America's Loss of Standing in the World, Let Me Count the Ways

Sure, we peaked in WWII, though the Korean War was an effort to unsplit a country, and Vietnam was a disastrous opposite effort. Still, we've spent decades creating moral, ethical, democratic, scientific, and, yes, financial leadership. We were at the helm of the financial world, and our dollar became the de facto world currency. All of that is threatened.

Imagine how dangerous he'd be if he knew what he was doing. (Hard to imagine.)

Read this piece on what else Trump is squandering with his violation of the Iran agreement.

Prior to, well, yesterday, the US could claim a moral high ground. Its extraterritorial financial control might be objectionable, yes, but absent some coordinating mechanism like that, there would always be a competitive race among politicians and bankers to allow themselves to be persuaded that Mexican drug lords are just legitimate businessmen from a hardscrabble country and why should the Iranians be prevented from getting nukes when the world winks at the Israelis? The US may not be the ideal global financial policeman, but like every other kind of global policeman that it is, it may be better than no policeman at all.

However, now, specifically with respect to its enforcement of financial sanctions on an apparently compliant Iran, it is the United States that seems, even among its Western partners, to be the rogue state in need of policing. However begrudging European acquiescence to extraterritorial US sanctions may have been two days ago, it is more begrudging today.

NASA to End Space Tracking of Greenhouse Gases

If we don't know the how-much and the where of carbon emissions, we can't track various countries' output of these gas. I guess that's the point. How much more of this can we take?

This is horrendous in a lot of ways. It fits right in with the way the Trump GOP is squandering our standing in the world. Now we are more anti-science and pro-pollution:

The Trump administration has quietly eliminated funding for NASA’s research program that tracks greenhouse gases around the world.

According to Science, the Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) tracks the world’s flow of carbon dioxide from space. Such a system is critical to monitoring any improvements — or failures — in attempts to cut the pollution linked to climate change.

NASA spokesman Steve Cole told the magazine that the program was canceled due to ”budget constraints and higher priorities within the science budget.” Usually, Congress battles such cuts, but this time, there was simply no mention of the program’s $10 million annual budget in the White House budget.

Although existing grants will finish, Cole said, no new projects will be undertaken. NASA’s budget report for fiscal year 2019 assumes the “termination” of CMS.

Watching our step-by-step degradation is beyond disheartening.

All-White Military Wives -- from our 40% Black Military -- Invited to Spouses Day at White House

Okay, maybe I see one Asian in there? Also, no male spouses? What, did Mike Pence get the nod as planner? This deserves a holy fuck.

Absolutely contemptible. But, should I say, absolutely par for the course?


Note. Apparently the odds of this happening by chance are lower than a trillion to one. (Thanks Ronald Klain)


Super Double Note. Someone spotted Ivanka Trump in there. What? Is it product placement?

The Republican Party Is So (Russian) Mobbed Up. Can We Survive as a Country?

Read and weep. We're getting a window into how Michael Cohen worked, but this stuff has been going on -- and known -- for quite a while.

From Ruth May's Dallas Morning News article from six months ago:

As Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team probes deeper into potential collusion between Trump officials and representatives of the Russian government, investigators are taking a closer look at political contributions made by U.S. citizens with close ties to Russia.

Buried in the campaign finance reports available to the public are some troubling connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to President Donald Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. We have allowed our campaign finance laws to become a strategic threat to our country.

The only good news is that Mueller has been on this for quite a while. No wonder the Republican Party is trying to shut him down. Big-ass gravy train, among other things.

A few weeks ago Mueller diverted a side thread of his investigation to the Southern District of New York in order to more directly go after Michael Cohen. Now, with what's coming out, it's obvious why, and also obvious why Trump is more nervous about this side investigation that the main one. Or is this the main one now? Hmm.

The question now may not be how mobbed up Donald Trump is. The question might be how mobbed up the Republican Party is, and is their patent disregard of the continuing Russian meddling a sign that they want the meddling to continue on their behalf? Double hmm.

The Unified Theory of Trump Stormy Scandals and Foreign Policy. Yes, They're Connected!

No, this is not ridiculous. It's exactly the way this shit works with Trump. His messes are his whole mess. We just get to live with it.

Yes, Russian sanctions and the Iran deal-breaking are connected to
Stormy via Cohen. Who would have thought such a thing? Er, Avenatti.

Okay, for the grand Unified Field Theory of Trump's Stormy Daniels Foreign Policy:

• Trump and his lackies going back as far as 2015 with Michael Flynn, Vladimir Putin and Russian oligarchs have been playing footsies, always about playing ball vis a vis sanctions and other quid pro quo arrangements.
• There were multiple tracks, but one of them turns out to be payments by Viktor Vekselberg -- partly on behalf of Oleg Deripaska -- to the same LLC set up to funnel money to Stormy Daniels. The "quo" is the slow walking of sanctions that would affect the money interests of both oligarchs, who have close ties to Putin. In fact, both a set of sanctions by Barack Obama to punish Russia for dirty campaign tricks and sanctions later passed by Congress have not taken full effect, with both Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross playing their parts.
• So, Daniels was paid off, in effect, with money paid for having the sanctions delayed.
• There is very much more to this, as payments from drug company Novartis and AT&T have flowed into the same LLC account set up by Michael Cohen. So stay tuned on that one, but it sure sounds like pay-to-play to me.
• From a Slate piece on this: "The Steele Dossier alleged that Russians had made a deal with Trump associates for the Russians to sell Rosneft, the massive state energy company, and use the commissions to give Trump associates payments under the radar, in return for lifting or softening sanctions. The Rosneft sale went through in December 2016, a month after the election, coinciding with Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, and Carter Page’s various alleged communicatio, ns with Russians. Just eight days before this oil megadeal, Flynn and Kushner met Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower, and Kushner reportedly proposed a secret communication link with the Kremlin through the Russian embassy. Then, a few days after the Rosneft deal, Kushner met Sergey Gorkov, chair of Russia’s government-owned VE Bank (VEB) and Putin’s close confidant."
• So, yet another crazy piece of the "dodgy" dossier is proven true. (Pee tape, anyone?)
• Connection to Iran? With the Iran deal, Trump has produced a mirror image: When the clearly dirty-dealing Russians are rewarded by cancelling or delaying sanctions, even though they do harm to the U.S., the Iranians are punished by having their sanctions re-instituted, even though they are in compliance.

By the way, there's one more late-breaking element. We know that the only other client Michael Cohen could claim to have to the court -- other than Trump and Sean Hannity (and that's just "advice on real estate deals") -- is Elliott Broidy, a Republican fundraiser. Apparently Cohen helped arrange a payoff of $1.6 million for Broidy to yet another Playboy Playmate, Shera Bechard, who got pregnant and had an abortion. But here's the funny part: According to records, the Broidy payoff was, just as with both Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, arranged between Michael Cohen and attorney Keith Davidson ostensibly representing the women, and the Broidy payoff also used the Stormy NDA as a template right up to and including the fake names David Dennison and Peggy Peterson and paid through the same entity, Essential Consulting LLC that was used to pay off Stormy.

Now, please tell me why it's not obvious that both payoffs were on behalf of Donald Trump, and that for some reason Elliot Broidy didn't mind stepping up and taking the fall -- and the heat -- for Donald Trump. Was it to bury the abortion? Was it also a pay-to-play move by Broidy who had a number of foreign deals he needed help with? John Campos of New York Magazine thinks so. What a mess, and it's only going to get messier.

Note. Don't forget that Michael Cohen is mobbed up with both Russian and Ukrainian interests in a number of ways: he's married into it, he was raised around them via his uncle, and he owned, co-owned, managed, and traded taxi medallions with them.

Withering Fact: Poor Are Born Poor, Rich Are Born Rich

For your entertainment, enjoy this graph showing the percent of inherited wealth in Europe's big three:

Translation: In France, UK, and Germany, among the wealthy, over half are born that way. Share of inherited wealth in the U.S. is as much as 45%.

Upward mobility? Meritocracy? Not so much. This also explains a more recent phenomenon: The rich go to college, and the not-so-rich go into debt.

When I went to college, I emerged with less than 4 grand in debt. Same school, same percentages today? I'd have finished college owing 80 grand. I shudder...

Holy Corruption Charges, Batman! Did Giuliani Just Admit Cohen Is Trump's Bagman?

Does anyone remember how Nixon's campaign committee -- run by his Attorney General -- had bagmen that took payoffs, in cash, to phone booths? I do.

Michael, didn't count on Rudy yapping, did you? Get measured for a jumpsuit.

Josh Marshall lets us know how it works in the Cohen/Trump case:

So now we have Giuliani confirming that this is exactly how Trump and Cohen operated. Hush money to Stormy Daniels is one thing and certainly raises potential serious campaign finance violations, but she is not a public official. What I find most significant about Rudy’s admission is what it says about the nature of the relationship between Trump and Cohen and how it suggests an M.O. for other more serious crimes.

Trump is a major real estate developer in NY who has openly bragged about his ability to cut through red tape and get politicians in his pocket. We now have serious SDNY public corruption prosecutors and FBI agents in possession of a massive amount of electronic data from his bagman. They likely already have all of his financial records as well. And Rudy has now given them the roadmap for how Trump may have laundered bribes through Cohen as purported legal fees or retainer payments. Every invoice Cohen has ever issued to Trump is suspect. Every corrupt payment Cohen has ever made or facilitated to building inspectors, councilmen, pornstars, or whomever can potentially be tied back to Trump. In addition, I suspect Trump and his kids had a false sense of comfort that their communications with Cohen would be privileged. I am convinced this is why Trump and his family are freaking out about the Cohen raid and the possibility he could flip. The SDNY is sitting on the mother lode of evidence and Rudy has given them the connection between purported legal fees and payments by Cohen to third parties.

Yep, sounds like a bagman to me. Also, if Cohen received payments from Trump, plus an extra taste, plus money for taxes (as Rudy makes out), and then he didn't declare the transactions in his 2017 taxes, someone is screwed. Did Trump declare it? Oh, right, he's delayed his tax filings. Hmm.