Russian To Judgment, Con't

The spy games between the Trump regime and the Kremlin continue, as The Guardian breaks an impressive story of a deep-cover Russian agent with access to the US embassy in Moscow.

US counter-intelligence investigators discovered a suspected Russian spy had been working undetected in the heart of the American embassy in Moscow for more than a decade, the Guardian has learned.

The Russian national had been hired by the US Secret Service and is understood to have had access to the agency’s intranet and email systems, which gave her a potential window into highly confidential material including the schedules of the president and vice-president.

The woman had been working for the Secret Service for years before she came under suspicion in 2016 during a routine security sweep conducted by two investigators from the US Department of State’s Regional Security Office (RSO).

They established she was having regular and unauthorised meetings with members of the FSB, Russia’s principal security agency.

The Guardian has been told the RSO sounded the alarm in January 2017, but the Secret Service did not launch a full-scale inquiry of its own. Instead it decided to let her go quietly months later, possibly to contain any potential embarrassment.

An intelligence source told the Guardian the woman was dismissed last summer after the state department revoked her security clearance. The dismissal came shortly before a round of expulsions of US personnel demanded by the Kremlin after Washington imposed more sanctions on the country.

The order to remove more than 750 US personnel from its 1,200-strong diplomatic mission is understood to have provided cover for her removal.

“The Secret Service is trying to hide the breach by firing [her],” the source said. “The damage was already done but the senior management of the Secret Service did not conduct any internal investigation to assess the damage and to see if [she] recruited any other employees to provide her with more information.

“Only an intense investigation by an outside source can determine the damage she has done.”

Asked detailed questions about the investigation into the woman, and her dismissal, the Secret Service attempted to downplay the significance of her role. But it did not deny that she had been identified as a potential mole.

In a statement, it said: “The US Secret Service recognizes that all Foreign Service Nationals (FSN) who provide services in furtherance of our mission, administrative or otherwise, can be subjected to foreign intelligence influence.

“This is of particular emphasis in Russia. As such, all foreign service nationals are managed accordingly to ensure that Secret Service and United States government interests are protected at all times. As a result, the duties are limited to translation, interpretation, cultural guidance, liaison and administrative support.

To recap, the US had identified a possible Russian mole in the USSS, who had been in the agency's employ for a decade.  The Trump regime was informed when Trump took office.  The USSS quietly let her go and pretended nothing was wrong.   Nobody would have suspected anything, but then this story hits.

On the same day that this story broke, yesterday, the White House press briefing was presented by not just press secretary Sarah Sanders, but by four cabinet officials who all just happened to be responsible for the executive branch's defense against Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections.

The top officials' presence in the White House briefing room amounted to the administration's most significant effort to date to convey that a whole of government effort is being undertaken to combat Russian attacks on US democracy, which Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said is "in the crosshairs." 

The briefing came on the heels of weeks of scorching criticism Republicans and Democrats have unleashed on the President following his refusal to back the US intelligence community's conclusions about Russian interference in the 2016 election over Russian President Vladimir Putin's denials.

"Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, and it has become clear that they are the target of our adversaries who seek ... to sow discord and undermine our way of life," Nielsen said. 

The briefing came on the heels of weeks of scorching criticism Republicans and Democrats have unleashed on the President following his refusal to back the US intelligence community's conclusions about Russian interference in the 2016 election over Russian President Vladimir Putin's denials. 

Trump has since reaffirmed his confidence in the US intelligence assessment, but his absence from the briefing room on Thursday and his ongoing branding of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation as a "witch hunt" have only kept alive questions about whether Trump is serious about confronting ongoing Russian interference. 

That cognitive dissonance was on display during the briefing Thursday as Coats, national security adviser John Bolton and FBI Director Chris Wray were pressed about contradictions in the administration's messaging and the President's. 

"I think the President has made it abundantly clear to everybody who has responsibility in this area that he cares deeply about it and that he expects them to do their jobs to their fullest ability and that he supports them fully," Bolton said, adding that Trump opened his private meeting with Putin by raising election interference. 

Still, Coats said he is "not in a position to either understand fully or talk about what happened in Helsinki," despite being one of the US's top intelligence officials. 

And so the same day we find out about a major, major Russian mole in the USSS.

This is not a coincidence.  Maybe there's finally enough pressure from Republicans in Congress to motivate the Trump regime to fight back.

Maybe.  I have serious doubts, but we'll see.  

StupidiNews!

• Former Tennessee Democratic Gov. Phil Breseden will take on GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn for the Senate seat of retiring Republican Bob Corker, both Breseden and Blackburn easily won primaries.
• Firefighters in California continue to battle dangerous winds and tinder-dry conditions as nearly 20 wildfires are raging across the Golden State this wildfire season.
• Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa is calling for calm as protesting opposition demonstrators are questioning the results of Mnangagwa's election victory this week.
• Japan has retaken the number two position in world stock market value over China as Beijing's sharp tech slump continues to batter prices, Japan was last number two to the US in 2014.
• Apple has become the first company to hit $1 trillion in stock market value as the tech giant's shares rose on strong second quarter earnings boosted by $100 billion in stock buybacks.

Last Call For That Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

If Vanity Fair's Gabe Sherman is correct here, the Manafort trial is the trigger event for Trump soon making his move on Rosenstein and Mueller.

In the Trump West Wing, new external pressure inevitably brings the buildup of internal heat, followed by its release, often most visibly in a series of tweets. The start of Paul Manafort’s federal trial this week has triggered Trump’s hottest blast yet, and has renewed the possibility that Trump will fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. “This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further,” Donald Trump tweeted yesterday. “Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!”

Whether it’s confidence, bluster, or delusion, Trump is venting to advisers both inside and outside the White House that the Manafort trial proves Mueller has nothing on him and his family, because Manafort’s trial doesn’t involve Russia or the 2016 campaign. “The Manafort trial is spinning him into a frenzy,” one Republican in frequent contact with the president told me. Another Republican told me Trump thinks “the only thing the trial shows is that Manafort is a sleaze.”

Sources say Trump is increasingly taking his legal defense into his own hands—very much at his own peril. The Sessions tweet crossed a line into what many interpreted to be outright obstruction of justice. Trump also is arguing that he wants to sit for an interview with Mueller, against his lawyers’ advice, The New York Times reported. This is partly driven by Trump’s frustration with his legal team’s inability to end the Mueller probe. As I reported this week, Trump is angry with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani for giving a series of erratic television interviews that seemed to disclose a previously unknown strategy meeting at Trump Tower that took place days before Don Jr.’s infamous sit-down with a Russian lawyer to get “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Trump is also unhappy with White House counsel Don McGahn, who in the past stood in the way of Trump’s effort to fire Mueller.

Trump’s latest attacks on Mueller are partly being enabled by conversations with his attorney Emmet Flood, one source told me. “Emmet feels there’s nothing there with collusion, so it’s fine for Trump to comment and tweet,” the source explained. This person added that Trump appears to be in earnest about his desire for Sessions to end the Mueller probe, and spoke of a timeline of a couple of weeks. Otherwise, Trump has threatened to fire Rosenstein himself.

A couple of weeks would put us near the end of the Manafort trial, but still in August before the House has returned from recess.  (Mitch McConnell is of course keeping the Senate in session through Labor Day in order to prevent incumbent Senate Democrats from being able to campaign at home, while their GOP challengers have no such restrictions.)

As I've said before, Trump has everything in place now to fire Rosenstein from both a technical and political aspect. I've been predicting this since February, when the previous number 3 official as Justice, Rachel Brand, abruptly resigned.  It took until Brand's replacement, Brian Benczkowski, was confirmed three weeks ago that the plan picked up speed.

Since then, Robert Mueller has upped the ante with the indictments of Russian GRU agents accused of interfering in the 2016 elections, and the GOP countered with the House Freedom Caucus plan to impeach Rosenstein.  The impeachment threat against Rosenstein didn't gain any traction before the House adjourned for August recess, but then came Trump's tweets on Wednesday.

That brings us to now, where Trump is supposedly giving Jeff Sessions a "couple of weeks" to end the Mueller probe or he fires Rosenstein.

If that's the case, then we're heading for the cliff, guys.

Be ready.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Long-time readers of ZVTS will recognize that I've long held the theory that a significant number of white Obama voters turned on President Obama and the Democrats after he defended Trayvon Martin and Black Lives Matter.  For these voters, the fact that Barack Obama recognized that his election was not the end of racism in America was too much of an admission for them to handle.  

It was an unforgivable crime in their eyes that kindled resentment and revenge on Hillary Clinton in 2016.  "We elected a black president, what more do you people want?  Maybe four years of Donald Trump will teach you gratitude for what we allow you to have!" is the kind of thought process I'm talking about here.

The answer to that question is "We'd like to work at our employer's place of business without the police being called on us for the crime of being black."

The rising sophomore at Smith College was quietly eating her lunch in a campus common room when a police officer approached her Tuesday afternoon.

A college employee had called police to report someone who “seemed out of place” in a Smith building that was being used for a summer program. But when campus police arrived, they found a Smith student, taking a break from her campus job.

There was “nothing suspicious about the student’s presence,” the school said in a statement released Wednesday about the incident, the latest example of police being called to investigate black people in everyday situations.

In two posts to Facebook on Tuesday, the woman identified herself as the student in question. She wrote that a white college employee had reported her to the police as a “suspicious black male.”

“I am blown away at the fact that I cannot even sit down and eat lunch peacefully,” she wrote in one post. “I did nothing wrong, I wasn’t making any noise or bothering anyone. All I did was be black.”

The student was working on campus this summer as a teaching assistant and residential adviser, according to her Facebook page.

“It’s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a woman of color,” she wrote. The student did not respond to requests for comment.

Amy Hunter, the college’s interim director of diversity and inclusion, said the school “does not tolerate race- or gender-based discrimination in any form.”

“Such behavior can contribute to a climate of fear, hostility and exclusion that has no place in our community,” she wrote in a message sent to students, faculty, staff, and alumni Wednesday morning, said Samuel Masinter, a college spokesman.

When police are called for situations like this, there is always the non-zero chance that it turns deadly.  Black people can die when it does.  Any confrontation between a black person in America and the police can potentially lead to death.

"But that's true for any police interaction, that's why law enforcement officers risk their lives every day with every move they make!"

So do black people in America.

In only one of these two situations is the risk voluntarily accepted.

Immigration Nation, Con't

Get used to headlines like this from the NY Times when it comes to the Trump regime and legal immigration: Trump May Slash Number of Refugees U.S. Accepts by 40%

The White House is considering a second sharp reduction in the number of refugees who can be resettled in the United States, picking up where President Trump left off in 2017 in scaling back a program intended to offer protection to the world’s most vulnerable people, according to two former government officials and another person familiar with the talks. 

This time, the effort is meeting with less resistance from inside the Trump administration because of the success that Stephen Miller, the president’s senior policy adviser and an architect of his anti-immigration agenda, has had in installing allies in key positions who are ready to sign off on deep cuts. 

Last year, after a fierce internal battle that pitted Mr. Miller, who advocated a limit as low as 15,000, against officials at the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and the Pentagon, Mr. Trump set the cap at 45,000, a historic low. Under one plan currently being discussed, no more than 25,000 refugees could be resettled in the United States next year, a cut of more than 40 percent from this year’s limit. It would be the lowest number of refugees admitted to the country since the creation of the program in 1980. 

The program’s fate could hinge on Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state. His department has traditionally been a strong advocate for the refugee program, but Mr. Pompeo is now being advised by two senior aides who are close to Mr. Miller and share his hard-line approach, according to the people briefed on the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal internal deliberation about a decision that has yet to be completed. 

A White House official who also did not want to be identified declined to confirm or deny whether deep cuts to the program, including a cap of 25,000, were under consideration. 

But the official implicitly made the case for substantially reducing refugee admissions. A “migration crisis” was gripping the country, the official said, and the administration was instead prioritizing asylum cases in which a person is already in the United States and claims a credible fear of returning home.

If you're white and wealthy, welcome.  If you're not both, the legal immigration target for the Trump regime is "zero".  The plan was always two-fold: end legal immigration from all but a handful of countries, reverse it by deporting most undocumented.  The beneficiaries would always happen to be the "right" immigrants.

Or, the "white" ones.

Last Call For That Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

Looks like Mueller has another big fat Trump tweet for his files from this morning.

Obstruction of justice?  Never heard of it.

President Donald Trump called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions Wednesday to shut down special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. 

Sessions "should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further," Trump tweeted. "Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!" Trump also called the probe a "terrible situation." 

The demand comes at what looks to be a pivotal point in the probe: Mueller's team is prosecuting former Trump campaign manager Paul Manfort on financial allegations, and some Trump aides believe that Mueller will submit a report soon on his findings as they relate to the president. The Manafort trial began Tuesday.

I mean, wide open in public, "Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now" guys.

Democrats quickly defined the president's tweeted demand to the attorney general as another attempt at obstruction, one of the things Mueller is investigating. 

"This is an attempt to obstruct justice hiding in plain sight," tweeted Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Yes.  Yes it is.  But Republicans in Congress and Trump supporters don't care and won't lift a finger. They won't when Trump eventually tweets that he's firing Sessions, Rosenstein, and Mueller either.  That day is coming sooner rather than later, judging by Trump's tantrum this morning.  It really won't be long now.

Stay tuned.

Steyer, the Buyer of Higher Ire Fire

It's unfair to compare California billionaire Tom Steyer to the Koch Brothers much deeper than on the surface.  Both are ridiculously rich, and both are spending tens, if not hundreds of millions, on the 2018 midterm elections.  But where the Kochs are investing in a GOP who will give them billions in returns on their business ventures, Steyer is spending on the Democrats to push his ideology, and that ideology is the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump from office.

Tom Steyer has set plans to spend at least $110 million in 2018, making the billionaire investor the largest single source of campaign cash on the left and placing him on a path to create a parallel party infrastructure with polling, analytics and staffing capabilities that stand to shape and define the issues the party runs on in November. 

Steyer is building out an operation that’s bigger than anyone other than the Koch Brothers — and the billionaire and his aides believe the reservoir of non-traditional voters he’s already activated could become the overriding factor in House and other races across the country.

Yet Steyer’s oversized role also stands to position him squarely against Democratic Party leadership, which has shown little appetite this fall for pursuing one of his signature causes: impeachment. 

Unlike the $80 million being spent by Mike Bloomberg, Steyer will put his cash toward building out NextGen America and Need to Impeach, his two growing political organizations, as well as funding clean energy ballot initiatives in Arizona and Nevada. Steyer has already doubled his initial $20 million investment in Need to Impeach to $40 million, and has not ruled out adding more. 

Steyer has also already dropped over $5 million into his For Our Future PAC, and is expecting more outlays on behalf of individual candidates like the $1 million he put behind Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, though likely not in any of the remaining primaries. 

Between the two organizations, he’ll have close to 1,000 people on staff, in addition to over 2,000 volunteers. The Need to Impeach email list alone has already topped 5.5 million, which their research — anyone who signs up with the effort has their information run through a series of voter files and other databases — shows includes a very exact 697,780 infrequent voters in the 63 most competitive House districts. 

“Our list is bigger than the NRA’s — and we’re going to make sure that it votes that way in 2018,” said Kevin Mack, lead strategist for Need to Impeach.

It's not just party leaders who are wary of Steyer, he has plenty of enemies among the DSA set, who see him as exactly the 0.00001% elite that the Democrats must avoid in order to not surrender their souls and actually do things for the people.  It's a fair and pragmatic criticism to say that Steyer could put his money towards fighting for Medicaid expansion at the state level, for instance, rather than impeachment.

In just the last decade, Steyer skyrocketed to become the Democratic Party’s biggest donor, only to leave that behind to invest instead in his own organizations and causes, to the irritation of party leaders — particularly those who worry that he’ll hurt them politically by talking up impeachment. That pushback seems to encourage him, while also encouraging talk that he’s interested in a 2020 presidential run, though he tends to push back on that by pointing out that many people first interpreted his spending in this cycle as the prelude to a 2018 campaign for California governor or senator. 

Most of those voters, based on their analyses, skew older and female, while the NextGen America effort is focused on younger voters in 11 states which are likely to be important both in 2018 and 2020. 

Those voters and others, according to new internal polling and focus group data commissioned by Steyer and described by people familiar with its findings, are very eager to hear Democratic candidates talking more about impeaching President Donald Trump: just 32 percent of Democrats said that they wanted their candidates to avoid the topic, while 59 percent said that they didn’t want Republicans dictating the terms of the campaign “so of course Democrats should talk about impeaching Trump if the Democrats win big in November.”

This however is also a very pragmatic point.  If talk of impeachment gets young Democrats out to vote who otherwise would have not voted, I'm 110% okay with the prospect.

And for the record, the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump is still not happening.  Impeachment is possible.  Removal will not happen...unless the GOP Senate takes a large enough hit in November that it becomes politically impossible not to.

So yes, motivating voters now on impeachment later is something I'm fine with Steyer doing.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Two Russian collusion stories this evening to peruse at your pleasure, first up, Facebook has caught another network of trolls looking to influence the 2018 election with fake left-wing sites designed to go after Democrats for not being sufficiently pure enough, just like fake Black Lives Matter sites in 2016 were used to attack Hillary Clinton.

Facebook announced on Tuesday that it has identified a coordinated political influence campaign, with dozens of inauthentic accounts and pages that are believed to be engaging in political activity ahead of November’s midterm elections, according to three people briefed on the matter. 

In a series of briefings on Capitol Hill this week, the company told lawmakers that it detected the influence campaign on Facebook and Instagram as part of its investigations into election interference. It has been unable to tie the accounts to Russia, whose Internet Research Agency was at the center of an indictment earlier this year for interfering in the 2016 election, but company officials told Capitol Hill that Russia was possibly involved, according to two of the officials. 

“We’re still in the very early stages of our investigation and don’t have all the facts — including who may be behind this,” the company said in a statement. “But we are sharing what we know today given the connection between these bad actors and protests that are planned in Washington next week.” 

In its statement, Facebook said that it first discovered the accounts — eight Facebook pages, 17 Facebook profiles, and seven Instagram accounts — two weeks ago.

The company has been working with the F.B.I. to investigate the activity.

Like the Russian interference campaign in 2016, the recently detected campaign dealt with divisive social issues. Facebook discovered coordinated activity around issues like a sequel to last year’s deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. Specifically, a page called “Resisters,” which interacted with one Internet Research Agency account in 2017, created an event called “No Unite the Right 2 — DC” to serve as a counterprotest to the white nationalist gathering, scheduled to take place in Washington in August. Facebook said it disabled the event. 

Coordinated activity was also detected around #AbolishICE, a left-wing campaign on social media that seeks to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, according to two people briefed on the findings. 

That echoed efforts in 2016 to fan division around the Black Lives Matter movement. 

After being caught flat-footed by the Internet Research Agency’s efforts to use social media to sow division ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Facebook is trying to avoid a repeat disaster in 2018. The company has expanded its security team, hiring counterterrorism experts and recruiting workers with government security clearances.

What a surprise, Abolish ICE is the new Black Lives Matter, guaranteed to rile up the right and depress Democratic turnout just like two years ago when social media blitzes like this were telling black Democratic voters to stay home because Obama and Clinton had "failed the black community".  It worked well enough when combined with existing GOP voter suppression tactics in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to give Trump the Oval Office.  And he's been polluting it ever since.

That brings us to story two, from Murray Waas at the NY Review of Books, who is claiming that Mueller is planning to make the case that Donald Trump obstructed justice.

Previously undisclosed evidence in the possession of Special Counsel Robert Mueller—including highly confidential White House records and testimony by some of President Trump’s own top aides—provides some of the strongest evidence to date implicating the president of the United States in an obstruction of justice. Several people who have reviewed a portion of this evidence say that, based on what they know, they believe it is now all but inevitable that the special counsel will complete a confidential report presenting evidence that President Trump violated the law. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel’s work, would then decide on turning over that report to Congress for the House of Representatives to consider whether to instigate impeachment proceedings.

The central incident in the case that the president obstructed justice was provided by former FBI Director James B. Comey, who testified that Trump pressed Comey, in a private Oval Office meeting on February 14, 2017, to shut down an FBI criminal investigation of Trump’s former national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Comey has testified the president told him.

In an effort to convince Mueller that President Trump did not obstruct justice, the president’s attorneys have argued that the president could not have broken the law because the president did not know that Flynn was under criminal investigation when he pressured Comey to go easy on Flynn. In a confidential January 29 letter to the special counsel first reported by The New York Times, two of the president’s attorneys, John Dowd (who no longer represents Trump) and Jay Sekulow, maintained that the president did not obstruct justice because, even though Flynn had been questioned by the FBI, Trump believed that the FBI investigation was over, and that Flynn had been told that he’d been cleared.

On its face, this is a counter-intuitive argument—for if Trump believed that Flynn had been cleared and was no longer under investigation, there would have been no reason for the president to lean on Comey to end the FBI’s investigation—telling Comey that Trump hoped that Comey would be able to “see your way clear to letting this go.” Yet Trump’s attorneys have pursued this line of argument with the special counsel because perjury and obstruction cases depend largely on whether a prosecutor can demonstrate the intent and motivation of the person they want to charge. It’s not enough to prove that the person under investigation attempted to impede an ongoing criminal investigation; the statute requires a prosecutor to prove that the person did so with the corrupt intent to protect either himself or someone else from prosecution.

If, therefore, Trump understood the legal jeopardy that Flynn faced, that would demonstrate such intent—and make for a much stronger case for obstruction against the president. Conversely, if Trump believed that Flynn was no longer under criminal investigation, or had been cleared, the president could not have had corrupt intent. But previously undisclosed evidence indicates just the opposite—that President Trump was fully informed that Flynn was the target of prosecutors.

I have learned that a confidential White House memorandum, which is in the special counsel’s possession, explicitly states that when Trump pressured Comey he had just been told by two of his top aides—his then chief of staff Reince Priebus and his White House counsel Don McGahn—that Flynn was under criminal investigation. This memo, the existence of which I first disclosed in December in Foreign Policy, was, as one source described it to me, “a timeline of events [in the White House] leading up to Flynn’s resignation.” It was dated February 15, 2017, and was prepared by McGahn two days after Flynn’s forced resignation and one day after Trump’s meeting with Comey. As I reported, research for the memo was “primarily conducted by John Eisenberg, the deputy counsel to the president and legal adviser to the National Security Council,” who, in turn, was “assisted by James Burnham, another White House counsel staff member.”

During my reporting, I was allowed to read the memo in its entirety, as well as other, underlying White House records quoted in the memo, such as notes and memos written by McGahn and other senior administration officials. My reporting for this story is also based on interviews with a dozen former and current White House officials, attorneys who have interacted with Mueller’s team of investigators, and witnesses questioned by Mueller’s investigators.

 So yes, Mueller is going after obstruction and will almost certainly recommend that Trump be impeached for it.  Whther or not anybody in America sees that report other than Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions, or even if Mueller gets to finish that report, I don't know.

StupidiNews!

• All 103 passengers aboard an AeroMexico flight from Durango have survived after their airliner crashed upon takeoff, at least 49 have been hospitalized but no deaths have been reported.
• A federal judge has halted the planned posting of 3D-printed gun blueprints online hours before the scheduled release, saying the untraceable weapons could cause "irreparable harm."
• Thieves in Sweden have made off with two royal crowns and an orb from a cathedral where the funeral regalia of King Karl IX were on display, the thieves escaped by boat and police are searching.
• China is calling the Trump regime's raising of proposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of yearly Chinese goods from 10% to 25% "blackmailing" as trade talks between the two nations have stalled.
• A new report finds that the vast majority of Americans have either only one choice for a broadband internet service provider, or no broadband service options at all.

Looting The Till On The Way Out Of The Store

Number one reason why I'm convinced that the Democrats are going to obliterate the GOP in November: The Trump regime isn't even trying to hide their complete and utter contempt for the people anymore.

The Trump administration is considering bypassing Congress to grant a $100 billion tax cut mainly to the wealthy, a legally tenuous maneuver that would cut capital gains taxation and fulfill a long-held ambition of many investors and conservatives. 

Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit meeting in Argentina this month that his department was studying whether it could use its regulatory powers to allow Americans to account for inflation in determining capital gains tax liabilities. The Treasury Department could change the definition of “cost” for calculating capital gains, allowing taxpayers to adjust the initial value of an asset, such as a home or a share of stock, for inflation when it sells. 

“If it can’t get done through a legislation process, we will look at what tools at Treasury we have to do it on our own and we’ll consider that,” Mr. Mnuchin said, emphasizing that he had not concluded whether the Treasury Department had the authority to act alone. “We are studying that internally, and we are also studying the economic costs and the impact on growth.” 

Currently, capital gains taxes are determined by subtracting the original price of an asset from the price at which it was sold and taxing the difference, usually at 20 percent. If a high earner spent $100,000 on stock in 1980, then sold it for $1 million today, she would owe taxes on $900,000. But if her original purchase price was adjusted for inflation, it would be about $300,000, reducing her taxable “gain” to $700,000. That would save the investor $40,000. 

The move would face a near-certain court challenge. It could also reinforce a liberal critique of Republican tax policy at a time when Republicans are struggling to sell middle-class voters on the benefits of the tax cuts that President Trump signed into law late last year. 

“At a time when the deficit is out of control, wages are flat and the wealthiest are doing better than ever, to give the top 1 percent another advantage is an outrage and shows the Republicans’ true colors,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. “Furthermore, Mr. Mnuchin thinks he can do it on his own, but everyone knows this must be done by legislation.”

By the time this gets to SCOTUS, it'll be far too late to matter, and I guarantee you Mnuchin will have at least 5 votes when it does come around.   They're going to give one last gift to the one percent on the way out the door and cash in after the Democrats come in to try to clean up the damage.  It's how these things work, guys.

Best part is when Democrats finally do get around to fixing this, it'll be "Democrats are increasing taxes by billions on family farms and small businesses!" again and in a decade or so we'll be right back to an even worse Republican than Trump.

Freedom To Have Our Religion Or Else

Meanwhile, over in the section of the Justice Department not overlooking the Mueller probe, AG Jeff Sessions is preparing his move to make Christians the only protected class.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that the Department of Justice is creating a "religious liberty task force." 

Sessions said the task force, co-chaired by Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio and the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, Beth Williams, will help the department fully implement the religious liberty guidance it issued last year. 

The guidance was a byproduct of President Trump’s executive order directing agencies to respect and protect religious liberty and political speech. 

Sessions said on Monday that the task force will “ensure all Justice Department components are upholding that guidance in the cases they bring and defend, the arguments they make in court, the policies and regulations they adopt, and how we conduct our operations.” 

The announcement came during the department’s religious liberty summit.
Sessions said the cultural climate in this country — and in the West more generally — has become less hospitable to people of faith in recent years, and as a result many Americans have felt their freedom to practice their faith has been under attack. 

“We’ve seen nuns ordered to buy contraceptives. We’ve seen U.S. senators ask judicial and executive branch nominees about dogma—even though the Constitution explicitly forbids a religious test for public office. We’ve all seen the ordeal faced so bravely by Jack Phillips,” he said, referring to the Colorado baker who took his case to the Supreme Court after he was found to have violated the state’s anti-discrimination laws for refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. 

Sessions said the guidance he issued in October lays out 20 fundamental principles for the executive branch to follow, including the principles that free exercise means a right to act — or to abstain from action — and that government shouldn’t impugn people’s motives or beliefs.

The hill Sessions will defend until he dies is that "sincerely-held Christian beliefs" trump (pun intended) civil rights.  "As a Christian, X offends me and my beliefs" will soon be grounds for the full weight of the government to be brought to bear in order to remove X from America.  Theocracies aren't fun, folks. Should Kavanaugh be confirmed on the Supreme Court, that's a very distinct possibility.

We're heading for one at breakneck speed right now.  Best part?  It's going to be a screamingly racist one too!

Regardless of the outcome of Kavanaugh's confirmation, don't be surprised when the Sessions DoJ signs on to the nearest case where anti-discrimination laws are pitted against religious beliefs with the intent of destroying the last 60 years of civil rights advancements.  Don't be surprised in fact when the Trump DoJ signs on to defend the free speech/religious liberty rights of white supremacist groups, especially online.  And don't be surprised when they sign on to overturn Obergfell and same-sex marriage.

That's coming.  I guarantee it.

StupidiNews!

• New intelligence from US agencies shows despite promises made to Donald Trump, North Korea is still building new ICBMs and refining uranium, according to a report from the Washington Post.
• Former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort goes on trial in Virginia today, facing tax evasion and bank fraud charges for his work representing Ukrainian politician Viktor Yanukovich.
• Both Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangawa and challenger Nelson Chamisa are confident of victory after yesterday's close vote, the first in 40 years without Robert Mugabe on the ballot.
• The tech rout in stocks after dismal second-quarter earnings has spread abroad to Chinese internet giant Tencent, the company has lost a quarter of its value, or $143 billion, since January.
• Some 20 states are suing Defense Distributed over 3D printed firearms plans spread freely after a settlement with the State Department, the group is countersuing on First Amendment grounds.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment

The dark comedy that is the Trump regime has basically treated the entire Russian collusion story like this so far:

• We didn't do anything wrong, we didn't even contact the Russians.
• OK, we contacted the Russians but it wasn't about the elections.
• OK, we contacted the Russians about the elections but it wasn't a face-to-face meeting.
• OK we met personally with some Russians about the election but it wasn't collusion.

So we've taken another step down the road today, as we get to the next logical denial from Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

President Donald Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said Monday that he's not sure collusion with Russia would be considered a crime. 

But legal experts have repeatedly said that anyone found collaborating with Russia on the 2016 election could be charged with other crimes, such as conspiracy -- and special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is ongoing. 

Asked about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's upcoming trial, Giuliani told CNN "New Day" co-anchor Alisyn Camerota that Manafort "was not involved with intimate business relationships with Donald Trump." 

"Four months, they're not going to be colluding with Russia, which I don't even know if that's a crime, colluding about Russians," Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, continued. "You start analyzing the crime -- the hacking is the crime. ... The President didn't hack." 

The President has repeatedly denied that there was any collusion between his campaign and Moscow. But he has made a similar argument to that of Giuliani's, telling The New York Times in December that "There is no collusion, and even if there was, it's not a crime."

The next one will be of course "There was collusion and it was smart politics for us to do it."  It's at that point where we go over the cliff, but I'll be damned if there's not a large chunk of the country already over the edge and more and more bits of it are falling into the abyss daily.

The Revenge Of The Return Of Shutdown Countdown

Donald Trump apparently really wants the GOP to lose control of Congress, threatening once again over the weekend to shut down the government right before midterm elections unless he gets funding for his border wall boondoggle.

Congressional Republicans, already facing a difficult election landscape, confronted a prospect on Sunday they had worked feverishly to avoid: a threat by President Trump to shut down the government over funding for a border wall. 

“I would be willing to ‘shut down’ government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!” 

Last week, Republican leaders thought they had reached a deal with Mr. Trump to delay a confrontation on funding for the wall until after the November midterm elections, according to a person familiar with their discussion. 

But Mr. Trump’s shutdown threat, in which he also demanded several pieces of a comprehensive immigration overhaul that is stalled in Congress, has opened the door to a politically bruising spending fight as the fiscal year ends in September.

With the election coming just weeks later, the party can ill afford a disruption that voters — already disgusted by Washington dysfunction — may hold the president accountable for.
A shutdown would also distract from Senate Republicans’ main business in September: their push to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

You would think by now that House and Senate GOP folks would have realized that Donald Trump is a lying sack of incontinent yak dung who would gladly sacrifice each and every single Republican in DC in order to stay in power, but I never said Republicans were smart (just crafty and wholly evil.)  Trump of course has done this before.

Trump repeated his threat today during a press briefing with Italian PM Giuseppe Conte.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday again threatened to shut down the federal government if Congress does not pass the immigration reforms he seeks as part of a spending package that must be passed by the end of September.

“If we don’t get border security, after many, many years of talk within the United States, I would have no problem doing a shutdown,” Trump said during a news conference with visiting Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. 

Asked if he required the full $25 billion the White House has requested to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, as well as his other immigration priorities, in order to avert a shutdown, Trump replied, “I always leave room for negotiation.”

Surprise, Trump doesn't think your deal is worth crap, boys.  And these clowns never seem to understand that there is no such thing as a deal with Trump.

I hope Democrats have gotten this through their heads already.  Republicans certainly have not.

Putting A Price Tag On It

The Koch-funded Mercatus Center is putting a $32.6 trillion price tag on Medicare For All over ten years, and precisely nobody's happy about it, least of all Bernie.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for all” plan would increase government health care spending by $32.6 trillion over 10 years, according to a study by a university-based libertarian policy center. 

That’s trillion with a “T.” 

The latest plan from the Vermont independent would require historic tax increases as government replaces what employers and consumers now pay for health care, according to the analysis being released Monday by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia. It would deliver significant savings on administration and drug costs, but increased demand for care would drive up spending, the analysis found.
Sanders’ plan builds on Medicare, the popular insurance program for seniors. All U.S. residents would be covered with no copays and deductibles for medical services. The insurance industry would be relegated to a minor role. 

“Enacting something like ‘Medicare for all’ would be a transformative change in the size of the federal government,” said Charles Blahous, the study’s author. Blahous was a senior economic adviser to former President George W. Bush and a public trustee of Social Security and Medicare during the Obama administration. 

Responding to the study, Sanders took aim at the Mercatus Center, which receives funding from the conservative Koch brothers. Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch is on the center’s board. 

“If every major country on earth can guarantee health care to all, and achieve better health outcomes, while spending substantially less per capita than we do, it is absurd for anyone to suggest that the United States cannot do the same,” Sanders said in a statement. “This grossly misleading and biased report is the Koch brothers response to the growing support in our country for a ‘Medicare for all’ program.” 

Sanders’ office has not done a cost analysis, a spokesman said. However, the Mercatus estimates are within the range of other cost projections for Sanders’ 2016 plan. 

Sanders’ staff found an error in an initial version of the Mercatus report, which counted a long-term care program that was in the 2016 proposal but not the current one. Blahous corrected it, reducing his estimate by about $3 trillion over 10 years. Blahous says the report is his own work, not the Koch brothers’.

I would think there's a happy medium between spending $3 trillion a year and what we have now, of course when we tried that, Republicans and more than a few Democrats did their dead-level best to dismantle such a plan, maybe you heard of that whole Affordable Care Act thing.

Yes, this is the Koch brothers going after Bernie and unfairly, but Medicare For All isn't going to be free, either.  I would like to see Bernie's hard numbers too, but it's his own damn fault if he's silly enough to let the Kochs get ahead of him on this. 

Bernie can fix this by putting out his own numbers, and until he does, other right-wing think tank shops are going to keep beating him into the ground on this.  He hasn't done so yet, and that's nobody's fault but his own.