JustOneMinute

American Heroes

From the Times:

Three Men Stood Up to Anti-Muslim Attack. Two Paid With Their Lives.

By Daniel Victor

An Army veteran, a recent college graduate and a student who once won a poetry contest by condemning prejudice stirred up by the Sept. 11 attacks intervened as a man screamed anti-Muslim insults at two women in Portland, Ore., on Friday.

In the days that followed, the three men were hailed as heroes.

Two of the men — Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, 23, and Rick Best, 53 — died in the attack, which occurred on a commuter train. The third, Micah David-Cole Fletcher, 21, was treated on Saturday for injuries that the police said were serious but not life-threatening.

"Hailed as heroes" because they are. 

The floater who did the stabbing is a nutjob and a political nihilist, so making political hay from this is silly but of course inevitable. From Heat Street:

In short, Christian is a deranged nihilist who just wants to watch the world burn.

And now the world wants to watch him burn so the feeling is mutual.

 

Fire Michael Flynn!

The NY Times really gets the goods on Team Trump's collusion with the Russians! Oh, spoiler alert provided by the Daily Caller:

Go Straight To The Fifth Paragraph Of The Latest NYT ‘Bombshell’ On Russia Collusion

...

But the (few) readers who make it to the fifth paragraph and are paying attention will realize there’s not actually much meat to the report. That paragraph hedges on the information collected by the spies, and notes the reporter has no real clue whether Russian officials actually made any attempt to influence the Trump aides in question. Oh yeah and the Trump campaign as well as both aides have consistently denied the longstanding accusations of collusion with Russia.

Because she is THAT GOOD Rachel Stoltzfoos of the DC puts their spoiler in the fourth paragraph. Who has time to read?

But let me excerpt some of the many caveats in the Times hot-air burst. Let's set the stage with the dramatic lead!

Top Russian Officials Discussed How to Influence Trump Aides Last Summer

WASHINGTON — American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers, according to three current and former American officials familiar with the intelligence.

The conversations focused on Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman at the time, and Michael T. Flynn, a retired general who was advising Mr. Trump, the officials said. Both men had indirect ties to Russian officials, who appeared confident that each could be used to help shape Mr. Trump’s opinions on Russia.

Paragraph five puts us on the fast-track to Caveat City:

The information collected last summer was considered credible enough for intelligence agencies to pass to the F.B.I., which during that period opened a counterintelligence investigation that is continuing. It is unclear, however, whether Russian officials actually tried to directly influence Mr. Manafort and Mr. Flynn. Both have denied any collusion with the Russian government on the campaign to disrupt the election.

The Times account of former CIA head Brennan's testimony to Congress is comical:

John O. Brennan, the former director of the C.I.A., testified Tuesday about a tense period last year when he came to believe that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was trying to steer the outcome of the election. He said he saw intelligence suggesting that Russia wanted to use Trump campaign officials, wittingly or not, to help in that effort. He spoke vaguely about contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials, without giving names, saying they “raised questions in my mind about whether Russia was able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.”

Cue the scary music! But a few paragraphs later:

In his congressional testimony, Mr. Brennan discussed the broad outlines of the intelligence, and his disclosures backed up the accounts of the information provided by the current and former officials.

“I was convinced in the summer that the Russians were trying to interfere in the election. And they were very aggressive,” Mr. Brennan said. Still, he said, even at the end of the Obama administration he had “unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting U.S. persons, involved in the campaign or not, to work on their behalf again either in a witting or unwitting fashion.”

Pretty strong stuff. The Russians may or may not have succeeded and their American counterparts may have been accomplices, or dupes.

Michael Flynn, on the other hand, really needs to be fired. Oh, wait...

Mr. Flynn’s ties to Russian officials stretch back to his time at the Defense Intelligence Agency, which he led from 2012 to 2014. There, he began pressing for the United States to cultivate Russia as an ally in the fight against Islamist militants, and even spent a day in Moscow at the headquarters of the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence service, in 2013.

He continued to insist that Russia could be an ally even after Moscow’s seizure of Crimea the following year, and Obama administration officials have said that contributed to their decision to push him out of the D.I.A.

But in private life, Mr. Flynn cultivated even closer ties to Russia. In 2015, he earned more than $65,000 from companies linked to Russia, including a cargo airline implicated in a bribery scheme involving Russian officials at the United Nations, and an American branch of a cybersecurity firm believed to have ties to Russia’s intelligence services.

The biggest payment, though, came from RT, the Kremlin-financed news network. It paid Mr. Flynn $45,000 to give a speech in Moscow, where he also attended the network’s lavish anniversary dinner. There, he was photographed sitting next to Mr. Putin.

A senior lawmaker said on Monday that Mr. Flynn misled Pentagon investigators about how he was paid for the Moscow trip. He also failed to disclose the source of that income on a security form he was required to complete before joining the White House, according to congressional investigators.

Time will tell which sides are represented by Jack and Tom. But please tell me the "Impeach Trump" crowd has not pinned their hopes to a phone bill.

 

 

Tough Week For China

 

Google AI beats Chinese master in ancient game of Go

and

M.M.A. Fighter’s Pummeling of Tai Chi Master Rattles China

Video of beatdown here.

Get Rid Of Those Rear View Mirrors

Humans are built to look forward. To a future so bright we'll need shades! (But not coal.)

David Brooks Is Right - Trump's Talent Search Will Be Difficult

Employing a metaphor that might have been taken from Tom Friedman, David Brooks erupts on TrumpWorld:

The Trump Administration Talent Vacuum

After an eruption, volcanoes sometimes collapse at the center. The magma chamber empties out and the volcano falls in on itself, leaving a caldera and a fractured ring of stone around the void, covered by deadening ash.

That’s about the shape of Washington after the last stunning fortnight. The White House at the center just collapsed in on itself and the nation’s policy apparatus is covered in ash.

I don’t say that because I think the Comey-Russia scandal will necessarily lead to impeachment. I have no idea where the investigations will go.

I say it because White Houses, like all organizations, run on talent, and the Trump White House has just become a Human Resources disaster area.

We have seen White Houses engulfed by scandal before. But we have never seen a White House implode before it had the time to staff up. The Nixon, Reagan and Clinton White Houses had hired quality teams by the time their scandals came. They could continue to function, sort of, even when engulfed.

The Trump administration, on the other hand, has hundreds of senior and midlevel positions to fill, and few people of quality or experience are going to want to take them.

As a bonus wrinkle, previous Presidents had some political background and a team of loyalists trailing in their wake. Reagan had his California cronies, Bush had the Rove/Hughes/Allbaugh Texas Triumvirate, and even Obama had a Chicago machine to lean on. Trump did not arrive with a seasoned team and is going to have a brutal time continuing to try and pull one together. One suggestion! Have the White House employment contract include some sort of legal insurance.

And We're Off To Special Counsel City!

The failing NY Times has the drama as well as the background on the naming of former FBI head Robert Mueller as Special Counsel on the alleged Trump-Russia connection.

My two cents? So far this had been a smoky yet fire-free scandal until Comey was fired. My guess is there is no 'there' there and we are just seeing Trump's opponents dialing the outrage back to eleven. But what do I know?

I will add this - in my view the last special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, was appointed back in Dec 2003 in small part to quell Democrats who wanted to Get Bush but in large part by Republicans who wanted to Get Cheney. Folks may have forgotten now and we did not know it at the time but in late 2003 the DoJ was in revolt over Cheney's War on Terror, highlighted by legal issues surrounding the warrantless NSA surveillance and the use of enhanced interrogation.

In that sense a similar dynamic may be in play here. Obviously there is little love to be lost between Trump and the Republican establishment. If the appointment of Mueller actually results in a period of leak-free calm (if!) that could help the Republicans advance their seemingly tattered agenda. (Who ever guessed a Republican President and a Republican Congress couldn't figure out how to cut taxes?) In any case, the establishment is eager at this point to separate their fortunes from the volatile Donald.

As to 2018 and the vulnerable Red State Democratic Senators? We might need an East Coast weather advisory since their exhales of relief might initiate a tropical storm. It's already supposed to hit 90 here in Connecticut!

LIKE TWO PAPERS IN ONE! The 'drama' Times story by Ruiz and Landler includes this odd bit of history:

It was only the second time that the Justice Department has named a special counsel. The first was in 1999, the year the law creating the position took effect. Attorney General Janet Reno appointed John Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, to investigate the botched federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., in 1993 that killed 76 people.

Really? Here is Charlie Savage on the background of the special counsel appointment:

Yes. There is precedent for granting special counsels greater autonomy than the regulation calls for — and, in a coincidence, it involves Mr. Comey. In 2003, as the deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, Mr. Comey was overseeing an investigation into the leaking of the identity of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame Wilson, because the attorney general, John Ashcroft, was recused.

Mr. Comey appointed Patrick Fitzgerald, the sitting United States attorney in Chicago, as special counsel. As part of that move, he waived the regulation and delegated his supervisory powers as acting attorney general for the case to Mr. Fitzgerald, giving him greater autonomy to make decisions about subpoenaing witnesses or bringing charges without the potential for second-guessing by Mr. Comey.

But Mr. Rosenstein did not take that step for Mr. Mueller.

Maybe Ruiz and Landler would argue that the Fitzgerald appointment doesn't count because it went beyond the scope of the regulation cited in the appointment of Mueller. Pretty thin!

 

Moving Toward The Exits

From the failing NY Times:

G.O.P. Senators Pull Away From Trump, Alarmed at His Volatility

Financial markets have been betting that a Republican President and a Republican Congress could figure out how to cut taxes and regulation. OK, one for two ain't bad.

Saturday Morning

The traditional "I will not let TrumpWorld interfere with my weekend" open thread.

The Ongoing Crisis

What is it now?

Comey Out! And What Does It Mean?

It has been clear for a year that looking for logic in TrumpWorld and feeling outraged by its absence is a game for fools. OK, and for those who have given up salt and feel a need to supplement their blood pressure.

Eric Boehm of Reason reprises some reactions from left and right. I especially love this from ardent and partisan lefty Josh Marshall:

Here's how Marshall puts it [link]: "There is only one reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the decision to fire Comey: that there is grave wrongdoing at the center of the Russia scandal and that it implicates the President. As I write this, I have a difficult time believing that last sentence myself. But sometimes you have to step back from your assumptions and simply look at what the available evidence is telling you. It's speaking clearly: the only reasonable explanation is that the President has something immense to hide and needs someone in charge of the FBI who he believes is loyal."

Or, "I can hardly believe I believe what I desperately want to believe." Really? Most people find that pretty easy. More difficult is conjuring explanations when you don't want there to be any.

Just for example - might Trump be firing Comey to maintain a cover-up? Absolutely. But isn't it possible that Trump is firing Comey because he has zero credibility on either the left or right at this point? An "exoneration" from Comey in the form of a no-action press conference clearing Trump and his associates from any Russian collusion will never silence or satisfy Trump's critics. That could be it! And just to give that notion a chance to breathe, might we want to wait and see who is tapped to replace Comey at the FBI?

Back to Boehm:

It will take days, perhaps weeks (perhaps longer) to understand all the ramifications of Tuesday's firing of Comey. Much will depend on who Trump appoints to lead the FBI and who, if anyone, he (or Congress) appoints to continue the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.

In the short term, though, this looks very, very bad for Trump.

Yes it does, but just how bad really does depend on what happens next.

The Unions Come To Campus - Stand Back!

To borrow a favorite from Glenn Reynolds - why are America's liberal campuses such cesspools of anti-unionism?

Jennifer Klein, a Yale professor writing in the NY Times, lays out the 'unions for the but not for me' attitude at Yale, Harvard and more. In brief, they like the cheap and flexible labor, unlike greedy corporations who are simply exploiting workers shamelessly.

DO LET ME ADD: Early reports described this as a "symbolic" hunger strike - students can eat when hungry, prompting Twitter wags to announce proudly that they, too have been on hunger strikes for decades, for causes as yet undeclared.

However, per Prof. Klein this hunger strike is not all merriment and hot dogs:

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Two weeks ago, Yale graduate student teachers began a hunger strike to pressure the school to negotiate with their union. Eight committed to fasting, planning only to stop if a doctor says their health is at risk of permanent damage. If a student has to stop fasting, another union member takes his or her spot. Four of the students have had nothing but water for 14 days.

...

At Yale, graduate student teachers tried sending letters, gathering signatures for community petitions and holding rallies to bring the school to the bargaining table, without result. So, two weeks ago, union members erected a lofty shelter on Beinecke Plaza facing the offices of Yale’s president, Peter Salovey. They furnished the area with sofas, chairs, tables, lamps, a bookcase, turf and picnic tables. The graduate students who are fasting take posts there each day, wrapped in blankets. Some use wheelchairs as they have become too weak to walk. At night they sleep inside the First and Summerfield Church.

After deep reflection I will take the same view I took when professional athletes unionize and threaten to strike - I don't care how much Derek Jeter or Tom Brady makes, I would rather see the money go to them then the Steinbrenner family or Robert Kraft. Like Harvard and Yale can't afford to pay up? Especially since virtually every faculty member there would back any union against any company or municipal employer?

The Comey Letter: It Sunk Her, It Sunk Her Not

From the failing NY Times we get Nate Cohn of 'Upshot':

A 2016 Review: There’s Reason to Be Skeptical of a Comey Effect

And that other poll-watching Nate, Mr. Silver of 538:

The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election

So why won’t the media admit as much?

Oh, my.

On a related note, and this is especially poignant for Hillary-watchers: when you've lost the Times... How is it the Times is presenting a political piece that is not transparently Trump-phobic? Well, maybe they are now writing based on conviction rather than political agenda. OK, April Fools was a month ago.

But maybe the Times team, individually or collectively, has realized that Hillary is not the future of the Democratic Party or the progressive program (nor is Chelsea) so they want to help the rest of us Move On. 

I love a mystery!

Vive La France!

A lonely nation turns its eyes to you...

Dirty tricks plague the globalists choice.

The Power Of Positive Pessimism

As Dems prep for 2020 Joe Biden is optimistic about their opportunity as the Party of Pessimism:

MANCHESTER, N.H. — A vast array of Democratic leaders, divided by generations but uniformly emboldened by President Trump’s perceived vulnerability, have begun taking palpable steps toward seeking the White House in an election that is still three and a half years away.

A prominent member of that group, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., may have sounded a starting gun for the 2020 race on Sunday night as he delivered a tough-love manifesto for the party’s future to a crowd of Democrats here.

Mr. Biden called on Democrats to deliver an optimistic message aimed at the needs of struggling Americans and to emphasize issues like health care and education, which he described as largely sidelined in the last election. “I’m absolutely positive they want to be with us,” he said of people in economic distress. “We have to prove, again, we understand that hopelessness.”

Go, go Joe! When I think of hopeless I think of Biden, as do we all. I also notice that [Insert honorific here] Biden has even cleaned up his language a bit - could he be warming up for 2020 himself?

Mr. Biden said he was prepared to storm the country to help revive the party, and boasted of his comfort in wooing areas that voted for Mr. Trump. “Wherever you want, just let me know, because it’s important,” he said.

"It's important"?!? I would say it is a big effing deal.