Public broadcaster airs clip of PM telling Likud activists US exit came after he stood up 'against the whole world' by opposing accord
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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In the News
By Asawin Suebsaeng & Sam Stein @ DailyBeast.com, July 19
[....] while numerous GOP lawmakers rushed to distance themselves from the president this past week, Trump’s most fervent loyalists circled the wagons. Far from being politically poisonous, Bannon argued, the president represented the party’s lone bit of electoral salvation.
“These House guys are running around with a very conventional district-by-district plan. This is the way you lose 40 seats. This is Trump and conventional won't work. They are thinking about this the wrong way. This is not a midterm election—this is Trump’s first re-elect,” Bannon, Trump’s ousted top White House strategist, told The Daily Beast on Thursday.
“This is a deplorables-plus electorate to hold the House and build the majority in the Senate: Deplorables plus the Reagan Democrats, plus those people who voted for the president in ’16 who never voted before in presidentials much less off years,” he added. “You’ve got to get those guys by telling them it is a presidential. Because the college-educated Republican women in the suburbs are a challenge. You are not going to be able to easily secure their support, a top target for the Democrats. Maybe they don’t vote for the other side and maybe they straggle in because their 401(k) is up. But it’s gonna be a challenge.”
oh to be a fly on the wall @ the Aspen Security Forum; we'll have to make do with
David Ignatius for WashingtonPost.com, July 19, 7:35 pm
ASPEN, Colo. The American intelligence community has never faced a problem quite like President Trump — a commander in chief who is suspected by a growing number of Republicans and Democrats of deferring to Russia’s views over the recommendations of his own intelligence agencies.
“There are almost two governments now,” worries John McLaughlin, a former acting CIA director. He discusses the Trump conundrum with the same vexation as a dozen other former intelligence officials I’ve spoken with since the president’s shockingly acquiescent performance onstage Mondaywith Russian President Vladimir Putin.
How are current intelligence chiefs handling this unprecedented situation? They are operating carefully but correctly, trying to balance their obligations to the president with the oaths they have sworn to protect and defend the Constitution. The officials continue to serve the elected president, but they are also signaling that they work for the American people.
Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, admirably rebuffedTrump on Monday, a few hours after the president seemed to accept Putin’s denial of meddling in the 2016 election. Coats gave the White House a heads-up, but he didn’t clear his statement. He believed it was essential to defend the intelligence community immediately.
FBI Director Christopher A. Wray made a similar show of independence here Wednesday at the Aspen Security Forum [....]
Six days after the US charged 12 Russian hackers with stealing and leaking DNC emails, a Microsoft executive says the same agency is targeting the midterm elections.
By Kevin Collier @ BuzzFeed.com, July 19, 2018, at 10:25 p.m. ET
[....] Speaking on a panel at the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday, Tom Burt, Microsoft's vice president for customer security and trust, said that his team had discovered a spear-phishing campaign targeting three candidates running for election in 2018. Analysts traced them to a group Microsoft has nicknamed Strontium, which is closely tracked by every major threat intelligence company and is widely accepted to be run by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.
Burt declined to name the candidates during the event, citing privacy concerns, and didn’t say which party they belonged to, but implied they were candidates of note and running for reelection [....]
For one thing, it’s not Trump country. Most struggling whites I know here live a life of quiet desperation, mad at their white bosses, not resentful toward their co-workers or neighbors of color.
Guest op-ed by Sarah Smarsh @ NYTimes.com, July 19. Ms. (Smarsh is the author of the forthcoming “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth.”)
WICHITA, Kan. — Is the white working class an angry, backward monolith — some 90 million white Americans without college degrees, all standing around in factories and fields thumping their dirty hands with baseball bats? You might think so after two years of media fixation on this version of the aggrieved laborer: male, Caucasian, conservative, racist, sexist.
This account does white supremacy a great service in several ways: It ignores workers of color, along with humane, even progressive white workers. It allows college-educated white liberals to signal superior virtue while denying the sins of their own place and class. And it conceals well-informed, formally educated white conservatives — from middle-class suburbia to the highest ranks of influence — who voted for Donald Trump in legions [....]
At this week’s summit in Helsinki, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed what President Trump described as an “incredible offer” — the Kremlin would give special counsel Robert S. Mueller III access to interviews with Russians who were indicted after they allegedly hacked Democrats in 2016. In return, Russia would be allowed to question certain U.S. officials it suspects of interfering in Russian affairs.
One of those U.S. officials is a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, a nemesis of the Kremlin because of his criticisms of Russia’s human rights record.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to rule out the Kremlin’s request to question McFaul and other Americans. Asked during the daily press briefing whether Trump is open to the idea of having McFaul questioned by Russia, Sanders said President Trump is “going to meet with his team” to discuss the offer.
“There was some conversation about it” between Trump and Putin, Sanders said, “but there wasn’t a commitment made on behalf of the United States. And the president will work with his team, and we’ll let you know if there’s an announcement on that front.”
The willingness of the White House to contemplate handing over a former U.S. ambassador for interrogation by the Kremlin drew ire and astonishment from current and former U.S. officials. Such a proposition is unheard of. So is the notion that the president may think he has the legal authority to turn anyone over to a foreign power on his own.
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Samantha Schmidt, WaPo 6:49 this morning.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, says that President Trump is "..certainly not careful in his words"......
Shocking assertion to throw that out there..! What will be the next calumny from the Oklahoma Republican ? "I wouldn't have phrased it as the President did"....? Strike him from the 18 Republican Senators needed to impeach...?
By Adam Satariano & Jack Nicas @ NYTimes.com, July 18
BRUSSELS — European authorities fined Google a record $5.1 billion on Wednesday for abusing its power in the mobile phone market and ordered the company to alter its practices, in one of the most aggressive regulatory actions against American technology giants and one that may force lasting changes to smartphones.
The European Union’s antitrust fine of 4.34 billion euros was almost double the bloc’s fine against Google last year over the company’s unfair favoring of its own services in internet search results. The penalty’s size highlighted Europe’s increasingly bold stance against the power of American tech firms, even as officials in the United States have taken a largely hands-off approach to the companies.
The fine was coupled with remedies that would effectively loosen Google’s grip over its Android software, which is used in 80 percent of the world’s smartphones and is a key part of the Silicon Valley company’s business [....]
But it’s probably not his fault.
By Nathaniel Rakich @ FiveThirtyEight.com, July 18
Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s new nominee to the Supreme Court, has been on the national stage for all of nine days, and the early reviews aren’t great: Polls show Kavanaugh as one of the most unpopular Supreme Court nominees in recent history.
The traditional way pollsters test support for a Supreme Court nominee is this: “Do you think the Senate should vote to confirm [name] to the Supreme Court?” At least three high-quality pollsters have asked a version of this question for Kavanaugh already — enough to start taking the data seriously [....]
Asians displace blacks as the most economically divided group in the U.S.
By Rakesh Kochhar and Anthony Cilluffo @ PewResearch.org, July 12
[....] An important part of the story of rising income inequality is that experiences within America’s racial and ethnic communities vary strikingly from one group to the other.
Today, income inequality in the U.S. is greatest among Asians. From 1970 to 2016, the gap in the standard of living between Asians near the top and the bottom of the income ladder nearly doubled, and the distribution of income among Asians transformed from being one of the most equal to being the most unequal among America’s major racial and ethnic groups.
In this process, Asians displaced blacks as the most economically divided racial or ethnic group in the U.S., according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data [....]
@ Pew Research Center, July 18
Democratic legislators’ opposition to political adversaries on Facebook spiked after Trump’s election, while “angry” reactions to posts by members of Congress increased among followers.
With summary article on A new Pew Research Center analysis examines congressional Facebook posts from Jan. 1, 2015, through Dec. 31, 2017, a three-year timespan that includes the entire 114th session of Congress, the 2016 primary and general elections, the first year of the 115th Congress, and Republican President Donald Trump’s first year in office. Complete PDF report available
Millennials are pretty reliable Democrats, but unreliable voters.
By Tara Golshan @ Vox.com, July 18
Democrats are winning over younger voters by huge numbers, but as a highly contentious, voter turnout-dependent midterm election inches closer, there’s a serious question of whether these young Democrats will come to the polls.
A recently released poll from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Atlanticconducted in June showed only 28 percent of young adults ages 18 to 29 say they are “absolutely certain” they’ll vote in midterms, compared to 74 percent of seniors [.....]
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The fact that Trump is unfit for office isn’t news.Here’s what is news: Last Friday, just days before the Trump-Putin summit, Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers, charging them with hacking, identity theft, and conspiracy to launder money. Allegedly, these officers were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the e-mails of Clinton campaign officials in 2016 and released stolen e-mails via Guccifer 2.0, the entity that furnished them to WikiLeaks in order to spread chaos and distrust among Democrats.
As Putin made clear in the joint press conference on Monday, Russia has no intention of extraditing any of these officers to stand trial in the United States, but that’s not the point of the indictments. More likely, Mueller intended to send a message to several figures not named but whose identities are strongly implied. One individual, described as “a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump,” is almost certainly longtime GOP operative and dirty trickster Roger Stone. The indictment describes this individual’s discussions with Russian agents regarding the release of stolen documents, citing language that precisely matches Stone’s previously reported August 2016 discussions with Guccifer. It’s easy to see how Stone himself could be charged with conspiring with foreign hackers, and how the mere threat of such charges could pressure him to flip on Trump.
But even more intriguing is the allegation that on August 15, 2016, the indicted officers “received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress” and that they “sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent.” Without anything beyond that description to work with, it’s best not to speculate as to who this candidate might be, but it’s safe to assume they know who they are. This is a shocking allegation, and it hints at larger implications of Russiagate that the public is nowhere close to coming to terms with.
It’s rarely recalled now, but back in May 2017, The Washington Post published the transcript of a conversation from June 2016 among the House Republican leadership, in which House majority leader Kevin McCarthy made clear that he was aware “the Russians hacked the DNC and got the opp research that they had on Trump” and speculated “there’s two people, I think, that Putin pays: [Representative Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump.” Amid laughter, House Speaker Paul Ryan insisted that the conversation remain off the record, adding, “What’s said in the family stays in the family.” Ryan would later claim he and McCarthy were joking.
The point here isn’t necessarily that Rohrabacher, a Republican congressman from California, solicited illegally obtained documents from Russian officials. There are other plausible candidates who might have done that. The point is that Russiagate, which is widely understood to be a scandal surrounding Donald Trump’s close associates like Paul Manafort, may go wider and deeper, and could implicate at least one member of Congress.
Moreover, it seems that the Republican leadership was at the very least aware of this possibility, amused by it, and did nothing whatsoever to alert the public or any relevant authorities. They were happy to enjoy the benefits of Russian interference and said so openly among themselves. Similarly, as the Post reported, when Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell was informed of Russian interference in September 2016 in a meeting with President Obama and other senior officials, he threatened to cast any public announcement of the threat as partisan politics. It’s not a stretch to say McConnell deliberately undermined national security for partisan advantage, a decision that has paid off with the signing of a massive tax cut for the wealthy and the looming establishment of a durable right-wing majority on the Supreme Court.
In other words, Russiagate isn’t just the narrow story of a few corrupt officials. It isn’t even the story of a corrupt president. It’s the story of a corrupt political party, the one currently holding all the levers of power in Washington. After Trump groveled before Putin in Helsinki, many Republicans in Washington proclaimed their solemn concern, just as they did when the president expressed his sympathy for the white supremacists in Charlottesville last year. But all of them are fully aware that they are abetting a criminal conspiracy, and probably more than one.
Shortly after the Trump-Putin press conference, federal prosecutors announced the indictment of Maria Butina, a Russian national in Washington, DC, who, unlike the 25 Russians the special counsel has so far indicted, was arrested over the weekend. Butina, who in 2016 attempted to arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin, is accused of operating as a foreign agent to gain influence in Republican political circles and advance the interests of the Russian Federation. Working on behalf of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Russian Central Bank, she appears to have brokered ties with the National Rifle Association and conservative religious organizations, which she herself accurately identified as the financial backbones of the Republican Party in Congress.
Butina is a colorful example of an increasingly common phenomenon in Washington: foreign nationals, not only from Russia but from dozens of other countries, who blur the line between lobbying and spying until it’s imperceptible. This is what the evisceration of campaign-finance laws has yielded: a capital where American corporations and foreign governments see every official as being for sale.
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David Klion, The Nation online, yesterday
A former White House stenographer said Wednesday that she resigned because President Donald Trump was “lying to the American people.”
The stenographer, Beck Dorey-Stein, joined the White House in 2012 during Barack Obama’s presidency. But she “couldn’t be proud” of working in the White House under Trump, she told CNN on Wednesday, and resigned in early 2017.
“I was so proud to serve under the Obama administration,” Dorey-Stein said. “And I felt like President Trump was lying to the American people and not even trying ... to tell the truth.”
As a stenographer, she was tasked with providing an accurate transcript of conversations involving the president. She described her position as the “first line of defense against the press” by making sure the president wasn’t misquoted.
“From President Reagan through President Obama, the White House really utilized stenographers to make sure there was a record of everything the president said to the press,” she said, adding that Obama would often tell the press to “check the transcript” to understand the context of his comments.
But Dorey-Stein said that strategy was scrapped when Trump took office.
“President Trump, we quickly learned, does not like microphones near his face, which is difficult because as a stenographer, we often had to do that,” she said. “His White House and his press office often didn’t include us in meetings with the press ... Even if there is a stenographer present, he doesn’t often say, ‘Check the transcript,’ because the transcript will reveal the truth.”
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Hayley Miller, HuffPo today
By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani @ NewYorker.com, July 15
A couple excerpts for an idea of how this takes one on a deep dive into Nigerian culture. This is the third time the New Yorker has published the author's work; the other essays were also related to understanding Nigeria.
[....] Last year, I travelled from Abuja, where I live, to Umujieze for my parents’ forty-sixth wedding anniversary. My father is the oldest man in his generation and the head of our extended family. One morning, a man arrived at our gate from a distant Anglican church that was celebrating its centenary. Its records showed that Nwaubani Ogogo had given an armed escort to the first missionaries in the region—a trio known as the Cookey brothers—to insure their safety. The man invited my father to receive an award for Nwaubani Ogogo’s work spreading the gospel. After the man left, my father sat in his favorite armchair, among a group of his grandchildren, and told stories about Nwaubani Ogogo.
“Are you not ashamed of what he did?” I asked.
“I can never be ashamed of him,” he said, irritated. “Why should I be? His business was legitimate at the time. He was respected by everyone around.” My father is a lawyer and a human-rights activist who has spent much of his life challenging government abuses in southeast Nigeria. He sometimes had to flee our home to avoid being arrested. But his pride in his family was unwavering. “Not everyone could summon the courage to be a slave trader,” he said. “You had to have some boldness in you.”
My father succeeded in transmitting to me not just Nwaubani Ogogo’s stories but also pride in his life [....]
[....] The descendants of freed slaves in southern Nigeria, called ohu, still face significant stigma. Igbo culture forbids them from marrying freeborn people, and denies them traditional leadership titles such as Eze and Ozo. (The osu, an untouchable caste descended from slaves who served at shrines, face even more severe persecution.) My father considers the ohu in our family a thorn in our side, constantly in opposition to our decisions [....]
By Reid Wilson @ TheHil.com, July 17
Promising news. Now my question is:do they have a clue how to spend it wisely? ~ arta
Senate Democrats and supportive outside groups have built a massive cash advantage over Republicans 3½ months before the midterm elections, raising GOP concerns that they will squander a golden opportunity to grow their narrow majority.
All told, Democratic candidates in 10 of the most critical races are sitting on $75 million, while their Republican rivals hold $33 million in cash on hand, according to a review of campaign finance documents filed in recent days. The gaps are widest in some of the red states President Trump carried by large margins in 2016 [....]
Feature by Michael Steinberger for NYTimes Magazine, July 17
His enemies paint him as all-powerful, but the billionaire philanthropist believes that his political legacy has never been in greater jeopardy.
Martha Roby, a Republican congresswoman, defeated a primary challenger who assailed her for withdrawing her support for President Trump in 2016
By Alexander Burns @ NYTimes.com, July 17
Representative Martha Roby of Alabama prevailed on Tuesday in a Republican primary election that unfolded as a test of fealty to President Trump, defeating a challenger who assailed her for withdrawing her support for Mr. Trump in the last days of the 2016 campaign.
Her criticism of Mr. Trump cost Ms. Roby, a mainstream conservative seeking a fifth term, a clear-cut victory in an initial round of voting last month. She fell short of a majority, forcing her to compete in a runoff election against Bobby Bright, a populist former Democrat who served in Congress and as mayor of Montgomery, Alabama’s capital.
She handily held off Mr. Bright, The Associated Press reported, after overcoming suspicion about her loyalty to the president with help from an unlikely ally — Mr. Trump himself.Unlike other Republicans whom Mr. Trump has gleefully helped push from office, Ms. Roby was not an eager antagonist during the 2016 presidential election [....]