Last Call For We'll Never Have Paris

As expected, Kang the Conqueror continues America's path down the road of the international pariah as the US will now start the process to drop out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

President Trump announced Thursday that he will withdraw the United States from participation in the Paris climate accord, weakening global efforts to combat climate change and siding with conservatives who argued that the landmark 2015 agreement was harming the economy. 

But he will stick to the withdrawal process laid out in the Paris agreement, which President Barack Obama joined and most of the world has already ratified. That could take nearly four years to complete, meaning a final decision would be up to the American voters in the next presidential election. 

Still, Mr. Trump’s decision is a remarkable rebuke to fellow heads-of-state, climate activists, corporate executives and members of the president’s own staff, all of whom failed this week to change Mr. Trump’s mind with an intense, last-minute lobbying blitz. 

It makes good on a campaign promise to “cancel” an agreement he repeatedly mocked and derided at rallies, saying it would kill American jobs. As president, he has moved rapidly to reverse Obama-era policies designed to allow the United States to meet its pollution-reduction targets as set under the agreement.

“In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord but begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States,” the president said. “We are getting out. But we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great.”

The rest of the world has immediately vowed that the Paris Agreement will not be renegotiated,  Of course as I've said before, this is about exterminating Barack Obama and his legacy from the history books, and reversing as many of his accomplishments as possible.

Much like gun control, an overwhelming majority (in this case 71% of  Americans) want us to remain in the Paris Agreement, but the Trump regime and his cultists have said no, and so voters will ignore it and continue to vote for Republicans who believe climate change is a massive hoax and who will do everything they can to wreck the planet.

It's possible that the process for the US exit from the framework won't be 100% official until after the next presidential election, meaning that the Democratic candidate in 2020 may be able to keep us in, but I would assume at this point that no international partner will trust the US after this point, so there's really no point in us engaging.

We are a isolated rogue state.

The world will rightfully treat us as such.  I doubt the damage from Trump will be fixed in my lifetime, if ever.

Black Museums Matter

My only reaction to this story of a noose being found on the grounds of the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian is that "Wow it took this long for white supremacists to try to bring their particular brand of hatred in."

A noose was found Wednesday in a public gallery at the National Museum of African American History and Culture museum, the second such incident on Smithsonian grounds in less than a week, officials said. 

David J. Skorton, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, said in an email announcement that he had to share “deeply disturbing news” that the rope was found in an public exhibition space Wednesday afternoon. It was in the Segregation Gallery on the second floor of the history galleries. 

“The Smithsonian family stands together in condemning this act of hatred and intolerance, especially repugnant in a museum that affirms and celebrates the American values of inclusion and diversity,” Skorton wrote. 

Skorton added that the incident is being investigated by U.S. Park Police. Spokeswoman Sgt. Anna Rose said that police are investigating but she provided no further details. 

Police officials said a noose was found hanging from a tree Saturday on the grounds of the Hirshhorn Museum.

Two in a week.

And of course the argument is "Why do they need a museum?  Why can't they just be happy with American history?  They're Americans, right?  Isn't this, you know,  racist?"

Unspoken message is "You go after our Confederate monuments, we go after your African-American museums."

So two nooses appear.

Making America Great Again™!

Russian To Judgment, Con't

A lot to cover in developments in the ongoing Trump/Russia collusion investigation in the last day or so, so let's get to it: First up, remember the two Russian diplomatic compounds in the US that then President Obama kicked the Russians out of in December? Those compounds are now going right back to Vlad and his buddies to continue operating. 

The Trump administration is moving toward handing back to Russia two diplomatic compounds, near New York City and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, that its officials were ejected from in late December as punishment for Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

President Barack Obama said Dec. 29 that the compounds were being “used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes” and gave Russia 24 hours to vacate them. Separately, Obama expelled from the United States what he said were 35 Russian “intelligence operatives.”

Early last month, the Trump administration told the Russians that it would consider turning the properties back over to them if Moscow would lift its freeze, imposed in 2014 in retaliation for U.S. sanctions related to Ukraine, on construction of a new U.S. consulate on a certain parcel of land in St. Petersburg.

Two days later, the U.S. position changed. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at a meeting in Washington that the United States had dropped any linkage between the compounds and the consulate, according to several people with knowledge of the exchanges.

Last week the Russian Embassy's Twitter account retweeted a Sputnik article calling for the US to return those two compounds or face consequences.  Looks like manly man Trump caved in order to give his real boss a nice present.

And speaking of Russian bosses, Attorney General Jeff Session has once again been caught perjuring himself with evidence of yet another clandestine meeting between him and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak that Sessions failed to disclose to Congress.

Congressional investigators are examining whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions had an additional private meeting with Russia's ambassador during the presidential campaign, according to Republican and Democratic Hill sources and intelligence officials briefed on the investigation. 

Investigators on the Hill are requesting additional information, including schedules from Sessions, a source with knowledge tells CNN. They are focusing on whether such a meeting took place April 27, 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, where then-candidate Donald Trump was delivering his first major foreign policy address. Prior to the speech, then-Sen. Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak attended a small VIP reception with organizers, diplomats and others. 

In addition to congressional investigators, the FBI is seeking to determine the extent of interactions the Trump campaign team may have had with Russia's ambassador during the event as part of its broader counterintelligence investigation of Russian interference in the election.

Once again Sessions lied to Congress under oath, but he's still allowed to be Attorney General. Fun times. 

On the congressional side of the investigation, the House is finally issuing subpoenas to those involved in the Russia investigation...but also to former Obama administration officials over "unmasking" these names as Republicans still blame the previous administration for all this.

A political feud erupted on Wednesday over the U.S. House Intelligence Committee's probe of suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, with charges that the panel's Republican chairman subpoenaed the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency without telling Democratic members.

Committee aides complained that the chairman, Representative Devin Nunes, who publicly recused himself from leading the Russia probe in April following a secret visit he paid to White House officials, failed to consult Democrats on the subpoenas.

The subpoenas asked the agencies to provide details of any requests made by two top Obama administration aides and the former CIA director to "unmask" names of Trump campaign advisers inadvertently picked up in top-secret foreign communications intercepts, congressional sources said.

The former officials named in the subpoenas were Obama national security adviser Susan Rice, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and former CIA Director John Brennan.

"Subpoenas related to the 'unmasking' issue would have been sent by Chairman Nunes acting separately from the committee's Russia investigation. This action would have been taken without the minority's (Democrats') agreement," said a senior committee aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Another congressional source, who also requested anonymity, said Democrats were "informed and consulted" before the subpoenas were issued.

Former Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn and Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen were issued subpoenas, but so have former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Obama's CIA Director John Brennan, and Obama's UN Ambassador Samantha Power.

In other words, the House GOP wants to dump as much of this on "Obama leakers" as they can to distract from Trump's possible crimes.

But in the Senate, the hammer may drop as early as this time next week as fired FBI Director James Comey is expected to testify publicly.

Fired FBI director James Comey plans to testify publicly in the Senate as early as next week to confirm bombshell accusations that President Donald Trump pressured him to end his investigation into a top Trump aide's ties to Russia, a source close to the issue said Wednesday. 

Final details are still being worked out and no official date for his testimony has been set. Comey is expected to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia during last year's presidential election. 

Comey has spoken privately with Special Counsel Robert Mueller III to work out the parameters for his testimony to ensure there are no legal entanglements as a result of his public account, a source said. Comey will likely sit down with Mueller, a longtime colleague at the Justice Department, for a formal interview only after his public testimony. 

When he testifies, Comey is unlikely to be willing to discuss in any detail the FBI's investigation into the charges of possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign -- the centerpiece of the probe, this source said. But he appears eager to discuss his tense interactions with Trump before his firing, which have now spurred allegations that the president may have tried to obstruct the investigation.

This of course explains the House move to put Rice, Brennan and Power under oath.  I would expect it to happen the same day or the day after Comey testifies.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• In a "friendly fire" incident, 11 Philippines solders were killed and 7 wounded when a Duterte regime airstrike against terrorists on Mindanao Island missed its target.
• Ohio GOP Attorney General Mike DeWine is suing five drugmakers over the state's opioid crisis, Ohio has led the nation in opioid overdose deaths for the past several years.
• Donald Trump is expected to announce that the US will abandon the Paris Climate Accords this afternoon, joining Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries refusing the global compact.
• China has surpassed the US in the size of the country's gaming market as global revenue from PC, console, and mobile games topped $100 billion last year.
• A German court has ruled that the parents of a deceased 15-year-old girl have no rights to her Facebook account, saying that allowing access would set a dangerous privacy precedent.

Last Call For Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Here's a heartwarming story about a rally in my home state of NC, and by "heartwarming" I mean it will actually induce angina.

Two active-duty U.S. Marines were arrested after driving hours from their homes to take part in a pro-Confederate rally last week in North Carolina. 

Sgt. Michael Chesny and Staff Sgt. Joseph Manning were arrested for trespassing after draping a white nationalist banner over a building in downtown Graham during a May 20 demonstration, reported the Times-News. 

The pair unfurled a banner that quoted George Orwell’s “1984” — “He who controls the past controls the future” — and the letters, “YWNRU,” which stands for “you will not replace us,” a slogan linked to the white nationalist group Identity Evropa. 

The group has gained followers in recent years by blanketing college campuses with white nationalist literature, although it’s not clear whether either Marine is directly involved with Identity Evropa or similar groups. 

The Marines told arresting officers they had gone to the rally to record video of protesters from the Industrial Workers of the World to prove the social group wasn’t peaceful. 

Chesny serves as an explosive ordnance disposal technician based at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, and Manning serves in the Marine Corps Engineer School at Camp Lejeune. 

The servicemen were each charged with first-degree trespassing, a misdemeanor offense, and released on $1,000 bond the same day as their arrest. 

The incident is under investigation by military personnel.

So many questions about this, such as one, why do we still have pro-Confederacy rallies in the US in 2017, two, why do we have white nationalists in public at these rallies, three, why are our military recruits so drawn to pro-Confederacy rallies with white nationalist messaging and four, are any of you still wondering why NC went for Trump?

As I keep saying, Trump is not the actual problem, although he's more like the metastasizing of the cancer of the body politic more than anything, the real problem is the people who saw his message and decided "Thank God, I finally can stop pretending now and do this openly."

And you know what, even if you as a Trump voter can still look yourself in the mirror and say "Well I'm not a white supremacist asshole" you're still okay with the candidate that made white supremacy publicly acceptable again.

For that, I will never forgive Trump voters.  To a person.

Poll Arising Nation, Con't

The after-action report on 2016 polling was simple: national polls were correct (Clinton by 2%) but individual state polls were wrong, in some cases badly so.  Nate Cohn at the NY Times Upshot crew takes a look and theorizes that the big problems in state polling are fixable to some extent.

Nearly seven months after the presidential election, pollsters are still trying to answer a question that has rattled trust in their profession: Why did pre-election polls show Hillary Clinton leading Donald J. Trump in the battleground states that decided the presidency? Is political polling fundamentally broken? Or were the errors understandable and correctable? 

At their annual conference in New Orleans this month, polling experts were inching toward the latter, more optimistic explanation. And there is mounting evidence to support their view. 

At least three key types of error have emerged as likely contributors to the pro-Clinton bias in pre-election surveys. Undecided voters broke for Mr. Trump in the final days of the race, or in the voting booth. Turnout among Mr. Trump’s supporters was somewhat higher than expected. And state polls, in particular, understated Mr. Trump’s support in the decisive Rust Belt region, in part because those surveys did not adjust for the educational composition of the electorate — a key to the 2016 race. 

Some of these errors will be easier to fix than others. But all of them are good news for pollsters and others who depend on political surveys. 

It might seem strange to argue that the polls could miss the result of an election and could still be trusted in the future. But there are some kinds of polling errors that pollsters can accept, even if the public never will. 

There’s nothing pollsters can do, for example, if undecided voters break for one candidate in the final hours. Even an error that puts more blame on the pollsters might be acceptable, provided it can be fixed. 

Errors have happened enough in past elections to know that an upset was well within the realm of possibility in 2016. The Upshot model estimated that a polling misfire was about as likely as a baseball strikeout or a missed midrange field goal in football. It’s not pretty, but it happens and will happen again, and a team wouldn’t release a batter or a kicker because of a strikeout or a missed kick.

The reality is that confidence in polling is quite frankly nowhere near 100%, and is really more like 75 or 80% at most, even in a best case scenario.   Nate Silver famously gave Trump about a one in 3 chance of winning, and Trump did just that.

Of course Russian interference that fueled James Comey's political bombshells had a great effect on this "last-minute break" to Trump too, and of course the pollsters missed that.

I'm much less worried about pollsters than I am having free and fair elections in 2018 or 2020 with the demonstrably broken election system we have now, and Trump running that system.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The hits keep on coming from the law enforcement and intelligence communities on Trump's inner circle, and this week has been no different from the last several as now we discover that Trump's personal lawyer and legal adviser Michael Cohen is the latest name on the Russia investigation list.

Cohen confirmed to ABC News that House and Senate investigators have asked him “to provide information and testimony” about any contacts he had with people connected to the Russian government, but he said he has turned down the invitation.

“I declined the invitation to participate, as the request was poorly phrased, overly broad and not capable of being answered,” Cohen told ABC News in an email Tuesday.

After Cohen rejected the congressional requests for cooperation, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to grant its chairman, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, and ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, blanket authority to issue subpoenas as they deem necessary.

"To date, there has not been a single witness, document or piece of evidence linking me to this fake Russian conspiracy," Cohen added. "This is not surprising to me because there is none."

While much of the media focus in recent days has fallen on Russian contacts made by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, there are few people closer to the president than his longtime lawyer. Insiders consider Cohen to be Trump’s pit bull or consigliere for his role in threatening legal action against Trump critics, gaining notoriety for threatening and browbeating reporters investigating Trump’s background.

He was quoted in 2015 telling Daily Beast reporters, “I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know … So I’m warning you, tread very f---ing lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f---ing disgusting.”

In a 2016 appearance on CNN that went viral, the stone-faced attorney flashed anger when anchor Brianna Keiler said the Trump campaign was “down.”

“Says who?” he challenged. When she cited polls, he countered, “Which polls?” She replied, “All of them.” His final response in that exchange proved prescient: “You’re going to all be very surprised when he polls substantially higher than what you all are giving him credit for.”

After the 2016 campaign, Cohen left the Trump Organization to become the president’s personal attorney, a job he still holds. From that post, he has continued to weigh in on Trump’s behalf on Twitter and during occasional television appearances.

Cohen is Trump's legal hitman, wielding lawsuits like pistols as he charges in blazing to take out Trump's enemies.  He's pretty decent at it too, but there's no way Cohen doesn't know where all the Trump regime's bodies are buried.  Cracking him would definitely be key to the investigation.

Still it means that Robert Mueller's investigation, and that of the Senate at least are moving forward.

StupidiNews!

• In Afghanistan a massive blast near Kabul's embassy section has killed at least 80 and injured several hundred as a car bomb was detonated during morning rush hour traffic.
• Donald Trump deleted a tweet that read “Despite the constant negative press covfefe” this morning after several hours, in what appears to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.
• Russian warships in the Mediterranean fired several cruise missiles at Islamic State targets in Syria according to Moscow, which informed US and Syrian forces of the strike.
• New polling ahead of next week's UK general election indicates the Tories and PM Theresa May could very well come up short of a majority in parliament.
• Hacker group Shadow Brokers are back after April's destructive NSA zero-day exploit release, promising a new batch of stolen NSA tools to those who pay $21,000.

Last Call For The White Supremacist Employment Act

If you were to imagine the worst possible GOP politician reaction to the horrible event last week in Portland, Oregon where two people were killed on a transit train by a white supremacist for trying to defend two women of color, I don't think even I could possibly come up with "We need to hire white supremacist militia groups and deputize them in order to protect Republican lawmakers" if I was high as a kite and spiking a 104-degree fever at the same time.

But here we are in America.

Two days after a hate crime left two people dead on a Portland, Ore., train, the chairman of the Multnomah County Republican Party is considering using right-wing militias to protect members of the GOP when they are in “the public square.”

James Buchal told The Guardian that he was “sort of evolving to the point where I think that it is appropriate for Republicans to continue to go out there. And if they need to have a security force protecting them, that’s an appropriate thing too.” 

Although Buchal cited the cancellation of Avenue of the Roses Parade, which occurred after someone anonymous threatened “Trump supporters and 3 percent militia” who attended, it is impossible to consider Buchal’s rhetoric without the context of the recent violence in the city. Jeremy Christian, 35, who held white supremacist opinions, is accused of committing racially motivated murder in that city. The victims include Rick Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23. A third person Micah David-Cole Fletcher, 21, was injured in the altercation, which started when the trio tried to help women who were being targeted by hate speech. 

As Portland police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said, “These were folks just riding the train and unfortunately got caught up in this. He was talking about a lot of different things, not just specifically anti-Muslim. We don’t know if he’s got mental health issues. We don’t know if he’s under the influence of drugs or alcohol or all of the above.”

When asked if he was thinking of having Republicans arrange for private security instead of relying on municipal or state police, Buchal confirmed this before adding that “there are these people arising, like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters.” Buchal said it could be necessary to use them for protection “because there are now belligerent, unstable people who are convinced that Republicans are like Nazis.”

Long-time readers know I have talked about militia groups like the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters before, both groups are bad, bad news and have gained exponentially in membership since Obama was elected president.  I know they are nominally "Second Amendment advocacy groups" but they've been involved in some truly dangerous rhetoric and actions.

But to hire these guys as muscle to intimidate liberals?  This is literally Brownshirt stuff here, guys. This is no-holds-barred, actual fascist police state garbage, period.

And again, here we are in the Trump era.

Meanwhile Here In Bevinstan

It's okay to attack journalists now in the era where Trump and his cultists freely consider an adversarial press vermin to be extinguished, and we're now seeing the results of this coming from the highest levels of our government as terror is being unleashed against reporters right here in Kentucky.

Several windows were shattered at the main office of the Lexington Herald-Leader in downtown Lexington, amid suspected signs of small-caliber bullet damage to the building.

The Herald-Leader filed a report on the damage with Lexington Police, who were at the building investigating early Monday morning.

Exterior windows were damaged on the first-, second- and third-level banks of windows of the press room on the Midland Avenue side of the building. Three exterior windows were shattered, leaving broken glass on the sidewalk outside. Two windows on the upper level of the press room were damaged, but did not shatter. Those windows show small holes and cracks that appear consistent with small-caliber bullet damage.

Lexington Police on Monday confirmed that they are investigating the incident as criminal mischief, and that investigators believe the damage is consistent with small-caliber gunfire.

Based on a review of security camera footage, the windows were shattered Sunday morning between 9:45 a.m and 11 a.m. There would have been a small number of employees in the building at that time, but the press room is no longer in use. No employees were injured or near the area where the damage occurred.

There are two layers of windows in the press area along Midland Avenue. The windows that shattered were on the exterior layer. After an initial inspection, there were no signs of penetration of the interior layer of windows.

Publisher Rufus M. Friday said the Herald-Leader is taking immediate steps to shore up the damaged windows and to increase security along Midland Avenue, where there already are security cameras. “The safety and security of our employees is paramount,” he said.

“It’s concerning,” Friday said, especially given the level of rhetoric directed at journalists recently in the United States and in Kentucky.

Reporters in Kentucky have had a really hard time dealing with Republicans, from Rand Paul to Matt Bevin to Mitch McConnell, and things have gotten so ugly now that newspaper offices are getting shot up.

What happens when reporters start getting shot up too?  That's not far off here in Kentucky here in the Trump era. 

The End Of The Civil RIghts Era

The Trump regime is dedicating to ending the civil rights era in America and replacing it with institutionalized white supremacy wherever possible, and the latest efforts to do so may be the most successful and the most devious: the dismantling of anti-discrimination enforcement divisions of basically all executive branch agencies.

The Trump administration is planning to disband the Labor Department division that has policed discrimination among federal contractors for four decades, according to the White House’s newly proposed budget, part of wider efforts to rein in government programs that promote civil rights.

As outlined in Labor’s fiscal 2018 plan, the move would fold the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, now home to 600 employees, into another government agency in the name of cost-cutting.

The proposal to dismantle the compliance office comes at a time when the Trump administration is reducing the role of the federal government in fighting discrimination and protecting minorities by cutting budgets, dissolving programs and appointing officials unsympathetic to previous practices.

The new leadership at the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has proposed eliminating its environmental justice program, which addresses pollution that poses health threats specifically concentrated in minority communities. The program, in part, offers money and technical help to residents who are confronted with local hazards such as leaking oil tanks or emissions from chemical plants.

Under President Trump’s proposed budget, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights — which has investigated thousands of complaints of discrimination in school districts across the country and set new standards for how colleges should respond to allegations of sexual assault and harassment — would also see significant staffing cuts. Administration officials acknowledge in budget documents that the civil rights office will have to scale back the number of investigations it conducts and limit travel to school districts to carry out its work.

And the administration has reversed several steps taken under President Barack Obama to address LGBT concerns. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, has revoked a rule ensuring that transgender people can stay at sex-segregated shelters of their choice, and the Department of Health and Human Services has removed a question about sexual orientation from two surveys of elderly Americans about services offered or funded by the government.

The efforts to reduce the federal profile on civil rights reflects the consensus view within the Trump administration that Obama officials exceeded their authority in policing discrimination on the state and local level, sometimes pressuring targets of government scrutiny to adopt policies that were not warranted.

Administration officials made clear in the initial weeks of Trump’s presidency that they would break with the civil rights policies of his predecessor. Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a review of agreements to reform police departments, signaling his skepticism of efforts to curb civil rights abuses by law enforcement officers. His Justice Department, meantime, stopped challenging a controversial Texas voter identification law and joined with the Education Department in withdrawing federal guidance allowing transgender students to use school bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity.

While these decisions have been roundly criticized by liberal activists, administration officials said that civil rights remain a priority for the Trump White House.

“The Trump administration has an unwavering commitment to the civil rights of all Americans,” White House spokeswoman Kelly Love said in an emailed statement.

This is something Attorney General Jeff Sessions has wanted all his career, a federal government neutered on civil rights, without any personnel to deal with more than a handful of issues, while states decide what civil rights enforcement means because of course the feds don't have the resources to actually enforce anything.

It's the tried and true Republican formula: destroy the federal government's ability to do its job, then declare it a failure and zero out the budget for it.  The damage from this will be generational, but of course that's the point.

But hey, tax cuts for the "job creators".

StupidiNews!

• Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega is dead at age 83 after complications from brain surgery, the strongman spent almost 20 years in US prisons before being sent back to Panama.
• Australian officials estimate nearly 30 percent of the Great Barrier Reef coral died in 2016, with more damage from thermal bleaching in 2017 expected.
• Newly-elected South Korean President Moon Jae-in has ordered an investigation into the Defense Ministry after four US THAAD missile batteries were installed without his review.
• Golf legend Tiger Woods is blaming prescription medication for his DUI arrest in Florida over the weekend, Woods has not played golf on tour in more than four months.
• Two Florida men accused of online extortion face court today in which a judge will decide if forgetting the unlock code to you mobile phone is a valid legal defense.

Last Call For The Cuban (Crap) Sandwich

Trump must destroy every iota of Obama's legacy, and that must include the end of rapprochement with Havana.

President Donald Trump plans on reversing a set of policies softening relations with Cuba, according to a report from The Daily Caller.

According to the report, the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, an anti-embargo group, said the Trump administration was preparing to announce the changes to Obama-era policies in a June speech in Miami. The report cites two unnamed sources who say that a bipartisan trio of senators -- Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) -- pushed for the reversal.

Obama, who became the first U.S. president to visit Cuba in almost a century last year, put in motion a series of policies to thaw relations with the Communist island nation, which had been a strategic burden throughout the Cold War.

While Obama was able to soften regulation on some kinds of trade, business and travel, Congress has refused to lift the 57-year-old embargo.

The Trump administration had put the Cuba policy under review upon taking office.

The Daily Caller report surfaceed days after Trump met with Pope Francis, who facilitated the deal between Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro.

It's not just what the history books have to say about Obama here, but Pope Francis's as well.  Don't think Trump's aim isn't to somehow punish and tarnish the legacies of both men, both who have dared to defy Trump since he took office.

Trump's defining goal is to obliterate Obama from American history, one achievement at a time.  Cuba normalization will be no different.

The Puzzle Palace And The G-Men

Former NSA analyst John Schindler says that the order has come from agency chief Adm. Mike Rogers to unleash the full power of the agency and preserve anything and everything collected on Team Trump period.

In my last column, I broke the news that Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, reportedly explained to his workforce last week that he had declined to assist President Donald Trump in his efforts to undermine the FBI and its counterintelligence investigation of the White House. As Rogers is said to have explained to agency personnel, “There is no question that we have evidence of election involvement and questionable contacts with the Russians.”

On this basis, Admiral Rogers confirmed the existence of highly classified signals intelligence which establishes some sort of collusion between Team Trump and the Kremlin during the 2016 election campaign. However, now that the Justice Department has appointed Robert Mueller special counsel charged with running the Russia investigation, NSA is apparently pulling out all the stops to track down any additional evidence which might be relevant to the expanded inquiry into KremlinGate.

Specifically, last week NSA is believed to have sent out an unprecedented order to the Directorate of Operations, the agency’s largest unit. The DO, as insiders term it, manages all of NSA’s SIGINT assets worldwide, making it the most important spy operation on earth. The email sent to every person assigned to the DO came from the Office of General Counsel, the NSA’s in-house lawyers, and it was something seldom seen at the agency—a preservation order.

Such an order would have charged every DO official, from junior analysts to senior managers, with finding any references to individuals involved in KremlinGate, especially high-ranking Americans—and preserving those records for Federal investigators. This would include intercepted phone calls and any transcripts of them, emails, online chats, faxes—anything the agency might have picked up last year.

At the request of NSA officials, I will not name the specific individuals that DO personnel have been told to be on the lookout for in SIGINT intercepts, but one could fairly surmise that the list includes virtually all key members of Team Trump.

Take it as you will, I believe that Schindler is right on the preservation order.  The reason is why, and he helpfully gives a devil's advocate defense:

The DO is divided into offices which focus on a specific country or region (e.g. China, the Middle East) or on a defined problem set (e.g. counterterrorism, counterintelligence). Months ago, the DO’s Russia shop is said to have received a preservation order from the agency’s lawyers—no surprise, given what that office does. Now such an order has reportedly been passed to the whole DO, including offices which have nothing to do with Russia. This demonstrates the agency’s serious intent to provide investigators with any evidence which may shed additional light on KremlinGate.

That said, NSA may have another motive in issuing this DO-wide order. Such motive is the Intelligence Community’s venerable tradition of self-preservation, what spy-veterans term CYA. As Trump’s Russia problems have heated up, his fans and media allies have made increasingly serious accusations of malfeasance by NSA and other spy agencies under President Obama. Some of these wild charges have been ludicrous, merely lies created by Kremlin disinformation outlets, then parroted by right-wing media in America.

That media has lavished particular attention on the issue of SIGINT unmasking, meaning the process of how NSA responds to high-level requests to reveal the name of any American who appears in an intelligence report (normally those names are redacted; for an explanation of how this complex issue really works, see this). Although there’s no evidence of any systematic abuse of unmasking by President Obama, this hasn’t halted the increasingly shrill accusations. 

Which is odd because anyone who has followed Schindler's blog and Observer column would be able to say that he is no fan of President Obama whatsoever.  Yes, this could be Schindler going to bat to protect his former employer from criticism, after all Edward Snowden and more recently Harold Martin did catastrophic damage to the agency and its reputation.  The information Putin got to compromise us came from these guys, and they remain some of the largest failures in American intelligence history, and Schindler has blamed Obama for these events for years now.  Of course Schindler wants to redeem the Puzzle Palace.

Having said that, it does make sense that with a special counsel like Robert Mueller now on the case that he would enlist the NSA's help on this.  Maybe Schindler's finally buried the hatchet long enough to realize the real bad guy here is Trump...and Putin.  Ahh, but Trump's increasing paranoia is going to make things very rough for the agency, and he can still do a lot of damage to it on the way out.

President Donald Trump has been aggressively working the phones since returning this weekend from his foreign trip, talking to friends and outside lawyers as he obsesses over the deepening investigations into his aides and Russia.

Two White House officials said Trump and some aides including Steve Bannon are becoming increasingly convinced that they are victims of a conspiracy against Trump's presidency, as evidenced by the number of leaks flowing out of government — that the crusade by the so-called “deep state” is a legitimate threat, not just fodder for right wing defenders.

Still, Trump and his aides are starting to take the probes more seriously, seeking to establish a communications team dedicated to dealing with questions around the probe and beefing up his legal representation. And they've become more rattled by the idea that they don't know where the scandals are headed and who may be ensnared next.

“The more people talk to him about it, the more he obsesses about it,” said one outside adviser who is close to the president. The White House did not respond to requests for comment as to how Trump was spending his day after returning from the nine-day foreign trip the night before.

How long before he fires Rogers, I wonder.  He'd have legitimate cause to do so over Harold Martin.

We'll see.

Zee Germans Are Done

German Chancellor Angela Merkel made it very clear this weekend that the EU and the rest of the Western world will be moving forward without the United States any longer.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is urging European Union nations to stick together in the face of new uncertainty over the United States and other challenges.

Merkel said Sunday at a campaign event in Bavaria that "the times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days."

The comments follow President Donald Trump saying he needed more time to decide if the U.S. would continue backing a key climate accord.

Trump's stance had led Merkel to describe the just-ended G-7 talks on climate change as "unsatisfactory."

The dpa news agency reports that in her campaign remarks, the German leader emphasized the need for friendly relations with the U.S., Britain and Russia, but added: "We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands."

"Well good, let them deal with their own Muslim mess!" will be the opinion of the deplorables.  Frankly, it's a good idea.  Our government is completely compromised by the Russians. We're no longer the leader of the free world, we're a client state of Moscow.  

Where China, Russia, and Germany go from here to determine the future of the planet is unknown, but I do know that those decisions will increasingly be made without us, and it will take generations for us to show the world that we can be trusted again, if ever.