternoon GOP senators like Jerry Moran are running from this mess as fast as they can.  So Mitch is going for Plan D, and that's instituting what was always going to be his real plan: a fake and insincere effort to shame Democrats into sharing the blame for massive Medicaid cuts with a bogus GOP "fix" to Obamacare.

A bill focused on buttressing the nation’s insurance marketplaces will be needed if the full-fledged Republican effort to repeal much of President Barack Obama’s health care law fails, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday. It was one of his most explicit acknowledgments that his party’s top-priority drive to erase much of Obama’s landmark 2010 statutes might fall short. 

The remarks by McConnell, R-Ky., also implicitly meant that to show progress on health care, Republicans controlling the White House and Congress might have to negotiate with Democrats. While the current, wide-ranging GOP health care bill — which McConnell is still hoping to push through the Senate — has procedural protections against a Democratic Senate filibuster, a subsequent, narrower measure would not and would take 60 votes to pass. 

The existing bill would fail if just three of the 52 Republicans vote no, since all Democrats oppose it. McConnell was forced to cancel a planned vote on the measure last week after far more Republicans than that objected, and he’s been spending the Independence Day recess studying possible changes that might win over GOP dissidents.

“If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur,” McConnell said at a Rotary Club lunch in this deep-red rural area in southern Kentucky. He made the comment after being asked if he envisioned needing bipartisan cooperation to replace Obama’s law. 

“No action is not an alternative,” McConnell said. “We’ve got the insurance markets imploding all over the country, including in this state.”

The problem of course is that GOP senators will lose to Democrats if they pass Trumpcare, but they will be primaried out of a career if they pass a "fix" to Obamacare.  It's Republicans in the Senate who are being held responsible to and for Mitch's hostage crisis, along with what Mitch hopes are enough Democrats to make this a "bipartisan" bill.  Steve M. sees the obvious trap for the Dems here:

Let's say Republicans give up on repeal, then invite Democrats to negotiate on a bipartisan bill to save the system. At that point, why would Republicans have a motivation to ensure the system can still work well? Now they'd have someone to blame for failure. A year from now, the various Trumpcare bills will be down the memory hole. The Republican narrative -- probably persuasive to GOP voters -- will be "We invited Democrats to the bargaining table, and this was the outcome." 

I know the conventional wisdom is that Republicans now own health care, because every voter knows they control the White House and Congress. But Democrats are quite visibly on the sidelines now. If they join in the talks, can't the GOP message machine assign them a disproportionate share of the blame for the results? I know McConnell seems now to be much less of a tactical genius than we thought he was a month ago, but I think he still might salvage a winning (i.e., opposition-bashing) message from this.

Salvage?  As with Gorsuch, Mitch has already won. In fact, the message will be "Democrats forced us into this mess that they created.  We tried to fix it, they blocked it.  Now you're stuck with this failing Obamacare program for good."

Even better, Trump will be sabotaging Obamacare through the White House, and running against his own party.  Republican voters will side with Trump on this.  The real message will be "we need more Republicans in Congress!"

The press will go along too.  It'll be the Medicare doc fix/AMT fix/debt ceiling kabuki all over again, and it'll be Obama's fault.

But we only get to this point if Dems play along.  I'm betting they will: Mitch is all but saying that if they don't go along, they will let Obamacare collapse and people will die as a direct result.  Mitch doesn't give a damn.  Democrats do, so they will give in. Real lives are on the line here.  In the end, Dems won't have a choice.

The bottom line is that Obamacare will stumble along year after year, with a permanent bomb strapped to it, and one Democrats know Mitch and the GOP will detonate and kill millions if they don't obey.

It's happened before.

It will happen again.  Democrats still haven't figured out that they only way to beat McConnell is not to play his game.  Last time, it cost us a Supreme Court seat.  This time it will cost us Obama's legacy and probably far, far worse.

And Moran, Moran So Far Away

Kansas GOP Sen. Jerry Moran thought he could have his July 4th recess Trumpcare town hall meeting cake and eat it too as he held it in the remote western part of the state.  The event in tiny Palco, Kansas, population 277, in Rooks County, population 5,200, a county that Trump won by 70 points in November.

Only one small problem, and that is Kansans, even in Rooks County, have had about enough of the GOP.

But about 150 people tried to squeeze into a community center room set up to hold less than half that many people, many of them from outside the area. While the audience applauded Moran for opposing a health care bill written by Senate GOP leaders, the applause was louder for speakers who advocated a universal government-run health care program such as Medicare for the elderly or Medicaid for the poor.

Moran announced last week that he would oppose the Senate Republican bill after a budget analysis suggested 22 million more people would be uninsured under the proposal by 2026. Moran said the legislation needs to protect coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and not hurt rural hospitals. 

“I will choose country over party,” Moran said. “I will choose Kansans over party.” 

Like many other Republican lawmakers, Moran has been a persistent critic of the 2010 Affordable Care Act championed by former President Barack Obama and filed legislation during the Democrat’s administration to repeal it. 

The general push still has the support of many Republican voters in the area, including Ashley Kuhn, the 32-year-old director of a day care center down Main Street from the community center where Moran had his town hall. She said she’s seen her family’s health insurance co-payments double and deductibles rise, and she blames it on Obama’s signature health care law. 

“Health care needs to be changed,” she said. 

But Moran’s town hall drew supporters of Planned Parenthood and members of health care advocacy groups from as far away as the Kansas City area. They were there to press Moran to pursue a bipartisan solution that built on the existing health care law and moved the nation toward broader government coverage. 

“Who doesn’t want health care?” Jeff Zamrzla, a retired and disabled Marine and 59-year-old Democratic activist from Salina, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the east of Palco, said after the forum. “Who doesn’t want to be able to live a life that’s worth living?”

The real albatross around Moran's neck is Kansas GOP Gov. Sam Brownback.  Kansans found out the hard way that Republican economic projections aren't worth a fart in a plains tornado, so you'll excuse them if they don't actually believe Republicans like Moran anymore.

Moran's seat is pretty safe, frankly, but not even he's stupid enough to vote for Trumpcare as it is. That may change, he's still a Republican after all.  But for now, Trumpcare is dead as long as Moran won't vote for it.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

As all eyes are on the meeting today between Donald Trump and his boss Vladimir Putin in Hamburg today, it's important to note that Russia expects its new client state to be sufficiently deferential, and that the Trump regime isn't moving quickly enough to remove Obama-era sanctions on Moscow.  As such, it looks like Vlad has sent a message to its American vassals reminding them just who they now work for.

Hackers working for a foreign government recently breached at least a dozen U.S. power plants, including the Wolf Creek nuclear facility in Kansas, according to current and former U.S. officials, sparking concerns the attackers were searching for vulnerabilities in the electrical grid.

The rivals could be positioning themselves to eventually disrupt the nation’s power supply, warned the officials, who noted that a general alert was distributed to utilities a week ago. Adding to those concerns, hackers recently infiltrated an unidentified company that makes control systems for equipment used in the power industry, an attack that officials believe may be related.

The chief suspect is Russia, according to three people familiar with the continuing effort to eject the hackers from the computer networks. One of those networks belongs to an aging nuclear generating facility known as Wolf Creek -- owned by Westar Energy Inc., Great Plains Energy Inc. and Kansas Electric Power Cooperative Inc. -- on a lake shore near Burlington, Kansas.

The possibility of a Russia connection is particularly worrisome, former and current officials say, because Russian hackers have previously taken down parts of the electrical grid in Ukraine and appear to be testing increasingly advanced tools to disrupt power supplies.
The hacks come as international tensions have flared over U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia tried to influence the 2016 presidential election. The U.S., which has several continuing investigations into Russia’s activities, is known to possess digital weapons capable of disrupting the electricity grids of rival nations.

“We don’t pay attention to such anonymous fakes,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, in response to a request to comment on alleged Russian involvement.

It was unclear whether President Donald Trump was planning to address the cyberattacks at his meeting on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In an earlier speech in Warsaw, Trump called out Russia’s “destabilizing activities” and urged the country to join “the community of responsible nations.”

The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation said they are aware of a potential intrusion in the energy sector. The alert issued to utilities cited activities by hackers since May.

May?  You mean back when the Russians were demanding that the Trump regime return their US compounds near NYC and DC after Obama kicked them out in December?  Trump definitely wanted to do it, but that was too much even for Republicans in Congress to stomach.

So it looks like we have our response from Vlad, ever so gently reminding us that being able to hack the control systems of several nuclear power plants at will should serve as sufficient impetus to maybe start taking his requests as demands that should be met.

Meanwhile, the intelligence community is warning that Russian agents are running amok right now and the Russians being able to fiddle with our nuke plants may actually be the least of our concerns.

Russian spies are ramping up their intelligence-gathering efforts in the US, according to current and former US intelligence officials who say they have noticed an increase since the election. 

The officials say they believe one of the biggest US adversaries feels emboldened by the lack of a significant retaliatory response from both the Trump and Obama administrations. 

"Russians have maintained an aggressive collection posture in the US, and their success in election meddling has not deterred them," said a former senior intelligence official familiar with Trump administration efforts. 

Russians could also be seeking more information on Trump's administration, which is new and still unpredictable to Moscow, according to Steve Hall, retired CIA chief of operations. 

"Whenever there is a deterioration of relations between countries — the espionage and intelligence collection part becomes that much more important as they try to determine the plans and intentions of the adversarial government," Hall said. 

Since the November election, US intelligence and law enforcement agencies have detected an increase in suspected Russian intelligence officers entering the US under the guise of other business, according to multiple current and former senior US intelligence officials. The Russians are believed to now have nearly 150 suspected intelligence operatives in the US, these sources said. Officials who spoke to CNN say the Russians are replenishing their ranks after the US in December expelled 35 Russian diplomats suspected of spying in retaliation for election-meddling. 

"The concerning point with Russia is the volume of people that are coming to the US. They have a lot more intelligence officers in the US" compared to what they have in other countries, one of the former intelligence officials says. 

The Russians are playing the long game and winning.  Obama underestimated them, much to America's sorrow.  But Trump knows damn well that the Russians are a threat and he's ignoring it.  The question is why, and the obvious answer is that they have quite a bit of leverage over him, which means Putin is largely expected to get what he wants from us on a number of things, especially Syria.

As such, Donald gets to check in with his new boss today: the real President of the United States.

Putin.

StupidiNews!

• German police used water cannons on protesters at day 2 of the G20 summit in Hamburg as demonstrators torched cars, staged sit-ins, and disrupted traffic.
• Illinois lawmakers have overridden the veto of the state's two-year budget by GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner, the new plan will increase the state's tax revenues by more than $5 billion.
• Donald Trump will meet face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin at today's G20 summit in Germany, the two leaders are expected to address a range of topics.
• Months of repairs and signal upgrades in the nation's busiest train terminal await commuters through Penn Station this summer as work gets underway Monday.
• France's environment minister says Paris will continue towards its goal of phasing out power from coal plants in five years and end the sale of both gas and diesel vehicles by 2040.

Last Call For Return Of The Centrist Daleks

Utter failure of a Dem strategist Mark Penn and Trump-vsupporting NYC millionaire Andrew Stein know exactly how Democrats can win in 2018 and 2020...by going back to 1996 and 1998 to TRIANGULAAAAAAAAATE!

The path back to power for the Democratic Party today, as it was in the 1990s, is unquestionably to move to the center and reject the siren calls of the left, whose policies and ideas have weakened the party. 

In the early 1990s, the Democrats relied on identity politics, promoted equality of outcomes instead of equality of opportunity and looked to find a government solution for every problem. After years of leftward drift by the Democrats culminated in Republican control of the House under Speaker Newt Gingrich, President Bill Clinton moved the party back to the center in 1995 by supporting a balanced budget, welfare reform, a crime bill that called for providing 100,000 new police officers and a step-by-step approach to broadening health care. Mr. Clinton won a resounding re-election victory in 1996 and Democrats were back. 

But the last few years of the Obama administration and the 2016 primary season once again created a rush to the left. Identity politics, class warfare and big government all made comebacks. Candidates inspired by Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren and a host of well-funded groups have embraced sharply leftist ideas. But the results at the voting booth have been anything but positive: Democrats lost over 1,000 legislative seats across the country and control of both houses of Congress during the Obama years. And in special elections for Congress this year, they failed to take back any seats held by Republicans. 

Central to the Democrats’ diminishment has been their loss of support among working-class voters, who feel abandoned by the party’s shift away from moderate positions on trade and immigration, from backing police and tough anti-crime measures, from trying to restore manufacturing jobs. They saw the party being mired too often in political correctness, transgender bathroom issues and policies offering more help to undocumented immigrants than to the heartland.

Got that?  Screw everyone but white Catholic Midwest working-class straight guys.  Only they matter. Everyone else must take a back seat: black voters, immigrants, women, LBGTQ folks, atheists, the ultimate identity politics are the ones this country was born from.  Forget the DREAMers, forget Black Lives Matter, forget the pink pussy hats, forget the Pride flags, we gotta get those white men back in the party or else!

Americans are looking for can-do Democrats in the mold of John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton — leaders who rose above partisanship to unify the country, who defended human rights and equality passionately, and who also encouraged economic growth and rising wages. That is the road back to relevance, and the White House, for the Democrats.

It's the road back to relevance for white men, and they already have an entire political party just for them.  If Dems go down the same road, they'll arrive at the same place.

Trump Cards, Con't

Reminder: we live in a proto-fascist kleptocracy where Dear Leader seeks to enrich himself at the cost of the citizenry, and he is cheered on doing so because the serfs see him as an avenging sword against the enemy they have been conditioned to hate for decades.

It is rare that a single news organization attracts the level of ire mustered by President Trump, who over the weekend posted on Twitter a video that portrayed him wrestling a figure with the logo of CNN for a head. 

But the president’s denunciations — in stinging tweets and slashing speeches, in phrases like “fraud news” and “garbage journalism” — have far outstripped his criticisms of other prominent news outlets, like The New York Times or The Washington Post. And his attacks have spawned a cottage industry of Trump supporters who have declared a digital war of sorts against CNN, including gotcha videos of network employees and threatening messages sent to anchors’ cellphones.

The onslaught has contributed to a foxhole-like mentality inside CNN’s offices, where security measures have been tightened and some hosts have considered abandoning their social media accounts because of abuse. Other employees, like Chris Cuomo, co-anchor of the morning show “New Day,” insist that the scrutiny has only galvanized them further. 

“I’m comfortable going to work in Thunderdome every day,” Mr. Cuomo said in an interview, referring to the steel-cage fighting venue of the “Mad Max” movies. 

Still, CNN’s troubles have been compounded by a series of recent self-inflicted wounds — not least a high-profile retraction of a sensitive article about one of Mr. Trump’s close allies, which last week led to the forced resignations of three veteran journalists.

Those who serve Dear Leader are rewarded with glory.  Those who oppose him will be snuffed out.

Mr. Trump’s allies argue that it is CNN’s conduct that is unbecoming. Starting on last year’s campaign trail, the president and his aides have accused the network of bias and arrogance, an offensive that heated up again in January after CNN reported on the existence of a secret dossier detailing a series of lurid accusations against Mr. Trump. The network’s reporters now routinely joust with Mr. Trump’s press aides, and Jim Acosta, a White House correspondent, recently denounced the administration’s use of off-camera briefings as an affront to American values. 

White House advisers have discussed a potential point of leverage over their adversary, a senior administration official said: a pending merger between CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, and AT&T. Mr. Trump’s Justice Department will decide whether to approve the merger, and while analysts say there is little to stop the deal from moving forward, the president’s animus toward CNN remains a wild card.

I know it's hard to cheer for Time Warner/AT&T in this scenario because Trump wrecking yet another media mega-merger out of spite would actually be far better for the American consumer in the long run, and it would be yet another very public example of Trump being unfit to govern.

It doesn't however make it right.

The Slobby Hobby Lobby Hammurabi Mobby Robby Jobby

So it turns out that when you have a large, family-owned private corporation that purports to be a Christian enterprise that has no problem using that religious belief to deny their employees benefits like birth control, that same corporation can also reference its religious beliefs in order to justify the theft of religiously significant artifact from other countries as well.

In 2010 and 2011, a series of packages were shipped to Hobby Lobby's headquarters or one of the craft retailer's affiliates. Shipping labels described the contents as clay tiles or tile samples of minimal value, but, according to federal prosecutors, they were actually valuable ancient artifacts of Iraqi origin being smuggled into the United States.

Hobby Lobby has now agreed to forfeit thousands of antiquities that it bought over the years — via a process that prosecutors say was "fraught with red flags" — and pay an additional $3 million to resolve any claims by the US government, according to court papers filed on Wednesday.

US laws restrict the import of Iraqi cultural items that were looted from Iraqi institutions or where "a reasonable suspicion exists that they were illegally removed." Iraq bars the export of antiquities and restricts private possession.

According to prosecutors, an expert hired by Hobby Lobby to advise the company on its acquisitions warned that antiquities likely from Iraq carried "considerable risk," and noted that hundreds of thousands of objects — including cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals, which Hobby Lobby ultimately purchased — had been looted from Iraq since 1990.

So we're taking about stolen Iraqi artifacts looted from the pre-Desert Shield days of President Poppy Bush and the first Iraq War, and of course Hobby Lobby and Steve Green had zero ethical problems in obtaining these over the last 25 plus years.  Providing insurance that covered birth control for their own employees, that however was worth going to the goddamn US Supreme Court over.

Hobby Lobby reached an agreement with the government to give up thousands of artifacts and to adopt new internal measures to make sure any future acquisitions comply with customs laws and regulations. The company will also have to file regular reports for 18 months about new purchases of "cultural property." Hobby Lobby did not admit any criminal wrongdoing.

Hobby Lobby said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News that the company "did not fully appreciate the complexities of the acquisitions process," which led to "regrettable mistakes."

“We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled,” Hobby Lobby president Steve Green said in the statement. “Hobby Lobby has cooperated with the government throughout its investigation, and with the announcement of today’s settlement agreement, is pleased the matter has been resolved.”

The forfeiture comes as Green prepares to open the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, a project that he has spearheaded and that will reportedly feature items from his vast private collection of biblical artifacts. The forfeiture case filings don't mention the museum, but the company said in a statement on Wednesday that Hobby Lobby had been buying artifacts over the years to share "with the world in public institutions and museums."

So, we're talking about a billionaire (Steve's worth at least $5 billion according to Forbes) who is literally appropriating Iraqi culture for his own art collection but covering birth control for his own employees was a literal federal case.

Christian values indeed.  And he's going to get away with it because he's going to open a museum with his stolen crap after getting slapped on the wrist for less than 0.1% of his net worth.  And what makes this utterly, completely perfect is that "selling stolen Iraqi artifacts to morality-free Western billionaires" is pretty much the chief source of funding for the Islamic State, which is why even the Trump DoJ is involved with this.

That's right.  Hobby Lobby is essentially funding ISIS through buying stolen antiquities.

Can't make this up, guys.

Also, I will never apologize for that post title.  Ever.

StupidiNews!

• GOP Rep. Steve Scalise has been readmitted to a Washington DC hospital in serious condition after concerns over an infection and other complications from being shot last month.
• US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley is warning of military action after this week's successful ICBM test by North Korea.
• Donald Trump praised Poland, criticized Russia, and threatened North Korea meeting in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzei Duda ahead of a G20 summit in Germany this weekend.
• Several states are looking to bring new net neutrality and privacy rules for broadband carriers after the Trump FCC reversed Obama-era consumer protections earlier this year.
• The third time was the charm for SpaceX as the commercial spaceflight company was able to put a satellite into orbit after scrubbing two previous launches this week.

Last Call For Running On Something

With Republicans hiding from constituents over Trumpcare during the summer recess, Democrats in Congress are rolling out a positive message based on economics.  Sort of, anyway.

Democratic leaders are zeroing in on a new mantra for their long-promised economic agenda: a “Better Deal.”

The rebranding attempt comes as Democrats acknowledge that simply running against President Donald Trump wasn’t a winning strategy in 2016 and probably won’t work in 2018 either. The slogan, which is still being polled in battleground House districts, aims to convince voters that Democrats have more to offer than the GOP and the self-proclaimed deal-maker in the White House.

But even as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi prepare a jobs package centered on infrastructure, trade and the minimum wage, some of their most vulnerable members are making other plans.

Several moderate Democrats facing reelection next year told POLITICO that no matter what leadership does, they’re preparing to craft their own pitch to voters. The ideological and political divides that gripped the party during the Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders primary wars are far from healed, and leadership may not find universal support for the left-leaning platform, particularly from those trying to defend seats in Trump-friendly states.

“Message has always been a challenge for Democrats, because it tends to get too convoluted and not very simple,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said in a recent interview.

“We ought to have a message already,” added Tester, a former chief of Senate Democrats’ campaign arm who is up for reelection in 2018. “I’m not sure we have a cohesive message. But we’ve certainly got one for Montana.”

Freshman Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.), who beat a progressive challenger to win his Orange County seat, which includes Disneyland, also declared his independence from leadership: “If the left and the right are going to have a certain message, I’m going to have my own message,” Correa said.

He isn’t alone.

Several lawmakers interviewed by POLITICO said the overarching lesson they learned from the 2016 election is not that Democrats need a more cohesive economic message. Instead, they say, they need to be able to run a strong campaign in spite of the national Democratic platform.

That’s not to say they won’t accept a new party plank if it materializes and fits their districts. But they’re not counting on it either.

“It would be helpful if there was a good national message, but the Blue Dogs do not count on that or rely on that,” said Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), chairwoman of the moderate Blue Dog super PAC. “If you have the right candidate, who’s a good fit for his or her district, that is what matters the most.”

But I was told that a unified, solidly progressive and left-leaning economic message would win across the country, including winning over Rust Belt, Midwest, Mountain West and Southwest voters in Trump states.   I guess that's why Bernie won all the primaries outside of California and New York.

Oh, wait.

Instead, I see multiple Democrats announcing now that they are running on their own message.  Why, it's almost as if Dems in conservative areas understand that bold liberalism doesn't work in places like Montana, Orange County, California or southern Arizona.

A one-size-fits-all economic approach doesn't work in every state, rather you need to smartly contest all 50 states with people who can win?  That's crazy talk.

Obama-Scare Tactics

As part of the Trump regime's push to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the White House has been pushing the notion that millions of Americans are "victims of Obamacare" and that it's somehow a moral imperative to rescue these "victims" from the evil Democrats.  Indeed, several state GOP parties are joining in this parade of apparent bureaucratic brutality, including VP Mike Pence's home state of Indiana.

Only one problem: when asked what "horror stories" these "victims of Obamacare" had to share, they instead told the Indiana GOP how much the Affordable Care Act had improved their lives.

The Indiana Republican Party posed a question to Facebook on Monday: "What's your Obamacare horror story? Let us know." 

The responses were unexpected. 

"My sister finally has access to affordable quality care and treatment for her diabetes."

"My father's small business was able to insure its employees for the first time ever. #thanksObama"

"Love Obamacare!"

"The only horror in the story is that Republicans might take it away."

Oops.

By 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, the Indiana GOP's post collected more than 1,500 comments, the vast majority in support of Obamacare. 

Within hours, Facebook users and pages, including county Democratic party pages and the popular Periods for Politicians/Periods for Pence page, shared the post to encourage their networks to comment in support of Obamacare, too.

And so it goes.  Remember, as Indiana's governor, Mike Pence signed on to Medicaid expansion. Yes, Indiana's hybrid Medicaid mess has a lot of caveats and hoops to jump through being touted as "skin in the game" and "personal responsibility" but people are getting coverage.

Remember, the GOP Senate bill would not only reverse Medicaid expansion, it would give states the option to opt out of Medicaid coverage altogether and take the money as a block grant instead that doesn't have to be spent on Medicaid at all.  And once a state waives its Medicaid program under the GOP Senate bill, it's permanent and cannot be changed.

This is what Republicans have been wanting for decades, and they're going to get it unless enough Americans start sharing stories of Obamacare's success like Indiana voters are doing.