Last Call For Enemies of the State

The White House is significantly escalating its war on press, using conservative outlets to specifically target critical journalists in order to discredit and destroy them with opposition research, and the operation is already under way.

A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists.

It is the latest step in a long-running effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to undercut the influence of legitimate news reporting. Four people familiar with the operation described how it works, asserting that it has compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements by hundreds of people who work at some of the country’s most prominent news organizations.

The group has already released information about journalists at CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times — three outlets that have aggressively investigated Mr. Trump — in response to reporting or commentary that the White House’s allies consider unfair to Mr. Trump and his team or harmful to his re-election prospects.

Operatives have closely examined more than a decade’s worth of public posts and statements by journalists, the people familiar with the operation said. Only a fraction of what the network claims to have uncovered has been made public, the people said, with more to be disclosed as the 2020 election heats up. The research is said to extend to members of journalists’ families who are active in politics, as well as liberal activists and other political opponents of the president.
It is not possible to independently assess the claims about the quantity or potential significance of the material the pro-Trump network has assembled. Some involved in the operation have histories of bluster and exaggeration. And those willing to describe its techniques and goals may be trying to intimidate journalists or their employers.

But the material publicized so far, while in some cases stripped of context or presented in misleading ways, has proved authentic, and much of it has been professionally harmful to its targets.

It is clear from the cases to date that among the central players in the operation is Arthur Schwartz, a combative 47-year-old conservative consultant who is a friend and informal adviser to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. Mr. Schwartz has worked with some of the right’s most aggressive operatives, including the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon.

“If the @nytimes thinks this settles the matter we can expose a few of their other bigots,” Mr. Schwartz tweeted on Thursday in response to an apologetic tweet from a Times journalist whose anti-Semitic social media posts had just been revealed by the operation. “Lots more where this came from.”

The information unearthed by the operation has been commented on and spread by officials inside the Trump administration and re-election campaign, as well as conservative activists and right-wing news outlets such as Breitbart News. In the case of the Times editor, the news was first published by Breitbart, immediately amplified on Twitter by Donald Trump Jr. and, among others, Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, and quickly became the subject of a Breitbart interview with Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary and communications director.

To recap, the White House has a operation to go after specific journalists, and we've already seen attacks on April Ryan, Don Lemon, Sarah Jeong, and NY Times editor Jon Weisman in the last week.  A lot more is coming.  The White House will be calling for the firing of journalists on a regular basis and expect the Perpetual Outrage Machine™ to do it for them.  A lot of them will be fired.

Our free press is going to be dismantled in order to get Trump a second term.

Watch.

The Once And Futureless Steve King

Sensing his demise in Iowa, Republican donors in Rep. Steve King's district are flocking to his primary challenger Randy Feenstra instead as the avowed white supremacist has finally become too much of an albatross, even in the era of Trump.

As he gears up for a difficult re-election cycle, Rep. Steve King’s campaign is strapped for cash. Individual donations to the Iowa Republican have continued to flow but support from corporate donors and King’s own colleagues have vanished entirely.

King has not received a single contribution this year from a political action committee associated with a sitting member of Congress. Corporate PACs and interest groups have also completely shunned him. Through the first six months of the year, King received just two contributions from third party political entities: $2,000 donations from PACs associated with two former members of Congress, Lamar Smith (R-TX) and the infamous Todd Akin (R-MO).

It is a remarkable though not entirely unpredictable abandonment of a sitting member of Congress. Though he was always controversial and further to the right than most of his colleagues, King has burned virtually all his bridges in the party this year with outlandish comments about white supremacy and abortion.

But while those comments have made King a pariah in the party—with House Republican leaders stripping him of his committee assignments—King has refused to leave office. Now, as he faces the toughest campaign since he was first elected in 2002, he is doing so with a potentially catastrophic lack of resources. The $18,365 that King’s campaign had in the bank at the end of June was the least cash on hand he’s ever reported after the first six months of a cycle.

King is dealing with that lack of resources as he faces very immediate threats to his incumbency. His 2018 Democratic opponent, former professional baseball player J.D. Scholten, lost by fewer than three points last year, and is making another run for the seat. This time around King also has a formidable Republican primary opponent, state senator Randy Feenstra, who has already scored endorsements from influential Iowans such as evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. At the end of July, Feenstra’s campaign committee reported having $337,314.30 cash on hand, compared to King’s $18,000.

Things weren’t always so financially dire for King. Throughout his time in the House, he has received more than $3 million from political groups associated with private companies, trade associations, members of Congress, and ideological advocacy groups. That support peaked during the 2012 cycle, when such groups donated nearly $700,000 to his re-election campaign.

King’s top industry donors throughout his career, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records, were the American Bankers Association, the National Association of Homebuilders, AT&T, Crystal Sugars, and the Rain and Hail Insurance Society. All of them last donated to King during the 2018 election cycle but have so far declined to do so in this cycle.

In fact, some are even funding his primary challenger. At least six industry PACs that have donated to King in the past, including those affiliated with shipping giant UPS and trade associations representing construction and agricultural firms, have chipped in to Feenstra’s campaign this year instead.

Contributions from Republican Party organs have also evaporated completely. King never relied too heavily on such donations—he generally received about $5,000 per cycle from GOP committees, with the most, about $32,000, coming during the 2010 cycle. But it appears he’ll be fighting for re-election next year without any financial assistance from his party, which is raising record sums this year.

Even Liz Cheney has abandoned King at this point. Expect a major effort to get behind Feenstra from the GOP for the rest of the year.

Of course the actual answer to Iowa's Steve King problem is Democratic candidate J.D. Scholten, who came within three points of toppling King in 2018.



Toss him a few bucks, eh?

Sunday Long Read: A Car Detective Named Ford

This week's Sunday Long Read comes to us from Esquire's Stayton Bonner: the story of Joe Ford, the man millionaires call to get their priceless stolen cars back, and his white whale of a $7 million case he's been tracking down for six years.

Joe, sixty-two, is more Magnum P.I. than Sam Spade—tall, trim, tan, usually wearing a fitted polo or a Hawaiian shirt. Drinks sweet tea by the gallon and speaks like the New Orleans native he is. (“I grew up in east New Orleans, near the Ninth Wah-ard.”) Likes to swim and dive for lobsters and drive boats. He recently cruised on a sixty-­five-footer down to Utila, “this coral-reef island off the coast of Honduras,” he says. “It was incredible—diving with whale sharks and drinking with outlaws. One guy didn’t come back.”

People end up doing all kinds of jobs in this life. You sometimes wonder if, given a few left turns and different choices, the guy playing center field at Yankee Stadium could have ended up a taxi driver instead. Or vice versa. But Joe . . . Joe Ford is what happens when a particular set of skills, personality traits, and turns of phrase lead a person into the only thing he should be doing. It’s rare. And when you see him at work—when you see him move easily among both the shady creatures of criminality and the millionaires on those yachts—you wonder whether you, like him, have found your place in the world.

The FBI agent was calling about a new lead in Joe’s current case. It’s a big one, the kind that could set Joe up for a long time. Maybe help him get his own boat, his own rare sports car. Help his daughter be more comfortable as she copes with the disease that’s taking away her eyesight. Help him disappear into the sunset.

He’s been working this case for six years. “Everyone loves cars, but this is different,” Joe says. “At this level, it’s about bragging rights for the rarest and the best. That’s what makes the Teardrop so coveted.”
The Teardrop. Otherwise known as the 1938 Talbot-Lago T150C SS teardrop coupe, chassis number 90108, current value $7.6 million. Built by two men, names of Figoni and Falaschi—Italian immigrants to France who ran the world’s top custom-car shop in Paris from the thirties through the fifties—the T150 is a prime example of a model that the Robb Report once called “the most beautiful car in the world.” One of only two models built with a race-car engine, it’s an art deco masterpiece, a long, sleek body powered by ground-shaking horsepower. The C stands for competition—it gets 140 bhp out of a 3,996cc six-cylinder engine—but the Teardrop was built as rolling art, a metallic blue car with a red leather interior and red wire wheels. It’s shaped like a teardrop, pure aerodynamics.

When it debuted, its wealthy owners commissioned custom wardrobes to match its colors and lines—society-page fixtures using it to make grand entrances at balls.

The T150, chassis number 90108, however, now holds another distinction: It was stolen in one of the boldest automobile heists in history. In fact, one of the most brazen and spectacular heists of any kind at all.

And Joe Ford, a P.I. from Fort Lauderdale nursing a Corona who has to get home to walk his girlfriend’s teacup poodle after she goes to work, is working his ass off to get it back.

“Some cars speak to me,” he says, finishing his beer and heading to get his parking validated. “This one screams.” 

The rare-car market is like a pyramid.

The base layer is mostly American cars of the fifties—Bel Airs and Packards in garages across the U. S. that can sell for up to $125,000. Next come the muscle cars and rarer European cars—Mustangs, Mercedes, Jaguars. They can go for up to $350,000. At the top are the European racers and one-of-a-kind creations whose blend of history and craftsmanship can put their value in the millions: a Ferrari raced at Le Mans, perhaps, or a ’68 Mustang driven by Steve McQueen. A 1927 Bugatti Royale, one of six ever made, a twenty-one-foot-long, seven-thousand-pound commercial failure upon its debut, would be worth an estimated $100 million should one ever become available. In 2017, classic cars topped the Coutts Passion Index, a list of the British bank’s top passion investments, increasing in value by more than 300 percent in the past decade to bypass assets like wine, jewelry, and artwork.

Like jewelry and artwork, valuable cars are stolen. Thieves have pulled off elaborate heists of million-dollar vehicles, sometimes smuggling them to international locales, retrofitting them with fake paperwork, and then reselling them on the global market.

That’s when people call Joe.

Settle in for a good heist story worthy of Steven Soderbergh or Guy Ritchie, folks.

The DNC Presents Caucus Blockers

Let's get something straight right out of the gate here: the Democrats wanting to try a virtual phone-based caucus system in 2020 in order to increase accessibility for voters is a wonderful concept.  In-person caucuses, as opposed to primary voting where absentee ballots can be cast, present a physical and accessibility barrier to voting that Democrats should absolutely work to get rid of.

Having said that, the problem of course is the data security angle, and it's a complete dumpster fire.

The Democratic National Committee has raised substantial cybersecurity concerns over virtual caucusing, potentially dooming the effort just five months before Iowa begins its process of choosing a presidential nominee.
At a closed-door session of the Rules and By-Laws Committee on Thursday, the DNC told the panel that experts convened by the party were able to hack into a conference call among the committee, the Iowa Democratic Party and Nevada Democratic Party, raising concerns about teleconferencing for virtual caucuses, according to three people who were at the meeting.

For the first time the DNC is requiring states that hold caucuses instead of primary elections to offer voters a way to participate without showing up at sites across the state. Iowa and Nevada are building a teleconference system for 2020, and Alaska plans a phone and web-based operation.

The state parties are waiting for final approval of their plans for the February caucuses in Iowa and Nevada and hoped it would come at the DNC’s summer meeting this week in San Francisco.

“We are continuing to work with Democrats in these states to address the Rules and By-Laws committee’s questions about their proposed plans," the DNC said in a statement Saturday.

The DNC is particularly sensitive to cybersecurity issues, given the hack into DNC emails in 2016, believed to have be carried out by Russian operatives.

The test and the revelation of hacking enraged party officials in caucus states who say the systems were not fully built and the hack of a general teleconferencing system is not comparable. The state party officials also said they were continuing to address any potential vulnerabilities as they build the system.

Caucus-state officials offered a litany of complaints: That the DNC created the rules about absentee participation without considering how the states should achieve that goal; that the DNC offered little help in devising a virtual system, what state officials called the most significant change in caucus procedure since modern caucuses began in 1972; and were slow to raise concerns about security.

In states that caucus, voters gather in homes, businesses and other places in each precinct to choose their preference for a nominee. Some have said the fact that a voter’s physical presence is required has diminished participation.

The solution presents itself quite handily here, of course...

Get rid of caucuses altogether and go to a primary system in every state.

Problem solved.

Hurricane Trump Heads For France

This weekend's G-7 summit of the leaders of the world's most powerful economies in France has, as it continues to be in the era of Trump, an endurance test to see if the other six nations can get any work done before the orange moron takes a big crap in the punchbowl.

President Trump arrived at a meeting of the world’s major powers here Saturday amid signs that the economic and political head winds gathering across the globe would be stirred rather than tempered at this year’s Group of Seven summit.

Hours before the meetings officially began, European Council President Donald Tusk warned that Trump’s trade wars could tip the world into a global recession. French President Emmanuel Macron surprised Trump with an impromptu lunch and began discussing “a lot of crises” as Trump sat stone-faced. And some Trump administration officials privately griped about the unscheduled meal and the French government’s decision to focus the G-7 on issues such as climate change and inequality instead of trade.

While Trump struck positive tones upon his arrival in Biarritz — tweeting “Big weekend with other world leaders!” — the tension surrounding the meeting was held barely below the surface as anxious diplomats kept close watch on the president’s Twitter account. Some Trump administration officials hinted that the president was prepared to disrupt the meeting’s carefully planned script with his trademark bombast.

The American president, who now has a track record of crashing into global forums with a torrent of tweets, complaints and bluster, came to Biarritz after spending days airing more grievances than guidance for global powers facing myriad challenges, including intensifying trade wars and a potential global recession.

During a special meeting on Sunday about the state of the global economy, requested by the White House, Trump will have an opportunity to set the tone for the gathering. While Macron has sought to organize the G-7 around issues such as global inequality and development in Africa, Trump plans to use the gathering to press his “America First” agenda on trade and economic growth, officials said.

On Saturday, Trump used his brief public remarks to praise the “perfect” weather and predict that Macron and other world leaders “will accomplish a lot.” But privately, some of his advisers were grumbling over the direction the summit was taking before it even officially began. Other U.S. officials, however, tried to tamp down the idea tensions were rising, saying that talks so far had been going well.

Once again, it's a case of the White House freely telling reporters they can probably manage the marmalade man-baby before he causes yet another international incident that will hurt America both in the respect department and financially.

In the days leading up to the summit, Trump escalated his trade war with China, blasted Denmark for not selling Greenland to the United States, declared the world to be in recession, harassed his central bank chairman, threatened tariffs against several of the G-7 nations, and called for G-7 outcast Russia to be readmitted to the group.

Trump’s continued embrace of “America First” — even in the face of growing signs of global economic turmoil — offers an indication that the various world powers will not be able to rely on the United States for steady leadership amid crisis, said Jon B. Alterman, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“There has been a complete realization on the world stage that the U.S. is not playing its traditional role, and may never again play the role it’s played for 75 years,” he said. “But it’s unclear what role the United States will play, and what the consequences of that might be.”

Donald Trump has effectively destroyed the current world order.  America is now a dangerous rogue nuclear nation that freely sides with North Korea and Russia.  Even if Trump resigned tomorrow along with Mike Pence and the entire GOP leadership in Congress, it will be years, if not decades before anyone trusts the United States ever again.

And why should any foreign leader do so?  An America that can elect Trump and remains capable of re-electing him is also capable of anything in the autocratic villainy department.

It may well take the rest of my lifetime before we get back to, say, 2008 diplomatically.

Mitch Gets The Coal-ed Shoulder From Amy McGrath

This ad is up in Kentucky this week from Democratic US Senate candidate Amy McGrath, and yeah, this one's going to leave a mark.

Devastating ad for McConnell pic.twitter.com/K80B0DaSPm

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) August 23, 2019

Understand coal mining still happens in Kentucky and it will for the foreseeable future. Even if coal mining stopped across the state tomorrow, the issue of miners needing health benefits from a lifetime of work in dangerous conditions would still be important to people here and across coal states. This meeting happened at the end of last month.

About 12,000 former miners nationwide rely on the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund to cover costs and make ends meet, but a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office showed that the fund is $4.3 billion in debt, and a tax on coal which funded the trust fund was cut in half in January. Many advocates for the fund worry it may soon become insolvent.

There is no cure for black lung disease, which is caused by the inhalation of dust particles in mines leading to severe lung damage. Cases of the deadly disease have surged in recent years in Eastern Kentucky and Central Appalachia.

The Kentucky Republican, who the miners and their advocates see as key to passing any sort of Congressional assistance, told the group of miners in a brief statement “that they were going to be taken care of,” said Kenny Fleming, a former Pike County miner who suffers from black lung.

“We just have to take him at his word and then we also have to keep him at his word, which I think that’s what we’re after,” Fleming said. “Hopefully he will come through.”

Fleming said McConnell was “kind of vague” and didn’t provide much detail on how the miners would be assisted.

Jimmy Moore, the head of the Letcher County Black Lung Association, said he found McConnell’s conduct “rude.” After the meeting, he said McConnell wouldn’t do anything to reinstate the tax which funded the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund.

“He might’ve stayed a minute,” Moore said, referring to McConnell’s quick exit from the meeting. “...It was a worthless trip, that’s the way I feel.”

Robert Steurer, a spokesperson for McConnell, said the senator was “glad to welcome his constituents to the Capitol,” and that members of McConnell’s staff spoke with the miners for about an hour.

Mitch's staff was there for about an hour.  Mitch wasn't. Too busy being the Grim Reaper of the Senate, making sure nothing passes.

For Mitch McConnell to show up for literally all of 60 seconds to "talk" to coal miners with black lung and then vanish is going to hurt him.

And it should.

The Trump Regime's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Yesterday I pointed out how BuzzFeed News caught the Justice Department sending out an article from known white supremacist site VDare.  The Justice Department said the articles came from a third-party internet service that scanned the internet based on keywords and automatically delivered articles from "various sources".  Yesterday, they canceled the service, blaming the third-party.

To their credit, BuzzFeed news followed up on the third-party service and found out that the Trump regime has been regularly sending out articles from some pretty terrible right-wing and white supremacist sites, and they've been doing it for months now.

An arm of the Justice Department regularly sent summaries and links to articles from an online white nationalist publication over the last year, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. In addition, similar newsletters sent to the Labor Department, ICE, HUD, and the Department of Homeland Security included links and content from hyperpartisan and conspiracy-oriented publishers.

In daily bulletins about media coverage for the department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the nation’s immigration courts, a government contractor sometimes included links to VDare, an anti-Semitic and racist site whose editor who has claimed that American culture is under threat from nonwhite peoples. That contractor, a Dade City, Florida–based company called TechMIS, also compiles newsletters for other agencies, including the Department of Labor, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Office of Housing and Urban Development.

While these newsletters typically shared articles from local and mainstream national news outlets — including BuzzFeed News — they also regularly delivered content from partisan publications touting anti-immigration rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Among these publications: the Western Journal, a hyperpartisan publisher whose founder once questioned if then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was Muslim, and the Epoch Times, a newspaper associated with the Chinese Falun Gong movement and whose related media properties have backed QAnon, a conspiracy theory claiming a group of high-ranking officials known as the “Deep State” is subverting President Donald Trump’s goals.

On Thursday, BuzzFeed News reported that an immigration judges union sent a letter of complaint to EOIR for its inclusion in an August newsletter of a VDare blog post that attacked its members with anti-Semitic slurs. After publication of that story, an EOIR press secretary said that the Department of Justice “condemns Anti-Semitism in the strongest terms” and that the post should not have been included. A former senior DOJ official said that the email in question was “generated by a third-party vendor that utilizes keyword searches to produce news clippings for staff. It is not reviewed or approved by staff before it is transmitted.”

“That’s absolutely incorrect,” said TechMIS CEO Steven Mains, adding that EOIR was the most specific and particular of the company’s clients. The agency’s staff would review its work “down to misspellings” if there was anything wrong before sending, he said.

A cursory review of EOIR newsletters by BuzzFeed News found two more mentions of VDare articles; Mains confirmed those and noted there were four others, saying that VDare had been included on seven occasions out of about 20,000 links and articles sent from September 2018, when TechMIS’s relationship with the organization began.

“These discoveries are deeply disturbing,” said Becca Lewis, a research affiliate at Data & Society, who studies online radicalization. “Unfortunately, they mark a continuation of a long history in which government agencies, and particularly law enforcement agencies, have promoted and enforced white supremacist and racist agendas. This also unfortunately shows that many white supremacist and far-right publications that seem to be on the ‘fringes’ of society actually have huge mainstream influence and impact.”

White supremacists are running the government, and sharing crazy, racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and radical conspiracy nonsense links across the federal bureaucracy.   And if you don't think each of these links is being approved by someone high up in the various Trump regime cabinet departments, well, you've not been paying attention to Trump.

This is absolutely being done on purpose to radicalize the government against those people.

It's not just the federal government either.  White supremacy is now acceptable at the state and local level too.

A city council candidate in Michigan said Friday she has no plans to end her campaign after shocking a public forum when she said she wants to keep her community white “as much as possible.” 

Jean Cramer made the comment Thursday in response to a question about diversity in Marysville, a city in St. Clair County, 55 miles (88 kilometers) northeast of Detroit. The Times Herald in Port Huron said she’s one of five candidates running for three council seats in November. 

More than 90% of Marysville’s 9,700-person population is white. 

During a follow-up interview Friday outside her Marysville home, Cramer doubled down on her statements. She said if there is a biracial marriage in their family, she could understand why her stance might upset her neighbors. 

“Because those people don’t know the other side of it,” she said. “For whatever reason, I’ve heard, they love each other, whatever, but there’s also such a thing as remaining single. People don’t necessarily have to get married, and, if they love somebody, love them single. There’s nothing wrong with that.” 

Cramer, 67, contends the bible backs her beliefs and asserts she doesn’t believe she is a racist, despite the condemnation of her views. 

“As far as I know, as long as we’ve been here, Marysville has been a white community, a white city,” she said. ”. If we have seen a black person here and there, whatever, we’re not bothered by it. I’m not bothered by it."

I still stand by the theory that much of white America turned on Barack Obama after Trayvon Martin.  For people older than myself, that was the last straw.  "We elected a black president and he dares to say there's still racism in America?  We'll make sure that never happens again."

The direct result of that was viewing Hillary Clinton as a traitor to her race, a white person who wanted to enact and expand on Obama's policies and that was just too much.  So now we have exactly what older Gen X and Boomers wanted: Reagan 2.0, the revenge, to burn down everything because they know as bad as things might get, it'll never be "I'm black or brown in America in 2019" bad for them.

Trump freed them to be able to say it out loud, and they'll never go back.  Never.

Last Call For Half The Koch Supply

The most fitting eulogy for Rright-wing asshole David Koch, one-half of the infamous Koch Brothers, comes from Earther's Brian Kahn, who reminds us that if you can't find anything nice to say about the recently deceased, tell the truth because the bastard is dead.

David Koch is dead.

The billionaire died this week at age 79 of causes yet unknown. While he certainly enjoyed the fruits of his labors to deregulate U.S. industry and reduce taxes on the super-wealthy like himself, he will never have to experience the consequences of his biggest achievement: putting the entire planet on the brink of crisis in the service of enriching himself and a few other fossil fuel billionaires. And we, the people and future generations who are going to live with the fallout, will never see him or the small cadre of wealthy conservatives who funded decades of climate denial face any form of justice.

Koch’s death was first reported by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer Friday morning and confirmed by his surviving brother, Charles, shortly thereafter. The two brothers were tied as the 11th richest people on the planet on the Forbes 100, with an estimated net worth of $50.5 billion each. They amassed so much wealth in part through business savvy—you likely don’t go a day without coming in contact with something made by some subsidiary of their privately owned Koch Industries conglomerate—and in part because they spent a comparative pittance of that fortune on turning our political system into a fucking nightmare. Funding astroturf groups like Americans for Prosperity and conservative politicians has led to widespread deregulation and huge tax breaks for their businesses, allowing them to take an even bigger share of the pie.

If ratcheting up inequality were all the Kochs did, they would still be arch-villains. But the Koch brothers’ businesses from fossil fuel extraction and refining to petrochemical and fertilizer production all rely on being able to emit carbon pollution with abandon. In the 1990s, as the world moved toward an awakening on climate change and the need to address it, the Koch machine moved to block any regulations or price on carbon that would cut into their profits by funding doubt and denial. Greenpeace estimates the brothers spent $127 million from 1997 to 2017 funding 92 organizations that muddied the waters on climate change, a move that helped make international efforts to combat climate change, like the Kyoto Protocol, worthless. They funded a network of overlapping climate denial organizations to kill a 2009 bill that would have created a cap and trade system, a very business-friendly climate solution they rejected on principle.

Now David Koch is dead. And he will never have to live with the consequences of his actions, all of which were for, I don’t know, making a point as part of some libertarian 101 seminar or maybe just plain old greed. (You could argue the two are synonymous.) Ditto for the other largely anonymous small cadre of conservative billionaires and fossil fuel executives who have peddled climate denial over the years all while making the problem worse by extracting more poison from the ground and putting it in the atmosphere. They’ll likely die long before things get really bleak, and the profits they made as one of the biggest market failures in human history will almost certainly ensure their descendants are insulated from the worst impacts.

If David Koch and his brother hadn’t funded denial—as Charles is likely to continue to do—it’s possible that the world would have taken steps to drawdown carbon pollution decades ago. If the world began cutting emissions in 2000, it would have had to do so at a rate of 4 percent per year to keep warming under the 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold. Starting today means “monumental” cuts. If we don’t do anything for 10 years, we’re in deep trouble. All the funding Koch kicked in for arts and cancer research won’t matter if the world burns down, a thing that’s actively happening to the Amazon rainforest on the same week he passed away.

Death was too good for the man.  He basically went out on top in the Evil Olympics.

Having said that...he went out.

Trump Trades Blows (Up)

Donald Trump just put a massive hole in the side of US-China relations, along with the US economy, by declaring Chinese President Xi Jinping the "enemy" and ordering US companies to "start looking for an alternative" to buying from and manufacturing in China.

Stocks plunged on Friday after President Donald Trump ordered in a series of tweets that U.S. manufacturers find alternatives to their operations in China. Apple led the way lower.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 600 points lower, or 2.3%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite slid 2.5% and 2.9%, respectively. The losses brought the Dow’s decline for August to more than 4%.

Trump tweeted on Friday: “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing..your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” However, it is not clear how much authority the president has on this front.

“The threats always been out there but there’s been no need to provoke that,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities. “It’s almost like the administration was expecting the Fed to announce a rate cut at the Jackson hole meeting.”

Apple shares dropped 4.4%. The VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) slid 4% as Nvidia and Broadcom both fell around 5%. Caterpillar shares, meanwhile, pulled back 3.1%.

Friday’s decline added to a series of sharp moves down this month. The Nasdaq has now fallen at least 1% six times this month while the Dow has posted five drops of 1% or more. The S&P 500 has closed down 1% or more four times in August. Those moves come as the U.S.-China trade war intensifies while the bond market flashes a recession signal.

Trump’s tweets come after China unveiled new tariffs on Chinese goods. China will implement new tariffs on another $75 billion worth of U.S. goods, including autos. The tariffs will range between 5% and 10% and will be implemented in two batches on Sept. 1 and Dec. 15.

The White House has previously said that Trump's tweets carry the weight of executive order.  We'll see how true that is in the days to come.

The Trump Regime's Race To The Bottom, Con't

The pervasive, hateful racism of the Trump regime has gotten to the point now where the day-to-day operations of the federal government are being conducted with racism, antisemitism, and white supremacy being the active default mode.

An email sent from the Justice Department to all immigration court employees this week included a link to an article posted on a white nationalist website that “directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs,” according to a letter sent by an immigration judges union and obtained by BuzzFeed News.
According to the National Association of Immigration Judges, the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) sent court employees a link to a blog post from VDare, a white nationalist website, in its morning news briefing earlier this week that included anti-Semitic attacks on judges. 

The briefings are sent to court employees every weekday and include links to various immigration news items. BuzzFeed News confirmed the link to a blog post was sent to immigration court employees Monday. The post detailed a recent move by the Justice Department to decertify the immigration judges union. 

A letter Thursday from union chief Ashley Tabaddor to James McHenry, the director of the Justice Department’s EOIR, said the link to the VDare post angered many judges. 

“The post features links and content that directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs and the label ‘Kritarch.’ The reference to Kritarch in a negative tone is deeply offensive and Anti-Semitic,” wrote Tabaddor. The VDare post includes pictures of judges with the term “kritarch” preceding their names. 

Tabaddor said the term kritarchy is a reference to ancient Israel during a time of rule by a system of judges. 

“VDare’s use of the term in a pejorative manner casts Jewish history in a negative light as an Anti-Semitic trope of Jews seeking power and control,” she wrote. 

Tabaddor called on McHenry to take immediate action over the distribution of white nationalist content. 

“Publication and dissemination of a white supremacist, anti-semitic website throughout the EOIR is antithetical to the goals and ideals of the Department of Justice,” she wrote. The court, Tabaddor wrote, should immediately withdraw the email and issue an apology to all immigration judges, including those mentioned in the post. 

“Separately, EOIR should take all appropriate safety and security measures for all judges given the tone and tenor of this posting,” she wrote. 

After publication of this article, EOIR Assistant Press Secretary Kathryn Mattingly told BuzzFeed News “the daily EOIR morning news briefings are compiled by a contractor and the blog post should not have been included. The Department of Justice condemns Anti-Semitism in the strongest terms.”

A former senior DOJ official said that the email in question was "generated by a third-party vendor that utilizes keyword searches to produce news clippings for staff. It is not reviewed or approved by staff before it is transmitted."

It wasn't us, it was the algorithm!

Look, if your workplace openly connects to VDare for news articles to send to employees, somebody needs to be fired.  Sadly, in this day an age, that's probably worth a promotion.

StupidiNews!

• NYPD detectives are investigating the death of Andrea Zamperoni, the award-winning chef at New York's Cipriani Dolci was found dead in a Queens building after being reported missing on Monday.
• Kansas politicians from both parties are apparently pressuring GOP Rep. Steve Watkins to resign after speculation grew over a possible affair and sexual assault during his 2018 campaign.
• Hong Kong is bracing for another weekend of protests and general strikes that could shut the city's airport down once again as unrest continues into its third month.
• Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will join FOX News next month, drawing sharp criticism from liberals and journalists.
• New mapping details of broadband internet households in Virginia and Missouri finds that the FCC may be massively overestimating the number of American homes served by broadband.

Last Call For Mitch, Interrupted

Everything you need to know about why Democrats should get rid of the filibuster once they get control of the Senate comes in the form of Mitch McConnell taking to the NY Times op-ed section to scold them not to.

A Democratic assault on the legislative filibuster would make the nomination fights look like child’s play. That’s because systematically filibustering nominees was not an old tradition but a modern phenomenon, pioneered in 2003 by Democrats who opposed President George W. Bush. When Republicans followed suit and held up a handful of Obama nominees the same way, Democrats could not stomach their own medicine and began a “nuclear” exchange that Republicans had to end.

The back-and-forth was regrettable, but the silver lining is that the failed experiment Democrats started in 2003 is now over. The Senate has taken a step back toward its centuries-old norms on nominations: limited debate and a simple majority threshold.

On legislation, however, the Senate’s treasured tradition is not efficiency but deliberation. One of the body’s central purposes is making new laws earn broader support than what is required for a bare majority in the House. The legislative filibuster does not appear in the Constitution’s text, but it is central to the order the Constitution sets forth. It echoes James Madison’s explanation in Federalist 62 that the Senate is designed not to rubber-stamp House bills but to act as an “additional impediment” and “complicated check” on “improper acts of legislation.” It embodies Thomas Jefferson’s principle that “great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.”

The legislative filibuster is directly downstream from our founding tradition. If that tradition frustrates the whims of those on the far left, it is their half-baked proposals and not the centuries-old wisdom that need retooling.

Yes, the Senate’s design makes it difficult for one party to enact sweeping legislation on its own. Yes, the filibuster makes policy less likely to seesaw wildly with every election. These are features, not bugs. Our country doesn’t need a second House of Representatives with fewer members and longer terms. America needs the Senate to be the Senate.

I recognize it may seem odd that a Senate majority leader opposes a proposal to increase his own power. Certainly it is curious that liberals are choosing this moment, when Americans have elected Republican majorities three consecutive times and counting, to attack the minority’s powers.

But my Republican colleagues and I have not and will not vandalize this core tradition for short-term gain. We recognize what everyone should recognize — there are no permanent victories in politics. No Republican has any trouble imagining the laundry list of socialist policies that 51 Senate Democrats would happily inflict on Middle America in a filibuster-free Senate.

Now Mitch isn't writing this for his base, he's writing this as an open threat to Democratic voters to not elect Democrats.  For all of his posturing and scolding, the only real thing that matters is control of the Senate with 51 Senators (or 50 plus the VP).  The "historical mores" of the Senate have only resulted in years of useless gridlock, and a Republican Senate bound and determined not to pass legislation.

The best thing we could do is get rid of Mitch McConnell.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

The Justice Department under William Barr is going to take years to fix because the entire place is poisoned by Trumpified US attorneys like the one whose district includes Philadelphia, William McSwain.

U.S. Attorney William McSwain quickly blamed Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner for the August 14 shooting of six police officers who were trying to serve a warrant. In a statement released less than 24 hours after the standoff ended in North Philadelphia, McSwain, the U.S attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said the shooting was “precipitated by a stunning disrespect for law enforcement” that was “championed” by Krasner.

“The [district attorney’s office] has no interest in engaging with Bill McSwain’s inappropriate attempts to run for political office from his taxpayer-funded perch in Donald Trump’s DOJ,” Krasner spokesperson Jane Roh told The Appeal.

Seems like Trumpies will Trump, but there's always more to the story.

McSwain failed to mention, however, that alleged shooter Maurice Hill’s interactions with law enforcement predated Krasner taking office. Nor did McSwain acknowledge that the 36-year-old Hill, who on Saturday was charged by Krasner’s office with attempted murder and multiple counts of aggravated assault related to the incident, has been a federal informant for years, according to documents obtained by The Appeal.

In June 2008, Hill entered a guilty plea the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was sentenced in the case in 2010. In an April 2010 sentencing memorandum filed with the court, Hill’s attorney Wayne Maynard stated that federal prosecutors filed a motion for a downward departure from Hill’s guideline sentence because he provided substantial assistance to the federal government. “He has testified before the Grand Jury on two occasions, was willing to testify at trial, and provided information about a shooter that led to an arrest,” Maynard wrote. “He has cooperated with the Government and provided information that has and will likely continue to imperil his safety and that of his family.”

Maynard argued that Hill should receive a lower-than-average sentence because of his cooperation and that a federal prosecutor made a similar argument for such a sentence. The federal prosecutor’s sentencing memorandum was sealed by the court, so the specifics of the downward departure are unknown.

In April 2010, Hill was sentenced to 55 months in federal prison followed by three years on supervised release. That year, the average sentence for a person convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm was more than 75 months in prison, according to statistics published by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

According to the agency, roughly one-quarter of all people sentenced in federal court received a sentence below the standard guideline minimum, the majority of whom received sentencing relief for providing substantial assistance to the federal government.

Prosecutors often file substantial-assistance motions in these cases; upon such a motion, which states that a defendant has provided substantial assistance in an investigation or prosecution of another person who has committed an offense, the court may depart from the sentencing guidelines. However, because much of Hill’s federal court record is sealed, it is unknown whether such a motion was filed in his case.

So of course, McSwain blamed Philly DA Larry Krasner for something that happened before Krasner took office, and it wasn't even Krasner who put Hill back on the streets.

It was the Feds.

Orange Snowflakes In Greenland

Donald Trump got his feelings hurt when Denmark's Prime Minister told him Greenland wasn't for sale, and now we have a full-blown international incident on our hands with yet another European ally.

President Trump on Wednesday lashed out at Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, saying the leader of the U.S. ally had made “nasty” comments about his interest in having the United States purchase Greenland.

Trump announced Tuesday night that he was calling off a planned two-day state visit to Copenhagen early next month over Frederiksen’s refusal to entertain the sale of Greenland, a self-governing country that is part of the kingdom of Denmark.

Frederiksen told reporters Wednesday she was surprised by Trump’s change in plans and also lamented the missed opportunity to celebrate the historical alliance between Denmark and the United States, saying preparations for the visit had been “well underway.”

Frederiksen called the idea of the sale of Greenland “absurd” over the weekend after news broke of Trump’s interest — a characterization that apparently offended him.

“I thought it was not a nice statement, the way she blew me off,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “She shouldn’t treat the United States that way. . . . She said ‘absurd.’ That’s not the right word to use.”

Trump’s comment came during a rambling, 35-minute back-and-forth with reporters outside the White House, where he reversed his position on some issues facing his administration while also reiterating comments that have already sparked several rounds of controversy this week.

Trump's put a year's worth of chaos into one week, and it's only Thursday morning.

The president defended his trade war with China despite worries that his tariffs have become a drag on the economy while chastising his predecessors for not taking a tougher line with Beijing.

“Somebody had to do it,” he said before looking skyward and proclaiming: “I am the chosen one.”

He said he still wants to end birthright citizenship through an executive order — an idea that was dismissed by most legal experts as unconstitutional when he floated it late last year — while also disputing reports that he is backing away from a plan to expand background checks following recent mass shootings. 

Trump denied he is considering a payroll tax cut to head off a recession, arguing that there is no need to do so even after he confirmed it was under consideration the previous day.

He intensified his criticism of Jewish voters who support Democrats, calling them “very disloyal to Israel.”

And Trump continued to serve as the loudest cheerleader for his own record, while dismissing any criticism of his actions or rhetoric.

“I was put here by people to do a great job, and that’s what I’m doing,” he said. “And nobody’s done a job like I’ve done.”

It's exhausting, all of it.

StupidiNews!

• California police have arrested a 37-year-old hotel cook who was allegedly planning to kill co-workers and guests, police found multiple rifles and tactical gear at the suspect's home.
• Over 73,000 forest fires have been recorded in Brazil in the first eight months of 2019 as President Jair Bolsonaro is under fire for increased deforestation of the Amazon rain forest.
• Washington state Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee has pulled out of the 2020 presidential contest, Inslee's climate change-centered campaign struggled to break out of the bottom of the pack of 20+ Dems.
• Italy's government faces collapse as PM Giuseppe Conte has resigned, leaving a caretaker government headed by President Sergio Materella as major political talks are underway.
• Dutch scientists are getting closer to a universal blood test that can flag major factors in premature death in people under 60, the tests so far are about 83% accurate.