Last Call For Panhandle Mishandled

The Washington Post story headline this weekend is Survivors of Hurricane Michael in the Florida Panhandle fear they have been forgotten while the actual headline should be"Poor white Trump voters discover how inconvenient they are to regime that has abandoned them".

FEMA said it has poured $1.1 billion into Florida in Michael-related response and recovery efforts, the bulk of that in the form of low-interest Small Business Administration loans. It has approved $141 million in individual assistance to 31,000 households affected by Michael, numbers similar to disaster relief provided to North Carolina after Florence.

But Congress has failed to pass a major disaster-relief supplemental-funding bill to pay for long-term recovery from Michael and other disasters across the country. The 35-day government shutdown delayed action initially, and then President Trump and his Republican allies clashed with Democrats over funding for hurricane recovery in Puerto Rico.

The partisanship in Washington does not sit well here on the Panhandle.

“We have as many Democrats suffering as Republicans, and we need help. We’re all in the same boat,” said Philip Griffitts, chairman of the Bay County Commission and a Republican.

Al Cathey, the mayor of Mexico Beach, said it’s “beyond my comprehension” how the federal government has failed to pass a disaster bill. Sitting on a pile of drywall outside his hardware store, Cathey surveyed the ravaged landscape.

“That whole bill is being jeopardized because of pettiness,” he said.

Down a country road in Bay County, Sam Summers, a heavy-equipment operator, and his wife, Sherry Skinner-Summers, who works with the sheriff’s department, have opened their five-acre lot to people whose houses and trailers were destroyed in the storm.

The backyard population is down to six tents from 10, occupied by families and individuals who cannot find or afford hotel rooms or apartments and pass a background check. The Summers and their donors provide the tents.

One family of four, including a 6-month-old infant, is living with the Summers in their brick rambler. More families are expected to arrive in the coming days, Summers said, based on requests his wife has fielded on social media.

FEMA said agency representatives, as well as state and county officials, visited the Summers property in mid-March and were shunned by the campers.

“On this and previous visits, all but a couple of the people refused to speak with anyone,” a FEMA spokesman said in an email.

There remains a suspicion among those in the region that the federal, state and local governments are not doing everything they should to help the recovery.

Your federal, state, and local governments are controlled by Republicans.

This is what you voted for.

This is the result.

The Drums Of War, Con't

So, what happened in Venezuela?

Trump was all ready to go in and smack around Nicolas Maduro, you see.  A nationwide blackout caused by "sabotage" at the country's largest hydroelectric dam was the perfect cover to sneak in and pull a Noriega Special, bag Maduro, and triumphantly install Juan Guaido as President.  But something funny happened on the way to Caracas.

Vladimir Putin showed up.  Suddenly Russia was willing to do what the US wasn't able to (or was too slow to pull off.)  They dropped in a hundred or so special operator types as "mechanics" and "trainers" to repair Maduro's Russian SAM defenses, damaged by the blackout, as well as to train Maduro's forces on using and maintaining Russian helicopters.  The one person who actually could have stopped the US from invading Venezuela made his move.

Now Mike Pence is left holding the bag to try to clean this up on Wednesday, while both China and Russia are laughing all the way to Venezuela's massive oil reserve bank.

Pence’s address will shine a global spotlight on the issue, but action by the Security Council is unlikely. The United States and Russia both failed in rival bids to get the body to adopt resolutions on Venezuela in February. 

The United Nations estimates about a quarter of Venezuelans are in need of humanitarian assistance, according to an internal U.N. report seen by Reuters last week, that paints a dire picture of millions of people lacking food and basic services. 

Maduro has said there is no crisis and blames U.S. sanctions for the country’s economic problems. In February Venezuelan government troops blocked U.S.-backed aid convoys entering from Colombia and Brazil. Maduro has accepted aid from ally Russia.

Moscow has also provided military assistance to Maduro’s government. 

The White House warned Moscow and other countries backing Maduro against sending troops and military equipment, saying the United States would view such actions as a “direct threat” to the region’s security. 

Russia has dismissed U.S. criticism of its military cooperation with Caracas, saying it is not interfering in the Latin American country’s internal affairs and poses no threat to regional stability. 

Guaido invoked the Venezuelan constitution to assume an interim presidency in January, arguing that Maduro’s 2018 re-election was illegitimate.

What's Trump going to do, exactly?  At this point Trump has trashed NATO so hard that they're not going to lift a finger to help the US in Caracas.  No, Putin is holding all the cards here, and all of them have Donald Trump's big dumb orange face on them.

No, I was dead wrong about Trump and John Bolton invading Venezuela. I freely admit that.  That ship has sailed.

But brother, the reality is going to be much worse.

It's All About Revenge Now

The Trump regime wants blood, and its House GOP allies are going to work, with Rep. Devin Nunes leading the charge to lock up Mueller probe figures and Obama administration officials.

California Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday he was planning to send eight criminal referrals to Attorney General William Barr as soon as this week. 

Nunes, who investigated accusations of FBI and Department of Justice abuse while he was previously chairman of the intelligence panel, did not say who he would be referring in a Fox News interview on Sunday. 

Appearing on Fox's "Sunday Morning Futures," Nunes said five of the referrals are related to lying to Congress, misleading Congress and leaking classified information. 

The other referrals, Nunes said, are allegations of lying to the FISA court that approves foreign surveillance warrants, manipulating intelligence and what he described as a "global leak referral," which Nunes said wasn't tied to one individual. 

"We couldn't really send these criminal referrals over without an Attorney General in place, so we are prepared this week to notify the Attorney General that we are prepared to send those referrals over and brief him if he wishes to be briefed. We think they're pretty clear, but as of right now this is, this may not be all of them, but this cleans up quite a bit. We have eight referrals that we are prepared to send over to the Attorney General this week," Nunes said. 

Criminal referrals from Congress to the Justice Department are effectively requests for a criminal investigation from the Justice Department and the FBI. 

When Republicans controlled Congress, Nunes launched a committee investigation into allegations the FBI and Justice Department abused the FISA process, including the release of a classified memo detailing his accusations.

You'll see investigations announced against Democrats and the FBI before you'll read another word of the Mueller report.

Count on it.

StupidiNews!

• The Baylor Lady Bears have secured their third NCAA Women's Basketball title with an 82-81 win over Notre Dame, Baylor star Lauren Cox left with a knee injury but the Lady Bears rallied to win.
• A new study finds white supremacist groups worldwide are adopting Donald Trump's symbolism and rhetoric to advance their agenda globally.
• Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is calling for an immediate cease fire in Libya as Khalifa Haftar and the Libyan National Army are advancing on the capital of Tripoli.
• Embattled Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has sacked several cabinet ministers hoping it will allow him to ride out his corruption scandal, polls show the Liberal Party and opposition Conservatives tied.
• The European Union is accusing automakers BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen of colluding to defraud consumers over diesel emissions and filters as far back as 2006.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

As I said last time, the person in the Trump regime to watch out for when it comes to the coming mass ICE roundups, concentration camp-style mass incarcerations, and mass deportations is avowed white supremacist Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

If you thought concentration camps for undocumented was fun, wait until we have beggar's prison camps for the families who are US citizens who can't afford to pay Miller's fines for their undocumented fathers, mothers, sons and daughters.

I'm telling you guys that this is coming. Trump's big re-election campaign is going to be "Deport them all" and should America grant him a second term, the round-ups are going to come. Hell, they'll start before that.

The next step is getting rid of everyone at DHS and ICE who isn't on board with Miller's final solution to America's "immigration problem", and that's too much for current DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to take, as she's resigning.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is resigning, President Trump announced in a tweet Sunday. CBS News first reported Nielsen's impending departure, which Mr. Trump announced after a 5 p.m. meeting with Nielsen at the White House.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan will serve as acting DHS secretary, the president announced.

"Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen will be leaving her position, and I would like to thank her for her service," Mr. Trump tweeted Sunday. "...I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary for @DHSgov. I have confidence that Kevin will do a great job!"

One U.S. official told CBS News is it unlikely McAleenan would be nominated as Nielsen's permanent replacement.

Nielsen's imminent departure is a part of a massive DHS overhaul engineered and directed by top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, according to a senior U.S. official. It's unclear whether Nielsen is deciding to leave voluntarily, or whether she has been pressured to resign. But Nielsen's tenure since she was confirmed in December 2017 has at times been rocky, with the president taking some of his frustrations over illegal immigration out on her. Questions about whether she might leave have swirled for months. But she was by the president's side on Friday in Calexico, California, as Mr. Trump pushed for a crackdown on illegal immigration and the need for a border wall.

Nielsen's announced exit comes two days after Mr. Trump announced he wants to go in a "tougher" direction in his nomination for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, after originally announcing Ron Vitiello would head ICE. Nielsen's departure also means acting heads will soon be running DHS, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Department of the Interior. Nielsen has also been one of only three women serving in Mr. Trump's Cabinet, the others being Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and CIA Director Gina Haspel.

Whatever Trump and Stephen Miller have planned for DHS and ICE, it's too awful for the *woman who engineered the separation of thousands of migrant kids from their parents and put them in cages to continue working for Trump.

Let's think about this.

I'm more convinced than ever that we're going to start putting millions of undocumented in camps, and very, very soon. And who will Trump tap to lead DHS who'll be worse than Nielsen?  Several people come to mind: Kris Kobach, Ken Cuccinelli, and Rick Perry sliding over from Energy seems like a good short list to me.

And all of them will back brutal, deadly police action against undocumented in this country.  But make no mistake: immigration is all Stephen Miller's field now.  That field is about to be awash in blood.

Nielsen deserves to be at The Hague facing crimes against humanity charges, for sure.  But things are about to get a lot worse.

The US Goes Rogue Nation

Back in September, John Bolton's Mustache made it clear that the US was never going to tolerate the International Criminal Court investigating American war crimes in Afghanistan.

In his first speech as national security adviser, Bolton made the case that the ICC's authority is invalid, subverts American sovereignty, and concentrates power in the hands of an unchecked authority in a way that is "antithetical to our nation's ideals." In November, the ICC prosecutor asked to investigate crimes allegedly committed by members of the U.S. military who served in Afghanistan. Bolton called those claims unfounded. The national security adviser said it was no coincidence he made his speech on the ICC one day before the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

"Today, on the eve of September 11th, I want to deliver a clear and unambiguous message on behalf of the President of the United States," Bolton said. "The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court.We will not cooperate with the ICC," Bolton said. "We will provide no assistance to the ICC. And we certainly will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us."

Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed these threats would become US policy.

The United States will revoke or deny visas to International Criminal Court personnel who attempt to investigate or prosecute alleged abuses committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere and may do the same with those who try to take action against Israel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday. 

Pompeo, making good on a threat delivered last September by national security adviser John Bolton, said the U.S. had already moved against some employees of The Hague-based court, but declined to say how many or what cases they may have been investigating. 

“We are determined to protect the American and allied military and civilian personnel from living in fear of unjust prosecution for actions taken to defend our great nation,” Pompeo said.

This week, the Trump regime made good on its threats to expel ICC investigators from the US.

The Trump administration revoked the visa of International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda following her inquiry into possible war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. 

Bensouda’s office confirmed the revocation in a statement on Friday, in which the office also emphasized that the chief prosecutor "has an independent and impartial mandate under the Rome statute,” ICC’s founding treaty, The Associated Press reports. 

"The Prosecutor and her office will continue to undertake that statutory duty with utmost commitment and professionalism, without fear or favor," the statement added.

The U.S. State Department also confirmed the revocation in a statement to the news agency on Friday, which also said that "the United States will take the necessary steps to protect its sovereignty and to protect our people from unjust investigation and prosecution by the International Criminal Court.”

We're officially a rogue nuclear nation, folks.  When the rest of the world decides we're too much of a threat to the planet, what then?

A Taxing Move By Trump, Con't

Steve M. notes White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney is vowing that Democrats will never get Donald Trump's tax returns, and I agree with Steve that Mulvaney is right.

Trump has Mulvaney on TV acting chesty and defiant, while gaslighting us on the legal appropriateness of the request and playing I'm-rubber-you're-glue on the question of which party is defying the law. (It's Republicans who know that the text of the law isn't on their side.) Prior to that, Trump sent out one of his personal lawyers, William Consovoy, to argue that the request was an attempt to "harass" Trump because Democrats "dislike his politics and speech." (Yes, Trump is the president of the United States -- but he's being deplatformed! Like Ben Shapiro and Milo!) 

This is America, of course, where the federal bench is stocked with extremists placed there by the last two Republican presidents, men who reached the White House through skulduggery and without benefit of a popular-vote mandate. Those judges won't care what the law says.

And if the courts do somehow rule against Trump, all the way up to the Supreme Court, I believe he'll still defy them. I've been saying since 2017 that Trump doesn't have the instincts of a true totalitarian dictator, which we knew when courts ruled against his first Muslim ban and he didn't say, "Screw the courts, we're doing it anyway, exactly the way we planned." Trump still wants to (more or less) color inside the lines, as the other branches of government define those lines. He'll bend the rules massively -- an emergency declaration to get his wall, for instance -- but he'll try to make it seem as if the law is on his side. 

I assume that even if he's exhausted all legal channels and all possible strained interpretations of the law, and he's finally compelled to release his taxes to the House, he'll refuse, because while he doesn't have a true totalitarian will to power, he'll do anything to save his own ass, which is what he cares about more than anything else.

As I've said before, if the contents of either the Mueller report or Trump's tax returns are made public, then that's not only the end of the Trump regime, it's the end of the Trump brand.   Donald Trump will do anything to prevent that.

And should SCOTUS rule that the Mueller report be released (highly unlikely, we'll never see it) or Trump's taxes (highly likely and almost a certainty to be leaked to the press) then as Steve says, Trump will refuse.

Then what?

Who will compel Trump to obey the Supreme Court?

Nancy Pelosi and the House Dems?  They won't impeach.  They'll never impeach.

Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans?  Trump will take every single one of them down with him and all parties know it.  They'll never convict him during an impeachment trial.

The American people?  They elected him in the first place.

Steve's right.

We'll never see Trump's returns.

Sunday Long Read: Superfungus Among Us

Drug-resistant bacteria are becoming more and more of a threat to those with weakened and/or underdeveloped immune systems, but drug-resistant fungal infections are also starting to wreak havoc, and within 25 to 30 years, bacterial and fungal infections are slated to kill more people worldwide than cancer.

Last May, an elderly man was admitted to the Brooklyn branch of Mount Sinai Hospital for abdominal surgery. A blood test revealed that he was infected with a newly discovered germ as deadly as it was mysterious. Doctors swiftly isolated him in the intensive care unit. 

The germ, a fungus called Candida auris, preys on people with weakened immune systems, and it is quietly spreading across the globe. Over the last five years, it has hit a neonatal unit in Venezuela, swept through a hospital in Spain, forced a prestigious British medical center to shut down its intensive care unit, and taken root in India, Pakistan and South Africa. 

Recently C. auris reached New York, New Jersey and Illinois, leading the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add it to a list of germs deemed “urgent threats.”

The man at Mount Sinai died after 90 days in the hospital, but C. auris did not. Tests showed it was everywhere in his room, so invasive that the hospital needed special cleaning equipment and had to rip out some of the ceiling and floor tiles to eradicate it.

“Everything was positive — the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump,” said Dr. Scott Lorin, the hospital’s president. “The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive.” 

C. auris is so tenacious, in part, because it is impervious to major antifungal medications, making it a new example of one of the world’s most intractable health threats: the rise of drug-resistant infections.

For decades, public health experts have warned that the overuse of antibiotics was reducing the effectiveness of drugs that have lengthened life spans by curing bacterial infections once commonly fatal. But lately, there has been an explosion of resistant fungi as well, adding a new and frightening dimension to a phenomenon that is undermining a pillar of modern medicine. 

“It’s an enormous problem,” said Matthew Fisher, a professor of fungal epidemiology at Imperial College London, who was a co-author of a recent scientific review on the rise of resistant fungi. “We depend on being able to treat those patients with antifungals.”

Simply put, fungi, just like bacteria, are evolving defenses to survive modern medicines.
Yet even as world health leaders have pleaded for more restraint in prescribing antimicrobial drugs to combat bacteria and fungi — convening the United Nations General Assembly in 2016 to manage an emerging crisis — gluttonous overuse of them in hospitals, clinics and farming has continued. 

Resistant germs are often called “superbugs,” but this is simplistic because they don’t typically kill everyone. Instead, they are most lethal to people with immature or compromised immune systems, including newborns and the elderly, smokers, diabetics and people with autoimmune disorders who take steroids that suppress the body’s defenses. 

Scientists say that unless more effective new medicines are developed and unnecessary use of antimicrobial drugs is sharply curbed, risk will spread to healthier populations. A study the British government funded projects that if policies are not put in place to slow the rise of drug resistance, 10 million people could die worldwide of all such infections in 2050, eclipsing the eight million expected to die that year from cancer.

And if you think the Trump FDA or CDC will lift a finger to help stave off superbugs, well, this is literally a regime that refuses to believe in actual science, so good luck with that.

Last Call For The Dog Gets Wagged

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, with elections just 48 hours away, is now promising the "annexation of West Bank" if re-elected.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israel's Channel 12 News on Saturday evening that he will start extending Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank if re-elected prime minister in the election on April 9.

It remains unclear at this point whether Netanyahu was referring to all of the West Bank, or only parts of it.

"A Palestinian state will endanger our existence and I withstood huge pressure over the past eight years, no prime minister has withstood such pressure. We must control our destiny," the premier said.

After boasting that he was responsible for U.S. President Donald Trump's declaration recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, Netanyahu told the program "Meet the Press": "Will we move ahead to the next stage? Yes. I will extend sovereignty but I don't distinguish between the settlement blocs and the isolated ones, because each settlement is Israeli and I will not hand it over to Palestinian sovereignty."

"I will not divide Jerusalem, I will not evacuate any community and I will make sure we control the territory west of Jordan," Netanyahu told the show's host, Rina Matzliah.

Asked what will happen to the Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar, which Netanyahu has vowed to evacuate but has still not been and which has been at the center of international condemnations against the decision, Netanyahu promised that "it will happen, I promised and it will happen at the soonest opportunity."

The prime minister refused to say whether he would support term limits, saying there is still a lot of work he needs to do. 

So yeah, Bibi will roll tanks into Gaza if re-elected.  And yes, it appears that despite the massive bribery scandal he is currently under indictment for, his Likud party is tied with opposition leader Benny Gantz's Kahol Lavan party in the latest polls.  It's entirely possible that the right-wing bloc will be able to form a government with Netanyahu at its head anyway.

And then the tanks roll in.

Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

That didn't take long, did it?

A 55-year-old New York man was arrested Friday for allegedly threatening to kill freshman congresswoman Ilhan Omar, the Elmira Star-Gazette reports. 

The man, identified as Patrick W. Carlineo, is said to have called the Democratic lawmaker’s office on March 21 and made threatening comments, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Western District of New York.  

“Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why are you working for her, she’s a fucking terrorist. I’ll put a bullet in her fucking skull,” Carlineo allegedly said.  

Omar’s office reportedly immediately reported the call to the United States Capitol Police, Threat Assessment Section, which in turn got the FBI involved.  

While questioned by FBI agents over the call late last month, Carlineo reportedly described himself as a patriot who loves President Trump and hates radical Muslims in public office.  

Investigators also reportedly found a shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle at his home.  

The arrest comes just a few weeks after Fox News host Jeanine Pirro suggested on-air that Omar’s wearing of a hijab might be “indicative” of loyalty to Sharia law, a claim which quickly sparked backlash and saw her show temporarily bumped from the air.

We've already had Gabrielle Giffords and Steve Scalise shot in assassination attempts on House lawmakers in the last decade.  We should be horrified that it very nearly happened a third time.

And speaking of happening a third time...

Three historically black churches have burned in less than two weeks in one south Louisiana parish, where officials said they had found “suspicious elements” in each case. The officials have not ruled out the possibility of arson, or the possibility that the fires are related.

“There is clearly something happening in this community,” State Fire Marshal H. Browning said in a statement on Thursday. “That is why it is imperative that the citizens of this community be part of our effort to figure out what it is.”

The three fires occurred on March 26, Tuesday and Thursday in St. Landry Parish, north of Lafayette. A fourth fire, a small blaze that officials said was “intentionally set,” was reported on Sunday at a predominantly black church in Caddo Parish, about a three-hour drive north.

“But just as we haven’t connected the three in St. Landry, we haven’t connected the one in Caddo,” said Ashley Rodrigue, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal, on Friday.

Local officials said that they were still investigating the fires, and did not say if they knew of any suspects, a motive, or whether racism was an element.

“There certainly is a commonality, and whether that leads to a person or persons or groups, we just don’t know,” Mr. Browning said at a news conference on Thursday.

The F.B.I. and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are involved in the investigation, said Jeff Nowakowski, a spokesman for the A.T.F.’s New Orleans field division.

Remember, the Homeland Security task force that looked into white supremacist domestic terrorism like this was disbanded by the Trump regime earlier this year because white supremacist domestic terrorism isn't a priority.

Well, stopping it isn't a priority, anyway.

 

A Taxing Move By Trump

Despite the law being clear that House Democratic Ways and Means chair Richard Neal can indeed summon Trump's tax returns from the IRS, the Trump regime is signaling it will delay the request for months or years and fight the release all the way to SCOTUS if necessary.

President Donald Trump continues to hold his ground against Democratic efforts to obtain his tax returns, with one administration official telling CNN that the President and his team are willing to fight the House Democratic request all the way to the Supreme Court. 

"This is a hill and people would be willing to die on it," the official said. 

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal formally requested six years of Trump's personal tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service in a letter Wednesday. 

The official added that the administration is "not going to set the precedent" of turning over tax returns for future occupants of the Oval Office, slamming the House Democrat request from Neal as "abuse and overreach by Congress" and asked what's stopping Senate Republicans from seeking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's returns. 

"They have zero right to it," the official said, who added Trump has also made it clear he's not releasing his tax returns. 

Trump has retained Arlington, Virginia-based law firm Consovoy McCarthy Park PLLC to represent him on the matter. 

Lawyer William Consovoy argued in a statement on Friday that the requests for Trump's tax information "are not consistent with governing law, do not advance any proper legislative purpose, and threaten to interfere with the ordinary conduct of audits." 

In the Wednesday request, Neal cited a little-known IRS code. Under IRS code 6103, only the Joint Committee on Taxation, the House Ways and Means chairman and the Senate Finance Committee chairman have the authority to request the tax information of an individual. 

But in a detailed letter to the general counsel of the Treasury Department on Friday, Consovoy said that "the committee's authority is subject to important constraints," which, he said, citing the tax code, "extend to the ordinary taxpayer and the President alike." 

Consovoy said that Neal does not have a "legitimate committee purpose" for obtaining the tax returns, adding that Neal's request "is a transparent effort by one political party to harass an official from the other party because they dislike his politics and speech."

America will never see Trump's tax returns for the same reason we'll never see the Mueller report: the information contained within it becoming public would mean the immediate end of the Trump regime.   Trump will fight both until 2021, if not 2023 or more in order to save himself from being forced out of office and then facing enough NY state charges for him and his family to spend a very long time in prison. For Trump himself it would be a life sentence.

Ask not why Trump wants to fight the release.  Ask why he has to stop it using any means necessary...and he will.

He doesn't have a choice.

The War In Yemen, Con't

A bipartisan vote in the House has approved a Senate bill ending materiel support for the US military presence in Yemen, something that will run into a guaranteed Trump veto, but an important vote nonetheless.

The House on Thursday voted to end American involvement in the Yemen war, rebuffing the Trump administration’s support for the military campaign led by Saudi Arabia.

The bill now heads to President Donald Trump, who is expected to veto it. The White House says the measure raises “serious constitutional concerns,” and Congress lacks the votes to override him.

By a 247-175 vote, Congress for the first time invoked the decades-old War Powers Resolution to try and stop a foreign conflict. The Senate vote was 54-46 on March 13.

“The president will have to face the reality that Congress is no longer going to ignore its constitutional obligations when it comes to foreign policy,” said Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He said the humanitarian crisis in Yemen triggered by the war “demands moral leadership.”

The war in Yemen is in its fifth year. Thousands of people have been killed and millions are on the brink of starvation. The United Nations has called the situation in Yemen the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The top Republican on the committee, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, acknowledged the dire situation in Yemen for civilians, but spoke out in opposition to the bill, saying it was an abuse of the War Powers Resolution.

“This radical interpretation has implications far beyond Saudi Arabia,” McCaul said. He warned that the measure could “disrupt U.S. security cooperation agreements with more than 100 counties.”

Democrats overcame a GOP attempt to divide the majority party through a procedural motion involving Israel just minutes before the Yemen vote. Republicans wanted to amend the Yemen bill with language condemning the international boycott movement and efforts to delegitimize Israel. Democrats argued the amendment would kill the Yemen resolution, and most of them voted against the Israel measure.

“This is about politics, this is about trying to drive a wedge into this caucus where it does not belong,” said Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., said to applause from Democrats. Deutch described the boycott movement as “economic warfare,” but called on lawmakers to vote against the amendment.

“The Jewish community also has a history of standing up against atrocities like the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. My colleagues are trying to block us from standing in support of human rights,” he said.

Democrats saw the trap coming and disarmed it, and now Trump has to veto a bill and break one of his major promises of pulling US troops home.  The reality though is that the Saudis own the Trump family, specifically Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.  If Trump doesn't veto the bill and support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen dries up, the Kingdom would immediately retaliate, possibly in a fashion fatal to Trump's 2020 chances.

Trump knows this.  Everyone knows this.

Now Trump has to explain to his base why American dollars have to go to the Saudis, whom they hate.

Should be fun.

Last Call For The Anti-Social Networks

Clear majorities of Americans in the latest NBC News/WSJ poll see social media correctly as the fake news sinkholes and privacy-destroying monstrosities that they are, but they're not quite ready to call for the government to break them up.

Yet.

The American public holds negative views of social-media giants like Facebook and Twitter, with sizable majorities saying these sites do more to divide the country than unite it and spread falsehoods rather than news, according to results from the latest national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

What’s more, six in 10 Americans say they don’t trust Facebook at all to protect their personal information, the poll finds.

But the public also believes that technology in general has more benefits than drawbacks on the economy, and respondents are split about whether the federal government should break up the largest tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook.

“Social media — and Facebook, in particular — have some serious issues in this poll,” said Micah Roberts, a pollster at the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies, which conducted this survey with the Democratic firm Hart Research Associates.

“If America was giving social media a Yelp review, a majority would give it zero stars,” Roberts added.

According to the poll, 57 percent of Americans say they agree with the statement that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter do more to divide the country, while 35 percent think they do more to bring the nation together.
Fifty-five percent believe social media does more to spread lies and falsehoods, versus 31 percent who say it does more to spread news and information.

Sixty-one percent think social media does more to spread unfair attacks and rumors against public figures and corporations, compared with 32 percent who say it does more to hold those public figures and corporations accountable.

And a whopping 82 percent say social media sites do more to waste people’s time, versus 15 percent who say they do more to use Americans’ time well.

But those numbers also come as nearly seven in 10 Americans — 69 percent — say they use social media at least once a day.

As with the FCC and television, social media desperately needs regulation.  I just don't trust the Trump regime to do it properly at all.

The fact remains though trillion-dollar companies need to be broken up.

Trump Cards, Con't

Another Trump nominee for an executive branch position who is so corrupt, incompetent, and unqualified, not even Mitch McConnell's Senate will confirm him.

The White House on Thursday withdrew the nomination of a longtime border official to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the Trump administration grapples with a massive increase in Southern border crossings that are straining the system with no easy solution, according to people with knowledge of the move.

The paperwork on Ron Vitiello was sent to members of Congress Thursday, the people said, and the decision was unexpected and met with confusion. Vitiello had been scheduled to travel with President Donald Trump to the border on Friday, but was no longer going, one official said. He will still remain acting director, they said.
One Homeland Security official insisted it was nothing but a paperwork error that had later been corrected. But other, higher-level officials said the move did not appear to be a mistake, even though they were not informed ahead of time.

The people had direct knowledge of the letter but were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Vitiello was nominated to lead ICE, the agency tasked with enforcing immigration law in the interior of the U.S., after more than 30 years in law enforcement, starting in 1985 with the U.S. Border Patrol. He was previously Border Patrol chief and deputy commissioner U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the patrol.

Vitiello took over during a time of unprecedented spotlight and scrutiny for the agency. Part of ICE’s mission is to arrest immigrants in the U.S. illegally, which has made it a symbol of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies.

He had been acting head since June 2018, nominated in August, had a Senate confirmation hearing in November and his nomination had passed one Senate panel, the people said. But because Homeland Security touches on so many topics, a second committee also had jurisdiction and his nomination was still under discussion there. Some Democrats had concerns, and a union representing some ICE agents had opposed his nomination.

Department of Homeland Security officials referred questions to the White House, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In other words, this guy had no chance at getting 50 Republican Senate votes.

Let that sink in.

Border Line Insanity, Con't

Me, last weekend, on Trump's border-closing bluff:

It's a bluff and everyone knows it.  Closing the border with Mexico would cost the country billions in trade dollars a day and Republicans in Congress aren't about to put up with that.  Trump has already blown a hole in the side of the US economy with his tariffs.  Closing the border with Mexico would only make things worse. 

Donald Trump, Thursday, reminding us "what border closing?"

President Donald Trump backpedaled on his threat to shut down the southern border, saying Thursday that now he doesn't think the US will "ever have to close the border." 

Trump, earlier Thursday, threatened to slap tariffs on automobiles made in Mexico and close the US-Mexico border if the country didn't stop "massive amounts of drugs" coming into the US within one year. 

"We're going to give them a one-year warning, and if the drugs don't stop or (are) largely stopped, we're going to put tariffs on Mexico and products, in particular, the cars ... and if that doesn't stop the drugs, we close the border," Trump told reporters. 

But by Thursday evening, Trump had shifted his position again. 

"I don't think we'll ever have to close the border because the penalty of tariffs on cars coming into the United States from Mexico, at 25%, will be massive," Trump said. 

When asked if his comments suggested that his new auto tariffs mean the southern border will remain open for at least a year, Trump responded: "No, I didn't say that." 

"We would start with the tariffs and we'll see what happens," Trump said. "Now, maybe by the end of this press conference or tomorrow that'll stop. And if that stops we're doing a big tariff deal." 

So we're back to 25% tariffs on autos and parts from Mexico, which would bankrupt US automakers overnight.  And the latest threat deadline would put that right in the 2020 campaign.  Trump is bluffing yet again, because while he is sliding the country towards autocratic fascism with small daily steps, the bigger jumps are, for now, not being made.

Trump is still Trump, a con artist who is 100% bluff when he has no cards.

StupidiNews!

• House Democrats will sue the Trump regime over Donald Trump's emergency border declaration, adding to multiple lawsuits filed by states and NGOs protesting Trump's abuse of power.
• The Mormon Church says it will no longer consider LGBTQ members in a same-sex marriage to be heretics to be excommunicated, reversing a November 2015 decree.
• Donald Trump reportedly will be nominating former GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve, Cain will join conservative pundit Stephen Moore on the board.
• Elon Musk's Boring Co. tunnel-digging enterprise is in talks to operate in Israel, PM Benjamin Netanyahu believes Israel would be a good fit for his proposed Hyperloop transportation technology.
• Coming to your Android-powered Smart TV: Google ads on your streaming services as customers found out this week who are part of a new "pilot program" for on-screen ads.

Last Call For Meat The Press, Con't

The Trump regime is absolutely coming to destroy the free press, and various media control and regulation schemes will be field tested in the (meth) labs of Democracy first, at the GOP state level in places like Georgia.

Six Republican state representatives in Georgia have moved to create an "ethics board" for journalists that would require news organizations to provide copies of pictures and audio and video recordings of interviews to subjects who request them or risk civil penalty. 

The cost of meeting those requests would be paid by the news organizations.

The proposed legislation, House Bill 734, titled the "Ethics in Journalism Act," was sponsored Tuesday by Rep. Andy Welch, who represents the city of McDonough. 

The bill would create a board of media professionals and academics that would produce"a canon of ethics" and "develop a voluntary accreditation process in journalism ethics," which would also allow for the investigation and sanctioning of journalists. 

The proposed board appears to have little power to punish journalists other than to remove its own accreditation or impose a penalty if the interview request provision is not met. 

Welch also announced that he was retiring from Georgia's legislature at the end of its session on Tuesday, but that the bill would remain available for consideration during the state's 2020 legislative session, according to The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

And of course, the state could then pass laws that would only allow the state to deal with "properly accredited" journalists, who of course would then have to turn over copies of all interview material to subjects on demand.

It would be the end of investigative journalism and a free press, which is of course very much the point of the "ethics board".  If your immediate response is "no newspaper or TV station would touch a state legislator, cop, or politician with this law in place" then congrats, you see where this is going.

And believe me, Trump is taking notes. This will be sold as "fixing fake news" and news outlets will be expected to play or perish.

We get a little closer to fascism.

Crank More-Pork, Or The Other Other White Meat

The Trump regime engages in pork barrel politics at its finest by planning to cut FDA pork inspectors in half and replacing them with meat processor employees.

The Trump administration plans to shift much of the power and responsibility for food safety inspections in hog plants to the pork industry as early as May, cutting the number of federal inspectors by about 40 percent and replacing them with plant employees.

Under the proposed new inspection system, the responsibility for identifying diseased and contaminated pork would be shared with plant employees, whose training would be at the discretion of plant owners. There would be no limits on slaughter-line speeds.

The new pork inspection system would accelerate the federal government’s move toward delegating inspections to the livestock industry. During the Obama administration, poultry plant owners were given more power over safety inspections, although that administration canceled plans to increase line speeds. The Trump administration in September allowed some poultry plants to increase line speeds.

The Trump administration also is working to shift inspection of beef to plant owners. Agriculture Department officials are scheduled next month to discuss the proposed changes with the meat industry.

These proposals, part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to reduce regulations, come as the federal government is under fire for delegating some of its aircraft safety oversight responsibilities to Boeing, which developed the 737 Max jets involved in two fatal crashes over the past six months. Federal Aviation Administration certification of the two aircraft involved in the crashes took place under President Trump, but the major shift toward delegating key aspects of aviation oversight began during the George W. Bush administration.

So give it a few years and beef, pork, and chicken will be inspected by the meat companies, and not the government, and who knows if they'll care or if contamination and recalls will even be reported?  I guess if several thousand people all turn up dead maybe.

Enjoy your coming summer cookouts, America.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

The NY Times is now running, not walking back its "Mueller Finds No Trump Collusion" story by actually doing some goddamn reporting and asking Mueller's team what Mueller did find, and the resulting story make it very clear that the report is bad enough for Trump that America will never see it.

Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.

At stake in the dispute — the first evidence of tension between Mr. Barr and the special counsel’s office — is who shapes the public’s initial understanding of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history. Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.

Mr. Barr has said he will move quickly to release the nearly 400-page report but needs time to scrub out confidential information. The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, and some team members believe that Mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the four-page letter he wrote on March 24 laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the investigation. Mr. Barr only briefly cited the special counsel’s work in his letter.

However, the special counsel’s office never asked Mr. Barr to release the summaries soon after he received the report, a person familiar with the investigation said. And the Justice Department quickly determined that the summaries contain sensitive information, like classified material, secret grand-jury testimony and information related to current federal investigations that must remain confidential, according to two government officials.

We basically suspected if not outright knew this material, but it took out journalistic institutions a couple of weeks apparently to get around to following up with Barr.  Now they're all but accusing him of covering up for Trump, and the fight, as Politico's Darren Samuelsohn describes it, will be the "redaction wars."

House Democrats want to see everything related to the special counsel’s nearly two-year-old investigation into Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential election. But their open-book demands stand at odds with the Justice Department’s desire to black out sensitive areas throughout Mueller’s 400-page submission.

The high-stakes chess match will play out on both political and legal grounds, and so far neither side has yet to show any signs of compromise.

As a result, the battle could spill into the courts, setting up a protracted legal confrontation that inevitably causes waves in the thick of the 2020 White House race. For President Donald Trump, the possibility of freshly unveiled Mueller bombshells dropping while he runs for reelection could be devastating. But Democrats are in a tough position: pursuing their legal challenge at all costs could feed the Trump-approved narrative that they’re overzealous, but giving up risks angering their own Trump-hating base.

“It seems to be shaping up as a classic collision of interests by two coordinate branches of government, each with their own respective legitimate interests that may be in conflict with one another,” said David Laufman, who ran the Justice Department’s counterintelligence unit from 2014 to 2018 and had a key role overseeing the early stages of the FBI’s Russia investigation before Mueller’s appointment.

I fully expect Barr to delay  the report for "national security reasons related to ongoing cases" as long as he can get away with it.  But if you ask me, my gut tells me that this story is chin music right past Barr's head.

Maybe a full leak is next unless Barr plays fair.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• In a 313-312 vote, the UK Parliament has voted to force Prime Minister Theresa May to seek an extension of the Brexit process if there is no deal by April 12.
• Indicted NC GOP chair Robin Hayes will hand over day-to-day party operations but will not step down as he heals from "recent health setbacks".
• Ethiopia's Transport Ministry will release its initial report Thursday on the March 10 crash of a Boeing 737 MAX jet that killed 157 passengers and crew.
• House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal is formally requesting six year of Donald Trump's tax returns from the IRS, Trump will refuse but the Treasury Department gets the decision.
• An Ohio teen is facing more than 70 counts of "swatting" police departments across the country, triggering armed response teams with fake emergency calls.