And you thought it couldn't be done

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile, the real shit is coming down fast

Netanyahu must act quickly, because there's a possibility that Democrats will take control of the House in November.






...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Monsanto will eat the world

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Mysterious tree removal

A mystery is brewing at the White House about what happened to the oak tree President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron planted there last week.

[...]

The oak sprouted at a World War I battle site that became part of U.S. Marine Corps legend.

About 2,000 U.S. troops died in the June 1918 Battle of Belleau Wood, fighting a German offensive.

[...]

The sapling was a gift from Macron on the occasion of his state visit.

News photographers snapped away Monday when Trump and Macron shoveled dirt onto the tree during a ceremonial planting on the South Lawn. By the end of the week, the tree was gone from the lawn. A pale patch of grass was left in its place.

The White House hasn’t offered an explanation.

  AP News

The French president’s office says there’s nothing mysterious about the disappearance of an oak tree he planted on the White House lawn.

It was put in quarantine, like other plants or animals brought into U.S. territory.

  APNews

Why wouldn't the White House simply say so?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What doesn't bother the press

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Next year, they should have that dinner in Stockholm.

[...]

Faced with an administration* and a president* dedicated to poisoning both the spirit and the institutions of free government, and faced with an administration* and a president* dedicated only to looting those institutions that it cannot destroy, the representatives of the elite political media, through the woman at the head of their formal association, Margaret Talev, have determined that bowing to the fauxtrage aimed at a comedian on behalf of the administration*’s paid liar is the proper way to respond to the weekend’s festivities.

[...]

The daily briefings are pointless. Sanders isn’t even a particularly accomplished liar. (Neither is her boss.) The benign faces she puts on malignant policies are thin and transparent. The idea that people actually are carrying her water in reply to Michelle Wolf’s monologue on Saturday night is absolutely astonishing to me.

[...]

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is not your friend. She is, professionally, the enemy. [...] She is a tower of contempt. That she was discomfited on Saturday night because of a comedian is part of what she gets paid for. Discomfiting the likes of Sarah Huckabee Sanders is part of what Michelle Wolf got paid for. The forces were perfectly in balance.

  Charles P Pierce

MAGA

The South shall rise again.

Since the fall, the US Department of Justice has been overhauling its manual for federal prosecutors.

In: Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ tough-on-crime policies. Out: A section titled “Need for Free Press and Public Trial.” References to the department’s work on racial gerrymandering are gone. Language about limits on prosecutorial power has been edited down.

The changes include new sections that underscore Sessions’ focus on religious liberty and the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on government leaks — there is new language admonishing prosecutors not to share classified information and directing them to report contacts with the media.

[...]

The [manual] review is taking place while the Justice Department is still missing several Senate-confirmed officials, including heads of the Criminal Division, the Civil Division, the Civil Rights Division, and the Environment and Natural Resources Division. Nominees for those posts are waiting for a final vote in the Senate. Trump has yet to announce a nominee for associate attorney general, the department’s third-ranking official, following the February departure of Rachel Brand.

  Buzzfeed

So what did the "Need for Free Press and Public Trial" say?

“Likewise, careful weight must be given in each case to the constitutional requirements of a free press and public trials as well as the right of the people in a constitutional democracy to have access to information about the conduct of law enforcement officers, prosecutors and courts, consistent with the individual rights of the accused. Further, recognition should be given to the needs of public safety, the apprehension of fugitives, and the rights of the public to be informed on matters that can affect enactment or enforcement of public laws or the development or change of public policy.”

Apparently, we don't need to know.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

White House Press is exactly that

Apparently, they're not really journalists.

Trump, who is too chicken to attend a White House Correspondents dinner after being roasted by President Obama at one, tweeted orders:





Perhaps the dinner should be canned, or just called what it is: a chance for politicians and journalists to glamorize themselves and schmooze.  (The "filthy" comedian made some remarks about grabbing pussy.  How shameful!)

Chastised and promptly submissive, Margaret Talev, head of the WHCA who booked comedian Michelle Wolf (who was, admittedly, harsh) without knowing anything about her and seemed to defend her on CNN, issued this statement:



"Hearing from members on your views on the format of the dinner going forward."  Is Trump a member?  Apparently, an honorary one.

Trump responded:





So, next year, I suppose they'll just get some Ronny Jackson suck-up types to stand up and praise themselves (which they always do) and Dear Leader.

Without an adversarial press, and journalists who tell the truth about your leaders, you don't have a democracy.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"There were no administration officials there last year, and this year it was nice to sit next to them, and at every table there were reporters chatting with administration officials.  It was nice.  So over time, I think we've seen progress." 
Eliana Johnson - Politico



UPDATE:







UPDATE:




You get the picture.

UPDATE:

I will except CNN's Jim Acosta, who is constantly undermined by Sarah Sanders and the White House apologists, in my criticism of White House correspondents.

The smartest man in politics isn't a politician

In Ralph Nader's early years, he studied law, traveled the globe and worked in Washington.  

Nader, now aged 84, is incredibly smart, knows so much about so many things, is able to distill the underlying causes and arguments and zero in on the essence of any policy issue, foreign or domestic, and has devoted his entire adult life to consumer protection and the public good, foregoing all the trappings of his fame and success to concentrate on making the world a better place for everyone and every living thing.  

Jeremy Scahill (a smart young idealistic and tireless investigative journalist) recently interviewed Nader on Scahill's excellent podcast Intercepted, where they talked about the CIA, James Comey, Trump, the presidency in general, John Bolton, Generals Mattis & Kelly, Syria, the Mueller investigation, the FBI, and - driverless cars, ending on this note:

JS:  The line from a lot of Democrats is that people like Jill Stein and people who were aggressively reporting on Hillary Clinton and the Podesta emails and the DNC hacks - this is a charge daily thrown at you, at me, at Glenn Greenwald and others - what is your response when people say, 'Look what you gave us with Donald Trump,' and 'Hillary Clinton would have never put us in the peril and danger that we find ourselves in with Donald Trump.  Look, John Bolton is now the National Security Adviser.'

RN:  And the Democratic Party could not landslide the worst Republican Party in history since 1854?  The most ignorant, the most corporate indentured, the most warlike, the most corporate welfare supportive, the most bailout prone Republican Party; anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-environment?  Why don't they look in the mirror?  The Democratic Party is the most main scapegoater in American politics.  It's never their fault.  It's never Hillary's fault.  It's always a Green Party fault.  It's always an independent candidate fault.  They've lost two presidential elections since 2000 even though they won the popular vote because the electoral college took it away from them.  

There's a major national citizen effort to have an interstate compact to neutralize the electoral college.  The Democratic Party is not supportive of that.  ...  They've lost twice to the Republicans, and that meant George W Bush, and that meant Donald J Trump.  So this scapegoating is nothing more than a sickness of the Democratic Party that cannot unleash new energy.  It keeps putting losers in place like Nancy Pelosi.  It keeps putting the Democratic National Committee apparatus against any kind of insurgent effort like Bernie Sanders.  It's a sick, decrepit party that cannot defend the United States of America against the worst Republican Party in history.

JS: Does anybody ever have to ask you what you really think, Ralph?

RN:  Well, what I really think is we ought to make an accusation, Jeremy, that the Democratic and Republican parties do not really believe in democracy.  If they did, they wouldn't attack the press when the press is uttering inconvenient truths.  They wouldn't attack competitive candidates.  A democracy cannot be a democracy if wealth is concentrated in a few hands, and democracy cannot be a democracy if it is not a competitive democracy in a multi-candidate election situation.  And the two parties have an autocratic duopoly opposed to those democratic principles.

The full transcript and the audio file is at this link.

His own worst enemy

And his lawyer's nightmare.  Or would be if he had a competent lawyer.

Verrrrrrrrry Interesting

We don't coddle prisoners in Alabama

According to a string of reports from AL.com, Sheriff Todd Entrekin of Etowah County, Alabama, has pocketed over three quarters of a million dollars intended for inmates’ meals, buying himself an expensive beach house, among other items, while leaving detainees eating rotten or contaminated food. Not long after acting as a source for AL.com’s reporting, one local man found himself charged with a felony by Entrekin’s office.

Entrekin has been taking advantage of a state law, passed before World War II, that allows sheriffs to keep for themselves any excess taxpayer dollars intended to feed inmates in their jails. He’s one of 49 Alabama sheriffs named in a lawsuit filed in January by human rights groups alleging abuse of the law. The groups say that because Alabama sheriffs have complete discretion over what inmates eat, the law incentivizes sheriffs to cut costs on food.

In response, Entrekin, who is running for reelection this year, has come out swinging, calling the claims “fake news” churned out by the “liberal media.”

[...]

In a complaint filed in Hale County circuit court, lawyers for the Southern Coalition for Human Rights say they receive frequent letters from inmates throughout Alabama reporting that their food is “inadequate in quantity or nutritional value, spoiled, or contaminated, such as with insect or rodent droppings, or foreign objects.”

Conditions in Entrekin’s Etowah County jail are particularly well-documented, thanks to AL.com’s interviews with former inmates who worked in the kitchen. They routinely served up a meat product whose plastic wrapping was labeled “Not Fit For Human Consumption.”

Expired or contaminated food — processed mystery meat, rotten chicken, cereal past its expiration date — is donated to the prison by local non-profits and corporations and repurposed into meals, the former inmates told AL.com.

  TPM

And, I'm sure those corporations get nice tax credits for their contributions, too.

Calling the meals served at his jail “nutritious, healthy and balanced,” Entrekin cracked that the inmates can’t expect Domino’s, grandma’s cooking, or “cake on their birthday”

“This is a jail, this is not a bed and breakfast,” he said.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

There goes another one

Already embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal [for reportedly using $39,000 of taxpayer dollars to settle sexual harassment claims from a former aide] that forced him to withdraw from a reelection bid, Rep. Pat Meehan (R-PA) abruptly announced his resignation Friday.

“While I do believe I would be exonerated of any wrongdoing, I also did not want to put my staff through the rigors of an Ethics Committee investigation and believed it was best for them to have a head start on new employment rather than being caught up in an inquiry,” he said in a statement. “And since I have chosen to resign, the inquiry will not become a burden to taxpayers and committee staff.”

  TPM

So selfless.

He promised to pay back the money, though he refers to it as “severance,” denying any wrongdoing.

Blake Farenthold resigned when it was learned he used $84,000 of that fund, and he promised to pay it back, too (which he hasn't, and don't hold your breath).

I bet any congressman who's used the fund is sitting on pins and needles waiting to be outed.  That, along with the trouncing they're expecting in 2018 may be a factor in why so many are "retiring" this year.

I don't understand this.  There's a fund for this; why can't they use it?  There shouldn't be any such fund.

Avoiding public roasting

Trump scheduled a campaign rally in Michigan so he could avoid the White House Correspondents Dinner.




Canadian reporter Daniel Dale covered it in his Twitter feed, so I don't have to look at the videos.



It's time to look past divisions and finally come together, which is why he spent the bulk of his rally smearing everybody he doesn't like, just like always.















Really bringing people together.

And, maybe the most bizarre smear of all, implicating the audience:



This is something I might have to investigate:




Interesting.  Is Lewandowski flipping in the Mueller investigation a possibility?

More notes:

Trump: "Nobody knows what a community college is. We're going to start using - and we had this - 'VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS.'" Both exist. They are different things. People know this.

Trump on dealing with North Korea: "I may go in, it may not work out, I leave. I'm not going to be a John Kerry." For the 10th time in office, he falsely says the Obama administration gave Iran $150 billion. 

Trump is offering an elaborate and bizzare theory for why Natalia Veselnitskaya now claims to be an "informant" in contact with the Russian government, claiming it's actually because he's so tough on Russia that...I don't even understand 

Trump is on an extended rant against Comey, the "two lovers" at the FBI, and Andrew McCabe. He falsely says again that Andrew McCabe took $700,000.  

Trump says there might be "a little pain" because of his hard line on trade, but it'll be good in the end - "ultimately for my farmers: I love my farmers." Interesting "my."

 Trump says he says this not as a "braggadocios" thing but just as "fact": "Nobody in the first year of office has done what we've done. It's not me, it's we."

Trump says the employment situation is now so strong that the U.S. needs to allow in low-skill guest workers, but then they have to leave. "Guest workers. Don't we agree? We have to have 'em." Some mild applause. 

Trump is getting even more detailed in his almost certainly fictional story about how he almost signed a plan to spend $1 billion on a new Jerusalem embassy and then stopped. He now says: "It's signed Donald and then it stopped and I put a big X over the Donald." 

For the 16th time, Trump falsely claims "wages are going up for the first time in many, many years." They have been rising since 2014.

Trump twice says he had 32,000 people at his election-eve rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The hall had a capacity of 4,200. Local media estimated 8,000 total including people stuck outside.

Trump on him and Macron: "We like shaking each other's hand."

For the second time this month, Trump falsely says FDR served 16 years. He served 12. 

Trump on a military strike: "Look at what happened in Syria: boom, boom, BING." 

Trump now says "somebody from the news" is the one who said Trump is the only one who "accomplished more than he promised." He is the one who said that, though he keeps attributing it to unnamed others. 

Trump is complaining about "some genius" who decided to move the U.S. embassy in London even though it was on "THE best site." It was moved because the Bush administration decided it couldn't be secured against terrorism in a dense neighbourhood.

 Trump says the U.S. embassy in London is on a "lousy" site, and that's why he wouldn't cut the ribbon. "I'm not cutting that ribbon!" Amending his earlier tweeted false claim that it was Obama's fault, he says it was also Bush's fault.

He wouldn't cut the ribbon because there was very public objection to him by Londoners; he was afraid to go.



Okay, that settles it.  There are Trump staff plants in these audiences that start chants on Trump cues.  I suppose we're now going to start hearing about nominations to the Nobel Prize committee.

UPDATE:

Dr. Ronny's such a great guy, though

It's pretty clear to me.  Not fair, Trump!

Oh, hell yeah.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



"While meeting with kids."  Jesus. To be fair, though, he was responding to a reporter's question.

"He's a great man, and he got treated very, very unfairly. He got treated really unfairly," Trump said. "And he's a hell of a man."

  ABC News

Let's face it, the only thing Trump actually knows about Jackson is that he has no problem lying to the world about Trump's physical condition.

Also, these were reporters kids.

Once inside the Oval Office, the president played tour guide for the kids and complimented their reporter parents for not using the occasion to press him to answer further questions on various news of day topics.

"Do you know they say this is the most important office anywhere in the world, right?" Trump said.

What? He didn't say anything about him being the most important person in the world? Does he think a bunch of little kids will make the extrapolation on their own?

"Honestly, the children ask me better questions, if you want to know the truth," Trump joked to the group of kids in the Rose Garden Thursday afternoon. "Your parents are being very nice right now, I can't believe it! Because they don't want to embarrass themselves in front of you."

There's no level low enough for him to avoid. He's such a nasty man. And pathetic.

America's complicity in the destruction of Palestine

“In our time,” wrote George Orwell in 1946, “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” British colonialism, the Soviet gulag and America’s dropping of an atomic bomb, he argued, “can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face.” So how do people defend the indefensible? Through “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” By obscuring the truth.

So it is, more than 70 years later, with Israeli policy toward the Gaza Strip. The truth is too brutal to honestly defend.

[...]

Gaza is becoming uninhabitable. That’s not hyperbole. The United Nations says that Gaza will be “unlivable” by 2020, maybe sooner.

[...]

[T]he actor with the greatest power over Gaza is Israel. Israeli policies are instrumental in denying Gaza’s people the water, electricity, education and food they need to live decent lives.

How do kind, respectable, well-meaning American Jews defend this? How do they endorse the strangulation of 2 million human beings? Orwell provided the answer. They do so because Jewish leaders, in both Israel and the United States, encase Israel’s actions in a fog of euphemism and lies.

  Peter Beinart

While it's true that the language of euphemism and lies exists, so does the obvious truth. It's not like there aren't reports and video footage constantly providing proof of the situation. If American Jews are defending Israel's treatment of Palestine, it's not because they don't know what's really going on.

Earlier this month, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, defended Israel’s shooting of mostly unarmed protesters by declaring that, “We withdrew entirely from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, removing every Israeli resident, home, factory and synagogue. We are not responsible for the well-being of the people of Gaza.” American Jewish leaders echo the claim. “Israel withdrew totally” from Gaza, wrote Kenneth Bandler, the American Jewish Committee’s director of media relations, last year.

[...]

These are anesthetizing fictions. Yes, Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers in 2005. But Israel still controls Gaza. It controls it in the way a prison guard might control a prison courtyard in which he never actually sets foot.

[...]

Israel declares parts of Gaza off-limits to the people who live there. Israel has established buffer zones — it calls them Access Restricted Areas — to keep Palestinians away from the fence that separates Gaza from Israel. According to the United Nations, this restricted area has ranged over the past decade from 100 to 500 meters, comprising as much as one-third of Gaza’s arable land. People who enter these zones can — and over the years have been — shot.

In addition to barring Palestinians from much of Gaza’s best land, Israel bars them from much of Gaza’s water. In 1993, the Oslo Accords promised Gazan fisherman the right to fish 20 nautical miles off the coast. But since then, Israel has generally restricted fishing to between three and six nautical miles.

Since sardines, which the United Nations calls Gaza’s “most important catch,” “flourish at the 6 NM boundary,” these limitations have been disastrous for Gazan fisherman.

[...]

The second way in which Israel still controls Gaza is by controlling its borders. Israel controls the airspace above Gaza, and has not permitted the reopening of Gaza’s airport, which it bombed in 2001. Neither does it allow travel to and from Gaza by sea.

Israel also controls most land access to Gaza. It’s true that — in addition to Gaza’s two active border-crossing points with Israel — it has a third, Rafah, with Egypt. But even here, Israel wields substantial influence.

But they "withdrew" from Gaza.

Finally, and perhaps most profoundly, Israel controls Gaza’s population registry. When a child is born in Gaza, her parents register the birth, via the Palestinian Authority, with the Israeli military.

[...]

Israel rarely adds adults to the Palestinian population registry. That means that if you’re, say, a Jordanian who marries someone from Gaza and wants to move there to live with her, you’re probably out of luck. Israel won’t let you in.

But Israel "withdrew".

Israel is even more zealous about limiting the number of Palestinians in the West Bank, where it still has settlers. So when Palestinians move from Gaza to the West Bank, Israel generally refuses to let them update their addresses, which means they can’t legally stay. Israel can even prevent children in Gaza from changing their address to the West Bank to live with a parent.

[...]

You won’t hear about this at the AIPAC Policy Conference. But in these and myriad other ways, Israel constrains the lives of virtually every person in Gaza.

Not "virtually". Literally.

As the indispensable Israeli human rights group Gisha has observed: “Gaza residents may not bring a crate of milk into the Gaza Strip without Israeli permission; A Gaza university cannot receive visits from a foreign lecturer unless Israel issues a visitor’s permit; A Gaza mother cannot register her child in the Palestinian population registry without Israeli approval; A Gaza fisherman cannot fish off the coast of Gaza without permission from Israel; A Gaza nonprofit organization cannot receive a tax-exempt donation of goods without Israeli approval; A Gaza teacher cannot receive her salary unless Israel agrees to transfer tax revenues to the Palestinian Ministry of Education; A Gaza farmer cannot get his carnations and cherry tomatoes to market unless Israel permits the goods to exit Gaza.” Claiming that Israel divested itself of responsibility for Gaza when it “withdrew totally” in 2005 may ease American Jewish consciences. But it’s a lie.

And American Jews who are still supporting the Israeli government know it.

In three wars — in 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014 — Israeli bombing damaged roughly 240,000 Gazan homes. According to The New York Times, Operation Cast Lead alone, in 2008-2009, cost Gaza’s economy $4 billion, almost three times the Strip’s annual GDP. Operation Protective Edge in 2014 damaged or destroyed more than 500 schools and preschools, affecting 350,000 students.

[...]

Israel’s buffer zones and partial blockade make it impossible for the Strip to effectively rebuild. Over the past three years, Israel has, to its credit, loosened restrictions on goods coming in and out of Gaza. Still, the United Nations reports that, in large measure because of “continued export restrictions” and “restrictions on import of material and equipment necessary for local production[B3],” Gaza exported less than one-fifth as much in 2016 as it had in the first half of 2007.

[...]

According to the United Nations, roughly half the people in Gaza are “moderately-to-severely food insecure,” up 30% from a decade ago. Hospitals lack essential drugs. A shortage of teachers and buildings has forced many schools to run double and even triple shifts, which means many children attend school for only four hours a day. (By withholding donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which runs many of Gaza’s schools, the Trump administration will likely make this worse). Most people in Gaza receive only a few hours of electricity per day.

[...]

[Allegedly for "security" purposes, Israel] restricts Gaza’s import of many “dual-use” products, from cement and steel to cranes, x-ray machines and smoke detectors to wood planks thicker than 5 centimeters to even the batteries and spare parts needed to power children’s hearings aids. The economic and humanitarian consequences of these restrictions are often grave. And Israel’s definition of “dual-use” is far broader than international standards.

[...]

Families in Gaza cannot travel to the West Bank or Israel proper to see their families unless a “first degree relative” (parent, child, sibling) gets married, dies or is about to die. Letting someone leave Gaza to visit his dying grandparent is an unacceptable security risk, evidently, while letting them leave to visit a dying parent is not.

Israel’s blockade on exports is similarly vast and arbitrary. Israel allows farmers in Gaza to sell tomatoes and eggplants to Israel but not potatoes, spinach and beans. It allows them to export 450 tons of eggplant and tomatoes per month but not more. Spinach, evidently, is more dangerous than eggplant. And 500 tons of eggplant and tomatoes are more dangerous than 450.

[...]

In 2009, Haaretz exposed the way Israeli agricultural interests lobby to loosen restrictions on imports into Gaza when Israeli farmers want to sell surplus goods. In 2011, Israel found itself with a shortage of lulavs, the palm fronds that observant Jews shake on the holiday of Sukkot. So Israel lifted its ban on Gaza’s export of palm fronds. Had the security risk suddenly changed? Of course not.

[...]

[T]errorism doesn’t only require opportunity; it also requires intent. And when you bankrupt a Gazan farmer by blocking his exports or crush a Gazan student’s dreams by denying her the chance to study abroad, you may breed the desperation and hatred that produces terrorism, and thus undermine the very Israeli security you’re trying to safeguard.

This is the same argument people make for US policy in the Middle East: we are creating terorists by interfering and destroying their homes and lives, and therefore making ourselves less safe. The problem with this "argument" is that it is so plainly obvious as to be rendered ridiculous. It shouldn't be necessary to make such an argument. In our case, it's even more ridiculous than it is for Israel since our country is so far separated from the Middle East by distance. It's plainly obvious, however, in both cases, that safety is not really the issue. It's a bugaboo. We - and both Israeli and American Jews - have to dispense with common sense and falsely claim fears for our safety to cover for what is purely prejudice and xenophobia.

American Jewish leaders insist that Israel no longer controls Gaza. But when confronted with the control Israel actually wields, their justifications generally boil down to: “security” and “Hamas.”

Hamas is indeed a brutal and destructive force, to both Israelis and Palestinians. It has a long and ugly record of terrorist attacks. It does not recognize Israel. Its Islamist ideology is deeply oppressive, especially to women, LGBTQ Palestinians and religious dissenters.

But Hamas did not force Israel to adopt the policies that have devastated Gaza. Those policies represent a choice — a choice that has not only failed to dislodge Hamas, but has also created the very conditions in which extremism thrives.

Nor did Hamas exist outside of the Israeli occupation. Hamas was formed in 1987 as a response and resistance to Israeli control of Palestine. Just as the US invasion of Iraq gave rise to al Qaeda (who want to kill us), Israeli policy gave rise to Hamas.

[After its electoral victory in 2006], Hamas proposed a unity government with Fatah “for the purpose of ending the occupation and settlements and achieving a complete withdrawal from the lands occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem, so that the region enjoys calm and stability during this phase.”

[...]

Washington and Jerusalem pressured Abbas to reject a national unity government and govern without a democratically elected parliament. Then, in 2007, the Bush administration encouraged Abbas’s national security advisor, Mohammed Dahlan, to oust Hamas from Gaza by force, a gambit that backfired when Hamas won the battle on the ground. And with Hamas now ensconced in power, Israel dramatically tightened its blockade of Gaza, which it has maintained — with modifications — ever since.

[...]

For more than a decade, Israel’s answer to the problem of Gaza has been collective punishment and terrifying force. For stretches of time, this has kept Gaza quiet. And it may again. In the coming weeks, Israeli soldiers may kill and maim enough protesters to scare the rest back into their prison enclave. But sooner or later, Gaza will rise again. And the longer Israel suffocates its people, the more desperate and vengeful their uprisings will become. [...] According to the United Nations, three hundred thousand children in Gaza suffer from post-traumatic stress from the 2014 conflict alone. Do Israeli and American Jewish leaders really believe that brutalizing them even more by denying them adequate food, education, electricity and water will make them more likely to live in peace with Israel?

That question would be useful only if Israeli and American Jewish leaders were actually interested in peace.

The struggle for human decency, Orwell argued, is also a struggle for honest language. Our community’s complicity in the human nightmare in Gaza should fill every American Jew with shame. The first step toward ending that complicity is to stop lying to ourselves.

But lying to ourselves is all we have to protect our egos, maintain our prejudices and retain control.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Veselnitskaya fesses up

Apparently, some of her personal documents were leaked.

The Russian lawyer who met with Trump campaign officials in Trump Tower in June 2016 on the premise that she would deliver damaging information about Hillary Clinton has long insisted she is a private attorney, not a Kremlin operative trying to meddle in the presidential election.

[...]

Ms. Veselnitskaya [...] appears to have recanted her earlier denials of Russian government ties. During an interview to be broadcast Friday by NBC News, she acknowledged that she was not merely a private lawyer but a source of information for a top Kremlin official, Yuri Y. Chaika, the prosecutor general.

“I am a lawyer, and I am an informant,” she said. “Since 2013, I have been actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general.”

[...]

She told the Russian news agency Interfax on Wednesday that her email accounts were hacked this year by people determined to discredit her, and that she would report the hack to Russian authorities.

The Russian prosecutor general’s office did not respond to requests for comment. In an email, Ms. Veselnitskaya said she would respond in two weeks.

  NYT

What happens in two weeks?

Ms. Veselnitskaya’s involvement in the official communications with the Russian government “raises serious questions about obstruction of justice and false statements,” said Jaimie Nawaday, a former assistant United States attorney in Manhattan who was a prosecutor on [a money laundering/tax fraud case (uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky) in which Veselnitskaya was involved].

She said Ms. Veselnitskaya’s actions should be referred to the United States attorney’s office for investigation, including whether she misrepresented herself to the court. “It’s completely outrageous,” Ms. Nawaday said.

Please. The woman is a Russian agent. What's "completely outrageous" is the action of the Trump cabal.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Dr. Jackson keeps his job

The White House medical unit frequently functioned as a "grab and go" clinic where mid-level staffers to the most senior officials could obtain prescription drugs without being examined by a doctor, casually pick up the powerful sleeping aid Ambien even for their children, and get drugs that were not prescribed to the person actually taking the medication.

These examples, described to CNN by five of the medical unit's former and current employees and which appear to represent the more problematic practices there, were endorsed by Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, a doctor.

Jackson withdrew his nomination to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs Thursday morning in response to an avalanche of allegations of questionable behavior. But the 50-year-old US Navy rear admiral remains President Donald Trump's physician and the head of an office that treats the first family, Vice President Mike Pence, members of the Trump Cabinet and other senior government officials.

  CNN

Hey, everybody does it.

Some former Obama administration officials are defending Jackson, saying they were only given sleeping aids after being asked routine medical questions. He would ask staffers how long they wanted to sleep and whether they had to get any work done on the flight, before offering drugs ranging from Ambien to non-prescription drugs like melatonin.

LOL. Those are NOT routine medical questions in anybody's definition of the term.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Shit-for-brains violates FIFA rules, too

What a nasty fucking attitude.   Jesus, he's got no redeeming qualities at all, does he?

In response [to Trump's tweet], FIFA highlighted its Bid Rules of Conduct, which prohibit anyone affiliated with a bid "from making any written or oral statements of any kind, whether adverse or otherwise, in relation to the bids of other member associations that expressed their interest in submitting to FIFA a bid to host the final competition of the 2026 FIFA World Cup or other Candidate Host Associations."

The FIFA rules also instruct member associations to reject "any attempt to be influenced in relation to their function and obligations."

[...]

Several European countries' soccer federations -- including Russia, France and Belgium -- have announced they will back Morocco's bid, which is also likely to earn significant support from African nations.

[...]

ESPN reported in February that the race between the joint bid and Morocco was already much closer than expected, due in part to Trump's foreign policies -- including a travel ban against mostly Arab countries -- and rhetoric in describing poorer countries. Lingering resentment over the U.S. Department of Justice investigation into FIFA corruption has also hampered the U.S.-led bid's effort to attract votes.

  ESPN

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Michael Cohen scorned

In the months before the election, when Mr. Trump reshuffled his campaign for a third time and named Steve Bannon as campaign chief, Mr. Cohen told associates he had expected to be tapped for the role, according to people familiar with the matter. He also told people at the time he expected to be named White House chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said.

[...]

Mr. Cohen has memorably said he would “take a bullet” for the president. But in a sign of Mr. Cohen’s state of mind, he has in recent months privately groused about being excluded from White House posts he believed he deserved, according to people familiar with his thinking. He has struggled to get Mr. Trump’s attention. And two new business engagements he started during that time that could have profited from his Washington connections have instead languished.

  WSJ

Translation: Michael Cohen was either led to believe or simply miscalculated his value to Trump, but the point is that he believed he was going to Washington to funnel money into his own personal businesses. What would make him think that? I'd say it's because he was fully aware that was the plan for the Trump cabal, and he mistakenly thought he was part of it.

Mr. Trump decided that bringing Mr. Cohen inside the White House carried too many risks, according to people familiar with the discussions. Mr. Trump privately has described Mr. Cohen as a “bull in a china shop,” who when brought in to fix a problem sometimes breaks more china, according to a person close to the president.

Look who's talking. The guy who goes on TV and announces he fired the head of the FBI to try to stop an investigation. The guy who calls up Fox News when his fixer is in a shitload of trouble and admits said fixer made a deal for him with a prostitute.

Mr. Cohen, who as a teenager frequented Brooklyn’s ethnic Russian neighborhoods and married into a Ukrainian family, cultivated a rough-and-tumble, streetwise image.

Gregory Ehrlich invited Mr. Cohen to his wedding and was amused to hear he bragged to another guest that he belonged to the Russian mob. Mr. Ehrlich, who is now estranged from Mr. Cohen, said he doesn’t believe his former friend had any such ties.

That's gonna look really good in the trial, and for Mueller's purposes. And it's not gonna matter whaether Mr. Ehrlich believes it.

Mr. Cohen said he believed he might become Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, which he said would keep their communications confidential. “My sole purpose is to protect him and the family from anyone and anything,” he said in the January interview.

That sounds mightly like a confirmation that he wasn't Trump's attorney, so...no attorney-client privilege.  ("The family.")

Mr. Trump didn’t always demonstrate respect for his employee. After saying he’d attend Mr. Cohen’s son’s bar mitzvah in 2012, Mr. Trump was late, and the blessings were delayed, according to an attendee.

After Mr. Trump arrived, he gave a speech, telling guests he hadn’t planned to come, but he relented after Mr. Cohen had repeatedly called him, his secretary and his children begging him to appear, the attendee said. The guests laughed because “everyone knew it was very realistic-sounding,” the attendee added.

Roger Stone was right about Trump treating Cohen like dirt. Why Cohen had so little respect for himself is the question now.

On Jan. 5, 2017, two weeks before the inauguration, Mr. Cohen, camped in his cluttered office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, a few doors away from the president-elect, still didn’t know what his future role would be.

Mr. Cohen juggled two phones with the backdrop of mixed martial-arts paraphernalia in his office. Mr. Trump “doesn’t operate with timelines,” Mr. Cohen explained to a reporter. Then he corrected himself: “I am not a timeline item,” he said. “He knows that an hour before he leaves, if he calls me and says, ‘I need you in D.C.,’ I’ll be there.”

About a week later, Mr. Cohen had grown more frustrated. He still hadn’t solidified his role. “I still don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, whether I need to stay here for a while or go to D.C.,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s crazy we’re talking about this three, four days before which everybody starts heading down and I have no idea.”

[...]

During the inaugural festivities, Mr. Cohen and his guests weren’t given priority access, the person said, noting that the hurt was visible on Mr. Cohen’s face: “He was always just at the edges.”

What a sad sack. The last to know; can't take a hint. Too chicken to ask. I'm beginning to think maybe it's true that he really did take out a loan on his house to pay off Stormy Daniels.

But, maybe it's Cohen's turn now.

Privately, Mr. Cohen [complained] to associates, both about being left in New York and about Mr. Trump’s then-failure to repay him for the $130,000 he had drawn off his home-equity line to pay Ms. Clifford, people familiar with the matter say.

Mr. Cohen even was contemplating “defecting” from Mr. Trump, according to a person familiar with these conversations. Mr. Cohen stopped complaining about Mr. Trump not repaying him around mid-2017, according to another person familiar with the situation. Mr. Cohen has said he wasn’t repaid by the Trump Organization or Mr. Trump’s campaign, but has declined to answer questions about whether Mr. Trump himself repaid him.

In the weeks since the FBI raid, Mr. Cohen has been out on the town, smoking cigars with friends and frequenting tony restaurants such as Nobu in midtown, in what some who know him interpret as an attempt to show he isn’t frightened of what the investigation will bring.

Or maybe he's celebrating having made a deal with the investigators, keeping himself out of prison.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

How much longer?

Perhaps I ought to stop looking at this Twitter account.

If that's what he meant, then perhaps he should "remember sailor" himself.  Obviously he's forgotten the man's name.  If ever he knew it.  

Who knows whether the remark is aimed at Comey or "the base"?  His stream-of-unconsciousness is indecipherable except by the voices in his head.

Also - he pardoned the guy.  Should Comey take that as a hint that he might be pardoned?  I think we know the answer to that.