Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

America's status as global pariah under the Trump regime worsens as the United States continues to bail on UN agreements.

The United States has walked away from a United Nations effort to ease the global migration and refugee crisis, with the Trump administration saying it was no longer compatible with U.S. principles or priorities. 

In a statement, the U.S. Mission said the U.N.'s New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants — recognized by the United States last year under the Obama administration — "contains numerous provisions that are inconsistent with U.S. immigration and refugee policies." 

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said President Donald Trump made the decision after noting that "America is proud of our immigrant heritage and our long-standing moral leadership in providing support to migrant and refugee populations across the globe." 

"But," Haley continued, "our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone. We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter the country."

The rest of the world, including China and Russia, will go on without us as Trump continues to abdicate from any sort of global leadership.

World leaders and dignitaries from 193 U.N. member states adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants in September 2016, paving the way for the global compact for migration. 

The compact, expected to be adopted in 2018, is aimed at facilitating safe and orderly migration around the world. It will present a framework for comprehensive international cooperation on migrants, set out a range of actionable commitments and tackle issues such as protecting the safety, dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of migrants. 

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson applauded Trump's decision to exit the agreement and said "strengthening global governance" would run afoul of U.S. laws and policies. 

"While we will continue to engage on a number of fronts at the United Nations, in this case, we simply cannot in good faith support a process that could undermine the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders," Tillerson said in a statement.

No longer.  A nation of immigrants has turned its back on the people of the rest of the planet.  Only about 4% of the world's population is American. The other 96% of the globe is realizing that they can get along without us for the time being, and will gladly do so.

And speaking of refugees, we seem to be headed for creating a few million more on the Korean Peninsula as Trump national security adviser is openly warning of war with Pyongyang and GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham is calling for the US to begin removing the families of American soldiers stationed in South Korea.

Let’s be clear about what McMaster and Graham are saying. The US and North Korea appear to be on the path to war, and there’s no solution for peace in sight. Therefore, Graham argues, the US should stop sending family members of American military personnel to South Korea — and start taking those already there out of the country.

Graham’s commentary doesn’t come out of nowhere, however. There are serious reasons to worry about the damage North Korea could do to South Korea, where 28,500 US troops and their dependents reside.

If the US attacks North Korea, experts believe Pyongyang will retaliate not just against America but also against Seoul and Tokyo. Simulations of that possibility produce pretty bleak results. One war game convened by the Atlantic back in 2005 predicted that a North Korean attack would kill 100,000 people in Seoul — a city of around 25.6 million people — in the first few days alone. Others put the estimate even higher. A war game mentioned by the National Interest predicted Seoul could “be hit by over half-a-million shells in under an hour.”

It’s worth noting that McMaster has long talked about the growing prospect of war with North Korea, and Graham nonchalantly discusses “thousands” dying on the Korean Peninsula during a conflict. And of course Trump himself once said he would unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea if it continued to develop its nuclear program.

This rhetoric is supposed to remind North Korea that the US is serious when it says it needs to stop building a missile that can hit America. But now that North has one, it seems like the US is threatening war with no real chance of getting North Korea to do what America wants, experts tell me.

“If McMaster, Graham, and Trump are serious, God help us,” Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, told me in an interview today. “If they're bluffing, it's not working to bring North Korea to the table, and threatening preventive war just further solidifies North Korea's determination to continue advancing its arsenal and increases unintended war risks.”

Either way, we're getting closer to becoming a dangerous rogue state, one the rest of the world will have to deal with.

He's Not Going Anywhere, Guys

I do update the Mueller investigation news several times a week it seems, but it's important to remember that, as The Atlantic's Peter Beinart reminds us, Trump will never be impeached by a Republican-led Congress and even if Democrats have the votes to do so in 2018, he'll never be removed from office by the Senate GOP.

Now that Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I., and agreed to dish on his former boss, some Trump-watchers are suggesting that impeachment may be around the corner. “It’s time to start talking about impeachment,” announced a Saturday column on CNN.com. The Flynn deal, declared former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman in Friday’s New York Times, “portends the likelihood of impeachable charges being brought against the president of the United States.”

That may be true. But bringing impeachment charges against Trump, and actually forcing him from office, are two vastly different things. And while the former may be more likely today than it was half a year ago, the latter is actually less likely. Since Robert Mueller became special counsel in May, the chances of the House of Representatives passing articles of impeachment—and the Senate ratifying them—have probably gone down.

That’s because impeachment is less a legal process than a political one. Passing articles of impeachment requires a majority of the House. Were such a vote held today—even if every Democrat voted yes—it would still require 22 Republicans. If Democrats take the House next fall, they could then pass articles of impeachment on their own. But ratifying those articles would require two-thirds of the Senate, which would probably require at least 15 Republican votes.

That kind of mass Republican defection has grown harder, not easier, to imagine. It’s grown harder because the last six months have demonstrated that GOP voters will stick with Trump despite his lunacy, and punish those Republican politicians who do not.

Among Republicans, Trump’s approval rating has held remarkably steady. The week Mueller was named, according to Gallup, Trump’s GOP support stood at 84 percent. In the days after Donald Trump Jr. was revealed to have written, “I love it” in response to a Russian offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton, it reached 87 percent. In Gallup’s last poll, taken in late November, it was 81 percent. Trump’s approval rating among Republicans has not dipped below 79 percent since he took office. None of the revelations from Mueller’s investigation—nor any of the other outrageous things Trump has done—has significantly undermined his support among the GOP rank and file.

Beinert goes on to note Clinton survived impeachment because Democratic voters supported him in 1999 at Trump-like levels.  He finished out his second term yes, but then Dubya won the all-important Supreme Court vote and the rest, as they say, is history.

Donald Trump will most likely make it to 2020. He'll run in 2020 too, hell he's running for 2020 now. Whether or not he wins, well, that's up to America, and whether we can overcome massive GOP voter suppression tactics and apathy and not die in a nuclear war with Pyongyang or whatever.

But he won't be impeached or removed from office.  Mueller may make his life miserable but there's nothing to make me think Republican voters will turn on Trump when, not if, he makes his move on Mueller.

Yes, the White House is crippled by paranoia and Trump essentially has the worst lawyers ever because they took on the worst client on earth, but the cynic's view is correct here.  This is 100% political now, the legality and morality of Trump's actions no longer apply.

President Trump's outside lawyer said in a new interview that a president can't obstruct justice. 

The "President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," attorney John Dowd told Axios. 

His comments come after Trump in a tweet over the weekend appeared to reveal he knew former national security adviser Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI when he was fired.
"I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies," Trump tweeted on Saturday. 

"It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

The tweet spurred controversy, as legal experts suggested if Trump knew Flynn had lied to the FBI and then asked Comey to drop the investigation, it could amount to obstruction of justice.

Mueller's investigation is still important, but only politics can remove Trump, and he'll have the support of 90%+ of Republicans regardless of what happens.  Don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise.  We're well past the "alleged" part of collusion and obstruction of justice now.

The White House's chief lawyer told President Donald Trump in January he believed then-national security adviser Michael Flynn had misled the FBI and lied to Vice President Mike Pence and should be fired, a source familiar with the matter said Monday. 

The description of the conversation raises new questions about what Trump knew about Flynn's situation when he urged then-FBI Director James Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn and whether anyone in the White House, including the President himself, attempted to obstruct justice. Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians, a probe led by Comey until Trump fired him. 

White House counsel Donald McGahn told Trump that based on his conversation with then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates, he believed Flynn had not told the truth in his interview with the FBI or to Pence, the source said. McGahn did not tell the President that Flynn had violated the law in his FBI interview or was under criminal investigation, the source said.

Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI because McGahn told him, Trump then fired Sally Yates and James Comey in order to try to cover up for Flynn.  There's no longer any doubt now. The law no longer matters where we're going.

Yes, the Trump regime is looking more a more like the Nixon administration daily, but Nixon resigned solely due to political pressure. Maybe that pressure can be brought to bear, but as I've been saying for months now, that would depend on the same Republicans who have been supporting Trump for years now, and even if they went along Republican voters won't believe any of the charges against him anyhow.

Oh, and if Obama had ever said that the "President cannot obstruct justice" he would have been impeached the next day and removed from office by the end of the week.

Taxing Our Patience, Con't

At a bowling alley in suburban Detroit, the Washington Post talks about the GOP tax heist.

A 60-year-old retiree bowling with a group of girlfriends said she’s tired of the middle class having to pay more so the wealthy can become even wealthier. A few lanes away, a middle-aged woman with frizzy gray hair said that the more she hears about the plan, the more she hates it. And a group of young guys in matching shirts said they didn’t even know the proposal was in the works, although they seemed skeptical that their taxes would ever go down in a meaningful way.

Ron Stephens, a 49-year-old Republican who works in purchasing for the auto industry and wrote in Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) for president, said he doesn’t expect to benefit under the proposal. Any gains he might make thanks to a tax cut would probably be washed out by changes to other deductions that he usually takes, he said.

And don’t get him started on cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, as the Senate bill passed early Saturday does.

I'm betting most of folks like Ron there are worried, but they'll vote Republican anyway.  Michigan folks who voted for Trump are certainly happy about the GOP tax bill because, all together now, IT WILL HELP SMALL BUSINESSES!

A few miles away at Art and Jake’s Sports Bar, two business partners were practically giddy at the idea of the corporate tax rate going down. Jeff Hinsperger and Mark Matheson own the World Class Equipment Co. in Shelby, which builds robots to work in automobile manufacturing plants. Both voted for Trump.

Business has been booming — although they said they have struggled to get the financing needed to do all the job requests they receive. With more cash from paying less in taxes, they said, the company could finance more on its own, allowing them to hire more employees and invest in even more equipment.

“Everyone thinks business owners are greedy,” Matheson said. “We’re not. We’re the ones with everything at risk.”

Sitting across the bar that night were two other businessmen who were in town for work — one from Indianapolis, the other from Tennessee. Both were longtime Republicans. Neither of them expects to benefit from the tax cuts, and they’re skeptical that cuts for corporations will really trickle down to them. Both scoffed when asked whether members of Congress or the president care about the middle class.

They know the Republicans don't care about them.  But they'll never make the connection about what they need to do to fix the problem.

“They’re not looking out for the middle class,” said Andrew Stewart, 30, a former hair stylist who works as a restaurant server while he’s studying to become an occupational therapist. “The separation between the middle class and the upper class, it’s growing, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. . . . It’s easier to control people when they’re under your thumb.”

Stewart supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for president in the primaries and believes Sanders was robbed of the Democratic nomination. He voted in the general election for Jill Stein of the Green Party, which he doesn’t regret — although he disapproves of how Trump is running the country.

“I feel completely unrepresented,” he said, while studying at a local Starbucks. “I don’t feel like I’m represented at all. It’s just a sad time in American history.”

The Republicans don't care about the middle class, everyone agrees on that.  Even the ones that support Trump now admit that.  The ones that don't like Trump are really upset he's President. If only there was an alternative to the Republicans.

And the ones who will actually benefit from the tax bill?  Will they create jobs?  Funny you should ask.

Getting lunch in the mall food court that afternoon was Mike Papastamatis, a 33-year-old dentist who is a partner in a local practice and expects his tax rate to fall about 10 points if the “pass-through” deduction is increased. While that will benefit him, he said the practice is fully staffed right now and there’s no need to expand.

Most folks are upset about this bill.  They know it's a giant scam to enrich the ultra-rich at their expense.

But these same people in 2018 and 2020?

They all have something in common, you see.

They'd rather vote for the party that gives their money to those hundreds, thousands, millions of times wealthier than themselves rather than the party that gives their money to those with even less.

They will never, ever, ever vote for the Democrats. They'll stay home maybe, possibly, kind of.  They'll vote for the Green or the Independence Party But they'll never vote for the Democrat. That's an admission of failure.

Stop chasing these voters, Dems. They will never vote for you.

Pay attention to the ones who do.

StupidiNews!

• The New York Metropolitan Opera has suspended former music director James Levine as the conductor faces an internal investigation into multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.
• With the Senate GOP having passed their version of a tax bill, the legislation goes back to the House today to work out differences like removing the individual health insurance mandate.
• The US and South Korea have started scheduled large-scale aerial military exercises, something North Korea is warning will push the peninsula to "the brink of nuclear war". 
• Pharmacy giant CVS is looking to by health insurance giant Aetna for $67.5 billion, a move that will face anti-trust scrutiny from the US government.
• After 37 years, scientists successfully tested the Voyager I spacecraft's trajectory thrusters to keep it in communication with Earth, 21 billion kilometers away.

Last Call For CHIP Off, The Old Blocker

Republicans might get around to re-authorizing the Children's Health Insurance Program at some point.  Maybe.  Sort of.  It's only been expired for two months now and when January comes around millions of kids will lose their health coverage but not a big deal because really, as Utah GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch says, those people don't deserve it.

This week, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) helped push a tax bill through the Senate that will cost about $1 trillion. At the same time, he lamented the difficulties of finding the money to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which pays for healthcare for nine million children and costs about $14 billion a year — a program Hatch helped create.

A Sunday-morning tweet from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough quoting Hatch kicked off a dustup on Twitter over the Utah Republican’s take on CHIP. Funding for the program — which was created as a joint effort between Hatch and Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy in 1997 — expired at the end of September; Congress has yet to reauthorize it. That puts health care for millions of American children at risk.

On Thursday evening, as the Senate debated the Republican tax plan, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) asked whether there’s “something we can do to get the children’s health insurance program done.”

Hatch’s response, in a nutshell: Yes, we’ll fund the program, but we’re really short on money.

“We’re going to do CHIP, there’s no question about it in my mind. And it’s got to be done the right way,” Hatch said. “But the reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore, and to just add more and more spending and more and more spending, and you can look at the rest of the bill for the more and more spending.”

This came as he advocated for a tax bill that, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation’s latest estimate, will add approximately $1 trillion to the deficit even when adjusted for economic growth, and which disproportionately benefits corporations and the wealthy.

Once again, Republicans just passed a Senate GOP tax heist bill that will cost $1.5 trillion just to give the vast majority of that money to corporations and obscenely rich people, but "we just don't have the money" for kids.  OK to give a trillion or so to rich people, $14 billion for kids, screw it.

In his speech, Hatch also said he thinks CHIP has done a “terrific job for people who really need the help” and noted that he had advocated for helping those who can’t help themselves throughout his Senate career. But, he continued, “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.” He blamed a “liberal philosophy” for creating millions of people “who believe everything they are or ever hope to be depend upon the federal government rather than the opportunities that this great country grants them.”

You catch that dog whistle?  "The people YOU know who use CHIP are good people.  It's those people who are ruining it for the rest of us."

So if CHIP has to go, well, blame those people for ruining it.  And if the GOP can get away with trashing CHIP, they can get away with the exact same reasoning behind why they will cut trillions for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid next.  Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley:

In a Nov. 29 interview, Grassley was adamant about the need for change, even if farmers and small business owners represent a tiny minority of estate tax payers. The reason, he said, is as much philosophical as practical.

An estate tax effectively and unfairly taxes a person’s earnings twice, he argued: first when they earn it and again when they die. And, he added, it penalizes savers without touching spenders.

“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley said, “as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

If you're going to be hurt by the GOP austerity budget, it's because those people are immoral and causing you to be hurt by it.  We're sorry, but it just has to be done.  The morality of your suffering will be noted as long as you continue to vote correctly, citizen.

Oh, and some of us were never fooled into believing Orrin Hatch would make a good "caretaker president" should the impeachment express train get rolling for real.

The Tale Of A Lesser Moore, Con't

Alabama Republicans simply don't believe the Washington Post's allegations of sexual abuse and pedophilia against Roy Moore, so they will happily vote the monster into office in nine days.

A new CBS News poll finds 71 percent of Alabama Republicans say the allegations against Roy Moore are false, and those who believe this also overwhelmingly believe Democrats and the media are behind those allegations.

The poll found 92 percent of Republicans who don't believe the allegations against Moore say the Democrats are behind the charges, and 88 percent say newspapers and the media are behind them.

Multiple women have come forward to accuse Moore of inappropriately pursuingor touching them when they were teenagers. The youngest woman to accuse Moore says she was 14 and he was 32 at the time.

The Senate contest looks to be highly dependent on turnout. Moore has a lead over Democrat Doug Jones, 49 percent to 43 percent, among the likely voters who are most apt to vote on Dec. 12. Among all registered voters, the contest is even. And nearly a quarter of voters still describe themselves as "maybe" or "probably" going to vote.

It's a plot by the Democrats and the media, you see. The dog whistle of "If these allegations are true then Moore should step aside" has been received loud and clear as the end justifies the means. Moore hasn't stepped aside, ergo the allegations are a Democratic plot.  Voters simply do not care.

A majority of Alabama Republican voters (53 percent) say the allegations against Moore are a concern, but that other things matter more. One-third of Republicans say the allegations are not a concern to them.

The majority of Alabama voters are willing to overlook a sex criminal because he's a Republican. He's our pervert goddammit, at least he's not a goddamn hippie.

Moore will win easily in the state that elected Trump by 28 points, elected by voters who see being a Democrat as a worse crime than sexual abuse of 14-year-old girls.  This has always been our country, we reap what has been sown in the name of extending white supremacy since the beginning.   And in the end, Moore will win because this is Trump's America now.

The poll also found 49 percent of Moore voters say their Senate vote is in support of President Trump, and 23 percent of Moore voters say the president's comments about the race, specifically, have made them more likely to back Moore.

Among all registered voters, the president has a 57 percent approval rating in the state. Among Moore's voters, it is an astounding 96 percent approval.

"Also did you know Obama was really born in Kenya?" will be the next thing out of Moore voters' mouths after they leave the voting booth.

Sunday Long Read: House Of The Spirits

As Japan's population ages towards economic and cultural unsustainability, the country's solution to housing the elderly, huge apartment complexes that are half hospice, half storage facility, are coming under increasing scrutiny.  It doesn't mean however that Japan is actually going to do anything about it.

Cicadas, every Japanese schoolchild knows, lie underground for years before rising to the earth’s surface in summer. They climb up the nearest tree, where they cast off their shells and start their short second lives. During their few days among us, they mate, fly and cry. They cry until their bodies are found on the ground, twitching in their last moments, or on their backs with their legs pointing upward.

Chieko Ito hated the din they made. They had just started shrieking, as they always did in early summer, and the noise would keep getting louder in the weeks to come, invading her third-floor apartment, making any kind of silence impossible. As one species of cicadas quieted down, another’s distinct cry would take over. Then, as the insects peaked in numbers, showers of dead and dying cicadas would rain down on her enormous housing complex, stopping only with the end of summer itself.

“You hear them from morning to evening,” she sighed.

It was the afternoon of her 91st birthday, and unusually hot, part of a heat wave that had community leaders worried. Elderly volunteers had been winding through the labyrinth of footpaths, distributing leaflets on the dangers of heatstroke to the many hundreds of residents like Mrs. Ito who lived alone in 171 nearly identical white buildings. With no families or visitors to speak of, many older tenants spent weeks or months cocooned in their small apartments, offering little hint of their existence to the world outside their doors. And each year, some of them died without anyone knowing, only to be discovered after their neighbors caught the smell.

The first time it happened, or at least the first time it drew national attention, the corpse of a 69-year-old man living near Mrs. Ito had been lying on the floor for three years, without anyone noticing his absence. His monthly rent and utilities had been withdrawn automatically from his bank account. Finally, after his savings were depleted in 2000, the authorities came to the apartment and found his skeleton near the kitchen, its flesh picked clean by maggots and beetles, just a few feet away from his next-door neighbors.

The huge government apartment complex where Mrs. Ito has lived for nearly 60 years — one of the biggest in Japan, a monument to the nation’s postwar baby boom and aspirations for a modern, American way of life — suddenly became known for something else entirely: the “lonely deaths” of the world’s most rapidly aging society.

“4,000 lonely deaths a week,” estimated the cover of a popular weekly magazine this summer, capturing the national alarm.

To many residents in Mrs. Ito’s complex, the deaths were the natural and frightening conclusion of Japan’s journey since the 1960s. A single-minded focus on economic growth, followed by painful economic stagnation over the past generation, had frayed families and communities, leaving them trapped in a demographic crucible of increasing age and declining births. The extreme isolation of elderly Japanese is so common that an entire industry has emerged around it, specializing in cleaning out apartments where decomposing remains are found.

“The way we die is a mirror of the way we live,” said Takumi Nakazawa, 83, the chairman of the resident council at Mrs. Ito’s housing complex for the past 32 years.

Summer was the most dangerous season for these lonely deaths, and Mrs. Ito wasn’t taking any chances. Birthday or not, she knew that no one would call, drop a note or stop by to check on her. Born in the last year of the reign of Emperor Taisho, she never expected to live this long. One by one, family and friends had vanished or grown feeble. Ghosts, of the living and dead, now dwelled all around her in the scores of uniform buildings she and her husband had rushed to in 1960, when all of Japan seemed young.

“Now every room is mine, and I can do as I please,” Mrs. Ito said. “But it’s no good.”

This one was sad, even by my usual Sunday Long Read standards.  Not that I think anything is better in America these days, and pretty soon we'll all be Chieko Ito the way things are going.   A good friend of my mother passed away recently, alone, found a couple of days later when she didn't show up for church.  I'd be lying if I didn't fear that outcome.  I think we all do.

We're just led by people who don't care.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

It seems at every turn, Candidate Trump was seeking Vladimir Putin's help to win the election and surrounded himself again and again with people Trump believed who could get him Putin's ear, and the more we dig into this relationship, the more people we find who connect Trump and Putin.  The latest NY Times story on one of those connections involves Jeff Sessions and the NRA.

A conservative operative trumpeting his close ties to the National Rifle Association and Russia told a Trump campaign adviser last year that he could arrange a back-channel meeting between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, according to an email sent to the Trump campaign.

A May 2016 email to the campaign adviser, Rick Dearborn, bore the subject line “Kremlin Connection.” In it, the N.R.A. member said he wanted the advice of Mr. Dearborn and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, then a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump and Mr. Dearborn’s longtime boss, about how to proceed in connecting the two leaders.

Russia, he wrote, was “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.” and would attempt to use the N.R.A.’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., to make “‘first contact.’” The email, which was among a trove of campaign-related documents turned over to investigators on Capitol Hill, was described in detail to The New York Times.

Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, secured a guilty plea on Friday from President Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, for lying to the F.B.I. about contacts with Moscow’s former ambassador to the United States. But those contacts came after Mr. Trump’s improbable election victory.

The emailed outreach from the conservative operative to Mr. Dearborn came far earlier, around the same time that Russians were trying to make other connections to the Trump campaign. Another contact came through an American advocate for Christian and veterans causes, and together, the outreach shows how, as Mr. Trump closed in on the nomination, Russians were using three foundational pillars of the Republican Party — guns, veterans and Christian conservatives — to try to make contact with his unorthodox campaign.

I'm beginning to think all these ridiculously overt connections to Putin were insurance for Trump making good on his quid pro quo to remove US sanctions on Russia, because otherwise there would be no way that Trump could hide them if he was exposed.

Both efforts, made within days of each other, centered on the N.R.A.’s annual meeting and appear to involve Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of the Russian central bank and key figure in Mr. Putin’s United Russia party, who was instructed to make contact with the campaign.

“Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” the N.R.A. member and conservative activist, Paul Erickson, wrote. “He wants to extend an invitation to Mr. Trump to visit him in the Kremlin before the election. Let’s talk through what has transpired and Senator Sessions’s advice on how to proceed.”

It is not clear how Mr. Dearborn handled the outreach. He forwarded a similar proposal, made through Rick Clay, an advocate for conservative Christian causes, to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a top campaign aide. Mr. Kushner rebuffed the proposal at the time, according to two people who have seen Mr. Kushner’s email.

Mr. Sessions told investigators from the House Intelligence Committee that he did not recall the outreach, according to three people with knowledge of the exchange. Mr. Dearborn did not return requests for comment, and Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer dealing with matters related to the investigations, declined to comment. Repeated attempts to reach Mr. Erickson were not successful.

Intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia, on orders from the highest levels of its government, undertook a sophisticated campaign to hack Democratic computers, spread propaganda and undermine the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. The repeated outreach around the N.R.A. convention, where Mr. Trump accepted the group’s endorsement, came just weeks after a self-described intermediary for the Russian government told George Papadopoulos, a campaign aide, that the Russians had “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton. And just weeks later, the president’s eldest son arranged a meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information about the would-be Democratic nominee.

“The Kremlin believes that the only possibility of a true reset in this relationship would be with a new Republican White House,” Mr. Erickson wrote to Mr. Dearborn, adding, “Ever since Hillary compared Putin to Hitler, all senior Russian leaders consider her beyond redemption.”

There's no longer any doubt that Trump was working for Russia.  The question has always been if the rest of the GOP would give a damn about it, and the answer so far is a resounding "hell no, we're getting what we want from him."  They don't believe it, and even if they believed it, they don't care.

And why should they?  They've all but won a multi-generational battle that will destroy 80 years of classic New Deal liberalism and have returned America into a new Gilded Age where the quarter of Americans who vote Republican every election year in local, state, and federal elections are the proxy that rules the other 75% of us, the vast majority of that group composed of people who just don't give a damn either because they've never been convinced that government can ever be used for good.

We don't care enough to remove the GOP.  There's no bottom limit, no nadir for what they can get away with now.

No wonder we have Trump.

Automatic For The People, Con't

Another set of alarm bells over automation and jobs, this time by McKinsey, finds that job losses due to automation will take out anywhere from ten to twenty percent of the current global workforce by 2030.

As many as 800 million workers worldwide may lose their jobs to robots and automation by 2030, equivalent to more than a fifth of today’s global labor force.

That’s according to a new report covering 46 nations and more than 800 occupations by the research arm of McKinsey & Co.

The consulting company said Wednesday that both developed and emerging countries will be impacted. Machine operators, fast-food workers and back-office employees are among those who will be most affected if automation spreads quickly through the workplace.

Even if the rise of robots is less rapid, some 400 million workers could still find themselves displaced by automation and would need to find new jobs over the next 13 years, the McKinsey Global Institute study found.

But of course there will be new jobs, with new skills to learn.

The good news for those displaced is that there will be jobs for them to transition into, although in many cases they’re going to have to learn new skills to do the work. Those jobs will include health-care providers for aging populations, technology specialists and even gardeners, according to the report.

“We’re all going to have to change and learn how to do new things over time,” Michael Chui, a San Francisco-based partner at the institute, said in an interview.

Then again if you don't have the money or education to learn these new skills, well, then you'll have to do other things like Be Poor And Unemployed.   McKinsey by the way finds that as many as 75 million American jobs are going away to be replaced by...something, in the next 12 years.  And tens of millions of us won't have the resources to change careers, especially should that odious GOP tax bill become law.

A lot of us aren't going to come out on the other side on this one, guys.

Taxing Our Patience, Con't

The Senate GOP has passed their version of the awful tax heist bill in the middle of the night, giving a multi-trillion dollar tax cut to corporations and the wealthy, which will be funded in part by mandatory cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and will cost 13-15 million people health insurance, and on top of all that, the measure will add a whopping $1.47 trillion to the national debt just by itself. 

The Senate passed the most sweeping tax rewrite in decades early Saturday, with Republicans lining up to approve an overhaul that will touch almost every corner of the United States economy, affecting families, small business owners and multinational corporations, with the biggest benefits flowing to the highest-earning Americans.

Senators voted 51-49, as Republicans approved the nearly 500-page bill in the early morning hours after lawmakers received a rewritten version, which contained significant changes from the original bill that passed two Senate panels last month along party lines. The last-minute revisions prompted an outcry from Democrats, who said it was impossible — and irresponsible — for lawmakers to read and digest a significant piece of legislation in such a short period of time.

Speaking on the Senate floor ahead of the vote, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, called the Republican approach “a process and a product that no one can be proud of and everyone should be ashamed of.”

He went on to warn that changes made to the bill “under the cover of darkness” would “stuff even more money into the pockets of the wealthy and the biggest corporations while raising taxes on millions in the middle class.”

And GOP senators were bribed into voting for the bill with amendments that were literally penciled in as the final bill was voted on only 2 hours after being finished.

Many of the changes stemmed from a series of last-minute agreements reached to convince a handful of holdout Republican senators, including Susan Collins of Maine and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, to throw their support behind the legislation. One of those Republican holdouts, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, voted against the legislation.

Early on Saturday morning, Mr. Pence provided a tiebreaking vote to pass an amendment offered by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, that would allow people to use up to $10,000 a year from tax-advantaged 529 savings accounts to fund tuition at private and religious K-12 schools or certain educational expenses for home-schooled students. Right now, such accounts can only be used to pay for higher education.

So how did GOP deficit hawks all vote for the bill (except for Bob Corker)?  It's simple, they simply don't believe the analysis that the bill will destroy the US economy.

Democrats opposed the tax bill as a bloc, saying it was meant to help the wealthy and not the middle class. With the Senate split 52 to 48, Republicans barely had votes to spare. But the bill’s passage was made possible by a near-complete Republican embrace of the idea that about $1.5 trillion of tax cuts will pay for themselves, by producing enough economic growth and additional federal revenue to offset their costs to the Treasury.

That belief was contradicted by several studies, including one from Congress’s official economic scorekeeper, which Republicans dismissed as overly pessimistic.

Mr. McConnell waved off any deficit concerns. “I’m totally confident this is a revenue-neutral bill,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a revenue producer.”

The House and Senate will now work quickly to resolve the differences between their bills and deliver a plan to President Trump’s desk, with the aim of delivery by Christmas.

The last time the GOP passed a tax cut bill was 2003, and five years later we had the worst recession in generations.  Now the GOP has passed an even more ridiculous bill that, when it fails to produce the growth it claims it will be in order to be revenue-neutral, will automatically trigger trillions in austerity cuts.

If this gets through the House and reconciled and onto Trump's desk, even if Trump was impeached and removed from office in January by some miracle, we'd still have a guaranteed financial collapse just in time for Democrats to have to clean up in 2020 or so, and years of "kick the can" austerity to follow.

It'll take decades to fix the damage from this bill, and some of us won't be around to see that happen directly because of the cuts.  It's still possible that the bill could fail in conference, but we'd need a massive, massive effort to stop it.

We'll see.

Last Call For Black Hawk Down 2: Electric Mogadishu

One of the major problems of the Trump regime's constant stream of outrageous, immoral and illegal behavior is that is sucks all the oxygen out of the room when it comes to the debate over major international military incidents like last August's apparent massacre of ten civilians in Somalia by US special forces.

THE U.S.-LED OPERATION on Aug. 25 would result in the death of 10 civilians, including at least one child, and become the largest stain on U.S. ground operations in the country since the infamous Black Hawk Down incident in 1993. 

In the operation’s aftermath, hundreds of people in the nearby town Afgoye flooded the city’s streets demanding justice for those killed, and survivors on the farm refused to bury their dead until the Somali government recanted its allegations that they were members Al Shabaab, and offered an apology. 

The Daily Beast conducted an investigation into the Bariire operation and its aftermath, interviewing three of the operation’s survivors over the phone from Mogadishu and meeting in person with the Somali National Army Commander in charge of the Somali soldiers who assisted in the operation under the command of soldiers from U.S. Special Operations Forces. 

The Daily Beast also met in Mogadishu with over two dozen Somali intelligence officers, political analysts, local leaders, and former and current government officials familiar with the incident. Two of these individuals are also involved in an ongoing local, non-government-sponsored investigation into the incident. 

The Daily Beast also met in person with the commander of the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces whose purview under the mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping force includes Bariire, and who was approached by the Americans about their plan to re-capture and hold Bariire. 

The vast majority of these sources preferred to speak anonymously, either because they were not authorized to discuss the incident or because they feared possible retribution from either the Somali Federal Government or the Americans for doing so. 

The details that emerged paint a damning picture of at least one U.S. ground operation in the African nation. This includes U.S. Special Operators firing upon unarmed civilians, using human intelligence from sources widely considered untrustworthy to Somalis in the region as well as government officials, and instructing their Somali counterparts to collect weapons that were being stored inside a home—not displaced on the field in the course of the firefight—and placing them beside the bodies of those killed prior to photographing them. In the aftermath of the incident, according to our sources, American diplomats also pressured the Somali government to bury the unfavorable findings of a Somali Federal Government-led investigation. 

Hours after the operation, AFRICOM released a statement noting that it was aware of allegations of civilian casualties in the operation and that AFRICOM was “conducting an assessment into the situation to determine the facts on the ground.” The AFRICOM press release also stated that “the Somali National Army was conducting an operation in the area with U.S. forces in a supporting role.” 

Yet a majority of bullet casings collected from the farm that was attacked, which were seen by The Daily Beast, were from American—not Somali National Army—weapons. This appears to confirm that the Special Operations team did not command SNA while remaining behind during the operation, as the AFRICOM statement would have the public believe, but rather were responsible themselves for firing upon and killing unarmed civilians. 

According to Maj. Audricia Harris, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense, “this incident remains under investigation” and the DOD cannot comment on any specifics of the employment of U.S. Special Operations forces. She noted that U.S. Special Operations “take all measures during the targeting process to avoid or minimize civilian casualties or collateral damage and to comply with the principles of the Law of Armed Conflict.”

The details surrounding the planning of this incident collected by The Daily Beast suggest, however, that the Special Operations Forces involved in this mission did not sufficiently vet the information they were presented with prior to carrying out this operation. 

The Daily Beast's Christina Goldbaum does an excellent job of chasing this story down.  Not that this kind of thing didn't happen under Obama, Bush 43, or Clinton, because it most certainly did, from Bosnia to Iraq to Yemen. But it's still wrong when it happens, and it needs to investigated.  At bare minimum ten people are dead, and their deaths were systematically covered up trying to portray them as terrorists.  Hey, we're pretty good at planting guns here in America next to dead black people, why not export those valuable skills?

After all, we spent three, almost four years neck deep in House hearing on Benghazi. Surely Republicans will want to get to the bottom of this tragedy and apparent cover-up as well, right?

Right?

The Mask Slips Again...

...and Republicans accidentally tell the truth about their plans for America.

Advocates for seniors and the middle class have been warning for weeks that the Republican drive to cut taxes for the wealthy is the prelude to a larger attack on Social Security and Medicare. 

In a videotaped interview with two Politico reporters Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said the quiet parts out loud. Asked by interviewers Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman how to address the federal deficit, he replied: “We have to do two things. We have to generate economic growth which generates revenue, while reducing spending. That will mean instituting structural changes to Social Security and Medicare for the future.” (A video of Rubio’s appearance is here, with his remarks on Social Security and Medicare beginning at the 21:45 mark.) 

The only thing that’s new here is the explicit admission by a Republican officeholder that this is the GOP’s master plan to eviscerate the welfare and retirement of American workers. Budget analysts have seen it coming with all the subtlety of a freight train. As we reported earlier this month, the damage begins with the so-called Paygo law (for “pay as you go”), which requires Congress to offset any increase in the federal deficit with spending cuts. The law limits Medicare cuts to 4% of its budget per year, or $25 billion of its $625-billion budget. 

But $25 billion a year is a drastic cut that “would undermine the delivery of care to the 57 million seniors and disabled Americans who depend on the program,” Max Richtman, head of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said a couple of weeks ago. 

The progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities observed that the Senate’s plan, which would add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, would “create pressure for future cuts.” That’s confirmed by Rubio’s remarks to Palmer and Sherman.

Following up the GOP tax bill with trillions in ugly, painful and racist austerity cuts was always going to be the plan, in what will be the biggest, most brazen robbery in human history.  Republicans are planning this in broad daylight, and most Republican voters still don't believe that the GOP would ever hurt them personally, and the ones that do know the cuts will hurt Obama coalition voters more.  They're all okay with what's coming.

We're running out of time.

BREAKING: It's Mueller Time, Con't

As largely expected, we now know the fruits of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn's lawyers meeting with Special Counsel Robert Mueller: a plea deal where Flynn will cop to a single charge of lying to the FBI, in this case about his meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, is expected to plead guilty on Friday to lying to the F.B.I. about two conversations with the Russian ambassador last December during the presidential transition. 

The charges were the latest indication that Mr. Flynn was cooperatingwith the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Flynn was scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington at 10:30 on Friday morning. 

A plea deal with Mr. Flynn brings Mr. Mueller’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s inner circle. A plea agreement suggests that Mr. Flynn provided information to prosecutors, which may help advance the inquiry. 

Mr. Flynn’s lawyers recently told the president’s legal team that they could no longer discuss the special counsel’s investigation as they had been — a sign that Mr. Flynn had decided to cooperate with the prosecution. 

Mr. Flynn was charged with making false statements to F.B.I. agents about two discussions with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey I. Kislyak.

As I've long said, for Mueller to agree to a pleas deal given the sheer magnitude of potential charges Flynn (and his son Michael Jr.) were facing, Flynn would not only have to give up pretty much everything,  the quality of Flynn's information would have to be solid pure platinum and not just gold-plated rumor.

The single charge of lying the the FBI bears all that out.  Flynn has absolutely rolled on somebody big.  If I'm Donald Trump, I'm going to have a bad time.

[UPDATE] ABC News's Brian Ross is saying that Flynn is prepared to testify that Trump directed him to contact the Russians.

JUST IN: @BrianRoss on @ABC News Special Report: Michael Flynn promised "full cooperation to the Mueller team" and is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump "directed him to make contact with the Russians." https://t.co/aiagnvr8eS pic.twitter.com/r8u2LWAd0O

— ABC News (@ABC) December 1, 2017

If that's true, that's the ball game.

Privatize The Spies, Guys

The Trump regime is more than happy to privatize pretty much every other government function so that corporations like the Trump Organization can ring up the profits, so why wouldn't we farm out the CIA's intel gathering services to private companies (who we can totally trust to keep our data safe)?

The White House and CIA have been considering a package of secret proposals to allow former US intelligence officers to run privatized covert actions, intelligence gathering, and propaganda missions, according to three sources who’ve been briefed on or have direct knowledge of the proposals. 

One of the proposals would involve hiring a private company, Amyntor Group, for millions of dollars to set up a large intelligence network and run counter terrorist propaganda efforts, according to the sources. Amyntor’s officials and employees include veterans of a variety of US covert operations, ranging from the Reagan-era Iran–Contra affair to more recent actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Amyntor declined to discuss the proposals, but a lawyer for the company said in a statement to BuzzFeed News that the type of contract being contemplated would be legal “with direction and control by the proper government authority.” 

Another proposal presented to US officials would allow individuals affiliated with the company to help capture wanted terrorists on behalf of the United States. In keeping with that proposal, people close to the company are tracking two specific suspects in a Middle Eastern country, the sources said, for possible “rendition” to the United States.

A source speaking on behalf of the company stressed that while Amyntor officials are aware of and involved in the rendition plan, the company itself would not be involved.
People involved in the highly unusual project have asked BuzzFeed News not to name the country or the targets because of concerns about the safety of operatives who, they say, are on the ground. They say that the people involved have the information and capabilities to snatch the two suspects and transport them to the US or a third country. 

The proposals sound like a convoluted movie plot, but two of the sources familiar with the project say discussions have been held recently with top national security officials.
The CIA declined to comment, but a US government official downplayed the proposals' significance. “The idea they are pitching is absurd on its face,” he said, “and it is not going anywhere.” 

A spokesperson for the National Security Council said that Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump's national security adviser, and other officials were not aware of the proposals. 

CIA Director Mike Pompeo has publicly promised that the agency would become “much more vicious” and aggressive. He said in one speech that the administration “is prepared to engage in activities that are different from what America has been doing these past few years.”

I'm sure this is going to be a great idea and nothing can possibly go wrong from having private companies doing CIA bag jobs in foreign countries in the Trump era.

The only thing that would make this better is if the Amyntor Group has financial ties to Putin.  I'm sure we'll find that out down the road.

StupidiNews!

• A last -minute rewrite of the GOP Senate tax bill is leaving the final product unknown and Republicans nervous as GOP leaders are still looking to vote on the bill this weekend.
• The expected exit of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the end of the year may only be the tip of the iceberg as a large number of Trump appointees and staffers could leave by early 2018.
• The acquittal of an undocumented immigrant in a San Francisco murder trial has enraged Donald Trump, who attacked the verdict on Twitter demanding justice for the victim, Kate Steinle.
• "Angel investor" Shervin Pishevar has been accused by at least five women of sexual misconduct, the billionaire Uber investor allegedly used his status to pursue women since 2014. 
• Elon Musk's Boring Company is looking to put a Hyperloop bid to cover Chicago's planned express train route from O'Hare airport to downtown.