The Things We Knew We Knew

Trump's first comments to the media since the release
of the Mueller report came with the Easter Bunny nearby

In the days since the release of the redacted Special Counsel's report drafted by Robert Mueller and his hand-picked dream team of investigators and prosecutors, a remarkable trove of disturbing information about a dysfunctional and dangerously authoritarian White House has been revealed to the public.

Among other things Trump directed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to lie and say it was him, and not Trump's idea, to fire former FBI director James Comey - as if anyone else in Washington would even consider such a flagrant overreach of power.

Or the stunning revelation of the extent of to which Vladimir Putin, and the extensive network operating on his behalf, went to in order to interfere in the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections (in favor of Trump) using proxies such as the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and a host of Russian cyber criminals.

Speaking of which, if you didn't catch 60 Minutes on Sunday night, please be sure to take a few minutes to check out Lesley Stahl's segment on the "unholy alliance" between Russian intelligence and the elusive Russian cyber criminals who operate on their behalf - and under their protection.

And how American intelligence (with the help of Microsoft and other private internet security firms) finally discovered the massive global hacking criminal enterprise of prolific Russian hacker Evgeniy Bogachev - it's truly disturbing.   

In his first comments directly to members of the press since the release of the Mueller report last Thursday, Trump mostly avoided any tough questions about the content of the report as he strutted about the South Lawn of the White House with the Easter Bunny during the annual WH Easter Egg Roll on Monday.

As the New York Times reported, the embattled POTUS did find time to assure a young child that the Wall was indeed on track, assuring the attendee, "Oh, it's happening. It's being built now." 

Lying White House Press Sec. Sarah Sanders 

Like many people, I'm still in the process of trying to make sense of the 448-page Mueller report.

I'm absorbing the conclusions of journalists as they sift through it, and I'm also in the painstaking process of reading through it myself.

But it's going to take time.

(By the way you can download the PDF from the DOJ Website for free.)

If you're interested in a quick overview of some of the more interesting revelations from the Mueller report that haven't gotten a whole lot of media coverage as of yet (including Don Junior's interaction with Wikileaks and Trump ordering former White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller and then lie about it to the press) take a few minutes to listen to the first segment from Monday morning's Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC.

Aside from all the things in the report that were't public, one of the things that struck me was the sheer volume of things in the report that we basically already knew we knew.

Like the fact that the widely-despised White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders has habitually lied to the press and the American people in a pathetic effort to put some kind of "spin" on the almost unceasing torrent of lies, partisan half-truths and assorted hogwash that spew out of Boss Trump's mouth and Twitter feed on a daily basis.

Even though she admitted under oath to Mueller that she lied about "countless" employees of the FBI disliking former FBI director James Comey, she's embarked on this bizarre press campaign to insist that she is not, in fact, the lying sack of shit she's proven herself to be.

We didn't need the Mueller report to know that Sanders was a liar, but it's important that there's now irrevocable proof that she is one.

Equally disturbing were the revelations that many top White House advisers simply ignored Trump's most bat-shit-crazy requests, knowing that his childlike attention span is so short, that he'd eventually just forget about it, pick up his phone to Tweet something and simply wander off to watch TV and eventually move on the next nut-job idea or proposal that popped into his head.

Again, these were things we knew we knew, but the Mueller report just now confirms it for the world (and history) to see - all these "known knowns" and efforts by a White House to manipulate the truth for nefarious reasons reminded me of the heady days of George W. Bush; when things that we knew we knew had far more deadly consequences.

Let's take a quick look back.

Ex-Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld's now-infamous
Pentagon press briefing February 12, 2002

By February 12, 2002 when the eclectic former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stepped to the Pentagon podium for a press briefing, it was just about five months to the day since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

There were many still-traumatized Americans anxious to see the U.S. government unleash its military to deliver righteous retribution to the terrorist networks responsible for the murder of innocent people on 9/11.

By the time Rumsfeld gave his now-infamous press briefing on February 12, 2002, the U.S. and a coalition of its allies including the United Kingdom had been engaged in combat operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan since October, 2001 - but the Bush White House had grander designs.

As we now know, an alignment of hawkish Neo-conservatives (Neo-Cons), reactionary politicians, murky think-tanks and corporations with ties to the defense industry complex and the oil industry were building a movement to support an invasion of Iraq under the false pretense that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a supporter of radical Islamic terrorists and possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) which (supposedly) posed a dire threat to security in the Mid-East and to the United States and its allies.

The White House and the Pentagon continued to push the false narrative that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to the 9/11 attacks even though 11 of the 19 attackers were from Saudi Arabia.

But some members of Congress, intelligence agencies (both in the U.S. and in other nations), the press, members of the American public and people around the globe were highly skeptical about the existence of proof that tied Iraq to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

So on February 12, 2002, in response to a reporter questioning the lack of evidence proving that Hussein had, or would provide WMD's to terrorists, Donald Rumsfeld gave the following answer:

In 2003 ex-Sec. of State Colin Powell gave evidence of
WMD's CIA Dir. George Tenet (left) knew was false 

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. 

But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones." 

Rumsfeld wasn't alone in peddling false or unprovable "facts" to try and justify a military invasion of Iraq - on February 5, 2003 former Secretary of State Colin Powell famously took to the floor of the United Nations to present "evidence" that Iraq possessed WMD's.

As journalist Seymour Hersh detailed in a March 23, 2003 New Yorker article, former-CIA Director George Tenet knew that the widely-circulated claim about Iraq trying to buy 500 tons of Uranium Oxide from Niger to enrich for use in a nuclear weapon was not true - and not supported by fact.

Powell made that claim in front of the UN with Tenet sitting behind him (pictured above), a speech he has since called a "blot" on his lengthy public service record.

Sadly, after an estimated 655,000 casualties and trillions of American tax dollars spent on the Iraq War, we know all too well the devastating consequences of those lies.

Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman high-fives Russian
President Vladimir Putin at the 2018 G-20 summit

At the time Rumsfeld said that now-infamous quote above, many people mocked him for engaging in what some saw as a murky kind of double-speak - a slippery attempt to evade the growing criticism that there was no link between the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

But the quote is paraphrased from engineers and scientists who'd used the term "known unknowns" decades before to describe inherent structural or system risks in aircraft.

Unforeseen dangers or catastrophic accidents which couldn't be mathematically predicted because they were unknown problems which had never appeared before.

Or, like the 9/11 terrorist attack, simply couldn't be imagined.

Personally I think Rumsfeld's quote helps to offer valuable perspective on the complex layers of the Mueller report - and what it reveals about the Trump campaign's murky connections with foreign governments including Russia, the Ukraine and Saudi Arabia. 

Unquestionably there are more layers yet to be revealed from the Mueller report, especially if the Democratic-controlled House is able to subpoena an un-redacted version.

The things we knew we knew about the Trump White House are certainly disturbing enough, but as Rumsfeld's quote suggests, it's the "unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know" that could prove to be the biggest threat to America's imperfect democracy.

And may just prove to be the undoing of the Trump presidency as well.

Marta's Long Road to Boston

Chicago protesters join some of the millions of anti-
Trump protesters around the U.S. November 9, 2016  

One of the unavoidable realities of this existence is that there are times when events beyond our control alter the course of our daily lives in ways that we are powerless to stop.

The event might be perceived as good or bad, or neutral, but there's no way to predict the impact of the exhilaration, joy or terror that can accompany the realization that one is being swept along by change we have little control over.

Regardless of whether we asked for that change, or it found us.

Like the sickening feeling of dread that gripped millions of Americans on the morning of November 9, 2016 when the reality that an unstable, openly-racist, con-man had been elected president began to sink in - despite 3 million more Democrats voting for Hillary Clinton, Trump still won.

Just ask the tens of thousands of hardworking, taxpaying, undocumented immigrants how they and their families have been affected by their lives being upended by the Jeff Sessions-led Department of Justice unleashing ICE agents like some kind of Gestapo force manifesting Trump's xenophobia.

Ask those immigrants how the 2016 election changed their lives.

A tainted election thanks in no small part to the collection of corrupted Russian oligarchs and assorted functionaries and puppets of the Russian intelligence community who willingly and actively manipulated the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections to appease Russian President Vladimir Putin's open contempt for Hillary Clinton by using a gullible, conceited American real estate investor turned reality show host to help undermine Democratic institutions in the U.S.

Two long years later, as Trump's pointless, puerile government shutdown enters its 20th day, millions of hardworking Americans are being swept towards a frightening economic uncertainty with no apparent end in sight.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September of
2008 heralded unprecedented change for millions

Especially after "Mr. Art of the Deal" had a hissy-fit, banged the table and walked out of face-to-face negotiations with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Congressional leaders at the White House on Wednesday after being told by Pelosi that he would not be getting his wall.

The people affected by President Man-Baby's tantrum include almost 800,000 federal workers, along with tens of thousands of outside contractors in sectors like defense and aerospace who work with shuttered federal agencies.

Folks facing the daunting reality that there will be no paycheck for them this Friday January 11th.

For anyone who has ever been laid off, as I was during the Great Recession back in June of 2009, the gnawing anxiety of knowing that bills are coming and food needs to be purchased despite having no paycheck on the way, is all too familiar.

Now even though change isn't always bad per-se, it's effects can wreak havoc in our daily lives, and unceremoniously upend routines we've known (or depended on) for years.

Last summer, smack dab in the middle of the busiest time of the year for residential apartment rentals, there were a lot of changes afoot at the real estate management company I've worked for since 2012.

At the precise moment when I was under the most intense pressure to sign leases and get vacant apartments rented, some internal company drama related to personnel changes that had begun simmering back in the spring of 2018 came to a heated boil in the summer which began taking a greater than usual toll on me emotionally and mentally.

The horror of writer's block

Those of you who may have followed my blog over the years may have noticed a precipitous drop-off in the frequency of my posts starting last April - it wasn't because I lost interest in writing or the desire to explore the topics which capture my attention.

Truth be told I was thinking of leaving the company during the summer when out of the blue, a senior manager at a sister property retired after 30-some years quite unexpectedly.

When a new position opened up I rolled the dice and applied for it - and ended up crushing the interview.

By late September I started in a new office with a new staff, new supervisor, new salary (yay!) and new hours which mean I no longer have to work every other Saturday - but the price is that I now have to get up at 5:15am, three hours earlier than I'd been getting up for the previous six years.

And I'm fine with that.

But with the changes in light and weather that accompany autumn, it took me weeks to get accustomed to the new hours, new job demands and adjust my sleep schedule to be in bed so much earlier - the weekday night-owl time I used to have to write was gone, and I didn't post a single blog between September 10th and January.

The career change I sought back in the summer impacted my creative efforts in ways I couldn't possibly have predicted.

The change was good for me, I'm enjoying the new job, I do quite a bit of writing there for the company (it's nice to be in a position to use one of my strengths professionally), I enjoy the challenges that come with property management, and I meet a lot of interesting people during the course of the day.

But not all change is good.

Immigration crisis? Or crisis of conscience?

One of the most interesting people in my new job was a woman I'll call "Marta" who immigrated to the U.S. years ago from a country located south of the Texas border; she's lived and worked here for years.

The property where I now work is huge, it sits on about 60 acres, 57 different buildings, well over 800 apartments.

Marta's job was to clean vacated the apartments after they'd been prepped and painted to make them ready for rental.

The residents there are very diverse, and a number of the employees and residents speak Spanish; Marta didn't speak a lot of English, and my Spanish is OK (I've been using the Duolingo app to brush up) but we communicated; and we're fortunate to have an office coordinator who is bi-lingual and could translate for Marta when needed.

Marta worked really hard, and she always managed to have a smile on her face, one that could light up a room, even when it was busy or freezing cold out - she was in and out of the office where I work a lot during the day so I interacted with her on a daily basis.

Whether it's carpenters, plumbers, leasing representatives or grounds crew, property management is a team effort; and over the 3-months I worked with her Marta was an important part of out team.

But last week she announced that she had to resign her position because her adult daughter up in Boston is facing an immigration hearing and she's going to be deported from the U.S. in a few weeks.

Marta's daughter is being taken to an immigration facility somewhere, and she wouldn't be able to take care of her 6-month daughter, a U.S. citizen by birth - so Marta had to move to Boston to take care of her 6-month-year-old granddaughter so the child can stay in the U.S. and the father can work.

Is this who we are as a country?

Sadly, Marta's daughter also has a 7-year-old daughter who is not a U.S. citizen, so she's going to be deported along with her mother.

Leaving her baby sister, grandmother and other family behind.

When Marta came into the office last Friday to explain why she was leaving, I could see how the stress and pressure of her circumstances was weighing on her.

In a very short time she had to make arrangements to pack her belongings, leave her apartment, friends and her job to move up to Boston in the middle of winter, a city she's never lived in.

Simply because Trump's draconian immigration policy treats people like Marta's daughter and granddaughter as "enemies of the state" - people to be feared, despised and deported.

As if their very existence was some kind of criminal act that merits punishment in the eyes of those who think a gigantic wall built along the southern border will somehow make America a better place.

It's been hard for me to get Marta out of my mind this week, her departure was so sudden, she was an important part of our team and suddenly, through no fault of her own, change swept her away from her job and community.

Yet she faced that change with a stoic determination and resolve that comes from a place of strength, love and compassion.

Before she left last Friday we assured Marta that she had a job waiting if and when circumstances allowed her to return to New Jersey - but I doubt she could think of anything other than the fact that her daughter will be going to a detention facility before being deported.

Even as the demands of the job pulled me back to the tasks which must be done, I find it hard thinking of Marta swept up by change beyond her control; change that found her.

Facing that long road to Boston.

Old Fox Guy, The Singer & Aleister Crowley

Govt. Shutdown Day 13 - Fake President at Thursday's
fake press briefing with his posse of bald xenophobes 

It was my intention to begin 2019 not so much with the daunting pressure and outsized expectations of a bold "New Year's Resolution".

But rather with the simple, honest pursuit of good intent.

So after work on Wednesday I closed my office door, changed into my workout clothes and drove over to the Retrofitness gym just around the corner from my apartment.

I needed to escape the incessant media coverage of Trump's delusional whining about building a pointless wall.

After spending much of my New Year's Day nursing a hangover, eating and watching Penn State come up short against a resurgent University of Kentucky football team in the Citrus Bowl on Tuesday, it felt good to work up a good sweat and burn some calories.

Now for some folks, the gym is a social experience, some people spend as much time talking and shooting the breeze with others as they do working out - which is cool.

But I'm more the cerebral type, and after a day of ringing phones, nonstop emails and constant interruptions at work, just meditating and thinking quietly while working out is much more relaxing and rejuvenating to me than talking.

Excessively chatty people at the gym, especially the types who thrive on a captive audience in a confined space where others are forced to hear them talk, can really annoy me by intruding on the peaceful, quiet place I try to create inside my head when I'm working out.

An asylum seeker pulls her children away from tear
gas fired by U.S. Border Patrol agents

My first workout of 2019 went pretty well, I did 30 minutes of lifting and ab work, then 30 minutes of cardio.

While on the treadmill I flipped back and forth between local weather and a CNN panel discussion of Trump's delusional demands for Congress to authorize $5 billion in taxpayer funds to begin construction on a useless monument to his xenophobia, bigotry and infantile ego along the southern border with Mexico.


Afterwards I walked into the locker room to change and grab a hot shower, and these two regulars are in there - one of whom is an older conservative guy I know to be a Fox News watcher.

He's not a bad guy, but he tends to roam the expanse of the gym looking for people willing to listen to him spend 15 to 20 minutes talking in excruciating detail about the woes of the Philadelphia Eagles or his right-wingy political views - which come straight from the aforementioned Fox News.

Allow me to share an example.

Back in the summer of 2017 I heard him angrily denounce Arizona Republican Senator John McCain as a traitor after the feisty, decorated Vietnam vet and former POW famously gave his thumbs-down on a Senate floor vote to pass that sketchy, cobbled-together Republican bill to repeal Obamacare - torpedoing Trump's disturbing obsession with rolling back the Affordable Care Act.

That's just one sample of the kinds of things I've heard him say in the gym at high-volume.

So as I enter the locker room on Wednesday, there's Old Fox Guy talking to this other gym regular who defies the Retrofitness dress code by insisting on working out in jeans, black leather boots, a black t-shirt, and a black baseball hat - he also wears headphones and spends much of his workouts singing loud, off-key snippets of classic rock like Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd.

(I enjoy classic rock, but if I'm going to listen to 'Breathe' from Dark Side of the Moon I want to hear Roger Waters sing it - not some sweaty dude in a gym with no musical tone staring at himself in a mirror pretending he knows the lyrics.)

Trash normally collected by Park Service employees
piles up across from the White House

Anyway, I see these two characters talking so I scurry over to my locker to change as fast as I can to try and get in the shower as quickly as possible where it was my hope that:

A) neither of them will try to engage me in conversation.

And B) the force of the water will hopefully drown out the sound of whatever conversation I know they're about to have.

I was making good time peeling off my sweaty clothes when The Singer brings up the government shutdown.

Old Fox Guy quickly agrees that something must be done, but before he can launch into some kind of tirade about Nancy Pelosi being responsible for it, The Singer stops in the middle of the locker room and his face gets red.

He raises his voice and announces that he's "sick of the whole thing", and with Ayn Rand-ian flourish says he could care less what happens to the 800,000 federal workers who are still going without a paycheck.

Many of whom have no means to pay their monthly mortgage, car loan or rent for January.

Now even Old Fox Guy was taken aback by such a statement, and despite his decidedly right-leaning political views starts to make a point about federal workers deserving to get paid.

But The Singer cuts him off, and shoots back that federal workers all get better benefits and pensions than he does and that they don't care about him.

Right-wing Net rumor: English occultist Aleister Crowley
was the father of First Lady Barbara Bush

He suggested they're all in cahoots with "the politicians" and out of the blue ( I shit you not) he says:

"Dude, you know Barbra Bush's father was Aleister Crowley, right?" 

Old Fox Guy is suddenly and uncharacteristically silent, as he ponders this question.

There are others besides myself in the locker room, and he has to realize how totally bat-shit crazy that sounds.

To me, suggesting that the wife of former President George HW Bush is actually the biological daughter of Aleister Crowley, the notorious British occult leader and prolific womanizer, ranks up there with the Pizzagate conspiracy that revolved around allegations that Hillary Clinton was a member of a pedophile ring that was run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant - which doesn't actually have a basement.

Curious about where The Singer could have dredged up this Bush-Crowley nonsense, I looked it up online and read an article on Gizmodo.com by Charlie Jane Anders which pointed out that the source of the rumor was an article published on the Cannonfire Website - on April Fools Day 2006.

Anders reported that he contacted author Tobias Churton, who wrote a biography about Crowley, to ask him about the rumor - Churton claims that Crowley, who like many cult leaders incorporated sex into the "rituals" associated with the occult practice he founded, kept meticulous notes of the various women he had sex with in his diary - there's no mention of him ever having had sex with Barbara Bush's mother Pauline Pierce.

So back to the gym, at this point I'm all but running past these two guys to get to the shower.

As I pass him, The Singer is red faced and pacing the small locker room area complaining that the Bush family are part of a cult that worships Satan.

By the time The Singer asks Old Fox Guy, "Do you believe in Lucifer?" I've got the shower going full blast and am rinsing my head to try and drown out the rest of his muttering about Trump foes being Satanists - this kind of irrational vilification of moderate Republicans by MAGA-hat wearing Trump loyalists is truly frightening.

8-YO Guatemalan immigrant Felipe Gomez Alonzo who
died in US Border Patrol custody on Christmas Eve

What's sad about that odd verbal exchange in my gym is how it reflects the kind of de-evolution of intelligent discourse and substantive political debate in this nation.

It's a direct byproduct of our deeply polarized political climate, and Trump's toxic presence in a White House where lies and deceit have become a daily part of the narrative.

His efforts to normalize racism, his paranoid attacks on institutions like the free press, the judiciary and free and fair elections go hand in hand with the denial of facts that Trump peddles like his xenophobia and bigotry.

The remarkable thing is that this Con Man-in-Chief doesn't actually care about any of these reprehensible views any more than he gives a shit about migrant children languishing (or dying) in detention facilities around the U.S. because of a policy he implemented.

Like 8-year-old Guatemalan immigrant Felipe Gomez Alonzo who died while in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol on Christmas Eve as a direct result of the intentionally inhumane immigration policy that's been the centerpiece of this nightmare presidency.

Trump's absurd policy positions and clownish statements are little more than crude tools used to prod and stoke the anger of the approximately 34% of American people who fawn over him like a cult leader, or quietly tolerate his intolerance.

Simply because it serves as a psychological outlet for the pent up fear and anger over their growing economic marginalization in a nation that's growing more racially and ethnically diverse every day.

A nation where the gap between the rich and everyone else continues to widen thanks in part to the Republican Party's zombie-like devotion to their corporate oligarch donor base.

All The President's Men

The quasi-delusional chaos Trump sews also serves as a way for him to try and deflect attention away from the shocking revelations of the Mueller investigation.

Like the fact that his former fixer-slash-personal lawyer (Michael Cohen), ex-campaign chief (Paul Manafort) and ex-national security adviser (Michael Flynn) have all been found guilty of varying degrees legal and ethical violations that point to a clear and sustained effort by the Trump campaign to actively conspire with Russia to rig the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections.

So it's troubling that I went to my gym to try and escape the ceaseless barrage of media coverage centering on Trump's rampant idiocy, and ended up being forced to listen to a "Freedom Caucus" Trump supporter whose contempt for mainstream Republicans is so extreme, that he's literally standing in a crowded public locker room repeating a baseless internet rumor about former First Lady Barbara Bush being the biological daughter of Aleister Crowley.

But that's okay, I get in, do my workout, shower and get out - calmed and reassured by the knowledge that a solid Democratic majority has just been sworn into the House of Representatives.

Politicians motivated by a desire to legislate on behalf of the majority of the American people, and energized by a sense of responsibility to reign in the chaos of a man who has turned the White House into a cesspool.

Besides, if the quasi-delusional rantings of The Singer are any indication of what's motivating Trump's base and the divisions within a Republican Party that's shown itself unable to govern, then the 2020 elections are shaping up to bode well for Democrats at the local, state and national level.

Happy New Year indeed.

Hail Marys From 1600

Rudy Giuliani getting booed in Yankee Stadium

Could White House efforts to try and deflect attention from the mounting evidence surrounding the Trump administration's numerous ties to the Russian government during the 2016 presidential campaign possibly get any more desperate?

Rudy Giuliani's unhinged appearances on network and cable news programs over the past couple weeks haven't exactly boosted Trump's credibility.

Or his own for that matter.

While attending a Yankees game in the Bronx last Monday, Giuliani was loudly booed by a Memorial Day crowd when he was introduced on the PA system as the camera panned about for celebrities in attendance.

The 74-year-old crackpot Trump supporter / lawyer tried to pass the unmistakeable slight off as the Yankee fans showing him "love", but as I've mentioned on this blog before, I lived in New York City for 14 years and have attended dozens of Yankees games over the years.

Just to be clear, when Yanks fans boo you in Yankee Stadium, it ain't love.

Giuliani's efforts to try and undermine special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation have gotten so bizarre, it's actually getting embarrassing for Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Particularly given that mid-term elections, which are clearly shaping up to be a referendum on Trump's first two chaotic years in office, and the divisive, mean-spirited tone of his administration, are now only four months off.

Top Republicans Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and
Trey Gowdy all support the Mueller investigation

In today's social-media-influenced 24/7 news cycle, that's like a two-minute warning in the 4th quarter of a close football game.

For those nervous, legacy-cognizant Republican members of Congress who haven't already announced that they won't seek another term in office (in an effort to avoid the humiliation of being in the same party as Trump) the stakes are high heading into summer.


The week before last, even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other leading Republican members of Congress, including the dependably right-leaning Hillary-basher, Representative Trey Gowdy, publicly stated their firm support for the ongoing investigation being led by special counsel Robert Mueller of intentional interference in the 2016 U.S. elections ordered by Vladimir Putin.

In political terms, that's a pretty revealing indicator of how Republican politicians preparing to face  a fired-up voter base are trying to re-position themselves.

But it's more than that.

For example, obviously I don't agree with a lot of the policy positions of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but I respect his mastery of the arcane rules of the Senate chamber.

And don't think for a second that he's forgotten Trump's loudmouth support for failed pedophile Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore last fall - who ran on a platform that was partially based on checking the power of the "Republican Washington establishment", calling out McConnell by name repeatedly.

Trump in Nashville telling one of the 35 lies or
factually-misleading statements he told.

Politically-savvy Republicans running for office in November don't want to get caught calling the ongoing investigation into Russian interference a "witch hunt" as Trump has taken to characterizing an investigation that's already filed more than 100 criminal charges against 19 different people and 3 companies.

Five of those indicted have already plead guilty.

As the New York Times reported, "Thirteen are Russians accused of meddling in the 2016 elections."


True to his bombastic nature, Trump's response to members of his own political party publicly supporting the Mueller investigation even as he desperately tries to undermine it, has been predictable.

He took it as a snub from the same mainstream Republicans that he gleefully eviscerated like dead fish during the 2016 campaign and, as he's done consistently when he's getting bludgeoned by the mainstream press and social media, he took to the road Wednesday night.

Heading down south to try and rally his shrinking, but loyal base of support.

As USA Today and other news organizations reported, Trump used an appearance at a "Make America Great Again" rally in Nashville, Tennessee to meander through at least 35 different false or misleading statements on his favorite topics including provably false statements on the Affordable Care Act championed by President Obama, taking credit for wage growth that began under Obama and of course Trump's central theme - irrational immigrant bashing.

Even the local Tennessean.com caught Trump, once again, lying about the size of the crowd there.

His blundering, back-and-forth foreign policy efforts, including on-again, off-again negotiations with North Korea and the announcement of 25% tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from some of America's closest allies - including France, Canada and Mexico - have further fractured already-tenuous relationships with some the country's biggest global trading partners.

To say nothing of the fact that such tariffs will likely increase steel costs for U.S. manufacturers

Dinesh D'Souza being arrested for illegal campaign
contributions back in 2014

Costs which will inevitably translate to higher prices for American consumers.

The tariffs in particular were so reckless, it's possible they were meant to overshadow Trump's decision to help Chinese electronics maker ZTE after the Chinese announced they would invest hundreds of millions in an Indonesian project from which Trump would personally profit.

The ZTE decision even irked Republican politicians in Washington.

And it certainly didn't help that the announcement coincided with China approving additional trademarks for profiteering First Daughter Ivanka Trump, who has shamelessly helped herself - as has her husband Jared Kushner - to unabashed financial feeding at the trough during their questionable tenure in the White House as roving "senior advisers" to their quasi-delusional daddy. 

But unquestionably, Trump's most bizarre effort to rally his right-wing base and deflect from the reality of his disastrous presidency, was his decision to issue a presidential pardon last week to the textbook homophobic bigot Dinesh D'Souza (pictured above).

As an op-ed by the New York Times editorial board on Thursday titled "Dinesh D'Souza? Really?"
noted:

"On Thursday, Mr. Trump pardoned Dinesh D'Souza, the right-wing troll known for, among other things, posting racist tweets about President Barack Obama, spreading the lie that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator and writing that 'the American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.' "

Trump's decision to pardon D'Souza for funneling $20,000 in illegal campaign contributions to Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long back in 2012 seems intended as yet another petty swipe in Trump's bizarre obsession with President Obama.

Particularly given D'Souza's many racist attacks on Obama over the years, including a widely-panned and unsubstantiated book and calling Obama "boy" on Twitter among other assorted classless, low-rent nonsense.

So it's not surprising that Trump used his executive power to pardon someone like that (Hell, he pardoned ex-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio), anything to distract from the ongoing disaster that is his presidency.

Another Hail Mary pass lobbed from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - not to score, but to distract.

More Republican Authoritarian Creep

Authoritarian Cabal? Russian President Vladimir Putin,
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange & Donald Trump 

It certainly wasn't necessary to go see Star Wars: The Last Jedi over the weekend in order to be frightened by the Dark Side of the Force.

Recent efforts by some Republican members of Congress to try and discredit special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections represent a step towards a 21st century authoritarianism in America that is genuinely frightening to behold.

Especially considering some of the conservative characters leading the calls to fire Mueller.

As Ken Dilanian reported for NBC News last Wednesday, the inspector general of the Justice Department provided transcripts of private text messages shared between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page in which the romantically-involved couple referred to Donald Trump as both an "idiot" and a "enormous douche" - Strzok and Page also expressed dislike for Bernie Sanders and former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder but don't hold your breath waiting for Republicans to express outrage at that.

Republicans quickly seized on the selected text messages that disparaged Trump as "evidence" that the entire special counsel investigation is tainted by some kind of anti-Trump bias - but how did they get a hold of them?

Earlier today Business Insider reporter Natasha Bertrand told MSNBC's Joy Reid that it's still not clear how the text messages got in the hands of Republican Congressman David Nunes as the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General said it did not authorize the release of the text messages.

Frankly if there's anyone responsible for anti-Trump bias, it's Trump's own big mouth, his chaotic White House, political inexperience and the seemingly endless stream of meaningless pycho-babble that he issues from his own Twitter account at all hours of the day and night.

According to an AP-NORC poll released on Saturday, 45's approval rate stands at around 32% - even though his approval numbers have ticked up a few points because of the healthy state of the economy, his approval numbers are still the lowest ever for a first-year president. Ever.

So it's pretty fair to say that a majority of the American people, Democrats, Republicans and independents alike, DO think that Trump is an idiot and a douche.

And it's not a violation of Department of Justice policy for members of the FBI to be romantically involved, or to express personal political opinions if they want to - they're not monks.

Republican Virginia Congressman Bob Goodlatte

Regardless, Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte led the partisan saber-rattling on Capitol Hill last Wednesday during an oversight hearing of the committee.

He and other Republicans, including Jim Jordan of Ohio, leveled baseless accusations that the Mueller investigation, as well as senior FBI officials were politically motivated.

Goodlatte's name should be familiar.

His righteous indignation is actually kind of funny considering that the feisty representative of Virginia's 6th Congressional District is the same guy who made headlines back in January when he kicked off the 115th Congress by proposing to put the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) under the oversight of the Republican-majority House Ethics Committee.

A jaw-dropping proposal so absurd that it quickly drew widespread criticism from members of both sides of the House, long-time political observers, members of the public and even Trump himself.

Embarrassed Republicans held an emergency meeting in which they agreed to ditch Goodlatte's proposal, after which Congressman Mike Simpson, a Republican from Idaho, sheepishly admitted to reporters, "We shot ourselves in the foot."

That's also a pretty good way to characterize Republican efforts to try and discredit special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia intentionally interfering with an American election.

Especially considering that Mueller is a decorated Vietnam veteran, a Republican who served during the Reagan administration, and a highly-respected former head of the FBI with an impeccable professional reputation - he was chosen as special counsel by current deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.

And Rosenstein was nominated by Donald Trump to serve as deputy AG on January 31, 2017 - when he was then the longest-serving U.S. Attorney in the Justice Department.

Intelligence & terrorism expert Malcom Nance

So Republican efforts to paint the special counsel investigation as some kind of biased political witch hunt are totally ludicrous.

And worse, they swerve dangerously close to the kind of repressive authoritarian creep that define the governments of Russia, China and North Korea.

This Republican authoritarian creep was on display over the weekend too.

As David Edwards reported in an article for Raw Story on Sunday, former Naval intelligence veteran, career intelligence officer, terrorism expert and author Malcom Nance made appearances on MSNBC on both Saturday and Sunday to offer troubling insight into the specific ways in which the Trump administration is taking actions that are straight out of the authoritarian playbook.

Nance wrote the 2016 book "The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and Wikileaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election" 

On Saturday MSNBC's Chris Hayes interviewed Nance about a Washington Post report that U.S. intelligence agencies posses proof that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered and oversaw the massive operation to slander Hillary Clinton using illegally hacked emails, documents and voice-mails in order to assist Donald Trump's campaign.

Because Putin realized that he can more easily manipulate Trump and use him to advance Russian foreign interests; including undermining the NATO alliance, dissolving the European Union, strengthening Russia's control over eastern Europe - and undermining American's faith in the democratic process in order to enhance Russia's global standing and influence.

Earlier today on CNN former director of national intelligence James Clapper said he felt Putin was using Trump like an intelligence "asset".

Sadly, the assorted conservative talking heads who now essentially shape the political message of the White House are parroting this shift towards authoritarianism by echoing the baseless criticism of the special counsel investigation and the Justice Department by Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Mueller-hating Fox host & Trump shill Jeanine Pirro

As was widely reported two weeks ago, unnamed sources within the White House who are close to Trump told New York Times reporters that Trump allegedly watches 6 to 8 hours of TV a day, mostly Fox News - not surprising given that most of his domestic and foreign policy talking points seem to come word-for-word from what he sees on Fox.

Want an example of just how absurd conservative media's criticism of Mueller has gotten?

Check out Allegra Kirkland's Talking Points Memo article from last Friday about Trump supporter and Fox host Jeanine Pirro.

As Kirkland reports, Pirro, a former judge who became Westchester County, NY's first female district attorney, opened her Fox show last weekend by giving her viewers a list of officials at the Department of Justice, including Robert Mueller, that she thinks "should not just be fired but who need to be taken out in handcuffs."

Yes, she's talking about career Justice Department officials trying to determine the degree to which a foreign adversary interfered in the American electoral process.

Kirkland notes that Pirro earned a reputation for being a rigorous public prosecutor for Westchester County, one who gained a reputation for her knowledge of the law and being an advocate of victim's rights.

So her willingness to bury her head in the sand and pretend that the overwhelming evidence gathered by the CIA, NSA, FBI and other U.S. intelligence entities showing that Russia did indeed conspire to interfere with U.S. elections in 2016 demonstrates the scope of the ideological bubble into which the current Republican Party has immersed itself.

A bubble in which authoritarianism replaces the democratic values on which the country was founded, and vilifying dedicated public servants who seek the truth on behalf of the American people is a substitute for leadership and accountability.

The Dark Side isn't just found in a fictional world that existed "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away."

It's here, creeping up on the political institutions the Constitution considers sacred - like an unwanted vine that thrives on greed, fear and ignorance.

Dark, Desperate & Divisive: Stephen Miller's Diversionary White House Tactics

Stephen Miller spars with CNN's Jim Acosta

The Trump administration's calculated habit of making intentionally-controversial policy announcements or proposals in order to deflect media attention from the non-stop chaos surrounding the presidency has become the new norm for a White House plagued by scandal.

24 hours before the Wall Street Journal reported that special counsel Robert Mueller was impanelling a grand jury in the Russia investigation, the White House trotted out its anti-immigrant zealot Stephen Miller with fresh red meat for the dwindling Trump supporters.

True to journalistic norms, practices and traditions, it's probably fair to assume that Del Quentin Wilbur, the WSJ reporter who first broke the story about the grand jury on Thursday, contacted the White House on Tuesday or Wednesday to advise them that the story would be published and to seek comment.

The WSJ is now owned by the conservative media mogul / wanna-be kingmaker Rupert Murdoch, so they're certainly not going to randomly blindside a Republican White House with a potentially damaging story - even if Murdoch was notably not a Trump fan during the 2016 race for the Republican presidential nomination.

So my guess is that the collective braintrust at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue quickly threw together another poorly-planned "policy announcement" (remember the disastrous Muslim travel ban rollout?) intentionally designed to stoke the fear and anger of the approximately 37% of Americans who currently approve of Donald Trump to get them to rally around in the face of the inevitable criticism.

As a detailed comparison of six different presidential approval polls released on Saturday by Nate Silver's FiveThitrtyEight.com shows, Trump is now the most unpopular president in modern American history - take a minute to click the link above, scroll down and look at the sinking green line to see how Trump's approval rating compares to the past 12 U.S. presidents going all the way back to Harry S. Truman.

Republican Senators Graham & Tillis co-authored
bills to block Trump from firing Robert Mueller 

With Trump having already alienated the intelligence community, a number of federal judges around the country and scores of career civil servants who work in the federal government - including many in the State Department, Department of Justice, Department of Education and Environmental Protection Agency to name a few - as the recent healthcare debates have shown, he's now alienating Republican members of Congress who's support he needs to pass his legislative agenda.

Just a day after Stephen Miller's widely publicized confrontation with CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta on Wednesday, the Senate introduced two bipartisan bills aimed at blocking Trump's ability to fire special counsel Robert Mueller - especially given that a grand jury can issue subpoenas.

Make no mistake, the Senate was sending a clear message to the American people, the White House and Vladimir Putin that its members will not be distracted from getting to the bottom of finding out the extent of Russia's interference in the 2016 elections - and to what degree members of the Trump administration colluded with them to undermine fair and democratic elections in this country.

What was particularly troubling about Miller's petulant anti-immigrant tirade during his announcement that the Trump administration was seeking to cut the rate of immigration into the U.S. in half, was the degree to which this administration will sink to deflect attention from the scandal enveloping the White House and it's hugely unpopular part-time resident.

As Brian Lehrer astutely observed on Thursday morning during an interview with American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent, author and CNN commentator April Ryan, CNN's Jim Acosta directly challenged Miller on the motivation behind the Trump administration's latest out-of-left field policy announcement.

White House correspondent April Ryan   

During Miller's response to Acosta's accusation that the desire to restrict immigration to those who could speak English was in fact "racial engineering" , (you should really should watch it if you haven't listened to it), he had the gall to suggest that the Trump administration's latest immigration crackdown was intended to address the disparities between unemployment rates among blacks and Hispanics with a high school education (or less) and their white counterparts.

In response, April Ryan the African-American reporter who Trump famously asked to set up a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus during (what was for Trump) a disastrous press conference back in February, who was in the room on Wednesday during Miller's heated exchange with Acosta can be heard in the background saying, "We've now reached a new low." 

As if Miller's claims that the Trump administration's motivations to impose restrictions on immigrants was some kind of effort to "help African-Americans get jobs" (his words) and assist those blacks and Hispanics with a marginal education and limited job skills while opposing increases in the minimum wage, are some kind of noble goal.

A notion which is laughable considering the Trump administration's wide disconnect with anyone who isn't white and Christian and its open hostility towards immigrants, Muslims, the LGTBQ community and people of color.

During her discussion with Brian Lehrer, Ryan noted that during Miller's strange Q&A on Wednesday she cut right to the chase, asking him point-blank whether the Trump administration was highlighting the black unemployment rate to offer concrete solutions to tackle discrepancies in employment based on race and ethnicity.

Or just a transparent and blatantly self-serving effort to pit one ethnic group against the other.

Former labor official Seth Harris

In response to Miller's erroneous claim, she read Brian Lehrer a quote from Seth Harris, a lawyer who served as the acting deputy labor secretary under President Obama after having spent seven years as a policy advisor in the Department of Labor during the Clinton administration. He noted that:

"While low-skilled immigrants compete against the lowest skilled U.S. workers, mostly not African-Americans, they do not significantly displace U.S. workers - and immigrants are not the cause of stagnant wages."

So as Ryan noted, Miller's efforts to use concern for minority unemployment to justify an attempt to cut the rate of immigration in half was nothing more than an unsubstantiated lie - the latest of many for the Trump administration.

What's also remarkable is the fact that the White House actually put Miller in front of the press to open his mouth in the first place.

Especially given his long legacy of open hostility towards immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities and his cozy relationship with white nationalism.

Stephen Miller literally symbolizes the efforts of the Trump administration to normalize white supremacy by dressing it up in a suit and tie and giving it an office in the West Wing of the White House - Steve Bannon ain't the only one folks.

When you get a chance, take some time to read William D Cohan's recent Vanity Fair profile of Miller; given Miller's position as an influential White House policy advisor and spokesman, I think it's important that people understand just who this guy really is.

CNN's Jim Acosta confronts Stephen Miller 

His accusing Jim Acosta of "cosmopolitan bias" during his tense exchange with Acosta was an overt nod to the alt-right / white nationalist community's embrace of the term as not-so-secret code for anti-Semitism.

As Cohan observes, Miller has been a poster boy of right-wing bigotry for years, when he was a student in high-school in the progressive, wealthy enclave of Santa Monica, California, he was already hard at work.


Demonstrating a disturbing passion for sewing the seeds of the decidedly racist brand of virulently anti-immigrant white nationalism that was on display in his recent verbal confrontation with Jim Acosta over the Trump administration's latest attempt to enact draconian immigration policies.

As April Ryan noted during her interview on The Brian Lehrer Show, Miller has cited at least three virulently anti-immigrant groups classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center to justify the Trump administration's radical attempts to re-shape immigration policy.

But in the end it's important to note that he embodies the dark, desperate and divisive diversionary tactics of a White House intent on solidifying its credentials with the extremist right-wing faction of American conservatives who see Trump's unhinged presidency as an opportunity to normalize views that are repulsive to the majority of the American people and our allies around the globe.

Repugnant policy stances intended, in part, to distract from the taint of scandal and ethical morass that now defines the executive branch of the U.S. government.

From Russia With Love: French Voters Reject Le Pen

New French president Emmanuel Macron

Like millions of other people around the globe today, I spent much of this morning anxiously awaiting the results of the presidential elections in France.

Back in March there was a collective sigh of relief after the Dutch elections for prime minister when the more moderate conservative Mark Rutte held off the far right candidate Geert Wilders.

Today that political trend echoed across France.

Based on early poll results, it appears the people of France have soundly rejected the divisive political ideology of extremist rightwing nationalism, and embraced a strong European Union.

According to poll projections published by the BBC, the moderate centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron appears to have soundly beaten the far right extremist candidate Marine Le Pen, garnering (at the time I'm writing this) 63.3% of the vote to her 36.7% based on results from polling stations that have already closed.

By French political standards this campaign was a pretty brutal slugfest evidenced by a lengthy and combative nationally televised presidential debate last Wednesday evening in which accusations and political insults were lobbed by both candidates.

French voters watched the conservative National Front candidate Le Pen appear to take a page from the Donald Trump campaign playbook and resort to peddling "alternative facts" to enflame and exaggerate fears and anxieties over the immigration issue that has divided so many in Europe.

It's a strategy that appears to have backfired for a number of reasons, and from a strategic perspective, I think Le Pen and her campaign advisors wildly underestimated the depth of Trump's unpopularity both here in America and around the globe - particularly after his chaotic first 100 days in office.

Far right candidate Marine Le Pen   [AFP-Getty Images] 

There's no question this campaign bore similarities to America's divisive 2016 presidential campaign.

Particularly with regards to the rise of a far right extremist ideology born of a populace frustrated with an unpopular president, and a political status quo that appeared disconnected from, and unable to solve, the difficult economic challenges faced by average people.

The French campaign also revolved around issues similar to the 2016 U.S. campaign.

The French presidential race was waged against a backdrop of a Democratic nation coping with fears over terrorism and the impact of immigration still trying to find it's economic footing in the wake of a global recession which has left the country with high unemployment lingering at around 10% nationally.

But where Le Pen, in many ways, patterned her campaign on Donald Trump, Macron took his cue from the pages of President Obama's playbook from his brilliant 2008 campaign.

Macron, a former investment banker, served as economic minister under the unpopular current Socialist president Francois Hollande.

But he shrewdly launched his own grassroots political movement called En Marche! (which translates to On the Move) in April of 2016, carefully distancing himself politically and ideologically from Hollande by stepping down from his ministerial position.

Macron's campaign also used a political research firm that had done work for Obama's 2008 campaign to conduct an intense outreach effort, sending out people to knock on the doors of thousands of doors to personally engage with voters and understand their concerns and collect data.

Macron visits a school during the campaign  [Getty]

He also used focus groups to help craft his campaign message and target the issues most important to mainstream French voters in order to carve out a centrist space to the left of Le Pen's far right National Front, and to the right of Hollande's Socialist party.

He ran a much more upbeat and inclusive campaign than Le Pen.

Macron also got a huge boost on Thursday with a videotaped endorsement from Obama, who remains hugely popular in France and in much of Western Europe.

The result was the first victory by a French presidential candidate outside of the two main political parties since the 1950's.

But undoubtedly the most disturbing comparison between the 2017 French presidential campaign and the 2016 American campaign was the effort by the Russian intelligence apparatus to use a combination of illegally obtained hacked personal emails and fake documents to sew doubt about Macron in order to help Le Pen - whose nationalism and authoritarian views are widely seen as more aligned with those of Russian president Vladimir Putin.  

Just like in the American presidential race, Russia timed the dump of a huge volume of information to take place at a critical point in the elections - in the case of France on Friday evening just before a period when candidates are not permitted to campaign or comment publicly.

As Reuters reported on Saturday, representatives from Macron's campaign reported that a "massive" mix of documents containing campaign finance information and email correspondence were dumped into Pastebin - a site where documents can be uploaded anonymously.

According to Reuters, the cyber-intelligence firm Flashpoint reports that APT 28, a group with ties to the Russian military intelligence branch known as the GRU, was responsible for dumping the documents intended to harm Macron's chances.

But fortunately the French government and media moved quickly to ensure that none of the documents obtained in the Russian hack would be released prior to voters going to the polls.

"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" banner unfurled under
the Eiffel Tower by Greenpeace on Friday

As Jason Easley observed in an article posted on Politicususa.com on Saturday afternoon, the French media collectively agreed not to publish any of the information hacked by the Russians.

Not just because there was not enough time to carefully evaluate the information and source it properly.

But because doing so would allow a foreign entity to undermine the legitimacy of free and fair elections in a Democratic nation.

Which in the case of America, allowed a petulant, incompetent narcissist with no political experience solely motivated by financial greed to be elected president.

Personally I'm wondering when the world's leading Western Democracies are going to have the balls to collectively stand up and deal with Russia's overt attempts to manipulate the outcomes of elections in foreign nations.

Here in America, the legitimacy of free and fair elections are already under threat from within by the Republican Party's policy of disenfranchising voters and putting up barriers for people of color, the elderly, legal immigrants and students to participate in the right to vote.

Now we have a Republican majority in Congress, to say nothing of a president whose administration
is rife with advisors and officials with proven links to Russia, that seems to be dragging its feet on conducting investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections.

But despite all that I am optimistic, because I think the outcome of today's election in France shows that mainstream voters overwhelmingly reject the kind of divisive rightwing nationalism that defines the Trump administration.

I think the outcome of the French election bodes well for the upcoming Congressional mid-term elections in 2018 here in America.

As Jean-Francois Julliard of Greenpeace, the group responsible for unfurling a huge banner beneath the Eiffel Tower on Friday emblazoned with the motto of the French Republic, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity", told public radio Francinfo:

"We wanted to say that we are against the rise of nationalism and authoritarianism in France and in other countries. This is our way of reminding everybody they all need to mobilize to defend these values of liberty, equality and fraternity."

Macron's election is a powerful reminder for us here in America as well.

Vive le France!