Blinded, Not by The Light

If, God willing, Abdul el-Sayed loses his bid to become the Democratic nominee to replace retiring Democratic senator Gary Peters of Michigan, he can always take up a career in storytelling.

Here, Haley Steven's opponent states "I don't hate anybody but I love everybody." Presumably, that would include Benjamin Netanyahu, whom el-Sayed has reason to dislike. Yet we do not know becuase el-Sayed speaks a few lines which bear as little resemblance to reality as "I love everybody".

Abdul El-Sayed: “When AIPAC drops $30M on a race, you know why that is? It’s a $30M downpayment on a vote to send $3B somewhere else. And where does that go? To a foreign government that’s done genocide and apartheid and now has taken us to a war for the goal of annexing Southern… pic.twitter.com/RfZGcrsXPt

— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) July 27, 2026

 It's astonishing that a nuclear power would commit genocide while ignoring Palestinians in Jordan and the rest of the Palestinian diaspora.  The habit of warning residents to vacate ahead of  a ground assault or air strikes? This is no way to conduct genocide. As explained in 2021 by Raphael Cohen-Almagor of the Middle East Study Group of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, & World Affairs 

Unlike the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Israeli Palestinians are entitled by law to enjoy the same citizenship rights as the Jewish citizens of Israel. The Israeli Palestinians constitute a significant minority in Israel: 21% of the population. I will differentiate between full citizenship and formal citizenship, arguing that the Israeli Palestinians enjoy formal but not full citizenship. I detail the areas in which Israel needs to invest to make the Palestinians full citizens. It is argued that while Israeli Palestinians are discriminated against, there is no apartheid in Israel. Apartheid exists in the occupied territories....

Critics of Israel should clearly distinguish between the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, where Palestinians are separated from Israelis who reside there and where Palestinians are routinely subjected to oppressive regulations of the occupation, and the condition of Israeli Palestinians inside the Green Line. As far as Israel’s Palestinian citizens are concerned, the apartheid argument does not stand. While Israeli Palestinians do not always receive equal treatment and they de facto at times are discriminated against, Israeli Palestinians do not live under anything that resembles South African apartheid.

According to Open Secrets, as of 2024, AIPAC was the 191st largest lobby in Washington, D.C. and from 2016-2026, nine countries spent more on lobbying than did Israel. But with the anti-Israel obsessives, it's always "AIPAC" and "foreign government."

And it has become widely accepted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled the strings that pulled Donald Trump into the war in Iran. However, the President's decision to launch Operation Epic Fury in lae February

in a joint operation with Israel followed weeks of behind-the-scenes pressure from Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Washingron Post reported on Sunday, citing accounts from officials and regional sources.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly pushed for strikes against Iran, whileSaudi Arabia's role appeared more complex.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly made several private phone calls to Trump over the past month, pushing for an attack despite publicly endorsing a diplomatic solution, the Washington Post reported.

Simultaneously, Riyadh released a statement that the state would not allow its territory to be used in the event of an attack.

Salman reportedly warned US officials that if the strike didn't happen soon, Iran would come away stronger and more dangerous.

That shouldn't have been surprising given that both Israel and Saudi Arabia consider Iran their mortal enemy. And it didn't hurt that the president's son-in-law has extensive financial involvement, including a $2 billion infusion of funds from the Saudi Public Investment Fund to the Kushner's Affinity private equity firm, with the Kingdom. Good work, if you can get it.

There is a lot to dislike about the foreign policy of the Israeli government, beginning with the guy, the Prime Minister, ultimately responsible for it. However, a distinction needs to be made between that nation's current leaders and the nation itself, just as there are differences between the Trump Administration and the United States of America. There are a few Democrats who understand that, but their voices are being drowned out. 

Abdul el-Sayed, Hasan Piker's pal, is not among those making a cogent and rational argument against current Israeli policy. There are varied reasons for that, but we should acknowledge that one of them is the Jewish thing. 

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This blog is going on hiatus. Or at least I am. Please come back on the weekend.

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Wrong and Strong, Seemingly

Steve M in his No MoreN Mr. Nice Blog makes a very good point.

Remember the end of Donald Trump's 2024 campaign? The town hall that concluded with Trump dancing onstage for a half-hour? The anecdote about Arnold Palmer's penis? The Madison Square Garden rally -- in a state Trump had no chance of winning -- that turned into a racist, profane grievance-fest? The fry cook and garbageman cosplay?

We thought the wheels were coming off the bus. We thought the public would recognize Trump's obvious unfitness to serve. Instead, he won the election, won the popular vote for the first time, and received more votes and a greater percentage of the popular vote than he had in his first two elections.

So am I saying that the 2024 Trump campaign wasn't a shambolic mess? No. In many ways, it was a shambolic mess. But it appears to have been a shambolic mess in such an aggressive, in-your-face way that millions of voters responded positively to the preposterousness of it all. They liked Trump's arthritic dance moves and granddad music playlist. They decided, somehow, that the unapologetic way Trump would say any WTF thing he felt like saying meant he was just the crazy bastard America needed to take on the bad guys.....

It seems to me that voters don't care what Trump is doing -- they just like the fact that he's doing whatever he's doing vigorously and forcefully. Once again, it appears that a famous 2002 Bill Clinton remark was correct:

"When people are feeling insecure, they'd rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right"...

Trump is proving that there's apparently no limit to how wrong you can be and still get the benefit of seeming strong.

That is the only way- or at least the best way- to make sense of Trump bragging about this, and getting away with it.

 

2020 in his last year so gas, food, anything transported/trucked cost American people more for first couple yrs of Biden presidency until another failed trump deal expired. https://t.co/moqGFO1xyI

— Jumbo Elliott (@JumboElliott76) December 14, 2024

In the video, Trump comes off as a strong, first-class dealmaker, as he typically- successfully- tries to do. Though not the paragon of objectivity, Climate Power- in what has never been refuted- two months ago explained 

In April  2020, Donald Trump cut a deal with Vladimir Putin, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and OPEC to intentionally increase oil prices and bail out his biggest oil donors after a price war between Russia and the Saudis sent oil prices plunging.

Trump cut the deal after his biggest fossil fuel backers lost billions from their net worth in just weeks, including Trump’s most crucial oil donor, Harold Hamm, who convinced Trump to bail the oil industry out after he lost $3 billion in days. 

Hamm leveraged his years of support for Trump, convincing him to host a whole roomful of oil executives at the White House to hash out the deal. Attendees included Kelcy Warren, Jeff Hildebrand, Vicki Hollub, and, of course, Harold Hamm. 

If any of those names sound familiar, that’s because they all responded to Trump’s April request for $1 billion by cohosting multiple fundraisers for him over the past six months. That includes the CEO who told Trump that she was upset at the FTC for requesting her cell phone record while they were reportedly investigating her over allegations of potential collusion with OPEC to raise gas prices....

 A USA Today editorial asked, “Amid coronavirus pandemic, why is Donald Trump trying to push up fuel prices?”… The editorial board wrote that  “the most unambiguous winners of higher prices are countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia, not the United States, which is still a net importer. What’s more, his move attempts to help oil companies by imposing higher costs on U.S. consumers, workers and fuel-reliant businesses.”

Trump boasted "said we got to get it up a little. I called Russia and the King of Saudi Arabia. We had a three-way call and we cult back on the oilbecause it was so incredible- helped fill up the Strategic national reserve" (i.e., Strategic Petroleum Reserve).  

There was little or no downside for the President because he declared victory as Democrats chose not to highlight the issue. It was a twofer for Trump- pleasing both his energy donors and boosting the economy of one of his favorite countries, Russia. Six months later, Saudi Arabia threw $2 billion dollars to son-in-law Jared Kushne, thereby consummating what Trump might satisfyingly call a "three-way."

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I Went To Riyadh, But All I Got Was A Fist Bump

George Conway tweets “I can think of at least two billion reasons why no member of the Trump family should not be heard to make any criticism of the President on this issue.” But in a way she does not intend, Lara Trump is right

Lara Trump: I think this whole trip was so embarrassing… I think back to when my father-in-law visited in 2017 and what a difference..
Host: Could you imagine if this was the former President actually fist bumping with the Crown Prince.. pic.twitter.com/l5S4b7Zwxq

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 16, 2022

President Trump never would have done the fist bump thing with Mohammed bin Salman.  There was no need for it. He already was in the Saudis' pocket without a fist bump.  As to the price exacted:

Six months after his father-in-law left the White House, Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from the main Saudi sovereign wealth fund — despite the fact that those responsible for helping oversee the fund were highly skeptical about giving Kushner’s firm this money. In fact, they accurately noted that Trump’s son-in-law had no relevant experience, and the firm’s operations were deemed “unsatisfactory in all aspects.”

Aside from the very real issue of a likely payoff to the son-in-law of an American president, there was Trump's visit early in 2017 to the Kingdom. He received an award from Saudi Arabia's de jure leader, King Abdullah, and in return, bowed down to the monarch. Rationalized as a squat, it was probably all Trump could muster, or perhaps he didn't want to get his suit pants dirty. There was also the mysterious glowing orb that President Trump joined Saudi dignitaries in saluting, which no one ever has been fully able to explain. The famous sword dance of the Saudis probably was Trump's favorite.

As Conway suggests, the two billion dollars was likely particularly significant, given that it exemplifies the Trump pattern of corruption and selling out the American people.  However, Lara Trump accidentally uttered a truth.  Her father-in-law would not have been satisfied with a meaningless and superficial fist bump when he could have gotten on his knees and really expressed his appreciation.

   

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A Trumpian Arrangement

According to a Yale epidemiologist (who is especially enraged about the impact on minority communities)

So, what does it mean to let thousands die by negligence, omission, failure to act, in a legal sense under international law? #COVID19 #coronavirus

— Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves) May 6, 2020

And I am being serious here: what is happening in the US is purposeful, considered negligence, omission, failure to act by our leaders. Can they be held responsible under international law?

— Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves) May 6, 2020

It's probably not negligence, omission, and it's certainly not a failure to act. However, it can only be considered purposefulA that

A program created by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has airlifted millions of gloves, masks and other coveted coronavirus supplies into the U.S. from overseas -- but it isn’t clear who’s getting them and at what price, or how much private-sector partners are earning through the arrangement. 

Kushner’s “Project Airbridge” provides transportation via FedEx Corp. and others for supplies that medical distributors, including McKesson Corp. and Cardinal Health Inc., buy from overseas manufacturers, mainly in China. Once a supplier’s goods arrive in the U.S., the companies must sell half the order in government-designated hotspots. They sell the rest as they see fit.

The U.S. government provides the air transportation for free, to speed the arrival of the products. The six distributors keep the profits, if any.

It's just a guess but McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., and others probably aren't acting out of a sense of virtue or noblesse oblige. They're in it for the profit. Meanwhile, the Administration benefits in numerous ways: a) throwing money at a company, which is likely to return the favor; b) allowing a company to distribute critically needed supplies, thus giving them a needed p.r. boost, especially as compared to "big government;" c) giving a competitive advantage to the non-union FedEx over the largely unionized UPS. 

It also allows the regime an opportunity to designate as they wish what Bloomberg refers to as "hotspots," which, conveniently, probably would include swing states. Moreover, if neither Jared nor either Donald is getting a kickback, it's a major upset.

Then there is privatization, the 40 year, 4 month effort of the Republican Party to whittle away the government so it can be drowned in the bathtub.   Moreover, the state governments are afforded the privilege of paying retail for products for which they should be paying wholesale, thereby putting them more at the mercy of the Trump Administration. 

Or maybe I'm over-thinking this and the Trump-Kushner message is "just die."

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A Long History

Interviewed by Axios' Jonathan Swan, President Trump's son-in-law refusedto concede that birtherism is racist. Then asked "has Trump ever said anything racist?" Jared Kushner responded  “Absolutely not. You can’t not be a racist for 69 years then run for president and be a racist.” (Presumably, inclusion of the double negative was a slip-of-the-tongue.)

Objection: assumes facts not in evidence. There are the usual suspects, including when

In 1973, Trump Management was accused by the Justice Department of violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968 by discriminating against people of color; when the suit was settled, the D.O.J. called the decree “one of the most far-reaching ever negotiated,” and the Justice lawyer who argued the case called it a “clear government victory,” according to the Washington Post. More recently the president has railed against immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti and African nations; last month Slate reported that the administration is plotting a “backdoor travel ban” on people trying to come to the U.S. from those places (unlike its front-door travel ban against Muslims, which Kushner sidestepped when asked if it was religiously bigoted).

However, that's not it.a smoking gun. Racism, Merriam-Webster understands, is "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."

So the argument is not proven even by candidate Trump's remark "look at my African-American over here" because Trump may believe he owns everyone, not only blacks. However, Trump may once have said, as former Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino President John R. O’Donnell charged, that Donald Trump once maintained "laziness is a trait in blacks."

That classically racist remark combined with Trump's past and present of ethnic hostility dovetails neatly with a belief in eugenics. Trump biographer Mike D'Antonio once remarked “The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.”

 Such as in

Trump's obsession with his genes is so weird. pic.twitter.com/8zIOHURuPU

— Erin 🔥🏃🏻‍♀️🍳 Ryan (@morninggloria) July 20, 2017

A little weird, but a lot telling. A good reporter must, and will, ask and probe, as Swan did.  Nevertheless, it is now less interesting to probe whether the President is a racist- which answer is obvious- than what sort of human mind it takes to support Barack Hussein Obama one year and a brazen, transparent bigot four years later.



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A Trump Favorite

Maria Ricardel, forced out as deputy national security adviser by First Lady Melania Trump after a tiff about seating arrangements on a flight to Africa, reportedly has rejected an offer to become the  USA ambassador to Estonia. One journalist responded

Trump's third least favorite country, after Canada and Haiti https://t.co/VwIo5wtvYG

— David Frum (@davidfrum) November 16, 2018

There is serious competition, including but not limited to, Mexico, Germany, France, and our own USA for this honored position.  However, it soon may become clear what is President Trump's favorite nation and- in an upset- it's not Russia. The Washington Post reported Thursday

Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor released the findings of a long-awaited investigation of the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Thursday, saying that a team of Saudi agents dispatched to Istanbul with orders to bring him home alive had instead killed the journalist and dismembered his body.

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince had no knowledge of the operation, Shaalan al-Shaalan, a spokesman for the prosecutor, said at a news conference in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

This is- to use two abused and misused terms- unbelievable, or at least incredible.

There are numerous reasons President Trump likes the House of Saud, among which are that  Riyadh is investing billions of dollars in American companies. It supports Jared Kushner's push for a deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Saudi Arabia has agreed to buy tens of billions of dollars in armaments from the USA, all the better to continue its crusade against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. (Thirteen million Yemenis are now in danger of starvation there, but that's only gravy to Trump.) Additionally, it is a despotic, Wahabbist monarchy, pleasing to the USA's would-be imperial autocrat who himself derives his most fervent support at home from theocrats.  And it treats journalists, such as the late Mr. Khashoggi, very, very badly. So much so, in fact that NBC News notes

The White House is looking for ways to remove an enemy of Turkish President Recep Erdogan from the U.S. in order to placate Turkey over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to two senior U.S. officials and two other people briefed on the requests.

Trump administration officials last month asked federal law enforcement agencies to examine legal ways of removing exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen in an attempt to persuade Erdogan to ease pressure on the Saudi government, the four sources said.

The effort includes directives to the Justice Department and FBI that officials reopen Turkey's case for his extradition, as well as a request to the Homeland Security Department for information about his legal status, the four people said.

They said the White House specifically wanted details about Gulen's residency status in the U.S. Gulen has a Green Card, according to two people familiar with the matter. He has been living in Pennsylvania since the late 1990s.

Therefore, we read, quite sensibly, from the deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post

This new Saudi account is completely implausible on its face. It contradicts numerous established facts about the case. Now we’ll see if the Trump administration gets behind it. https://t.co/O2hNMdx4cw

— Jackson Diehl (@JacksonDiehl) November 15, 2018

This new Saudi account is completely implausible on its face. It contradicts numerous established facts about the case. Now we’ll see if the Trump administration gets behind it. https://t.co/O2hNMdx4cw

— Jackson Diehl (@JacksonDiehl) November 15, 2018

Evidently, the push to sacrifice Gulen to appease Erdogan and cut the Saudis a huge break has been stymied by bureaucrats. "Career officials at the agencies," Bloomberg reports, "pushed back on the White House requests" and a senior US official remarked "once they realized it was a serious request, the career guys were furious."

It's conceivable, therefore, that the White House won't support the Saudi account of Khashoggi's murder. There still are some career, non-political employees in the Trump Administration, people who put principle over politics and country over personal privilege. But there also is Donald Trump, and he's not any of that.

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However, He Does Dress Well

Van Jones always had it in him. He "resigned" as "green jobs czar" by President Obama, who was unwilling to take the heat from Republicans criticizing Jones.  Because it is the only sensible approach toward someone who won't defend you against his political enemies, Jones then became a huge supporter of, and surrogate for, Obama.

So he was in character when he interviewed in Ohio five members of a rural white family, three of whom voted twice for Obama but switched to Trump, one not old enough to vote until 2012 who switched from the Democrat to the Republican, and one who voted for Obama but passed on both Trump and Clinton. He was surprised to learn that they did not fit the stereotype of Trump supporters as being racist- they even denied it!

He brought them to the studio and gushed "you know, that was a life-changing thing for me and I just learned so much from it. It was a total stereotype shatterer" (sic). Really.

Consequently, it shouldn't have been surprising to read

Liberal CNN commentator Van Jones says he has no regrets over his praise for President Trump’s first address to Congress which landed him in hot water with the left.

Mr. Jones, a former President Obama adviser who now hosts “The Messy Truth” on CNN, sparked liberals’ ire last week after he said Mr. Trump’s honoring of a slain Navy SEAL during his Feb. 28 speech was “one of the most extraordinary moments” in American politics.

More than a week later and Mr. Jones still stands by his words, telling The Daily Beast that he was just being honest about how he felt “in the moment.”

“No, I don’t regret it, because it was honestly how I felt in that moment. My dad’s in the military and that moment where everybody in Congress stood up and applauded that widow, that really moved me,” he said. “And it moved a lot of people. I said, if he keeps doing stuff like this, he’s going to be there for eight years.

Jones would gush over Barack Obama, then was awed by Donald Trump. Therefore, we should not have been shocked when Jared Kushner came out of hiding in order to give an interview to,,, Van Jones.  Nor was it odd- albeit naive and unprofessional- when

“I want to start — how did you get this job?” he asked Kushner, who was seated rigidly in an oversize armchair. “I mean, you have, like, the dopest job in the world — the secretary of everything. Does it bug you when they call it secretary of everything?"

“Yes,” Kushner responded, with a small smile.

“You’re a business guy,” Jones went on. “How did you wind up in this position?”

It could be because Jared Kushner is husband to Donald Trump's favorite person beside himself.  Or it could be the cushy relationship between the Trump Organization and the Kushner Companies, or because Jared knows where some of the bodies are buried.

Jones was appropriately mocked online and responded in part "I really wanted to make sure that he was able to explain himself without having to defend himself on everything, because when you get somebody like that talking, sometimes, just let them talk."

Kushner should be allowed to talk, but then challenged if what he says is inaccurate or even at all controversial.  And he would have been, had his interviewer done a better job impersonating a journalist.

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But Those Emails!

Donald Trump infamously remarked of his departed staff secretary, Rob Porter

Well, we wish him well. He worked very hard. I found out about it recently and I was suprised by it But we certainly wish him well. It's obviously a tough time for him. He did a very good job when he was in the White House and we hope he has a wonderful career and hopefully he will have a gret career ahead of him. But it was very sad when we heard about it and certainly he's also very sad. 

Now he also as you probably know,  he says he's innocent and I think you have to remember that. He said very strongly yesterday that he's innocent. So you you'll have to talk to him about that. But we absolutely wish him well. He did a very good job while he was at the White House.

Joe Scarborough found "two or three phrases" which "stand out" to be "shocking" and "unbelievable." It would be far more shocking were Donald Trump to string together 10-11 sentences about some random matter and it were not unbelievable. If remarks of similar length about sexual abuse or harassment or domestic violence were not unbelievable, it would be an upset of epic proportions.

Still, Scarborough's comments made more sense than of emerging sidekick Katty Kay, who contended "and the thing you noticed about that first comment- those remarks that the President made in the Oval- absolutely no mention of the women, let alone a word of sympathy for them."





He may be ill-informed, uncurious, ruthless, dishonest, racist, misogynistic, manipulative, egotistical, and deviously patronizing.  But he's not much of a hypocrite. And if Donald Trump were to utter one word of sympathy for a woman who as a woman had been mistreated by a man, he would be a raging hypocrite. So give him his due- he was in character.

Further, Donald Trump is not a pastor, a therapist, a social psychologist, or journalist. He has never even met the women who have reported domestic abuse.. However, he is President of the USA- and was the employer of Rob Porter. He saw him frequently and spoke to him often.  Porter had access to the most powerful individual in the world, the man holding the position that once was leader of the free world.

While he awaited permanent security clearance, Rob Porter had access to classified documents. NPR's Brian Naylor reports

... national-security experts warn that that person (with the such a background) could be subject to blackmail by a foreignor domestic adversary. That's especially true when it comes to a person with close access to the president, like one responsible for putting the papers the president reads in front of him.

Naylor adds "700,000 people are waiting to have clearances processed, according to a report issued last week by the U.S. Comptroller's office." That's a serious long-term problem, one media will continue to ignore because it's tied up in the underfunding of government began decades ago by Saint Reagan.

Nevertheless, there is an immediate short-term problem which is understated, underreported, and potentially calamitous.  Slate's Jeremy Stahl notes "the ultimate arbiter of who in the executive branch is able to handle this country's most sensitive secrets is one man. That man is Donald Trump."

That's Donald T-r-u-m-p, as in Vladimir Putin's man in the West. Stahl explains

There is nothing preventing Trump from giving top security clearance access to whoever he wants, professional agency adjudication of the normal security-clearance process be damned. Furthermore, there is nobody—aside, perhaps, from Congress—who has oversight over how Trump can issue security clearances. And because this particular Republican Congress has been fully pliant to Trump’s will on all issues surrounding ethical norms, that basically means Trump has untrammeled say over all such clearances.

Porter is not an isolated incident. Stahl continues

In the cases of (Trump son-in-law Jared) Kushner and Porter, it appears that he has all but broken long-standing norms around clearances in a way that seems to have rendered the entire point of the clearance process at the highest levels of government moot. Another example? Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who ultimately pled guilty to lying to the FBI, was allowed to remain in his job even after the Trump administration had been informed that he might be compromised because of such lies. He resigned only after the lies came to public light.

Individuals such as Rob Porter will come and go, especially in this Administration.  Aside from him, there have been tens (hundreds?) of millions of instances of domestic abuse, and probably more than a few occurring at the precise moment that his resignation was reported.  This incident will pass from the national consciousness and there still will be widespread physical abuse of persons by persons living in the same household.

There will be several- albeit too few- first-hand testimonials from victims, and the American people will not want for awareness of the problem. However, this is the moment, and journalists are the medium, in which the nation can learn about the threat to national security because individuals without proper security clearance may have access to information they shouldn't.

The danger has been largely ignored and may continue... unless the word "Hillary" can be somewhere inserted.




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Tip Of The Iceberg

The Hill reports

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in a new interview criticized former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for writing her memoir so soon after the 2016 election. 

“What’s the f---ing point? Keep the fight up?” McCain asked in an interview with Esquire.

“History will judge that campaign, and it’s always a period of time before they do. You’ve got to move on. This is Hillary’s problem right now: She doesn’t have anything to do.”

We know what Senator McCain (and virtually all his GOP comrades) have to do. They have to pass a tax bill shoving money upward because, well, that's what Republicans do. If it weren't their raison d'etre, they wouldn't be Republicans.

But let's give Senator McCain a break, even though he's planning to bolster theTrump presidency by passing the Great Corporate Tax Cut bill of 2017. History will judge the campaign, as he notes, and vindicate Hillary Clinton, which he does not. Last week, Gabriel Sherman explained

As Kushner’s Russia troubles mount—last Friday the Senate disclosed that he had not turned over e-mails about WikiLeaks, a claim his attorney, Abbe Lowell, denied—insiders are again speculating, as my colleague Emily Jane Fox reported last month, about how long Kushner and Ivanka Trump will remain in Washington. Despite Kushner’s efforts to project confidence about Robert Mueller’s probe, he expressed worry after the indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates about how far the investigation could go. “Do you think they’ll get the president?” Kushner asked a friend, according to a person briefed on the conversation.





Do you think they'll get the president, a knowing Jared Kushner asks. Odd it would be that he would worry about somone "getting" Trump unless he knew there was something to "get" him for. There is, and he does.





John McCain probably feels bad because he went quietly into the night, or rather, back into the Senate to join the GOP in opposing everything proposed by the guy who beat him- which was revenge of a sort. However, he was opposed only by Barack Obama.  Hillary Clinton had to defeat not only Donald Trump but also Jim Comey, Julian Assange, the right-wing media machine, and Vladimir Putin- and still won the popular vote.

So Hillary Clinton deserves a break. She could have waited a couple of years to put out her book. But given what Robert Mueller will almost surely report at the end of his investigation, John McCain and the degenerate party he belongs to have a lot more to worry about than Hillary Clinton's book.




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A Fine Reputation, Once

When a juvenile is accused of breaking the law, people near to him may utter something like "he was such a good kid. It must be the crowd he got into." In a best-case scenario, Lt. General H.R. McMaster is suffering the same fate, for David Frum tweets "one of the finest reputations in the US military is not an asset to be cast away in this manner."

That has been manifested twice rently.  Reuters reports

Asked about reports that Donald Trump's son-in-law had tried to set up a secret channel of communication with Russia before the president took office, U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said that so-called "back-channeling" was normal.

McMaster declined to speak specifically about the case of Jared Kushner, who serves as a senior adviser to Trump, but when asked if it would concern him if someone in the administration tried to set up a back channel with the Russian embassy or the Kremlin, he replied "no".

"We have back-channel communications with any number of individual (countries). So generally speaking, about back-channel communications, what that allows you to do is communicate in a discreet manner," McMaster said.

"So it doesn't pre-expose you to any sort of content or any kind of conversation or anything. So we're not concerned about it."

When the content of the meeting is kept secret for approximately three months- as this one did- blackmail becomes plausible. Of course, that would have been less likely had Kushner tried to set up such "back-channel communications" with, say, the Netherlands rather than a geopolitical enemy such as Russia.  It also may have been helpful had it occurred after his father-in-law had actually become President or if someone had informed the NSA or the CIA of the scheme.

Former FBI agent and fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute Clint Watts argues "The idea of using Russian facilities to skirt Russian surveillance in the U.S. would either be a serious attempt to hide something or the actions of a young amateur."  A real estate tycoon arguably worth nearly a billion dollars, Kushner is no amateur.






McMaster's lack of concern, given the paucity of detail about the incident, should be troubling. Nonetheless, at least he (presumably) didn't lie there, unlike when

"I think it's extraordinary that there would be an expectation that the president would have to say explicitly that he supports Article 5. Of course he does," McMaster told reporters at the end of a Group of Seven summit in Sicily.

"He did not make a decision not to say it," McMaster continued. "It was implicit in the speech. There was no decision to not put it in there. It is a matter of fact that the United States, the president, stands firmly behind our Article 5 commitments under NATO."

In his speech in Brussels, the President noted that after the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 "Our NATO allies responded swiftly and decisively, invoking for the first time in its history the Article 5 collective defense commitments."

But this was not the USA standing behind its own commitments to NATO, but rather those nations standing behind their commitment on behalf of  America. Trump added

.... grave security concerns are the same reason that I have been very, very direct with Secretary Stoltenberg and members of the Alliance in saying that NATO members must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations, for 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they’re supposed to be paying for their defense.

This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States...

This was less an implicit recognition by the President of his nation's commitment to Article 5 than an implied threat that if other nations don't pony up the dough, he may have to reconsider the USA's posture. It was a shout-out to  the isolationists who were energized by the candidate who criticized US military intevention abroad, yet stated of ISIS “I would bomb the shit out of them. I’d just bomb those suckers. I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries, I’d blow up every single inch—there would be nothing left.” And of course take their oil, because we're the biggest, the best, and always entitled.

Of giving Kushner a pass, Malcolm Nance tweets "McMaster headed to disgrace. He's willfully ignorant of allegations or willing to risk our national security. Either one is disqualifying."

There, the National Security Advisor blew smoke up our backside, as he did commenting on Trump's NATO speech.   Lieutenant HR McMaster is in with a bad crowd, and it's up to him to start leveling with the American people or get out..





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