Russian To Judgment, Con't

Meanwhile, the Mueller investigation is now closing in on White House personnel, and the goal now is "who will sing first to avoid prison?"  It's the classic scenario: talk to the cops or risk going down in flames if you say nothing.  Eventually somebody will start singing like Pavarotti at the Met.

In a sign that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election will remain a continuing distraction for the White House, the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is in talks with the West Wing about interviewing current and former senior administration officials, including the recently ousted White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, according to three people briefed on the discussions.

Mr. Mueller has asked the White House about specific meetings, who attended them and whether there are any notes, transcripts or documents about them, two of the people said. Among the matters Mr. Mueller wants to ask the officials about is President Trump’s decision in May to fire the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, the two people said.

That line of questioning will be important as Mr. Mueller continues to investigate whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice in the dismissal of Mr. Comey.

No interviews have been scheduled, but in recent weeks Mr. Mueller’s investigation has appeared to intensify. Late last month, he took the aggressive step of executing a search warrant at the home of Paul J. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, in Alexandria, Va. Legal experts say Mr. Mueller may be trying to put pressure on Mr. Manafort to cooperate with the investigation.

Although it has been clear for months that Mr. Mueller would interview Mr. Trump’s closest advisers, Mr. Mueller’s recent inquiries come as Mr. Trump is heading into the fall pushing his priorities in Congress, including a tax overhaul, with the constant distraction of a federal investigation.

Ty Cobb, a special counsel to the president, declined to comment, saying only that the White House would “continue to fully cooperate” with Mr. Mueller’s inquiry. He has frequently said that the White House will cooperate with Mr. Mueller’s investigation and that he hopes it will be completed quickly. Mr. Priebus did not return messages seeking comment.

Mr. Mueller has expressed interest in speaking with other administration officials, including members of the communications team. But Mr. Trump’s allies are particularly concerned about Mr. Mueller’s interest in talking to Mr. Priebus, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee who worked closely with Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign. Mr. Trump’s confidants at the White House say Mr. Trump was never fully convinced that Mr. Priebus would be loyal to him.

Before, the focus was on former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort.  Now the focus is on Trump's former WH Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus.

Shortly after the November election, Mr. Priebus was made chief of staff, and he was involved in the major decisions the president made during the transition and in the first six months of the administration. Mr. Priebus made a point of being in most meetings and tried to be aware of what the president was doing. Mr. Trump fired him last month.

Mr. Priebus can potentially answer many questions Mr. Mueller has about what occurred during the campaign and in the White House. Mr. Priebus appears on the calendar of Mr. Manafort on the same day in June 2016 that Mr. Manafort and other campaign officials — including Mr. Trump’s eldest son and son-in-law — attended a meeting with Russians who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton, according to two people briefed on the matter. It is not clear whether Mr. Priebus and Mr. Manafort did meet that day.

According to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation, Mr. Comey met with Mr. Priebus at the White House on Feb. 8 — a week before Mr. Comey said Mr. Trump cornered him in the Oval Office and asked him to end an investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. In Mr. Comey’s meeting with Mr. Priebus, Mr. Comey told Mr. Priebus about a Justice Department policy that largely bars discussions between White House officials and the F.B.I.about continuing investigations in order to prevent political meddling — or at least the appearance of it — in the bureau’s work, according to the law enforcement official.

It is not clear whether Mr. Priebus ever relayed that message to the president. Mr. Trump’s Republican allies — including the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan — have said that Mr. Trump may have asked Mr. Comey to end the investigation because he was a new president who did not understand the subtleties of how the commander in chief should interact with the F.B.I.

Mr. Priebus may also be able to help prosecutors verify crucial details about Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Comey. According to testimony Mr. Comey provided to Congress, Mr. Priebus knows that Mr. Comey had the one-on-one encounter with Mr. Trump on Feb. 14, when Mr. Comey has said Mr. Trump asked him to end the Flynn investigation. Mr. Trump has said that the meeting did not occur and that he did not ask Mr. Comey to end the inquiry.

Between the two of them, Trump could be in a lot of trouble.  We'll see what happens, but it's clear with the news that Manafort is cooperating with Mueller and the Senate Judiciary Committee investigation, the window to cut a deal is closing fast.

Priebus will almost certainly talk.  And then things get interesting.

Weekend (White) Warriors

Meanwhile here in Trump's America, we're having open Nazi rallies in Virginia to celebrate the victories of white supremacy over the last year, and let's face it, they won themselves an entire US federal government. They have a lot to cheer about with this regime while they're marching with torches in hand.

Hours before a noon rally was set to begin Saturday, violent skirmishes broke out between bands of white supremacists and counterprotesters who have converged on this college town around the issue of a Confederate statue.

Men in combat gear, some waring bicycle and motorcycle helmets and carrying clubs and sticks and makeshift shields fought each other in the downtown streets, with little apparent police interference. Both sides sprayed each other with chemical irritants and plastic bottles were hurled through the air.

State police and Charlottesville police in riot gear were stationed on side streets but were not in the most concentrated areas where protesters and counterprotesters were brawling. Gov. Terry McAuliffe had placed the National Guard on standby but they, too, were not in the downtown area where the morning clashes were occurring.

By 11 a.m., several fully armed militias and hundreds of right wing rally goers had poured into the small downtown park that is the site of the planned rally.

Charlottesville officials, concerned about crowds and safety issues, had tried to move the rally to a larger park away from the city’s downtown.

But Jason Kessler, the rally’s organizer, filed a successful lawsuit against the city that was supported by the Virginia ACLU, saying that his First Amendment rights would be violated by moving the rally.

Tensions began Friday night, as several hundred white supremacists chanted “White lives matter!” “You will not replace us!” and “Jews will not replace us!” as they carried torches marched in a parade through the University of Virginia campus.

The fast-paced march was made up almost exclusively of men in their 20s and 30s, though there were some who looked to be in their mid-teens.

Meanwhile, hundreds of counterprotesters packed a church to pray and organize. A small group of counterprotesters clashed with the marchers shortly before 10 p.m. at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson, the university’s founder.

One counterprotester apparently deployed a chemical spray, which affected the eyes of a dozen or so marchers. It left them floundering and seeking medical assistance.

Police officers who had been keeping a wary eye on the march jumped in and broke up the fights. The marchers then disbanded, though several remained and were treated by police and medical personnel for the effects of the mace attack. It was not clear if any one was arrested.

The march came on the eve of the Unite the Right rally, a gathering of groups from around the country whose members have said they are being persecuted for being white and that white history in America is being erased.

The Saturday rally is being held at noon at Emancipation Park, formerly Lee Park, home to a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that the city of Charlottesville voted to remove earlier this year. The statue remains in the park pending a judge’s ruling expected later this month.

Anyone who is shocked or thinks this is unfathomable after the Obama administration?  Let the fact America happily elected the most hostile regime towards civil rights in generations as a direct response to America's first black president sink in.

This is merely America reverting to form, and that form is that of a country that became the most powerful in the world by exploiting black and brown bodies for 400 years and continues to do so today with the government of the United States fully in control of a Republican Party completely dedicated to continuing this arrangement.

Expect a lot more of this in the years ahead.  We're long overdue.

Last Call For There's Always One

Gotta love House Democrats who think that right now the biggest target to be swinging at in the Trump regime is...Nancy Pelosi.  Meet Democratic Rep. Filemon Vela of Texas, who's more interested in seeing Pelosi gone in 2018 than any of the GOP.

Things weren’t always so tense between Vela and Pelosi. Vela, who’s represented Texas's 34th District since 2013, is a relative newcomer to the ranks of Pelosi critics. Back in 2014, she visited Vela's district at his invitation and the two toured a detention facility there. According to a transcript of a press conference from the leader’s office, Pelosi was complimentary of Vela.

“Congressman Vela is such a tremendous intellectual resource on this because this is something we have to be very smart about,” Pelosi said. About a month after the visit, Pelosi met with a delegation of border mayors and local officials Vela had brought to Washington.

“She was very helpful during that time,” Vela told BuzzFeed News. It’s only much more recently their relationship crumbled.

Earlier this year Pelosi even appointed Vela to be the Blue Dog representative to leadership at the start of the current Congress. The role involves voicing the opinions of the Blue Dogs, a group of moderate Democrats, to leadership.

But then he quit.

Vela told BuzzFeed News he decided to leave it due to a hike in dues for new members of leadership. Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for Pelosi, told BuzzFeed News there is not an additional dues requirement for the Blue Dog representative to leadership. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which handles dues, did not comment.

“I just decided I didn’t want to be on leadership at the front end. I felt like I was better off working this cycle outside of leadership,” Vela said.

Vela has had his disagreements with Pelosi in the past, but he said he supported her for leader as recently as last fall, when 63 other Democrats voted against her.

“I think she’s provided tremendous value to the Democratic caucus. And I think her tenure has been historic,” Vela told BuzzFeed News in an interview. “But I think with respect to the issue of winning the House majority back in 2018, and given her negative effect on swing voters and Republican moderates, there’s no way she’s worth the trouble in the context of gaining the majority in 2018.”

That’s just Vela, friends in Congress say. He’s the type of person who is not shy about his thoughts on a matter once he has made his mind up.

“My own estimation of him — he has a backbone of steel,” California Rep. Juan Vargas said of Vela. “It’s best to go talk to him and try to convince him of your position, not to try to force him to do anything because if you do, it completely backfires. … But he’ll always listen to you.”

And Vela hasn’t saved his quick turnaround ire for Pelosi alone — his closest friends are no exception.

Vela abruptly left the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in 2013, accusing some of his colleagues of supporting a Senate immigration bill he opposed “without blinking.” He also charged Pelosi at the time with pressuring the CHC to back it.

Pelosi’s spokesperson disputed Vela’s characterization and said the approach to the bill was decided in “close consultation” with the full caucus.

The bill never got a vote in the House, but Vela took something of a gap year and distanced himself from CHC over the affair. Eventually, other members were able to talk him into returning. Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva said he and other members convinced him it was “better to be inside the tent.”

Immigration is a deeply personal issue for Vela, who represents a border district. Conversations with him often include tales of undocumented immigrants and their struggles.

“One thing that I admire about Filemon, I don’t always agree with his positions, but you know, he’s fierce about his positions, and he’s fearless about standing up for the things that he believes in, which I think our constituents really want,” New Mexico Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham told BuzzFeed News.

Despite his penchant for strong language (for example telling Trump in an open letter last year to “take your border wall and shove it up your ass”) and picking fights with his own Democratic colleagues and leaders, Vela’s network of friends on Capitol Hill is large.

He’s known for going out of his way to fundraise for other members. Vela is in near constant touch with many of his colleagues, often texting them or chatting with them on the floor. By his estimate, approximately 100 members of Congress have visited his district — which is bordered by Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico — for various events. “Helping other members is just something that I really enjoy,” Vela said in an email.

And in person, his demeanor doesn’t seem to match his rhetoric. Vela is far more reserved than his public statements would lead people to believe.

But he has an approachable quality about him that’s noted even by fellow politicians. Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal, said he was “impressed” on a trip to Vela’s district by how excited his constituents were to see him at small restaurants they stopped in for take out. “He knew everybody on a first-name basis, and they knew him on a first-name basis, and I thought that was good retail politics,” Neal said.

Asked if he has leadership ambitions of his own, Vela said: “With respect to my own leadership aspirations, I think that many of the members that I have helped are better postured to lead this caucus. But then again, you never know what the future holds so it is important to always be prepared.”

If all this seems familiar, this is the exact Sen. John McCain/Sen. Rand Paul "Maverick!" playbook, only written for Dems.  Vela has an agenda, and it's to beat up on Nancy Pelosi and her "San Francisco values" at home in Texas and to vote with her in Washington. He doesn't really dislike Pelosi, but he sure likes to pretend he does.

It's pretty effective in a red state like Texas if you're a Democrat, I guess.  I mean, why should the Republicans be the only party to get to "run against the leadership" and stay in power?

Might work if the Dems were actually in power though.  Just saying.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

There's no doubt now that former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort is cooperating with both Senate Judiciary Committee investigators and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team.  Whether this means Manafort has cut a deal, we don't know yet.  But the Trump regime is definitely treating Manafort like somebody who ratted out their guilty boss, and they can't backstab him quickly enough in front of the press.

President Donald Trump would have you believe that Paul Manafort wasn’t all that involved with his campaign, and for good reason: Behind the scenes, Trump’s aides fume that the former campaign chairman is at least partially responsible for the president’s deepening legal woes. 

“I know Mr. Manafort. Haven’t spoken to him for a long time, but I know him,” Trump said of his former top campaign aide on Thursday. The president was reacting to news that a dozen FBI agents had raided one of Manafort’s four homes late last month and carried off tax documents and banking records, as The New York Times reported on Wednesday. “That’s pretty tough stuff,” Trump told reporters. 

The president and his White House staff have for months minimized Manafort’s role and time on the 2016 presidential campaign, repeatedly describing it as a “very short period of time.” 

Trump’s attempt to downplay his relationship with Manafort left out some pertinent facts, however. 

Manafort was integral to the Trump campaign’s efforts to secure Republican delegates at last year’s convention. He reportedly remained in touch with the White House as late as April of this year, and helped craft the administration’s early strategy to counter allegations that it colluded with agents of the Russian government during last year’s election. 

According to sources close to the president, many on Team Trump blame Manafort for special counsel Robert Mueller’s divergence from election interference and foray into the private finances of the president’s family, and political and business associates.
Though Trump himself has engaged in a number of opaque foreign business deals, his aides believe it was Manafort’s work in Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere that set off the special counsel’s alarm bells—and got him digging into issues only tangentially related to alleged Russian election shenanigans.

The terms “shady” and “sketchy” come up most frequently when senior veterans of Trump’s campaign discuss the earlier work done by Manafort, the campaign’s former chairman. (This is the kind of work that has in decades past included Manafort’s lobbying for some of the worst human rights abusers, killers, and dictators of the Cold War era—work Manafort did with longtime Trump consigliere Roger Stone at their well-connected K Street lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly.) 

What they don’t know is whether Mueller has “turned” Manafort or simply obtained information during his investigation that has led to pertinent election-meddling developments, and what—if anything—Manafort would have to offer or interest Mueller and his team.

Pretty soon they'll tell us Manafort was really working for Clinton and Obama as part of a plot to bring down Dear Leader Trump.  But like I keep saying, the Trump regime is certainly acting like Manafort has the potential to badly damage Trump, and all of it keeps coming back to that June 9, 2016 meeting with Manafort, Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. involving Russian nationals shopping dirt on the Clinton campaign.

I said earlier last month that the revelations about that meeting were the turning point in the Mueller and Senate investigations, the "end of the beginning" as we moved into the realm of the case against Trump becoming serious.  When news of that meeting leaked, the Trump regime went into panic mode and has yet to leave it.

According to two senior officials, White House suspicions toward Manafort were turned up to eleven after the news broke last month of a Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer who claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton. Manafort was present at the now-infamous confab, as was President Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Trump’s advisers spent a good chunk of the month of July wondering and wildly speculating who could have leaked such damaging information—and Manafort’s name was a recurring theme. 

Maloni, the Manafort spokesman, stressed to The Daily Beast that Manafort had voluntarily disclosed the Trump Jr. meeting to Senate investigators (as had been previously reported) before Mueller or his team ever asked about it. 

And as the spotlight around Manafort continues to grow, there are still some in Trump-world who insist the president has nothing to worry about from his former campaign chairman, no matter what comes of the Mueller probe. 

“The raid on Manafort’s home on the very day that the special counsel knew he was meeting with Senate investigators is a pressure tactic designed to induce Manafort to testify against the president, which is never going to happen,” Manafort’s former partner and current pal Roger Stone insisted to The Daily Beast on Thursday. “Paul is 100% loyal to the President.” 

Stone has publicly gone to bat this week for his ex-partner, and in more ways than one. Earlier this week, the Trump-endorsing supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer published online its big story headlined, “TRUMP ADVISOR SEX SCANDAL—PAUL MANAFORT’S SICK AFFAIR.” 

“It’s very disturbing. I felt very badly for him last night,” Stone told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “Nobody has to see their personal flaws splashed over the front pages. I’ve been there.”

I'm betting the completely amoral Manafort is about as loyal to Trump as Trump has been to him (or anybody for that matter) which is to say "not in the least".  Remember, Trump's long-time modus operandi is to turn on anybody and everybody he can find that he can blame for his own failures. (Ask Sean Spicer, Jeff Sessions or Mitch McConnell how that works out.)

That was eventually going to catch up to Trump, and it's starting to look more and more like Manafort sold him out (or tried to at any rate).

We'll see where this goes, but the effort to smear Manafort and to change the subject back to Clinton and reopen the investigation into her emails is the clearest sign yet that the Trumpies are coming undone.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump refused to rule out a preemptive strike on North Korea at an impromptu press conference yesterday, suggesting his "fire and fury" rhetoric this week wasn't tough enough.
• The Trump regime filed a briefing with the US Supreme Court Thursday arguing that Congress has already given Trump the power to ban Muslim immigrants from entering the US.
• A suicide bomber has killed at least one soldier detonating a blast in front of Mogadishu's largest mosque in Somalia early Friday.
• Donald Trump will declare the opioid crisis in the US as a national emergency, paving the way for federal funding for additional treatment resources.
• Google has canceled an all-employee meeting on the company's diversity issues over fears that the company would not be able to protect employees online from retaliation.

Last Call For Suppression With No Discretion

Republicans at the state level know that the Trump regime will never challenge them on outright voter suppression of registered Democrats and groups that vote Democratic in elections, so they've given up trying to be subtle about it as and are blatantly disenfranchising Democratic precincts in states like Indiana today.

State and local Republicans have expanded early voting in GOP-dominated areas and restricted it in Democratic areas, an IndyStar investigation has found, prompting a significant change in Central Indiana voting patterns. 

From 2008 to 2016, GOP officials expanded early voting stations in Republican dominated Hamilton County, IndyStar's analysis found, and decreased them in the state's biggest Democratic hotbed, Marion County.

That made voting more convenient in GOP areas for people with transportation issues or busy schedules. And the results were immediate. 

Most telling, Hamilton County saw a 63 percent increase in absentee voting from 2008 to 2016, while Marion County saw a 26 percent decline. Absentee ballots are used at early voting stations. 

Population growth and other factors may have played a role, but Hamilton County Clerk Kathy Richardson, a Republican, told IndyStar the rise in absentee voting in Hamilton County was largely a result of the addition of two early voting stations, which brought the total to three.

"It was a great concept to open those (voting stations)," Richardson said, adding that the turnout might have increased with the addition of even more voting machines.

Other Central Indiana Republican strongholds, including Boone, Johnson and Hendricks counties, also have added early voting sites — and enjoyed corresponding increases in absentee voter turnout. 

But not Marion County, which tends to vote Democratic, and has a large African-American population. 

During that same 2008-16 period, the number of early voting stations declined from three to one in Marion County, as Republican officials blocked expansion. 

Some Republicans blame the dearth of early voting in Marion County on a lack of local funding. "I have never received any type of message that the individuals in charge of Marion County have any interest in spending the money (to expand satellite locations)," said Jim Merritt, chairman of the Marion County Republican Party.

More early voting stations for Republican precincts in suburban white Republican counties, fewer early voting stations for Democratic precincts in urban black counties.

Any questions about how Republicans plan to maintain a stranglehold on local and state elections in the states they control now, regardless of demographics over the next generation?

Mike Pence helped the Indiana GOP win.

He's going to help them win in all 50 states.

He's going to do it by preventing black people from voting.

Do you get it now, guys?

A Fissile Missile Pissing Contest, Con't

Over at Foreign Policy, Jeffrey Lewis argues that North Korea won its game of nuclear chicken some time ago, and that the world will have little choice but to come to the negotiating table and give Kim Jong Un what he wants, no matter what Trump blusters about.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that North Korea has a large stockpile of compact nuclear weapons that can arm the country’s missiles, including its new intercontinental ballistic missiles that are capable of hitting the United States. That’s another way of saying: game over. 

Also: I told you so. 

There are really two assessments in the Post’s report. One, dated July 28, is that the intelligence community — not just the Defense Intelligence Agency, contrary to what you may have heard — “assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles.” The other assessment, published earlier in July, stated that North Korea had 60 nuclear weapons — higher than the estimates usually given in the press. Put them together, though, and its pretty clear that the window for denuclearizing North Korea, by diplomacy or by force, has closed. 

These judgments are front-page news, but only because we’ve been living in collective denial. Both intelligence assessments are consistent with what the North Koreans have been saying for some time, for reasons I outlined in a column here at Foreign Policy immediately after the September 2016 nuclear test titled, “North Korea’s Nuke Program Is Way More Sophisticated Than You Think: This is now a serious nuclear arsenal that threatens the region and, soon, the continental United States.” 

Authors rarely get to pick titles, and almost never like them, but I think the editors at FP got this one about right. It is about as subtle as a jackhammer, although even so the message didn’t seem to sink in.

The world must now deal with a nuclear North Korea, and it must deal with Pyongyang soon or risk a fatal miscalculation that could cost tens of millions of lives.

Let’s walk through the evidence. 

North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests. That is really quite a lot. Looking at other countries that have conducted five nuclear tests, our baseline expectation for North Korea should be that it has a nuclear weapon small enough to arm a ballistic missile and is well on its way toward testing a thermonuclear — yes, thermonuclear — weapon. 

A lot of people got the wrong idea after North Korea’s first nuclear test failed, and subsequent nuclear tests seemed smaller than they should be. There was a common view that the North Koreans, well, kind of sucked at making nuclear weapons. That was certainly my first impression. But there was always another possibility, one that dawned on me gradually. According to a defector account, North Korea tried to skip right toward relatively advanced nuclear weapons that were compact enough to arm ballistic missiles and made use of relatively small amounts of plutonium. That should not have been surprising; both Iraq and Pakistan similarly skipped designing and testing a more cumbersome Fat Man-style implosion device. The disappointing yields of North Korea’s first few nuclear tests were not the result of incompetence, but ambition. So, while the world was laughing at North Korea’s first few nuclear tests, they were learning — a lot. 

And then there is the issue of North Korea’s nuclear test site. North Korea tests its nuclear weapons in tunnels beneath very large mountains. When my research institute used topography data collected from space to build a 3-D model of the site, we realized that the mountains are so tall that they may be hiding how big the nuclear explosions are. Some of the “disappointments” may not have been disappointments at all, and the successes were bigger than we realized. I think the best interpretation of the available evidence is that North Korea accepted some technical risk early in its program to move more quickly toward missile-deliverable nuclear weapons. 

The fact that North Korea’s nuclear weapons used less fissile material than we expected helps explain the second judgment that North Korea has more bombs than is usually reported. The defector claimed that North Korea’s first nuclear weapon contained only 4 kilograms of the limited supply of plutonium North Korea made, and continues to make, at its reactor at Yongbyon. (For a long while, experts claimed the reactor was not operating when thermal images plainly showed that it was.) The North Koreans themselves claimed the first test used only 2 kilograms of plutonium. Those claims struck many people, including me, as implausible at first. But they were only implausible in the sense that such a device would probably fail when tested — and the first North Korean test did fail. The problem is North Korea kept trying, and its later tests succeeded. 

We also must take seriously that North Korea has perhaps stretched its supply of plutonium by integrating some high-enriched uranium into each bomb and developing all-uranium designs. North Korea has an unknown capacity to make highly enriched uranium. We’ve long noticed that the single facility that North Korea has shown off to outsiders seems smaller than North Korea’s newly renovated capacity to mine and mill uranium; we naturally wondered where all that extra uranium is going. (My research institute thinks it might be fun to estimate how much uranium North Korea enriches based on how much it mills, if you know anyone with grant money burning a hole in her pocket.) 

Unless the intelligence community knows exactly where North Korea is enriching uranium and how big each facility is, we’re just guessing how many nuclear weapons the country may have. But 60 nuclear weapons doesn’t sound absurdly high. 

The thing is, we knew all this already. Sure, sure it isn’t the same when I say it. I mean, I am just some rando living out in California. But now that someone with a tie and real job in Washington has said it, it is news. 

The big question is where to go from here. Some of my colleagues still think the United States might persuade North Korea to abandon, or at least freeze, its nuclear and missile programs. I am not so sure. I suspect we might have to settle for trying to reduce tensions so that we live long enough to figure this problem out. But there is only one way to figure out who is right: Talk to the North Koreans.

We don't really have much of a choice right now, do we?

Of course, we don't have much of a State Department or President right now either.  Hell, we don't even have an ambassador to South Korea.

I assume China, South Korea, and Japan will need to step up and handle this mess.  America doesn't even have the people to do so right now.  Our diplomacy is nearly worthless and the rest of the world will press on in spite of our apparently uselessness in situations like these.

Take your pick as to whom the Leader of the Free World title belongs to these days.  North Korea has just proven it's no longer the United States in that chair.

Fast-Growing Fascism

It's totally strange how the response to the nation's first black Democratic president was the Republican party going full-on authoritarian with white nationalism at its core and seeking to completely undo Obama's entire memory, let alone his presidential legacy.  No surprise then that years of "Democrat voter fraud!" screaming now has a majority of Republicans backing the end of federal elections should Dear Leader Trump declare so.

Slightly more than half of Republicans say they would support postponing the 2020 presidential election if President Trump proposed it to make sure only eligible American citizens can vote, according to a new survey. 

According to a poll published by The Washington Post, 52 percent of Republicans said they would back a postponement of the next election if Trump called for it. 

If Trump and congressional Republicans proposed postponing the election to ensure only eligible citizens could vote, support from Republicans rises to 56 percent. 

Pollsters found 47 percent of Republicans think Trump won the popular vote.

A majority of Republicans, 68 percent, also thinks millions of illegal immigrants voted in the presidential election and 73 percent think voter fraud happens somewhat or very often. 

The poll was conducted from June 5 to 20 among 1,325 Americans. The survey focused on the 650 respondents who said they identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party.

Clinton of course won the popular vote by 3 million or so, but apparently we've reached the point where open fascism and dictatorship is now acceptable to the majority of the voters belonging to the party in power as long as doing so maintains their power.

Needless to say, keep a close, close watch on Mike Pence's "Voter Integrity Commission".  That's where the real voter suppression will be in 2018 and 2020, I fully expect tens of millions of registered Democrats to have their voting registrations purged while Republicans cheer "democracy" in action.

Democracy was overrated anyway, right?

A body politic that elected and re-elected a black president has to be dismantled, of course.  It can never be allowed to happen again.  Trump, Pence, Kris Kobach and the rest of the GOP will make sure that it's all but impossible for the Democrats to win ever again.

Watch.

StupidiNews!

• North Korea is once again threatening to fire missiles near Guam and dismissed Donald Trump's ad-libbed threats of "fire and fury" as "a load of nonsense." 
• Two Cuban diplomats have been expelled from Washington after US personnel in Havana's Embassy were harmed by sonic surveillance equipment.
• Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Ravi Karunanayake has resigned over corruption charges linked to a bond scam, the former Finance Minister maintains his innocence while stepping down.
• US consumer debt has now surpassed a record $12.7 trillion, more than the GDP of China and eclipsing 2008's total as the "great recession" leveled markets. 
• E-mails from Tesla suggest the electric car and battery company will begin testing its planned automated electric semi trucks in Nevada later this year.

Last Call For Zuck Trucks Amok

So what exactly is Facebook founder and gazillionaire Mark Zuckerburg up to with his "listening tour" across the country these days?  Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton tagged along for some answers, and it may actually be that he's not running for anything.

A couple months ago, I received a text message from a friend containing a brief video clip that caught me utterly by surprise. It depicted a man giving a rousing speech at Harvard in front of an audience of thousands, who listened rapturously despite the beating rain, as he enumerated the various policies that the average American needed to adapt in our increasingly volatile world. “We need affordable childcare,” the man said, before noting the plight of a younger generation who “will have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks.” It seemed less of a commencement address than a stump speech. A few seconds later, my friend texted me again to say, “I think he’s running for president.” 

The man in the video was Mark Zuckerberg. And his oration at his old stomping grounds appeared to solidify a whole lot of political speculation and Internet gossip. A few months earlier, a whisper campaign began to mount regarding the Facebook C.E.O.’s potential political aspirations. Zuckerberg, after all, was sending out some strong signals: Facebook had updated the company’s proxy statement to allow him to run for office and still maintain control of his company. Then Zuckerberg, a former atheist, said that he believed religion is “very important.”. And then there was the most controversial intimation—Zuckerberg’s New Year’s resolution to meet “people in every state in the U.S.,” which spurred a series of bizarre campaign trail-style imagery. At the time, I wondered aloudif Zuckerberg, who turns 35 in two years, would indeed (try to) be our next president. In a funny way, it almost seemed like a demotion. Yet over and over again, various sources told me that Zuckerberg had grander plans in life and wanted to be “emperor.” 

The reaction to the rumors, though, were sometimes stranger than the potential of a Zuckerberg presidency. On the left, a lot of people applauded the notion of a tech genius running for office, especially in the wake of an ignoramus like Donald Trump. Some in the alt-right reduced the prospect of Zuckerberg, who is of Jewish heritage, in the White House to horrifying racist screeds. And then there were those in Silicon Valley who momentarily wondered aloud about Zuck’s calculation before concluding—perhaps after back-channeling with Zuckerberg’s communications team—that there was absolutely no way he would run for president, that he was really just hauling across the country in order to get to know The People. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has since taken to Facebook (where else) to deny that he’s running for office. 

So, if he’s not running for president, what exactly is Zuckerberg doing? Nathan Hubbard, a former executive at Twitter, recently posted a series of tweets outlining his theory for what Zuckerberg has been up to during the last few months—and it’s a theory that a lot of people in Silicon Valley subscribe to. “Zuck isn’t running for President. He’s trying to understand the role the product he created played in getting this one elected,” Hubbard wrote on Twitter. “Zuck woke up on Nov 9th acutely aware that FB had facilitated a new shift he didn’t foresee or understand; that’s terrifying to a founder.” 

I’ve spoken to several Silicon Valley executives and tech journalists about this theory, and it makes a fair amount of sense. People at Facebook have also privately told me how they were caught completely off guard by the role that the social network played in the election. But while this sounds entirely plausible, it doesn’t explain why Zuckerberg would amend Facebook’s proxy statement.

In the updated S-1 filing, this provision is invoked several times, explicating that Zuckerberg can take a “Pre-Approved Leave,” which translates as “any leave of absence or resignation of the Founder that is in connection with the Founder serving in a government position or office.” One person who interacts with Zuckerberg on a regular basis theorized that maybe Zuckerberg is leaving open the option to run for office one day in the very distant future, or that he could try running for lesser office to better understand how government works. But again, this is all just conjecture and speculation. No one really has the faintest clue what Zuckerberg is up to, which all amounts to fairly genius politicking for a political neophyte. Mike Pence, in fact, might want to give it a try.

So here's the exit question folks: which is more frightening?

One one hand there's the notion that Zuck wants to run the country like he's running Facebook, as the ultimate Silicon Valley dudebro who thinks tech can solve everything. On the other hand there's the notion that he's lost control of his social network behemoth and not even he knows how to fix the fake news spewing volcano that he's helped to unleash under the body politic.

Neither scenario exactly fills me with confidence.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign continues to shift into higher gear as now the Washington Post is reporting that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's home was raided by FBI agents two weeks ago and evidence taken into custody.

FBI agents raided the Alexandria home of President Trump’s former campaign chairman late last month, using a search warrant to seize documents and other materials, according to people familiar with the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. 

Federal agents appeared at Paul Manafort’s home without advance warning in the predawn hours of July 26, the day after he met voluntarily with the staff for the Senate Intelligence Committee. 

The search warrant was wide-ranging and FBI agents working with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III departed the home with various records. Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort, confirmed that agents executed a warrant at one of the political consultant’s homes and that Manafort cooperated with the search. 

Manafort has been voluntarily producing documents to congressional committees investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. The search warrant indicates investigators may have argued to a federal judge they had reason to believe Manafort could not be trusted to turn over all records in response to a grand jury subpoena. 

It could also have been intended to send a message to President Trump’s former campaign chairman that he should not expect gentle treatment or legal courtesies from Mueller’s team. 

The documents included materials Manafort had already provided to Congress, said people familiar with the search. 

“If the FBI wanted the documents, they could just ask [Manafort] and he would have turned them over,” said one adviser close to the White House. 

Josh Stueve, spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment, as did Reginald Brown, an attorney for Manafort.

So the timing on this matches up with the grand jury investigating the Russian affair going to work as well as the sudden push by Sessions to get Trump off his back by going after leakers and those who publish their stories.  There's no way that the White House didn't know about Manafort's house getting raided by FBI and you'd better believe Trump is scared.

Mueller is being pretty thorough on this.  Whatever Manafort had, Mueller has.  How useful that information is as far as building a case, we don't know yet, but FBI search warrant raids are pretty serious business.

Oh, and Manafort isn't the only guy coughing up documents either.  The Senate Judiciary Committee is getting their investigation under way as well.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, his son Donald Trump Jr. and former campaign manager Paul Manafort have started turning over documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of the panel’s expanded investigation of Russian election-meddling. 

The Trump campaign turned over about 20,000 pages of documents on Aug. 2, committee spokesman George Hartmann said Tuesday. Manafort provided about 400 pages on Aug. 2, including his foreign-advocacy filing, while Trump Jr. gave about 250 pages on Aug. 4, Hartmann said. The committee had asked them last month to start producing the documents by Aug. 2.

A company the Judiciary panel says has been linked to a salacious "dossier" on Trump, Fusion GPS, and its chief executive officer, Glenn Simpson, have yet to turn over any requested documents, Hartmann said. 

The committee asked for all records regarding any attempts or interest in obtaining information about Hillary Clinton from Russian government or affiliated sources, including the June 2016 meeting of Trump Jr., Manafort, Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner and a group of Russians including lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. 

The committee asked for documents related to any attempt to coordinate or use information related to Russia’s attempts to influence the election. It sought Manafort’s registration filings and contacts with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Lot of smoke, lot of fire, lots of documents.  We've gotten to Trump's campaign manager and his son turning over possible evidence.  Who's next?

A Fissile Missile Pissing Contest

Donald Trump has all but completely flunked Syria at this point, handing the country over to the Assad regime at Putin's request with "safe zones" bringing the "peace" of dictatorship to the rubble-strewn cities while anti-Assad rebels supported by the previous administration are exterminated under the guise of US-Russia cooperation against Islamic State.

Now North Korea continues to be the big new international crisis as two man-children suffering from arrested development scream at each other and threaten nuclear destruction, and while the US nuclear arsenal's power to reduce all of human civilization to ash dozens of times over remains without doubt (hooray!), it's looking like North Korea may be far more able to deliver on the nuclear missile threat than previously believed.

North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, crossing a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a confidential assessment.

The analysis, completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency, comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country’s atomic arsenal. The United States calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some independent experts think the number is much smaller.

The findings are likely to deepen concerns about an evolving North Korean military threat that appears to be advancing far more rapidly than many experts had predicted. U.S. officials concluded last month that Pyongyang is also outpacing expectations in its effort to build an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the American mainland.

President Trump, speaking Tuesday at an event at his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., said North Korea will face a devastating response if its threats continue. “They will be met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” he said.
Earlier Tuesday, North Korea described a new round of U.N. sanctions as an attempt “to strangle a nation” and warned that in response, “physical action will be taken mercilessly with the mobilization of all its national strength.”

Although more than a decade has passed since North Korea’s first nuclear detonation, many analysts thought it would be years before the country’s weapons scientists could design a compact warhead that could be delivered by missile to distant targets. But the new assessment, a summary document dated July 28, concludes that this critical milestone has been reached.

“The IC [intelligence community] assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles,” the assessment states, in an excerpt read to The Washington Post. Two U.S. officials familiar with the assessment verified its broad conclusions. It is not known whether the reclusive regime has successfully tested the smaller design, although North Korea officially claimed last year that it had done so.

Considering that Trump hasn't even nominated an ambassador to South Korea yet, we have zero diplomatic personnel on the ground right now and that's even if this State Department wasn't in complete shambles under Rex Tillerson.  Apparently we're farming that out to our neighbors to the north as Ottawa is at least nominally interested in not having a giant nuclear death party.

Meanwhile, North Korea state media is happily reminding Trump that Guam is a lot closer to Pyongyang than the mainland US is, and that it would be a darn shame if something happened to it.

North Korea said on Wednesday it is "carefully examining" plans for a missile strike on the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump told the North that any threat to the United States would be met with "fire and fury".

North Korea has made no secret of plans to develop a nuclear-tipped missile able to strike the United States and has ignored international calls to halt its nuclear and missile programs.

The strike plan would be put into practice at any moment once leader Kim Jong Un makes a decision, a spokesman for the Korean People's Army (KPA) said in a statement carried by the North's state-run KCNA news agency.

"The KPA Strategic Force is now carefully examining the operational plan for making an enveloping fire at the areas around Guam with medium-to-long-range strategic ballistic rocket Hwasong-12 in order to contain the U.S. major military bases on Guam including the Anderson Air Force Base," the spokesman said.

The plan would be reported to the North's Supreme Command soon, the spokesman said, without citing a date.

I'd say at this point cooler heads would prevail, except we're talking about Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump here, two guys with nuclear toys not exactly known for their reasonable levelheadedness.

Yeah, I know, we were a lot closer to real nuclear destruction 55 years ago over Cuba and Soviet hardliners almost starting World War III twice in 1983 over a missile detection radar glitch and then NATO's Able Archer military exercises in Europe, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be worried now.

We'd be nuts not to be concerned.  The reality right now is that we have several military options, and the option of continued attempts at containment.  None of them are good options, and all of the military options would almost certainly lead to the deaths of millions, maybe tens of millions, on the Korean Peninsula and Japan. 

But acquiescence to a nuclear North Korea risks a far greater global conflict down the road, a road that this intelligence assessment report this week makes very clear.  With nukes and the time they can buy his regime, Kim can start making more and more belligerent demands, and we either meet them or choose to ignore him and risk his reponse. Again, there is no good option here, only the least awful (which is containment and diplomacy).

I remind you the person now in charge of that decision is a failed reality TV show host who may be a Russian agent, with a State Department all but crippled and the very real possibility of facing a constitutional crisis sooner rather than later over his numerous misdeeds.

Good luck, America and the world.

We're gonna need it.

StupidiNews!

• Tensions between Washington and Pyongyang continue to rise after Donald Trump threatened "fire and fury" against North Korea, and North Korea responded with threats against Guam.
• French police officials say a driver deliberately targeted and wounded six French soldiers with a vehicle, the soldiers were outside a Paris barracks on an anti-terrorism patrol.
• Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has pulled into the lead after Wednesday's presidential vote count, opposition leader Raila Odinga is claiming Kenyatta is behind massive voter fraud.
• The UK is among several other countries looking to follow the FDA's lead on possibly stripping nicotine and other addictive chemicals from cigarettes entirely.
• Disney confirms it will be pulling its animated films and TV shows from Netflix in 2019 to start its own streaming service, the fate of Marvel and Lucasfilms movies remains unknown.

Last Call For Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem

Last week an improvised explosive device was thrown through a window of a Minnesota Islamic Center in the Twin Cities, causing severe damage and it was only by luck that nobody was hurt or killed at the time.  It was definitely an act of domestic terror, but the Trump regime has been strangely silent on the attack.

That silence ended late Monday when regime spokesman Sebastian Gorka suggested strongly that the reason why the White House has refused to comment on the terrorism is because the White House believes it was a false flag attack in order to damage Dear Leader Trump.

The White House will not officially comment on the bombing of a Minnesota mosque because it may be a hate crime faked by a liberal, according to Trump national security adviser Sebastian Gorka. 

An as-of-yet unidentified individual threw a makeshift bomb through the window of a mosque in Minnesota Saturday, and Gorka was asked on MSNBC Monday if the White House will comment. Gorka said that the White House will “absolutely” comment once there is a finalized investigation into the incident. 

“There’s a great rule: All initial reports are false,” Gorka said. “You have to check them and find out who the perpetrators are. We’ve had a series of crimes committed, alleged hate crimes by right wing individuals in the last six months that turned out to be prop propagated by the left. Let’s allow the local authorities to provide their assessment and then the White House will make its comments.” 

But Trump has, in the past, commented on attacks without full information, including a recent June attack in the Philippines, which may have been a robbery gone wrong. He has not been so fast to cry terrorism after the Minnesota bombing, despite the fact that Minnesota’s governor called the attack terrorism. 

Gorka is correct that there have been incidents of hate crimes in recent months that were made to look like they were perpetrated by someone other than the actual perpetrator. 

On Tuesday, the FBI accused an Israeli teen of making bomb threats to U.S. schools and Jewish community centers more than 100 times since January. The teen also allegedly sold his bomb threat services online and offered to frame people for the threats.
But as the MSNBC host pointed out, authorities can and should still condemn attacks, even if the perpetrator is in question. 

“You don’t have to make a statement about who did it but you can make a statement denouncing how terrible it is to attack a building of worship,” the host said. 

“That’s fine and I’m sure the president will do that,” Gorka responded.

But three days have passed and the president still hasn’t done that.

Nor will he.  And remember, this isn't just some random right-wing pundit making this horrible statement that an attack on a mosque is not only beneath Trump commenting on, but was in fact done to hurt Trump politically, this was said by a White House employee and adviser to Trump.

This is unconscionable in every way, and yet this is where we are in America in 2017.  We have to keep pushing to get Trump out of office before this country self-immolates.

Welcome To HateFest '17!

The largest public gathering of white supremacist Klansmen, neo-Nazi skinheads, and alt-right jackasses in decades will be this weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia as The Losers of the Civil War come together to mourn the loss of yet another of their participation trophy monuments.  We've seen these racist losers whine and moan before and they still keep losing.

Only this time around these guys will be heavily armed and spoiling for a bloody fight, and they very well may get it.

A planned demonstration by white nationalist extremists in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been described as the “largest hate-gathering of its kind in decades in the United States” by a monitoring group. 

The Unite the Right gathering of extremists protesting the removal of a Confederate-era statue will draw alt-right groups, neo-Confederates, Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis, all of whom have been “emboldened by the Trump presidency,” according to nonprofit civil rights group the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). 

The extremists will be met by counter-demonstrators from left-wing and civil rights groups, including Antifa and Black Lives Matter, with Virginia state law enforcement officers equipped with riot gear to police the event alongside officers from local forces. 

Law enforcement officials believe the rally could draw thousands, according to local media reports. Congregate Charlottesville, a multi-denominational clergy group, made a July call for 1,000 clergy, especially white clergy, to attend the rally in protest, according to the Charlottesville Courier Dispatch.

According to the SPLC, Saturday’s event will be the first large-scale physical meeting by disparate white nationalist and far-right groups, who have previously been confined to extremist messaging boards, websites and social media. 

Among those expected to address the gathering are alt-right provocateur Richard Spencer, and rapper turned alt-right troll Tim Gionet, also known as "Baked Alaska," reports Vice. 

“This is the biggest rally event we’ve had this millennium,” event organizer Brad Griffin said on a recent radio showed hosted by former KKK leader David Duke. 

Racial activists “get hung up on interacting with people online,” and the racist message board culture has its drawbacks, Griffin said, creating “a lot of paranoia when people don’t know each other in real life.” 

But the Unite the Right rally will give “the movement a real world presence, which it hasn’t had in 15 years,” Griffin said.

It won't take much for this particular powder keg to blow, and should it happen things are going to go straight to hell in a heartbeat.  I'm hoping against hope that nothing happens to anyone here: the counter-protesters, the cops, and yeah, even the skinheads don't deserve to die over this idiocy.  But I'm betting that this is going to be an infamous event that we'll look back on as a milepost on our current road to hell, and that road is going to run red this weekend.

These are not well people, guys.