JustOneMinute

Terror In Manhattan

From the NY Post:

8 killed as truck plows into pedestrians in downtown NYC terror attack

A man in a pickup truck killed eight people when he drove onto the West Side bike path in lower Manhattan Tuesday afternoon — and then shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he got out of the car with fake guns, police sources said.

The NY Times:

At Least 8 Killed as Truck Careens Down Bike Path in Manhattan

Eight people were killed when a man drove 20 blocks down a bike path beside the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon before he crashed his pickup truck, jumped out with fake guns and was shot by a police officer, the authorities said.

Federal authorities were treating the incident as a terrorist attack and were taking the lead in the investigation, a senior law enforcement official said. Two law enforcement officials said that after the attacker got out of the truck, he was heard yelling, “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is great.”

 

 

Remaining A Safe Space For Cisgendered Straight White Guys Since 2002

Here at JOM we are going in a different direction from the DNC:

DNC Email: Straight White Men Need Not Apply

The Democratic National Committee is hiring for some new positions in their Technology Team, including Chief Security Officer, IT Systems Administrator, and Product Manager. In the email soliciting job applications, it says that the DNC is looking for a "staff of diverse voices and life experiences." 

Unfortunately, according to the DNC's Data Service Manager Madeleine Leader, this desire for "diverse voices and life experiences" apparently doesn't extend to "cisgender straight white males." In the closing paragraph of the email, Leader said "I personally would prefer that you not forward to cisgender straight white males, as they are already in the majority." 

Yup. 

One of the key projects will be upgrading their micro-targeting to make sure their outreach to working class whites is on track. JK.

 

Keep BS Alive! In Which We Exhort People To Take A Breath...

The Mueller indictments and criminal information have set the mediasphere on fire! So much so that oxygen-deprived commentators are, well, losing track of some key plot points. We get to Lawfare later but let's start with Joe Uchill of The Hill, who gets this splashy headline:

Timeline: Campaign knew Russia had Clinton emails months before Trump 'joke'

Hmm. "Campaign"? One out-of-the-loop nobody in London got a mention from The Professor, a guy with some Russian contacts. Nothing in the affidavit or stipulation indicate George P passed this along. So who is "the campaign"? [Do let me add: my primary criticism of the Uchill piece applies equally to the Scott Shane effort at the failing NY Times.]

As to "knew" - well, George P claims he thought the Professor was BSing. Hillary's secret server and email travails had been in the news for over a year at that point and the possibility of classified info being hacked had been prominent in March and April of 2016. Maybe The Professor read the papers? Maybe he really was BSing and George P nailed it? Again, nothing in the stipulation indicates that George P followed up on 'the dirt', or that "the dirt" was even an agenda item rather than just a surprise suggestion from The Professor.

But Joe Uchill really loses the plot in his main story:

Months before candidate Donald Trump asked Russia to “find” Hillary Clinton's missing private server emails — a statement the campaign later called a joke — a Russian operative told a campaign aide "the Russians had emails of Clinton," according to a plea agreement released Monday. 

...

In the context of the timeline of events, Papadopoulos was told of Russian hacking before the rest of the country, and weeks before the Trump campaign made its first denial of Russian involvement in the election. 

We are then presented with a timeline of the DNC and Podesta hacks, and so what? If The Professor was referencing Hillary's server, We the People still don't know if the Russians hacked that. What we do know is that no one needed to be a Russian insider to speculate that the Russians had hacked Hillary's server - that was a public worry. If The Professor had mentioned the DNC or Podesta, OK, that would have been deeply troubling. But he didn't.

If The Professor was just BSing about Hillary's emails based on what he read in the news (or passing along a Russian contact's BS) and got lucky when the DNC emails were released, well, good guess. He should spend more time buying Lotto tickets.

Or if The Professor had early word of the Podesta and DNC hacks and simplified everything as dirt on Hillary, well, again, so what? Maybe George P took this seriously and followed up but nothing released confirms that.

Should George P have gone to the FBI with this hot tip? Please - sort of like Team Hillary went to the FBI as the Steele dossier came together. George P may have simply not believed it. I have one Russian friend (OK, small sample size) and there is no conspiracy theory so outlandish he won't nibble on it. You think there are Americans who don't trust the government and don't trust the media? Go to Russia. The Professor undoubtedly heard all sorts of outlandish stuff  from his Russian buddies and may have passed some along. Turned out to be true-ish, but who knew?

Meanwhile, over at the invaluable Lawfare, Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes provide a quick take on Monday's action. My quibble points revolve around these passages:

The second big takeaway is even starker: A member of President Trump’s campaign team admits that he was working with people he knew to be tied to the Russian government to “arrange a meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government officials” and to obtain “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of hacked emails—and that he lied about these activities to the FBI. He briefed President Trump on at least some of them.

"Working to... obtain dirt"? No evidence that the offer of dirt was incidental and a surprise or that there was follow-up.

His [George P] guilty plea is for lying to FBI investigators in a Jan. 27, 2017, interview regarding his conduct and contacts. As we’ve discussed in the past, it isn’t uncommon for false statements to the FBI to be prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 offenses in these sorts of cases. Proving that someone is lying is often easier than proving that the underlying offense violates the law. Here, for example, Papadopoulos’s underlying activity—working with Russian government officials to obtain “dirt” on Clinton and set up a Putin-Trump meeting—may have been legal, if wholly disreputable. Lying about it, however, is a crime. 

Same objection. Bonus objection - the dirt is only mentioned in a conversation with The Professor, who is neither a Russian nor an official.

That said, the Papadopoulos stipulation offers a stunningly frank, if probably incomplete, account of what occurred during the spring of 2016 in the Trump campaign. To wit, during that period, Trump campaign officials were actively working to set up a meeting with Russian officials or representatives. And from a very early point in the campaign, those meetings were explicitly about obtaining hacked, incriminating emails.

Similar objection. Based on the released info, only George P knew about the email offer and no meeting was "explicitly" about that (Teh George P follow-up emails after the fateful breakfast meeting were still about a Trump meeting with Putin). Maybe Mueller is playing it close to the vest or maybe he is delivering drama-provoking over-charges. Time will tell! From the stipulation:

Next:

It isn’t clear which emails the various parties might have been discussing here. There are, after all, the hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee, which first became public on June 14, 2016, though the breach had occurred more than a year earlier. There are the hacked emails of Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, abreach that occurred on March 19, 2016, but that did not become public until Oct. 9, 2016. There are also the purported 30,000 emails from Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department, a matter dating to 2015, which may not have ever been hacked but which Trump campaign folks clearly believed had been. There is also possibly some other category of alleged emails that wasn’t a matter of public discussion. But it’s clear that Trump campaign officials were after emails and, well, let’s just say they didn’t go to the FBI when they found themselves in conversations with Russian officials about them.

Good point about the range of emails on the menu. Again, it is not at all clear anyone was after any emails.

The stipulation also contains some rather damaging information about President Trump himself. Papadopoulos says he attended a “national security” meeting on March 31, 2016, at which Trump himself was present, along with his other foreign policy advisers. In that meeting, Papadopoulos told the group that he had connections to arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Putin. This means that Trump either knew or should have known about his campaign’s effort to interface with Russia, even as news of various criminal hacking and attempts to interfere with the U.S. election were becoming public.

For heaven's sake! Trump has been to Russia a million times and has more connection there than this nobody from nowhere. Meanwhile, as to "news of various criminal hacking and attempts to interfere with the U.S. election were becoming public", which is it? If the email hacking was public (seems early to me for the DNC/Podesta stuff) then why are we sure The Professor was not just following the news? Or if it was still secret, why would Trump know about it?

But that’s about the only good news in the indictment for the president. Because Manafort is alleged to have lied about his foreign-agent status and made false statements into this year. In other words, at the same time Papadopoulos admits he was working Russian government officials for Clinton emails and for a Trump-Putin meeting, Manafort was allegedly still laundering the money he had obtained by illegally representing one of Putin’s allied strongmen.

I'm a broken record, but... The Professor was not a Russian official and George P doesn't admit to "working" with anyone to obtain emails.

Since you ask, The Professor is described in the affidavit (but not the stipulation) as a 'citizen of a country in the Mediterranean'. Page 4:

My betting pool - he is Cypriot. Cyprus, Russian oligarchs, money laundering - c'mon. [OK, maybe Malta? The Professor is IDed as Joseph Misfud.]

Well. Lawfare normally does fabulous work but this time they seem to be making assumptions not supported by the facts in evidence.

Knucklehead Grifter Busted For Being A Lying Knucklehead

It's Fitzmas at Halloween as Team Mueller releases info about a plea deal with George Papadopoulos, an actual member of Trump's campaign. OK, the guy was nobody, sitting off in London trying to promote himself by writing emails no one seems to have read. But hey, the failing NY Times gets a Fake News headline out of it:

Trump Campaign Adviser Met With Russian to Discuss ‘Dirt’ on Clinton

Hmm, he met with him to discuss it, as in, George P knew in advance that dirt was on the agenda? Neither the affidavit from FBI agent Robert Gibbs nor the stipulation agreed as part of the plea deal go that far. Here are pages 6 and 7 from the stipulation:

And from the affidavit:

A couple of things are missing. First, as proof of a false statement the FBI really might have wanted to include an email from Papadopuolos mentioning the "dirt". Instead, the Big Reveal in the affidavit is that the Professor was not treated as a 'nobody'. Disappointing!

No doubt some will say that Mueller is keeping his cards close to his vest. Please. If the people on the receiving end of the George P. emails hadn't already checked every email mentioning Hillary, Russia or emails, well, they surely have by now, with special emphasis on any email chain including George P. The idea that Mueller will mousetrap someone by producing an email from George P. of which the recipient is unaware is Fitzmas-level fantasizing.

Also missing, contra the Times headline - any indication that the agenda of the meeting was to discuss Hillary dirt. One might infer from the follow-up about arranging a Trump meeting with Putin that the agenda was in fact the ongoing discussion of a meeting that was never going to happen.

And speaking of this never-meeting, one of the more revealing factoids from the stipulation is this:

 So the nobody in London has been "working" on arranging a meeting for since March but only finds out in June just who on the campaign will set it up? Come on. And the footnote, where the message is passed that the whole thing is a non-starter, reveals just how completely out of the loop this indictee was.

So why was he lying about what are transparently legal meetings and gossip that never went anywhere? And why did he think any of these lies would hold up to a cursory (and inevitable) examination of his emails?

Obviously conspiracists will conjure an answer but I think we should never underestimate the power of stupid.

 

Andrew McCarthy On The Manafort Indictment

Andy McCarthy does not exactly say that the Manafort indictment is a classic example of special prosecutors in action. But he could have! Team Mueller delivered felony charges that would normally be la-di-da administrative violations, creative expansion of the criminal code in contradiction of Congressional intent, and a general sense of active imaginations at work. Away we go!

Left unsaid - a DC jury will be delighted to convict Manafort of having a bad haircut if it can be billed as a slap at Trump. Resist!

Too bad - Manafort did seem to be trying to turn his Trump connections into Ukrainian gold and certainly deserved to be fired. Ethically dubious, but a criminal? I guess we will find out.

Manafort Busted

Manafort and one of his aides are busted:

Paul Manafort, Who Once Ran Trump Campaign, Surrenders to F.B.I.

WASHINGTON — Paul Manafort surrendered to federal authorities Monday morning, after a person close to the case said the first charges were filed in a special counsel investigation.

The charges against Mr. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, were not immediately clear but represent a significant escalation in a special counsel investigation that has cast a shadow over the president’s first year in office. Also charged was Mr. Manafort’s former business associate Rick Gates, who was also told to surrender on Monday, the person said.

Mr. Manafort walked into the F.B.I.’s field office in Washington at about 8:15 a.m. with his lawyer.

Hmm, the FBI didn't burst into his home at dawn? They are lightening up.

LIGHTNING ROUND: This is good news for Trump because it suggests that plea negotiations with Manafort have gone nowhere. Possibly becasue they have nowhere to go - Trump did fire the guy last summer when the rumors and innuendo about Manafort and the Russkies hit the press.

Paul Manafort Quits Donald Trump’s Campaign After a Tumultuous Run

Paul Manafort, a professional Republican political operative since the 1970s, was supposed to impose order on Donald J. Trump’s chaotic presidential campaign.

On Friday, the chaos devoured him.

Weeks of sliding poll numbers and false starts had sapped Mr. Manafort’s credibility inside the campaign. A cooling relationship with Mr. Trump — who had taken to calling Mr. Manafort “low energy,” the epithet he once used to mock a former rival, Jeb Bush — turned hot last weekend when the candidate erupted, blaming Mr. Manafort for a damaging newspaper article detailing the campaign’s internal travails, according to three people briefed on the episode.

Then a wave of reports about Mr. Manafort’s own business dealings with Russia-aligned leaders in Ukraine, involving allegations of millions of dollars in cash payments and secret lobbying efforts in the United States, threw a spotlight on a glaring vulnerability for Mr. Trump: his admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

By Friday morning, Mr. Manafort’s predictions to confidants that he might not be able to survive in his post had come true.

“This morning Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “I am very appreciative for his great work in helping to get us where we are today.”

In fact, Mr. Manafort did not go voluntarily. “My father just didn’t want to have the distraction looming over the campaign,” Eric Trump, the candidate’s second son, explained in a Fox News interview.

...

At the same time, the new accounts of Mr. Manafort’s ties to Ukraine quickly eroded the support that he had from Mr. Trump’s family during his earlier battles with Mr. Lewandowski.

According to people briefed on the matter, Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, expressed increasing concern after a Times article published on Sunday about allegations of cash payments made to Mr. Manafort’s firm for his work on behalf of his main client, Viktor F. Yanukovych, the former Ukranian president, who is an ally of Mr. Putin.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has repeatedly sought to yoke Mr. Trump to Mr. Putin, citing Mr. Trump’s praise for the Russian leader. And the avalanche of stories about his work for pro-Russian entities in Ukraine were becoming untenable for the campaign, according to people briefed on the discussions.

“The easiest way for Trump to sidestep the whole Ukraine story is for Manafort not to be there,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who has become a counselor to Mr. Trump.

In North Carolina on Thursday, Mr. Trump was informed of the newest such report: an Associated Press article that, citing emails, showed that Mr. Manafort’s firm had orchestrated a pro-Ukrainian lobbying campaign in Washington without registering as a foreign agent.

That was enough, according to people briefed on the calls, for Mr. Trump to call Mr. Bannon and Ms. Conway.

He had the same message for each: It was time for Mr. Manafort to go.

 

Sunday Afternoon

Let's have the traditional Sunday afternoon open thread.

Try, Try Again

So I was rooting for Penn State and the Astros yesterday. Whatever - today is the "Another day" we were promised yesterday and we will see what we see.

Meanwhile, I can't wait for Monday, or whenever these sealed charges lead to arrests. Has to be Manafort or someone close to him, yes?

Are You Ready For Some Standing, Sitting, Talking, And Maybe Football?

ESPN Magazine presents a seemingly endless article about a seemingly endless controversy - just how might the NFL owners and players come out on the social justice/national anthem protests?

After reading for a few minutes I became hopelessly distracted by the notion that this had nothing to do with the actual games. OK, I was also distracted by the notion of the concussion-ridden, injury vexed NFL focusing on social justice rather than the ludicrous mis-treatment of their own retired players. If this lying, greedy owners group were on fire I wouldn't put down my beer and... well, my bladder control or lack thereof is not the issue here.

FWIW, I was listening to some sports talk radio chatter about the NFL's ratings problems. First, let's note that their problem would be any other leagues dream ratings - my guess is that the NFL Sunday games will out-draw the World Series.

But more importantly, one speaker wondered whether the declining ratings were due to over-exposure (Thursday Night, Sunday all day, Sunday Night, Monday Night and college everywhere), the slow pace and endless booth reviews (who among us fails to enjoy watching live as three guys huddle around a television monitor watching replays?), the injuries to star players (the best defensive player, JJ Watt and two of the top offensive players, Aaron Rodgers and Odell Beckham Jr, are gone for the season), the social justice protests, the long, strung out commentary by people writing endless sentences about the league (OK, that's on me...) - what, he wondered, is the problem?

To which the co-host replied, why choose? The ratings decline is almost surely due to All of the Above.

Oh well. It's Saturday afternoon. Play ball, college-style!

THIS Is A Stud Athlete?

My goodness - three-time NFL defensive player of the year JJ Watt of the Houston Texans has raised $37 million for Hurricane Harvey relief but he needs to raise his game if he wants to pass himself off as a premier athlete. OK, he is throwing from one leg and using one crutch, evidently impaired by a broken leg. Still, his ceremonial first pitch at the Astros-Dodgers Game Three is Obamaesque.

C'mon, don't embarrass us out there.

The Reign In Spain...

It's nice to see that we and the Brits have company in the political chaos category.

The Kennedy Files

Who killed John Kennedy? Conspiracy theorists eagerly await a major (but incomplete!) file dump.

SIDEBAR: I am scoring this mystery phone call to a Brit paper as BS. What, "Call the US embassy for big news" 25 minutes before Kennedy is shot? Because otherwise the reporters might have not heard about the shooting?

OK, I get that there was no Twitter or CNN in 1963 but still, prior to the shooting this tip was meaningless and afterwards it was hardly necessary. No Sale.

IRS Apologizes To Tea Party, Finally

And here we thought being the IRS meant never having to say you're sorry.

Sen. Fauxcahontas - NOT a Truth-Teller

Wow, Elizabeth Warren re-imagining the truth in order to bolster her image - who could have seen that coming?

On Meet The Press last Sunday Sen. Warren shared a wrenching "me-too" story about the sexual harassment of a young Professor Warren many years ago. However, by weird coincidence, she had told the same story years ago in the course of eulogizing her alleged harasser. I know, right? Must have been a pretty scarring incident if she took time out of her schedule to attend his funeral. Or did she open with "I have come to bury this randy old goat, not to praise him"? Not according to the fellow who described it, who remembers her making light of the whole incident (although now he wonders how reliable his memory might be, and who among us can not relate? Other than The Donald, I suppose.)

Bonus Baffler: Today Ms. Warren describes the harasser chasing her around his office desk. Back in Realityville the guy had polio and could barely walk.

Whatever. The guy is dead so he won't be commenting and who am I to question her many truths?

Cheap, Irresponsible Bonus Speculation, or, Get Your Schadenfreude Early

The NY Times has been pounding the table on Weinstein and related stories of sexual harassment. What is the chance that back in the 80's and 90's, or even later, the Times newsroom didn't have a, well, awkward Hollywood dynamic with older, established men of power and rising young ingenues looking for a break?

If Mark Halperin can be plausibly accused of sexual harassment can the Times really be squeaky clean? Or do they see themselves making a virtue of necessity with this current crusade?

ERRATA: This 2011 New Yorker piece about the rise of editor Jill Abramson includes a few straws in the wind about harassment. Slate covered her 2014 exit, with more straws:

Of course, Abramson’s short tenure atop the Times did not usher in a new gender-equitable utopia at the paper. “I have worked many places, but nowhere more sexist than the New York Times,” one young female staffer told me. (“We don’t have a great culture of female solidarity at the Times,” is how another put it.) “There’s still very much an Old Boys’ Club atmosphere here. It’s hard to pinpoint—it’s that uncomfortable kind of sexism you don’t know what to do with.” The staffer didn’t blame Abramson for that environment, but said she felt that her perch at the top was sometimes invoked by others to elide the Times’ more diffuse woman problem. “It’s nice to pretend that we’re past gender,” the staffer told me, “but we’re not.” 

Any day now...

 

Blue On Blue, Leon Wieseltier Edition

Leon Wieseltier, longtime literary editor of The New Republic, has caught the Weinstein flu:

Leon Wieseltier, a prominent editor at The New Republic for three decades who was preparing to unveil a new magazine next week, apologized on Tuesday for “offenses against some of my colleagues in the past” after several women accused him of sexual harassment and inappropriate advances.

As those allegations came to light, Laurene Powell Jobs, a leading philanthropist whose for-profit organization, Emerson Collective, was backing Mr. Wieseltier’s endeavor, decided to pull the plug on it.

Yeah, well, like Weinstein he was on the downhill side of his career so it was safe to come for him. More on Wieseltier here.

 

The Trump Dossier And The FBI

Byron York discusses the Trump dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign and maybe - or maybe not - used by the FBI as a basis for surveillance of the Trump campaign.

Over at the WaPo Aaron Blake of The Fix is in isn't even pretending that this is not a problem for Democrats. His attempts at minimization are amusing, however:

Some on the right even alleged that Democrats paying Steele amounts to "collusion" with foreigners. But Russia-Steele comparisons aren't apples-to-apples. The British after all are, unlike the Russians, America's allies. Also, Steele was not acting as an agent of a foreign government, which is what would likely be required to prove collusion in the case of the Trump campaign and Russia.

Steele's dossier does include information it says was obtained from "a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure and a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin." In other words, the Clinton camp and the DNC were essentially paying for information allegedly obtained from inside the Russian government, even as there is no proof they deliberately sought Russia's help.

Uh huh. they paid Steele knowing (or hoping to implausibly deny knowing) he was relying on Russian intelligence contacts but that keeps their own hands clean. Whatever.

Mr. Blake also highlights a bonus problem for the Dems:

Separately, the firm that the Clinton camp and the DNC paid also has alleged ties to the Kremlin. In Senate testimony in July, Hermitage Capital Management chief executive William Browder accused Fusion GPS and its head, Glenn Simpson, of running a smear campaign against Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian whistleblower who in 2009 was tortured and killed in a Russian prison after uncovering a $230 million tax theft. Magnitsky worked for Browder, and his name was used for a U.S. law containing sanctions that was passed by Congress and is a sore spot between the U.S. government and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Browder said the smear campaign was run by Fusion GPS with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin. You might remember them from the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. that took place in June 2016. Veselnitskaya was the Russian lawyer with alleged Kremlin ties who arranged the meeting.

Working with the group that worked with the dastardly Russians trying to smear Magnitsky? What next?

Dying In The Dark

Ross Douthat blasts the Never-Trumpers. His intro:

In 1911, in the midst of a debate about whether Britain’s House of Lords should willingly give up its veto power over legislation or fight a doomed battle to retain its privileges, a British peer, Lord Selborne, framed the debate for his fellow lords this way: “The question is, shall we perish in the dark, slain by our own hand, or in the light, killed by our enemies?”

A similar question has confronted Republican politicians throughout the age of Trump, and again and again they have chosen to die in the dark.

This was true of Trump’s strongest primary-season rivals, who fought him directly and concertedly during exactly one of the umpteen debates and then, finding open war hard going, chose to lose and bow out as though Trump were a normal rival rather than the fundamentally unfit figure they had described just a few short weeks before. 

Now, a spoiler alert: the headline is "Jeff Flake's Defiant Surrender", so you can see where this is headed.

Live Free or Die Hard is not the guiding motto in Washington right now. Where is our leadership?

Colluding With Russian Intelligence

Imagine our surprise - the Hillary campaign picked up the funding for the "Trump dossier" which was a batch of stories passed along by Russian intelligence by way of Brit Christopher Steele.

So when Don Trump Jr. meets with a Russian in order to get dirt on Hillary it's "Begin impeachment hearings!". But when Team Hillary spends millions hoovering up salacious Russia dirt it's just politics as usual, move on.

Ann Althouse notes the connection to the other Russian investigation that the FBI hid from Congress because, well, other than its potential to embarrass Barack and Hillary I don't know why they hid it.

Flake Out

Sen. Jeff Flake will serve out his term but not seek re-election in 2018. AllahPundit has more:

 His reelection strategy never made sense: He’s a small-government conservatarian, which alienates Democrats, and he’s also the most outspoken Trump critic in the GOP caucus, which alienates populist Republicans. He had no path. As a man of principle, he apparently resolved earlier this year to do what his conscience told him to do and to let the chips fall where the may electorally. And they fell … poorly. 

 

Immigration Men

Politico outlines the possibilities of a Dreamer deal on immigration.

Pondering Foregone Conclusions

Barring catastrophic injuries is there any true suspense as to whether Alabama, New England and Golden State will emerge as champions?

All this excitement and intrigue as to who will have the honor of the final loss to them. Really?

JOM Gets Results!

Jim Cramer of CNBC wants to imagine he might deserve the credit but someone sparked Trump to tweet that the Republicans will NOT be tinkering with 401(k) rules as part of their tax reform.

Falcons Boycott Continues

The Falcons resume their boycott of the New England end zone that they began in the third quarter of last winter's Super Bowl.

This 'follow the non-bouncing ball' catch by a Dolphin receiver was remarkable.

Sunday Morning

The dawn comes up like thunder. No, I don't know why either.

Take Me Out To The Seventh Ballgame

The traditional "Let's Go Yanks" seventh game ALCS open thread.

Discouraging Saving In Order To Reduce The Deficit

You would need a PhD in Dumb to think this made sense:

Republicans Consider Sharp Cut in 401(k) Contribution Limits

...

The proposals under discussion would potentially cap the annual amount workers can set aside to as low as $2,400 for 401(k) accounts, several lobbyists and consultants said on Friday. Workers may currently put up to $18,000 a year in 401(k) accounts without paying taxes upfront on that money; that figure rises to $24,000 for workers over 50. When workers retire and begin to draw income from those accounts, they pay taxes on the benefits.

Rumors have circulated for months that negotiators were debating including a cap as a way to help offset the revenue loss from a reduction in business tax rates that Republicans have put at the center of their plan. Reducing contribution limits would be, in effect, an accounting maneuver that would create space for tax cuts by collecting tax revenue now instead of in the future.

To be fair you would have to be either dumb or a politician. A politician who took the CBO scoring seriously, which circles back to 'dumb'.

Now Gen. Kelly Is Racist. or Sexist. Or Both!

Of course she did:

After Video Refutes Kelly’s Charges, Congresswoman Raises Issue of Race

Kelly criticized a black woman so she could have gone either way. One of her supporters rejected these false choices and went with "Both":

Clifford W. Jordan, 60, the general manager of a nursing company in the same building as Ms. Wilson’s Miami Gardens office, said the criticism of the congresswoman smacked of racism and sexism.

“There’s all this noise around the one black guy who died in Niger — no one is even talking about the other guys — and now they’re going after this black congresswoman,” said Mr. Jordan, whose father died in the 1960s while serving as a sergeant in the Air Force.

As to the substance, Kelly was somewhat betrayed by his memory (I know, Politifact) in his recollection of the commemoration of an FBI building named after two fallen agents. Congresswoman Wilson did not prattle on about her heroic effort to get funding for the building. Instead, she prattled on about her heroic effort in getting the building named after the two agents, which was what stuck with Kelly. However, she did share the credit with Republican congressional leaders and the context she was aiming for seemed to be that Washington writ large backed the heroism of the FBI. She also took time to praise the agents specifically, so all-in-all, I would say misremembered an otherwise forgettable speech.

Send Better Czars

Trump is going to announce a plan to battle the opioid crisis next week; this week's crisis is coming up with a plan.

The erstwhile drug czar won't be arriving, so the top spot is also up for grabs.

 

Read My Lips - Cut Taxes!

Congressional Republicans show they still know a little bit about cutting taxes.

Phone Calls, Dead Heroes, And The Politicization Of Everything

Oh, brother. Trump calls the widow of a fallen soldier ambushed in Niger. The widow is at the airport in a limo, waiting for the casket. A Congresswoman is with her, so she listens to Trump's call on the speaker phone. Her characterization of the phone call is this, from the NY Times:

As President Trump spoke for three to five minutes, Ms. Johnson, 24, who is six months pregnant, wept openly, her body frozen with emotion, according to Representative Frederica S. Wilson, Democrat of Florida who accompanied the young widow.

“Myeshia, the entire time, was in a ball, rolled up almost like in a fetal position crying,” Ms. Wilson said on Wednesday. “What he said was, ‘I guess he knew what he was signing up for but it still hurts.’ That’s how he said it.”

Ms. Wilson offered a harsh critique of the president’s words about the soldier’s death in an ambush in Niger, which she said were not comforting.

“So in other words, when you sign up when you go into the military, you are really signing up to die,” she said of the president’s comments. “That is not what you say to a grieving widow, a woman who just learned that her husband cannot have an open casket funeral. In fact, she will probably not even be able to see his body.”

Please. Gen. Kelly defended the President today and described the message he received when his own son died in action:

Speaking to reporters in the White House briefing room, Kelly disclosed what he was told when his son, 1st Lt. Robert Michael Kelly, died in 2010.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, Kelly recalled, told him that his son "'was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that one percent (who serve the nation). He knew what the possibilities were, because we're at war. And when he died…he was surrounded by the best men on this earth, his friends."

Kelly added, "That’s what the president tried to say to the four families the other day."

That seems a bit more supportive a message than the Congresswoman's "Hey, he signed up for war, he got killed - waddya expect?" version.

Haters gotta hate.

Hold The Front Page!

This just in - Joe Biden is less of a knucklehead than John Kasich. Like, isn't everyone?

Tackling The Big Issues

Ted Cruz remains an unlikely candidate to be the Zodiac killer. But we are getting some smiles out of Washington, so there's that.

Resistance Is Futile

The Baby Bombers are bringing it on against the hapless, overmatched Astros. OK, they're up 2-0 in the 3rd and still batting, but the freight train is rumbling through the Bronx and headed for Houston. Where Verlander will choke them out in Game 6, setting up a dramatic, climactic Game 7 in which CC Sabathia can lead the youngsters to the promised land.

I love this game!

Firmly On Both Sides

Shaun King lauds Gregg Popovich for putting his white privilege to good use. Naturally, this riles me:

This past September, Popovich tackled the issue of race and white privilege head on.

“Race is the elephant in the room, and we all understand that,” Popovich said at a recent press conference, addressing Kaepernick and the NFL protests. “But unless it is talked about constantly, it’s not going get better.” Popovich went on:

There has to be an uncomfortable element in the discourse for anything to change. Whether it’s the LGBT movement, or women’s suffrage, race, it doesn’t matter. People have to be made to feel uncomfortable. And especially white people, because we’re comfortable.

We still have no clue what being born white means. … Yes, because you were born white, you have advantages that are systemically, culturally, psychologically there. And they’ve been built up and cemented for hundreds of years. But many people can’t look at it. It’s too difficult. It can’t be something that is on their plate on a daily basis. People want to hold their position, people want the status quo, people don’t want to give that up. And until it’s given up, it’s not going be fixed.

If Pops wants to talk about class privilege, or middle-class white privilege, fine. But 'white privilege' did not leap off the pages of "Hillbilly Elegy" and into my lap. I;m sure Hillary can find lots to deplore about working class whites and I suppose they are privileged relative to the deeply impoverished of any race, but I just don't see the paved open road in front of working class whites that Pops seems to envisage.

Obviously I am insufficiently woke and will be reporting back from the re-education camps.

Ready For The Night Shift

Bedlam in the Bronx as the Yankees dust off their late-inning lightning of yesteryear. Now if the Cubbies can fly the "W" we will have some playoffs to watch.

Follow The Bouncing Ball

My guess is there is a large overlap between the demographic that doesn't like the NFL anthem protests and the NBA fans who won't like this from the normally tight-lipped Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. 'Pops' is reacting to Trump's latest about not calling the families of the four Green Berets killed in Niger:

“This man in the Oval Office is a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others. This has of course been a common practice of his, but to do it in this manner—and to lie about how previous presidents responded to the deaths of soldiers—is as low as it gets. We have a pathological liar in the White House, unfit intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically to hold this office, and the whole world knows it, especially those around him every day. The people who work with this president should be ashamed, because they know better than anyone just how unfit he is, and yet they choose to do nothing about it. This is their shame most of all.”

OK, ouch. Popovich is a brilliant coach and master motivator and what his team did to the defending champion Miami Heat in 2014 was incredible. But I don't think this will win more fans than it loses.

Creating A Dumbbell Debate

Dan McLaughlin explains how marginalizing the mainstream empowers the fringes.

Meanwhile, Back In Kirkuk

The Kurdish pesh merga, which is factionalized in a way that mirrors the Kurdish political parties, does not fight for Kirkuk. Whew, but there are still some oil fields up for grabs:

Northwest of the city, near oil fields that Kurds have controlled since 2014, pesh merga fighters from the K.D.P. remained dug into positions Monday near the city of Dibis.

The commander of forces there, Kamal Karkokly, said in an interview at his command post Sunday that his fighters would not surrender their positions.

“We have enough weapons,” Mr. Karkokly said. “We can fight as long as we have to.”

The K.D.P is the governing Kurdish Democratic Party that organized the controversial independence referendum.

Inside The Trump White House

The Washington Post takes us inside the adult day-care center mocked by Sen. Bob Corker:

Inside the ‘adult day-care center’: How aides try to control and coerce Trump

I know what you're thinking. OK, I know what I am thinking - we see this about every Republican President from Reagan the moron to Bush 41 the wimp to Bush 43 the double-moron plus.

Except, hmm, maybe we don't. I figured I would dredge up an old WaPo hit piece on 43 and came up with this semi-sympathetic piece instead. And in a real fail, I tried The Atlantic. In this April 2003 piece by the National Review's Richard Brookhiser  Bush comes off as, well, not at all a moron. Of course, in April 2003 Iraq had not gone to Hades.

Let's stay with The Atlantic for a different but apt comparison - although no one questioned his intellectual curiosity Bill Clinton was also impulsive and undisciplined, with a backstabbing, leaky White House staff. The LA Times didn't even wait out Clinton's first 100 days - three weeks after the inauguration they were noting Clinton's chaotic, slow, indecisive leadership style.

As to Trump, time will tell. But I am confident he is not as inept as his caricaturists imagine.

Those Wacky Clinton Gals!

Hillary, choosing her words carefully, deplores the idea that we elected a sexual assaulter to the Presidency:

"Look, we just elected someone who admitted sexual assault to the presidency."

Well, Trump hasn't exactly admitted it - he claimed it was locker room talk. And the original headline, preserved in the URL, had the phrase "committed sexual assault", which of course would ensnare her devoted hubby.

Meanwhile, Chelsea is being running from questions about whether the Clinton Foundation will be returning donations from Harvey Weinstein. Tricky! The Clinton Enterprise Foundation is built around the notion of people contributing to a sexual assaulter - if such money ought to be returned then the Clinton Foundation won't be able to give its money away.

Steelworker's Niece

The NY Times runs a very long and very sympathetic bubble-bursting story about a working class white woman whose job is being moved to Mexico.

The story works for the Times for a couple of reasons. First, it is about a woman - she is is collateral damage in the Dem Party's war on the white patriarchy but no reader is asked to actually root for a white guy. Perhaps more importantly, their heroine didn't vote for Trump. OK, she didn't vote at all, but that means she was a lost opportunity for Hillarity! rather than an outright member of the white supremacist fascist haters that gave us Trump.

The story does get a little edgy when Trump's tweets try to save the factory and our heroine starts rooting for him but ultimately Trump fails so its all good.

Resist!

I'm Sure There Is News Happening

I'm sure there is real newsy news somewhere but I am watching the baseball.

Let's Get This Weekend Going!

It's a Sports Overload weekend coming up! And that's not even including the wide-open college football season.

One For The Haters

The NY Times pores through the Facebook manual and devises a quiz:

What Does Facebook Consider Hate Speech? Take Our Quiz

It's only six questions and if you can get more than two right you can send some non-hate my way.

What are the rules? 

Hate speech is one of several types of content that Facebook reviews, in addition to threats and harassment. Facebook defines hate speech as:

1. An attack, such as a degrading generalization or slur.
2. Targeting a “protected category” of people, including one based on sex, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, and serious disability or disease.

To whet your appetite here is the first question:

“Why do Indians always smell like curry?! They stink!”

 

Would this statement meet Facebook’s criteria for hate speech?

 

Good luck.

 

ERRATA: "I hate NY Times quizzes" is not hate speech.

Trump Being Trumpy

After months of Trump's Tweets Jack Shafer has dialed back his Outrage-ometer and thinks the rest of us should too:

Obviously, his tweets, if backed up with action, have the potential to cause people trouble. If for example, he wanted to make life miserable for NBC’s parent company, Comcast, he could. But he’s too cheap to spend that sort of political capital for short-term gain, and he’s too lazy to be the autocrat that his tweets make him out to be. The average Trump Twitter provocation exists, as during the campaign, to reset the news agenda somewhere near a place of his liking.

OK, but perhaps Mr. Shafer is missing the other element to this game - the media has been getting rich (OK, avoiding a complete financial meltdown) by treating every Trump tweet and utterance as Apocalypse Now. Why should they stop and embrace the cool reality that their business model is collapsing?

Freeing The Markets, Or Something

The day will come when health care reform is out of the news. But this is not that day. This day, we fight! Fight to understand the implications of Trump's latest executive order.

How Badly Is Weinstein Polling Now?

How radioactive is Harvey Weinstein that after five days of ducking the story even Hillary Clinton feels obliged to attack him?

Exclusive: Clinton 'sick,' 'shocked' and 'appalled' by Weinstein allegations

Yeah, she was sickened and appalled that her hubby isn't the only powerful man to do that sort of thing and get away with it for years. I guess the "vast right wing conspiracy' defense didn't fly with focus groups this time.

Playing Baseball!

The Baby Bombers will do or die in Cleveland tonight. Earlier, led by pitcher Stephen Strasburg the Nationals live to fight another day and will host a decisive Game 5 against the Cubs tomorrow night.

WOW: Derek who?

California Burning

These wildfires in California are almost certainly a man-made disaster:

The cause of the fires, which flared overnight Sunday and blew swiftly through 170,000 acres in the following days, was unknown and likely to remain so for some time.

Pimlott, the Cal Fire chief, said the possibility that a lightning strike started the fires was “minimal.” In California, he said, 95 percent of wildfires are started by people, inadvertently or intentionally.

I don't know why terrorists wouldn't start wildfires. That, and the failure to emulate the DC Sniper strike me as monumental and extremely fortunate failures of imagination on the part of Al Qaeda and ISIS.

SINCE I MENTIONED IT: Think back to the confusion and concern the DC Sniper and his partner caused. Now imagine that two teams of two using the same type of rifle and driving color-coordinated vans were operating on the East Coast. How long would it take the people connecting the dots to realize they were tracking more than one team?