Last Call For These Disunited Nations

The Trump regime continues to play the role of international pariah as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has officially announced plans to withdraw the US from UNESCO, the United Nations science and culture organization, over what Washington calls "anti-Israel bias."

The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it would withdraw from Unesco, the United Nations cultural organization, after years of America distancing itself because of what it called the group’s “anti-Israel bias.” 

“This decision was not taken lightly,” according to a State Department statement on Thursday. Along with the anti-Israel bias, the department also cited “the need for fundamental reform” and “mounting arrears” at the organization. 

While the United States withdrew from the group, the Trump administration said it wanted to continue to be engaged with Unesco to provide American perspective and expertise, but as a nonmember observer. The United States withdrawal goes into effect at the end of 2018. 

Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization known for its designation of world heritage sites, is a global development agency with missions that include promoting sex education, literacy, clean water and equality for women. 

The Obama administration cut off funding to Unesco in 2011 because the group admitted Palestinians as full members, which the United States saw as undercutting its influence in countries around the world. America lost its vote in the organization in 2013 because it ended its financial contributions. 

In July, Unesco declared the ancient and hotly contested core of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a Palestinian World Heritage Site.

And yeah, it's difficult to say this is entirely unexpected, even the Obama administration cut off money to UNESCO over Palestine years ago.  It looks like however that the Hebron declaration of the Tomb of the Patriachs as a World Heritage Site by secret ballot was the excuse Trump needed to pull out altogether.

It's a shame, but the writing was on the wall for this for a while now.  Still, for the US to bail on UNESCO is yet another sign that the Trump regime is increasingly isolated politically. Keep in mind that UNESCO is also a champion of global women's issues, global climate issues, and of global press freedom, all things the Trump regime have repeatedly taken action against. We weren't exactly welcome there anyway, and I doubt we'll be welcome anywhere soon.

Oh, and all this would makes sense if Israel wasn't, you know, still a UNESCO member and has been one since 1949.

So yeah, not about Israel, but about Palestine.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Somebody at the White House is telling Team WIN THE MORNING that Donald Trump would be made available to talk to Robert Mueller if the good special counsel will but ask.

Donald Trump’s lawyers are open to having the president sit down for an interview with Robert Mueller, according to a senior White House official, as part of a wider posture of cooperation with the special counsel’s Russia probe. 

If Mueller doesn’t request an interview by Thanksgiving, Trump’s lawyers may even force the issue by volunteering Trump’s time, the official said. The White House believes such an interview could help Mueller wrap up the probe faster and dispel the cloud of suspicion over Trump.

A meeting with Mueller could bring serious risks for Trump—exposing him to questions about everything from potential obstruction of justice over his firing of FBI Director James Comey to what Trump might know about Kremlin support for his presidential campaign. 

But the official suggested that the White House has no reason to stonewall Mueller.
“Whatever happens with regard to whether or not, or how, the special counsel might want to interview the president, there’s no reason to expect that would be combative,” the senior White House official explained. 

Trump told reporters this spring that he was “100 percent” willing to testify under oath about alleged Russian ties to his campaign. But even if he has nothing to hide, Trump’s unpredictable nature and willingness to bend the facts poses headaches for his legal team as it strategizes for a possible sit-down with Mueller. One angry or untrue statement could have devastating political and legal consequences for the president.

There are a couple of separate issues here in these five graphs.  First of all, who on Trump's legal team is counseling Trump to talk to Mueller under oath?   Does Trump actually know about this plan, and is the plan to force Trump to talk to Mueller even if he doesn't want to? How the heck are they going to make Trump do this and it not be a disaster where he blows his stack?

Second, why volunteer to talk to Mueller under oath at all?  Bill Clinton did and he was still impeached for his troubles and while the Senate votes to remove him from office were a foregone conclusion of acquittal as the GOP only had 55 senators in January 1999, the fact remained that it was Clinton's statements to Ken Starr (the now infamous "depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is") that led to the articles and subsequent trial.

Third, is this a good faith effort in order to strike a deal later on?  The "we've got nothing to hide" defense only works if you're 1) completely innocent or 2) you're so guilty and so powerful that you just want to save time and get to the horse trading already.  Clinton's guys figured impeachment would never come because they knew the GOP didn't have the votes in the Senate.  It ended up costing Al Gore votes a year later because people thought Clinton got away with it.

Finally, what's coming from Mueller that's prompting Trump's lawyers wanting to fully cooperate?  Is it Trump selling out his cabinet and maybe even his family?  Is this open treason?  It can't get much worse, right?

We'll see.

Tang The Conqueror Is Losin' It

Donald Trump has apparently reached the Nixon '74 stage of paranoia as Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair reports.

At first it sounded like hyperbole, the escalation of a Twitter war. But now it’s clear that Bob Corker’sremarkable New York Times interview—in which the Republican senator described the White House as “adult day care” and warned Trump could start World War III—was an inflection point in the Trump presidency. It brought into the open what several people close to the president have recently told me in private: that Trump is “unstable,” “losing a step,” and “unraveling.” 

The conversation among some of the president’s longtime confidantes, along with the character of some of the leaks emerging from the White House has shifted. There’s a new level of concern. NBC News published a report that Trump shocked his national security team when he called for a nearly tenfold increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal during a briefing this summer. One Trump adviser confirmed to me it was after this meeting disbanded that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron.” 

In recent days, I spoke with a half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers, and they all describe a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president who seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods. Trump’s ire is being fueled by his stalled legislative agenda and, to a surprising degree, by his decision last month to back the losing candidate Luther Strange in the Alabama Republican primary. “Alabama was a huge blow to his psyche,” a person close to Trump said. “He saw the cult of personality was broken.”

According to two sources familiar with the conversation, Trump vented to his longtime security chief, Keith Schiller, “I hate everyone in the White House! There are a few exceptions, but I hate them!” (A White House official denies this.) Two senior Republican officials said Chief of Staff John Kelly is miserable in his job and is remaining out of a sense of duty to keep Trump from making some sort of disastrous decision. Today, speculation about Kelly’s future increased after Politico reported that Kelly’s deputy Kirstjen Nielsen is likely to be named Homeland Security Secretary—the theory among some Republicans is that Kelly wanted to give her a soft landing before his departure. 

One former official even speculated that Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have discussed what they would do in the event Trump ordered a nuclear first strike. “Would they tackle him?” the person said. Even Trump’s most loyal backers are sowing public doubts. This morning, The Washington Post quotedlongtime Trump friend Tom Barrack saying he has been “shocked” and “stunned” by Trump’s behavior. 

While Kelly can’t control Trump’s tweets, he is doing his best to physically sequester the president—much to Trump’s frustration. One major G.O.P. donor told me access to Trump has been cut off, and his outside calls to the White House switchboard aren’t put through to the Oval Office. Earlier this week, I reported on Kelly’s plans to prevent Trump from mingling with guests at Mar-a-Lago later this month. And, according to two sources, Keith Schiller quit last month after Kelly told Schiller he needed permission to speak to the president and wanted written reports of their conversations. 

The White House denies these accounts. “The President’s mood is good and his outlook on the agenda is very positive,” an official said.

He's also losing with with the generals.  When Trump can't get his way, he pitches a fit like a child.

In July, Trump was livid with his national security staff for suggesting he had to certify Iran’s compliance with the international deal arranged by President Barack Obama. 

“He threw a fit,” said one Post source. “He was furious. Really furious.” 

With Trump ignoring the arguments put forth by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, national security advisor H.R. McMaster came up with a scheme to accommodate Trump’s hatred of everything Obama — without killing the deal between the United States, Iran, Britain France, Germany, Russia and China. 

The workaround employed by McMaster is for United States to certify Iran’s compliance the deal, but to put allies on notice Trump wants to walk away by announcing new conditions for continued participation and then punting the issue to Congress. 

“It would give a few months or years lead time to give time to get U.S. allies on board with the same restrictions — a unified front that will put lots of pressure on the Iranians” a White House aide told The Post. 

Trump’s July 17th tantrum about the deal reportedly lasted all afternoon — even forcing a postponement of a planned announcement.

To be fair, it took Tricky Dick six years before things fell apart this badly, and it took America almost 50 years to find out he won the 1968 election by selling the country out to a foreign power.

Both have been compressed into under 12 months for Trump.

Think about that.

StupidiNews!

• More than a score of wildfires are now burning in Northern California, the death toll is at 23 and hundreds missing and 170,000 acres scorched as several fires have zero containment.
• Donald Trump has nominated AccuWeather CEO Barry Myers to head NOAA, Myers has been criticized for previous plans to limit government weather forecasts.
• Flooding caused by a tropical depression has killed 37 in Vietnam, thousands have been evacuated and rivers are at their highest level since 1985.
• The EU's head negotiator is reporting Brexit talks between the EU and UK have reached a deadlock, sticking points on social security and family reunification remain.
• A pharmacist that serves Capitol Hill is backpedaling on comments that indicate some members of the Senate could be receiving treatment for Alzheimer's.

The Turtle May Win The Race After All

While Trump is busy causing long-term damage to the country, Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard is happily crowing about GOP Senate majority leader and human tortoise analogue Mitch McConnell finally revving up the federal judicial nomination machine that would allow Trump to appoint up to a third of federal judges and shift America's courts to the far right for a generation.

The Republican drive to confirm federal judges has gained momentum from a series of actions by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. They seem modest but are likely to speed up the confirmation of both appeals and district court judges—conservatives, for the most part. 

Democrats won’t be pleased. The steps McConnell has taken in recent weeks are aimed at thwarting their efforts to block, sideline, or delay President Trump’s nominees.
Here’s what McConnell has done: 

• Confirming judicial nominees has been elevated to a top priority in the Senate. “I decide the priority,” McConnell said in an interview. “Priority between an assistant secretary of State and a conservative court judge—it’s not a hard choice to make.”  

• And when nominees “come out of committee, I guarantee they will be dealt with,” McConnell said. “Regardless of what tactics are used by Democrats, the judges are going to be confirmed.”  

• No longer will “blue slips” be allowed to deny a nominee a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and vote on confirmation. In the past, senators have sometimes barred a nominee from their state by refusing to return their slip to the committee, thus preventing a hearing and confirmation.  

• “The majority”—that is, Republicans—will treat a blue slip “as simply notification of how you’re going to vote, not as an opportunity to blackball,” McConnell told me. The use of blue slips, he noted, is not a Senate rule and has “been honored in the breach over the years.” Now it won’t be honored at all.  

• The so-called “30 hours rule”—which provides for 30 hours of debate on a nominee—won’t be overturned. But McConnell vowed to set aside time for these debates. And he can make this happen because he sets the Senate schedule.  

The majority leader has been under pressure recently from conservative groups to get more court nominees approved by the Judiciary Committee—and more rapidly—and sent to the Senate floor. McConnell had long prodded the committee to increase the number of hearings, then report the nominees out as quickly as possible for Senate floor votes.

In other words, McConnell is going to blow up Senate rules and traditions and allow Trump to pack America's courts with lifetime appointments that will tilt the country into wingnut territory for decades, and it doesn't look like Democrats will be able to do anything to stop him.

The death of the "blue slip", the unspoken rule that both senators of a state needed to sign off on any judicial appointment, means states with split Senate delegations like Ohio, Florida, and Illinois could de facto block a party lackey from a term that could last 40 years or more, and both parties enforced it.

No longer.

McConnell has already engineered the theft of a Supreme Court seat, and now he is looking to do the same with a third of the federal district and appellate judiciary.  It would essentially mean the end of the Civil Rights era in a disturbingly large section of the country, and allow Trump to appoint judges who in turn would move to sign off on all his executive branch excesses.

It's the classic path to dictatorship, and we're careening down it at breakneck speed.  It's now a race to see whether Mueller can stop Trump before the GOP puts the framework for a semi-permanent dictatorship in place.

This is where America is in 2017.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

If there was somehow any doubt left that computer anti-virus maker Kaspersky Labs was a Russian FSB front to steal data, that just got shattered this morning with the story of how the latest NSA breach revealed last week was discovered when the Israelis found Kaspersky Labs sitting on stolen NSA hacker tools.

It was a case of spies watching spies watching spies: Israeli intelligence officers looked on in real time as Russian government hackers searched computers around the world for the code names of American intelligence programs. 

What gave the Russian hacking, detected more than two years ago, such global reach was its improvised search tool — antivirus software made by a Russian company, Kaspersky Lab, that is used by 400 million people worldwide, including by officials at some two dozen American government agencies. 

The Israeli officials who had hacked into Kaspersky’s own network alerted the United States to the broad Russian intrusion, which has not been previously reported, leading to a decision just last month to order Kaspersky software removed from government computers. 

The Russian operation, described by multiple people who have been briefed on the matter, is known to have stolen classified documents from a National Security Agency employee who had improperly stored them on his home computer, on which Kaspersky’s antivirus software was installed. What additional American secrets the Russian hackers may have gleaned from multiple agencies, by turning the Kaspersky software into a sort of Google search for sensitive information, is not yet publicly known.
The current and former government officials who described the episode spoke about it on condition of anonymity because of classification rules.

Like most security software, Kaspersky Lab’s products require access to everything stored on a computer in order to scour it for viruses or other dangers. Its popular antivirus software scans for signatures of malicious software, or malware, then removes or neuters it before sending a report back to Kaspersky. That procedure, routine for such software, provided a perfect tool for Russian intelligence to exploit to survey the contents of computers and retrieve whatever they found of interest. 

The National Security Agency and the White House declined to comment for this article. The Israeli Embassy declined to comment, and the Russian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

The Washington Post is backing up the NY Times story on this as well and I have to ask at this point if we knew in 2015 that the Russians basically had the NSA's set of cyber-lockpicks dead to rights like this, what the hell did we do about it?  Apparently the answer was "not a damn thing" and the Russians happily came in and helped put Trump in the Oval Office.

Meanwhile on the congressional investigations side of things, former Trump regime foreign policy adviser Carter Page apparently plans on taking the Fifth rather than testify.

Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, informed the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that he will not be cooperating with any requests to appear before the panel for its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and would plead the Fifth, according to a source familiar with the matter. 

A former naval-officer-turned-energy consultant, Page came under fire last year after reports emerged that he had met with high-level associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in 2016. While Page denied those meetings occurred, the Trump campaign distanced itself from the adviser not long after, with former officials saying that Page and Trump had never met.

Page also attracted attention earlier this year after it was revealed that he once came under scrutiny by the FBI for his contact with a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013. Page was never charged with a crime, and the association happened years before he came into Trump’s orbit. 

The Intelligence Committee has sought documents and testimony from Trump associates — including Page — as it seeks to piece together Russian efforts to manipulate and interfere with the 2016 presidential race. It has held high-profile closed-door meetings with several current White House and Trump-related officials, including Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr. But the panel has also signaled an interest in interviewing former campaign associates such as Page, to determine how, if at all, the Russians sought to infiltrate Trump's circle in the throes of the presidential race.

If Page is clamming up and pleading the Fifth, well as they say the smoke just became a five-alarm fire.  On the House side, it seems investigators there want to have a talk with Fusion GPS, the political information firm that gave us the Steele Dossier.

The chairman of the House intelligence committee has issued subpoenas to the partners who run Fusion GPS, the research firm that produced the dossier of memos on alleged Russian efforts to aid the Trump campaign, according to sources briefed on the matter. 

The subpoenas -- signed by California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes -- were issued Oct. 4, demanding documents and testimony later this month and early November. 

Earlier this year, Nunes announced that he was stepping aside from directing the committee's Russia inquiry after he became the subject of an ethics investigation into his handling of classified information. But more recently, he has made clear that he is still playing an influential role, despite announcing that he had delegated authority on the Russia matter to Republican Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas. 

A source familiar with the matter told CNN that all Russia-related subpoenas have been approved by Conaway, and Conaway confirmed to CNN Monday he asked for the most recent subpoenas. 

But the subpoenas appear to be the latest fight in an investigation that has periodically been hobbled by controversy and infighting. 

A Democratic committee source said "the subpoenas were issued unilaterally by the majority, without the minority's agreement and despite good faith engagement thus far by the witnesses on the potential terms for voluntary cooperation." 

Indeed, the move blindsided some committee members, multiple sources told CNN. And it has angered some on the committee who say that Nunes is still seeking to direct an investigation he was supposed to have no involvement in leading. 

"He's not in any way, shape or form working on the investigation," said one Democratic committee member. "He's sitting outside the investigation and pushing it in a political direction." 

Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that Nunes appeared to be "trying to undermine the investigation." 

"This would violate that recusal if this is indeed what he has done," Swalwell said.

The Grand Unifying Theory on the GOP covering up the Trump/Russia investigation starts with discrediting Fusion GPS as a Clinton front as a political hit job on the Trump campaign, and that it was Clinton colluding with Moscow to swing the election towards her or something, which is as stupid as it sounds, but it's not like Devin Nunes hasn't gotten in trouble over putting his thumb on the scale for Trump before.

Anyway, we'll see where all this takes us as the week is young still.

StupidiNews!

• For the first time in 32 years, the US Men's National Team has failed to qualify for the World Cup after falling 2-1 to Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina will take the final CONCACAF spot.
• The death toll has now risen to 17 as raging wildfires continue to scorch thousands of acres in California's wine country north of San Francisco.
• American nuclear bombers once again flew over the Korean peninsula as a show of force against Pyongyang as the US continues joint military exercises with South Korea and Japan. 
• Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy is demanding that Catalan's government give an official position on independence from Madrid, a move that could lead to suspension of Catalan lawmakers.
• Trump EPA chief Scott Pruitt wants to eliminate federal tax credits for green energy, saying wind in particular should "stand on its own" against coal and natural gas.

Last Call For Harvey The Wonder Hamster

Harvey Weinstein isn't just somebody who needs to be fired (and he was over the weekend) but this latest report on the other closet full of shoes dropping from the New Yorker's Ronan Farrow means this asshole needs to serve prison time, period.  He's a sex criminal, full stop.

Since the establishment of the first studios a century ago, there have been few movie executives as dominant, or as domineering, as Harvey Weinstein. As the co-founder of the production-and-distribution companies Miramax and the Weinstein Company, he helped to reinvent the model for independent films, with movies such as “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” “The English Patient,” “Pulp Fiction,” “The Crying Game,” “Shakespeare in Love,” and “The King’s Speech.” Beyond Hollywood, he has exercised his influence as a prolific fund-raiser for Democratic Party candidates, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Weinstein combined a keen eye for promising scripts, directors, and actors with a bullying, even threatening, style of doing business, inspiring both fear and gratitude. His movies have earned more than three hundred Oscar nominations, and, at the annual awards ceremonies, he has been thanked more than almost anyone else in movie history, just after Steven Spielberg and right before God. 

For more than twenty years, Weinstein has also been trailed by rumors of sexual harassment and assault. This has been an open secret to many in Hollywood and beyond, but previous attempts by many publications, including The New Yorker, to investigate and publish the story over the years fell short of the demands of journalistic evidence. Too few women were willing to speak, much less allow a reporter to use their names, and Weinstein and his associates used nondisclosure agreements, monetary payoffs, and legal threats to suppress these myriad stories. Asia Argento, an Italian film actress and director, told me that she did not speak out until now––Weinstein, she told me, forcibly performed oral sex on her—because she feared that Weinstein would “crush” her. “I know he has crushed a lot of people before,” Argento said. “That’s why this story—in my case, it’s twenty years old, some of them are older—has never come out.” 

Last week, the New York Times, in a powerful report by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, revealed multiple allegations of sexual harassment against Weinstein, a story that led to the resignation of four members of his company’s all-male board, and to Weinstein’s firing from the company. 

The story, however, is more complex, and there is more to know and to understand. In the course of a ten-month investigation, I was told by thirteen women that, between the nineteen-nineties and 2015, Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them, allegations that corroborate and overlap with the Times’s revelations, and also include far more serious claims. 

Three women––among them Argento and a former aspiring actress named Lucia Evans—told me that Weinstein raped them, allegations that include Weinstein forcibly performing or receiving oral sex and forcing vaginal sex. Four women said that they experienced unwanted touching that could be classified as an assault. In an audio recording captured during a New York Police Department sting operation in 2015 and made public here for the first time, Weinstein admits to groping a Filipina-Italian model named Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, describing it as behavior he is “used to.” Four of the women I interviewed cited encounters in which Weinstein exposed himself or masturbated in front of them. 

Sixteen former and current executives and assistants at Weinstein’s companies told me that they witnessed or had knowledge of unwanted sexual advances and touching at events associated with Weinstein’s films and in the workplace. They and others describe a pattern of professional meetings that were little more than thin pretexts for sexual advances on young actresses and models. All sixteen said that the behavior was widely known within both Miramax and the Weinstein Company. Messages sent by Irwin Reiter, a senior company executive, to Emily Nestor, one of the women who alleged that she was harassed at the company, described the “mistreatment of women” as a serial problem that the Weinstein Company was struggling with in recent years. Other employees described what was, in essence, a culture of complicity at Weinstein’s places of business, with numerous people throughout the companies fully aware of his behavior but either abetting it or looking the other way. Some employees said that they were enlisted in subterfuge to make the victims feel safe. A female executive with the company described how Weinstein assistants and others served as a “honeypot”—they would initially join a meeting, but then Weinstein would dismiss them, leaving him alone with the woman. 

Virtually all of the people I spoke with told me that they were frightened of retaliation. “If Harvey were to discover my identity, I’m worried that he could ruin my life,” one former employee told me. Many said that they had seen Weinstein’s associates confront and intimidate those who crossed him, and feared that they would be similarly targeted. Four actresses, including Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette, told me they suspected that, after they rejected Weinstein’s advances or complained about them to company representatives, Weinstein had them removed from projects or dissuaded people from hiring them. Multiple sources said that Weinstein frequently bragged about planting items in media outlets about those who spoke against him; these sources feared that they might be similarly targeted. Several pointed to Gutierrez’s case, in 2015: after she went to the police, negative items discussing her sexual history and impugning her credibility began rapidly appearing in New York gossip pages. (In the taped conversation with Gutierrez, Weinstein asks her to join him for “five minutes,” and warns, “Don’t ruin your friendship with me for five minutes.”) 

Several former employees told me that they were speaking about Weinstein’s alleged behavior now because they hoped to protect women in the future. “This wasn’t a one-off. This wasn’t a period of time,” an executive who worked for Weinstein for many years told me. “This was ongoing predatory behavior towards women—whether they consented or not.”

And this is why I'm sharing this article in this post.  Yes, this is going to make people feel uncomfortable.  I hope it makes people uncomfortable enough to speak out about how wrong this is, especially men.  Harvey is not a hero, guys.  He's not somebody to emulate or even pity, he's somebody who abused his power in order to hurt women.  He's a criminal, period.

Prison awaits him, I should hope.

The Suds Sucker Proxy

So the biggest corporate proxy battle in history just took place this morning here in Cincinnati (home of Proctor and Gamble, or P&G as it's know now), and it was, if you'll excuse the pun, a complete wash for billionaire hedge fund master Nelson Peltz.

Nelson Peltz has been thwarted in the largest proxy battle in history, failing to claim a board seat from $236 billion giant Procter & Gamble. 

Peltz, the founder of $14 billion hedge fund Trian Partners, lost the proxy fight by a slim margin against P&G, the maker of consumer products like Tide, Crest, and Bounty and the largest-ever company to face such a challenge.

Trian quickly announced it disagrees with P&G's vote count and is calling for a recount.

The billionaire investor has been trying to shake up Procter & Gamble since announcing a $3.5 billion stake in February. He was nominated to the board in July.

The two companies have spent some $100 million on the campaign to win over shareholders, 40% of which are comprised of individual retail investors, according to Reuters.

This one isn't over, not by a long shot.  P&G is still one of the biggest employers in the Cincy area and people are afraid Peltz is going to take over and shed thousands of jobs just to add another few billion or so to his pile of billions.

There are also a lot of retirees around with pretty decent retirement and pension benefits (including P&G stock) and those would certainly be first on the block if Peltz had his way.  The first skirmish may have seen Peltz from raiding the company, but the war is far from done.

Trump Gives Us The Coaled Shoulder

EPA chief Scott Pruitt came to Kentucky yesterday to make an announcement with Mitch the Turtle that the "war on coal" has been won, and that all of America will lose as a result.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt told coal miners in Kentucky Monday he will move to repeal a rule limiting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, assuring them, “The war against coal is over.” 

Speaking at an event in Hazard, Ky. with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Pruitt said his agency will publish the new proposed rule on Tuesday.

“[Tuesday], in Washington D.C., I’ll be a signing a proposed rule to withdraw the so-called Clean Power Plan of the past administration, and thus begin the effort to withdraw that rule,” Pruitt said. 

The proposal, which was obtained by The Washington Post and other news outlets last week, argues that the agency overstepped its legal authority in seeking to force utilities to reduce carbon emissions outside their actual facilities to meet federal emissions targets.

There are of course no plans to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan with, well, anything at this point, and Scott Pruitt's job is to make sure that will never happen.

Of course here in coal country those jobs aren't ever coming back and in fact since Trump took office the state has lost another 300 mining and logging jobs and is below 10,000 of them total, but hey, who's counting?

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of additional respiratory deaths will occur over the next ten years as a result if the plan is scrapped and that will result in billions in health care expenses but that doesn't exactly seem to be an issue with the Trump Regime.  Dead people don't vote, after all.

StupidiNews!

• At least 10 people are dead as wildfires continue to blaze through California's wine country, nearly 120,000 acres have burned as 20,000 have been evacuated from the Santa Rosa area.
• Russia is threatening retaliation against US media outlets as Kremlin-controlled Russia Today accuses Washington of persecution.
• Austria's far-right Freedom Party has suspended a party official for allegedly using a Nazi salute in public ahead of this weekend's national voting.
• In his first trip to South Korea, Donald Trump may visit the demilitarized zone in November where White House officials say he may have a "message" for North Korea.
• Microsoft is confirming the end of the road for the Windows Phone, current phones will remain supported but now new hardware of software fixes will be forthcoming.

Last Call For Reality Trumps Perception

After the failures of Trumpcare and eleven months of legislative failures and broken promises, it seems like finally the Trump regime honeymoon may be over for Ohio.

Outside the Morgan County fair in McConnelsville, in a rural swath of Ohio that fervently backed U.S. President Donald Trump in last year’s election, ticket seller John Wilson quietly counts off a handful of disappointments with the man he helped elect. 

The 70-year-old retired banker said he is unhappy with infighting and turnover in the White House. He does not like Trump’s penchant for traveling to his personal golf resorts. He wishes the president would do more to fix the healthcare system, and he worries that Trump might back down from his promise to force illegal immigrants out of the country. 

“Every president makes mistakes,” Wilson said. “But if you add one on top of one, on top of another one, on top of another, there’s just a limit.”

Trump, who inspired millions of supporters last year in places like Morgan County, has been losing his grip on rural America. 

According to the Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll, the Republican president’s popularity is eroding in small towns and rural communities where 15 percent of the country’s population lives. The poll of more than 15,000 adults in “non-metro” areas shows that they are now as likely to disapprove of Trump as they are to approve of him. 

In September, 47 percent of people in non-metro areas approved of Trump while 47 percent disapproved. That is down from Trump’s first four weeks in office, when 55 percent said they approved of the president while 39 percent disapproved. 

The poll found that Trump has lost support in rural areas among men, whites and people who never went to college. He lost support with rural Republicans and rural voters who supported him on Election Day. 

And while Trump still gets relatively high marks in the poll for his handling of the economy and national security, rural Americans are increasingly unhappy with Trump’s record on immigration, a central part of his presidential campaign. 

Forty-seven percent of rural Americans said in September they approved of the president’s handling of immigration, down from 56 percent during his first month in office.

Morgan County is in southeast Ohio, just west of where Interstate 77 comes up from West Virginia into Cleveland.  There's nothing there, whole county has maybe 16,000 people on a good day.  Trump won the county by 41 points last year.

For Trump now to be reduced to breaking even here is saying something.  I know, they're mad at him for not building the wall yet and for not conducting mass deportations, for not destroying Obamacare and for not keeping his promises.  He hasn't gone far enough, he hasn't gotten things done, and he's running out of time. 

There's no real danger of these folks suddenly turning out for Bernie or Kamala Harris or Liz Warren, but there is danger of them not showing up in 2018.  I'm okay with that.

But it also makes me very worried about what Trump will do in order to keep power.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Spencer Ackerman and his national security reporting team at the Daily Beast have been doing a really stellar job of following the Silicon Valley end of the Trump/Russia connection, and how tech giants like Facebook and Twitter were leveraged by Russian front companies to deliver pro-Trump/anti-Clinton propaganda over social media.  Now the Daily Beast reveals that of course Google was involved too through its extensive web ad network, and through promoted YouTube videos.

According to the YouTube page for “Williams and Kalvin,” the Clintons are “serial killers who are going to rape the whole nation.” Donald Trump can’t be racist because he’s a “businessman.” Hillary Clinton’s campaign was “fund[ed] by the Muslim.” 

These are a sample of the videos put together by two black video bloggers calling themselves Williams and Kalvin Johnson, whose social media pages investigators say are part of the broad Russian campaign to influence American politics. Across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, they purported to offer “a word of truth” to African-American audiences. 

“We, the black people, we stand in one unity. We stand in one to say that Hillary Clinton is not our candidate,” one of the men says in a November video that warned Clinton “is going to stand for the Muslim. We don’t stand for her.” 

Williams and Kalvin’s content was pulled from Facebook in August after it was identified as a Russian government-backed propaganda account, The Daily Beast has confirmed with multiple sources familiar with the account and the reasons for its removal. Williams and Kalvin’s account was also suspended from Twitter in August. But the YouTube page for Williams and Kalvin remains live at press time. 

It’s reminiscent of the Russian attempts to impersonate a California-based Muslim group and piggyback off of the Black Lives Matter protests to spread the Kremlin’s message. But this time, the Kremlin operation used real people, not just memes and hijacked hashtags.

The discovery of living, breathing, real-life avatars for Kremlin talking points deepens and complicates the emerging picture of how Russian propaganda reached what Facebook alone estimated last week were 10 million users in the United States—a number considered by many outside experts to be a lowball estimate.

We're just now finding out how deep Silicon Valley's rabbit warren goes when it comes to taking Russian propaganda cash, and actively having their ad and promotion algorithms manipulated for maximum advantage.  If companies can micro-target people with SEO and tailor ads for specific products, why can't it be used for political ads?  And if it can be used for political ads, why can't it be used for much darker political purposes?

And yes the Washington Post is following up with the Russian buys extending to Google's ad network, DoubleClick.

Google for the first time has uncovered evidence that Russian operatives exploited the company’s platforms in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the company's investigation. 

The Silicon Valley giant has found that tens of thousands of dollars were spent on ads by Russian agents who aimed to spread disinformation across Google’s many products, which include YouTube, as well as advertising associated with Google search, Gmail, and the company’s DoubleClick ad network, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters that have not been made public. Google runs the world’s largest online advertising business, and YouTube is the world’s largest online video site. 

The discovery by Google is also significant because the ads do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-affiliated troll farm that bought ads on Facebook -- a sign that the Russian effort to spread disinformation online may be a much broader problem than Silicon Valley companies have unearthed so far. 

Google previously downplayed the problem of Russian meddling on its platforms. Last month, Google spokeswoman Andrea Faville told The Washington Post that the company is "always monitoring for abuse or violations of our policies and we've seen no evidence this type of ad campaign was run on our platforms." 

Nevertheless, Google launched an investigation into the matter, as Congress pressed technology companies to determine how Russian operatives used social media, online advertising, and other digital tools to influence the 2016 presidential contest and foment discord in U.S. society. 

Google declined to provide a comment for this story. The people familiar with its investigation said that the company is looking at a set of ads that cost less than $100,000 and that it is still sorting out whether all of the ads came from trolls or whether some originated from legitimate Russian accounts.

The Russians had this figured out and they executed their attacks flawlessly. And as long as Trump remains in the White House and his GOP enablers remain in charge of Congress, we'll never know to what extent our political system remains compromised, and there's every reason to believe it will remained compromised for the foreseeable future.

If the Kremlin can put people making videos on YouTube, what else is a Russian front at this point?

A Real Corker Of A Fight

The Twitter fight over the weekend between Donald Trump and retiring Tennessee GOP Sen. Bob Corker got pretty heated, Trump accusing Corker of not having the guts to run again in 2018, Corker firing back that the White House was an "adult day care".  It resulted in a brutal Corker interview with the NY Times where the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman said Trump's recklessness would lead to World War III.

Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged in an interview on Sunday that President Trump was treating his office like “a reality show,” with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.” 

In an extraordinary rebuke of a president of his own party, Mr. Corker said he was alarmed about a president who acts “like he’s doing ‘The Apprentice’ or something.”
“He concerns me,” Mr. Corker added. “He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.” 

Mr. Corker’s comments capped a remarkable day of sulfurous insults between the president and the Tennessee senator — a powerful, if lame-duck, lawmaker, whose support will be critical to the president on tax reform and the fate of the Iran nuclear deal. 

It began on Sunday morning when Mr. Trump, posting on Twitter, accused Mr. Corker of deciding not to run for re-election because he “didn’t have the guts.” Mr. Corker shot back in his own tweet: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

The senator, Mr. Trump said, had “begged” for his endorsement. “I said ‘NO’ and he dropped out (said he could not win without my endorsement),” the president wrote. He also said that Mr. Corker had asked to be secretary of state. “I said ‘NO THANKS,’” he wrote. 

Mr. Corker flatly disputed that account, saying Mr. Trump had urged him to run again, and promised to endorse him if he did. But the exchange laid bare a deeper rift: The senator views Mr. Trump as given to irresponsible outbursts — a political novice who has failed to make the transition from show business. 

Mr. Trump poses such an acute risk, the senator said, that a coterie of senior administration officials must protect him from his own instincts. “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him,” Mr. Corker said in a telephone interview. 

The deeply personal back-and-forth will almost certainly rupture what had been a friendship with a fellow real estate developer turned elected official, one of the few genuine relationships Mr. Trump had developed on Capitol Hill. Still, even as he leveled his stinging accusations, Mr. Corker repeatedly said on Sunday that he liked Mr. Trump, until now an occasional golf partner, and wished him “no harm.” 

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. Corker’s remarks.

Considering Trump would need Corker's full support on just about anything foreign policy related (Iran, North Korea,  immigration, etc) or just as a reliable vote in general for his tax scheme, pissing Corker off is something that's probably going to cost Trump down the line.

But for Corker to unload like this and confirm that "several of his caucus" feel the same way about Trump is going to make things very uncomfortable for them in the coming days and weeks, as certainly they will be asked if they agree with Corker, and if so, what they plan to do about reining Trump in.

How much of this is kabuki I cannot say, Corker is after all retiring, and that's significant. So is your own party questioning the fitness of a sitting Oval Office occupant to do the job. Whether or not this is the fisrt crack in the dam of Trump support on Capitol Hill remains to be seen, but there certainly now precedent for the Senate GOP to trash Trump openly.

Stay tuned.  Blood is in the water and it's Shark Week.

StupidiNews!

• Senate Democrats are rejecting a Trump deal that would reauthorize the DACA immigration program in exchange for a border wall and significant cuts to legal immigration.
• In what appears to have been a planned political stunt, VP Mike Pence stormed out of an NFL game in Indianapolis on Sunday after some players took a knee for the national anthem.
• Iran is promising a "crushing" reponse to the US should the Trump regime decertify the nuclear agreement with Tehran and declare Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group.
• Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been fired by his studio's board of directors after news of legal settlement with at least eight women over sexual assault.
• Hurricane Nate, now a tropical depression after slamming into the Gulf Coast, made nine named Atlantic hurricanes in 2017, a new record in the satellite era.