StupidiNews!

• A suspect is in custody after a rental van plowed through a crowded Toronto sidewalk, killing 10 and injuring 15.
• Kate Middleton and Prince Harry are celebrating the birth of their third child for the British royal couple, the newborn prince is fifth in line to succession of the throne.
• Nashville police have arrested the suspect in Sunday's Waffle House shooting that killed 4, the suspect's father could face prosecution in Illinois for giving his son the rifle allegedly used.
• CIA Director Mike Pompeo has won a narrow 10-9 vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Pompeo could get a full Senate vote this week on his State Department nomination.
• An "unpatchable" vulnerability in the Nintendo Switch could allow enthusiasts to homebrew code on any current Switch console, or hackers to completely take over the device.

Last Call For A Claire Winner In Greitens's War

As embattled Missouri GOP Gov. Eric Greitens refuses to resign as Governor, blaming the liberal media for his problems despite felony sexual assault charges for essentially kidnapping his mistress and felony computer tampering charges for stealing his veterans' charity donor list for his own campaign's use, state GOP AG Josh Hawley has his hands full fighting calls for his own resignation for breaking Reagan's 11th Commandment.  The bigger problem for Hawley is that furious Republicans are turning on each other as his race to replace Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill is heating up.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill is up for reelection. And, like clockwork, the Republican Party of Missouri is in complete turmoil again. 

McCaskill won a second term term in 2012 when GOP Rep. Todd Akin’s campaign imploded in the wake of his comments about “legitimate rape.” Now, Republicans worry GOP Gov. Eric Greitens’ mounting scandals will inundate McCaskill’s likely Republican opponent, state Attorney General Josh Hawley, and bestow another term on one of the most endangered incumbent senators in the country.

Greitens was indicted in February for allegedly taking a nonconsensual nude photograph of a former lover, and the woman testified under oath that Greitens had a forced sexual encounter with her. As if that weren’t bad enough for the GOP, Greitens is refusing to step down, thrusting two of the most prominent Republican elected officials in the state into open warfare. 

Hawley demanded that Greitens resign and triggered a new investigation into the governor’s fundraising, resulting in a second indictment last week. Greitens has fired back by seeking a restraining order against the attorney general, saying that Hawley’s call for resignation meant he could not conduct an impartial investigation of the governor. 

The scandals are damaging the GOP at the most critical interval of its six-year wait to unseat McCaskill. 

"[Greitens] is jeopardizing the whole Republican Party of Missouri," said Rob Jesmer, a top Republican consultant who was executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee when Akin made his infamous comments about rape and abortion during McCaskill’s last campaign.

It's funny here that the victim is the Missouri GOP and not, you know, the woman Grietens allegedly assaulted or the donor list to the vets' charity the Greitens founded whose data Greitens allegedly stole.  We're supposed to feel sorry for the Republicans because they are losing the opportunity to beat Claire McCaskill.

There's an easy solution if the problem is Greitens: impeach and remove him from office.  Republicans control nearly three-quarters of both the state House and Senate and could basically get rid of him without a Democratic vote, not that the Democrats aren't eager to get rid of the guy.

But Missouri Republicans are dragging their feet on impeachment and want to wait until the legislature's investigation is complete despite the felony charges from Hawley's office.  That could mean that the legislature would have to call a special session themselves (not like Greitens will do it) to impeach, and for that they would need some Democratic votes.  Democrats aren't committing to that because there's not a reason to delay the process until after the current legislative session.

Frankly, I hope the Missouri GOP keeps up with the self-inflicted wounds.  Some of the state's biggest GOP donors do want Greitens gone, but others are making it clear that moving against Greitens will close their checkbooks, and Hawley's senate campaign funding is their leverage.  Pulling the plug on Hawley's war chest, or at least not filling it, is a real possible result from this mess.  Meanwhile, Senate Dems are flush with cash.

And the winner?  Justice, of course.  Claire McCaskill having a much easier time in November is a bonus, but the reality is that Greitens needs to be punished for his crimes regardless of the election result in Missouri.

Trump Cards, Con't

I've long said that Trump's ego and fixation on petty revenge against slights both real and perceived drives every action he does.  Chief among his actions is moving to punish the Obama voting coalition in order to tear it apart, specifically moving against the black, Hispanic, and Asian communities.

But there's another group that is often overlooked in this coalition, Native Americans, who overwhelmingly voted Democratic and for Obama in 2012 and 2016.  It's no surprise that Trump is now choosing to go after them as well.

The Trump administration says Native Americans might need to get a job if they want to keep their health care — a policy that tribal leaders say will threaten access to care and reverse centuries-old protections. 

Tribal leaders want an exemption from new Medicaid work rules being introduced in several states, and they say there are precedents for health care exceptions. Native Americans don’t have to pay penalties for not having health coverage under Obamacare’s individual mandate, for instance.

But the Trump administration contends the tribes are a race rather than separate governments, and exempting them from Medicaid work rules — which have been approved in three states and are being sought by at least 10 others — would be illegal preferential treatment. “HHS believes that such an exemption would raise constitutional and federal civil rights law concerns,” according to a review by administration lawyers. 

The Health and Human Services Department confirmed it rebuffed the tribes’ request on the Medicaid rules several times. Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, conveyed the decision in January, and officials communicated it most recently at a meeting with the tribes this month. HHS’ ruling was driven by political appointees in the general counsel and civil rights offices, say three individuals with knowledge of the decision. 

Senior HHS officials “have made it clear that HHS is open to considering other suggestions that tribes may have with respect to Medicaid community engagement demonstration projects,” spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said, using the administration’s term for work requirements that can also be fulfilled with job training, education and similar activities. 

The tribes insist that any claim of “racial preference” is moot because they’re constitutionally protected as separate governments, dating back to treaties hammered out by President George Washington and reaffirmed in recent decades under Republican and Democratic presidents alike, including the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations. 

“The United States has a legal responsibility to provide health care to Native Americans,” said Mary Smith, who was acting head of the Indian Health Service during the Obama administration and is a member of the Cherokee Nation. “It’s the largest prepaid health system in the world — they’ve paid through land and massacres — and now you’re going to take away health care and add a work requirement?”

Trump won't stop at that.  If the regime's position is that tribes have no separate governmental authority, then that destroys centuries' worth of legal protections, something Republicans have long wanted to accomplish.

It looks like Trump is moving to make that happen, as if the federal government of this country hadn't already caused tribes enough grief and sorrow.

The Bernie Sanders Show

Don't look now, but while people in both parties seem to be too busy screaming at Hillary Clinton to just go away and die or something because nobody likes a political loser while simultaneously running against her in November, it seems that political loser Bernie Sanders is getting accolades for pulling a Trump TV.

The Vermont senator, who’s been comparing corporate television programming to drugs and accusing it of creating a “nation of morons” since at least 1979 — and musing to friends about creating an alternative news outlet for at least as long — has spent the last year and a half building something close to a small network out of his office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill.

He understands, but resents, the comparison to the man who’s described the news media as the “enemy of the people.” His take is different, and he has his own plans. “[Am I concerned] that people might see me and Trump saying the same thing? Yes, I am,” Sanders conceded, leaning back in a leather chair in a conference room in his office on a recent Tuesday, as footage of Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony one building over played on TVs throughout his office. Wearing his standard uniform — long tie, jacket in need of a few swipes with a lint roller — he launched into the critique now familiar to anyone who’s watched one of his rallies. “My point of view is a very, very different one. My point of view is the corporate media, by definition, is owned by large multinational corporations: their bottom line is to make as much money as they can. They are part of the Establishment. There are issues, there are conflicts of interest in terms of fossil fuel advertising — how they have been very, very weak, in terms of climate change.” Needless to say, the content he produces is not sponsored by advertisers.

Sanders hosts an interview show (“The Bernie Sanders Show”) that he started streaming over Facebook Live on a semi-regular basis after his staff got the idea in February of 2017 to film the senator chatting with the activist Rev. Dr. William Barber. After they posted that simple clip and it earned hundreds of thousands of views with no promotion, they experimented with more seriously producing Sanders’s conversation days later with Bill Nye.

The chat with the Science Guy ended up with 4.5 million views. Sensing an opportunity, the next day Sanders’s aides turned down multiple network TV requests and took his response to Trump’s first address to Congress directly to his Facebook page.

Things escalated. Audio recordings of his conversations, repackaged as a podcast, have since occasionally reached near the top of iTunes’ list of popular programs. Sanders’s press staff — three aides, including Armand Aviram, a former producer at NowThis News, and three paid interns — published 550 original short, policy-focused videos on Facebook and Twitter in 2017 alone. And, this year, he has begun experimenting with streaming town-hall-style programs on Facebook. Each of those live events has outdrawn CNN on the night it aired.

“The idea that we can do a town meeting which would get a significantly larger viewing audience than CNN at that time is something I would not have dreamed of in a million years, a few years ago,” Sanders says.

The result is a growing venue for Sanders’s legions of backers, and other curious progressives, to take in tightly curated lefty takes on policy news — one that, increasingly, competes directly with more traditional news outlets for eyeballs. There’s little room for minute-by-minute analysis of White House drama or Robert Mueller’s probe — and no panels full of opining “strategists” — but also little room for dissent. The scale is unmatched by any other politician, inviting obvious questions about whether Sanders plans to pivot it into a massive primary campaign-mobilization machine come 2020. But the mainstream media criticism implicit in the venture also invites obvious comparisons — if equally stark contrasts — to the man crying “Fake news” at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

It's weird how Sanders is not only allowed to do this but encouraged to do it, something that if Hillary Clinton had tried would be trashed by approximately 90% of America as "fascist propaganda" and "hate speech" by 60% of America.  If Hillary went online to do this, we'd have GOP legislation regulating political speech on the internet by the end of the month.

And yes, there's the problem where Sanders freely admits that American media should be viewed as the untrustworthy enemy "establishment" and bypassed completely in favor of Sanders getting his "direct message" out to the people. 

There's a fair number of people who want to hear Bernie's message, but it seems that on the Left, only he's allowed to have a message.  Everyone in the Democratic party is already automatically suspect, and that's his real message.  You can't trust the party, you can't trust the media, you can only trust me.

That's also Donald Trump's current message.

I do not care for it.

StupidiNews!

• French President Emmanuel Macron will be the subject of Donald Trump's first hosted state dinner this week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit the US later this week.
• Nashville police continue a manhunt for the 29-year-old white right-wing terrorist who killed four in a Waffle House early Sunday, schools are being searched and on lock-out barring all visitors.
• Trump's travel ban legislation gets its first Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday as Hawaii and other states argue that the ban unfairly targets people of Muslim faith. 
• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says CIA Director Mike Pompeo will get a full vote before the Senate even if his nomination for Secretary of State does not pass the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
• The Trump regime now wants to turn to the Defense Production Act of 1950 to bail out coal and nuclear energy companies by increasing production as a national security matter.

Last Call For The Snowiest Of Snowflakes

Silicon Valley techbros are asking "what about us white guys?" and want safe spaces away from all that horrible non-whiteness and vagina-having where they can finally feel included in America.

Paul Mann wants to create a safe space for white men.

Mann, a white man who has spent years in the education industry, has begun leading workshops in San Francisco that encourage people in his demographic to explore feelings about race and gender and think about how to better assist women and nonwhites in their workplaces.

Most diversity training is inclusive of all races and genders. But Stepping Up, Mann’s program that began in January, is unusual because the workshops are designed for white men and led by a white man.

It’s an approach that has inevitably stirred controversy. It’s not something that Starbucks, for example, will pursue when it closes its stores in Mayfor a half-day diversity training in the wake of the arrest of two black men at a Philadelphia coffee shop. And creating a “safe space,” a stated goal of Stepping Up, is a concept traditionally associated with people who feel marginalized or victimized.

But Mann says some white men are afraid of saying the wrong thing or worry they’ll be put on the defensive — and Stepping Up allows them to express themselves openly and practice language without hurting anyone.

“All this attention has been paid to tech companies not having enough women and not being racially diverse,” Mann said. “It just seems obvious to me that we are ignoring the whole half of the equation, which is white people and men.”

Kim Scott, a former Google executive and author of the leadership book, “Radical Candor,” strongly disagrees with the approach, saying it’s important to learn from people with different backgrounds and perspectives.

“I am glad they care enough to discuss the issue,” Scott said. “I’m very sorry to hear that white men feel so fearful that they feel they have to have this conversation without inviting women and minorities to join.”

I have to say, if you feel the need to have a diversity workshop without any actual diversity in your diversity workshop, it's not a diversity workshop.  Sure, asking white men to think about gender and race is definitely needed, but when your first criteria is "needing to limit the space for the discussion on diversity to white men" you're not just missing the point, you're butchering it.

On purpose.
 

Mitt-igating Circumstances

Mitt Romney finished second in yesterday's Utah GOP primary caucus yesterday, meaning he now faces a June runoff primary against state Rep. Mike Kennedy for Sen. Orrin Hatch's seat.

After a wild and raucous day of voting at the Utah GOP convention, the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee was unable to win the 60% that he needed to head to the November ballot unopposed. When none of the 12 candidates were able to cross that threshold, the party continued with successive rounds of caucus voting until one candidate reached 40%. 

On the second round of voting, Utah state representative Mike Kennedy emerged in the lead with 50.88%. Romney came in a close second with 49.12%. 

Romney and Kennedy will now compete in a primary set for June 26. 

After the vote, Romney said he was looking forward to a primary race. 

"This is terrific for the people of Utah, and I really want to thank the delegates who stayed so late to give me the kind of boost that I got here today," Romney said, standing on the convention floor after the proceedings were adjourned. "We're going to have a good primary." 

Kennedy, who had framed the race as David vs. Goliath, said when asked why he had edged out Romney in the vote that he wasn't sure. 

"I don't know," Kennedy said when asked why he thought his message appealed more to delegates than Romney's. "I don't know -- it's just my message."

Or it could be that nobody actually likes the guy.  Still, Romney was able to navigate Utah's byzantine GOP primary rules and if he does win the primary would have to be considered a frontrunner for Hatch's seat.  Hatch is retiring after his 7th term, a whopping 42 years in the US Senate.

Then again, Sen. Mike Lee won the other Utah Senate seat by driving Sen. Bob Bennett out of the party in 2010 as not conservative enough.  Utah Republicans can be weird.

What I do know is that the leading Democratic candidate, Salt Lake City Councilwoman Jenny Wilson, doesn't have much of a chance.  We could be stuck with Mittens in the US Senate for a while if he wins the primary as he's 71, but if Kennedy wins, well, he could be in there for 42 years too.

No real good news here for Dems unless Utah goes through a major demographic change towards purple/blue like the rest of the US Southwest.  It may happen, but not soon enough to help this time around.

Sunday Long Read: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes

As the data privacy debate over social media and online services rages on, it already may be a moot point.  The federal government and many state and local governments are already customers of data analysis giant Palantir, and odds are Palantir knows everything about you already, consent or not.

High above the Hudson River in downtown Jersey City, a former U.S. Secret Service agent named Peter Cavicchia III ran special ops for JPMorgan Chase & Co. His insider threat group—most large financial institutions have one—used computer algorithms to monitor the bank’s employees, ostensibly to protect against perfidious traders and other miscreants. 

Aided by as many as 120 “forward-deployed engineers” from the data mining company Palantir Technologies Inc., which JPMorgan engaged in 2009, Cavicchia’s group vacuumed up emails and browser histories, GPS locations from company-issued smartphones, printer and download activity, and transcripts of digitally recorded phone conversations. Palantir’s software aggregated, searched, sorted, and analyzed these records, surfacing keywords and patterns of behavior that Cavicchia’s team had flagged for potential abuse of corporate assets. Palantir’s algorithm, for example, alerted the insider threat team when an employee started badging into work later than usual, a sign of potential disgruntlement. That would trigger further scrutiny and possibly physical surveillance after hours by bank security personnel. 

Over time, however, Cavicchia himself went rogue. Former JPMorgan colleagues describe the environment as Wall Street meets Apocalypse Now, with Cavicchia as Colonel Kurtz, ensconced upriver in his office suite eight floors above the rest of the bank’s security team. People in the department were shocked that no one from the bank or Palantir set any real limits. They darkly joked that Cavicchia was listening to their calls, reading their emails, watching them come and go. Some planted fake information in their communications to see if Cavicchia would mention it at meetings, which he did. 

It all ended when the bank’s senior executives learned that they, too, were being watched, and what began as a promising marriage of masters of big data and global finance descended into a spying scandal. The misadventure, which has never been reported, also marked an ominous turn for Palantir, one of the most richly valued startups in Silicon Valley. An intelligence platform designed for the global War on Terror was weaponized against ordinary Americans at home. 

Founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel and some fellow PayPal alumni, Palantir cut its teeth working for the Pentagon and the CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. The company’s engineers and products don’t do any spying themselves; they’re more like a spy’s brain, collecting and analyzing information that’s fed in from the hands, eyes, nose, and ears. The software combs through disparate data sources—financial documents, airline reservations, cellphone records, social media postings—and searches for connections that human analysts might miss. It then presents the linkages in colorful, easy-to-interpret graphics that look like spider webs. U.S. spies and special forces loved it immediately; they deployed Palantir to synthesize and sort the blizzard of battlefield intelligence. It helped planners avoid roadside bombs, track insurgents for assassination, even hunt down Osama bin Laden. The military success led to federal contracts on the civilian side. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services uses Palantir to detect Medicare fraud. The FBI uses it in criminal probes. The Department of Homeland Security deploys it to screen air travelers and keep tabs on immigrants.

Police and sheriff’s departments in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and Los Angeles have also used it, frequently ensnaring in the digital dragnet people who aren’t suspected of committing any crime. People and objects pop up on the Palantir screen inside boxes connected to other boxes by radiating lines labeled with the relationship: “Colleague of,” “Lives with,” “Operator of [cell number],” “Owner of [vehicle],” “Sibling of,” even “Lover of.” If the authorities have a picture, the rest is easy. Tapping databases of driver’s license and ID photos, law enforcement agencies can now identify more than half the population of U.S. adults.

Increasingly in America, Palantir's systems tell cops, fraud investigators, immigration officials,  and employers who to suspect, and once you get into the system, you're trapped there for good.  Never committed a crime?  Too bad: if you have any sort of relationship to anyone who has, you're in Palantir's digital gaze.  Your life is a series of data pages, and Palantir turns it into an open book for the right bidder to read.

We can talk about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica all day, but it's Palantir and data analysis firms like it already involved in every aspect of your life that are the problem outside the voting booth.

Who watches the watchmen?

Nobody knows.  But they are sure as hell watching all of us.

Farming Up Some Votes

Rural Trump voters in red states are coming to terms with what Trump's trade war with China means: already damaged farm economies are only going to get worse. Democrats think there's fertile soil here to grow something strong.

Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat and longtime farmer who is running in another of the nation's most hotly contested races, said that he would support subsidies over nothing at all if Trump doesn't back away from the tariffs.

"I think as a last-ditch effort, yeah," Tester said. "Short of putting people out of business, I'd support them."

But Democrats say Trump's trade agenda has gone in exactly the wrong direction for American farmers.

"What he really needs to do instead of contracting trade markets is expand them, and he's not doing that," Tester said. "Farmers would much rather get their payments from the marketplace, so he needs to expand the markets."

Many Democrats see political opportunity in the treatment the agricultural community has gotten from Trump, who said recently that farmers will "understand that they're doing this for the country" and that he would "make it up to them."

Kristen Hawn, a Democratic strategist who is working with several House candidates, said Trump's message won't land well in the heartland.

"Anyone who tells these hardworking Americans that they should take it on the chin is not just wrong," Hawn said. "They do it at their own political peril."

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said his party was already well positioned to take advantage of a Trump backlash among suburban Republicans and that White House trade policy could help expand the map of politically competitive districts.

"He’s not looking too good in the rural areas either right now," Pallone said. "If [we] start winning seats in Iowa and some of the farm areas, then they are really in trouble.”

Trump's actions forced the debate over tariffs and subsidies, but many Republicans and Democrats — and their rural voters — would like to see him simply walk back the proposed tariffs.

"He brought [subsidies] up but really the whole focus of the discussion shifted to markets and trade and fair trade and not having tariffs," Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said after meeting with Trump last week.

But the president also told lawmakers repeatedly that he has his finger on the pulse of rural America.

"He said multiple times he’s very focused [on] getting something that’s very good for agriculture and good for farmers and ranchers, and that farmers and ranchers supported him in his election," Hoeven said.

But even among those farmers, support for the president doesn't automatically translate into support for his agriculture policy.

Raybould, running against Fischer in Nebraska, has endorsed a bill introduced by Sens. Jeff Flake, Ariz., and Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., that would nullify Trump's proposed action on steel and aluminum imports.

"We need more trading partners, not fewer trading partners," she said.

In a statement released after last week's White House meeting, Fischer said she told Trump "how critical it is that we work together to protect markets" both domestically and internationally.

These issues are "causing anxiety and uncertainty" among her constituents, she said.

I don't have very high hopes for Democrats winning back states like Iowa or Indiana or Kansas, because I don't think for a second that the real issues people vote on in red states have much to do with economics.  Republicans will put together enough of a farm bill package to keep farmers and ranchers loyal, I'm sure.

But the reality is while Trump's trade war may depress GOP turnout, there's a wide chasm between "I'm not going to vote Republican" and "I'll vote for the Democrat in the race instead".  It's not going to be bridged anytime soon.  Trump's approval rating among Republicans remains upwards of 80-85%.

As long as he can prove that his policies are hurting urban Democrats and those people more than farm country, they'll applaud him while their economies burn, if not gladly hand him the matches and the gasoline.

Last Call For Assad's Useful Idiot

Before Nina Turner or Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein made it clear that cashing in on Clinton-bashing was a thing, former Dem Rep. Dennis Kucinich was making the rounds as the dirtbag left's favorite son.  With Ohio's Democratic nomination for governor relatively open, the Mistake from the Lake is already finding out just how much of a massive albatross he would be in a general election.

Ahead of a tight primary on May 8, Dennis Kucinich’s bid to win the Democratic nomination for the critical gubernatorial race in Ohio landed in trouble this week because of the revelation that he was paid $20,000 last year by a group sympathetic to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Now, largely overlooked election filings show that the former congressman’s political apparatus received thousands of more dollars from two brothers involved in multiple efforts to bring Kucinich and Assad together since 2007.

Elie Khawam, a member of a pro-Assad party in the Middle East, gave $6,000 to Kucinich Action PAC in two installments: $1,000 on May 4, 2015, and $5,000 on Nov. 1, 2016, two months before Kucinich’s most recent meeting in Syria with the dictator. Elie’s brother, Bassam Khawam, gave $2,000 to the Kucinich for President campaign on June 30, 2012. Both men, who are U.S. citizens, accompanied Kucinich on his January 2017 visit, and Bassam has said they funded the trip.

Kucinich has depicted his visits with Assad ― all but one of which took place after the Syrian ruler began turning his guns on his own people in 2011― as important diplomatic outreach to avoid American foreign policy mistakes and militarism. But he has also repeatedly downplayed credible reports of war crimes by the Assad regime, including at an April 2017 British conference the pro-Assad group paid for him to attend, three months after his trip to Damascus. Kucinich opponents are now making the issue central to the question of whether he’s fit to be governor.

“Kucinich has been an outspoken defender of the Assad regime in Syria even as it killed countless people and has repeatedly used chemical weapons against defenseless civilians,” former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D), a supporter of Democratic front-runner Richard Cordray, said Wednesday.

Cordray’s campaign is already demanding that Kucinich reveal any other income since he left Congress in 2013, including potential payments for multiple appearances on RT, a media outlet owned by the pro-Assad government of Russia.

The former congressman’s financial ties to the Khawam brothers could add fuel to the fire.

Asked about the donations, Kucinich spokesman Andy Juniewicz noted that the men had been friends for over 30 years. The Kucinich campaign says Cordray’s team is misrepresenting his views.

Admitting a 30 year relationship with pro-Assad war crimes truthers is probably a bad idea, even in Ohio.  I'm glad this came out now rather than after Kucinich might have beaten Rob Cordray in the primary.

Maybe it's terrible saying that, but hopefully this will knock Kucinich out of Ohio politics for good.

Meet The New El Jefe, Same As The Old El Jefe

After more than a decade, Raul Castro has stepped down as Cuba's president, handing off power to his selected successor and Cuba is still Cuba. Anyone hoping for major new reforms, especially in the Trump era, are going to be majorly disappointed.

His handpicked successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, 57, is a Communist Party loyalist who was born a year after Fidel Castro claimed power in Cuba. His rise ushers in a new generation of Cubans whose only firsthand experience with the revolution has been its aftermath — the early era of plenty, the periods of economic privation after the demise of the Soviet Union, and the fleeting détente in recent years with the United States, its Cold War foe.

Officials started gathering here in Havana on Wednesday morning and put forward Mr. Díaz-Canel as the sole candidate to replace Mr. Castro, all but assuring his selection by the Communist Party.

Though Mr. Díaz-Canel’s path to the top office has been forecast for years, many an heir apparent before him has fallen by the wayside in the search for a successor to lead the country, whether because of party disloyalty, snide remarks or projecting too much power for the Castros’ liking.

In that delicate balancing act, Mr. Díaz-Canel, a former provincial leader who became the most important of Cuba’s vice presidents, has shown the sort of restraint prized by the Castros. But that same caution has left him an enigma both inside and outside the country.

Few American officials — even those in the United States Embassy in Havana — have spent time with him or can claim to have shared more than a few passing words. Even the most seasoned Cuba experts have only faint clues as to what he will do, how he will lead and how much latitude he will have to chart his own course.

Cuba’s next president could be hemmed in from multiple sides. For one, Raúl Castro is expected to remain the head of the Communist Party and wield great influence. Even Fidel, who ruled Cuba since the revolution, did not officially become president until years later, allowing others to occupy the post while he ran the country.

Beyond that, the diplomatic opening with the United States has closed abruptly under President Trump, limiting Mr. Díaz-Canel’s ability to maneuver economically.

“There is nothing in his résumé to suggest he is going to take risks,” Theodore Piccone, a Cuba scholar at the Brookings Institution, said of Mr. Díaz-Canel. “But that is the way the system works — anyone willing to take the risk before now would not be in line to be the president.”

I would have to think that if Clinton were in charge, there would be a much greater chance of real detente with Cuba.  Alas, America made its decision, and it appears so has Raul Castro.

Besides, even if you did want democratic reforms in Cuba, why would you want them with, you know, a country that has Donald Trump for a leader?

A Couple Brief Sessions Of Sanity

Recently, Donald Trump has been placated and has put off firing Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and Special Counsel Robert Mueller after Rosenstein gave the House Judiciary copies of former FBI Director James Comey's memos on his meetings with Trump.

The House Judiciary immediately leaked the notes to the press in hopes that it would somehow show that Comey wasn't credible, but that "brilliant plan" has already backfired and this morning Trump was attacking the "Special Council" on Twitter yet again.

But the bigger story this morning is Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who over the course of the last week or so may have accidentally developed a microscopic thread of human decency.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently told the White House he might have to leave his job if President Trump fired his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the exchange.

Sessions made his position known in a phone call to White House counsel Donald McGahn last weekend, as Trump’s fury at Rosenstein peaked after the deputy attorney general approved the FBI’s raid April 9 on the president’s personal attorney Michael Cohen.

Sessions’s message to the White House, which has not previously been reported, underscores the political firestorm that Trump would invite should he attempt to remove the deputy attorney general. While Trump also has railed against Sessions at times, the protest resignation of an attorney general — which would be likely to incite other departures within the administration — would create a moment of profound crisis for the White House.

In the phone call with McGahn, Sessions wanted details of a meeting Trump and Rosenstein held at the White House on April 12, according to a person with knowledge of the call. Sessions expressed relief to learn that their meeting was largely cordial. Sessions said he would have had to consider leaving as the attorney general had Trump ousted Rosenstein, this person said.

Another person familiar with the exchange said Sessions did not intend to threaten the White House but rather wanted to convey the untenable position that Rosenstein’s firing would put him in.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. 

 I know, I'm astonished as well.  Jeff Sessions actually doing the right thing, going to bat for his eople to protect them from Trump after spending nearly a year twiddling his twiddlers doing nothing because of his recusal from the case?  Why, that would be two correct actions in 11 months.  At that rate, Sessions might win the Nobel prize in 3416.

Meanwhile the Democrats aren't sitting back and waiting around for once either (all these people in politics doing the right things, what the hell?)  Dems are now suing Trump, Russia, and WikiLeaks in a major civil case.

The Democratic National Committee filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit Friday against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and the WikiLeaks organization alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 campaign and tilt the election to Donald Trump.

The complaint, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, alleges that top Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russian government and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and help Trump by hacking the computer networks of the Democratic Party and disseminating stolen material found there.

“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement.

“This constituted an act of unprecedented treachery: the campaign of a nominee for President of the United States in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the presidency,” he said.

The suit asserts that the Russian hacking campaign — combined with Trump associates’ contacts with Russia and the campaign’s public cheerleading of the hacks — amounted to an illegal conspiracy to interfere in the election and caused serious damage to the Democratic Party.

Go for it, guys.  Stormy Daniels shows us the way.

Economic Anxiety Watch 2018

Meanwhile, here in Ohio...


 

A display featuring several Confederate flags, black figures with wigs, and a black mannequin with painted lips is spurring controversy in Lindale. 

Some witnesses have described the display as disturbing. The homeowners claim they have received threats over it. 

The flags and figurines are outside a home in the 2000 block of OH-132, about a 30-minute drive east from downtown Cincinnati. 

“In no way, shape, or form should anybody think that it’s racist," said Louie Jones, Jr., who lives at the home where the display is set up. 

Jones says the porch has multiple antique pieces on it including a tin poster of John Wayne, a lantern, and a gnome. 

Jones lives at the home with his father. He says the display has been up for years.
FOX19 NOW's Maytal Levi asked Jones: "What would you say to someone driving by this saying that family hates black people?" 

“Everybody hates everybody, ya know?" Jones said. "It just depends on what you hate and what you like. It ain’t got nothing to do with race, we ain’t racial.”

That economic anxiety, man, it's brutal.

Say what you will about Kentucky, there are entire counties in Ohio I won't go through because of garbage like this.

Bonus points as to how the story as framed as "Is this racist?  Opinions differ."

Last Call For Rudy Toot Toot

You guys, Rudy Giuliani is going to make the Mueller probe go away in May because, you know, he's the best lawyer on Earth!

Rudy Giuliani said Thursday that he will join President Trump’s legal team and hopes to bring an end to the special counsel’s investigation into Russian election meddling in “a week or two.” 

“I’m going to join the legal team to try to bring this to a resolution,” Giuliani told The Post. 

“The country deserves it. I’ve got great admiration for President Trump. 

“I’ve had a long relationship with Bob Mueller. I have great respect for him. He’s done a good job.” 

Giuliani, a former US Attorney, served as New York City’s mayor when Mueller was the FBI director. 

“I don’t know yet what’s outstanding. But I don’t think it’s going to take more than a week or two to get a resolution. They’re almost there. 

“I’m going to ask Mueller, ‘What do you need to wrap it up?’” he said.

When this blows up in his face, expect Trump to get all "apoplectic" again, sure.  But keep in mind that Rudy is the shiny object you're supposed to be looking at while Trump's real new lawyers, the husband and wife team of Marty and Jane Raskin, go to work.

As for Giuliani, the choice is peculiar. Trump has shown a penchant, especially lately, for hiring people more for their ability to advocate for him on television than for their experience. Unlike some of the other attorneys who have circulated through Trump’s team or been rumored as possible additions, Giuliani has legitimate criminal-law experience, most prominently as a U.S. Attorney. But he left that job in 1989 to run for mayor. Over the years since, he has practiced law, but most often has served as a consultant or an executive, not as a litigator. These days he is most often known for his outspoken and sometimes outlandish opinions.

He is also awkwardly tied to the Russia investigation. In July 2016, Giuliani asserted that Russia had possessed Hillary Clinton’s emails for some time. In November, he boasted that FBI officials were leaking to him about the Clinton investigation, and that he had known about Comey’s decision to reopen the probe before it was announced. National-security lawyer Bradley Moss tweeted that the government is due in June to file an affidavit in a case over whether Giuliani received FBI leaks during the campaign. 

Indeed, Giuliani told CNN later on Thursday that his involvement in the Trump team would be limited in both scope and timeframe. The last time Trump announced a big addition to the team, the former U.S. Attorney and current conspiracy theorist Joseph diGenova, Sekulow had to quietly announce a few days later that the new hire wouldn’t actually be coming on due to conflict-of-interest issues with another client. 

Raskin and Raskin might be a more important hire in the broad scope. Unlike Sekulow, a First Amendment specialist, they are experienced white-collar criminal-defense lawyers. While Ty Cobb, the White House special counsel working on Russia, has criminal-law experience, the president hasn’t had a real criminal-defense lawyer working on his personal legal team since John Dowd’s exit in March, at least as far as is publicly known. Moreover, the Raskins are not famous partners at a big firm, but litigators who spend a great deal of time in a courtroom. While there’s no first-call attorney for defending a sitting president, they have a record of defending public officials. 

Giuliani’s brash promise of a negotiated settlement, and the leak about Rosenstein, both telegraph a president feeling increasingly confident about the Russia investigation. Hiring Raskin and Raskin sends a different message: that Trump is moving toward getting serious about a very serious investigation.

Trump figures he has the clout to hire both Giuliani and the Raskins.   If one fails, the other approach might work.

Or, you know, Trump is just so completely guilty that they quit just like everyone else.

You Can Bank On The Winner Not Being You

The Trump Tax Scam™ has already saved taxpayers billions of dollars, and when I say "taxpayers", I mean the nation's six largest banks who posted record profits in Q1 2018.

The nation’s six big Wall Street banks posted record, or near record, profits in the first quarter, and they can thank one person in particular: President Donald Trump. 

While higher interest rates allowed banks to earn more from lending in the first quarter, the main boost to bank came from the billions of dollars they saved in taxes under the tax law Trump signed in December. Combined, the six banks saved at least $3.59 billion last quarter, according to an Associated Press estimate, using the bank’s tax rates going back to 2015. 

Big publicly traded banks — such JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America — typically kick off the earnings season. Their reports for the January-March quarter are giving investors and the public their first glimpse into how the new tax law is impacting Corporate America. 

Before the change in tax law, the maximum U.S. corporate income tax rate was 35 percent, not including what companies paid in state income taxes. Banks historically paid some of the highest taxes among the major industries, due to their U.S.-centric business models. Before the Trump tax cuts, these banks paid between 28 to 31 percent of their income each year in corporate taxes. 

The results released over the past week show how sharply those rates have dropped. JPMorgan Chase said it had a first-quarter tax rate of 18.3 percent, Goldman Sachs paid just 17.2 percent in taxes, and the highest-taxed bank of the six majors, Citigroup, had a tax rate of 23.7 percent. This is just one quarter’s results, however, and bank executives at the big six firms have estimated that their full-year tax rates will be something closer to 20 percent to 22 percent.

$3.6 billion per quarter comes out to roughly $14 billion a year for the six largest banks in America, and I'm sure all that money is going to the employees in the form of raises and to customers in the form of reductions in fees and service charges.

I mean, that's what Trump promised, right?

Oh, you mean that's not what the banks are doing?

Shares of Bank of America rose 0.3 percent in Tuesday midday trading after the bank announced it would be buying back an additional $5 billion worth of shares. 

The board of directors approved the additional repurchase, which will occur through June 2018. The company had previously announced plans to repurchase $12 billion in common stock earlier this year. 

In a statement from Bank of America, the repurchase program "will be subject to various factors, including the company's capital position, liquidity, financial performance and alternative uses of capital, stock trading price, and general market conditions, and may be suspended at any time."

Bank of America shares are 31 percent higher this year, with a 4 percent jump in the last one month alone, as investors bet that banks will be one of the top beneficiaries of tax reform.

That was in December.  Shares went up all the way into March before last month's Trump Tariff crash shaved BoA's share price back down to those December levels.  But hey, BoA has enough money to buy $17 billion in stock since Trump got elected.

That's just one of the big six.

And they just got another $600 million a piece this quarter.

But sure, her emails.