Last Call For There Is No Dana, Only Fool

The Trump-Russia story is bad enough, but we need to take a look at other compromised Republicans in DC these days, starting with California GOP Congressman (and long-time friend of Russia) Dana Rohrabacher.  Turns out Dana hasn't just been taking lobbyist cash from the folks Don Trump Jr. likes to hang out with in meetings, he also takes policy direction...and apparently direct orders from the Kremlin to boot. Nico Hines at the Daily Beast:

Members of the team of Russians who secured a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner also attempted to stage a show trial of anti-Putin campaigner Bill Browder on Capitol Hill. 

The trial, which would have come in the form of a congressional hearing, was scheduled for mid-June 2016 by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a long-standing Russia ally who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe. During the hearing, Rohrabacher had planned to confront Browder with a feature-length pro-Kremlin propaganda movie that viciously attacks him—as well as at least two witnesses linked to the Russian authorities, including lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. 

Ultimately, the hearing was canceled when senior Republicans intervened and agreed to allow a hearing on Russia at the full committee level with a Moscow-sympathetic witness, according to multiple congressional aides. 

An email reviewed by The Daily Beast shows that before that June 14 hearing, Rohrabacher’s staff received pro-Kremlin briefings against Browder, once Russia’s biggest foreign investor, and his tax attorney Sergei Magnitsky from a lawyer who was working with Veselnitskaya. 

The Browder in this case is William Browder, the US businessman and portfolio manager who was represented by Sergei Magnitsky before Magnitsky's unseemly death.  Rohrbacher by the way freely admitted to meeting with this Russian cast of characters back in May.

Although House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) had prohibited Rohrabacher from showing the Russian propaganda film in Congress, Rohrabacher’s Capitol Hill office still actively promoted a screening of the movie that was held at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., on June 13, 2016. Veselnitskaya was one of those handling the movie’s worldwide promotion. 

Invitations to attend the movie screening were sent from the subcommittee office by Catharine O’Neill, a Republican intern on Rohrabacher’s committee. Her email promised that the movie would convince viewers that Magnitsky, who was murdered in a Russian prison cell, was no hero.

The invite, reviewed by The Daily Beast, claimed that the film “explodes the common view that Mr. Magnitsky was a whistleblower” and lavishes praise on the “rebel director” Andrei Nekrasov. 

“That invitation was not from our office. O’Neill was an unpaid intern on the committee staff. Paul denies asking her to send the invitations,” said Ken Grubbs, Rohrabacher’s press secretary, referring to the congressman’s staff director, Paul Behrends. 

O’Neill went on to secure a job on the Trump transition team and then in the State Department’s Office of the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights. She did not return a call for comment. 

Rohrabacher’s office was given the film by the Prosecutor General’s office in Moscow, which is run by Yuri Chaika, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin who is accused of widespread corruption, and Viktor Grin, the deputy general prosecutor who has been sanctioned by the United States as part of the Magnitsky Act. 

That same Prosecutor General’s office also was listed as being behind the “very high level and sensitive information” that was offered to Donald Trump Jr. in an email prior to his now infamous meeting with Russian officials at Trump Tower on June 9—just days before the congressional hearing. Veselnitskaya attended that meeting with Trump Jr. She also happens to have worked as a prosecutor in the Moscow region and is a close personal friend of Chaika. 

The Daily Beast reviewed a copy of a document that was passed to Rohrabacher in Moscow in April 2016. The document, marked “confidential,” was given to Rohrabacher and Behrends. It lays out an alternate reality in which the U.S.—and the rest of the world—has been duped by a fake $230 million scandal that resulted in sanctions being imposed on 44 Russians linked to murder, corruption, or cover-ups.

So cooler heads prevailed, but Rohrabacher was literally going to use a Russia popaganda film as evidence in a House Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Russian sanctions, and this was all just around the time that we start seeing the Russians mess with voter registration systems, and start openly contacting the Trump people.

And yes, it's once again Valerie Veselnitskaya and friends.  Again.

Mueller has to be looking at Rohrabacher too.  You can make the case that Trump may not be fully involved (but knew what was going on) on the Russia side, but there's zero doubt in my mind that Dana Rohrabacher is outright taking orders from a foreign government.  Best case he's a fanatic and patsy, but worst case his actions meet the very definition, historical, literal, and legal, of treason.

We'll see how deep this krolichya nora goes.

Flaking Out In Arizona

One of the few GOP Senators in 2018 that may be vulnerable, Sen. Jeff Flake is now facing a massive primary challenge funded by...Donald Trump.

President Donald Trump and White House officials have had a series of conversations with prospective Republican candidates about challenging Arizona GOP Sen. Jeff Flake in the 2018 primary. 

Kelli Ward, who has already launched her campaign, and Robert Graham, a former state GOP chair and Trump adviser who is considering it, both told CNN on Monday they have had multiple conversations with White House officials about opposing Flake in the Senate primary. 

Graham said the talks began shortly after the 2016 presidential campaign concluded, and both Graham and Ward said further conversations took place as recently as two weeks ago.

Another potential candidate -- state treasurer Jeff DeWit -- has had multiple conversations with Trump, sources familiar with those talks said. DeWit is close with Graham, making it unlikely both would run. 

If you're surprised in the least by Trump coming to slice Flake's throat open, you haven't been paying attention to the Revengeaholic-In-Chief .

Trump was furious at Flake last fall when the Arizona senator called on Trump to withdraw from the presidential race after the emergence of the "Access Hollywood" tape. 

He told a small group of Arizona Republicans last fall -- including Graham -- that he would spend $10 million on defeating Flake in the 2018 Senate primary, a source familiar with the conversation confirmed. That conversation and the White House's further involvement in recruiting a primary challenger were first reported Monday by Politico's Alex Isenstadt. 

"They used Jeff Flake in Hillary Clinton's ads, for heaven's sakes. It was like pouring salt on the wounds," Graham told CNN.

Flake made Trump look bad.  Now Trump will most likely end Flake's political career.  The message is clear: if there are any Republicans in the Senate even considering turning on Trump, they're dead and buried where they stand.

By the way, one of the Democrats running against Flake in 2018 is Deedra Abboud, a Muslim attorney who lives in Phoenix. If Trump's blackballing doesn't end Flake's career, then Flake refusing to attack Abboud for being Muslim should finish him off nicely.

I have no sympathy for Flake because I know whoever replaces him on the GOP side will be worse.

None whatsoever.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Donald Trump's major issue is that in the end, he can't stop telling lies of omission. When he gets caught, he claims it's no big deal, tweeting furiously at the "fake news" press.  The problem is that Trump always gets caught anyway, and that the lies always, always seem to involve Russia.

Hours into a dinner with world leaders who had gathered for the Group of 20 summit meeting, President Trump left his chair at the sprawling banquet table and headed to where President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was seated.

The two presidents had met earlier in the day for the first time and, as the White House put it, had developed a rapport even as they talked about Russia’s interference in the United States’ 2016 elections.

The July 7 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, was the single most scrutinized of the Trump presidency. But it turned out there was another encounter: a one-on-one discussion over dinner that lasted as long as an hour and relied solely on a Kremlin-provided interpreter.

No presidential relationship has been more dissected than the one between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, a dynamic only heightened by the swirl of investigations into whether Mr. Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to sway the election in his favor. Nevertheless, the meeting was confirmed by the White House only on Tuesday, after reports surfaced that some of the guests had been surprised that it occurred.

The dinner discussion caught the attention of other leaders around the table, some of whom later remarked privately on the odd spectacle of an American president seeming to single out the Russian leader for special attention at a summit meeting that included some of the United States’ staunchest, oldest allies.

A White House official said there was nothing unusual about it. And in two tweets late Tuesday, Mr. Trump derided news reports about it as “sick.” He said the dinner was not a secret, since all of the world leaders at the summit meeting and their spouses had been invited by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. “Press knew!” he tweeted.

“Even a dinner arranged for top 20 leaders in Germany is made to look sinister!” Mr. Trump added.

Except of course an hour-long, off -the-record, omitted conversation with no official record from the White House, with the Russian president that Trump is already accused of being far too friendly with, is exactly the kind of  unforced error that the White House keeps committing time and time again.

You know, like the country finding out there was an eighth person at Don Jr.'s little Russian Clinton dirt festival in June of 2016., and of course that person was a Russian involved in international money laundering.

A U.S.-based employee of a Russian real estate company took part in a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr., bringing to eight the number of known participants at the session that has emerged as a key focus of the investigation of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians.

Ike Kaveladze attended the meeting as a representative of Aras and Emin Agalarov, the father-and-son Russian developers who hosted the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013, according to Scott Balber, an attorney for the Agalarovs who said he also represents Kaveladze.

Balber said Tuesday that he had received a phone call over the weekend from a representative of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III asking whether Kaveladze would agree to be interviewed. Balber said his client would cooperate.

The request is the first public indication that Mueller’s team is investigating the meeting.

The presence of Kaveladze at the Trump Tower meeting introduces a new and intriguing figure into the increasingly complex Trump-Russia drama. A native of the Soviet republic of Georgia who came to the United States in 1991, Kaveladze was the subject nearly two decades ago of a congressional inquiry into Russian money laundering in U.S. banks, although he was never charged with a crime and Balber said there was never any sign of wrongdoing by Kaveladze.

But at least we now know that Don The Even Lesser's meeting is squarely on Robert Mueller's radar.

The longer this goes, the more we find out.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump has called a meeting with all 52 GOP senators at the White House today to discuss the collapse of the party's health care legislation in the Senate.
• The White House is expected to name former Utah Governor, US Ambassador to China and 2012 GOP presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman as US Ambassador to Russia.
• A new public campaign is pressuring California and New York to divest state employee pension fund money from a Trump-related investment fund.
• A new report finds total employer contributions to worker retirement funds have fallen sharply over the last 15 years despite an increase in matching 401(k) contribution levels.
• German auto giant Daimler has announced a voluntary EU recall of 3 million Mercedes-Benz diesel vehicles to improve software for emissions control.

Day Of The Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver

Meanwhile, while all the attention is on the Senate GOP's Trumpcare tire fire, Paul Ryan and the House GOP are showing their budget proposal cards and are planning trillions in austerity cuts over the next ten years and a plan to force it through the Senate on just 50 votes.

The House Budget Committee blueprint, which is set for a Thursday committee vote, sets out special procedures that could ultimately allow Republicans to pass legislation over the objections of Senate Democrats who can normally block bills they oppose. GOP leaders in the House, as well as top Trump administration officials, hope to use those procedures — known as reconciliation — to pass a tax overhaul later this year. 

The instructions in the draft budget, however, go well beyond tax policy and set the stage for a potential $203 billion rollback of financial industry regulations, federal employee benefits, welfare spending and more. Those are policy areas where Republicans have, in many cases, already passed legislation in the House but have seen Democrats block action in the Senate.

House Budget Committee Chairman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) said the spending proposal is “not just a vision for our country, but a plan for action.” 

“In past years, our proposals had little chance of becoming a reality because we faced a Democratic White House,” she said in a statement Tuesday. “But now with a Republican Congress and a Republican administration, now is the time to put forward a governing document with real solutions to address our biggest challenges.” 

In other words, the House still plans to ram this through on reconciliation.

Like the spending blueprint released this year by President Trump, the House plan envisions major cuts to federal spending over the coming decade, bringing the budget into balance by relying on accelerated economic growth to boost revenue. Under the House plan, defense spending would steadily increase over 10 years while nondefense discretionary spending would decline to $424 billion — 23 percent below the $554 billion the federal government is spending in that category this year. 

Unlike Trump’s budget, the House proposal cuts into Medicare and Social Security — entitlement programs that the president has pledged to preserve. The House plan also makes a less-rosy economic growth assumption of 2.6 percent versus the 3 percent eyed by the Trump administration. Both, however, exceed the 1.9 percent figure used by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in its most recent economic estimates.
The House blueprint won a strong endorsement from White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, who served on the House Budget Committee before joining the Trump administration.

“It is a bold effort that follows the leadership of President Trump in Making America Great Again,” he said in a statement. “Critically, this budget lays a pathway for Congress to pass, and President Trump to sign pro-growth tax reform into law.”

So yeah, total cuts across the board over ten years will easily be in the trillions of dollars to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other social programs.  They expect this to sail through the House and Senate and for Trump to sign it.

Of course, they expected the same thing for Trumpcare.

Oops.

A Problem Of Compound Interest

Meanwhile our good friends the Russians really are expecting their cute little spy HQ buildings back from when mean ol' Obama threw a bunch of Russian agents out of the country last December, and they're rapidly running out of patience with the current American regime they bought and paid for.

Russia has described any possible conditions set by Washington to return two of the country's diplomatic compounds in the US that were closed down late last year as "unacceptable." 

"We have repeatedly said that we think any conditions are unacceptable. We think that the diplomatic property must be returned without any conditions and talks," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN Monday. 

"What is happening is -- de facto and de jure -- a violation of international law," he said. "Contacts are happening between the foreign policy departments. Kremlin, as it is, does not really participate but as you know this issue was raised by President [Vladimir] Putin during his G20 meeting with President Trump in a quite straightforward manner." 

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment. 

Last December, then-President Barack Obama imposed a range of sanctions against the Russian government for its alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election, including the closure of two Russian compounds located in New York State and Maryland. 

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov is expected to meet with US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon in Washington later Monday to discuss the diplomatic compounds.

The Senate overwhelmingly voted to stop Trump from giving these compounds back as part of a package of new sanctions against Moscow last month. The Russians have gone from miffed to annoyed to outright angry at this point, and expect the man they installed in power to follow through on this.

Meanwhile the House GOP is dodging the Russian Senate bill and instead wants to tie Russian sanctions to new measures against North Korea.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced Friday that the House is looking to add North Korea provisions to a Russia and Iran sanctions bill that is stuck in a procedural morass.

The House passed a standalone North Korea sanctions bill in May on a 419 — 1 vote, but the Senate has yet to take up the measure. Adding North Korea to the Russia and Iran sanctions measure would ensure speedier Senate consideration.

“I believe Iran, the work Russia has done and what North Korea has done, it would be a very strong statement for all of America to get that sanction bill completed and done and to the president’s desk,” McCarthy said in floor remarks Friday. 

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce told reporters earlier Friday that he was working on a bipartisan sanctions measure that could see floor action as soon as next week. He did not specify the contents.

So who knows where this will all end up in the end.  The House GOP almost certainly wants some pretty tough measures against North Korea if they are going to go along with the Senate on Russia.

We'll see.

Reports Of Trumpcare's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Yesterday morning Trumpcare stood at two GOP senators against it, Maine's Susan Collins, who though Trumpcare was too cruel, and Kentucky's Rand Paul, who thought Trumpcare wasn't cruel enough. Three Republicans against it would mean Mitch McConnell wouldn't have the votes to pass it. 

That brings us to last night, when Nevada's Dean Heller, stuck in days of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" hell and facing re-election in 2018, had his legs cut out from under him by two of Rand Paul's crew, Utah's Mike Lee and Kansas's Jerry Moran, both coming out against the Senate bill for not killing enough poor people. Mitch is now going with plan C: calling out Rand Paul's crew on the "not cruel enough" part by planning a vote to defund Obamacare immediately and then repeal the ACA in two years.

President Donald Trump's top legislative priority was dealt a potentially fatal blow Monday night as two more Republican senators announced their opposition to the party's health care overhaul. 

Trump quickly called on Republicans to simply repeal Obamacare and begin work on a new health care plan, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he would try to do so.

“Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful," McConnell said. 

The Kentucky Republican said he planned to hold a vote in the coming days to take up the House-passed bill to replace the 2010 health law and then call up an amendment to eliminate major parts of Obamacare, such as the Medicaid expansion, insurance subsidies and fines for the employer and individual mandates. 

Republicans passed a similar bill to effectively repeal Obamacare in 2015 under reconciliation — the fast-track budget procedure the GOP is using to thwart a Democratic filibuster — but it was vetoed by President Barack Obama. 

McConnell added that the repeal-only bill is "what a majority of the Senate has already supported in 2015," but GOP lawmakers have voiced severe doubts that such a plan can win the 50 votes necessary this year given the uncertainty it would throw onto insurance markets. The 2015 vote was viewed as mostly symbolic at the time given Obama’s certain veto. 

But after his own caucus tanked McConnell's attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare simultaneously and at the prodding of the president, the GOP leader is going to force his caucus to go on the record on health care. If the Senate does vote to open debate on the House bill, which is not guaranteed, the repeal-only bill would be the first amendment. But senators would still be able to offer unlimited amendments to the bill, leading the GOP down an uncertain road once the process began. 

"Republicans should just 'REPEAL' failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate. Dems will join in!" Trump tweeted shortly before McConnell's statement came out.

That House 2015 bill was literally the worst case scenario, it would kick 32 million people off health care coverage and double premiums by 2026.  This is what Mitch is daring Rand Paul to block, as Trump will more than happily sign it.  The bill was window dressing when Obama was around to veto it.  It was never supposed to become law, but now Mitch is forcing his own caucus to eat this flaming poop sandwich and, you know, destroy the individual health insurance market in the process.

Rand Paul and his faction wanted something more cruel?  They got it.  And unless we fight back hard now, we're the ones who are going to "get it".

Got it?

Good.

Call your Senators.

StupidiNews!

• South Korea's government is proposing new military talks with North Korea after Pyongyang's successful ICBM test launch earlier this month.
• A new WHO/UNICEF health study finds that 1 in 10 infants around the world received no vaccinations at all in 2016.
• Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is asking the country's lawmakers to keep his state of martial law through 2017 in order to help defeat ISIS-inspired rebels on Mindanao.
• A new startup in NYC provides grades for rental properties across the city based on hard-to-find but public information.
• The 9th Circuit has upheld a lower court ruling allowing the FBI to block companies from publicly disclosing that a user's private data is under demand by a National Security Letter.

Last Call For The True Price Of Trumpcare

Trump Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price went on ABC's This Week to defend Trumpcare, and tried to play it off as business as usual.  Price of course forgot that business before the Affordable Care Act meant insurance companies could regularly deny people insurance coverage based on pre-existing conditions and could cut off care due to yearly and lifetime caps.  

Even insurance companies flat out said last week that under revised Trumpcare legislation that they would have no choice but to seek significant financial help from the government to keep offering policies, and that millions of policies would be disrupted.

Price's response: let's go back to 2008 when health insurance sucked.

During an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Price was asked to respond to a blistering criticism of the Senate Republicans’ health care proposal by two major groups representing the U.S. health insurance industry. In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) earlier this week, the groups called the latest version of the bill “simply unworkable in any form” and warned that it would cause “widespread terminations of coverage” to people with serious medical problems.

“It’s really perplexing, especially from the insurance companies, because all they have to do is dust off how they did business before Obamacare,” Price said, referring to an amendment proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would allow insurers to resume sales of policies that leave out key benefits, such as prescription drugs or mental health treatment.

“A single risk pool, which is what they’re objecting to, is exactly the kind of process that was ― that has been utilized for decades to care for individuals,” he added.

America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association of America, the two groups who wrote the letter, oppose the latest draft of the legislation. They say it would allow insurance companies to discriminate among customers based on medical status ― essentially causing insurance premiums for people with pre-existing conditions to skyrocket.

In discussing their health care plan, Republicans do not usually speak as candidly as Price about returning the nation’s health care system to its pre-Obamacare period, a period marked by egregious insurance company abuses. Protections for pre-existing conditions remain highly popular around the country, and GOP lawmakers are loath to admit their policies would weaken them.

Prior to Obamacare, 79 million — more than one in four Americans — either lacked health insurance or were underinsured. The poor, especially, lacked adequate coverage.

In his appearance on “This Week,” Price countered by arguing that the Trump administration would be taking further administrative actions on health care and that the Senate health care bill is “not the entire plan.”

Price isn't wrong about that last part: Trumpcare would give him phenomenal power over who gets health coverage in America. The bill would mean that Price would get the final decision about which states get Medicaid money and how much under the GOP's block grant scheme, and the decision would be his and his alone.

Remember "death panels"?  Tom Price would be a one man show.

Meanwhile, Trumpcare is going to be so awful that the White House is already attacking the CBO score of the revised Senate GOP bill before it's even out.

Keep calling your senators.

Your 2018 Math Check

I feel very good about the Democrats' chances in 2018 in the House of kicking Paul Ryan to the curb. The latest Cook Political Report check-in on the House finds alarm bells ringing for the GOP and it's still 16 months out.

This is a tricky point in the election cycle to begin making predictions. On one hand, the danger signs are everywhere for the GOP: President Trump's approval is mired in the high 30s, and support for the AHCA's legislation is stuck in the high teens, and Democrats have been significantly over-performing—despite falling short—in a broad array of special elections. They also lead most national generic ballot tests by high single digits.

Race by race, the data isn't much better for Republicans. Multiple public and private polls now show House Republican incumbents who won by wide margins last fall tied with or trailing real and hypothetical opponents. For example, GOP Rep. Martha McSally (AZ-02) cruised by 14 points last fall. After voting for the AHCA, she's running even in two surveys against former Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, whose impending bid is the worst-kept secret in Tucson.

Taken as a whole, the evidence would seem to point to a wave election that would justify moving a slew of races into the Toss Up column and threaten GOP control of the House.

Trumpcare is killing them now.  Whether or not that will still be the case in November of next year, we don't yet know.  The Senate however is a different story, as the difficulties of the Dems winning the three seats they need are pretty manifest (enough that even James Carville can see it.)

Democratic operative James Carville is expressing doubt that his party will take back the Senate in 2018, saying Saturday that it would be “very, very difficult," to do so.
“I think right now most Democrats are trying to focus on the 2018 elections and trying to recruit people and keep incumbents, and you know I would say we have a pretty good chance of taking the House back. The Senate is very, very difficult,” Carville told John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York. 

“The problem in the Senate is we have a large number of seats we have to hold in states that Donald Trump carried. Indiana, Missouri, you know, places like that we have to hold seats,” he continued.

“The only places where we have an opportunity for pick up are, you know, Nevada is pretty good. After that Arizona is less good, then you’re down to Texas and Alabama, and for Democrats to win the Senate back, they have to pick up three seats,” Carville said.

Carville is of course talking about Nevada GOP Sen. Dean Heller and Arizona GOP Sen. Jeff Flake, who are both vulnerable, but after that the field turns to flipping either Ted Cruz in Texas or Luther Strange in Alabama, two races that the GOP are probably going to win.

On top of that, as I've said before, the Dems have to defend in ten Trump state races.   That's looking more and more likely now, but the notion of picking off Cruz or Strange is still a massive long-shot. Absolutely everything would have to go the Dems' way next November.  It's not impossible, but I would gladly take a successful defense of all Senate Democrats in 2018 plus flipping Heller's seat and call it spectacular.

It's possible that it completely collapses for the GOP in 2018, the way Trump's going.  We'll see.

Bibi Breaks Ranks With Donny

After the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany two weeks ago, Donald Trump announced that his major diplomatic win was a cease fire agreement in southern Syria with his new buddy Vladimir Putin.  The problem with that is if there's any US ally that isn't going to accept a Syria deal that keeps the Assad regime in Damascus it's Israel, and PM Benjamin Netanyahu is now openly blasting the deal. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters after his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday that Israel opposes the cease-fire agreement in southern Syria that the United States and Russia reached because it perpetuates the Iranian presence in the country. 

The prime minister noted that in his meeting with Macron, he made it clear to the French president that Israel was totally opposed to the cease-fire plan. 

A senior Israeli official who asked not to be named due to the diplomatic sensitivity of the matter said Israel is aware of Iranian intensions to substantially expand its presence in Syria. Iran is not only interested in sending advisers to Syria, the official said, but also in dispatching extensive military forces including the establishment of an airbase for Iranian aircraft and a naval base. 

"This already changes the picture in the region from what it has been up to now," the senior official said. 

Netanyahu discussed the cease-fire deal with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by phone Sunday night.

By openly voicing his opposition to one of the most significant moves the United States and Russia have made in Syria in recent months, Netanyahu made public a major disagreement between Israel and the two great powers that had until now been kept under wraps and expressed only through quiet diplomatic channels. 

U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed on the cease-fire on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg last week. In a tweet published shortly after the truce came into effect last week, Trump tweeted: "We negotiated a ceasefire in parts of Syria which will save lives. Now it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!"  

The U.S.-Russian deal included establishing de-escalation zones, otherwise known as safe zones, along Syria’s borders with both Jordan and Israel. Over the past month, Israel had held talks on this agreement with senior American officials, including Brett McGurk, America’s special envoy for the battle against ISIS, and Michael Ratney, the special envoy for Syria, both of whom visited Israel several times. 

During these talks, Israel presented a list of demands and voiced several reservations about the emerging agreement. Inter alia, Israel said that the de-escalation zones must keep Iran, Hezbollah and other Shi’ite militias away from the Israeli and Jordanian borders and must not enable Iran to consolidate its presence in Syria. Israel also told the Americans it objected to having Russian troops policing the cease-fire in the safe zones near its border.

Of course Bibi is pissed.  Here he was finally getting what he wanted with a GOP president, rather than Obama, and Trump is screwing him over worse than Obama ever dared to dream of doing.  Trump giving into Russia and Assad on Syria is not exactly what Israel had in mind when Netanyahu and his party were celebrating Clinton's loss.  They thought they were going to get the keys to the kingdom, but Netanyahu's demands have been completely sidelined in favor of Moscow and Riyadh.

Like most of our allies, Israel is finding out that America first under Trump really means Russia first, and it's coming at the expense of our other long-time allies.

I'm betting they wish they had Hillary Clinton to deal with about right now.

StupidiNews!

• Arizona officials say nine are dead, including six children, as flash flood waters swept through a swimming area along the East Verde River north of Phoenix on Saturday.
• Iran has sentenced a Princeton University doctoral history candidate to ten years in prison on espionage charges, the US State Department says it is aware of the case.
• Iraqi Kurdish security services says ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is alive and near the Syrian city of Raqqa, al-Baghdadi was reported killed last week in a US coalition airstrike.
• The Congressional Budget Office's report on the latest revisions to the Senate GOP Trumpcare bill are expected this week as GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hunts for votes.
• The BBC has announced that Jodie Whittaker will be the first female actor to play Doctor Who as she takes on the role of the 13th Doctor starting with this year's Christmas Special.

Last Call For Qatar In The Act

Time to check in with America's 'allies' in the Middle East, and it turns out the increasingly ugly fight between Qatar and Saudi Arabia may have been taken to a flashpoint by the UAE.

The United Arab Emirates orchestrated the hacking of Qatari government news and social media sites in order to post incendiary false quotes attributed to Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani, in late May that sparked the ongoing upheaval between Qatar and its neighbors, according to U.S. intelligence officials. 

Officials became aware last week that newly analyzed information gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed that on May 23, senior members of the UAE government discussed the plan and its implementation. The officials said it remains unclear whether the UAE carried out the hacks itself or contracted to have them done. The false reports said that the emir, among other things, had called Iran an “Islamic power” and praised Hamas. 

The hacks and posting took place on May 24, shortly after President Trump completed a lengthy counterterrorism meeting with Persian Gulf leaders in neighboring Saudi Arabia and declared them unified. 

Citing the emir’s reported comments, the Saudis, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt immediately banned all Qatari media. They then broke relations with Qatar and declared a trade and diplomatic boycott, sending the region into a political and diplomatic tailspin that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has warned could undermine U.S. counterterrorism efforts against the Islamic State.

So the question is what did Trump say in that meeting in Saudi Arabia that gave the UAE the green light for all of Team Riyadh to leave Doha out to dry?  The UAE is of course denying the hell out of the move, but then again it's not like there isn't a reason to believe Trump does things like have other countries hack things to his benefit these days, right?

The revelations come as emails purportedly hacked from Otaiba’s private account have circulated to journalists over the past several months. That hack has been claimed by an apparently pro- Qatari organization calling itself GlobalLeaks. Many of the emails highlight the UAE’s determination over the years to rally Washington thinkers and policymakers to its side on the issues at the center of its dispute with Qatar. 

All of the Persian Gulf nations are members of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State. More than 10,000 U.S. troops are based at Qatar’s al-Udeid Air Base, the U.S. Central Command’s regional headquarters, and Bahrain is the home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. All are purchasers of U.S. defense equipment and tied to U.S. foreign policy priorities in numerous ways. 

The conflict has also exposed sharp differences between Trump — who has clearly taken the Saudi and UAE side in a series of tweets and statements — and Tillerson, who has urged compromise and spent most of last week in shuttle diplomacy among the regional capitals that has been unsuccessful so far.

“We don’t expect any near-term resolution,” Tillerson aide R.C. Hammond said Saturday. He said the secretary had left behind proposals with the “Saudi bloc” and with Qatar including “a common set of principles that all countries can agree to so that we start from . . . a common place.”

Now, if you wanted to split the US coalition with both the Sunni and Shi'a Gulf states and leave a gigantic mess to take advantage of, having the Qatari emir's real thoughts on his Saudi 'friends' leaked all over the media is definitely the way to go.  The US position, thanks to the worst diplomats ever, is now that America clearly favors the Sunni side of the equation.

I'll give you three guesses as to which large country north of China is more than happy to exploit this rift here, and the first four don't count.

Donny's Crash And Burn

July has been the worst month for the Trump regime yet, and new historic lows for Trump's approval ratings at the six month mark means the Russia mess is definitely catching up to him.  As usual, the largest drop is among Trump's own supporters, who were willing to overlook a multitude of sins, but maybe not so much taking away their health insurance and you know, treason.

Americans give President Donald Trump the lowest six-month approval rating of any president in polls dating back 70 years, punctuated by questions about his competence on the world stage, his effectiveness, the GOP health care plan and Russia’s role in the 2016 election.

Just 36 percent of Americans polled in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll approve of Trump’s job performance, down 6 points from his 100-day mark, itself a low. The previous president closest to this level at or near six months was Gerald Ford, at 39 percent, in February 1975.

Sixty-three percent in this poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, say it was inappropriate for Trump’s son, son-in-law and campaign manager to have met with a Russian lawyer during the campaign. Six in 10 also think Russia tried to influence the campaign, and among those who say so, 67 percent think Trump aides helped, similar to results in April.

Yet the Russia controversy is just one on the list of Trump’s troubles. Just 38 percent say he’s making significant progress toward his goals; 55 percent think not. With no apparent help from the G-20 summit, two-thirds don’t trust him to negotiate with other world leaders -- or with Russian President Vladimir Putin specifically -- on America’s behalf. And about half say the country’s world leadership has grown weaker under Trump; just 27 percent say it’s gotten stronger.

Only Bill Clinton, who at this point in 1993 was facing the fallout from the crises of the first WTC bombing in February and the Waco Branch Davidian siege, coupled with his own "unpopular" health care ideas, was anywhere really close to where Trump is today.  Gerald Ford, who America turned to after Nixon and Agnew resigned, was similarly hamstrung.  One went on to two terms, one barely lasted 2 years.

But Trump has all the hallmarks of descending into an untenable position.  He'll either take the rest of the GOP with him...or the rest of the entire country.

Sunday Long Read: Life In Cancer Alley

When you think of American states that are environmental disasters, you might bring up Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island, Ohio's burning rivers, Nevada's Yucca Mountain, or West Virginia's mountain strip mines, but the worst state for toxic environmental deaths is far and away Louisiana, home to Cancer Alley, and unlike those other states, there's basically zero effort to clean up the bayou and its petrochemical and refinery industries.

If you’re visiting New Orleans and want to see something truly amazing, take your beer or daiquiri to-go and walk a few blocks past the Superdome—you’ll find a school being constructed on an old waste dump.

“All the toxins from the landfill are still there,” says toxicologist Wilma Subra. These toxins include lead, mercury, and arsenic, exposure to which can lead to reproductive damage, and skin and lung cancer. Even more astonishing, Subra says hundreds of schools across Louisiana have been built on waste dumps. Why? Dumps represent cheap land often already owned by a cash-strapped town or city, plus serve as rare high ground in a flood-prone state. And this is just the beginning of Louisiana’s nightmare.

The risk of cancer in Reserve, a community founded by freed slaves, is 800 times the national average, making the community, by one EPA metric, the most carcinogenic census tract in America—the cause is a DuPont/Denka chemical plant adjacent to the town that annually spews 250,000 pounds of the likely carcinogen chloroprene into the air. If you think the situation in Flint is bad, there are approximately 400 public water systems in Louisiana with lead or other hazardous substances leaching into the drinking water. Meanwhile, hundreds of petrochemical plants peppered across the state’s lush swampy interior freely emit carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and neurotoxins into the air and water, as well as inject them deep into the earth.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that Louisiana is ranked, according to different surveys, 47th in environmental quality, third in poverty, and 49th in education. Are you still gushing about your latest trip to New Orleans for Jazz Fest Presented by Shell, or French Quarter Festival presented by Chevron? “New Orleans is the best,” one visitor recently wrote to me, “you are so smart to live there!” But how smart is it to allow children to attend school built on toxin-laced waste? How smart is it to allow a community’s cancer rates to shoot off the charts? Louisiana is rich in culture, spirit, and faith, yet what type of state knowingly poisons its own people? What type of country stands by and allows it to happen?

While it is fashionable to critique President Trump for his scientific ignorance, science was misdirected long before Trump laid hands on it. It is time to open our eyes and see what is really going on in this world, to critique our society’s dinosaur methods, then step back and imagine what a new path forward might look like. It is with this aim that I begin a science column for Longreads. In my first story I’ll tour us through a land America should have never allowed to materialize—it’s what I’m calling the Louisiana Environmental Apocalypse Road Trip. As the Trump administration chucks environmental science out the window, evaporates industry regulations, and cripples agencies charged with protecting the environment, this tale is relevant for all Americans, because the poisoning happening in Louisiana could happen in your state too—in fact, it is probably already happening.

But for now sit back, enjoy a signature New Orleans cocktail from the comfort of your couch or chair, and get ready to keep reminding yourself: Yes, this is occurring in 2017 in the United States of America.

Here's a heart-stopper: as awful as things are in places like Reserve and other rural parish towns where the entire economy is run on making deadly chemicals out of ground sludge, under the Trump regime it's only going to get exponentially worse as the GOP's austerity budget will hit these places first, and hit them the hardest.