Trump Cards, Con't

And speaking of Trump's foreign money laundering schemes, another big one just blew up over the weekend as the founder of the chain of massage parlors in Florida where New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft got busted for soliciting sex last month is a major Trump donor who apparently sells access to Trump to Chinese nationals.

The latest Trump political donor to draw controversy is Li Yang, a 45-year-old Florida entrepreneur from China who founded a chain of spas and massage parlors that included the one where New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft was recently busted for soliciting prostitution. She made the news this week when the Miami Herald reported that last month she had attended a Super Bowl viewing party at Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club and had snapped a selfie with the president during the event. Though Yang no longer owns the spa Kraft allegedly visited, the newspaper noted that other massage parlors her family runs have “gained a reputation for offering sexual services.” (She told the newspaper she has never violated the law.) Beyond this sordid tale, there is another angle to the strange story of Yang: She runs an investment business that has offered to sell Chinese clients access to Trump and his family. And a website for the business—which includes numerous photos of Yang and her purported clients hobnobbing at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach—suggests she had some success in doing so.

Yang, who goes by Cindy, and her husband, Zubin Gong, started GY US Investments LLC in 2017. The company describes itself on its website, which is mostly in Chinese, as an “international business consulting firm that provides public relations services to assist businesses in America to establish and expand their brand image in the modern Chinese marketplace.” But the firm notes that its services also address clients looking to make high-level connections in the United States. On a page displaying a photo of Mar-a-Lago, Yang’s company says its “activities for clients” have included providing them “the opportunity to interact with the president, the [American] Minister of Commerce and other political figures.” The company boasts it has “arranged taking photos with the President” and suggests it can set up a “White House and Capitol Hill Dinner.” (The same day the Herald story about Yang broke, the website stopped functioning.)

The short bio of Yang on the website, identifying her as the founder and CEO of GY US Investments, shows her in a photo with Trump bearing his signature. It says she has been “settled in the United States for more than 20 years” and is a member of the “Presidential Fundraising Committee.” According to the Herald, Yang is a registered Republican, and since 2017 she and her relatives have donated more than $42,000 to a Trump political action committee and more than $16,000 to Trump’s campaign. Her Facebook page, which was taken offline on Friday, was loaded with photos of her posing with GOP notables: Donald Trump Jr., Rep. Matt Gaetz or Florida, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, among others.

The GY US Investments website lists upcoming events at Mar-a-Lago at which Yang’s clients presumably can mingle with Trump or members of his family. This includes something called the International Leaders Elite Forum, where Trump’s sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau, will supposedly be the featured speaker. Attendees, the site says, will include “Chinese elites from various countries, including the US states, as well as elite leaders from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia, Europe and other countries and regions.” Another event for which Yang’s firm says it can provide access is Trump’s annual New Year’s celebration at Mar-a-Lago. Elsewhere on the website, the firm boasts that “GY Company arranged a number of guests to attend the 2019 New Year’s Eve dinner. All the guests took photos with” members of Trump’s family. This page displays photos of Chinese executives and a Chinese movie star with Donald Trump Jr., suggesting that these pics were arranged by the company, and also includes a photo of Yang with Elizabeth Trump Grau. 

This is going to get a lot worse for Trump. A Chinese sex trafficker selling Mar-A-Lago access to Chinese donors for years along with pictures of Yang with dozens of politicians is the kind of thing that buries entire parties for a few years. 

Stay tuned.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Former Blackwater founder Erik Prince is up to his neck in Trump's international pay-for-play money laundering scheme, and he blew a healthy chunk of his cover this week while talking with Al Jazeera's Mehdi Hasan.

Erik Prince, the founder of the private American security company Blackwater, has admitted to meeting with members of the Trump campaign in August 2016 after, according to a public transcript, apparently failing to disclose the gathering during his testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee last year.

When asked by Mehdi Hasan on Al Jazeera's Head to Head programme about the August 3, 2016, Trump Tower meeting that reportedly took place between Prince, Donald Trump campaign officials, an Israeli social media specialist and an emissary for two Gulf princes, the former Blackwater CEO did not deny the meeting took place.

"We were there … to talk about Iran policy," Prince said when pressed by Hasan.

According to the New York Times, that meeting was attended by Prince, Donald Trump Jr, George Nader, a former Blackwater employee and emissary for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Stephen Miller, then a top aide to the Trump campaign and currently a senior policy adviser to the president and Joel Zamel, whose company Psy-Group employed former Israeli intelligence operatives and specialised in social media manipulation and was reportedly contacted by Rick Gates, a top Trump campaign official, for proposals for social media manipulation to help Trump win the election.

Prince, however, apparently did not disclose information about the meeting when testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on November 30, 2017, according to a public transcript.

Prince testified under oath that he had "no official, or, really unofficial role" in the Trump campaign. He also told the House panel that he did not have any formal communications or contact with the campaign other than policy papers given to Steve Bannon, attending some fundraisers and a "yard sign".

When asked by Al Jazeera's Hasan about why he didn't then disclose the August 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Prince initially said he "disclosed any meetings, the very, very few" he had.

When pressed further by Hasan, Prince said, "I don't believe I was asked that question."

Prince later contradicted himself, saying he did tell the panel about the meeting. When asked to explain why it was not in the transcript, Prince said, "I don't know if they got the transcript wrong."

They didn't, of course.

Erik Prince committed perjury on live TV.  He was there at the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. He helped Donald Trump arrange a major campaign money laundering scheme with the Russian, the Saudis, the UAE, and more.  He was paid off by his sister gaining control of the nation's public education system and she is gleefully destroying it.  He's as dirty as the day is long.

Lock them up.

Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Republicans are screaming about Michigan Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar and her "anti-Semitism" (which must be true because she's Muslim and wears a hijab and said that Israel has influence on US policy) and all, while the reality is that the Republicans are quite happy to be related to white supremacist fascist group Identity Evropa.

Identity Evropa is a fascist organization. Its members have been involved in violent street brawls, including 2017’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. While other white supremacist organizations imploded after the rally, Identity Evropa attempted to cast aside the alt-right’s tarnished image and rebrand as a “clean-cut” organization. The makeover was an attempt to appeal to the mainstream Republican Party, according to chat logs released Wednesday by the media collective Unicorn Riot.

But despite its new face, the group stayed true to its fascist heart, the leaked conversations reveal.

The chat group’s name was an ironic nod at the image Identity Evropa tries to present to outsiders: “Nice Respectable People Group.” The image landed the white supremacist group a softball interview with the Today Show last year. Privately, Identity Evropa members celebrated the interview as a recruitment driver, the leaked chat logs reveal.

“Can we send a bouquet of flowers and a ‘thank you from Identity Evropa’ card to the ‘TODAY Show’?” one group member wrote in a message first flagged by Media Matters researcher Madeline Peltz. “I feel like we owe them something after so many applications today.”

The racist group wasn’t just pandering to the media. Members were also encouraged to get involved with their local Republican parties, Splinter first reported.

“Identity Evropa leadership strongly encourages our members to get involved in local politics. We’ve been pushing this for a while, but haven’t seen much of it happening,” leader Patrick Casey wrote in an Oct. 2017 message. “Today I decided to get involved in my county’s Republican party. Everyone can do this without fear of getting doxxed. The GOP is essentially the White man’s party at this point (it gets Whiter every election cycle), so it makes far more sense for us to subvert it than to create our own party.”

Months later, Identity Evropa member and Charlottesville marcher James Allsup quietly won an uncontested seat in his local Republican party, The Daily Beast first reported. After months of hedging by local Republican leaders who likened Allsup to a lynching victim, the local party ejected him in January.

But other Identity Evropa members have stayed close to the Republican Party. One member who described himself in October as having “an interview for a political job coming up. Anyone know any good inside sources for political news? I can't say my main news source is [fascist podcast] Fash the Nation.” (Elsewhere in the chat, he posted racist and anti-Semitic attacks.)

The member used the screen name “Logan” and shared links to his now-defunct website, which he registered under the name, Logan Piercy. He described “door knocking” on behalf of Republican candidates in Montana during the 2018 congressional primaries. Piercy did not return The Daily Beast’s Thursday request for comment at the email address used to register his website.

Racists who didn’t campaign on the ground instead pushed for their favorite Republicans from afar. In September, when Rep. Steve King was under fire for being a white supremacist, Casey ordered the group to call then-House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy to voice support for King, HuffPost first reported.

“Got through on the 202 number,” one member wrote. “Thanked lady for taking my call, identified myself as a member of a young conservationist Republican group that supports Congressman Steve King.”

Others bragged of donating money to King, and dreamed about getting him to interact with their Twitter account, as he has with other white supremacists.

Younger members described themselves as being members of College Republicans clubs.

“I’m an officer in my college republicans. I’m sure many other IE members are. It’s easy to infiltrate low level GOP stuff if you just show up,” one Identity Evropa member said in September, adding that he hoped to convert two members of his club. He also described modeling the club after Identity Evropa.

“[That feeling when] I’m making rules for my college republicans based on the IE guidelines and it makes me look like the responsible moderate,” he wrote.

“Join college republicans if you haven’t already,” another urged his fellow white supremacists.

The party clucking their tongue at the "Democrats' increasing anti-Semitism" really needs to worry about the hate group infestation that it is currently embracing on a daily basis.

Last Call For Leaking Like The Titanic

The White House is refusing to release documents to the House pertaining to security clearances for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, both who were flagged as security risks and both who ended up with high-level security clearances anyway.  That's not today's story though.

Today's story is that the House Oversight Committee got the documents anyway, because somebody in the White House is now leaking to the House Democrats directly.

From a White House source, the House Oversight Committee has obtained documents related to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's security clearances that the Trump administration refused to provide, according to a senior Democratic aide involved in handling the documents.

Why it matters: The Trump administration's problems with leaks will now benefit Congress, making it harder for the White House to withhold information from Democratic investigators.

The news: The White House this week rejected the committee's request for documents on the process for granting security clearances to staffers.

The twist: But the House Oversight Committee in early February had already obtained the leaked documents that detail the entire process, from the spring of 2017 to the spring of 2018, on how both Kushner and Trump were ultimately granted their security clearances.

The senior Democratic aide who was involved in handling the documents told Axios that two staffers on the Oversight Committee said the documents are "part of the puzzle that we would be asking for" from the White House, "so we appreciate having this upfront."

The House Oversight Committee, via deputy communications director Aryele Bradford, declined to comment.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The documents leaked to the Oversight Committee provide detailed information on the timeline for how Kushner's and Trump's security clearances were approved and who the people were involved in processing and the final decision.

Oops.

Have a good weekend Donny.

Catapulting The Propaganda, Con't

As I covered on Monday, The New Yorker's Jane Meyer dropped a piece that showed just how incestuous the relationship between the Trump regime and FOX News is, to the point FOX News should be considered Trump regime state media. It didn't help that Trump had hired FOX's news division director Bill Shine as White House Communications Director, either.

Now, just days after the piece made it clear that Democrats should be using subpoena power on Shine to answer a few dozen pressing questions, Shine has suddenly resigned from the White House to join Trump's 2020 campaign machine.

White House communications director Bill Shine has resigned his post and will become a senior adviser to President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, officials announced Friday.

Shine, a former top executive at Fox News before he was forced out in 2017, has worked in what's become a high-turnover position in the White House since July of last year.

"Serving President Trump and this country has been the most rewarding experience of my entire life. To be a small part of all this President has done for the American people has truly been an honor. I’m looking forward to working on President Trump’s re-election campaign and spending more time with my family," Shine said in a statement.

He tendered his resignation Thursday night and Trump accepted, officials said. Trump said in a statement that "We will miss him in the White House, but look forward to working together on the 2020 Presidential Campaign, where he will be totally involved."

Shine's resignation came just days after The New Yorker reported on Trump and his administration's unusually close relationship with Fox News, which is still paying out Shine's multi-million dollar contract, including the $8.4 million severance payment he got from the network.

Shine was the network's co-president, but was forced out after it emerged in lawsuits that he'd helped cover up allegations of sexual harassment. 

I mean, Trump really does need an expert on covering up sexual assault for 2020.  His last campaign guy is, you know, going to prison.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

As widely expected, the judge in Paul Manafort's sentencing hearing gave the convicted fraudster a fraction of what the Mueller team recommended, as Manafort will end up serving just over three more years in jail, plus time served.  However, Manafort still faces a second sentencing hearing on conspiracy convictions next week.

Paul Manafort, the political consultant and Trump presidential campaign chairman whose lucrative work in Ukraine and ties to well-connected Russians made him a target of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, was sentenced on Thursday to nearly four years in prison in the financial fraud case that left his grand lifestyle and power-broker reputation in ruins.

The sentence in the highest-profile criminal case mounted by the special counsel’s office was far lighter than the 19- to 24-year prison term recommended under advisory sentencing guidelines. Judge T. S. Ellis III of the United States District Court in Alexandria, Va., said that although Mr. Manafort’s crimes were “very serious,” following the guidelines would have resulted in an unduly harsh punishment.

A team of Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors sat glum-faced while Judge Ellis delivered his decision. Mr. Manafort, who suffers from gout and came to the hearing in a wheelchair with his foot heavily bandaged, had asked the judge for compassion. “To say I feel humiliated and ashamed would be a gross understatement,” he said in a barely audible voice, reading from a laptop.

Of the half-dozen former Trump associates prosecuted by Mr. Mueller, Mr. Manafort garnered the harshest punishment yet in the case that came to a conclusion on Thursday — the first of two for which Mr. Manafort is being sentenced this month. While prosecutors sought no specific sentence, they spent much of the three-hour hearing sparring with the judge over the evidence.

For nearly two years, prosecutors pursued Mr. Manafort on two tracks, charging him with more than two dozen felonies, including obstruction of justice, bank fraud and violations of lobbying laws. While they ultimately won Mr. Manafort’s agreement to cooperate, prosecutors said on Thursday that Mr. Manafort provided little information of value for their inquiry into Russia’s election interference and the degree of involvement by Trump associates.

Most of what Mr. Manafort told the office of the special counsel “we already knew or was already in documents,” Greg D. Andres, the lead prosecutor in the case, said in court. “It certainly wasn’t 50 hours of information that was useful.”

The evidence in the case tried last summer before Judge Ellis showed that Mr. Manafort hid millions of dollars of income in overseas accounts and lied to banks to obtain millions more in loans — a financial scheme that prosecutors said was rooted in greed and in Mr. Manafort’s sense that he was above the law.

They described him as a hardened, remorseless criminal who never fully accepted responsibility for his offenses and who continued to lie to federal prosecutors even after he pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts in a related case in Washington and agreed to cooperate with the special counsel’s office last fall.

Defense lawyers had asked for leniency, citing Mr. Manafort’s age, health problems and lack of a criminal record. He will turn 70 next month.

And they got it.  Here's the thing though: the judge in the Washington DC case is expected to be much less lenient.  We can only hope Manafort gets the rest of his natural life behind bars for helping Trump steal an election on behalf of Russia.

We'll see.  Trump won't be able to do much if additional state charges come through for Manafort, and I'm betting they will.

StupidiNews!

• A federal judge has tossed adult film star Stormy Daniels's lawsuit against Donald Trump, ruling that the matter needs to go back to California Superior Court.
• A Florida jury has convicted a former cop on charges of manslaughter and attempted first-degree murder in the 2015 shooting death of Corey Jones, he faces a maximum of life in prison.
• A major blackout in Venezuela is being blamed as "sabotage" by the government of President Nicolas Maduro, crowds flooded the streets as Caracas's metro was not operational.
• UK PM Theresa May is making a final effort to plead to the EU for more time in order to break Parliament's impasse on Brexit, Brussels is largely expected to say no to any further deals.
• Cable and satellite TV services lost 3 million subscribers in 2018 as Americans continue to cut the cord in favor of streaming services amid significant price boosts.

Last Call For Out Of Con Text

The big story in Cincinnati politics this week is the hammer that Hamilton County judge Robert Ruhlman dropped on Cincinnati's City Council on Thursday.  Five City Council members pled to violations of the state's open meetings law by discussing the fate of City Manager Harry Black via text messages last year, and in the hearing today to have those pleas heard, Judge Ruhlman called on all five to immediately resign from City Council instead.

A Hamilton County judge gave a tongue-lashing Thursday to five Cincinnati City Council members who broke the law by secretly conducting public business via text messages.

Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman told the five they violated the trust of voters and should immediately resign from office.

"You essentially lied to the people of this city," Ruehlman said. "The trust is gone. It's going to take a long time to get that trust back."

The five council members – Wendell Young, P.G. Sittenfeld, Chris Seelbach, Tamaya Dennard and Greg Landsman – all admitted as part of a settlement agreement that they broke Ohio open meetings law by secretly discussing public business in a string of group text messages.

The spectacle of five council members appearing before a judge to acknowledge wrongdoing is unprecedented in modern Cincinnati politics and threatens to unleash more chaos at City Hall, where personal and professional rivalries have interfered with council’s work for more than a year.

None of the five council members spoke in court Thursday, but the judge did plenty of talking. He said their actions betrayed the ideals of those who created a city government that's supposed to serve the public, not elected officials.

"I really believe the five City Council members should resign," Ruehlman said. "No city voter should ever vote for them again."

Outside the courtroom after the hearing, Landsman said he has no plans to step down. "You have to take responsibility for your actions," he said, referring to the texts. "I've said they were a mistake from the beginning."

Sittenfeld said in a statement the group text messages were "an honest mistake" that won't be repeated. But he complained the error has been blown out of proportion by political opponents, including the law firm and the conservative, anti-tax group that have led the charge against the five Democratic council members.

"The important business of the city has been hijacked by politically motivated actions of a local right-wing group and their affiliated law firm, whose goals, put simply, are to cause chaos and enrich themselves," Sittenfeld said.

Seelbach attacked Ruehlman, a Republican, on Twitter, referring to appeals court decisions that went against the judge and describing him as the "most overturned judge in southwest Ohio."

Mark Miller, who filed the lawsuit that brought the text messages to light, said Ruehlman was right to criticize the five council members. "This is very real," Miller said. "How are we going to trust these guys after they purposely did business out of public view?"

One of the five, Young, will be back in court in a few weeks to face a possible contempt of court charge for deleting some of the texts at issue in the case.

Young's lawyer told Ruehlman on Thursday he believes his client deleted the texts before the judge ordered the council members to preserve all of their messages. If that's true, it may shield Young from a contempt of court violation.

And all of this comes from a series of really bad decisions the City Council has made involving Mayor John Cranley.  Cranley and the Council have been banging heads for years now, and both of them have made increasingly bad decisions over protecting their turf from the other, including both sides using former City Manager Harry Black as a pawn.

It's getting ridiculous now, and I'm hoping this will finally be the end of this clown show.

Meat The Press, Con't

Keep in mind that Donald Trump's designation of critical press being "enemies of the people" extends to foreign press and journalists as well who dare to criticize him.

Jessikka Aro, a Finnish investigative journalist, has faced down death threats and harassment over her work exposing Russia’s propaganda machine long before the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. In January, the U.S. State Department took notice, telling Aro she would be honored with the prestigious International Women of Courage Award, to be presented in Washington by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Weeks later, the State Department rescinded the award offer. A State Department spokesperson said it was due to a “regrettable error,” but Aro and U.S. officials familiar with the internal deliberations tell a different story. They say the department revoked her award after U.S. officials went through Aro’s social media posts and found she had also frequently criticized President Donald Trump.

“It created a shitstorm of getting her unceremoniously kicked off the list,” said one U.S. diplomatic source familiar with the internal deliberations. “I think it was absolutely the wrong decision on so many levels,” the source said. The decision “had nothing to do with her work.”

The State Department spokesperson said in an email that Aro was “incorrectly notified” that she had been chosen for the award and that it was a mistake that resulted from “a lack of coordination in communications with candidates and our embassies.”

“We regret this error. We admire Ms. Aro’s achievements as a journalist, which were the basis of U.S. Embassy Helsinki’s nomination,” the spokesperson said.

Aro received a formal invitation to the award ceremony not from the embassy but from the State Department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol on Feb. 12.

There is no indication that the decision to revoke the award came from the secretary of state or the White House. Officials who spoke to FP have suggested the decision came from lower-level State Department officials wary of the optics of Pompeo granting an award to an outspoken critic of the Trump administration. The department spokesperson did not respond to questions on who made the decision or why.

To U.S. officials who spoke to FP, the incident underscores how skittish some officials—career and political alike—have become over government dealings with vocal critics of a notoriously thin-skinned president. The Trump administration has barred the hiring of prominent Republican foreign-policy experts who publicly denounced the president during the 2016 election season, including some who have since walked back their criticisms. As another example, Trump himself last year revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, who regularly castigates the president on Twitter, and threatened to follow suit with other former national security officials who did the same.

And that's where we are in America right now.  Our government apparatus is terrified of doing anything that might remotely appear to be critical of Trump, for fear they will be hunted down and destroyed by state media brownshirts.

This is not how a free country works, guys.

Trump Cards, Con't

Who knew that one of the most vindictive, nasty, greedy people on earth, one entirely motivated by petty vengeance, one who constantly and consistently referred to critics, journalists, activists, and political opposition as "enemies of the people" has an enemies list that he directed the government to watch?

Documents obtained by NBC 7 Investigates show the U.S. government created a secret database of activists, journalists, and social media influencers tied to the migrant caravan and in some cases, placed alerts on their passports.
At the end of 2018, roughly 5,000 immigrants from Central America made their way north through Mexico to the United States southern border. The story made international headlines.

As the migrant caravan reached the San Ysidro Port of Entry in south San Diego County, so did journalists, attorneys, and advocates who were there to work and witness the events unfolding.

But in the months that followed, journalists who covered the caravan, as well as those who offered assistance to caravan members, said they felt they had become targets of intense inspections and scrutiny by border officials.

One photojournalist said she was pulled into secondary inspections three times and asked questions about who she saw and photographed in Tijuana shelters. Another photojournalist said she spent 13 hours detained by Mexican authorities when she tried to cross the border into Mexico City. Eventually, she was denied entry into Mexico and sent back to the U.S.

These American photojournalists and attorneys said they suspected the U.S. government was monitoring them closely but until now, they couldn’t prove it.

Now, documents leaked to NBC 7 Investigates show their fears weren’t baseless. In fact, their own government had listed their names in a secret database of targets, where agents collected information on them. Some had alerts placed on their passports, keeping at least three photojournalists and an attorney from entering Mexico to work.

The documents were provided to NBC 7 by a Homeland Security source on the condition of anonymity, given the sensitive nature of what they were divulging.

The source said the documents or screenshots show a SharePoint application that was used by agents from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Border Patrol, Homeland Security Investigations and some agents from the San Diego sector of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

The intelligence gathering efforts were done under the umbrella of “Operation Secure Line,” the operation designated to monitor the migrant caravan, according to the source.

The documents list people who officials think should be targeted for screening at the border.

The individuals listed include ten journalists, seven of whom are U.S. citizens, a U.S. attorney, and 47 people from the U.S. and other countries, labeled as organizers, instigators or their roles “unknown.” The target list includes advocates from organizations like Border Angels and Pueblo Sin Fronteras.

So, Trump's political critics were targeted by intelligence services and harassed by immigration services.

That is exactly how autocrats do things.

StupidiNews!

• Jeopardy host Alex Trebek has announced that he has been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, the legendary emcee say he plans to beat the disease despite his low odds.
• Arizona GOP Sen. Martha McSally says she was sexually assaulted by a superior officer while serving as the US Air Force's first female combat pilot.
• Chinese tech giant Huawei has filed a countersuit against the Justice Department over accusations the company has stolen US corporate secrets for Beijing.
• Indian PM Narendra Modi is under heavy scrutiny as political opposition lawmakers are demanding proof that last week's raid against Pakistan actually killed 300 terrorists as he claimed.
• Democratic leaders have introduced legislation to restore the FCC's removal of net neutrality regulations from 2017, the bill is expected to pass the House but faces an uncertain Senate vote.

Last Call For Emergent Stupidity

Donald Trump is using his favorite minion, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, to let Republicans senators voting against his emergency declaration know that Trump will do everything in his power to destroy them.

President Donald Trump said Senate Republicans considering opposition to his emergency declaration on the border are "playing with fire," according to Sen. Lindsey Graham, who met with the president on Tuesday morning.

The South Carolina Republican said his meeting with the president focused mostly on the border and the number of illegal crossings as Trump faces certain bipartisan defeat on his emergency declaration in the Senate later this month.

Four Republican senators have said they will join 47 Senate Democrats in voting to block the national emergency declaration, though Trump will veto it and Congress likely won't be able to muster the votes to override it. And though Trump is not waging a massive campaign to convert Republicans to his side, he's acutely aware of the politics of the issue.

"He says he thinks Republicans are playing with fire here because most Republicans, anyway, most people I hope, will see that the border is in a state of crisis," Graham said, adding that Trump believes GOP senators that defy him are likely to face a political backlash. "That's his observation, but he's not out there calling people out or anything."

Not yet, at least.  He saves his racist, childish nicknames for Democrats so far.  Looks like that is about to change.  Sarah Sanders made it a bit more clear what to expect.

“My message to that group is to do your job,” she said during an appearance on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.” “If you had done what you were elected to do on the front end, the president wouldn’t have to fix this problem on his own through a national emergency.”

Also, Trump wants to know where that infrastructure bill is, apparently.  So would I, especially since Mitch McConnell has no intention of bringing anything up for a vote.

Even though Trump will simply veto the measure however, it represents the first real crack in the GOP foundation, depending on how badly Trump loses this vote.  If it's only Rand Paul and a handful of "mavericks" like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, then it's not really notable.  But if it gets more than 55 votes or so, it'll be something.

Not much, certainly after three years, but something.

Another Hat Does NOT Land In The Ring

Notable this week: the number of people saying they will not enter the 2020 race for the Democratic nomination.  First up not running: former Obama AG Eric Holder.

Holder, who was President Barack Obama’s first attorney general, said he will instead continue his work to end gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing legislative districts for a political advantage.

“Though I will not run for president in 2020, I will continue to fight for the future of our country through the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and its affiliates,” Holder said in an op-ed published Monday in The Washington Post.

“Our fight to end gerrymandering is about electing leaders who actually work for the interests of the people they are supposed to represent. I will do everything I can to ensure that the next Democratic president is not hobbled by a House of Representatives pulled to the extremes by members from gerrymandered districts,” Holder said.

Good for Holder.  He knows he'll be far more effective fighting GOP voter suppression in the courts than running for 2020, and I applaud his choice.  We'll never get the Voting Rights Act fixed that the Roberts Court gutted a few years ago without winning the Senate and keeping the House, and that means both fixing gerrymandering and keeping Democratic senators in the Senate, bringing us to our next non-contender, Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley.

In his announcement, Merkley said: "Over the last year I've weighed whether I can contribute more to the battle by running for Senate, or by running for president."

"I've reached the conclusion that the biggest impact I can have is here in the Senate."

The Oregon senator, who is considered a progressive, is a main proponent of banking regulation and has been one of the main forces behind the Wall Street reform bill.

Again, this is the right choice for Merkley.  He didn't have a shot at the White House, but he's been a bedrock-solid liberal senator where he's been needed.

We also need to get the 2020 field straightened out as soon as we can and get to work, and that means Hillary Clinton is making it clear that she will not run in 2020.  And yes, Clinton has said no several times before.

The pool of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates keeps expanding. But one name that won’t be in the mix is 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton.

The former secretary of state and US senator ruled out a 2020 White House bid in an interview with the local New York City television station News 12 on Monday.

“I’m not running,” she said, “but I’m going to keep working on and speaking and standing up for what I believe.”

Now watch, Clinton will say anything at all after this and it will be "Could Hillary be preparing a 2020 run?"

But finally, it means we have to put a stop to the dangerous, ego-driven third party nonsense of America's billionaires, and thankfully that now means Michael Bloomberg is out too as he laid out the case for why he won't run on Monday.

I know what it takes to run a winning campaign, and every day when I read the news, I grow more frustrated by the incompetence in the Oval Office. I know we can do better as a country. And I believe I would defeat Donald Trump in a general election. But I am clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field.
There is another factor that has weighed heavily on my mind: the likelihood that our biggest national problems will worsen over the next two years. With a leader in the White House who refuses to bring the parties together, it will be nearly impossible for Congress to address the major challenges we face, including climate change, gun violence, the opioid crisis, failing public schools, and college affordability. All are likely to grow more severe, and many of the president’s executive actions will only compound matters.

I love our country too much to sit back and hope for the best as national problems get worse. But I also recognize that until 2021, and possibly longer, our only real hope for progress lies outside of Washington. And unlike most who are running or thinking of it, I’m fortunate enough to be in a position to devote the resources needed to bring people together and make a big difference.

That just leaves one big question mark as to entering the race..and his name is Joe Biden.

We need to hear from him ASAP...

No Vaccination For Stupidity

In the process of Kentucky's Republican senators causing arguably the most damage to the country from any single state between Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, let's not forget that Rand Paul is an anti-vaxxer dimwit on top of everything else.

During a Senate Health Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) criticized the idea that parents should be required to vaccinate their children and perpetuated the notion that vaccines themselves could cause harm.

The speech, which came during the opening moments of the hearing, was framed as an argument in favor of personal liberty, a posture that Paul routinely adopts. But in offering his thoughts, the Kentucky Republican furthered the argument that it is socially reasonable not to vaccinate your kids—a mindset that the scientific community says is already worsening communal health crises.

“As we contemplate forcing parents to choose this or that vaccine, I think it’s important to remember that force is not consistent with the American story, nor is force consistent with the liberty our forefathers sought when they came to America,” said Paul, reading off a paper. “I don't think you have to have one or the other, though. I'm not here to say don’t vaccinate your kids. If this hearing is for persuasion I’m all for the persuasion. I’ve vaccinated myself and I’ve vaccinated my kids. For myself and my children I believe that the benefits of vaccines greatly outweighing the risks, but I still don’t favor giving up on liberty for a false sense of security.”

Paul didn’t just make the case that vaccines should be voluntary, however. He used his platform at the hearing to affirmatively push the perception that they are potentially problematic.

“It is wrong to say that there are no risks to vaccines,” said Paul. “Even the government admits that children are sometimes injured by vaccines.”

To recap, Paul thinks the government compelling people to vaccinate children (something he himself has done for his own children because he understands the benefits to it both personally and for society as a whole) is worse than not vaccinating your kids.  He believes it is akin to martial law.

Paul told Alex Jones’s InfoWars that vaccines for illnesses such as swine flu have long histories of perilous side effects. “The first sort of thing you see with martial law is mandates, and they’re talking about making it mandatory,” Paul said. “I worry because the first flu vaccine we had in the 1970s, more people died from the vaccine than died from the swine flu.” (Paul is wrong: 450 people out of 45 million developed paralyzing Guillain-Barré syndrome.) “The whole problem is not necessarily good versus bad on vaccines; it’s whether it should be mandatory or the individual makes the decision. And sometimes you want to not be the first one to get a new procedure; you want to see if it works well before you choose.”

As I keep telling people, growing up I had to apologize to people for my senator at the time, NC's Jesse Helms.  Now I have to do it again for Rand and Mitch.

I'm tired of it.

 

StupidiNews!

• Just days after the Trump-Kim summit in Vietnam, North Korea is apparently rebuilding a closed long-range missile facility in violation of UN sanctions.
• FDA head Scott Gottlieb is resigning after two years, the departure calls into question the agency's stance against teen use of e-cigarettes and on speeding up generic drug approvals.
• The Cook Islands in the South Pacific wants to drop the country's colonial name in favor of a traditional Maori one, and it has gotten dozens of ideas from residents.
• After years in limbo, Japanese toy company Sanrio is licensing the movie rights to its popular Hello Kitty franchise to New Line Cinema and Warner Bros for a planned global feature film.
• Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill want to know why T-Mobile executives have spent nearly $200,000 at Trump Hotels since lobbying for approval of an announced merger with Sprint.