Seditionist hangs above the Senate floor

Seditionists — a term used by one television network; also called domestic terrorists by another — acting in support of President Trump, stormed Congress one year ago today while a joint session was working to ratify the electoral college vote, which was expected to confirm President-elect Joe Biden as the 46th President of United States.

U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), "who is vice chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, said the committee has gathered first-hand testimony that Trump was watching the violence unfold on television at the White House and did nothing to stop his supporters." Cheney was intereviewed on NBC's TODAY show this morning. "A year [later], there are pending laws in 16 states that would change election rules to give more power to the state legislatures rather than election officials and governors, and there are least 18 Trump loyalists and election deniers who are running for secretary of state to oversee elections at the state level." ¹

Representative Cheney has been a very outspoken opponent of Trump loyalists within the Republican party, and has endured well-publicized threats of censure, committee removal, and other political actions from those same loyalists.

VANITY FAIR reported recently that "11 people associated with the right-wing extemist group Oath Keepers were charged with seditious conspiracy" as part of a story titled "That Whole Not-an-Insurrection Business Really Blew Up in Fox News' Face." Their point: Some of Fox' biggest names have worked very hard over the past year to downplay the insurrection, and their arguments are running out of fuel.

Personally, I've been very affected by the event. A year on I'm still amazed by the division and rancor. It hasn't gone anywhere. Just the other day I saw a vendor selling banners and flags on a street corner. The flags were all pro-Trump rhetoric, "TRUMP WON" and so forth. Seeing those flags shot me straight back into a funk about the state of our nation.

A few years ago I read about a "playbook" of sorts for breaking down democracy — I think the author alleged that Trump was following it closely. One of the first things it mentioned was the idea of exhausting the public — removing the public's interest in government by beating them down. Trump did it with drama; with outrageous antics and with the assistance of like-minded people in Congress. Together with the FOX network, they split the country very deeply: Trump, et al. created a following and orchestrated and conducted the attack; but he also created disinterest among people like me — Regular Joes and Janes who became overwhelmed by the audacity, the frequency, and the incredible and formerly inconceivable bullshit. I soured on watching news, I stopped reading the books, and I even replaced browser default news pages with links to emergencykitten.com to put some space between me and the never-ending Trump headlines. For a while, I even took a break from political news and news junkies on Facebook. Facebook had become fertile loam for political rancor and seemingly little else.

Many left Facebook for exactly that reason. Conservatives left because they accused the platform of suppressing their ideals, fleeing to Parler and other forums. Others left because they were just tired of all the constant political arguments. I confess, I created a list of friends who became combative and just wanted to argue everything — I mean in an aggressive way, not through reasoned discourse — and I isolated them from future posts. My wall would appear as though I hadn't posted anything since the day I created the list, but in reality, they've been excluded from everything forward from that date. I don't feel our political differences warrant anything as drastic as unfriending, but their price of admission has gone up. "YOU ARE ALLOWED TO CHANGE THE PRICE OF WHAT IT COSTS TO ACCESS YOU" is a phrase I found on the Internet some time ago that really resonated with me. I didn't intend to apply it to social media "time-outs," but, if the shoe fits... Being friends on Facebook and following people on Facebook are two separate things. I "snoozed" some friends when I needed to break from a barrage of political posts; but getting attacked by people I'd served our nation with because I'd posted a news article — without commentary — well, that's a horse of a different color in my eyes, and perhaps warrants banishment into my Facebook "Phantom Zone" described above.

Socially, I mean, I think we all lost. People I used to keep in touch with over Facebook aren't there anymore, and we've lost touch. It leaves me feeling sad and empty. These were people who I served with — there should be a bond there more important, more sacred, than political differences. I don't blame them, however. I blame Trump et al. and conservative media for broadcasting their absurd narrative. I've one friend — a contractor at a company I used to work for — who absolutely adored the conservative media. He was a HUGE fan of the Drudge Report. Then I shared with him an article that showed the Drudge Report was actually forwarding Russian propaganda ² and he went "radio silent." This is a guy for whom I actually bought a MAGA hat when I stayed at a Trump hotel property back in 2016, I think. I still really like the guy and say "hi" every so often. But there are others I haven't heard from at all since the election, and doubt I will again. I've got great memories of them, and I'd prefer to just remember those, if I can.

p.s. — I'm a little proud of myself for working a Superman reference into the paragraph about Facebook. It's way out of my nerding comfort zone.

The Flag of the United States of America

 

Today marks the 32nd anniversary of Operation Just Cause.

On the Atlantic side of the isthmus, the Panamanian Defense Forces, under the command of Gen. Manuel Noriega, operated out of Fort Espinar. A year later, I had orders to Panama, and would later be assigned to quarters on Ft. Espinar.

Noriega would be captured and become US prisoner #41586 (this was the headline of the edition of the Miami Herald that reported his capture). He was sentenced to 40 years for narcotics trafficking and money laundering. He passed away in May, 2017.

I did not have a role in the operation, but I knew some who did. I was a PO2 at the time, stationed in Florida, in the orbit of Miami. Miami was pretty involved in the aftermath, insofar as Gen. Noriega was brought to federal court there, plus of course South Florida has a very large Latin American community.

At this point in my life, only a few other memories stand out for me about Just Cause. The first was the horror of watching the SEAL team come ashore, courtesy of American news media. Several of us huddled around a TV set in astonishment. I remember what seemed to be "WTF?!" expressions on some of the operators’ faces as the team was greeted by news cameras — and their lights. That's what I meant when I used the word "horror"; to us, it seemed as though there was a massive hole in the operational security of the mission. Looking back, though it seemed completely disgraceful to us at the time, I suspect there were reasons for the publicity.

The second thing I remember is the condition of the PDF barracks on Ft. Espinar. The building was riddled with large holes and appeared abandoned. I was told the damage was from a firefight between the PDF and US forces. "Ni un paso atras" was painted on the building -— it was a phrase from Noriega’s campaign of increasing hostility toward the US.

The third thing that comes to mind is Chief Don McFaul. I knew him as a PO1 in California years before the operation. We actually stood watch together at one point. Chief McFaul fell at Paitilla Airfield, and became the namesake of a training range in Panama and, of course, USS MCFAUL DDG-74. If you look closely at the ship’s badge, you’ll see a shield resembling the national flag of Panama, and a trident in the style of the one featured on the Special Warfare insignia he earned and wore.

Rest In Peace, Chief McFaul.

The logo of Epik hosting

When Parler, which made the news a lot prior to the presidential election last November, was kicked off of its hosting provider for violating its rules, it, and other far right Internet sites and apps turned to Washington-based hosting provider Epik.

According to news reports and Wikipedia, Epik was hacked in February of this year, following the seige at the capitol on January 6th. The group apparently came away with tons and tons of data which was not encrypted at rest.

The hacktivists exposed tons of account infomation, including financial records. Government authorities were quick to request preservation of the data for use in investigating the events of the capitol seige. In my estimation, the data's publication to the public domain represents the exposure of the clockwork of myriad right-wing organizations. This should be worth more than gold to the FBI in particular.

"The company played such a major role in keeping far-right terrorist cesspools alive," said Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence Group, which studies online extremism. "Without Epik, many extremist communities — from QAnon and white nationalists to accelerationist neo-Nazis — would have had far less oxygen to spread harm"

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Epik's CEO — a man whose surname actually is Monster — says he's interested in Net Neutrality. I am, too.

But I guess if Net Neutrality is what I really want, then there must be room for Epiks in our world.

Besides, Epik should remind us that we're supposed to be living in a free country. People are free to choose hosting providers, and hosting providers are free to impose whatever rules they want to impose in their license agreements. It's a shame they got hacked — it's a bigger shame they didn't protect their information better (Ashley Madison, anyone?) — which is something the FTC could investigate.

I guess my point is, choice is choice and crime is crime. Epik represents freedom of choice here. I vote that should be preserved, good, bad, or otherwise. People will choose to use Epik's services like people will choose to become students of philosophies we don't agree with. Studying them is choice, not crime; hurting others is crime. There's a certain logic to the argument that stopping the spread of the philosophy will stop the crimes, but it also impinges on choice — and choice is what we're supposed to be about here.

Flyin' Ted Cruz sneaking out to Cancún

"Leaders stay with the ship."

The southern United States received an arctic blast of snow and cold this week, knocking out power and water across Texas, a state widely known to be owned by the devil and kept as a rental, because Hell is more comfortable.

As temps plunged into the single digits, power generating elements of ERCOT, which oversees the Texas power grid — the "R" stands for "Reliability," folks — dropped offline; wind turbines froze up and failed, and conventional plants also failed, due to natural gas lines and instruments freezing:

[ERCOT] said Feb. 15 that about 34 gigawatts of power were offline. But of that, about 4 gigawatts was due to problems with wind turbines. The rest came mainly from the state’s primary sources, natural gas and coal.¹

Flyin' Ted

One promeninent source of hot air for Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz, opted out of the cold and misery his fellow Texans were enduring, and jumped on a plane headed for Cancún, Mexico — a trip The New York Times learned was organized by Mrs. Cruz and included invitations to others via text messages. The plan was for the family to remain at a resort there through the weekend.²

Twitter-enabled Netizens photographed Sen. Cruz at the airport and on the plane, and shivering Texans did not react well: ³

 

 

What can boil in Texas without power or water? Texans' blood can, after seeing that tweet.

 

 

Many wasted no time in sending Cruz (and even Gov. Abbott) images of destruction to their homes, images of empty store shelves, images of melting snow so they could flush their toilets, with remarks loaded with sarcasm: ⁴

 

 

Some were more direct.

 

 

There are more. Many, many more.

During the days I and my family were without power, I felt a stinging guilt for not having loaded up on firewood and fire-starter logs in advance. We paid for it dearly: though we were unable to find wood anywhere (once my wife could get her 4x4 out and onto the street), she did find an open Home Depot and bought a battery-op reciprocating saw and circular saw, which we used to cut apart a fallen tree limb and some slats from an old bed. I also picked a few expendable pieces of furniture to burn. I wasn't quite Chevy Chase walking the house with a chainsaw (Christmas Vacation is a must-watch every December), but my hands and feet were very cold. Something was going to take one for the team.

During the same period, ice had formed over our pool because the pumps had been dormant. Apart from breaking the ice apart on the surface when power returned, we also dumped snow into the pool to bring the water level up enough to allow it to flow back to the pump via the returns.

Many Texans were also without water service because of a combination of lack of power and the effects of the storm (ice). Many communities, once water service was restored, warned their citizens to boil their water prior to consumption. Mine was briefly under such a warning, though we didn't notice being without both power and water simultaneously (I think we heard later that we actually were).

Lyin' Ted

In the land of "Come and take it," Cruz cannot expect to be let off easy for this gaffe. What's worse, he lied about it at least twice.

From Buzzfeed News:

Sources told the Associated Press, New York Times, and CNN that Cruz went with his family for a long-planned trip to Cancún and was expected to return immediately on Thursday.  ⁵

Yet the text thread reported by The New York Times (ob. cit.) shows the trip was actually a last-minute idea, because poor Mrs. Cruz was chilly (insert frowny-face emoji here):

When Ms. Cruz wrote to the group text chain of neighbors trying to weather the extreme conditions early Wednesday, she said the family had been staying with friends to keep warm, but quickly pivoted to offering an invitation to get away. "Anyone can or want to leave for the week?" she wrote. "We may go to Cancún." She teased a "direct flight" and "hotels w capacity. Seriously." Ms. Cruz promptly shared details for a Wednesday afternoon departure, a Sunday return trip and a luxurious stay at the oceanfront Ritz-Carlton in the meantime.

Clearly this was not a "long-planned trip" as was suggested.

Cruz was also caught trying to worm his way out of it, telling Buzzfeed News (ob. cit.) "that his daughters wanted to take a trip with their friends after school was canceled for the week", and adding, "Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon."

Again, the text thread obtained by The New York Times completely contradicts his explanation. This wasn't about "being a good dad." This was about taking a fucking vacation in the Mexican sun despite extended power outages, ice, snow, and even a handful of constituents' deaths.

HuffPost remarked:

[The New York Times'] report contradicted the senator's flimsy claim that he was merely granting his daughters' wish for a vacation with their friends and was accompanying them when the family jetted off to Cancún this week. He later conceded he had planned to stay through the weekend, but Heidi Cruz's messages to pals seemed to indicate a grander getaway. ⁶

If you really wanted to be a good dad, Senator, you should have put some food on the grill, built a fire in the fireplace, and used it as an opportunity to make some sweet memories with your family.

Am I saying I wouldn't have packed us up and headed for Cancún for a few days? Well, I didn't, because I don't have the money to spare. But if money was no concern, I would have gone SINCE I'M NOT A U.S. SENATOR, WITH MILLIONS OF CONSTITUENTS WHO ARE FREEZING.

It sure seems to me the ONLY reason he flew back to Texas the following day was because he KNEW he'd been busted at the Houston airport and was in for a world of shit. He wasn't going down to drop anybody off; he came back because he knew what he was in for. This offers an extremely low estimation of you, Mister Senator.

#hyprocrite

In early December, Sen. Cruz blasted Mayor Adler of Austin for telling his constituents FROM CABO SAN LUCAS to stay home:

 

 

... yet he flies to Cancún in the middle of this winter storm.

Yes. Complete and utter hypocrite. That's YOU, Mister Senator.

Also:

 

... And Shown Up by Dems

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) started a campaign that raised OVER $3 MILLION for Texas relief. Contrast with Sen. Cruz, who — say it with me now — boarded a plane for Cancún: ^{7, 8}

 

 

My Conclusion

Among lively discussions on Facebook, one contributor had only this to say: "Fuck him. Fuck him right in the face."

Others didn't necessarily defend his selfish actions per se, but one offered his personal doubt that the senator could have contributed anything to help the situation. Perhaps beside the point, he also opined that Texas hadn't asked for federal aid (others replied with multiple examples of the Governor doing exactly that).

For me, this all comes back to optics — a highly contextualized term to which I was introduced in my overseas military service. Whether Sen. Cruz could have directly contributed anything to aid his constituents is actually immaterial. What's important is that he was caught heading to Mexico during this terrible disaster.

Leadership happens by example. Senator Cruz just plainly showed Texas that he selfishly doesn't give a fuck about them or their problems. He also showed them, with some assistance from Twitter and the media, that he has the means to fly his family to Cancún for a few days, and that the present state of affairs in Texas wasn't so troublesome as to prevent him from leaving.

These were his actions: He walked into the airport in Houston. He went to the gate of a flight headed for Cancún. He boarded that flight.

So these are the optics of those actions: Consituents perceived he was running away while they suffered, and, as news spread, people were rightly outraged.

He could have avoided this. Even if he sat in a wingback chair in front of a fireplace for the whole week, he wouldn't have pissed anyone off... perhaps at least until AOC started fundraising for Texans; at this point perhaps some may have stirred.

Perhaps Texans will remember this. I mean, I doubt anyone will forget the winter storm and the power outages and putting snow in the toilets and all that. Perhaps Texans will remember that Sen. Ted Cruz just fucking left us all while he selfishly evac'd his family to the Ritz-Carlton in balmy Cancún.

The ONLY reason TFC hopped a return flight on Thursday was to save his slimy lyin' flyin' skin. Making this worse for himself, he looked right in the camera and told lies. Caught and called out. THEN resourceful Netizens piled on with examples of Cruz calling out others who did the exact same thing HE JUST DID.

If he was your employee, would you keep him? You know he's supposed to be working for US, right?

 

 

By the way, VANITY FAIR's article on the misadventure includes a sentence others don't: The Cruzes apparently left their dog (ironically, named "Snowflake") there in their powerless home. The word VF used was "abandoned," ⁹ but this could be misleading: Mention of "Snowflake" can be traced back to an article from The Intelligencer in which the reporter, outside the Cruz home in Houston, was told by a security guard that he was looking after the dog. ¹⁰

 

The Flag of the United States of America

 

Tuesday, November 3, 2020 — Election Day

 

Thursday, November 5, 2020

Trump turns angry as possible defeat looms

Losing an election, Trump chooses to slander American democracy

In a speech of historic dishonesty, Trump tried to reinforce his long-planned effort to retain power

 

Friday, November 6, 2020

Thank goodness Trump is too incompetent to properly organize a coup

With GOP at crossroads, Trump team employs fear tactics in bid to keep Republican lawmakers in line

Republicans who’ve tried to exist in both the MAGAverse and reality are being forced to choose

Advisers urge Trump to prepare for defeat — but maybe without a concession speech

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows tests positive for coronavirus

 

Saturday, November 7, 2020

White House hit with fresh outbreak of coronavirus cases

Joe Biden triumphs over Trump, says it is ‘a time to heal’ even as Trump does not concede

Biden plans immediate flurry of executive orders to reverse Trump policies

Trump, a president obsessed with winning, spends the day refusing to admit his loss to Biden

 

Monday, November 9, 2020

Trump fires Defense Secretary Mark Esper in a tweet

The long love affair between Fox News and Trump may be over. Here’s how it all soured last week.

 

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Biden, planning his administration, says GOP leaders ignoring his win are ‘intimidated’ by Trump

 

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Trump lawyers suffer embarrassing rebukes from judges over voter fraud claims

 

Thursday, November 12, 2020

As Trump stews over election, he mostly ignores the public duties of the presidency

 

Friday, November 13, 2020

It goes from bad to worse for the Trump legal team

Trump’s attempts to challenge the election results suffer further setbacks

In Trump’s final days, a 30-year-old aide purges officials seen as insufficiently loyal

 

Saturday, November 14, 2020

Trump greets hundreds of supporters gathered in D.C. to falsely claim he won election

 

Monday, November 16, 2020

Trump is engaging in U.S. history’s deadliest-ever sulk

Georgia’s secretary of state says fellow Republicans are pressuring him to find ways to exclude legal ballots

 

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

As defeats pile up, Trump tries to delay vote count in last-ditch attempt to cast doubt on Biden victory

 

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Trump uses power of presidency to try to overturn the election and stay in office

Trump is past exploring legal options. He’s using lies and chicanery to try to undo his defeat.

Ga. hand recount confirms Biden’s lead; president-elect speaks virtually with governors

 

Friday, November 20, 2020

Trump suffers twin defeats in his effort to overturn Biden’s victory in key states

Most Republicans greet Trump’s push to overturn the election with a customary response: Silence

 

Saturday, November 21, 2020

Justice Dept. meets Trump, Giuliani vote-fraud claims with silent skepticism

In scathing opinion, federal judge dismisses Trump campaign lawsuit in Pennsylvania

Trump’s attempt at unprecedented power grab runs into resistance from local and state Republicans

Trump deploys his favorite tactics to bully and intimidate, in last-ditch bid to stay in office despite losing election

 

Monday, November 23, 2020

GOP national security experts call on Trump to concede

A noisy president goes (relatively) quiet in wake of election defeat

Giuliani keeps peddling debunked falsehoods on behalf of Trump

Trump relents on transition as Republicans join mounting calls for him to acknowledge Biden’s win

 

Friday, November 27, 2020 — Black Friday

Federal appeals court panel rejects Trump request to block certification of Pennsylvania’s election results

 

Sunday, November 29, 2020

Wisconsin recount confirms Biden’s win over Trump, cementing the president’s failure to change the election results

 

Monday, November 30, 2020

Wisconsin and Arizona make it official as Trump fails to stop vote certification in all six states where he contested his defeat

 

Saturday, December 5, 2020

• Electoral College vote in 9 days

Trump calls Georgia governor to pressure him for help overturning Biden’s win in the state

At Georgia rally, Trump spouts election falsehoods, amplifies old grievances

 

Monday, December 7, 2020

• Electoral College vote in 7 days

Trump asks Pennsylvania House speaker for help overturning election results, personally intervening in a third state

 

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

• Electoral College vote in 6 days

Supreme Court denies Trump allies’ bid to overturn Pennsylvania election results

 

Friday, December 11, 2020

• Electoral College vote is Monday

Justices dismiss Trump-backed bid to overturn Biden victories in 4 states

 

Monday, December 14, 2020

• Electoral College vote is today

Electoral college affirms Biden’s victory on a relatively calm day of a chaotic election

 

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

McConnell breaks with Trump in finally recognizing Biden as the new president

 

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Trump lashes out at McConnell for recognizing Biden’s victory: 'People are angry!'

 

Sunday, January 3, 2021

• Congress is due to certify the Electoral College vote in 3 days
• A run-off election between two pairs of Senatorial candidates is scheduled in Georgia in 2 days. The outcome of the election could give Democrats the majority in the Senate

In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor

 

Monday, January 4, 2021

• Congress is due to certify the Electoral College vote in 2 days
• GA Senatorial run-off election in 1 day

Trump sabotaging GOP on his way out of office with push to overturn election

Biden tells Georgia voters they have the power to decide Senate control; Trump pressures Pence at evening rally

 

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

• Congress is due to certify the Electoral College vote tomorrow
• GA Senatorial run-off election is today

Where Senate Republicans stand on certifying the electoral college vote

What you need to know about the Georgia Senate runoff elections

Georgia runoff live updates: Control of the U.S. Senate hangs in the balance as polls open

 

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

• Congress is due to certify the Electoral College vote today
• Protesters, encouraged by President Trump, stormed the Capitol as Congress was about to debate the objection Sen. Ted Cruz made to the Arizona electoral college count
• Both Democrats projected to have won Georgia Senatorial races; Senate majority expected to flip
• Congress reconvened late in the evening and certified President-Elect Biden's win

Raphael Warnock wins Georgia runoff election against Sen. Loeffler, lifting Democratic hopes of claiming Senate majority

After years of fealty, Pence prepares for a final performance likely to anger Trump

Legally, Pence cannot overturn the election for Trump

Proud Boys leader barred from District by judge following his arrest

Thousands of Trump’s supporters arrive in D.C. to protest election results

As Trump backers descend on capital, military hopes to avoid political fray

McConnell rejects GOP push to subvert election; Trump protesters breach Capitol

U.S. Capitol is on lockdown as protesters clash with police and breach the building; D.C. mayor imposes curfew

Pelosi has requested deployment of National Guard troops to Capitol

D.C. National Guard activated as mobs breach Capitol; one person shot; curfew imposed

Democrats win control of U.S. Senate as Ossoff defeats Perdue

Congress affirms Biden’s presidential win following riot at U.S. Capitol

 

Thursday, January 7, 2021

• Rioters ransacked the Capitol yesterday; Morning news programs show the damage
• Four dead, including one killed by Capitol security
• President Trump gave speech encouraging supports to "march on the Capitol"; now widely blamed for the attack
• Staff-level discussions about removing the President from office
• Numerous calls for Sen. Ted Cruz' (R-TX) resignation

Trump, Hawley and Cruz will each wear the scarlet ‘S’ of a seditionist

Aides weigh resignations, removal options as Trump rages against perceived betrayals

Transportation Secretary Chao to resign, first to leave Trump’s Cabinet after he incited mob that attacked Capitol

Senior White House economist quits; Treasury Secretary Mnuchin stays

Schumer calls for Trump to be removed or impeached

Former attorney general Barr says Trump’s conduct was 'a betrayal of his office and supporters'

'The president has become unmoored:' GOP Rep. Kinzinger calls for 25th Amendment to be invoked against Trump

Trump banned from Facebook indefinitely, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says

'Blood on his hands': Sen. Josh Hawley excoriated by his hometown paper

Mulvaney resigns diplomatic post, says Trump not the same

Giuliani calls violence 'shameful' a day after suggesting 'trial by combat'

Administration officials have discussed whether the Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment

Housing department official resigns after mob attack on the Capitol

Pelosi joins Schumer in calling on Pence to invoke 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office

GOP Gov. Hogan says ‘America would be better off’ if Trump resigned

Sen. Graham says he doesn’t support invoking 25th Amendment, but 'if something else happens, all options would be on the table'

Calls intensify to remove Trump from office even as he acknowledges 'a new administration'

Betsy DeVos resigns as Education secretary, citing Trump’s role in riot

After inciting mob attack, Trump retreats in rage. Then, grudgingly, he admits his loss.

Hawley loses book deal, support from allies after actions that fueled Capitol riots

Trump’s remarks before Capitol riot may be investigated, says acting U.S. attorney in D.C.

 

Friday, January 8, 2021

Internet detectives are identifying scores of pro-Trump rioters at the Capitol. Some have already been fired.

59 Democrats call on Pelosi to reconvene House 'to reckon with the assault on our democracy'

Colin Powell says Trump should follow Nixon’s lead and resign as soon as possible

Rep. Clark says House could vote to impeach Trump by middle of next week

Pelosi says she spoke to nation’s top military leader about ensuring Trump doesn’t launch a nuclear attack

Trudeau says takeover of Capitol was 'incited' by Trump

Sen. Murray calls for the resignations of Sens. Hawley and Cruz

Pelosi, considering impeachment of Trump, says she plans to talk to Biden

Biden says Cruz, other Republicans responsible for spreading ‘big lie’ that incited the mob

Arkansas man who posed in Pelosi’s office and West Virginia delegate-elect among those charged in Capitol breach

Lehigh University rescinds honorary degree it gave President Trump

GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski says Trump should leave office now

63 percent of Americans blame Trump for Capitol attack, 48 percent say he should be removed from office, poll says

Read: Draft impeachment articles against Trump for 'incitement of insurrection'

Trump faces mounting demands to leave office or face impeachment for inciting Capitol mob attack

Twitter bans Trump’s account, citing risk of further violence

 

Saturday, January 9, 2021

'Find the fraud': Trump pressured a Georgia elections investigator in a separate call legal experts say could amount to obstruction

For Trump, the end is coming swiftly and with stinging rebukes

GOP West Virginia lawmaker who live-streamed himself storming the Capitol resigns after arrest

Trump scrambles to find new social network after Twitter ban, as White House prepares to blast big tech

Amazon suspends Parler, threatening to take pro-Trump site offline indefinitely

 

Monday, January 11, 2021

• House of Representatives expected to proceed with impeachment Wednesday, if Trump does not resign or Pence does not invoke 25th Amendment

Congresswoman tests positive for coronavirus after sheltering with some maskless lawmakers during siege of Capitol

Pelosi says House will move on impeaching Trump if Pence doesn’t meet a deadline to remove him

Biden looks at whether Senate can tackle impeachment and his agenda simultaneously

Giuliani hit with disbarment complaint, faces possible expulsion from New York lawyers association

Twitter purged more than 70,000 accounts affiliated with QAnon following Capitol riot

 

Tuesday, January 12, 2021

• House of Representatives expected to proceed with impeachment tomorrow, if Trump does not resign or Pence does not invoke 25th Amendment

After hiding with maskless Republicans, Rep. Jayapal feared she would catch the coronavirus. Now she’s tested positive.

Trump calls second impeachment effort a continuation of a ‘witch hunt,' offers no regret for inciting mob attack on Capitol

Third House member tests positive after Capitol siege

 

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

• House of Representatives expected to perform impeachment proceedings today

Backlash to riot at Capitol hobbles Trump’s business as banks, partners flee the brand

A ‘Stop the Steal’ organizer, now banned by Twitter, said three GOP lawmakers helped plan his D.C. rally

Trump has been suspended from YouTube

Analysis: McConnell’s move means more Republicans might board impeachment train

Pelosi calls for Trump’s immediate removal, promotes Cheney’s support for impeachment

New York City says it will terminate its contracts with Trump’s company

House poised to impeach Trump for 'incitement of insurrection'

House hands Trump a second impeachment, this time with GOP support

McConnell breaks with Trump, says he’ll consider convicting him in Senate trial

 

Thursday, January 14, 2021

• President Trump was impeached a second time yesterday

Dozens of people on FBI terrorist watch list came to D.C. the day of Capitol riot

Democrats demand investigation of whether Republicans in Congress aided Capitol rioters

FBI focuses on whether some Capitol rioters intended to harm lawmakers or take hostages

 

Friday, January 15, 2021

Rioters wanted to ‘capture and assassinate’ lawmakers, prosecutors say. A note left by the ‘QAnon Shaman’ is evidence.

How the rioters who stormed the Capitol came dangerously close to Pence

 

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

• President Biden is to be inaugurated tomorrow

McConnell blames Trump for having ‘provoked’ the mob that stormed the Capitol

Georgia certifies Ossoff, Warnock victories, paving way for Democratic control of Senate

GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert gave Capitol tour to ‘large’ group before the riots, Democratic lawmaker says

Lawmakers who objected to election results have been cut off from 20 of their 30 biggest corporate PAC donors

My Pillow CEO says Bed Bath & Beyond, Kohl’s, Wayfair have dropped his products

Pelosi laptop theft highlights 'real counterintelligence concerns' of Capitol riot, lawmaker says

 



Wednesday, January 20, 2021

• Today is Inauguration Day

Trump leaves White House for final time of his presidency

Greta Thunberg trolls Trump on Twitter as he leaves Washington

Kamala Harris sworn into history

Biden is sworn in as president amid challenges of raging pandemic and economic crisis

2020 saw the creation of Parler, a social media platform. Parler was to contrast with Facebook in one important area: content moderation. Parler's promise to the Trump supporter was essentially that there would be no fact- checking, no truth to get in the way of your flavor of reality. The platform, funded by a wealthy ultraconservative, was the realization of the fears of many: Facebook unhinged — where propaganda and lies can swirl about unfettered, free to influence the willing. The attempted coup on January 6 was a direct result of stupid masses being lied to by people they've come to blindly trust — Trump, Cruz, Hawley, et cetera.

Conservatives cried foul when Facebook realized it actually was responsible for the bullshit that was being pumped onto its platform, starting with the inspection of hundreds or even thousands of accounts it realized were created by Russia. That propaganda made the 2016 election a giant mess.

So when Facebook started cracking down on content last year, savvy conservatives realized the lies about ballot fraud and the U.S. Postal Service and all these other things had actually created a demand for more lies — thus, Parler was born to fill that void.

Over the past couple of days, mainstream media has reported that Parler, once it was tied directly to the coup attempt, is being killed off. First, I saw a report that Google was suspending the app from its app store... next, I saw that Google had axed it, and Apple was considering similar actions. Then I read that Amazon, which hosts the Parler website and services, is kicking them off of their AWS servers as of Monday.

The argument is the defense of free speech versus terms of service.

The Case for Free Speech

In my mind, one could argue that even though these misguided idiot conservatives are completely talking out of their asses — or, perhaps more correctly, misguided idiot conservatives who are recognized authorities in the world of misguided idiot conservatives, are completely talking out of their asses to masses of misguided idiot conservatives — their ass talk is free speech, something we value in this country.

When I was serving on active duty, it would pain me to see people burn our flag in protest — but what would sorta piss me off about it was that SCOTUS ruled that my job was actually to protect their right to do it.

So, bearing the whole flag thing in mind, should the misguided idiot conservatives be able say what they want to say? Sure.

BUT...

The Case for Terms of Service

Parler was built on the Amazon Web Services platform. The people who created Parler entered into an agreement with Amazon, and agreed to Amazon's terms of service. The people who created Parler's mobile app entered into agreements with Google to build it for the Android platform, and for it to be hosted in the Google App Store. They also entered into agreements with Apple to build it for the iPhone/iPad platform, and for it to be hosted in the Apple App Store.

Therefore, Amazon, Google, and Apple, independently, can determine whether any web application or mobile application satisfies their criteria for hosting and development. That criteria is established and agreed upon before a single byte of space is alloted on a server. (Key word: agreed upon.)

In the case of Parler, Parler agreed to those terms of service. It's Parler's responsibility to remain compliant with the terms of those agreements, just like it's my responsibility to remain compliant with the terms of my agreement with my hosting provider. It's not rocket surgery.

My Conclusion

Parler has options, but they could get expensive.

I think Parler can do whatever it wants in terms of the content it allows on its site, but it's either going to have to partner with a network with an acceptable use policy that's a better fit for misguided idiot conservatives, or it's going to have to create its own.

If Parler wants device apps, they'll have to comply with whatever app market and device manufacturer they want their app on, OR get with Mr. Valentine and make their own.

So I think what we're learning here is that Parler can have all the free speech it can stand, but Parler is going to have to be live someplace where it either complies with the terms of service of that platform. And, if Parler is going to have mobile applications, those applications are either going to have to comply with the terms of service of the app stores OR be "side-loaded" onto peoples' devices.

Seditionist hangs above the Senate floor

A black day for America today.

Seditionists — a term being used by one television network; also being called domestic terrorists by another — acting in support of President Trump, stormed Congress today while a joint session was in progress, working to ratify the electoral college vote. The images that follow are simply photos I took of my television set while watching — stunned — at CNN's live broadcast.

The president, having been asked time and again to tell the protesters to disperse, issued only a recorded message on Twitter which also perpetuated the lie that's been fueling protesters' fires: he continued to insist that he won the election by a landslide.

Now in the 9 o'clock hour at night, the Senate and House of Representatives have reconvened to perform the business of the American people. Certain senators, who had allied with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and had intended to protest their electoral college counts, have likely realized that their protest is strongly linked to the seditious acts from earlier in the day, and have publicly reconsidered their positions.

Presently, one is left to wonder if Ted Cruz will keep his fat, opportunistic mouth shut, or if mysterious and charitable others have shut it for him.

Tonight, America is still a land of hopes and dreams.

Dumpster fire

 

US Politics

Often when I publish content in a particular topic, I'll copy an old post for it's technical goop and replace its content.

Not this time. Not exactly. See, I'm using my end of year remarks from 2018 as a template, but this time I'm keeping some of it in, in sort of a 2020-looking-back-at-2018 way. Example:

2018:

What if I'd told you that The Washington Post would publish stories like this (emphasis mine)?

President Trump's year of lies, false statements and misleading claims started with some morning tweets.... [T]he start of a year of unprecedented deception during which Trump became increasingly unmoored from the truth. When 2018 began, the president had made 1,989 false and misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker's database, which tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. By the end of the year, Trump had accumulated more than 7,000 untruths during his presidency — averaging more than 15 erroneous claims a day during 2018, almost triple the rate from the year before. ¹

2020 (in response): "That's cute."

2018:

A couple of years ago I posited that the election cycle that put Donald Trump in the Oval Office could have the effect of energizing people to get involved in politics — or at least become more aware of it and the associated issues — and stop "phoning in" their votes — if they bothered to vote at all.

2020: Well, perhaps I was right about that. President-Elect Joe Biden won the election, though President Trump has been kicking and screaming about it like a kid in the candy aisle of a grocery store. The rest of his Republicans weren't exactly mature about it, either — mounting frivolous lawsuits with the goal of excluding votes and triggering recounts. Effectively every suit that was filed was either thrown out of court or decided in favor of the defense. ²

I'm pleased to report that I read a few books again this year — all were about Donald Trump, in some capacity.³

 

Trump and Tiktok

President Trump spent a lot of time (and taxpayers' money) this year stumping for himself. The media showed us clips of some of the awful things he said on those trips. But one event in particular stands out: his trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tickets for the event were going like hotcakes... except Trumpians weren't the ones snapping them up: it was TikTokkers — users of a controversial social media platform, mostly kids, and particularly fans of Korean pop music — who reserved massive numbers of seats, effectively keeping them out of Trumpians' hands, and making the crowd look anemic.

Tiktok had been troublesome anyway, because the app collected all kinds of unnecessary data from users' phones and used a non-standard encryption algorithm that worried technology experts. Certain employers banned the app from company phones, and the DOD did the same. Fears that the Chinese government was intercepting the data was reason enough to ban it, but I think the fact that TikTokkers embarrassed him at his Tulsa rally was the actual catalyst for moving to ban the app in the US. ⁴

 

The Infamous Church Photo Op

During the time of the race riots sparked by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (more on these later), the president forced his way across Lafayette Square to St. John's Church, where we posed with a bible in what was probably the most amazingly tone-deaf act of a president EVER.^5, 6

Internet justice was swift:

 

Presidential Pardons

By the way, Trump is now — this week — pardoning all those scumbag characters we were introduced to over the previous few years.⁷ He's also reportedly exploring options he can issue presidential pardons to his kids, even though they have not even been charged with any crimes. As an interesting footnote to this, Michael Cohen — Trump's infamous former fixer — argues that people receiving such pardons may be forced to testify meaningfully in related matters against Donald Trump: Cohen reasons that, since a presidential pardon conveys immunity from prosecution in the matters they were previously convicted for, prevention of self-incrimination via the Fifth Amendment does not apply; therefore, if called to testify, these people cannot invoke their Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer questions. ⁸

 

Donald Trump's Taxes

I find I can't talk about Donald Trump and the year 2020 and not mention this whole thing about his taxes. Since 2016, Donald Trump has refused to release any information regarding his taxes — not how much he paid, not how much he owed, nothing. But the New York Times obtained copies of many years of Donald Trump's tax records, and performed their own analysis.⁹

• The IRS is auditing a $72.9 million tax refund Mr. Trump received in 2010 as a function of declaring over $1.4 billion in business losses for the preceding two years — most notably, abandoning his stake in the Trump Atlantic City casino. He has used this enormous refund to not pay taxes for ten of the last fifteen years. At issue is the casino abandonment: If the IRS discovers that Mr. Trump received anything of value after Trump Atlantic City emerged from bankruptcy (like, say, 5% ownership of the new business), his entire 2010 refund must be repaid, with interest — a sum over $100 million.
• October 9th reporting from The Washington Post concerns an additional tax matter, this regarding the Trump family's 212-acre Seven Springs estate in New York. Court documents show that Trump received a tax break of $21.1 million in exchange for a promise to preserve more than 150 acres of woodlands on the property, based on an appraised value of $56.5 million. The property reaches into three cities in Westchester County, none of which agree with the $56.5 million figure. New York AG is investigating whether the Trump Organization improperly inflated Seven Springs' value as part of the conservation easement.
• Finally, the article explores how business has been booming at Trump properties since he entered office. Business at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., nearly doubled from December, 2016 to May, 2018; at the Doral golf resort, credit card receipts nearly doubled in the quarter ending August, 2015 (after he announced his candidacy) as compared to the year before; profits at Mar-a-Lago soared tenfold from 2014 to 2016 (he then doubled the initiation fees in 2017).

Why this is important: Trump, like his father Fred before him, loathes paying taxes. But ask Al Capone how serious charges of tax evasion can be. Should the IRS conclude Trump was not entitled to that tax refund, I imagine he'll have to resubmit his taxes for each of the years he used it as a credit. Add to this the possibility of other investigations being opened into his businesses at the state or federal level and you have a man who has been desperate to remain in the White House to avoid prosecution.

I can't overstate my thankfulness that President Trump has been voted out of office. Despite all of the dirty tricks he's been using to try to overturn election results in myriad states. Even now he's operating a PAC that plainly says Trump can spend this money however he wants, and idiots are donating millions.¹⁰ Personally, I just want him gone. I want him gone from the White House, gone from politics, gone from the news cycle. Just... gone.

Looking ahead, I feel 2021 will be a year for the Republican Party to throttle back in some ways and try to figure itself out. Trump basically just spent four years raping it, to put it indelicately. I think it's possible that the hardcore conservatives who still support Trump and would support him were he to run again in 2024 could actually fracture the party and become its own political entity, leaving more moderate conservatives to maintain what's left of the Republican Party. And honestly, that would be better than a civil war.

 

COVID-19

Botched: The Trump Administration's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Inasmuch as President Trump doesn't seem to want to share anything, he above all others seemed to share the headlines with one other constant topic throughout 2020: COVID-19. Strangely, the Trump Administration made a public health issue into a political one. Trump essentially told the public it was no big deal, refusing to take simple precautions to protect himself like wearing a mask over the nose and mouth, and practicing social distancing — a term all, at the close of 2020, should understand to mean keeping yourself at least 6' from other people — and staying home, to help minimize the spread. As a result, Republicans tended to adopt President Trump's position on these safe behaviors, while people of other political inclinations tended to heed the warnings coming from the NIH and the CDC. Social media became more rancorous than ever before, with people saying the whole COVID-19 thing is a hoax — some would even charge the Democrats of spreading it as a vicious rumor to destroy the US economy and to discredit the Republican Party, and destroy the president's re-election platform (touting the success and strength of the US economy).

Even after President Trump recanted his bullshit remarks and admitted it was real and dangerous (he'd later contract the disease), there are STILL "COVID flat earthers" who completely disbelieve the whole thing; meanwhile hospitals are overrun with victims of the disease. The news in mid-November did their best to send the message for people to stay home for Thanksgiving, to prevent "gifting" the disease to family members and friends — vulnerable older people in particular. But over 1 million people still boarded airplanes and flew to see family. It's likely the same will be true of Christmas (I started writing this post on December 21st), and so I expect infections to SOAR beginning on or about December 30th. [Editor's note: It has.]

COVID-19 Vaccines

In late March, the local school district closed in response to the pandemic, and only now, in late December, have two vaccines been introduced. (I do not mean to infer that scientists have been slow to develop the vaccines. In truth, vaccine development normally takes far longer to happen — so the fact that we have a vaccine in December 2020 is damn near miraculous.) Immunizations started with health care workers, and will move next to vulnerable populations, such as nursing home patients. I spent most of the year writing about COVID-19 in international news, in national news, in local news, down to tracking and charting infections in the local school district and in Kiddo's school. ¹¹

Public Response: Hoarding

It was about mid-March when the hoarding began. Shoppers started buying up cleaning supplies (like Clorox wipes) and toilet paper (why?). Although the demand for toilet paper eased downward by late summer, well, let's just say it should have been a Hell of a year for Purell and Clorox. But Clorox had their troubles, too — it turned out their supply of the material they use for the wipes (they call this substrate) could not keep pace with demand. I seem to recall Clorox was having trouble getting hold of the material — perhaps due to labor troubles, possibly due to the pandemic (hello, irony).

Social Consequences

COVID-19 brought with it some pretty astonishing consequences. I mean, for those of us who heeded the warnings of medical experts. It brought loneliness with it. I've basically spent nine months closed up in my home. I think the number of times I've seen local friends I can count on one hand. I've grown my hair out — I went from a short haircut to now being able to pull my hair back into a pony-tail. (Apparently a lot of men have done this.)

More Politics

Along with that loneliness is probably an overdependence on social media for connection. But the political season was poisonous for social media, in that posts were sometimes weaponized for political purposes. Friends left Facebook for Parler — a social media platform which apparently ignores fact-checking altogether. I fear that Parler and similar platforms will become the Petri dishes in which ultraconservativism will breed. We could be headed for some kind of reckoning in 2024.

In mid-June I wrote a post about how a person's politics affected their compliance with COVID-19 protective measures. By that time, numerous polls had concluded a very strong correlation between the two; I could classify them in a range from "compliant" (people who are complying with stay-at- home orders, using masks, washing their hands, etc.) to "hoax" (people who believe the entire pandemic is a hoax) — still true now, at the end of December. I also wrote how this strong correlation is why we were still in the first wave of the virus.¹²

2020 taught us that nature is still a greater power than man. I didn't know anything about 1918 beyond maybe a footnote in a history class or two until this year. But we can be hopeful that 2020 also showed us that man is capable of learning and of fighting back. Man and money can accomplish almost anything.

 

Looking ahead, we may have a long way to go before COVID-19 is controlled. Personally, I don't anticipate receiving the vaccine until sometime in the late spring. I'm not saying I wouldn't accept it earlier — far from it. Also, I think we're going to find the influenza season this year will be less of an issue than in previous years because of all of the mask-wearing and social distancing — a terrific thing. Our society needs to become conditioned to taking these precautions like oriental societies do.

 

George Floyd/Black Lives Matter

As a nation under extreme stress from quarantining, from job losses due to the pandemic, and commonly witnessing racial injustice via mainstream media, many were especially outraged over the separate deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the miscarriages of justice that ensued in Minneapolis and Louisville. ^13,14 Their deaths sparked unrest all across the nation — the cities of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, NYC, Portland, and Sacramento all come to mind — so much so there were demonstrations and even riots in some of the major cities, and federal squads of questionable legitimacy were dispatched to hot spots and working to incite even more violence — some even kidnapping people off the street — to help the Trump Administration make law enforcement part of his reelection platform.

I wrote a post about some of this, called "A Closer Look at the Roles of Media and Bad Actors in the Success of Black Lives Matter." In my post I declared my position on the early success of the BLM movement. ¹⁵

Through the media, the whole country now has an expectation that justice must arrive swiftly and transparently, or police precincts and local businesses will suffer destruction and communities will be ripped apart — not necessarily by BLM participants, but by bad actors converting protests into unrest. It's probably not what BLM wants, but, let's face it — it's the combination of the two that is actually promoting the change.

Through the deaths of Floyd and other blacks under questionable methods, citizens of several cities came to call for police departments to be defunded. The Republicans seized upon this and quickly worked to associate it with liberalism; here in Texas, almost every attack ad I saw for local races made some mention of support for organizations who wanted to defund the police. I think Minneapolis actually moved — or considered moving — in that direction.

You know, I've used these images of fires for this topic for the past few years. But in 2020, fires like these actually happened in the racial justice unrest in June. Some cities burned for a week or more. The president yelled at governors and mayors, tweeting that if they didn't get control of their cities, he'd send in troops.

As you can see, with the major topics I've covered here, there's no clean separation of any of them from the Trump Administration.

 

Hon. Ruth Bader Ginsberg

The world and its Internet work in mysterious ways. Because of the Internet, people like Chuck Norris and Betty White have ravenous fans — it's as if they've been knighted by Americans on the Internet and therefore are sacred to all American Netizens. And there's probably none more (suprisingly) popular than RBG — Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the first woman to sit on the US Supreme Court. There were action figures made of her in her robes, and even a movie was filmed, telling her story. And when she passed in October of this year, it was as if a piece of every woman's heart died with her. RBG was an icon to so many, for the glass ceilings she shattered. My wife cried; I imagine so many did.

As expected, the Republicans — particularly in the Senate, where they outnumbered Democrats and Independents — pounced at the opportunity to get a conservative on the bench before the presidential election on November 3, and the Democrats cried foul. But I think it's important to understand that, had the Democrats held the majority of seats in the Senate instead, they could probably be counted on to have done exactly the same thing the Republicans did.

President Trump selected a woman to succeed RBG — a white woman, who appears about as conservative as possible: she's got loads of kids, she's strong in her faith — these are things that abortion rights people do not want to hear, as Roe v. Wade could be redecided.

Ironically, many believe that it was the nomination ceremony at the White House Rose Garden where President Trump caught the COVID-19 disease.

Isn't it amazing, how interconnected everything seems to be?

 

Other News

We needed a lot of encouragement and humor to get through this year — particularly with so many out of work and businesses closing. Witty netizens have posted their thoughts on how 2020 has been for them.

This year, I had a lot of time on my hands: my client ghosted me and my company starting in July, and I've earned pretty much nothing since then. I even went and got a second job — I've been an employee there since September and haven't made any money because my background investigation got held up by incompetence and COVID.

So I used part of that time getting into Windows Forms programming, and programming using the Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel interop assemblies. Hell, I even wrote a program to vote in a contest. ¹⁶

The greatest thing that happened to me this year was learning about my birth parents, because I got closure on a mystery that has been with me for over fifty years. I have learned that my father was KIA in South Vietnam, and have petitioned the national records archive for information on him. My world is SO much larger now. I'm hoping for some great news coming from the archives next year.

The coolest thing I did all year was probably buying my Wolfgang Special guitar, and using it to learn (or perhaps more properly, "to play at") some really great music from historic artists. ^17, 18  Chief among them: music from early 1980's Van Halen albums. This became particularly true when Eddie Van Halen passed away.

The worst thing this year has been how much Kiddo has suffered. She's experiencing crippling anxiety traceable back to awful events that happened when she was away, and it's created friction between us and the school. But if there's good news here, it's that there is now a legal aspect to the events that transpired, and we are hopeful that Kiddo will receive justice in the coming year.

 

Conclusion

Not everything that happened in 2020 was bad, but there sure was a lot of bad going around. COVID-19 and its politicization was by far the worst. Over 330,000 Americans have died from the disease so far, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel: Vaccines have been developed, and President Biden will replace President Trump in the White House in less than a month. These give me hope for 2021 — and I even feel somewhat confident 2021 won't be as bad as recent years.

Personally, 2020 was a mixture of good and bad. I didn't work for half the year, but I learned about my birth parents and learned new things. I guess the world hasn't beaten me down so far as to make me believe that 2021 will be just as bad as 2020. But for now — right now — COVID infections are through the roof. On a national news broadcast this morning it was mentioned that over a million Americans still took to the skies despite the urging of medical experts to stay at home to minimize the spread of the disease. And I know Texans to be a particularly stubborn lot.

Still, there's a lot of potential for 2021 to be a real shitshow, particularly if our people still can't get their shit together on fighting COVID-19. I also think our economy will probably suffer some effects throughout the year, given the multiple attempts at economic stimulus in 2020.

*sigh* So, here we are:

The Flag of the United States of America

 

Today marks the 31st anniversary of Operation Just Cause.

On the Atlantic side of the isthmus, the Panamanian Defense Forces, under the command of Gen. Manuel Noriega, operated out of Fort Espinar. A year later, I had orders to Panama, and would later be assigned to quarters on Ft. Espinar.

Noriega would be captured and become US prisoner #41586 (this was the headline of the edition of the Miami Herald that reported his capture). He was sentenced to 40 years for narcotics trafficking and money laundering. He passed away in May, 2017.

I did not have a role in the operation, but I knew some who did. I was a PO2 at the time, stationed in Florida, in the orbit of Miami. Miami was pretty involved in the aftermath, insofar as Gen. Noriega was brought to federal court there, plus of course South Florida has a very large Latin American community.

At this point in my life, only a few other memories stand out for me about Just Cause. The first was the horror of watching the SEAL team come ashore, courtesy of American news media. Several of us huddled around a TV set in astonishment. I remember what seemed to be "WTF?!" expressions on some of the operators’ faces as the team was greeted by news cameras — and their lights. That's what I meant when I used the word "horror"; to us, it seemed as though there was a massive hole in the operational security of the mission. Looking back, though it seemed completely disgraceful to us at the time, I suspect there were reasons for the publicity.

The second thing I remember is the condition of the PDF barracks on Ft. Espinar. The building was riddled with large holes and appeared abandoned. I was told the damage was from a firefight between the PDF and US forces. "Ni un paso atras" was painted on the building -— it was a phrase from Noriega’s campaign of increasing hostility toward the US.

The third thing that comes to mind is Chief Don McFaul. I knew him as a PO1 in California years before the operation. We actually stood watch together at one point. Chief McFaul fell at Paitilla Airfield, and became the namesake of a training range in Panama and, of course, USS MCFAUL DDG-74. If you look closely at the ship’s badge, you’ll see a shield resembling the national flag of Panama, and a trident in the style of the one featured on the Special Warfare insignia he earned and wore.

Rest In Peace, Chief McFaul.

The Flag of the United States of America

 

Yesterday was a hard day. I spent Veterans' Day reaching out to my fellow veterans — people I used to be stationed with, people I was close to — especially those who are passionate about their politics. I wanted them to know that I'm grateful for the memories we share.

Some replied; some didn't. The point was to let them all know I was thinking about them.

Working my way down my mental list, and came upon somebody I probably interact with more than any other veteran — and I was upset to learn that he has suspended his Facebook account. I reached out to another vet asking if she'd seen him around, and the response I received made my heart sink.

I was told that a couple of people I hold dear have some pretty hard opinions about modern society — particularly on the subject of race relations. Hard enough to have offended a couple of other sailors. My heart sank.

People change. They just do. That's where marriages and divorces come from. Some people grow together; others grow apart. It just happens. I'm 50 years old. Two marriages, one annullment. I'm a parent through my third wife — we are raising the daughter she adopted, now into her teens. Am I the same guy I was when I was 18? No. I mean, my heart is probably similar, but I have experience and wisdom (hopefully) now that I didn't have then. Some of my military memories are over 30 years old. I guess it's kind of ridiculous to think the cast of characters in my memories haven't changed in 30 years.

For me, yesterday was about mending fences and reminding people of the good we did, the good times we had. I hope I did that, for those who remain on the network. But I didn't expect that yesterday would also become about having to accept that people change, and that sometimes they can become people who can no longer be recognized by who we thought they once were. It's not fair to assume they've weathered 40 years of changes and would still be the same people I remember. I shouldn't project that onto them.

The Flag of the United States of America

 

My heart hurts today.

Every year on Veterans Day I do two things: (1) I wear military-related clothing; If I'm out and about on this day in particular, I want people to know that I contributed to our democracy. (2) I make a point to touch base with my shipmates on Facebook today. Why Facebook? Well, because that's where everybody IS. I don't have telephone numbers for most of them — and we haven't really needed them... perhaps until this year.

This year is different. We, as a nation, are coming off of probably the most divisive, rancorous presidential election cycle our nation has ever seen — at least during my lifetime. The past two cycles have been unbelievable, and today America is perhaps only less fractured than it was in the time of the Civil War. Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, I think it's fair to say that Donald Trump brought with him a kind of political guerrilla warfare the United States had never seen; by pledging to give a voice to the underrepresented, Trump created an incredibly powerful and passionate conservative base, who came to question much about the American Way — and questioning the American Way is a true part of the American Way; we the people are supposed to use it to build a better democracy — a fairer democracy, for the benefit of all.

This election cycle has also shown us that we the people have NOT used it to build a better democracy. We have used it to create a gulf between us. Red states are redder; blue states are bluer. People's rights are in jeopardy; the ugly underside of America is in the spotlight. Moderation doesn't make headlines anymore; the parties in control of the Senate and the House of Representatives press their advantages for selfish benefit. Our senators and representatives are the people we elected to debate and legislate for the greater good.

Sadly, this division has also affected the relationships we share. Facebook has been a place where unfettered rancor has been aired — people have been unloading their politics on strangers and friends alike, and starting tremendous fights. People are just far too quick and willing to bare their teeth online these days.

There are people who believe they are no longer served by Facebook, and are leaving for a different social network. I first got wind of this only a few days ago. Today I found that to be true of a shipmate, and I am selfish for having trouble with his decision. We used to be in several groups together and always had positive, friendly, healthy discussions about things. He was a big reason I enjoyed being on Facebook; I am grateful for every thread we shared. No rancor, no malice. Just thoughtful exchanges. His departure is a great loss to me, and I'm mourning it by writing.

Today I wanted to remind especially him and other shipmates who have been so passionate about their politics how much I value them, and the memories I have of having served with them. I'd worked through a few on my list before discovering he was gone. His departure from Facebook has left a giant hole in my small world.

This gulf of political ideology is a very deep wound, and all of us must heal. I fear my friend was so angry or hurt that he closed his account; I hurt for him, and I hurt for me, too. I feel there's a lot of grieving that needs to happen. Perhaps this is fitting, given that today is the 101st anniversary of Armistice Day — the day when the Allied forces signed a peace accord with Germany to end World War I.

Our next task, now as it was then, is to rebuild. Veterans Day should always remind us all of how important peace is. But on THIS anniversary of the peace accord, we should especially think of how we need peace within our nation — a time to pause and to remember how much more we achieve together than apart; to remember how much we miss each other while we're in isolation during this pandemic, and to remember — REALLY remember — the things that brought us together and have kept us together for so many years; they are worth cherishing, worth honoring, worth preserving, and are far more important than anything else that could come between us.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Your next President of the United States (source: Wikimedia)

The race was seemed pretty close until all the mail-in ballots were counted. Biden and the Dems largely controlled the coastal areas (save Texas and South Carolina), and Trump and the Republicans took the landlocked states.

In the end, Trump was Trump, and he launched lawsuits like airstrikes based on a myth he started perpetuating about mail-in ballots back in July, and it got him nowhere.

All of this calls for a refresher on the favorite headlines section, because they intimate — and their articles clearly illustrate — the depths at which the corrupted soul of our president operates. The United States has become the laughing stock of the entire globe.

Former Vice President Biden is not the person I would have liked to have elected, but I believe he is two things the country desperately needs: (1) He is a moderate. Right now, and for as much as this country needs to move forward, our nation needs moderation more. (2) He will restore a sense of dignity to the Presidency. We desperately need that right now, too, to mend the fences with our international neighbors.

President Trump

The past couple of weeks has had a mountain of news that have exploded into the news cycle and were overtaken just as quickly by equally shocking events.

Trump's Taxes

The first event I'd care to address is a New York Times (NYT) article published last Tuesday with the headline, Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance.

The heading below the title read, "The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due."

The highlights:

• Mr. Trump is personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $421 million, with most of it coming due within four years. Included in this number is a $125 million mortgage on the Doral country club in Florida, coming due in 3 years, and a $100 million mortgage he took out on commercial spaces in Trump Tower, coming due in 2022.
  
  
• The IRS is auditing a $72.9 million tax refund Mr. Trump received in 2010 as a function of declaring over $1.4 billion in business losses for the preceding two years — most notably, abandoning his stake in the Trump Atlantic City casino. He has used this enormous refund to not pay taxes for ten of the last fifteen years. At issue is the casino abandonment: If the IRS discovers that Mr. Trump received anything of value after Trump Atlantic City emerged from bankruptcy (like, say, 5% ownership of the new business), his entire 2010 refund must be repaid, with interest — a sum over $100 million.
  
  
• NYT analysis also revealed a pattern of writing off "consulting fees" matching 20% of the value of new properties the Trump Organization acquired, and that some of these values appear to equate to income on financial disclosures from Ivanka Trump. In other words, he's giving money to his kids and writing the payments off on his taxes, presumably to avoid paying gift taxes.
  
  
• UPDATE: October 9th reporting from The Washington Post concerns an additional tax matter, this regarding the Trump family's 212-acre Seven Springs estate in New York. Court documents show that Trump received a tax break of $21.1 million in exchange for a promise to preserve more than 150 acres of woodlands on the property, based on an appraised value of $56.5 million. The property reaches into three cities in Westchester County, none of which agree with the $56.5 million figure. New York AG is investigating whether the Trump Organization improperly inflated Seven Springs' value as part of the conservation easement. ¹
  
  
• Finally, the article explores how business has been booming at Trump properties since he entered office. Business at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., nearly doubled from December, 2016 to May, 2018; at the Doral golf resort, credit card receipts nearly doubled in the quarter ending August, 2015 (after he announced his candidacy) as compared to the year before; profits at Mar-a-Lago soared tenfold from 2014 to 2016 (he then doubled the initiation fees in 2017).

This article got everybody talking. In my social circles, there was much made of the $70,000 spent on his hair, and of the $750 he paid in taxes for two years while in office.

That was until Mr. Trump announced over Twitter that he and the First Lady tested positive for COVID-19.

Trump's Coronavirus

At one o'clock in the morning last Friday, Trump tweeted news of his infection. The media scrambles to cover the story. By about midday, the nation has learned that the announcement of Amy Barrett's nomination to fill the late Justice Ginsberg's seat was perhaps a "superspreader" event. The annoucement in the Rose Garden at the White House, and the reception that followed, was well-documented by photographers; each photo shows that masks were not worn, and none of the guests were socially distanced. Plausible, in terms of conditions under which the disease may have been spread — and I chose my words carefully.

As of Monday, known infected now include: ²

• President Trump
• Melania Trump
• Hope Hicks
• Kayleigh McEnany
• Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)
• Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)
• Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)
• Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel
• Rev. John I. Jenkins, University of Notre Dame president
• Kellyanne Conway
• Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien
• Trump debate adviser Chris Christie

The COVID story spreads like a California wildfire, just racing to chew up more on-air time until all control is gone. The tax story is buried, overtaken by news of Trump's diagnosis and treatment, of others who claim to be positive, and other minutae that quite frankly should not be public knowledge, IMHO.

But instead of simply denying the press any information, citing national security concerns — which I think most reasonable people would understand, the Administration has turned it into yet another laughable, three-ring shitshow. Quoting NYT:

The episode continued what has been a days-long torrent of falsehoods, obfuscation, evasion, misdirection and imprecision from those surrounding Trump as he faces the greatest threat to a president’s health in decades. From the chief White House doctor to the president’s chief of staff, the inability to provide clear, direct and consistent information about Trump’s condition has been widespread since the coronavirus began rapidly circulating in the West Wing.

Trump, his doctors and White House aides sought to portray him as improving and largely unencumbered by the virus that has killed more than 209,000 Americans. White House aides emphasized that Trump was continuing to work while at Walter Reed, casting him as a triumphant warrior.

Highlights:

• President Trump was seen on Sunday being driven around by Secret Service agents in a black SUV. The president was waving to people as a show of his strength. There is much hay being made by the news corps' medical consultants about how the act seriously risked the lives of those agents.
  
  
• In a video the president released on twitter, Trump remarked that he'd been "visiting wounded warriors and first responders" inside the hospital. ³

My Conclusion

On Taxes: Spend a weekend reading Michael Cohen's DISLOYAL. Cohen discusses how Trump would inflate the values of his properties to boast about his wealth, then turn around and devalue them drastically at tax time. Taking deductions and recording losses is one thing; playing very fast and loose with the regulations is perhaps another. What Cohen described was very solidly on the shady end of the spectrum. It seems likely to me that the president is in some very hot water over his Atlantic City casino, and that right now he's counting on his Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchkin and bully Bill Barr to get and to stay in front of that mess (recall the FBI under the Department of Treasury, same as the IRS). I think it's also very likely that when he's no longer a sitting president, a Biden Administration Treasury will go after Trump for tax evasion. I think it's equally likely Mr. Trump knows it.

On COVID: I don't yet believe the president has COVID-19. I am highly suspicious of the events being reported in the media.

1. First and foremost, after lie after lie after lie, I don't believe a damn thing Trump says.
   
   
2. Second, the timing was perfect for squashing the tax story. It seems just too convenient that Trump and a bunch of his cronies all catch the COVID-19 disease two days after NYT broke a huge story about Trump's taxes.
   
   
3. Trump is transported to the hospital the moment he pops positive. The SCOTUS Nomination Ceremony was held on September 26; Trump tests positive on October 1, only 5 days later. Yet in all the outbreaks we saw earlier in the year — particularly over holiday weekends — the COVID numbers all spiked about 10 days after these events. Ten, not five. (To be fair, I don't know details on the testing, including whether it offers some advantage of detection within five days.)
   
   
4. In his initial report, Trump's physician wrote that the president was "well." Not "responding well", not "showing very mild symptoms." He said "well." Was this a very subtle indication that the president does not actually have the disease?
   
   
5. The notion that our president, who has tested positive for COVID-19 and has been admitted to Walter Reed Memorial Hospital, is allowed to walk around and press the flesh with service members and first responders is COMPLETELY PREPOSTEROUS. Quoting NYT:

   In the Twitter video, Trump said he has spent part of his time at Walter Reed visiting wounded warriors and first responders but did not provide details about how those patients were protected against him infecting them with the coronavirus. He also implied he understood the virus better than medical experts after having contracted it.

There's no way in Hell that man has COVID-19. Or, the medical staff at Walter Reed, up to and including the President's personal physician, are GROSSLY INCOMPETENT that they're letting a patient infected with a deadly disease wander around their hospital greeting other patients. It's patently absurd on its face.

So What's His Plan?

In my estimation, the price for using this COVID-19 ruse is not being able to visit voters in battleground states for the next couple of weeks, although he may just take a week off and get back to it. His idiots will still go see him.

So either he plays the whole thing up like he's currently doing, to paint himself as some sort of superman to wow his voters, then be done with the whole thing,

or

He plays the whole thing down to get voters' pity. Seems unlikely, BUT — suppose he plays it down so far that he fakes his own death?

Say he fakes his death. By "death," he saves face in a way, because he technically wouldn't lose the election, because he "wasn't alive." He has a funeral on the National Mall and the whole bit — prior to the election. Being "deceased," the Treasury department can't take $100 million of his fortune, so they don't go after him. Meanwhile, he's alive and well and has disappeared just like he said he would, continuing to run his empire through his beard — his children — just as he does now, from within some country where he'll live comfortably without worry of extradition to the United States should he ever be found.

But to do that, he'll have to deny himself the lust for power he's become so drunk on. And that might be too tall an order, even when weighed against losing $100 million and possible prison time.

Of course the scenario I just outlined is far-fetched. It sounds like a mid-60's episode of Mission Impossible. The problem is, he's proven time and again that he's capable of such fantastic hyperbole through connected others.

President Trump returns from his campaign rally in Tulsa, OK. Photo Credit: Newsday

Word spread like wildfire across social media: Tiktokkers — that is, members of the social media platform "TikTok", who tend to be younger and produce excruciating content my teen finds hilarious, were apparently responsible for handing President Trump probably his most notable loss of his re-election campaign yet.

Apparently, members of the social media platform contacted the Trump campaign and reserved tickets — thousands upon thousands of tickets — for the rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma scheduled for Fathers' Day weekend.

But the gag was, none of them had any intention of actually attending the rally.

The ruse was brilliant: Tiktokkers reserved tens of thousands of tickets, making the Trump Campaign believe the rally would be well-attended. (Reporting from The Washington Post suggests the plan originated among TikTok users who are fans of Korean pop music — also known as K-pop.) ¹

I have second-hand information that claim the actual attendance was 6,611. The source, I was told, is someone who actually worked the rally.

The ruse is probably also responsible for a huge sigh of relief from the city of Tulsa. After the city made repeated requests to the campaign to not hold the rally for fear a COVID-19 outbreak would overwhelm its emergency response and health systems, lawsuits were filed to prevent the campaign from holding the rally.

(The campaign went so far as to make ticketholders sign waivers, releasing the campaign of any responsibility should the attendee catch the COVID-19 disease as a result of attendance.)

Tulsa must love TikTok today.

According to the Washington Post, the Trump Campaign immediately set to spinning the reason for the low turnout: "The Trump campaign on Sunday sought to blame concerns about protesters for the lower-than-expected turnout at the president’s Tulsa rally, even though the campaign itself had raised expectations about attendance by touting the number of people who had signed up for tickets online." ².  One can't blame the campaign about their expectations on the tickets, though — a great many did sign up for them.

My Conclusion

The president's re-election campaign was dealt a stinging blow by the youth of America. My surmise is the President will seek to retaliate, and his target will be Tiktok.

The social media platform is actually a Chinese venture, which means shutting it down will likely become the stuff of international relations. Security analyses published months ago showed that the app employs an unusual, non-standard encryption method, which led to speculation that China is likely collecting TikTok data. Published reports indicated that US military forces were forbidden from installing the app on their devices because of the discovery of the unusual encryption.

Excerpts from John Bolton's latest book, The Room Where It Happened, either leaked online or published in part by news outlets having received advance copies, show that President Trump has been particularly deferential to Xi Jinping, even going so far as asking him for help in getting re-elected.

In my opinion, given Trump-Xi relations, retaliation seems unlikely, or at least "on ice" until a time when tensions are high — but — the Trump Administration could certainly frame the nonstandard encryption as a national security threat and use that as justification for having SmartPhone app distributors like Apple and Google remove TikTok from their U.S. stores, and perhaps from U.S. users' devices.

UPDATE

In my conclusion, I opined that the Trump Administration might use the discoveries of unusual security measures as an excuse to remove Americans' access to the platform, should tensions with China escalate.

For the past week or so, Microsoft has been in the news cycle, because the Trump Administration asked them to consider acquiring TikTok from its Chinese parent company; ³  also this week, the President announced that TikTok will be removed from app stores by mid-September. ⁴

Actually, I think the deal could ultimately be a good thing for Microsoft. For one thing, it'd certainly give them an opportunity to market their gaming console business; they might even find ways to tie them in somehow, with letting gamers push gameplay videos out over the platform. I'm just saying there are business opportunities there for them after they get the data capture, storage, and encryption messes worked out.

Still, Microsoft didn't seek out this opportunity... and shelling out $50BB to host really stupid videos for the sake of national security is quite an "ask."

 

President Trump returns from his campaign rally in Tulsa, OK. Photo Credit: Newsday

Word spread like wildfire across social media: Tiktokers — that is, members of the social media platform "TikTok", who tend to be younger and produce excruciating content my teen finds hilarious, were apparently responsible for handing President Trump probably his most notable loss of his re-election campaign yet.

Apparently, members of the social media platform contacted the Trump campaign and reserved tickets — thousands upon thousands of tickets — for the rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma scheduled for Fathers' Day weekend.

But the gag was, none of them had any intention of actually attending the rally.

The ruse was brilliant: Tiktokers reserved tens of thousands of tickets, making the Trump Campaign believe the rally would be well-attended. (Reporting from The Washington Post suggests the plan originated among TikTok users who are fans of Korean pop music — also known as K-pop.) ¹

I have second-hand information that claim the actual attendance was 6,611. The source, I was told, is someone who actually worked the rally.

The ruse is probably also responsible for a huge sigh of relief from the city of Tulsa. After the city made repeated requests to the campaign to not hold the rally for fear a COVID-19 outbreak would overwhelm its emergency response and health systems, lawsuits were filed to prevent the campaign from holding the rally.

(The campaign went so far as to make ticketholders sign waivers, releasing the campaign of any responsibility should the attendee catch the COVID-19 disease as a result of attendance.)

Tulsa must love TikTok today.

According to the Washington Post, the Trump Campaign immediately set to spinning the reason for the low turnout: "The Trump campaign on Sunday sought to blame concerns about protesters for the lower-than-expected turnout at the president’s Tulsa rally, even though the campaign itself had raised expectations about attendance by touting the number of people who had signed up for tickets online." ².  One can't blame the campaign about their expectations on the tickets, though — a great many did sign up for them.

My Conclusion

The president's re-election campaign was dealt a stinging blow by the youth of America. My surmise is the President will seek to retaliate, and his target will be Tiktok.

The social media platform is actually a Chinese venture, which means shutting it down will likely become the stuff of international relations. Security analyses published months ago showed that the app employs an unusual, non-standard encryption method, which led to speculation that China is likely collecting TikTok data. Published reports indicated that US military forces were forbidden from installing the app on their devices because of the discovery of the unusual encryption.

Excerpts from John Bolton's latest book, The Room Where It Happened, either leaked online or published in part by news outlets having received advance copies, show that President Trump has been particularly deferential to Xi Jinping, even going so far as asking him for help in getting re-elected.

In my opinion, given Trump-Xi relations, retaliation seems unlikely, or at least "on ice" until a time when tensions are high — but — the Trump Administration could certainly frame the nonstandard encryption as a national security threat and use that as justification for having SmartPhone app distributors like Apple and Google remove TikTok from their U.S. stores, and perhaps from U.S. users' devices.

Murial of George Floyd. Photo by KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images.

In seeing all of these news stories of law enforcement brutality and policy changes vis-à-vis BLM happening from cities across the nation up to the White House, it occurs to me that police nationwide are having their "'Me too' movement" moment: instances of brutality are caught on camera, families and loved ones speak out about their experiences; arrests, lawsuits, court cases — different deaths and different families in different cities, televised every day lately. National news exposure and the combination of BLM and bad actors seems to have sent this reply: make justice swift and transparent, or your city will burn.

It seems every police department across the country is now under a microscope. "Me too" was in the news cycle for an extended period, and I suspect this will be too; both had sensational catalysts — the demises of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby in "Me too"; the death of George Floyd and weeks of rioting in BLM.

In both cases, a critical mass was reached before news of action was broadcast. In recent days, for BLM, news of officer reprimands, firings, and charges seem to be accelerated, as if extorted under threat of mayhem. Through the media, the whole country now has an expectation that justice must arrive swiftly and transparently, or police precincts and local businesses will suffer destruction and communities will be ripped apart — not necessarily by BLM participants, but by bad actors converting protests into unrest.

It's probably not what BLM wants, but, let's face it — it's the combination of the two that is actually promoting the change. The cycle: BLM protests peacefully; police monitor the protest. Bad actors use the protests to damage property; police engage. Mistakes are made, protesters/opportunists catch it on camera and disseminate the footage, and the cycle starts anew, with both protesters and police charged by the events of the previous evening. Rinse, repeat; the whole thing spirals.

Sadly, amicable protests are not change agents. On this side of my television set, peaceful protests amount to a footnote that beyond inconvenience to traffic, no harm was done. But protests where shit blows up? Cities start looking at "re-imagining" their police forces.

Departments are under tremendous scrutiny. The mission of the police department is to enforce the law. But their officers need to be more than that; they need to be model citizens, too, with behaviors others should want to emulate. Departments want to be seen as partners in their communities, staffed with officers from those communities. One guy with a knee on a neck put a black mark on all uniformed officers. Every time this happens, all police forces suffer. But when officers respond to calls, they don't ever know what they're really getting into: they have to be ready for anything. Surely this must affect them in permanent ways over time. How would I remain a model citizen under conditions like that over a year? Five years? Twenty? No wonder we're seeing news stories about police feeling unsupported.

In all of these differences, something is common: media coverage. Media attention is both enabling the success of BLM and fueling this "'Me too' moment" for police — BLM has been around for years (think Trayvon Martin in 2013), and the injustices long, long before that — but today, with the death of George Floyd, the injustices are now broadcast far and wide.

So, what is the real change agent here?

A representation of COVID-19 cells.

So, it looks like there are now "factions" of COVID-19 believers out there — that is, there are people who take the guidance seriously, people who don't take it seriously, then there are people who think it's a complete hoax.

One who commented on a Facebook thread I saw on a friend's wall typed, "[We're] still supposed to pretend that C19 is a thing." Basically, a "flat earther" of the pandemic, I suppose.

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy asserted in late May that people's views on the various policies and procedures regarding stopping transmission (things like observing social distancing and wearing masks) appeared to be consistent with their political affiliations. Citing multiple polls, Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to visit retail malls for non-essential shopping, and far more likely not to wear a mask when leaving the house. ¹

Pew Research reported on June 3 that "Since late March to early May, the share of Republicans who view the outbreak as a major threat to the nation's health dropped 9 points, from 52% to 43%, while views on this issue among Democrats increased slightly from 78% to 82%. Democrats are now nearly 40 percentage points more likely than Republicans to consider the coronavirus a major threat to the health of the population. About six-in-ten Americans (59%) view social distancing measures — which were still in place across much of the country at the time of the survey — as helping a lot to reduce the spread of the disease, although this belief is more common among Democrats (69%) than Republicans (49%)." ²

Now, I find it interesting that the Trump Administration and the Republican Party have been pushing so hard for reopening the country, and they're doing it despite the data that shows infections are up. The Lieutenant Governor of Texas infamously said a few times (and I'm paraphrasing here) that the U.S. economy is more important than living. Clearly both of these organizations have quite a hold on the percentage of the public that echoes these sentiments -— although, to be fair, most of us can't live without income, and that's one thing that is NOT a political issue.

I believe the people not taking the countermeasures seriously are the primary reason why we're still in the first wave of the virus spread — we should have been past this point already, but we're not, because (1) people protesting the economic hardship the countermeasures have created have allowed the virus to spread (2) racial tensions in the United States have produced other protests and riots, which have allowed the virus to spread (3) the Memorial Day weekend — which many view as the start of summer — sent covidiots scrambling to beaches and shopping and other gatherings, which has allowed the virus to spread.

(Texas has moved into Phase 3 of its reopening plan despite the Dallas area seeing record numbers of new cases for a SOLID WEEK. What do you think the chances are the Governor will pump the brakes on Phase 3? Particularly when Dan Patrick is so willing to sacrifice Texans' lives? Which brings me to the secondary reason we're still in the first wave.)

The secondary reason we're still in the first wave is entirely political. The Republicans are far too ready to brush off the new cases by simply saying "well, we're testing more, so the numbers are higher." It's an entirely too dismissive approach, encouraged by the fact that nobody is confident in any numbers any longer — either because the collection methods are changing, or because the data scientists are being told to fudge the numbers (and getting fired if they refuse, right, Florida?). So with the encouragement of politicians, people — apparently especially Republicans, if the polls are any indication — are allowing the virus to spread.

Another quote from Pew Research: "Since April, Republicans have grown more concerned that restrictions will not be lifted quickly enough, while Democrats have become increasingly concerned that restrictions will be lifted too quickly. In the most recent Center survey, nearly 9 in 10 Democrats (87%) say their greater concern is that states will lift restrictions too quickly; Republicans are closely divided between concern that restrictions will be lifted too quickly or not quickly enough (47% to 53%)."

According to this data, Dems are almost unanimous in their concern for restrictions being lifted too quickly. But what could be the reason for Republicans being so split on the issue? I think it's a question of loyalty: the economy IS the Trump Campaign platform in 2020. COVID-19 has fucking wrecked it; Republicans have been tasked with getting the economy back and at full steam in time for voters to do their thing (I guess³).

Seems the Republicans polled like living, too.

At the start, I said that it looks like there are now "factions" of COVID-19 believers out there — that is, there are people who take the guidance seriously, people who don't take it seriously, and people who think it's a complete hoax. I now understand that there's a strong correlation between one's political affiliation and where one stands regarding COVID-19 countermeasures: The spectrum of "Stay Home, Stay Safe" to "Reopen the economy now!" appears to parallel the spectrum of Liberals to Conservatives/Democrats to Republicans.

I think it's important to point out that Democrats and Liberals aren't anti-economy, and with notable exception of Dan Patrick, Republicans probably aren't generally pro-COVID. Nobody wants to die, and nobody wants to be broke, which means there's likely common ground AND that probably nobody is paying any attention to Dan Patrick.

Personally, I'm worried about going into Phase 3. But I also know that the Dallas County recommendation is essentially the mid-June equivalent of SIP. I can still stay home while the economy reopens. Actually, Dallas says I SHOULD. I wish more would, but they're making choices just like I am. And I want us all to make good choices. For ourselves, and others.

UPDATE: The Dallas County Commission voted this morning (Friday, 6/19) to require masks at county businesses — for employees AND consumers. A report I saw on NBC's TODAY show this morning expained, COVID hospitalizations in Texas are up 95% since Memorial Day. ⁴

Please stay safe and be good humans.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

On Super Tuesday (March 3, 2020), I'll be casting my vote for Sen. Elizabeth Warren to receive the nominiation of the Democratic Party for the 2020 presidential election.

14 of our 50 states will be holding their primaries on Super Tuesday, representing 40% of the population. ¹

Recent polling on the Democratic Primary suggests Sen. Bernie Sanders is the front runner. ²  Indeed the media has not hidden their surprise about this turn of events. Some of my friends are beginning to ask themselves how they'd vote, given a choice between Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Perhaps I'm stubborn, but I'm not ready to give up on Warren. Two big things that I think she has going for her are her experience and her willingness to call "bullshit" on the antics happening in Congress.

But a third very big reason why she's earned my vote is based on recent reporting appearing in The Nation and Politico concerning Warren and Sanders' foreign policy wonks. In short, Team Warren's roots are in the establishment; Team Sanders' roots are in "activism and the alternative media." ³

But what about "Uncle Joe?" He's not my first choice here. He might be what the Democratic Party ends up with, and I guess I could get behind him. But I think Biden seems to represent going back to the previous administration. Maybe we need that now more than we need a more progressive stance, but I don't know if we can go back. I think Biden represents "Repair and reset," and I think I want more.

I'm not afraid of Sanders' Democratic Socialism; I understand what it means. A ready example: Any county sheriff's office. All cities in a county pay for the sheriff's office, and all cities benefit from the sheriff's department operations. Same is true of fire departments, trash collection, you get the idea.

But I'm a moderate. I also consider myself an independent, and I absolutely understand that the recklessness that has become the Republican Party under President Trump cannot continue. Conservativism certainly has its place, but this shit is way out of control; ergo, I'm going blue. You do you, but Sen. Warren fits the bill for me.

And when I say "you do you," it's not because I care who you like. I don't. What I care about is that you use the system to make your voice heard.

Separated at Birth?

Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

I was surprised to see reporting from Daily Kos with the following headline: "Mitch McConnell reportedly linked to Putin, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and Russian companies".

So I figured I'd look into it.

The article was written by Leslie Salzillo. Under her name is the word "Community," which I think — and I offer my apologies here, because I'm not familiar with Daily Kos — means the article was written by someone who is maybe not on staff. Don't get me wrong, here — I'd love to be able to contribute articles to somebody as a "side hustle" (local news made a big deal of that term recently, so I thought I'd try it on.). The only point I'm trying to make here is that the article might be the equivalent of an opinion piece.

Salzillo points to an opinion article in the Dallas News to show that McConnell, along with Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, had a contributor named Blavatnik who has dual US and UK citizenship and strong ties to Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg. Deripaska and Vekselberg are both strongly tied to the Kremlin. ¹

The Dallas News article was originally written for The Dallas Morning News by Ruth May, "a business professor at the University of Dallas and an expert on the economies of Russia and Ukraine."

These opinion articles are some pretty strong opinions. And they're damn good.

Daily Kos published Salzillo's article on January 28th, just after US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced the US had lifted sanctions on three Russian companies tied to Oleg Deripaska. Mnuchin lifted these sanctions despite two resolutions introduced by Demorats in the House of Representatives.

Among the many interesting points May makes in her article: Mnuchkin and Blavatnik owned RATPAC Entertainment together until Mnuchkin divested his interest to become Secretary of the Treasury.

Blavatnik:

• Billionaire Russian with US citizenship
• donates millions to McConnell and other Republican PACs;
• tied to Deripaska, who is tied directly to the Kremlin
• Former Mnuchkin business parter

Mnuchkin:

• Former Blavatnik business partner
• now US Secretary of the Treasury
• lifts sanctions on three Deripaska businesses.

Salzillo's point is simply that McConnell's ride-or-die alliance with Trump and the Russians are guiding his actions as Senate Majority Leader.

The logo of the National Rifle Association

Mainstream news reports from August, 2018 suggested that the NRA could face bankruptcy. This just two years after it donated a whopping $70 million on President Trump's election campaign. How could the gun rights organization, in existence for nearly 150 years, go from riches to rags in just two years?

 

 

Proof of Collusion

Seth Abramson, in his book, Proof of Collusion, devotes an entire chapter to the connection between Russian operatives and the NRA, from 2013 to 2017. To summarize the following paragraphs, Abramson spells out for us certain flashpoints in the time between the 2012 and 2016 presidential election cycles a Russian effort to get Trump into the White House and well connected with the Kremlin. Elsewhere in his book he identifies Trump's desire to build a Trump Tower in Moscow; Abramson will show the intersection of Trump's business and political aspirations.

Starting in early 2013, a wealthy Russian politician with ties to Russia's intelligence apparatus named Alexsandr Torshin, and a young Russian woman named Maria Butina begin work to create a back channel link between the Kremlin and Republican Party leadership by infiltrating the National Rifle Association. Their scheme involves making social connections with powerful NRA members and GOP operatives, and engineering very generous support to the Trump campaign. (p. 81)

The 24 year-old Butina seduces Paul Erickson, an influential GOP operative and NRA member, who is 30 years her senior. Before long, she's living with him, and he is paying many of her expenses (p.82). By the fall, Butina has been introduced to NRA President David Keene, and Keene is hosted in Moscow that November. Keene is also editor of the opinion pages for the Washington Times, and publishes an essay by Torshin. Over the following year, Torshin and Butina attend multiple NRA functions. In 2015, Torshin has made Trump's acquaintance at the NRA national conference in Nashville, Tennessee, and by the close of the year has hosted two dinners in Moscow for NRA A-listers and "influential Russian government and business figures" (p. 86). Separately, Butina, in attendance at the "Freedom Fest" event in Las Vegas, actually asks Candidate Trump about his position on relations with Putin and Russia in a televised Q&A session.

By the close of 2015, it's become clear that the Russians expect Trump to lift economic sanctions against Russia, and are dangling a giant carrot in front of him: Trump Tower Moscow. "[U]nless Trump wins the presidency and removes U.S. sanctions on Russia, he will not be able to get the money [secured for the Trump Tower project]" (p.86).

2016 — Election year:

In 2016, the annual NRA conference is held in Louisville, Kentucky, and once again Torshin and Butina attend. A few days before the conference, Butina's boyfriend, Erickson, writes Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn to inform the Trump campaign that the Kremliin is "quietly but actively seeking a dialog with the United States that isn't forthcoming under the current administration," adding that "the Kremlin believes that the only possibility of a true reset in this relationship would be with a new Republican in the White House." Erickson notes that Torshin will attempt to make "first contact" with the Trump campaign at the NRA convention.... At the same time Torshin approaches Dearborn through Erickson, he also uses Rick Clay, whom the New York Times describes as "an advocate for conservative Christian causes," to get the same message to Dearborn: Putin wants to meet with Trump, and Torshin wants to meet with Trump first to set up the meeting. (p. 87)

Finally, Abramson closes the chapter by quoting an e-mail that Erickson wrote on October 4, 2016, stating in part: "I've been involved in securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin and key [GOP] leaders through, of all conduits, the NRA" (p.89).

In summary, Torshin and Butina, working in league with the Kremlin, were able to infiltrate the NRA, use NRA and GOP members to use their contacts within the Trump campaign to communicate messages from the Kremlin, and actually make direct contact with the candidate himself. In Butina's plea deal (reached December, 2018), Butina "agreed and conspired, with a Russian government official and at least one other person, for Butina to act in the United States under the direction of [That Russian official]." ¹ The Russian official is likely Torshin.

So, what about the money?

NRA expenditures on the 2016 presidential primaries and general election were far higher than the NRA initially reported — and eventually reach and exceed $70 million, according to a McClatchy report in January 2018.... Massive spending by the NRA and the RNC on Trump's behalf make it possible for him to abandon his self-funding promise from the primary and nevertheless be adequately funded for the general election. In the end, the NRA spends more than the billionaire Trump does on his own election.... As noted by Vanity Fair in June 2018, "The FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating meetings between NRA officials and powerful Russian operatives, trying to determine if those contacts had anything to do with the gun group spending $30 million [in direct support] to help elect Donald Trump... The use of foreign money in American political campaigns is illegal (pp. 88-89)  ²

 

 

Funding in Decline

A November 2018 article in The Hill stated that 2017 income at the NRA was down $55MM, about 15%, from the previous year. ³ Donations had dropped $27MM and annual dues contributions dropped a whopping $35MM — over 20% -- from the previous year.

Additionally, NBC News reported that the non-profit finished TY2016 with a $45MM loss.⁴

I could accept the argument that donations were down, because 2016 was an election year. But the thing I find surprising was that its annual dues contributions dropped by a fifth. That seems to me to indiate they lost a lot of members following the elections.

Well, perhaps they have. An AXIOS report from March, 2018 indicated that the NRA is now seen more negatively, particularly given the tragedies involving automatic and semiautomatic weapons at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas (October, 2017), Sutherland Springs, Texas (November, 2017), and at a high school in Parkland, Florida (February 2018).⁵  The report suggested that 40% of Americans now viewed the NRA negatively, with a 15% decline in favorability among white women.

On its surface, the decline in membership seems much more related to domestic gun violence than Russian campaign interference, with three tragedies in five months and all involving AR-15's. The most notable of these events, in terms of public outrage, was probably the Parkland shooting.

 

 

Parkland Backlash

The Parkland shootings became particularly significant for the NRA because public sentiment became very negative. Following the incident at the high school, several companies terminated their relationships with the NRA:

Among those cutting ties with the NRA were the car rental groups Enterprise, Hertz, Avis and Budget; the insurance giant MetLife; the software firm Symantec; and the Boston-based home security company SimpliSafe. Delta and United also said in statements Saturday that they will no longer offer travel discounts for the NRA. Each airline asked that related information be removed from the NRA website. ⁶

But these are nothing compared to the actions taken by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

In April, 2018, Cuomo ordered the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS), which regulates all banking and insurance companies doing business in New York, to "to urge insurance companies, New York State-chartered banks, and other financial services companies licensed in New York to review any relationships they may have with the National Rifle Association and other similar organizations. Upon this review, the companies are encouraged to consider whether such ties harm their corporate reputations and jeopardize public safety."  ⁷

According to NBC News reporting:

Then the DFS went after companies that did business with the NRA, fining Lockton Companies and Chubb for underwriting the NRA’s "Carry Guard" insurance, which the agency said unlawfully covered gun owners’ "acts of intentional wrongdoing." (The NRA says the program covers members’ expenses "arising out of the lawful self-defense use of a legally possessed firearm.")

The NRA said in a recent court filing that New York state’s campaign to push insurance companies and banks to cut ties with the organization had already cost it "tens of millions of dollars" this year and could ultimately make it "unable to exist as a not-for-profit or pursue its advocacy mission." Unless the courts step in and stop New York, "the NRA will suffer irrevocable loss and irreparable harm if it is unable to acquire insurance or other financial services," the group said in a complaint submitted in federal court on July 20.  ⁴

 

 

My Conclusion

The hard times at the NRA appear chiefly connected with the episodes of gun violence that occurred between late 2017 and early 2018. During that period and the months that followed, the NRA brand suffered in terms of popularity, and in financial terms as numerous companies severed ties with the venerable non-profit either as a function of pressure brought by private citizens over social media or as a function of pressure from the Governor of New York through its state agencies.

I was unaware of the connection of the NRA to the Kremlin until I read about it in Proof of Collusion. I admit I was spellbound by Abramson's recounting of these events. I would love to know how much money the Russians poured into the NRA's coffers, and how much of it was among the $70MM the organization spent to support the Trump campaign (read: how much the NRA laundered). Perhaps we will see a full accounting when the Special Counsel releases its final report.

How do I feel about the NRA going under? I feel bad for the private citizens who are firearm owners, because I feel NRA membership probably offers something of value to them. I'm talking about the Average Joes who take their pistols down to the range every so often and put ordnance on a big paper target. The NRA sponsors all sorts of gun safety classes — I know because I've attended one. Classes like these are absolutely valuable for people to learn about firearm safety. Do I support the NRA in this regard? Absolutely.

On the other hand, how do I feel about the notion that the Russians knew the gun lobby was a strong link to the GOP? How do I feel about the NRA laundering Russian money and funneling it into the Trump campaign? That's a problem for me. I don't like politics in my guns. (By the way, the notion "the liberals are coming to take my guns away" is complete horse shit, Mr. Patrick, and you know it.) Do I support the NRA in this regard? Oh Hell no.

Am I a member of the NRA? No.

Would I consider joining? No. Not after all of this bullshit. And by the way, I don't entirely agree with their mission, either — because I believe the amount of money it's spent in the political arena is probably what has kept the second amendment debate in limbo for... nearly 150 years. That debate is the interpretation of the amendment which allows private citizens unfettered access to assault weapons. That's some pretty advanced "advocacy" there.

What I would support is the NRA in a much more limited... scope. GET IT? HA!!
And I don't think that makes me liberal. It just means I have common sense.

If the NRA wants to be political, fine. Split the education programs out to somebody else, and I'll support that company instead. I want "advocacy" to mean proper firearm education and licensing. I don't want it to mean an avenue to influence, disturb, or corrupt our political process. Or to put itself in such a position as to launder money for Russian oligarchs. If it wasn't so deep in bed with the GOP, it wouldn't have gotten into that particular mess.

As far as its financial woes, well, advocacy for the AR-15 and other assault weapons of its ilk is what got it where it is — at a low point in membership, a low point in income, and left looking like a turd in the punchbowl. Why? Because people were using those guns on innocents in schools or at outdoor concerts. The NRA didn't want that. Nobody did. But I guess this is what "advocacy" has bought.

President Trump

Mainstream morning news is all abuzz this morning about a Buzzfeed article charging President Trump with having directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about his Moscow tower project.

Michael Cohen, in testimony to the Office of the Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, had previously stated that the Trump Tower Moscow project had ended in January, 2016 as an attempt to distance Trump from, and to limit, the FBI's Russia investigations.

The special counsel's office learned about Trump's directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.

Buzzfeed is careful to note that this "is the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia."

Predictably, the Buzzfeed article sent Democrats into an uproar, with some calling for an investigation, others grabbing their pitchforks and torches and calling for impeachment. ¹ Others took to twitter: ²

In a surprising move, the Justice Department this afternoon actually issued a statement on the Buzzfeed story, saying that there were unspecified inaccuracies in their report.³

UPDATE:
Subsequent Washington Post reporting claimed that the Special Counsel's office later sent Buzzfeed an excerpt from the transcript of Cohen's plea hearing, which showed that Cohen said that he made the misstatements to be consistent with [Trump's] political messaging and out of loyalty to [Trump] — it did not say that Trump told him to make those misstatements.

HOWEVER (emphasis mine):

Guy Petrillo, Cohen's attorney, wrote in a memo in advance of [Cohen's] sentencing, "We address the campaign finance and false statements allegations together because both arose from Michael's fierce loyalty to Client-1. In each case, the conduct was intended to benefit Client-1, in accordance with Client-1's directives." Client-1 refers to Trump. ⁴

The Washington Post article goes on to say that nowhere else in the memo could one find any direct statement that Trump had ordered Cohen to lie. Furthermore, the Justice Department did some homework based on the Buzzfeed article and was unable to find any testimony or other evidence to corroborate the report; this, WaPo explains, is partly why the Office of the Special Counsel decided to dispute the report.

President Trump

I've been seeing multiple stories over the past few days regarding details discovered in the case against Paul Manafort that appear to significantly undermine the president's position on accusations his campaign colluded with the Russian government for advantage in the 2016 presidential election.

The Washington Post characterized the information as "[indicative of] a pathway by which the Russians could have had access to Trump campaign data." ¹

It's also being widely reported that Manafort was in debt to Oleg Deripaska, and that Manafort's intention was to pass the polling data on to him through Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort associate since at least 2005 with known ties to Russian Intelligence.

Josh Marshall, an editor for TalkingPointsMemo, explains it in his blog post:

According to the Manafort court filing, the Special Counsel’s Office charged that Manafort had lied about sharing "polling data" about the 2016 campaign with his former Ukrainian deputy Konstantin Kilimnik, a man who US intelligence believes is himself tied to Russian intelligence. Given that Manafort had also told Kilimnik to offer briefings on the campaign to Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska, it was a reasonable surmise that handing over the polling data was meant for Deripaska as well. Then yesterday mid-evening, The New York Times confirmed as much.²

Time Magazine reporting cited in the TalkingPointsMemo editorial offers some interesting background on Manafort at the time of the presidential campaign:

When he joined the campaign in the spring of 2016, Manafort was nearly broke. The veteran political consultant had racked up bills worth millions of dollars in luxury real estate, clothing, cars and antiques. According to allegations contained in court records filed in the U.S. and the Cayman Islands, he was also deeply in debt to... Oleg Deripaska... In a petition filed in the Cayman Islands in 2014, lawyers for Deripaska, a metals tycoon with close ties to the Kremlin, complain that Manafort and his then-partner had "simply disappeared" with around $19 million of the Russian’s money. When [Manafort] reappeared in the headlines around April 2016, [he] was serving as an unpaid adviser to the Trump campaign. He wanted his long-time patron in Moscow to know all about it. In a series of emails sent that spring and summer, Manafort tried to offer "private briefings" about the presidential race to Deripaska, apparently, as one of the emails puts it, to "get whole." Reports in The Atlantic and The Washington Post revealed those emails in the fall of 2017. ³

TPM's conclusion: "[N]ow we appear to have clear cut evidence from the other side that Manafort was doing precisely what was claimed: passing on confidential campaign data to a high-level Russian oligarch who Manafort knew from long experience was closely tied to Putin and the Russian intelligence services. There’s really no question about whether there was collusion. We have it right here in front of us."

MSNBC characterized it this way (transcription mine): "If this is the case, and Donald Trump's campaign was sharing polling data ... then Robert Mueller just might have an important piece of information about the intersection of the Trump political machine and Russian efforts to aid Donald Trump's campaign." ⁴

Collusion is not a legal term, but conspiracy IS — regardless of whether the Trump Campaign actually got anything of value in return — as Judge Andrew Napolitano, legal analyst for Fox News, reminds us in this interview with Shepard Smith:

UPDATE:
Reporting from Politico helps us understand what value there was in the polling data to the Russians:

Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio, who met with Mueller in early 2018, also worked for Manafort on Ukranian elections, narrowing the circle of participants.... After the [US] election, Fabrizio explained to Frontline how powerful his data was in identifying "Trump targets" who were ready to change direction in the upcoming election. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., did not inhibit himself from speculating that the polling data was put to direct use. "Did the Russians end up using this polling data in their efforts that took place later in the fall where they tried using the Internet Research Agency and other bots and other automated tools on social media to suppress, for example, the African-American vote?" Warner said.⁵

It certainly seems to fit. The Internet Research Agency has been shown to be an instrument of the GRU, with whom Kilimnik was a known affiliate. The polling data could have been used for targeting Russia's disinformation campaign.

My Conclusion

Question: Did the Trump Campaign conspire with the Russian government to install Donald Trump into the White House? — I believe that answer is effectively yes, and for reasons which extend beyond the scope of this post.

Question: Was Donald Trump responsible for the conspiracy? — I still don't know. What I do know, based on the above reporting, is that a guy who was $19MM in debt to a Russian oligarch offered to provide valuable insight into the Trump Campaign to get back in the black, and a former arms dealer-turned-enforcer/collections agent off his back.

It reads like a Cold War era espionage case — some enlisted solider or sailor starts selling secrets to the Soviets as a solution to financial problems. For Manafort, it seems the motivation was in getting out from under Deripaska, not in actually getting Trump elected. Simply put, I think Manafort got himself into a position to have something to sell (Recall he was working as campaign chairman for free!) and was perhaps able to discern Russian interest. Does motive matter? Not necessarily, but it does seem to respond to the second question I asked above.

So we know there was conspiracy between campaign staff and people with ties to the Kremlin. But we don't yet appear to have the smoking gun that ties it all back to Trump in any way other than by Manafort's position on his campaign staff. But is that enough?

We may have enough when one considers the totality of circumstantial evidence: Don't forget that whole thing with Don Junior and the infamous meeting at Trump Tower. (And who was there with Don Jr., by the way? Why, Paul Manafort was!)

Trump Jr. later told the Senate Judiciary Committee, "I did not collude with any foreign government and do not know of anyone who did." ⁶

All very exciting. But I'll bet Special Counsel Robert Mueller is going to make certain there's a solid link between the president and the Russians before sending a paddy wagon down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Is Polling Data Protected Information?

And by the way, is voter data worthy of such protection as to make its circulation outside of the United States a crime?

To answer this question, I tried calling the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives and Records Administration. My call went straight to voicemail.

Next, I opened a web chat session with USA.gov, asking the same question. The response I received was "Polling results are public information so it can be used by anyone anywhere." When I tried to dig a little deeper, I was referred to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

So, I called the FEC, where again, nobody answered — simply a recording that said, "Due to unforseen circumstances." Seriously, that was the entire message.

Ringing in the new year

President Trump not only continues to hold his own government hostage over budget to wall off the southwestern border, but now promises to sustain the shutdown for months or even years until he gets what he wants. ^{1  2}  He's even talking about declaring a national emergency to get it built.

The same wall he told everybody Mexico would pay for is the reason close to a million federal civilians haven't worked in over two weeks. ³

My Conclusion

This is a hostage crisis. 800,000 federal workers are furloughed or working without pay, going by the number in today's The Washington Post reporting — which is about 40 percent of the total Federal civilian workforce.⁴  How many of those 800,000 are just going to "tough it out" if this shutdown really does go for months? Probably not 800,000 of them. This kind of paralysis is the makings of an actual national emergency.

With our executive branch spiraling into oblivion and taking almost half of the federal workforce with him, it is up to our Congress to get this country back on track properly. The Democrats are leading the fight from the House of Representatives, ⁵ and the resolve of the smart Republicans in the Senate will continue to erode to the point that when it's all over and the next election cycle is reached, the American people will witness the utter destruction of the Republican Party. It's simple math: 40% of the federal workforce will not forget who fought to get them working again, and who failed their newly unemployed constituents. And the rest of us watched it all happen.

Here's the thing, though: we'll be lucky if that's all that happens. With so many Federal employees on furlough, what do you think our national security posture is right now? Yes, we still have the DOD, but the other intelligence services of the United States of America are brushing up their resumes and being advised by the OPM to trade labor for rent payments. ^{6  7}  Homeland Security, Treasury, Justice, State departments are all affected. (By the way, the shutdown is probably not a diversion from the Mueller Investigation; the FBI is excepted from furlough.⁸)

This shutdown is headed toward becoming an actual threat to our national security, whether in the physical or electronic security dimension through the diminished capacities of federal agencies, or in the economic dimension as a function of market reaction. ^{9  10} 

If we arrive at that point where something actually bad happens as a result of this stupid shutdown, how much is a fucking wall going to matter?

Dumpster fire

What if I told you in 2012 that in just a few years, the United States would see its first dictator-president in living memory actually hold his own government hostage over budget to wall off the southwestern border? ¹

Would you have believed me?

 

What if I'd told you that The Washington Post would publish stories like this (emphasis mine)?

President Trump's year of lies, false statements and misleading claims started with some morning tweets.... [T]he start of a year of unprecedented deception during which Trump became increasingly unmoored from the truth. When 2018 began, the president had made 1,989 false and misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker's database, which tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. By the end of the year, Trump had accumulated more than 7,000 untruths during his presidency — averaging more than 15 erroneous claims a day during 2018, almost triple the rate from the year before. ²

... or this?

[The president's departing Chief of Staff John F. Kelly] defended those serving Trump as delivering him the right information, even if it might be disregarded. "It's never been: The president just wants to make a decision based on no knowledge and ignorance ," Kelly said.... [Kelly] was also more subtle than former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who a few weeks ago said Trump was "undisciplined, doesn't like to read" and tried to do illegal things but was often thrwarted by those around him .... The idea that Kelly regards his biggest success as standing in Trump's way is a pretty strong indictment of Trump as a person and of his presidency. ³

What if I told you that president would bring the dignity of his office down so far as to actually get laughed at while addressing the United Nations?

Would you have believed that?

 

I wouldn't have. Not in the new era of the transcendent President.

 

A couple of years ago I posited that the election cycle that put Donald Trump in the Oval Office could have the effect of energizing people to get involved in politics — or at least become more aware of it and the associated issues — and stop "phoning in" their votes — if they bothered to vote at all.

At the close of 2018, I can say that it's certainly affected me. I've researched and written about much more national issues-oriented content than I had ever before. The FBI Investigation into Russian meddling in the election. Fusion GPS and the infamous dossier. Comey. The auto industry. Syria. Immigration. US Oil and the Iran nuclear deal. North Korea. Conservativism. I researched and wrote about them so I could have some understanding about the issues, form an opinion (my thoughts are carefully identified), and share it all with anyone who cared to read. My hobby has taken on a new dimension.

 

Personally, I believe that the President won't be allowed to move too far afield of his office. But, particularly in view of his latest tantrum over immigration, I find myself wondering if I'll be writing about much the same thing on the eve of 2020.

 

*sigh* So, here we are:

We've been through this enough
It gets rough but there's nowhere to run
This is where we belong
We are strong, we can never give up

  President Trump

In April I wrote a lengthy post about Syria. Syria was in the news at the time because the United States led coalition forces to bomb runways which intelligence indicated had been used by Syrian forces to deliver chemical weapons on its own people. ¹

According to my research, the US had been involved in Syria's civil war, supporting forces opposed to President al-Assad — most notably the Kurds which occupied the northern third of the country at the time, plus Rebel and Turkish forces in pockets scattered across the lands to the south, under Russia-supported Syrian military control.

ISIS was operating in both major areas, and provided plausible cover for our forces and others aligned with us to operate in the region.

The Announcement

Much to everyone's surprise, President Trump announced that the US had beaten ISIS, and so we were withrdawing from Syria immediately.

News reports suggest the decision was the result of a call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week. Erdogan had been threatening to launch a military operation U.S.-backed Kurdish rebels. ² (Recall that Turkey shares its southern border with Syria, and that the area the Kurds controlled as of April stretched along almost the entire length of that border.)

The rationale for the withdrawal appears to simply be that the ISIS threat has declined significantly — to the point where the terrorists control only 1% of the territory it had previously. Despite repeated attempts by Secretary of Defense Gen. Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and national security advisor John Bolton to convince the president to find some middle ground, the president's position remained fixed. News of the decision was announced by the White House on Wednesday morning.

Fallout

The Washington Post quoted one military analyst as saying a US withdrawal will make relations with Iran more difficult, because the US will be viewed as weak. Indeed, the same articla includes a quote from a top Iranian military official: "The Americans have come to the conclusion that they can exercise power neither in Iraq and Syria nor in the entire region," said Brig. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, the commander of ground forces of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, at a news conference in Tehran." ³

The same reporting suggests the US' departure presents opportunity for other forces to wrest control of the northern territory — from Iran to the east or from Turkey to the North. An Iranian incursion could impact Israel and Iraq — some analysts believe Iran might pressure the US to leave Iraq for the same reason as it's leaving Syria — while the threat of Turkish aggression has forced the Syrian Kurds to hope for a deal with Assad.

Secretary of Defense Resigns

Meanwhile here at home, likely frustrated by the president's unwillingness to discuss US troop withdrawl from Syria, Secretary of Defense Mattis has tendered his resignation to the White House. ⁴

The letter reads in part, "My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. . . . Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position."

Mattis' resignation alarmed Republicans and Democrats alike on Capitol Hill. "To [Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.,] the letter 'makes it abundantly clear that we are headed towards a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances & empower our adversaries.' He also pressed for more oversight of the executive branch by Congress." ⁵

The Washsington Post characterized Congress' response this way: "[F]or many members of Congress — Republicans and Democrats — and the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, it was an unmitigated disaster. None was officially informed in advance of Trump’s announcement, made on Twitter early Wednesday. Most warned that Turkey, whose troops were poised on the border waiting for U.S. forces to leave, would slaughter U.S. Kurdish allies. Overall, they said, it was nothing less than a capitulation to the other two powers on the ground in Syria — Russia and Iran." ⁶

US Envoy McGurk Resigns

Moments ago, The Washington Post broke the story that US Envoy to the Anti-ISIS Coalition Brett McGurk has resigned "in protest of President Trump's decision to abruptly withdraw U.S. troops from Syria." The move was confirmed by a State Department official and is effective December 31st. ⁷

Russian Reaction

On news of the US plan to withdraw, President Putin remarked, "Let’s not forget that the troops' presence has been illegitimate. It hasn’t been vetted by the United Nations Security Council," Putin said. "A military contingent can only be present on the Security Council's approval or by the Syrian government's invitation. There was neither, so if the United States decided to withdraw its contingent they did the right thing." ⁸

My Conclusion

In my opinion, President Trump's decision to immediately withdraw from Syria is two things: first, it is consistent with his "America First" platform. Apparently, if the US is not realizing a direct profit from our presence there, it's time to move on. Second, it is clearly expected to destabilize what would traditionally have been termed "US interests" in the region.

Except, we apparently don't care about that anymore. Please pardon my "French" here, but the Syrian Kurds are going to get completely fucked when we leave. Gen. Mattis understands this to the point where he even included it in his resignation letter. The reporting I read suggests they're either going to be killed by invasion from the north or by invasion from the east. (And by the way, good luck negotiating with al-Assad. He'll likely shower them with sarin before the others come for them. Or he'll wait until the others invade, then make them all a Chlorine cocktail.)

What goes around comes around, Mr. President. What your advisors have been trying to tell you over the past few days is simply that not everything we do in the Middle East should necessarily be transactional. Allies and treaties aren't necessarily transactional. And leaving the Kurds hanging is bad business. Or is it that you're sending a message to the rest of the world that we want our protection money?

Being in Syria — perhaps illegally, as President Putin maintains — seems to have been good for Iraq and good for Israel (plus it gave us a strategic presence southwest of Russia.) When it comes time for something we want or need from either, will our abrupt departure from Syria come back to bite?

  FBI Special Council Robert S. Mueller III, Michael Cohen, and Paul Manafort

It's been quite a week for the FBI investigation into President Trump and Russia's interference in the 2016 elections, with two news stories emerging this week regarding the investigation that had otherwise been quiet for a while.

Boiled down, both Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen had fibbed to the FBI during the course of its investigation.

For Manafort, it could mean his deal with federal prosecutors is in jeopardy, because prosecutors charge he lied to investigators even after having reached a plea agreement. ¹ Cohen, on the other hand, pled guilty to lying to Congress, saying that he was trying to keep his story aligned with what Mr. Trump was telling the news.

President Trump commented on Cohen this morning, calling him "weak" and saying that he was out to save his own skin. According to The Washington Post, the president is identified as "Individual 1" in Cohen's guilty plea.²

The same report characterized the president as "a central figure of [the] probe into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign."

  The General Motors logo

The past couple of weeks saw announcements from Ford Motor Company and from General Motors which signaled major changes for the American automobile manufacturing industry.

The Announcements

Ford's announcement was sharply critical of the Trump Administration, blaming it for over $1BB in losses and added costs due to the president's trade war with China.¹

Ford had previously announced that it was planning to cease production of all sedans except the Ford Mustang, and would concentrate on the SUV and truck markets. ² Personally, I was stunned at this reporting; I didn't believe it.

This week GM followed suit, with the announcement that it was closing several production plants in the Great Lakes region. These plants are all responsible for manufacturing sedans from its Buick, Cadillac, and Chevrolet lines.

The Blame Game

Ironically, even though Ford, not GM, was quick to blame Trump's trade war for a share of it's problems, it's the GM plant closings that are causing a furor. Congressmen who represent the areas that will be affected by GM's decision are separately angry with GM and accusing the president of lying to their constituents:

Congressman Tim Ryan, who represents Lordstown as part of Ohio’s 13th District, also blamed President Trump for the job losses, pointing out that Trump had promised workers in the region that jobs were “all coming back” when he visited last year.

"The Valley has been yearning for the Trump Administration to come here, roll up their sleeves and help us fight for this recovery," Ryan said in a statement Monday. "What we've gotten instead are broken promises and petty tweets. Corporations like General Motors and the President himself are the only ones benefiting from this economy." ³

 

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown said the move will be disastrous for the region around Youngstown, Ohio, east of Cleveland, where GM is one of the area's few remaining industrial anchors.

"GM received record tax breaks as a result of the GOP's tax bill last year, and has eliminated jobs instead of using that tax windfall to invest in American workers," he said in a statement. ⁴

According to New York Times reporting, "the corporate tax cuts enacted last year.... championed by Mr. Trump and his party, saved G.M. $157 million in federal taxes in the first nine months of the year, according to the company’s most recent quarterly earnings report. ^{5  6}

The GM Bailout

The Trump Administration is being especially tough on GM because it had filed for one of the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings in U.S. history ten years ago. A Wikipedia article pins the final cost to the U.S. Treasury at between $11BB- $12BB, after an initial investment of $51BB. ⁷. According to Reuters reporting, President Trump this morning retweeted this remark: "If GM doesn’t want to keep their jobs in the United States, they should pay back the $11.2 billion bailout that was funded by the American taxpayer." The tweet was originated by the account of a Trump supporter. ⁸. GM's move prompted direct communication to GM CEO Mary Barra from both President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Consumer Preference

The shift away from sedans is a response to consumer tastes. The Washington Post, in a previously cited report, stated that "almost 65 percent of new vehicles sold in the U.S. [in October] were trucks or SUVs. That figure was about 50 percent cars just five years ago." Citi analyst Itay Michaeli was quoted as saying "We estimate sedans operate at a significant loss, hence the need for classic restructuring."

Could This Just Be About Bargaining With the Union?

Finally, this from The New York Times report (previously cited):

G.M., Ford and Fiat Chrysler are all poised to negotiate new labor contracts next year. Some of the affected G.M. plants could resume production, depending on the outcome of the bargaining. Carmakers often agree to keep plants open in exchange for other concessions from the union.

My Conclusion

I'm dismissing President Trump's behavior as posturing. He tells the people what they want to hear while on the campaign trail, gets into a pissing contest with China over trade and points the finger at GM once things go bad because he won't take responsibility for the administration's part in the mess. I'm sure he sees GM's strategy as a betrayal of his "America First" platform, TARP bailout and giant GOP tax break aside.

Perhaps this is exactly why GM did not call the president out on his trade war — Barra had over 11 billion reasons to bite her tongue. Well, that, and because they have a presence in China — it's where the Buick Envision is built.

I believe the president is only involved because Barra is making him look bad. He's on record as having told American manufacturing that jobs were being created. Barra is now taking away over 11,000 of them.

When you look at the entire industry, it's hard to deny that sales of mid-size passenger cars — sedans — are all heading south. Despite the bailout and the tax breaks, when one considers the energy poured into making sedans for so many years, it makes sense it's going to take some time to get those plants turning out products people are willing to pay for. Businesses have to react to supply and demand. And that has nothing at all to do with bailouts and tax breaks. Speaking of demand, America's appetites for SUVs and trucks has returned because gas prices have been low. If you set your wayback machine to 1979, Chrysler made the "K car" (a nice Reliant automobile!) in response to record high gas prices.

Still, I'm somewhat encouraged by the comment from The New York Times. If true, this could simply mean that GM and Ford are positioning themselves for negotiations and that the final result could be very different from what we're seeing in the news now.

Idling plants isn't quite the same as closing them, but the impact on the people and the areas seems about the same; call it what you want, unemployment is unemployment. And it sucks. It also sucks for consumers who own those cars. I own one of the models on the GM hit list. It's the most comfortable car I've ever owned. It's a few years old, but I wasn't even thinking about selling it for something new — now I have to consider the availability of parts in addition to general maintenance expectations. I likely also have to factor the same into what sort of trade-in value it may command on the lot. IF it comes to pass.

Reminds me of when GM killed off the Oldsmobile line. My city was home to a GM plant that built some Oldsmobile models. I remember seeing them on the road and wondering how the owners felt about the brand going away.

Well, now I know.

My bottom line here is that if people aren't buying sedans, there's no point in building them. I view this as the manufacturers reacting to demand, nothing more. President Trump can make as much hay of it and the bailout and the tax breaks all he likes; about the only thing he could do that actually would make a difference is drive gas prices up to retard the American appetite for trucks and SUVs, creating a renewed demand for smaller, sippish sedans. But even that drastic measure would only go so far — the quality and performance of modern electric engines is supposedly a factor in GM's decision to idle the plants in their plan. (Among the models being killed off is the Chevrolet Volt, because electric engine technology has improved to the point where producing the Volt doesn't make sense any longer.) If GM is betting big on electric, it still does those plants no good in the short term — they'd have to be retooled anyway regardless if they're going to make electric cars or giant SUV's, assuming sufficient demand is there to retool them at all.

I think new opportunities are coming our way, but unfortunately we're caught up in the news of the moment, which is focused on what must be lost before we gain. I'm hurt too -- my car is going away. And, sadly, for 11,000 Americans, their jobs are going away.

  Sen. Cruz (R) and Rep. O'Rourke (D). Image credit: ABC News

I'm writing this under the topic of politics, but I think politics is just an expression of something more... it's a dimension of a bigger thing. How I got here is, well, it's just plain weird. But I can't shake the idea that it's how many get here— to political conservatism, I mean.

This is an exploration about how people become conservative. And I'm trying to choose my words carefully, because it's not a thing that happens to everyone; the "Yuppies" of the 80s would likely be called Conservatives today, and the "Hippies" of the 60's — the definition of liberal in their time — likely never crossed into convservativism. This is speculation, of course. I've no footnotes or endnotes or references in this post. It's all commentary.

I awoke this morning from a dream. And in this dream, I was visiting a dear friend of mine, whom in real life is in a committed relationship with a really smart and fun woman. The couple came to my wedding in the Florida Keys, and we love them both. Anyway, in my dream, I was at a party, I think, and my friend was there. We were all laughing and having a good time, and in a private moment he asked me if I would marry him for a day.

Marry him for a day? What does that mean? What happens when you marry someone for a day? And anyway, he knows I'm already married! And he's... essentially married... both of us are married to women... what did he mean?

I awoke feeling a bit disturbed and confused, because in my dream I was confronted with a strange concept. Awkwardness aside — I refused him and he was disappointed, and so I brought with me into the waking state the feeling that I'd upset a good friend — I sat up to sort of review the imaginary event. And that's when I recalled seeing a cartoon on social media that mentioned the term "gender-fluid." What does that mean? It's not a term that was used when we were growing up and learning how to operate in the world. It wasn't... it wasn't part of our world.

It wasn't part of our world.

(By the way, I've been having some weird dreams lately. The night before last, I had dreamed about seeing a teeny snake made from different organisms and had minute copper wires visible beneath its eggy white exterior. But I digress.)

Last night I went with my family to a music store. I mostly drooled over the drum sets and the guitars. Kiddo, who is 12, was all over the... I'll call them drum machines, but that's not really what they are. The name of the product is "Launchpad." It's an electronic device that can be used to make different sounds and arrange them using special software and a laptop computer. It doesn't have keys like a piano. It has a grid of white squares. It appears to possess nothing that would clue you into its purpose of music production -— it resembles a game board more than any kind of instrument. My wife was doing her best to try to keep up with kiddo as she strived to explain it, and she (my wife) was using a kind of verbal symbolism to represent the concepts. Once again, because it wasn't part of our world.

Weirdly, perhaps I've found the esssence of conservativism here. I've given you examples of things — imaginary or real — that I simply can't parse, at least in the context of my life experiences.

Have you wondered why young people are typically considered liberal and older people are typically conservative? Have you thought about why it was that the UK's infamous "Brexit" was a fight between younger and older Britons?

What it is that changes a person's political attitudes as one ages?

I've had front row seats to the absolute shitshow that is state politics in Texas this year. And I've written about how I've felt about the state senate race in particular, though I've seen advertising for several races. I found the incumbent Lt. Governor's ads particularly... insightful, because everything he's trying to push — including the fear — is being done against a background of good old... oldness. He's driving a restored 1940's pickup truck. He's in a rocking chair on a porch with a dog at his side. He might as well be wearing a straw hat while saying, "Do you remember when Texas was founded on we-do-what- we-want-because-we're-Texas principles? Pepperidge Farm remembers." The ad is a giant appeal to older people — people who can relate to that 1940's pickup truck. That old truck says very clearly that he's not about change. He's about the old times, the old ways. He's the choice of the people who gave up.

Weirdly, I get it. The aging population has had to put up with a lot of shit over their lifetimes. Specifically my parents' generation. Look how different everything is now — they've had to figure out how to live in the computer age — and evolve with mobile technology. Some have, others have not. My mother is almost 80 and she's had an iPhone for several years. She knows how to do maybe two things with that phone, and that's IT. I know others her age who have embraced the technology and use it to their advantage. People get tired. I'm nearly 50 and I don't know what the fuck "gender fluid" means (Do I add it to my car to make it more masculine?) just like I didn't recognize that thing in the music store last night as an instrument. So I can see the attraction to an ad that features an old tractor in the background and driving a 1940's Chevrolet. That ad is not about issues. It's about tugging at the heartstrings of people who miss their old trucks — made back when life wasn't as complicated as it is today. That desire is the dividing line. That's what separates the young and old. Religious beliefs aside, progress — rather, peoples' capacity to tolerate it — is what makes the difference.

And so this is why we have the cycle we have. We will always have liberals and conservatives in some form, using some label, because as a society we have youth, we have adults, we have elderly. And all of us have a definite tolerance for change. The youth have a greater appetite for it than do the elderly. Mapped out, people on and near university campuses and urban areas tend to be younger and to vote more liberal; rural area populations tend to be older and vote more conservatively — those people also remember what their party once stood for. The campaign ads are trying to appeal to certain people in between.

  Sen. Cruz (R) and Rep. O'Rourke (D). Image credit: ABC News

Immigration — and the infamous wall — have been very hot topics throughout the Trump Administration's tenure.

With mid-term elections fast approaching, the topic is as hot in Texas as is the summer weather. After writing about the first senatorial debate, I promised myself I'd dig more into the issue of immigration. So I'm approaching it using the debate to level-set and dig into the topics addressed therein.

Family Separation at the Border was a Deterrent Tactic

I read an opinion article in The Washington Post this morning which stated, in part, that the Trump Administration's family separation tactic was implemented as a deterrent to immigration, and that deterrent is ineffective. The administration has also resorted to bullying the source countries into deterring their citizens from coming north. Republicans have politicized the issue in an effort to encourage Republican turnout at the polls: ¹

Republicans are running dozens of ads across the country that paint undocumented immigrants as violent criminal invaders. Trump tweets regularly that countries to our south are deliberately unleashing them on us. This latter idea is foundational to Trumpism: In his announcement speech, he didn’t merely slime Mexicans as rapists; he also repeatedly said Mexico is sending them, which is why he vowed to get revenge by forcing Mexico to pay for a wall.

As a class, Republicans appear to be peddling fear to voters — they're not only embracing Trumpism, they're "doubling down" on it (it's become such a popular term during this administration). I saw an ad by the incumbent Lt. Governor of Texas telling people the Democrats want to take away their guns and turn Texas into California. (Dear Idiots, if the Democrats didn't take away your guns while there was a Democrat in the White House AND a Democrat majority in the Senate, they're probably not going to do it when the Republicans control both the White House and the Senate.) And yes, immigration is also mentioned in his first sentence. ²

And Senator Cruz is not about to play above board, either — I've already mentioned how his campaign solicited contributions in envelopes marked "SUMMONS ENCLOSED - OPEN IMMEDIATELY." ³

Sen. Cruz' Argument is About Border Security and Deportation

In his debate with Rep. Beto O'Rourke in mid-September, Sen. Cruz stated: "I think when it comes to immigration, we need to do everything humanly possible to secure the border. That means building a wall, that means technology, that means infrastructure, that means boots on the ground. And we can do all of that at the same time that we are welcoming and we are celebrating legal immigrants." ⁴

Cruz said nothing about the people who are already here, which was Rep. O'Rourke's focus — giving a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants in this country, many of whom are doing jobs Americans simply don't want to do. (To offer some context for that number: The population of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is approximately 8 million (an estimate in 2017 placed it at 7.4MM. In July, my realtor told me that an estimated 400 people were moving to the metroplex daily. So deporting 11 million illegal immigrants would be akin to deporting the entire population of the metroplex plus another 3 million.)

Of course, one might callously remark that there's nothing to be gained in helping them because they're not voters, nor is it likely they would be before the incumbent is out of office.

DREAMers and DACA

There's been a lot of talk about a group of people who are being called "dreamers." The term, correctly written as "DREAMers", refer to people who would have qualified under the DREAM Act ⁵.

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act (S.1291) legislation was introduced in 2001 as a bipartisan bill in the Senate. The legislative goal was to provide a means for undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children to gain a pathway to permanent legal status; provided those individuals achieved certain milestones, including:

• Attending or graduating from an institution of higher learning;
• Be of a certain age to apply;
• Be physically present in the U.S. for a certain number of years;
• Have good moral character; and,
• Not have violated other immigration laws

DREAMers are college kids "who have kept their noses clean," as my dad would say. They had assimilated into the US culture and were educated by US schools. As LawLogix explains, there have been at least 21 subsequent bills introduced since the original DREAM legislation was proposed in 2001.

The Department of Homeland Security implemented a program in 2012 somewhat resembling the DREAM Act bill called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. While DACA stops short of providing DREAMers and others here on expired visas a pathway to citizenship, it does extend their stay in the US in two-year increments as long as certain criteria are met — including a criminal history review. DACA was originally introduced as a strategem for reducing the caseload on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) by identifying the biggest threats to national security and public safety in immigration ⁶.

To qualify for DACA, applicants must meet the following criteria:

• On June 15, 2012 or before, was under the age of 31;
• Arrived in the U.S. before reaching age 16;
• Lived continuously (without interruption) in the U.S. since Jun 15, 2007 to the time of DACA filing;
• Physically present in the U.S. on June 15, 2012 and at the time of DACA filing;
• Entered without inspection before June 15, 2012, or lawful immigration status expired as of June 15, 2012;
• Is currently in school, have graduated or obtained a certificate of completion from high school, a GED certificate, or honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the U.S.;
• Has not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, three or more other misdemeanors, and does not pose any threat to national security or public safety.

I perceive some barriers to both of these programs. The DREAM Act bill required applications to be attending college. Full-ride scholarships aside, I don't know anybody who can afford to pay cash to send their kids to college, and so I should think it would be difficult at best for anyone doing the jobs Americans don't want to do (not that 11 million are ALL doing those jobs) to save enough to send their kids to college without use of Federal student loans — and those loans required recipients to be "on the grid" at the very least — they also required me to prove I had registered for the Selective Service program ("the draft"). DACA is more lenient, in that it required the applicant to be in school or have graduated with a high school diploma or a GED, or be an honorably discharged veteran. I should check with a military recruiter about this, but I guess that as long as the kid has a social security number, there's essentially no barrier to entry into the armed forces. (USA TODAY reported in February of this year that there are 900 DREAMers serving in the military. According to Wikipedia, over 1.3MM were serving on active duty.) ^{7  8}

Rep. O'Rourke's Argument Supports The DREAM Act Bills

The quote from Sen. Cruz was in response to the first question of the debate which was posed to Rep. O'Rourke (transcription mine).

Moderator: "You said last week, Representative, that you want citizenship for DREAMers today, and yet others who've applied to come to America continue to wait. Senator Cruz has said he doesn't support a path to citizenship for DREAMers, which means they could be sent back to a country they've never known. Who's right, Representative?"

O'Rourke: "My wife Amy and I were in Booker, Texas ... and the saludatorian from Booker High School had just been deported back to his country of origin... he'd just been sent back to a country whose language he didn't speak, where he no longer had family connections, where if he was successful against those long odds, he'd be successful there, for that place and not here, for Texas. There is no better people than those of us here in this state ... the defining border experience, the defining immigrant experience and state to rewrite our immigration laws in our own image. And to ensure that we begin by freeing DREAMers from the fear of deportation by making them US citizens so they can contribute to their full potential, to the success not just of themselves and their families, but to this country. The economists who have studied it have said that we will lose hundreds of billions of dollars to the negative if we deport them; we will gain hundreds of billions to the positive if we keep them here. Senator Cruz has promised to deport each and every single DREAMer. That cannot be the way Texas leads on this important issue."

Congressman O'Rourke made several great points in support of the DREAM Act bills. One observed the social impact of deportation — the boy from Booker High School was being sent to a country where he didn't speak the language and had no support. But I think the stronger point was the economic one.

O'Rourke valued the economic impact at hundreds of billions of dollars. Does that make sense?

'Hundreds of Billions of Dollars'

If you're talking about the earning potential of 11 million people, well, each dollar they earn amounts to 11 million dollars; if each made $50,000, that's $550 billion — which is hundreds of billions of dollars.

In February of this year, USA TODAY reported the number of DREAMers — that is, people who would have qualified for the DREAM Act had it passed — at 3.8MM. It also reported the DREAMer typically arrived in the US at age 6 and was presently about 25 years old ⁸. If we were to assume each of these people, at age 25, was making $20,000 per year — a very low number — then they're each making $400,000 over 20 years, or over $1.5 trillion.

For Beto to claim that the state of Texas would be missing out on hundreds of billions of dollars is a plausible claim, based on the simple math above. Obviously there are plenty of other factors. Every single person in that 3.8 million is not going to earn only $20,000 per year for 20 years. Also, my simple artithmetic is free from complex considerations that factor into economic models (like inflation).

UPDATE: Why Is Immigration an Issue NOW?

Why do you suppose immigration is such a hot issue this political season?

The Washington Post published an interesting article answering this very question yesterday. They report Nationalism took center stage because Republicans' plans for a middle-class tax break didn't materialize:

[A]s the midterm campaign season was heating up, the [2017] tax law was dropping in the polls.... Republicans who'd planned to make it the centerpiece of their campaigns began to look elsewhere... Trump made clear that he wanted a proposal to be made public in October so voters would know that Republicans planned to continue cutting taxes, creating a contrast with Democrats. Congressional Republicans never readied a plan.... Now, with their 2018 tax plans having failed to come to fruition, and their 2017 tax law still polling poorly, Trump and a number of other Republicans have made a hard pivot away from economics and into nationalism, a debate with heavy racial overtones meant to energize the conservative base ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections. ⁹

Militias

Heeding the president's clarion call for border security, militia groups stand ready to... whoop some ass, I guess. Reporting from The Washington Post identified the leaders of two such groups based in Texas, who are standing by to mobilize to the border area within hours. The same report also recounted interviews with local property owners, some of whom would not allow militia groups on their lands; one notable exception was the owner of a property the size of Rhode Island. ¹⁰

The article brings to light another dimension of the border spectacle: the land owners. I'm reminded of stories of Civil War soldiers gorging themselves on fruit from the trees of property owners (and making themselves sick on them). I don't know how fertile the land is there, or what can be grown on it if anything. My point is the militias and immigrants alike are probably doing some sort of property damage — I think the article mentioned one property owner with a shed or an outbuilding that gets broken into all the time by immigrants looking for shelter. Naturally, these owners are going to want some sort of law enforcement protection for their lands and property — not necessarily the same mission as immigration and border patrol, but definitely related.

My Conclusion

Ultimately, the Senator and the Congressman were talking about two different things. Senator Cruz was talking about border defense; Rep. O'Rourke was talking about deportation vs. paths to citizenship. During his response, the Congressman asserted that Sen. Cruz favored deportation, and the Senator failed to dispute it, simply saying "Legal good, illegal bad."

Personally, I agree with "Legal good, illegal bad;" but I also agree with allowing people who were brought here as children to have a path to citizenship — you can't' hold these people responsible for what their parents did. I believe in the requirements of the DREAM Act bill. They seem completely reasonable to me. It also seems reasonable that the US, like its companies, should work to retain good people who make good contributions to its businesses.

In April,1980, the Cuban government allowed all of its citizens wishing to emigrate to the US to depart from a port west of Havana. It was later learned that Castro had used the event to empty his prisons.

I'm not aware of any other countries doing this, but I think it's important to note that it has happened — nearly 40 years ago. Personally, I don't think a wall is necessary. I don't think "boots on the ground" — which I interpreted as US military presence — are necessary. If people are determined to get into the United States illegally, they're going to get in. By the way, property owners in the border area have a right to protect their property — from illegal immigrants and vigilantes alike. Property rights aside, we should remember that the United States is a nation of immigrants. We became the greatest nation on earth. To protect our borders in such a Draconian fashion runs counter to the the ideal of The New Colossus: ⁹

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

If the United States is not prepared to live up to the ideal that we advertise to the world with Lady Liberty, then perhaps Lady Liberty is as irrelevant, or offensive, as the commemorations to the soldiers of the Confederate Army.

We can't have it both ways, Texas. We can vote for isolationism and exclusion, or we can vote for greatness, prosperity, and the American ideal.

Regarding the update, if immigration is only a platorm for Republicans this year because their apology to the middle class fell flat, the candidates' positions are still telling: Cruz is toeing the party line 150%. O'Rourke takes the moral high road, despite Cruz' efforts to paint him as a liberal (In Texas, it seems there are Republicans and there are liberals, if Republican campaign ads are to be believed).

Also, the WaPo article made me realize that, in all of these attack ads, there's not much mention of Democrats' stance on taxation, which has been a bullet in Republicans' belts forever. Given the unpopularity of their 2017 mega-gift to the rich, most PACs likely don't dare load it in their chambers -— they're likely to shoot themselves in the feet.

  Sen. Cruz (R) and Rep. O'Rourke (D). Image credit: ABC News

The Dallas NBC station hosted a debate between US Senator Ted Cruz (R) and Representative Beto O'Rourke (D) in September.

I learned a lot in that debate.

I’ve come to feel that I can identify more closely with more of Rep. O’Rourke‘s positions then I can with Senator Cruz’ positions. I think they’re both relatively extreme for my tastes, but I think it would be easier for O’Rourke to come toward the center on some of his issues than it would for Senator Cruz to do the same.

The point which seemed to resonate the most with me was about illegal immigration -- the "dreamers." Cruz echoed conservatives' zero-tolerance stance and the president's call for a wall; O'Rourke's position is softer, because he supports giving "dreamers" a path to citizenship. O'Rourke told Stephen Colbert: "We don’t need walls, we can have smart security solutions, and we can free DREAMers from the fear of deportation by making them U.S. citizens today so they can contribute to their maximum capacity, to their full potential, and we can move forward in that manner, making sure we’re secure, and making sure that we live up to our values and ideals." ¹ Advantage: Beto.

The New Yorker described the debate this way: "The competition between O’Rourke, a congressman from El Paso, and Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, pits progressive idealism and a nearly Tom Hanksian earnestness against unctuousness and the kind of fearful Tea Party recriminations that paved Cruz’s path to the Senate, in 2012." ².

In the same article, another observation: "[One] sees a path to victory in broadening the sense of possibility among the public and expanding the electorate; the other is attempting to win even if it means pandering to the base concerns of the one he already has."

If you missed it, you can watch it here. NBC News did some fact-checking during the debate; you can read that here. The Dallas News's fact check article is right here. PolitiFact also did some fact-checking; you can find that published in The Statesman here.

Also, I am appalled by some of the tactics Sen. Cruz has employed to solicit donations. I find them underhanded and dishonest, designed to confuse people into pledging funds³.

  Sen. John McCain

I was stunned and saddened to read reporting from The Washington Post that broke the news of Sen. McCain's decision to end treatments for his glioblastoma, a rare and sometimes untreatable cancer in the brain.

I have a soft spot for Sen. McCain, because he was a Navy pilot who was captured and held as a POW during the Vietnam War, and because he was born at Coco Solo, Republic of Panama— I lived not far from there during my time on Active Duty.

Sen. McCain brought a unique understanding to especially the Senate Committee on Armed Services. His experience absolutely has my respect.

I recall the early presidential race between Senators Obama and McCain, and recall how much I loved that they were both moderates — they were actually trading votes — at least until the Republican Party forced Gov. Palin on him as a running mate. We didn't see the normal-guy-I-liked McCain again until his concession speech. Pity. I think a President McCain could have been amazing.

But today, in our age of daily WTF-DID-TRUMP-JUST-TWEET?!, I am so, so sorry to see Sen. McCain's starlight fading.

Fair winds and following seas, Senator McCain.

 

UPDATE: Sen. McCain passed away a few hours after I published this.

President Trump

The improbable intersection of President Trump's Stormy Daniels debacle and the FBI investigation into Russian collusion with Candidate Trump's team is...

Michael Cohen.

Mr. Cohen, infamously known as Mr. Trump's "fixer," is at the center of both worlds and, of late, at the center of media attention.

 

Essential Consultants

Mr. Cohen set up a shell company called Essential Consultants through which he paid Ms. Daniels the hush money and through which he received a half million dollars in payments from Columbus Nova, a company owned by billionaire Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. From The Washington Post: ¹

The company’s confirmation came after Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, circulated on Twitter a document purporting to show a detailed accounting of wire transfers made to Essential Consultants, a company established by Cohen in October 2016.

The payments listed in the document began in the months after Cohen paid $130,000 to Daniels just before the November 2016 election, as part of an agreement that required her to not speak publicly about an affair she says she had with Trump a decade earlier.

In the document, Avenatti claims that Cohen received $500,000 from Columbus Nova between January 2017 and August 2017.

Avenatti did not provide supporting documentation for his claims, though Columbus Nova and AT&T, another company named in the document, both released statements in the hours after Avenatti's disclosure confirming that they had business relationships with Cohen.

 

Open for Business

The Washington Post article digs deeper into other companies involved with Essential Consultants. It certainly seems this intersection is bigger than just Daniels and Russia — Cohen is where companies go to get VIP backstage passes to the whole Trump sh!tshow.

The image below might offer some assitance in tracking along: ²

Look closely at the transactions originating from the blue boxes. Reporting from The Washington Post certainly seems to infer these payments were made to get access to President Trump and for lucrative government contracts:

Shortly after the last transaction from Novartis identified by Avenatti, in January, Trump met with executives including the incoming CEO of Novartis, Vas Narasimhan, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Korea Aerospace is in contention for a multibillion-dollar joint contract with Lockheed Martin to produce jet trainers for the U.S. Air Force. A company representative confirmed paying the Cohen company, but said the payments were to provide legal consulting to assist in the company’s reorganization of its "internal accounting system" and did not involve the Air Force deal or other lobbying. ¹

The document from Avenatti says AT&T paid Cohen $50,000 a month for four months starting in October 2017, just weeks before Trump’s Justice Department filed suit to block AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner. . . . A spokesman for AT&T confirmed that the company engaged Essential Consultants, a company formed by Cohen in early 2017 "to provide insights into understanding the new administration." ²

Mr. Trump is open for business. And for that kind of access, you need.... an essential consultant.

President Trump

Three years ago, Iran agreed to inspections and limitations regarding its nuclear program under a pact with the United States, Russia, China, Britain and Germany. These nations in turn agreed to remove restrictions on Iranian oil sales among other economic activities, including foreign investment opportunities. Under the agreement brokered by the Obama Administration, economic sanctions were lifted, and Iran's oil sales and imports of nonagricultural products skyrocketed. ^1 2

As part of that deal, the United States waived certain restrictions allowing American companies to conduct business directly through the Central Bank of Iran.

Today Iran, and countries who do business with the US and Iran, including the signatories of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, are concerned about the expiration of the waiver this coming weekend. The Washington Post continued:

The price of West Texas Intermediate crude topped $70 a barrel Monday for the first time since 2014 amid fears that renewed U.S. sanctions would require international companies to buy less Iranian oil or face stiff penalties.

According to October, 2017 BBC reporting, The Trump Administration asserts that Iran broke parts of the agreement, including heavy-water limits and access to international inspectors, and called for Congress to renegotiate the deal Mr. Trump considered too lenient. Current reporting from The New York Times characterized those violations as "minor infractions that were quickly rectified." ³

The Times article also stated that senior officials from Britain, France and Germany had all traveled to Washington recently to try to convince the Trump Administration to keep the nuclear deal, though flawed, in place. Particularly President Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany "suggested the West could impose new sanctions against Iran's ballistic missile development and armed support for the Syrian regime" among others, rather than discard the deal in its entirety. The same reporting cited an unidentified senior European diplomat who told reporters today that it was "pretty obvious" Mr. Trump would not continue to waive the sanctions.

Political commentary suggests that the US is being encouraged by regional allies to abandon the deal with Iran simply because it's a deal with Iran — an accord that could lead to closer ties between Washington and Tehran that the Saudis cannot abide.⁴

Iranian oil exports are estimated to be about 2.6 million barrels per day. Renewed sanctions could cut as much as 20% of those sales within months — sales which account for over 60 percent of Iran's total export revenue. The same reporting from The Washington Post claimed the Trump Administration would begin asking oil traders to cut their consumption of Iranian crude, and could levy penalties on those countries who do not comply.

Comment

The Times article quoted President Macron as saying he believed President Trump would "get rid of this deal on his own, for domestic reasons." I can think of three:

1. Trump First: The 2015 deal was orchestrated by the Obama Administration, and President Trump can't let that stand despite the pleas of our European allies. He is driven to make a deal that's bigger and better and bears the Trump name;
2. America First: reducing the ready global supply of crude oil to make American oil more attractive to the market (partly through coercion);
3. To punish Iran for its role in the Syrian Civil War.

In 2017, US oil exports were almost double what they were in 2016, due to "booming U.S. production, expanding pipeline and export capacity, and the more than $3-a-barrel discount" ⁵. The surge has received the attention of Asian markets previously devoted to OPEC:

U.S. crude oil exports to China accounted for 202,000 bpd—or 20 percent—of the 527,000-bpd total increase in American exports in 2017, EIA data showed. . . . Another large Asian crude oil importer, India, which had not received any U.S. oil in 2016, bought 22,000 bpd in 2017 to tie with Spain as the tenth-largest destination of American crude sales.

"U.S. crude oil exports rose to 2.175 million barrels per day, or more than 15 million a week, at the end of March," according to CNBC reporting in early April. Analysts expect the US to become the fourth largest oil exporter by 2022, behind Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Iraq.

It doesn't seem much of a stretch that the Trump Administration would use an available excuse to back the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to further the US' ambitions as a major OPEC competitor. But there's no guarantee the US will be able to strike the bigger, better deal President Trump is after, and certainly the other signatories are concerned about the impact backing out could have on their national interests.

 

 

For fairly easily digestible information about the Iran Nuclear Deal, see this simple guide published by The New York Times.

  The Crest of the U.S. Second Fleet

Over the past several months, I've written a lot about current, particularly political, events affecting our nation and wondering about their collective affect on the near future.

The Increasing Russian Threat

One recurring theme has been our relationship with Russia and Russian aggression. Russia is nearly always a topic in these posts: Russia is actively supporting the Syrian government in it's civil war; ¹  Facebook was recently called to Washington to report on Russian intelligence services' efforts to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election; ²   Russian cyberattack operations against other government and financial targets, the presence of kompromat dossiers on Fmr. Sec of State Clinton and President Donald Trump, and reporting that the Kremlin had provided intelligence and other assistance to Mr. Trump since 2008;³   and a look at the FBI's investigation of the same.⁴

The US Second Fleet

Over this weekend, news emerged from the Department of the Navy and other media outlets on the reactivation of the US Second Fleet, to address a growing Russian subsurface threat. ⁵

The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) made the announcement on May 4, 2018, during a change of command ceremony at the US Fleet Forces Command (USFF).⁶

"Our National Defense Strategy makes clear that we're back in an era of great power competition as the security environment continues to grow more challenging and complex," said [CNO Adm.] Richardson. "That's why today, we're standing up Second Fleet to address these changes, particularly in the north Atlantic."

The Deputy Director of the Center for American Seapower at the Hudson Institute, Bryan McGrath, told The Washington Post:

One concern the 2nd Fleet will immediately address [is] the threat from a now-modest number of Russian nuclear attack submarines capable of cruising in the depths off the East Coast.

The same reporting also said the Pentagon had proposed a NATO Joint Force Command, perhaps colocated with the USFF.

Conclusion

Shit's getting real, y'all: The Department of Defense had stood down the 2nd Fleet in 2011 in favor of concentrating on operations in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, and, I believe, because Russia no longer posed a relatively significant naval threat.

Secretary Matthis' recommendation to reinstate the 2nd Fleet must have been in response to assessments from the military intelligence community and of the current political climate. The factors I named above were likely just a few — and they were based on information circulated in the media. Who knows what the balance of the indicators were.

Before you start watching your defense contractor stocks, I should caution you that the reestablishment of 2nd Fleet appears mostly to be an administrivial exercise. When the fleet was disestablished in 2011, its units were transferred to the new USFF.⁷ In other words, the ships, personnel, and support remained active — the checks were being written by someone else, so to speak. Conversely, reestablishment of the fleet really means reopening the office of the fleet commander, who, by the way, will report to USFF. So it's possible, maybe even likely, the USFF will still be paying the bills, and all that has really happened was a delegation of operational control.

Still, a delegation of operational control is a significant move, and could suggest an expansion of the military budget for the coming fiscal year, six months away.

The Flag of Unified Korea

I was taken by complete surprise when news outlets were reporting an amazing turn of events in North Korea relations, particularly with South Korea. It was clear to me that something significant must have happened to cause North Korea to completely reverse course diplomatically; I figured they got some kind of deal so favorable as to coax them into forgetting its nuclear ambitions.

Then I came across this report from USA TODAY which could explain everything:

A study by Chinese geologists shows the mountain above North Korea's main nuclear test site has collapsed under the stress of the explosions, rendering it unsafe for further testing and necessitating monitoring for any leaking radiation.

The article explained that the most recent nuclear device test in September, 2017 is believed to have had a yield over five times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, and ten times stronger than anything North Korea had previously tested. The final detonoation is also believed to have caused a series of earthquakes that shook the region in the weeks that followed, and actually reshaped the mountain above the test facility.¹

Personally, I don't care so much that a crippling blow to the DPRK's underground testing facility is behind the diplomatic overtures between the Koreas as much as I do that the Koreas are talking and cooperating on at least small things (think the combined Korean olympic team at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang).

April 29th reporting from The New York Times asserted Kim Jong-un would abandon its nuclear program if the US would agree not to invade the DPRK, and would also agree to formally end the Korean War. ²

 

Wait.. what? The Korean War never officially ended?

Public contributions to Wikipedia suggest that, although an armistice was established in late July, 1953 (which created the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas), no actual peace treaty had been signed.³

It's also worth noting that, not unlike Syria, there were more than just the Koreas involved: pro-communist forces in North Korea were receiving assistance from the Soviet Union and China, while forces in the south received assistance from the United States.

Why would Kim specify that he wanted agreement that the US would never invade? Kim Jong-un likely made this specification because the US was the primary supporter of the Republic of Korea during the Korean War, and possibly because of his recent exchange of insults with President Trump — the greatest of which also occurred in September, 2017: ⁴

"The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime."

— Mr. Trump, in his first address to the United Nations General Assembly

---

"A frightened dog barks louder."

"He is unfit to hold the prerogative of supreme command of a country, and he is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician."

“Whatever Trump might have expected, he will face results beyond his expectation. I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire."

— Mr. Kim, responding in a statement to President Trump’s threat

Reporting from the BBC about an earthquake in North Korea on September 23, 2017 included references to Kim and Trump's exchanges.⁵ In fact, when compared with reporting from The New York Times, it appears the earthquake happened the day after those events as a matter of coincidence; the bomb test had occurred at the beginning of the month.

 

Ending the Korean War

North and South have both committed to formally declare the end of the Korean war by the close of the year, according to reporting from The Independent. The leaders agreed to cease hostilities and to pursue arms reduction, and to seek mulilateral talks with the United States and other nations.⁶

A 2013 Tweet from then-Candidate Trump

If you'd care to think about it this way, Syria is a sort of a Petri dish of warring factions and super power influence, relatively contained within an area about the size of North Dakota.¹ Perhaps looking at these events through a figurative microscope will help us better understand what could become a flashpoint in heightened tensions between especially the United States and Russia.

Table of Contents

1. About Syria
2. Civil War
3. Why is Russia Involved?
4. Why is the US Involved?
5. What Other States are Involved?
6. Syria's Use of Chemical Weapons
7. Coalition Strike, April 2018
8. Protesting the Coalition Strike
9. Conclusion

About Syria

Syria is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Iraq and Jordan to the south, and by Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to its west. Damascus is its capital, close to its border with Lebanon.

Civil War

Syria's civil war began in 2011, with the violent suppression of protests ignited by the Arab Spring. ². The year that followed gave birth to several opposition groups, including the Free Syrian Army (started by former Syrian Armed Forces officers) and the al-Nusra Front, which was later swallowed up by ISIS.

In present day, Kurdish forces control the region of Syria north of the Euphrates river, which is approximately one-third of the country. Other groups control smaller regions throughout the country, as indicated on the map below, from Al Jazeera: ³

As you can see, the situation in Syria is extremely complex. The fact that super power states have taken sides further complicates matters. The Kurds in the North are supported by the United States, while Russia backs the government forces.

Other groups are also involved: ISIS controls some percentage of both forces' territories, likely from Iraq. Other rebel forces have made inroads into government-controlled lands from the northern border with Turkey, from the south between Jordan and Iraq, and west from Jordan and Lebanon.

Why is Russia Involved?

Russia has long been an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Syria serves as an important access point to the Mediterranean Sea for Russian ships and a hub for Russia in the Middle East. They have also supplied Assad with the military resources necessary to fight back against the rebels who nearly overthrew him in 2011. ⁴

Russia appears to be actively involved in Syria's civil war, lending military/ paramilitary support to President Al-Assad's forces. As recently as April 12, Russian military police and Syrian Army forces retook Eastern Ghouta, an area east of the capital city.⁵

Why is the US Involved?

Reporting from The Washington Post suggests the US was originally indirectly involved in the Syrian civil war at it's outbreak in 2011 by backing and providing limited armament to opposition groups working to topple President Assad. By 2014, in response to a growing ISIS threat in Iraq and in Syria, the US began conducting airstrikes on ISIS targets, and sending in "advisers" to capture and control the ground ISIS had held. By the time Russia started its air campaign in Syria in September 2015, the US found itself getting caught up in disputes with other regional actors, and had "at times acted against threats or the repeated use of chemical weapons against civilians." ^{6 7}

The US has since become more directly invoved in Syria, though at least in part as a function of it's campaign against ISIS. The same reporting details incidents involving US armed forces within Syria since at least 2016 and especially in the spring of 2017, operating as part of a multi-national coalition against ISIS, but also training Syrian rebel forces. The US has also led missile strikes from naval platforms in the
Mediterranean Sea. ⁸

What Other States are Involved?

• Iran. The Washington Post reporting previously cited detailed a June, 2017 attack on US troops by an Iranian armed drone near a base where Syrian rebel forces were being trained.
  
  
• France. As the former mandatory ruler of Syria ⁹, the French appear to have generally taken a harder line against Syria and ISIS than even the US, and had been calling for military intervention since 2013, admitting it had armed Syrian rebels the following year. France significantly stepped up coordinated air strikes against Syrian targets after the 13 November attacks in Paris. ^{10 11}.
  
  This doesn't necessarily mean that France is involved in Syria's civil war, but the line between civil war actor and international coalition against ISIS seems blurred.
  
  
• Turkey. Turkey trained defectors from the Syrian Armed Forces and in 2011, "announced the birth of the Free Syrian Army under the supervision of Turkish military intelligence," later actively working to align itself with a post-Assad government and providing arms and training to Syrian opposition forces. ¹²
  
  
• Great Britain. Reporting from Sky News in August, 2012 asserted that the UK was providing intelligence on Syrian military movements from its bases on Cyprus to the Turkish, who forwarded that information to the Turkish-trained Free Syrian Army. ^{13 14}.

Syria's Use of Chemical Weapons

Over the past five years, President al-Assad used chemical weapons against people inside of Syria. Let's first look at the 2013 attack, then the most recent attack, and finally a quick overview of attacks that have occurred between the two.

2013 Attack

The attack happened in Ghouta, near the capital city of Damascus, in the early hours of August 21, 2013.

According to BBC reporting, some of the missiles used were Soviet-era M14 rockets. ¹⁵ Other rockets were unidentified 330mm surface-to-surface missiles with a thin casing designed to peel away at impact to expose the nerve agent sarin. ¹⁶

2018 Attack

About 42 Syrians died in the suburb of Douma, east of Damascus on April 8, 2018. ¹⁷ Reporting from The New York Times indicated that the compound involved may have been chlorine. ¹⁸

...And all the attacks in between

The same reporting from The New York Times highlighted multiple chemical attacks throughout the time period (read: date - chemical agent):

• April 2014 - Poison gas
• May 2015 - Chrlorine
• August 2015 - Mustard Gas
• September 2016 - Chlorine
• April 2017 - Sarin

Coalition Strike, April 2018

A coalition of US, British and French forces struck Syria's chemical weapon facilities on Friday, April 13th. The facilities were located west of Homs near the Lebanon border, though confidence that the destruction made a significant impact on Assad's program seems somewhat low. ¹⁹

Each member of the coalition has shown they had greater reasons for performing the strike than just the humanitarian mission of protecting Syrian citizens. We've established the United States has forces inside Syria and is known to support the rebel forces, as do the British and the French.

Protesting the Coalition Strike

Russia, Syria, and Iran immediately protested the coalition action, with Russia calling for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. At that meeting, Russia was joined by China and Bolivia in its resolution proposal. Eight countries voted against Russia's resolution, and three abstained. ²⁰

This is not the first time Russia has protested to the UN Security Council on other countries' intrusions upon Syria's sovereignty. In early 2016, Turkey began attacking Kurdish militia from positions inside of Turkey. Russia's attempt to have a resolution adopted by the UN Security Council was "undermined by Western powers, including the U.S., the UK, and France" ²¹ — the same countries that participated in the most recent strikes. As the image above shows, Russia has managed to gain at least anecdotal support from Bolivia, China, Iran, and Syria.

Conclusion

President al-Assad and his government forces have been using chemical agents over the past five years to destroy opposition to his regime. In the seven years since the Arab Spring and the start of Syria's civil war, the United States and key allies, in league with neighboring Arab states, have worked to train and arm opposition forces, while Russia and its Arab state allies have worked to support government forces.

My suspicion is that the anti-ISIS mission provides the US and its allies with sufficient reason to operate within Syria, or at least within Iraq — meaning that as long as ISIS is a threat in Iraq and Syria, the US has all the reason it needs to continue to work against the Assad regime.

My primary concern has to do with the recent escalation of tensions between the Russsians and the West and its allies. Almost every country involved in the strike, or involved in reaction to the strike, has some "skin in the game."

"Because Reasons"

Fallout from Russia's espionage efforts related to the 2016 US presidential election continues to surface, and the murder of a former double agent in Great Britain sparked outrage from both the British and the US, including the expulsion of Russian diplomats from the US, and American diplomats from Russia. Though these events are not directly related to the Syrian civil war, I can't help but wonder if events like the coalition strikes against Syria's chemical weapons facilities are tantamount to "poking the bear."

(I find this ironic, considering the lengths to which President Trump has gone toward stroking the bear, against the guidance of his advisors — most recently, congratulating President Putin on his re-election in what was widely viewed as a completely fraudulent national election and despite direction to the contrary.) ²²

Of the coalition participants, only France seems to have relatively stable relations with Russia, having even cooperated with each other on bombing campaigns against ISIS. ²³

Looking at the countries aligned with Russia in these events, China immedately stands out because of the trade war the US seems to be starting. ²⁴ News in recent weeks recounted new tariffs on lists of products both American and Chinese. I don't know if it's likely that China would continue to escalate at Russia's behest, but I think it's a result worth considering.

The next sensible question: How are Russia's relations with China? The short answer: apparently quite good:

[Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councilor Wang Yi], during his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, declared that "China-Russia relations are in the best period of history." He added that the two sides should seek even closer coordination in the future, saying that "since the current international and regional situation is still full of various uncertainties, it is necessary for China and Russia, two close strategic partners, to strengthen communication and coordination." In talks with both Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Wang stressed the need for China and Russia to coordinate on regional and global issues of interest, help safeguard each other's national interests, and support each other in taking up larger roles on the world stage. ²⁵

What about Iran? A Newsweek article published at the start of 2018 may offer some insight:

Iran's leadership has blamed foreign powers, especially the U.S., for having a hand in recent, deadly protests that have swept the country, pointing to President Donald Trump's immediate support for demonstrators on social media and the U.S.'s long history of invasions and interventions that includes an early interference into Iranian politics that shaped the modern relationship between the two nations.

As Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Bahram Qasemi blasted Trump's eager backing of Iranians taking to the street to protest economic conditions and strict religious rule, Iran's supreme leader and top authority, Shiite Muslim cleric Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, commented on the situation for the first time Tuesday. Khamenei warned of foreign meddling behind the country's civil unrest, but maintained that "what prevents the enemies and their hostile actions is the spirit of courage, self-sacrifice and faith among the people." ²⁶

Does it seem Iran has a grievance against the United States? Well, how warm are relations between Russia and Iran?

Since President Trump took office, in 2017, Moscow and Tehran have shared increasingly common bonds: growing tensions with Washington and a quest to expand spheres of influence in the Middle East.²⁷

Does it make sense that Russia will find other nation states with an axe to grind against the United States and pull them into Russia's orbit?

In a radio speech during WWII, Winston Churchill famously said, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Russia's warming relations with at least China and Iran could eventually spell trouble for the US and its allies should tensions increase beyond diplomatic capability.

 ²⁸

President Trump

A few moments ago, The Washington Post reported that the FBI "executed a series of search warrants" at the Manhattan office of President Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen, and that they seized records related to the payment Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. ¹

UPDATE - 5:50 PM CDT:
The Washington Post is now reporting that Cohen is under federal investigation for bank fraud and campaign finance violations. This would certainly be a more plausible explanation for the FBI raids than interest in the Daniels case alone — although, I've never quite been able to shake the reporting that showed Cohen made the payment arrangements using his Trump campaign e-mail address.

The Post offered other additional details regarding it's previous reporting, including details that privileged communications between Cohen and his clients were seized — including those with President Trump — along with Mr. Cohen's computer, phone, and personal financial records. ²

I'm a little surprised by what I read in Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's prepared statement to the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives, as reported by The Washington Post. ¹

In section III, "RUSSIAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE," Zuckerberg recounts the activities of groups named APT28 and the now-infamous Internet Research Agency (IRA), and mentions that as recently as last week Facebook removed accounts and pages operated by the IRA, adding that "Some of the pages we removed belong to Russian news organizations that we determined were controlled by the IRA."

To me, remarks like these smack very heavily of intelligence reporting. Given all that happened with Facebook since the 2016 US federal election cycle, I suppose it's not really too much of a stretch to think that experts from the federal government would be embedded with Facebook in some sort of a fusion center-like environment, coupling events surfacing on the Facebook network with intelligence derived from other sources. I'm simply skeptical Facebook has the organic resources to make the statements in Zuckerberg's remarks.

Taking the "Facebook fusion center" concept a step further, it might not be too outlandish to suggest the US intelligence services might also be using the Facebook network for foreign intelligence gathering, or at least the enormous amount of data it generates. Sound silly? Certainly, Mr. Zuckerberg is well aware of impending election cycles abroad:

We’re committed to getting [the addition of verification requirements] done in time for the critical months before the 2018 elections in the U.S. as well as elections in Mexico, Brazil, India, Pakistan and elsewhere in the next year.

Facebook is a global phenomenon, reaching over 2 billion by Zuckerberg's count. By the middle of last year, India — not the US — was Facebook's top consumer, and among the cities with the largest populations of active Facebook users, the top ten were all outside of the United States. ²

It stands to reason that Facebook would observe increased regional traffic in response to events like elections. But I just can't shake the notion that Facebook couldn't "name names" without assistance.

President Trump

The term "prior restraint" is appearing in the news quite a bit lately as a function of President Trump's affair with porn actress and director Stormy Daniels. In context: Trump and lawyers seek to prevent a recorded CBS interview with Daniels from airing.

The notion of such an injuction is tricky, according to an expert cited in Washington Post reporting, because "A judicial 'gag order' against Ms. Daniels or CBS would constitute a 'prior restraint' of free speech, which under First Amendment doctrine is almost never permissable." A separate lawyer quoted in the same article "said she thought the president's lawyers have few options" to prevent the segment from airing, adding, "If [President Trump's lawyers] succeed, it is a prior restraint of speech. If they fail, they look like they lost." ¹

Separate reporting published today from The Washington Post offers additional explanation. Recall that then-citizen Donald Trump and his personal lawyer Michael Cohen presented Daniels with a non-disclosure agreement. Recent media reports indicated that Daniels no longer recognizes the validity of the agreement because Mr. Trump did not sign it. A defamation attorney quoted in the March 12th article noted that "CBS would need to be a party to the suit to be restrained from airing the interview, and since the obligation on Ms. Daniels arose as part of a private settlement, I don't see much legal basis to enjoin CBS — a stranger to the settlement agreement — from doing anything."²

That part's important: CBS was not party of the initial agreement, which is currently being contested. This is where the notion of prior restraint comes in. "To thwart '60 Minutes,' Trump would need to secure a separate order against CBS — a prior restraint of speech that legal precedent suggests is unconstitutional," says Callum Borchers, author of the March 12th article. "Trump's attorneys could argue that CBS is going to defame the president by airing the Daniels interview, but 'the law is, as a general rule, you don't get injunctions because of an anticipated defamation,' said George Freeman, a former in-house lawyer for [The New York Times] who is now executive director of the Media Law Resource Center."

An article on Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute website describes two common forms of prior restraint: one characterized as licensing, and the other "is a judicial injunction that prohibits certain speech." ³.

The doctrine of prior restraint is further explored in this article on FindLaw.com, and Duke University has online an exerpt from the book "Law and Contemporary Problems", featuring a chapter titled "The Doctrine of Prior Restraint" written by Thomas I. Emerson, which features a history of its use starting in Europe in the sixteenth century and explains the significance of Near vs. Minnesota, a case synonymous with the modern legal concept.

Perhaps the most significant feature of systems of prior restraint is that they contain within themselves forces which drive irresistably toward unintelligent, overzealous, and usually absurd administration. (Emerson, 658).

Finally, if you're looking for more information on the history of the Stormy Daniels events, Vox published Stormy Daniels's legal battle against Trump, explained, which walks through the whole story so far.


UPDATE: President Trump's lawyer's correct name is Michael Cohen, not James Cohen.

President Trump

What follows is the Senate Judiciary Committee's interview of Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS, a research firm that was retained to perform an investigation of then-candidate Donald Trump, and the Committee's review of a series of memoranda detailing intelligence collection activities in support of Fusion GPS' mission.

Before diving in, it's important to become familiar with some terminology to better understand the researchers' world.

Kompromat

At the heart of all of this is the concept of kompromat, which is a Russian word for blackmailable information that can be used for the coercion of an individual or group. According to memoranda provided by Christopher Steele, working on behalf of Fusion GPS, Russians had alerted the Trump Campaign to the existence of kompromat intelligence on Bill Clinton and on Hillary Clinton separately, and the Trump Campaign was eager to receive it. — This is what made headlines in the US.

Separate reporting by Steele also stated the Russians had significant kompromat on Donald Trump himself, recounting lurid activities at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and other sexual activities in St. Petersburg.

While we're here, we should talk a bit about the FSB, a Russian state intelligence organization which collects this kind of information. The FSB, among other state intelligence organizations, originated from the Committee of State Security — the KGB — in the days of the USSR. The FSB is the Federal Security Service, which is responsible for surveillance, internal and border security, and counterterrorism within Russia. The FSB was the primary actor mentioned in connection with Russian kompromat activities.

The Dossier

Steele's reporting occurred in a series of memoranda to Fusion GPS. These memoranda were leaked to Buzzfeed and mischaracterized as a "dossier" of intelligence. A link to the leaked memoranda appears at bottom.

These memoranda were the reason Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS volunteered over nine hours of testimony to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee last August. Released this past Tuesday was the 312-page transcript of that testimony.

I happened to have a minute, so I read it for you. You're welcome.

What is Fusion GPS?

Fusion GPS is the name of a research company formed by Glenn Simpson and other investigative journalists formerly of the Wall Street Journal.

Fusion GPS is typically contracted by companies to investigate issues of concern with potentially litigable outcomes, like being hired to investigate why that company failed to win a contract they felt they should have won. (In fact, Fusion GPS was collecting research regarding a Russian company called Prevezon when they were commissioned to research Donald Trump. Simpson characterized Prevezon as a victim of extortion.¹ The case made national news.² ) Fusion GPS is also hired, particularly during political seasons, to do oppositional research on political candidates. Simpson claims the company is itself politically neutral, suggesting that they'd been hired at times by each party to perform investigations on candidates of the other. (Reporting from The Washington Post suggests the research on Donald Trump was initially funded by a "GOP megadonor" before lawyers from the DNC retained Fusion GPS to continue the research.)³

Fusion GPS' research, asserts Simpson, is open-ended, meaning that there is no predefined end game for the research itself — conclusions are drawn from the result of the research. With respect to their research on Donald Trump, the objective was simply to investigate whether his business dealings were legitimate, and whether he was representing himself honestly.

Fusion GPS conducts its research primarily, or initially, through open-source means. In the case of Donald Trump, Simpson said his first steps involved ordering every book on Donald Trump from Amazon. Other open sources include public filings and other information obtainable through Freedom of Information Act requests.

If additional research is needed, the company may contract with certain knowledgable and trusted third parties to obtain additional intelligence on specific topics. For example, if Fusion GPS became particularly interested in Donald Trump's golf courses in Scotland, they might send somebody to Scotland to investigate the courses — not necessarily sharing that the actual objective is an investigation into Donald Trump.

The testimony for the Senate Judiciary Committee was centered on information obtained by Christopher Steele, a subcontractor to Fusion GPS, and the reporting (memoranda) he provided.

The Research

Fusion GPS initially discovered connections between Mr. Trump and various crime organizations.

I found various references to [Trump] having connections to Italian organized crime and later to a Russian organized crime figure named Felix Sater.⁴ ... As it happens, Felix Sater was connected to the same Russian crime family that was at issue in the Prevezon case.⁵ ... I saw that Donald Trump was in business with Felix Sater in the Trump SOHO project and a number of other controversial condo projects.⁶ ... We learned that Felix Sater had some connections with [alleged Kazakh money launderers], and it's been more recently in the media that he's helping the government of Kazakhstan recover this money. There's been media reports that the money went into the Trump SOHO or into the company that built the Trump SOHO.⁷ ... Another figure involved in the Trump SOHO project was a Central Asian person named ARIF... if you search under a different transliteration of that name you can find open source reporting alleging that he's an organized crime figure from Central Asia and he's had an arrest for involvement in child prostitution.⁸

This research gave rise to bringing Steele aboard to "see what he could find out about Donald Trump's business actiities in Russia." ⁹

Simpson noted he was shocked at the reports Steele filed:

So the purpose of this was to see if we could learn more, generally speaking, about [Trump's] business dealings in Russia. What came back was something... very different and obviously more alarming... which outlined a political conspiracy and a much broader set of issues than the ones we basically went looking for.¹⁰

The Memoranda

Alarming it was. The combined reporting from Steele laid out a shocking story of corruption and deceit:

• Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance
• So far TRUMP has declined various sweetener real estate business deals offered him in Russia in order to further the Kremlin's cultivation of him. However he and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.
• Former top Russian intelligence officer claims FSB has compromised TRUMP through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him. According to several knowledgable sources, his conduct in Moscow has included perverted sexual acts which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB.
• A dossier of compromising material on Hillary CLINTON has been collated by the Russian Intelligence Services over many years and mainly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls rather than any embarrassing conduct. The dossier is controlled by Kremlin spokesman, PESKOV, directly on PUTIN's orders. However it has not yet been distributed abroad, including to TRUMP. Russian intentions for its deployment still unclear ¹¹

This was just the first memorandum, dated June 20, 2016.

A second memorandum, dated July 26th was titled "RUSSIA/CYBER CRIME: A SYNOPSIS OF STATE SPONSORED AND OTHER CYBER OFFENSIVE (CRIMINAL) OPERATIONS."¹² The memorandum included:

A former senior intelligence officer divided Russian state-sponsored offensive cyber-operations into four categories (in order of priority): targeting foreign, especially western, governments; penetrating leading foreign business corporations, especially banks; domestic monitoring of the elite; and attacking political opponents both at home and abroad. The former intelligence officer reported that the Federal Security Service (FSB) was the lead organization within the Russian state apparatus for cyber operations.¹³

Quick recap. In these two reports alone (there was a total of 16), we've learned:

• The Russians are actively conducting cyberattacks against foreign governments, banks, and political targets;
• The Russians had compiled a kompromat dossier on Fmr. Sec of State Clinton at President Putin's direction;
• The Russians had snared Donald Trump in his own, particularly lurid kompromat which could be used as blackmail;
• Donald Trump had been receiving intelligence from the Kremlin on his rivals, and receiving other support and assistance from the Kremlin since 2011.

But wait! There's more! Subsequent reporting set the actual date of Mr. Trump's collusion back to at least 2008, and offered greater detail:

...an intelligence exchange had been running between [TRUMP and PUTIN] for at least 8 years. Within this context PUTIN's priority requirement had been for intelligence on the activities, business and otherwise, in the US of leading oligarchs and their families. TRUMP and his associates duly had obtained and supplied the Kremlin with this information.¹⁴

The interview also makes mention of Paul Manafort, and his relationship with Russian and Ukranian oligarchs, and much ado about Michael Cohen, who was basically Mr. Trump's "fixer" for all things Russian. The intel Steele provided stated "a key role in the secret TRUMP/ Kremlin relationship was being played by Michael COHEN." ¹⁵  Furthermore, "COHEN engaged with Russians in trying to cover up scandal of MANAFORT and exposure of PAGE" — this was damage control — "in the attempt to prevent the full details of TRUMP's relationship with Russia being exposed." ¹⁶  Lastly, former Gen. Flynn was identified in one of the memoranda naming political figures receiving indirect support from the Kremlin on recent trips to Moscow. ¹⁷

The full transcript of the Senate Judiciary Committee interview may be found here.
The memoranda referred to during the interview may be found here.

Conclusion

First and foremost, I'm grateful to Sen. Feinstein for releasing the transcript to the public. I'm also grateful to Buzzfeed for publishing the leaked memoranda because it allowed me greater insight into some of the context of the Senate Judiciary Committee interview, helping me to understand the controversy.

This entire chapter in the history of our nation is written on pages I wish I could tear out. In the last elections, many Americans were looking for a departure from politics as usual. Our democracy is now run by a man who has been providing intelligence to Russia for at least 10 years under threat of blackmail.

Our nation is living our worst Cold War nightmare.

Footnotes:
¹ “Read the full transcript of Glenn Simpson's Senate testimony.” Apps.washingtonpost.com, The Washington Post, 25 Jan. 2018, apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/politics/read-the-full-transcript-of-glenn-simpsons-senate-testimony/2700/, p.114.
² See https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crime-prevezon/u-s-settles-russian-money-laundering-case-idUSKBN18904I
³ See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/01/09/what-you-need-to-know-about-christopher-steele-the-fbi-and-the-dossier/
⁴ “Read the full transcript of Glenn Simpson's Senate testimony.” Apps.washingtonpost.com, The Washington Post, 26 Jan. 2018, apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/politics/read-the-full-transcript-of-glenn-simpsons-senate-testimony/2700/, p. 67
⁵ ibid., p. 68.
⁶ ibid., p. 69.
⁷ ibid., p. 296.
⁸ ibid., p. 298.
⁹ ibid., p. 74.
¹⁰ ibid., p. 143
¹¹ "Trump Intelligence Allegations", retrieved 1/26/2018 from https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html.
¹² ibid., p.4. The memo was erroneously dated 26 July 2015 instead of 2016.
¹³ ibid., pp. 4, 5.
¹⁴ ibid., p. 11
¹⁵ ibid., p. 30
¹⁶ ibid., p. 32. "PAGE" refers to Trump Campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, whom was believed to be an easy target for Russian subversion.
¹⁷ ibid., p. 16.

Image credit: The Washington Post

Initially, I created the "Favorite Headlines" section because of the silly -- no, fantastic — headlines that were being published in the press. And when I used "fantastic," I didn't mean it in a positive way — I meant "fantastic" more literally, as in a function of fantasy.

These were functions of fantasy because these stories shouldn't exist — they just seem too far-fetched to represent actual events: headlines like the one about how the new Trump administration paid a bakery to rip off the design Duff did for President Obama's inauguration cake. Or the one where a paper mistakenly used an image of Steve Baldwin portraying President Trump in a satirical SNL skit instead of using an actual image of President Trump. THAT kind of fantastic.

The last time I'd published a "favorite headline" was in early 2017, I think. Maybe I'd become less watchful, or I'd become overwhelmed. Actually, maybe the headlines I saw after last January simply weren't all that... fantastic.

Each post I make under the nation or politics topic is the culminiation -- though I have been known to tweak and update after the initial post — of a lot of research and a lot of deep thought. In most cases, I'm gathering a lot of data so I can learn and come up with a position on the matter. The immigration ban post is a great example of that. Such posts are few and far between, owing partly due to the complexity and partly because my interest in it must cross a certain threshold — the subject has got to move me enough to put in all of that effort. And part of that effort is in providing the sources for all of the material I've considered. I want you to be able to see it for yourself, and make up your own mind.

As 2017 wore on, fewer headlines grabbed my attention for inclusion. As I wrote the most recent post — my thoughts about the book Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff — I decided to remove the code displaying the "favorite headlines" section. I was about to get it onto my maintenance plan when, in the past two days, three headlines hit us out of the blue that actually justified keeping the feature active: news that the president reported Norway's purchase of fighter aircraft that only exist in a video game (he misspoke the model number); the now infamous news about the president asking why the US allows in so many people from "shithole countries;" and finally, news that the president's "fixer" paid $130K in hush money to a porn star just before he became a candidate.

As Wolff, quoting Sean Spicer, said: "You can't make this shit up."

I imagine the whole "shithole countries" quip is going to generate more headlines before it's done. I've heard that Norway actually responded, asking why in the world they'd want to come to our shithole country. (If that's true, then (1) good for them, and (2) I'll pinch that headline if I can find it.) Anyway, my point is, we may have some decent fodder to feed the feature for a little while.

So the "favorite headlines" feature stays in place for now.

Internet meme circulated in late 2017

We finally have answers. Perhaps more importantly, something about the Trump Administration finally makes sense. Credit Michael Wolff, author of Fire and Fury, which is a peek under the short skirt of the Trump Administration (yes, I tweaked the metaphor on purpose). Wolff's work provided so many insights and answers to questions I can't be the only one asking.

Wolff has been doing the talk show circuit for at least a week now. I ordered my copy of the book based on Wolff's Today Show interview and a Newsweek article — a "top ten list" of topics covered in Fire and Fury's salacious 321 pages. ¹ 

Fire and Fury

Fire and Fury delivered for me the "ground zero" answer to all of my questions about the Trump Administration over the past year: Winning the race was never Donald Trump's intention.

With Wolff's help, I've been led to conclude, by piecing together content from the book with other news I'd picked up over the past year and a half, that the whole thing was about developing a message that Trump could later broadcast over a media company. In short, Trump's candidacy was step one of a two step program: (1) create a message (2) make a network to broadcast that message. The program was taken straight from the playbook of Roger Ailes, the disgraced former Chairman and CEO of Fox News who resigned in mid-2016 amid sexual harrassment allegations. Both Ailes and Rupert Murdoch, Wolff explains, are held in very high esteem at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — though for Murdoch, the feeling was not entirely mutual.

Trump's longtime friend Roger Ailes liked to say that if you wanted a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network. It was a great future.

He would come out of this campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunties. "This is bigger than I ever dreamed of," he told Ailes in a conversation a week before the election. "I don't think about losing because it isn't losing. We've totally won."

The answer to just about any question one might ask about the Trump Administration can be traced back to that paragraph. Example: Why, particularly early on, why did the Trump Administration appear to be in complete disarray? Because they made no plans for becoming an actual Administration. Team Trump planned to lose the election. Another example: Why did Candidate Trump refuse to release his tax returns to the public? Because Team Trump planned to lose the election. Then-candidate Trump knew the entire furor would become entirely moot after Election Day.

Fire and Fury does three things very well: It offers insight into our enigmatic 45th president (and how the White House staff learned to shape information for him); it offers insight into the events that shaped the first year of the Trump Administration, from catalysts to reactions; and, perhaps most importantly, it offers insight into different factions within the White House who were constantly fighting for the president's favor.

Three Factions

To the final point above: three parties with different interests were all working feverishly to further their own agendas through President Trump: Steve Bannon, who was advocating for the no-quarter nationalist approach (Wolff refers to this as "Trumpism-Bannonism": an "iron-fisted isolationism"); Reince Priebus, who was working to further the interests of the Republican Party; and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who were pushing hard against Bannon for moderation, pushing for causes Bannon considered "off-message," and to generally mold 45 into a more presidential image.

As the events of 2017 unfolded, Wolff gave us the three sides to every story — including how each side tailored their messages, and the players each recruited to bend the president's ear and hold his attention enough to communicate it (for example, Camp Kushner was using Joe Scarborough of Fox Network's Morning Joe, playing to the president's addiction to television). And it seems every topic was a battle; every day, a grueling war for virtual control of the United States and its place in the world.

Numerous newsworthy events were engineered by at least one of the three camps, Wolff explains. For example, the firing of FBI Director James Comey was engineered by Kushner, because Kushner's family business dealings were getting exposed as part of the Russia investigation. (Interestingly, Bannon urged against firing Comey because news coverage of the investigation would instantly become front-page material — but also perhaps partly because he'd had his fill of Kushner.) Kushner then went to great lengths to deny any involvement in the decision.

Wolff walks us through many such events — using the introduction of each actor and how they came to participate to set the stage, followed by the event and the reactions by each camp. Many of these events involving a given camp only became events because word was leaked by one of the other camps — for example, much of the trouble Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were in was preceded by some action from an agent of either Bannon or Priebus — or both.

At times the book reads like the latest installment of the Star Wars saga (*cue John Williams*):

If no text shows after a few seconds, right-click on the black field and refresh.

Credit: css-tricks.com

Pity the Fool

In truth, Fire and Fury has ultimately made me pity our president. I'm angry that he ran in the first place (because he had no intention of winning); he should have found some other way to craft a message without making a promise he never intended to keep. I'm angry about the things he did under Bannon's influence, and I'm angry about the hijinx the Republicans have been doing in Congress (like voting on important bills the Democrats had no chance to read). But ultimately, the book has shown that Mr. Trump has been a pawn the entire time. Everyone around him learned the one thing he craved most was adoration, and so all used flattery to their advantage to get him to do what they wanted.

Looking to the Future

Look where this could leave us. We have a president that entered the race for himself — not for the good of the country. All he wanted was a media presence. Now he's the Commander in Chief, and, as Wolff helps illustrate, the issues facing the country don't interest him. Hell, reading doesn't interest him. The ONE thing in those 321 pages he really seemed to give any kind of a damn about was the use of chemical weapons in Syria — and only because Ivanka was smart enough to put together a CARE-esque preso and made him watch it. ²  As was stated in the book, "He doesn't give a fuck." (That's a quote — not my words.) He doesn't care about you. Or your family. Or your health care. Or your taxes. He cares about himself, television, — his image on television — golf, and cheeseburgers. Everything else is a pain in his ass (which I think is also at least close to another quote from the book).

I encourage all Americans to read this book — but particularly those who voted for President Trump. Read it and really think about how our political process should function — and what you can do to prevent this from happening again in the future.

I believe we the people had become complacent.

We the people were not engaged enough.

And we the people are suffering the fruits of outsourcing our liberty.

We the people need representatives in the judiciary, in the legislature, and in the executive who will absolutely act in the best interests of we the people of the United States of America.

Internet meme circulated in late 2017

I used the term "dumpster fire" to describe the end of 2016 into 2017. I was talking about our national political situation at the time, and about events mainly at the federal level of government, and social issues in our country that seem to have fueled them. And so I thought the image above, which I found posted to social media, was uniquely appropriate to describe my feelings about what we could be in for in the coming year. But enough about that. Let's talk politics.

On the Trump Administration

Recent events and media stories have openly questioned President Trump's cognitive state.

Charles P. Pierce, writing on behalf of Esquire, offered commentary on a recent New York Times interview of 45:  ¹

[In the interview, the President] talks in semi-sentences and is always groping for something that sounds familiar, even if it makes no sense whatsoever and even if it blatantly contradicts something he said two minutes earlier. To my ears, anyway, this is more than the president*’s well-known allergy to the truth. This is a classic coping mechanism employed when language skills are coming apart.

I understand Pierce's observation, because I have a father-in-law who used similar evasive techniques. When responding to questions he didn't understand, he'd merely chuckle or offer some brief exclamation ("Oh!").

Pierce points out why the notion of an incompetent president is so important:

In Ronald Reagan’s second term, we ducked a bullet. I’ve always suspected he was propped up by a lot of people who a) didn’t trust vice-president George H.W. Bush, b) found it convenient to have a forgetful president when the subpoenas began to fly, and c) found it helpful to have a “detached” president when they started running their own agendas — like, say, selling missiles to mullahs. You’re seeing much the same thing with the congressional Republicans. They’re operating an ongoing smash-and-grab on all the policy wishes they’ve fondly cultivated since 1981. Having a president* who may not be all there and, as such, is susceptible to flattery because it reassures him that he actually is makes the heist that much easier.

A friend, who posted the article on social media, had an interesting opinion -- he suggests mandatory testing and succession planning for national-level leaders susceptible to cognitive decline like Alzheimer's disease or dementia.

I'm not so certain we don't already have such planning in place. Additionally, I suspect an argument could successfully be made that any aspect of the President's health is a matter of national security. In other words, we can talk all we want about whether the President suffers from some sort of decline, but we'll likely never see any statement from the White House nor any other federal level agency offering any sort of confirmation.

"Papa" John Schnatter at the NASDAQ. Image credit: Forbes

How does one lose $70 million of personal fortune in one night?

Blow it in Vegas? Get your hotel suite broken into in Paris? News reports suggest Papa John's CEO John Schnatter did it by putting his foot in his mouth on a quarterly earnings call AND getting an unsolicited endorsement by white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

Offering his thoughts on the National Football League's national anthem debacle, Schnatter blamed the NFL's inaction for slumping sales. CNN Money reported the remarks were criticized on social media by supporters of players' protest during the national anthem. (Papa John's is the official pizza sponsor of the National Football League.)

Forbes reported that Papa John's shares dropped 11% by mid-day Wednesday. And CNN Money reported that their stock has fallen 30% so far this year:

National Public Radio reporting essentially avoided mention of the company's financial woes, except to include Schnatter's quote about damage to Papa John's shareholders.

I don't have any beef against Schnatter or Papa John's. My wife and I have ordered their pies for years. But I just sensed there's something out of place here.

What's bigger news here? The notion that Schnatter interjected his personal sentiments into an earnings call and got slammed for it, or the fact that he remained as CEO for an entire year while his company lost 1/3 of it's value? What other company would not consider leadership changes after three or maybe only two quarters of a slump like that? How did he stay at the helm for a YEAR?

Of course, there are a great many things I likely don't understand here. Particularly about the intricasies of corporate financials. There could have been other factors not surfaced in the news coverage that explain the decrease in stock value. The only thing I feel comfortable about saying probably wasn't to blame was the NFL. Regardless of how you feel about player's protesting social injustice, other publicly traded pizza chains did not suffer as Papa John's did (and it's not like the company's NFL sponsorship allowed them to "corner the market" on pizza delivery during NFL games. Plenty of other pizza and other food delivery companies advertise during those games.

Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick started his protests in the preseason of 2016. A look at the 5-year chart of PZZA shows the company was trending upward consistently until December, 2016, when their stock had reached $89.17 per share. The stock has been in decline since that point.

I guess if I could see some pattern of decline that seemed to mirror the NFL schedule, I'd be more inclined to believe Schnatter's asssertion; the NASDAQ chart tells the story that something happened in mid-December 2016 that changed the company's fortunes — a year in advance of Schnatter's earnings call blunder.

If pizza sales are tied so strongly to the NFL brand, it should follow that other publicly traded pizza chains should also have had a disastrous year. Over the same period, Domino's (NYSE: DPZ) was trading at about $150 per share in September, 2016. That December, it was trading at $170 per share. Its price reached $230 per share this July, and is currently still north of $190.

Here's a look at the two against the S&P Index:


Clearly, the NFL's and Papa John's problems are not Domino's problems.

According to Denver Post reporting from December 21:

Pizza Hut has also been working to up its delivery game and catch up with the more tech-savvy Domino’s Pizza Inc., which makes it easy for customers to order pizza pies through apps, social media posts or even text messages. Pizza Hut said Thursday that sales rose 1 percent at its established locations worldwide and were flat in the United States, an improvement from past quarters.

Domino’s, though, said sales rose 8.4 percent at established U.S. stores during the third quarter. That’s down from the 13 percent growth it reported in the same period the year before. “Nothing we reported in the quarter included commentary about the NFL because we saw no reason to call it out,” a Domino’s spokeswoman said Thursday.

For Papa John's to believe their fate is tied so closely to the NFL is to say that their sales all come from NFL fans. The New York Times stated the obvious in their coverage: "Pizza is big business during football games."

It's not just pizza, though: Nation's Restaurant News reports Buffalo Wild Wings has also taken a hit due to reduced NFL viewership.

According to a Snopes article, Papa John's Pizza was one of the NFL's biggest advertisers as of November, 2017, when it started pulling some of the NFL branding off of their advertising. Papa John’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) Steve Richie explained the link between the company’s financial position and the NFL:

We’ve had a long-standing relationship with the NFL and it’s served us quite well, just in terms of the overall brand awareness — we’re actually the number one recognized partner with the NFL, two years running. So we get the benefit when things are going well, but clearly we’re going to get the downside implications when things aren’t going that well.

The Nation's Restaurant News article also mentioned that Papa John's has entered into an agreement with Major League Baseball.

Schnatter was the subject of a meme in circulation on social media in late October/early November. The meme offered a rather one-sided comparison of Schnatter to Mike Illich, founder of Little Caesar's. While the meme makes some rather unfair statements (according to Snopes, a bullet regarding being found guilty of wage theft and not paying overtime actually involved a franchisee, not the Schnatter or the corporation), the Snopes article includes a number of quotes from Schnatter explaining the proper context for a number of assertions. (The link to Snopes includes the meme.)

Links:

CNN Money
Denver Post
Forbes
Nation's Restaurant News
NPR
Snopes.com (Meme)
Snopes.com (NFL advertising)
The New York Times
Wikipedia

Senator Al Franken (D-Minn) has just announced his resignation from the US Senate in light of multiple allegations of inappropriate behavior during his career as a comedian.

It seemed to me the calls for his resignation came fast and furiously only in recent days — calls led primarily by his female contemporaries on the same side of the aisle.

This makes me wonder whether Democrats, and Democrat Congresswomen in particular, are making a statement by leading this charge. In a sense, it wasn't about Sen. Franken as much as perhaps sending a message to the nation that the Democrats, unlike the Republicans, are willing to deal with these issues swiftly, and that the Congresswomen in particular have the support of the party.

Certainly the Democrats must take every opportunity to stand out against the Republicans who have been steamrolling them on issue after issue that has come up for vote the Senate floor. They must anticipate the move will curry favor with female voters in particular. In this sense, Sen. Franken's political career (well, probably any career he might choose to pursue at this point) has become sacrificed for the good of the party.

By stepping down at the close of the year, Sen. Franken is doing something really big for the Democratic Party by showing that the Democrats are strong on women, hold their leadership to a higher standard, and will not tolerate inappropriate behavior. Contrast with the Republicans have thrown their full support behind Judge Roy Moore of Alabama, who has infamously been accused by multiple women of preying on teenage girls when he was in his 30s, ¹  and of course, the President's now infamous "hot mic" Access Hollywood interview audio from 2005 ²  and the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. ³

 

Image credit: Melina Mara/The Washington Post

I sat in near shock yesterday morning as Savannah Guthrie announced to the world that Matt Lauer, a fixture on NBC's TODAY show for 20 years, was fired from NBC as a result of an allegation of sexual misconduct. Reporting from other sources appeared to confirm NBC's assertion that the incident was not isolated. This news followed last week's revelations that CBS' Charlie Rose was relieved of his responsibilities as news anchor for sex-related indiscretions.

The same day, news broke that Garrison Keillor, best known as the creator/host of Minnesota Public Radio's "A Prairie Home Companion" was fired from his employer, also for sexual misconduct.

News about Lauer and Keillor completely stunning. These are two men who project themselves as intelligent and measured. I really liked Lauer's delivery and the way he would interact with his co-hosts on TODAY; He gave me the sense that he was witty, rational and risk-averse, and I admired him for that. In the years I listened to "A Prairie Home Companion," I was attracted to Keillor's wit and dry sense of humor even back in the mid-1980's.

Granted, I don't pay much attention to tabloid reporting ("the hot sheets," as they were called in the movie Men in Black). I seem to very vaguely recall Lauer was on the cover of one of those rags some months ago... Vanity Fair reporting suggests The National Enquirer had harrasssed Lauer for years:

Lauer had been dogged by stories of infidelity for years, so much so that he had become a regular target of the tabloid press. That focus narrowed his world, according to a former colleague. "His pattern was that of a beleaguered person who was constantly being pursued by The National Enquirer," the former colleague told me. "He was their target No. 1." The Enquirer regularly ran stories on Lauer’s rumored affairs. "The Enquirer was suspected to have a crew on him, and he couldn’t do anything," the former colleague told me. "He’d led this lonely life after his wife moved his family to the Hamptons. He was always being followed."

I posted a reaction to the Lauer announcement on Facebook and received several responses. Perhaps the most notable of these was from a friend from high school who wrote, "They act for a living. Of course they know how to come across as sincere on the screen."

I took this more as a warning about perception. Case in point: Bill Cosby, whose Emmy®-nominated show Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids ran for 13 years, and whose comedy albums I nearly memorized when I was a kid, was accused of sexual assault by 60 women. The accusations started becoming public in 2014.  ¹

The Annual Sexual Harrassment Beat-Down

I've been in careers that have required a lot of training. Sadly, sexual harassment training has been part of that training my entire adult life. And I say "sadly," because it's simply completely asenine that companies and agencies in our society are compelled to train their staff on how to behave like people because, invariably it seems, some jackass has to ruin things for everybody. In 1991, a small group of Navy pilots at an annual convention brought the operations of the entire US Navy to a standstill. ²

And, as a man, I'm mortified by having to undergo this training annually and sign an acknowledgment that I've understood the it and the company policies (which often include terms like "zero-tolerance" or even more threatening language.) It's a punishment, really, understandably designed to prevent repetition of some incorrigible act of an irresponsible jackass somewhere along the line.

And, in the wake of this training, one byproduct is always the same: the female team members become alienated in a way, because no man dare make eye contact with a female team member anymore after the virtual beating they just received from HR and Legal (I'm talking about the training). ³ Another byproduct: the message HR and Legal intended to send was accompanied by other messages with some consequences. I've had to endure some pretty heavy- handed sexual harassment training in some private sector companies, and it didn't leave me thinking favorably about people in that department.

I'd bet there is data out in the world that measures the impact of sexual harassment training on (appropriate) cross-gender relationships. And I'd bet it shows a significant dip in the health of those relationships following every instance of training administration. I even wonder if some men, immediately after training, actually get angry and wilfully deny opportunities to their female counterparts or reports, because they blame them for having to go through these wasteful exercises?

Of course, companies don't really have a choice. They have to establish policies for legal reasons; they become the standards by which HR can measure an employee's performance. But I feel pretty comfortable in saying companies can and should find ways of communicating their policies without alienating their workforce. The bad thing is, that negative impact I talked about earlier is likely considered a completely justifiable consequence — a price of being in business. They're not incorrect.

I'd opine that companies aren't really motivated to find those better ways of communicating their policies, because the company has no profit-based incentive to do so. It's not like we're going to see an interview with some former CEO saying, "Welp, all our men quit because they were offended by the sexual harassment training we made them take." With no incentive to change to a less Draconian approach, men will continue to feel threatened, women will continue to feel shunned, morale will dip, and relationships will suffer, year after year, as per policy.

The Message is Lost

Having said all of this, it's clear some aren't getting the message. ⁴  But then, perhaps the examples we're seeing on TV aren't getting the training. Either way, as long as there are men behaving badly in the workplace, the rest of us who can be adults and keep our hands and our thoughts to ourselves will continue to suffer.

Fallout

Lauer, Rose, Keillor and others are part of the fasionable trend of public exposure (no pun intended) of the bad actors. Honestly, I'm not sure where all of this is really headed. Clearly for the victims, the endgame is a measure of justice. Those getting outed on the evening news are seeing their careers flash before their eyes like the bulb on the camera that once adored them.

But what about the impact on the rest of us, who have sense? Will we be subjected to even more training? More stand-downs? In my opinion, the only thing these would do is make the good actors more resentful of the distractions.

I don't want to have keep paying the price for the idiots who can't keep themselves in check. Can't I just subscribe to something similar to a TSA Pre-Check program for sexual harrassment so I can just initial the policy acknowledgment and get on with my work life? Have some sort of background check that looks at the number of complaints over my entire work history and clears me?

Sex Partition

Why do we have to keep damaging many perfectly good relationships — relationships that are healthy and good for the company — because of bad actors? How divisive is this going to become? Will we reach a point where men will consider female coworkers an unacceptable risk? "I left my position at ACME because I was assigned to a team with some female members, and I wasn't about to subject my career to that kind of risk." Sure the example sounds silly, but there are men who are honestly afraid of the potential damage any slight misstep might cause. The LA Times article cited above included this quote:

One study found that almost two-thirds of male executives are even reluctant to have a one-on-one meeting with a junior female employee.

The author of that article, Kim Elsesser, is a psychologist, author, and lecturer at UCLA. What Elsesser describes here is what she calls a "sex partition" — the notion that a particular action is viewed differently when different sexes are involved. Example: A man, in the role of a superior, having a closed-door meeting with a subordinate. The meeting with a subordinate man is considered entirely appropriate, but the closed-door meeting with a woman is questioned, which eventually impacts the normal superior-subordinate relationship. Elsesser argues a sex partition commonly hurts the female subordinates, because they miss the coaching and other opportunities the male subordinates receive.

What Does the Future Hold?

What else could this mean for multiple sexes in the workplace? Could we actually arrive at a point where sexual misconduct is so rampant that there's actually a stigma about hiring men? That female applicants are preferred over males because of a popular belief that men are unable to control themselves, and therefore pose an unacceptable risk?

Eventually, the US is going to have to have the uncomfortable conversation about why it is "me too" is storming through the private sector, yet certain national-level public officials remain unscathed.

For now, I guess we'll just stay tuned to the news.

 

Image credit: CNN, Lucasfilm Ltd.

Shepard Smith of Shepard Smith Reporting

I've a friend whom I consider rather a hardcore conservative. I reached out to him recently about a week ago when news broke about the DRUDGE REPORT — his favorite webzine — being linked to propaganda from Russia. ¹  His reply: "Sessions better be planning a major Hillary investigation ... uranium one deal is potentially steeped in corruption." When I asked what purpose further investigation of Ms. Clinton would actually serve, he suggested that the "Best approach is to watch Fox News. You won't learn what is happening in Congress investigations on other news channels."

Shepard Smith Reporting

So this morning when I read an article examining a recent report by Fox News' Shepard Smith regarding this whole Uranium One mess, I had to share it with him. The article included the Fox News footage, provided below:

I'd rather not decorate Mr. Smith's reporting with inputs from other pundits, or with my thoughts just yet. I'd like to simply point out what Mr. Smith addressed here:

• How Uranium One came to be under Russian control
• The accusation and its source
• Presidential Candidate Trump's allegation, dated June 2016
• CFIUS, and the federal government process for evaluating foreign investment in the United States
• The actual NRC recommendation and stiplulation
• Donations to the Clinton Foundation — source and timing.

It sure seems to me that Mr. Smith ran this to ground.

Backlash and Fox's Identity

As word of the Smith segment spread to other news outlets (CNN ²  and The Washington Post ³ are a couple of examples), they began to report just as much about the backlash from Fox News viewers as Mr. Smith's piece.

A separate Washington Post "analysis" article discussed the "different realities" in which Fox' Hannity and Smith live. I found the quote of a Fox News spokesperson particularly telling, describing Hannity as "an outstaning opinion commentator" and Smith as "an outstanding journalist." ⁴. Let that sink in. Hannity and Carlson and their ilk may be Fox's bread and butter, but it's not news — it's commentary.

Final Note

I suppose we've yet to really discern the impact of Mr. Smith's report — particularly whether we'll see the Trump Administration, Fox News commentators, and other conservatives back away from the Uranium One story.

Revealed this morning were the first US government criminal indictments against actors in Special Council Robert Mueller III's probe into Russian government interference in the 2016 US national elections.

The indictment of former Trump campaign chairman Mr. Paul Manafort and business partner Mr. Rick Gates reads a lot like scenes at the end of The Untouchables. The movie tells the story of how notorious mobster Al Capone (pictured) was brought to trial by Elliot Ness and his team of US Treasury agents, and was convicted of tax evasion charges in 1931. ¹

The Capone case was a landmark in the sense that the US government could use a tool as comparatively lame as tax evastion to bust up a multi-million dollar bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling enterprise and bring to justice the principal player in the Chicago underworld.

Why Compare Manafort and Gates to Al Capone?

I compare Messrs. Manafort and Gates to Al Capone for two reasons.

Like the case against Capone, the federal government traced the money: the indictment lays bare the men's work on behalf of a Ukrainian pro-Russian political party, the tens of millions of dollars they made, and the network of companies and accounts they used to launder the money. ²

And, like the case against Capone, Manafort and Gates failed to declare these earnings as (taxable) income; ergo, income tax evasion became the tool the US Government used to indict.

UPDATE: Jennifer Westhoven on CNN Headline News' "Morning Express with Robin Meade" pointed out that the personal spending particularly Manafort did was accomplished by wiring money directly from the overseas accounts to US businesses. I suspect one might argue that, since the money never actually went through Manafort in the US, he avoids responsibility for personal income tax. This could be why the federal government had to prove that Manafort (a US citizen) earned and hid the money in the offshore accounts.

Building their Case

I suspect perhaps this indictment was made possible perhaps as a second step, following the admission of a former Trump campaign adviser that he'd lied to the FBI regarding connections to the government of Russia. Court documents show the adviser, Mr. George Papadopoulos, "repeatedly tried to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials." ³

One assumes a relationship between the two actions in the context of the Russia probe — perhaps simply establishing evidence that campaign advisors had ties to the Russian government.

I imagine step one in the FBI's cases was showing that arrangements for direct introductions were being made, and step two was perhaps showing that the Trump campaign was hiring advisors with at least indirect ties to Russia.

UPDATE: Reporting from the Washington Post suggests another target for the FBI could be Sam Clovis, a social conservative activist and former radio personality who served as national co-chairman of the Trump campaign and is currently awaiting Senate confirmation for a top position in the USDA. Mr. Papadopoulos is known to have communicated with Clovis regarding his infamous meeting in London in March, 2016. ⁴ The same reporting suggests that Mr. Papadopoulos likely "wore a wire" for the FBI in advance of getting a plea deal on October 5th, which could be cause for great concern among those "in Trump's orbit."

It should surprise no one that the FBI would play the long game here, leveraging Papadopoulos, Manafort and Gates to cultivate additional actionable intelligence later. There's much at stake, and the eyes of the world are watching.

 

Image credit: FBI

Yesterday a man staying at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada opened fire on a crowd gathered outside at a country music festival. Nearly 60 are dead and well over 500 are wounded. The man was armed with multiple assault weapons. He basically fired the weapons out of the windows of his hotel suite onto the helpless crowd of 22,000, some 30 stories below.

We can only guess at what motivated the shooter — his name is well known by this point, but I like the approach the Mayor took in her interview on NBC's TODAY show, denying him posthumous notoriety by refusing to speak it — to do such a horrific thing.

I heard yesterday that ISIS actually claimed responsibility. Why wouldn't they? I believe ISIS is sure to use his name as propaganda regardless of whatever the truth actually is. They'll spin whatever yarn they need to recruit and to further their cause. But reporting by CNN suggests law enforcement still must discover his motive before any connection to terrorism can be established. ¹

Multiple news outlets reported this morning that the shooter was a retired accountant, who had 23 weapons in the hotel room and another 19 in one of at least two homes...

Image credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment

Clearly the actions of Affleck's character in The Accountant aren't the same as the shooter in Las Vegas. I'm only drawing the comparison on the similarites of the career choice and the weapons. Still... I do wonder if the movie was some sort of motivator, or if there were similarities beyond the two I've drawn upon. Pure speculation.

On Why and How

And I think in times like these there is a line between healthy and unhealthy speculation. I've seen criticism on social media over the latter — some make the point that why he did what he did is completely irrelevant; yet the public wants answers. Answers about everything. We do so love our infoporn. So, there's a demand for the irrelevant, I guess because it makes us feel like it's helping us to understand... to process. It's why I'm writing this.

I feel like the question we should be trying to answer isn't the why; it's the how. And the how gets directly to the heart of gun control and our freedoms under the Second Amendment.

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The Second Amendment is not specific about the types of armament a private citizen is allowed to have. So the question really isn't about the Second Amendment per se as much as it is how to regulate munitions the amendment permits. This is where we get into interpretation — specifically, collective rights theory vs. individual right theory — and into examples of individual cases, perhaps including United States v Miller (307 U.S. 174) and District of Columbia v Heller (07-290); but note that the court reasoned the sawed-off shotgun that was the subject of the former and referenced in the latter is not an instrument that "has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia . . . ."; automatic weapons are actually built specifically for that purpose. Learn more about these cases.

President Washington didn't actually say that.

A Federal Ban

If we're getting into the how of the Second Amendment, we'll likely end up somewhere between Machiavelli and Orwell. But I don't think this is likely to happen — primarily because laws governing firearms — with exception of the National Firearm Act (NFA)— are the province of state law. By the way, the few state law entries I've read with regard to ownership of machine guns acknowledge the NFA.

(UPDATE: When I started writing this post, I imagined a scenario in which the Republic of Texas starts secession planning in response to a federal ban on machine guns, and imagined the economic impact on the US on the loss of it's second strongest economy. But then I looked into Texas' laws regarding assault weapons (see below), and discovered they're already not allowed!)

The National Firearms Act

Machine guns and silencers are registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) under the National Firearms Act. ²  The purpose of the act was to tax and regulation of machine guns, silencers, modified weapons (like sawed-off shotguns) and explosive devices.

These weapons are registered by the manufacturers, importers, and certain governmental agencies — not by private citizens. ³  The ATF must even be notified of even temporary transportation of an NFA-registered firearm across state lines. ⁴

State Laws May Be the Right Answer

I think it's more likely that states will continue to peform regulatory functions than we'd see any kind of federal legislation on the matter.

According to the NRA-ILA website, it is illegal in the State of Kansas to possess an automatic weapon: ⁵

"It is unlawful to possess... any firearm designed to discharge or capable of discharging automatically more than once by a single function of the trigger."

Persons in law enforcement are exempt, as are weapons "rendered unserviceable," and those registered in accordance with the National Firearms Act. ⁶.  (UPDATE: The ATF confirmed and offered some clarification to that final point: In Kansas, as long as the weapon, say, a machine gun, was registered with the NFA before the law went into effect in 1986, a private citizen is allowed to legally own that machine gun in Kansas. No further qualification is required.)

The base Kansas and Texas laws are two examples of state legislation that could work for curbing unbridled access to assault weapons. By contrast, the Nevada law simply states ownership of legally acquired and registered machine guns is lawful. ⁷

Perhaps if more states establish stricter automatic weapons control, we could finally leave episodes like this one behind us.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's book — the one you knew was coming — arrives Tuesday.

The New York Times' review describes it as "angry" and "unsparing."

On a less serious note, the book is the subject of an Internet meme and even has the related twitter hashtag "#BetterNamesForHillarysBook."

Image credit: Simon & Schuster

I've been introduced to Matt Kiser's WTF JUST HAPPENED TODAY, a website which serves as a digest of news on the Trump Administration, culled from various news sources (which are cited). I'm very excited about this, because it's something I briefly considered doing with this page.

I post on here from time to time, usually on a specific topic, which I'll explore using publicly available information to form an opinion. So having a site like WTFJHT is fantastic for keeping up-to-date on issues which I can dive deeper into later.

Matt's providing a great service, and my wife and I support it (soon we'll have the tee shirts to prove it.)

Image credit: Matt Kiser

I don't feel much like celebrating our nation's independence today. I'm not feeling very independent, I suppose.

Make no mistake about it — we are in the clutches of a predator. A man who serves himself first and foremost, whose ego is completely unhinged, and who knows about "fake news" because he threatens others with it.

In their service to our nation, politicians have been placed at the top of multiple federal agencies — where they absolutely do not belong. Perhaps most famously, former Governor of Texas Rick Perry as the head of the EPA, and Betsy DeVos as the Secretary of Education. (Okay, DeVos is the billionaire wife of a politician.)

There are two things that weigh heavily on me about the state of our country: Money and Russia.

The first is that everything seems to be about money — some by way of loopholes and technicalities,   others by legislation,   WAY more overtly than ever before. Hell, even the President's advisor was busted adding sales pitches for the President's daughter's fashion line during an official interview   (the Seal of the White House can be seen in the background). Perhaps the most egregious to date being the Republican "Wealthcare" bill, which is widely criticized for providing massive tax cuts for the rich at the particular expense of women and children (Planned Parenthood),   and those who cannot afford private insurance plans (Medicaid).  

Secondly, all of this stink about Russian involvement in meddling with the national elections process. As more information has come to light about hacking campaigns against politicos   and even social engineering campaigns against voting machine equipment manufacturers,   the actions of the Trump Administration in covering their tracks   just seem to get dirtier and dirtier. (Speaking of a US-Russian connection, Wikipedia reports Secretary of State Rex Tillerson "has previously been the director of the joint US-Russian oil company Exxon Neftegas.")

We've hit a noteable low. Allies who looked to America as the great "guarantor of liberal market economics and democracy" are having serious doubts.   Ours is the greatest country in the world. I believe that. I served this nation with pride. But today, I am very troubled by the direction our nation is taking. Where we are today is not our ideal. I'm worried the middle class will disappear. I'm worried about health care. I'm worried about the country I fought to protect.

I don't feel much like celebrating today.

I can't really be the only one who saw the similarity... Can I?

I'm bothered by the national press corps' collective lack of respect for the Office of the President of the United States.

As Lisa Grotts wrote for HuffPost in 2013, "The president should be addressed as President Obama or Mr. President." Ms. Grotts was correct: The Emily Post Institute notes the proper spoken greeting for the current President is "Mr. / Madam President."

As Robert Hickey points out, those rules are for manner of direct address; in other words, those are rules for when one is speaking to the President of the United States. Hickey, in response to a reader on this topic, writes:

In the media the journalists are referring to The President in the third person in a story ... so they will refer to him in various ways so who they are talking about is clear to the listener. You'll hear:   Donald Trump
  President Trump
  Trump
  Mr. Trump
These are not forms of address ... for which there are rules. In direct address a president is addressed as
  Mr. President
His given name or surname is not used in his presence. Listen to a White House news conference, and all the reporters address him as Mr. President. White House staff refer to him as The President ... which makes sense since he is the only President to them! But on the evening news they may refer to several presidents ... the president of the United States ... the president of British Petroleum ... the president of a national association.

Personally, I find references to the President of the United States only by surname to be irksome.

I think this all gained traction in the days of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden... People sorta got hung up on the similarities of "Osama" and "Obama," and so reference to the President by only his surname became popular. Plus, I recall POTUS 44 wasn't loved by all, so perhaps there was also some tendency to omit his title when referring to him.

That practice seems to have continued, with nobody in the press (that I've observed to date) referring to President Trump by title or even by "Mr." If you look back at the other blog posts I've made concerning his administration, you'll notice I've preceded at least the initial reference to the current President with his title.

Look, press: Regardless of whom you voted for in the election, Mr. Trump IS the President of the United States. IMHO, you don't get to leave the title off of his name just because he has a white hot hatred of the press and for Saturday Night Live.

Please offer respect to at least the office if not the man.

This past week, Conway actually had the balls to refer to a "massacre" inside the US that never actually happened, in a lame attempt to create support for the administration's immigration ban. And the Internets are having a complete field day, as this image posted to Twitter suggests:

Facebook users are creating fake pages mimicking the site's public security features to proclaim they're "safe" in the wake of the fictitious calamity.

Let's say for a minute that Conway and Spicer really are playing to Soviet-era Russian strategy. The state of technology was not as it is today, with answers available on demand in handheld devices. Conway, Spicer, and others (oh there will be others) representing the Trump Administration have the attention of everybody on the Web. Their biggest problems here are trolling and fact checking — two of the Internet's favorite passtimes. Trolls live for this kind of stuff. The Trump Administration isn't providing information — they're providing entertainment. And by providing entertainment, they're inviting even more attention and scrutiny.

I saw this posted to Facebook from Unbiased America last night:

(WR) Final thoughts on Trump's proclamation on refugee and immigration policy from the Middle East:

The cacophony of claims that this violates the law and is a racist "Muslim ban" have been misguided at best.

The headlines have been atrocious. This is what the headline should really look like:

"Donald Trump signs executive order placing a moratorium on immigration and/or re-entries from seven specific countries and a moratorium on refugees from the Middle East as a matter of national security in an effort to bolster the vetting process."

The President gets this authority from CONGRESS in the Immigration and Nationality Act Sec. 212(f) that clearly states in part:

"Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of ANY CLASS of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."

He is not denying immigration status based on religion or ethnicity (neither is mentioned in the proclamation) and it no way tries to change the racial make-up of our country by favoring one nationality over the other, for which previous law was promulgated to combat.

The temporary restriction is due to lax security measures and the danger immigrants pose to US interests coming from these specific areas. The purpose is to create a system whereby we can accept refugees and immigrants in the very near future, not place a longstanding "ban" on refugees, visitors or immigrants.

The President has broad authority in matters of foreign affairs and national security interests, which can take precedence over Congressional dictates as stipulated in US v. Curtiss-Wright (1936) quoting John Marshall, "'The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.' Annals, 6th Cong., col. 613."

IN THE CASE OF GREEN CARDS: It must be clear that no one, and I repeat, no one has a right to emigrate or visit the US or remain in the US that is not a citizen. We have zero responsibility to accept refugees, and can, in fact, deport legal immigrant residents at any time (due process rights considered). The government has a duty to citizens first and foremost. Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698 (1893) concludes: "The right to exclude or to expel aliens, or any class of aliens, absolutely or upon certain conditions, in war or in peace, is an inherent and inalienable right of every sovereign nation."

There is a threat that is real and recognized, of legal immigrants returning home, radicalizing, and then coming back to the US to launch attacks.

 

Sources:
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/299/304.html#319
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/…/149/698/case.html

After reading, I took a moment to reflect on all of the traffic and news coverage I've been seeing about this new temporary immigration ban, and wondered what makes this current instance different than temporary immigration bans in the recent past?

The Executive Order

Earlier today, National Public Radio published the full text of the Executive Order, with annotations.

In my estimation, National Review reporting on the content of the order makes the move seem relatively mundane:

First, the order temporarily halts refugee admissions for 120 days to improve the vetting process, then caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year....

Second, the order imposes a temporary, 90-day ban on people entering the U.S. from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. These are countries either torn apart by jihadist violence or under the control of hostile, jihadist governments. The ban is in place while the Department of Homeland Security determines the "information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat."...

Third, Trump’s order also puts an indefinite hold on admission of Syrian refugees to the United States "until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the USRAP to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest."... [U]ntil 2016 the Obama administration had already largely slammed the door on Syrian- refugee admissions....

Fourth, there is a puzzling amount of outrage over Trump’s directive to " prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality."

The National Review reporting lays out some very important justifications for its points:

• To it's first point, regarding the cap of 50,000, the article offers Migration Policy Institute data which shows that the cap was stable at 70,000 from FY 2002 through 2007, and was increased to only 80,000 from FY 2008 through 2012. Admissions for that ten year period ranged from under 30,000 to 70,000. The data appears to support National Review's statement that the Trump Administration "intends to admit refugees at close to the average rate of the 15 years before [President] Obama’s dramatic expansion in 2016." (The National Public Radio annotations include the 2016 data.)
  
  
• To its second point, the article is careful to note the inclusion of a provision which allows exceptions "on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked", which opens the door to foreign nationals who have aided US forces operating in the region.
  
  
• To its third point, National Review offers numbers on Syrian admissions. To give you an idea of what the numbers have historically been like, in 2014, the United States admitted just over 100 Syrian refugees. That number is greater than Syrian refugee admissions from the previous three years combined.
  
  
• To it's final point regarding religion, National Review points out that religion is an established criterion for refugee status — that is, religious persecution is by law one basis for admission. This very subtle point is later highlighted in National Public Radio reporting.

Detainees...

The trouble, which National Review acknowledges, is that there are other issues at work — specifically, the detainees.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the travel ban was "never intended to deport people." — despite detaining over 100 people after landing in the US on Saturday.

From this National Public Radio report on Sunday:

[President] Trump's executive order ... includes those who hold green cards as legal permanent residents of the U.S.; to enter the country, they will need a case-by-case waiver, which officials say will be granted as long as there is no evidence of the person presenting "a serious threat to public safety and welfare."

The article recounted detentions and deportations in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., New York, and Seattle.

...and Worse

Tweets from alt-Immigration on the subject included these:

• "Passengers on two flights had I-407s distributed.Triage lawyers interviewing family spotted",
  
  
• "We remind u to educate any green card holder you know from anywhere: the I-407 document is your enemy. Do not sign it. You abandon ur status"
  
  
• "Still hearing about a few incidents of green card holders being sent back late last night this morning. any aclu folks please confirm."
  
  
• Also retweeted a photo of a family in handcuffs at Dulles.

The Washington Post reported the existence of a lawsuit arguing "that dozens of people may have been forced to give up their green cards by Customs and Border Protection agents."

According to Bloomberg reporting:

Form I-407... was distributed on several aircraft that landed this weekend at Los Angeles International Airport, said Rachel Odio, an immigration lawyer with pro-bono law firm Public Counsel. Other travelers saw the forms after they had been detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees in the airport... "It’s absurd. There’s no legal basis for it," Odio said of the requests to renounce residency. Because many of the forms are being signed "under duress" in isolated airport rooms without access to family, attorney representation, or even food, "there is definitely a strong argument that their signature is without consent."

Protests and Religion

News of the detainments created protests from coast to coast, with tens of thousands participating. The United Nations projects some 200,000 people could be affected by the policy change, according to The Washington Post. The demonstrations added fuel to the fire that the ban was about religion, and likely prompted Pope Francis to rebuke "the contradiction of those who want to defend Christianity in the West, and, on the other hand, are against refugees and other religions.".

As Unbiased America, National Public Radio and National Review all point out, the term "Muslim" is nowhere to be found in the text of the order. However, careful study of the document does reveal a preference for people not of the Muslim faith, as pointed out in the National Public Radio annotation.

SPOILER ALERT: Recall that one of the legal requirements for refugee status is that the person seeking the status follow a religion other than the dominant religion of the country they're fleeing. The countries listed in the schedule are all dominantly Muslim.

Fallout

In Washington, the fire spread out of control when the Attorney General was relieved of her duties after refusing to enforce the ban. Sally Q. Yates was immediately replaced.

Reaction across the globe included the possibility of retaliatory visa restrictions from Iraq and calls from Britain to cancel the President's impending visit; The German Foreign Minister, speaking in Paris, "questioned how such orders could be imposed by a country that embraces Christian values like the U.S.".

The List of Countries

Several have weighed in on the composition of the list of banned countries, which are not named in the Executive Order, but were provided under separate cover. The Institute for Policy Studies observed:

It’s no accident that of the seven countries identified, the U.S. is bombing five (Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Somalia), has troops deployed and military bases in another (Sudan), and imposes harsh sanctions and frequent threats against the last (Iran).

National Public Radio took a close look at how the list related to the president's business interests.

[President] Trump has no business interests in those countries [listed in the Executive Order].... The 19 terrorists in the Sept. 11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates... They are among the Muslim-majority countries not affected by Trump's immigration freeze, but where Trump does business.

Summary

We have looked at the content of the Executive Order, and have seen distilled summaries from Unbiased America and National Review, plus annotations from National Public Radio. Based on this information, the numbers do seem generally consistent with previous allowances as reported by Migration Policy Institute, and do appear far lower than the revisions made in 2016. I surmise the impact perceived by the UN (as reported by The Washington Post) reflects the 2016 numbers.

I also believe the populace is generally correct in its perception as a "Muslim ban," but the simple fact of the matter is the terrorist threat is seated in religious radicalism. I've made my feelings clear about it in a previous post, but to be fair, 2016 allowances excepted, the Executive Order is not outlandish.

I take serious exception to what has seemed to be a very heavy-handed approach by customs officials. I don't recall anything in the Executive Order authorizing the expulsion or detainment of permanent alien residents (read: "green card" holders). The notion that flights were issuing forms for abandoning permanent resident status is horrifying. Yes, Unbiased Anerica, I understand that we can deport legal immigrants at any time, but handcuffing families in the airport? Making people sign away their permanent resident status? Really?

Lady Liberty weeps.

STATES WITH HIGHEST DEPENDENCE ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT LABOR
(Source: Center for American Progress)

STATE	Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, Hunting	Construction	Leisure and Hospitality	ESTIMATED TOTAL LOSS IN GSP
NJ	14%	10%	13%	5%
CA	21%	12%	14%	5%
NV	NA	14%	9%	4%
TX	10%	13%	12%	4%
WA	23%	4%	9%	3%