Natural Weekends - Dusk

Sergei Skripal's Attempted Assassination And Russian Collusion

When Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned in Salisbury, England, literally days before the Russian elections, it raised a lot of questions about what Vladimir Putin's motives for carrying out the attack might be. The use of the Novichok nerve agent was an incredibly aggressive method for assassination, as one British police officer was hospitalized and another 46 other British citizens sought medical treatment but did not need to be hospitalized. Using Novichok was a far more dangerous method for the Russians that poking someone with a poisoned umbrella or getting someone so drunk they died from multiple internal injuries because of their frequent falls.

Even more troubling was the fact that the use of Novichok so easily tied the assassination attempt back to Russia and made it seem that Putin actually wanted the world to know he had directed that killing. Considering that Putin was just days away from an election against his own hand-picked opponents and was guaranteed a massive win, his actions even seemed even more inscrutable. Some claimed that it was a projection of Putin's power in a bid to boost his popularity at home. But that hardly seemed necessary in an election he knew he was going to win. Others surmise that Putin wanted to send a message to those who have betrayed Russia, especially those who have recently been uncovered in the wake of Russia's interference in Western elections. But that message could easily have been sent without the use of a deadly and outlawed nerve agent like Novichok on foreign soil.

Moreover, the use of Novichok has prompted an enormous backlash against Putin, with 21 countries joining the UK in expelling Russian diplomats and sanctioning Russia in other ways. Putin has overreached in the past and, by and large, gotten away with it, for example, the shooting down of MH17 over Ukraine. But even Putin had to realize that this attempted assassination, carried out in this way and in the present environment of Russian interference in the West, would create enormous blowback.

But it is clear that Putin did want to send a message to those who have or will betray him and, by taking such an enormous risk with equally enormous repercussions, that message is strong and loud and clear - whatever it takes, Putin will get you. But Putin has sent that message before. Why now and in such an extreme way?

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall points out that Paul Manafort may have incredibly good reasons not to cooperate with Mueller. Manafort may have much more to fear than going to jail for the rest of his life and might even be more afraid of actually getting a pardon and walking free. After all, he owes a Russian oligarch millions of dollars, he is well aware of all the people and methods involved in the Russian interference in the Ukraine, as well as with any of the alleged collusion by the Trump campaign. In fact, Manafort may fear the exact same fate as Sergei Skripal.

As Marshall  writes, "Yes, I know this sounds like an audacious suggestion. And I agree that it is hard to imagine that either the Russian government or powerful figures from the former Soviet Union would take such a reckless step on American soil. But look at the simple facts of the matter. Russia has killed a number of enemies abroad in recent years — not just in obscure lawless parts of the world but in major western metropoles". But, based on what we now know about the death of Mikhail Lesin, Putin has already taken that "reckless step" on US soil.

Rick Gates is in exactly the same situation as Manafort, with the same exposure as Manafort. In fact, Gates may know even more than Manafort because he was more of a detail guy and because he spent longer inside the Trump campaign and transition. It strikes me as hardly a coincidence that Putin's reckless assassination attempt on Skripal came less than two weeks after the news broke that Gates was going to cooperate with Mueller.

In addition, it seems highly probable that Gates must have significant information about the Trump campaign's collusion with Russia. Recent reports indicate that Mueller felt he did not need Gates' help with the case against Manafort, apparently feeling that the paper trail alone made the case a slam dunk. Rather, Mueller wanted Gates' help in the collusion part of the investigation and, based on the rather lenient charges Mueller brought against him, Gates must have provided some pretty good information.

Since Trump's election, there have been an unusually high number of Russian diplomats who have died under various, sometimes mysterious, circumstances. Whether these deaths are related to uncovering breaches in security that the Russians were able to glean from the revelations in the US about potential Trump-Russian collusion, or an attempt to "clean up" after that collusion, or are completed unrelated is, at this point, unclear. In a report this week from Richard Engle on MSNBC, another Russian living in the UK and similarly disaffected with Putin says that Skripal was on a Putin hit list which also now includes Christopher Steele, further giving credence to the theory that Putin is eliminating people with information about the Russian collusion. Indeed, the possibility that these deaths were part of a clean up, combined with Skripal's attempted assassination, should create real concern with Gates and especially Manafort.

If you believe that Skripal's attempted murder is a warning shot to Manafort and Gates, it then may also be a similar message to Donald Trump himself. It must be clear to Putin by now that the removal of sanctions, the very reason that Putin supported Trump, will just not happen. Worse for Putin, it seems that Trump is quietly increasing pressure and even sanctions on Russia, despite not publicly highlighting them.

Admittedly, all this is speculation. On the other hand, it explains Putin's reckless actions as well or better than any other theory. And you can be sure if others have come up with the theory that Skripal's attempted murder was a signal to Manafort and Gates, it has also occurred to Manafort and Gates themselves and their families. And even to Donald Trump and his family.

(NB: This post has been updated to show that, as of now, this was only an assassination attempt. Few people have been able to recover from a direct exposure to this kind of nerve agent without immediate medical assistance, which is not the case for Skripal. He remains in critical but stable condition, on life support, and his family does not expect him to survive. Even if he does manage to pull through, there is considerable risk that he has sustained permanent neurological damage. His life will never be the same, effectively extinguished on direct orders from Putin.)

The Answer Is Always More Guns In More Places

In the wake of the massacre in Las Vegas where 58 people were killed and 851 others were injured, David Frum pointed out that the idea that nothing ever changes with respect to gun laws is a critical misconception. He wrote, "The five years since a gunman killed 26 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, have seen one of the most intense bursts of gun legislation in U.S. history—almost all of it intended to ensure that more guns can be carried into more places...Since Newtown, more than two dozen states have expanded the right to carry into previously unknown places: bars, churches, schools, college campuses, and so on". One study that covered the 25 year period from 1989 to 2014 showed that the usual response to gun massacres was actually a loosening of gun restrictions.

Thankfully, in the wake of Parkland and the phenomenal efforts of its survivors, we actually have finally seen some possible movement toward real gun restrictions. The DOJ began a process to ban bump stocks and Florida, an NRA stronghold, actually did ban those bump stocks as well as raising the age to buy a gun to 21. That same Florida legislation  includes a "red flag" provision that allows guns to be taken away from those who show signs of violent behavior. Similar provisions have been passed in Rhode Island and Vermont. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is pushing a ban on armor-piercing bullets and further restrictions on getting a gun permit.

More importantly, we have finally seen some corporations take baby steps in support of gun restrictions. Dick's Sporting Goods stopped selling assault weapons as well as high-capacity magazines and, along with Walmart, raised the age to buy a gun at those stores to 21. Airlines, car rental agencies, life insurance companies, and even a major bank took steps to sever or limit their relationship with the NRA and with gun manufacturers and sellers.

Despite these signs of progress, the pattern that Frum identified also continues but, so far, with less success. In Florida, the new restrictions were also accompanied by the establishment of a "school guardian" that would allow individual school districts to decide whether they wanted to arm certain teachers. In Kansas, there is a proposal to not only allow teachers to carry concealed weapons but also that a school district could be declared negligent if a school shooting happened and the district had not armed its teachers. Although the proposal's chances for passage are not seen as good because of the latter provision, there is stronger support for arming teachers alone.

In South Carolina, legislators are proposing a 7% tax on firearms in order to fund putting a trained police officer in every school. This proposal also faces significant opposition primarily because it is seen as a tax increase. The efficacy of police officers in schools, euphemistically called "school resource officers", is debatable, At Parkland, the officer never even entered the school and the officer who reportedly stopped the shooter at the Great Mills school in Maryland actually confronted the gunman as he was seemingly in the process of committing suicide. What we do know about having police officers in schools is that it exacerbates the school-to-prison/deportation pipeline, especially in minority communities. Studies have also shown that the presence of police officers in schools increase the criminalization of what would normally be considered childish behavior.

The Parkland students and the March for Our Lives has without a doubt changed the dynamic around gun control, hopefully permanently. It has certainly put the NRA on the back foot. But that will still not stop the NRA from pursuing policies that will lead to more guns in more places, such as schools, especially in those state legislatures where the NRA still holds sway.

Always Fighting The Last War

Over at Washington Monthly, Nancy Letourneau highlights the fact that the battle against the destruction of US manufacturing created by globalization currently being waged by both Donald Trump and, to some extent, Bernie Sanders is essentially about fighting a war that's already over. That battle was never really fought and lost when it was needed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Today, the level of global trade and cross-border capital flows have largely leveled off. And, in fact, the emergence of a vibrant middle class in some of those emerging economies is actually and finally creating a market for American products.

As Neil Irwin points out, "In short, the anti-globalization drive that is spreading across the Western world may be coming at exactly the wrong time — too late to do much to save the working-class jobs that were lost, but early enough to risk damaging the ability of rich nations to sell advanced goods and services to the rapidly expanding global middle class." Moreover, the upcoming trade battles are largely going to be in the area of information, artificial intelligence, renewable energies and other advanced technologies, and intellectual property, not in core manufacturing industries.

Of course, America specializes in fighting the last war. For the past forty years, our central bankers have been fighting the stagflation wars of the 1970s, obsessively focusing on the inflation bogeyman at the expense of the Federal Reserve's full employment mandate. Even as we headed into the depths of the financial crisis, certain members of the Fed and the club of right wing economists, many of whom are now working in the Trump administration, kept harping on the imminent onset of runaway inflation. That mistake was repeated once again last week with the Federal Reserve's announcement of another quarter point rate hike, putting the federal funds target rate between 1.50% and 1.75%. This decision was made in the wake of actual declining wage growth and with inflation running at or below target.

When it comes to military intervention, it also seems like we keep fighting the same war again and again. Despite the 20 year hiatus in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, we have essentially spent the last two decades fighting similar counter-insurgency, nation-building wars in the Mideast and, especially, Afghanistan. Now, however, we realize that nation-building is largely futile and only make token efforts at actually accomplishing it, but, unwilling to accept defeat or stalemate, we just keep on fighting the war itself, pretending that victory will come at some point in the not-to-distant future.

As expected and as the French found out at the start of World War II, continually fighting the last war means that you are totally unprepared for the next real one. In trade and economics, it means understanding the tremendous dislocation that will be caused by robotics and artificial intelligence and how important control of that technology will be. In military terms, it means being able to detect and defend the country from sophisticated cyber attacks by our enemies. Based on our leaders' focus over the last couple of years, it appears we will be unprepared, just as they were largely unprepared and uninterested in the enormous dislocation that globalization created twenty years ago.

Are Democrats Really Prepared For The Total Failure Of Our "Democracy"?

All indications are that 2018 will be an enormous wave election for Democrats. And, yet, Democrats could win in 2018 by margins not seen in decades and still not gain any power in the federal government and make only slight inroads in state legislatures. A new study from the Brennan Center of Justice indicates that Democrats would have to win by a staggering 11% margin in order to win the 24 seats needed to take back control of the House of Representatives.

In a normal off-year election, a six point margin of victory usually nets about 27 seats. But the extreme partisan gerrymandering Republicans have engaged in since the 2010 census has nearly doubled the margin of victory needed to net that same number of seats. According to the report, a six point margin of victory would net a measly 13 seats. Even a ten point margin would only net 21 seats, three less than the number needed to win back the House. Democrats would have to win the 2018 elections by a massive eleven points, 55%-44%, in order to win control of the House and, even then, they would only have a four seat majority. This country has not seen that margin of victory in House races since 1982.

The reason for this, of course, is the extreme partisan gerrymandering that Republicans implemented after the 2010 census. In Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, and even Texas, Democratic opportunities for picking up seats is severely limited no matter what their margin of victory because of partisan gerrymandering. For example, in Ohio, Democrats are virtually guaranteed to win 4 of the 16 races, needing a minimum of only 26% of the vote to hold those seats. However, in order to gain just one more seat, Democrats would have win by a 10 point margin, meaning that winning 55% of the vote across the state would still net the Democrats less than one-third of the state's Representatives in the House. A similar situation existed in Pennsylvania, where 50% of the statewide vote netted less than one third of the House seats, until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down those gerrymandered voting districts as an unconstitutional violation of the state constitution. 

At the state level, the most recent election in Virginia showed just how bad things are for Democrats in these states. There, Democrats won the state-wide vote by a full 11 points yet still netted only half of the seats in the House of Delegates and lost the chance to regain control of that body by a single seat on the basis of a coin flip in a tied election. In Wisconsin, after the post-2010 partisan gerrymandering, Democrats won 53% of the statewide vote and ended up with just 40% of the seats in the Wisconsin Assembly.

In Texas, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, there are voters who have been voting in districts that have been ruled unconstitutional by one court or another in multiple elections this decade. Yet, the extreme gerrymanders continue in all those states due to drawn-out appeals in the court system or legislatures who effectively create maps with similar results after being forced by courts to redraw the districts. Beyond those delaying tactics, Republicans are essentially trying to "overturn" these courts' rulings on their own. In Pennsylvania, there is a move to impeach the Supreme Court justices who voted that the state's districts were unconstitutional. In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker has refused to hold special elections to fill open state seats and now, having been directed to do so by the courts, Republicans are openly defying that ruling and trying to get the legislature to rewrite the law that covers special elections.

At this point, I think most Republican leaders understand they can not win what most people recognize as free and fair elections. As the Trump candidacy in 2016 showed, even with a strong turnout of the GOP base, Clinton won the popular vote by millions, nearly three percentage points, and only won because of the undemocratic nature of the Electoral College. That realization leads to the massive efforts at voter suppression like voter ID, restricting early voting and the actual number of ballot stations, and, the most effective strategy, extreme partisan gerrymandering, making sure as many Democratic votes as possible are "wasted" or not able to even be cast. It is why the Mercer/Bannon/Cambridge Analytica/Russia strategy in the 2016 election was as much devoted to suppressing Clinton voters as it was to animating Trump voters. And it is what is behind the latest decision by the Trump administration to add the citizenship question to the Census, as well as underfunding its work, in a blatant attempt to make sure as many Democratic voters are not even counted for reapportionment purposes and perhaps providing a method for GOP state legislatures to draw even more gerrymandered districts based on citizenship as opposed to residence.

One of the most uplifting parts of the March for Our Lives and the movement behind it is the understanding these teens have of the interconnectedness of the fight against gun violence, the general social justice movement, and the importance of actually voting and winning elections. How many of these young voters will be thoroughly discouraged when they realize that the ideal of American democracy is a mirage, where winning a majority of the votes actually results in still having no political power, where a powerful minority will still rule, and that the system really is rigged. And that's before we even talk about the filibuster in the Senate.

The reality is that there is very little standing in the way of that kind of undemocratic result in 2018. Democrats could win all the votes cast for House candidates by a 55%-45% margin and still be a minority. And, if Republicans hold both the House and the Senate this year, there is no reason to think their efforts to maintain power won't become more extreme. That means more attempts of voting restrictions and, conceivably, depending on the results of the 2020 election and census, forgoing reapportionment entirely and postponing it until 2030, the precedence for which was set back in 1920. That reapportionment never happened for a variety of reasons including the fact that the 1920 census showed that urban voters had now become the majority. Similarly, the 2020 census will show that the US is moving ever close to a majority minority country, something that is expected to finally happen within the next 30 years.

If forgoing reapportionment seems like a radical idea that the would never happen, you haven't been paying attention to the current Republican party.  So was idea that a Supreme Court nominee would not even receive a hearing or that Congress would be unwilling to act as a President and his family basically run their businesses from inside White House, selling access and favors and refuse to defend the country from an attack by a foreign power.

Right now, the only thing that would prevent the possible undemocratic result in 2018 from happening again in 2020 may be the Supreme Court, extremely partisan in its own makeup, which is expected to rule on the constitutionality of extreme partisan gerrymandering, possibly this term. But, as history has shown, relying on the Supreme Court is eventually a fool's errand. Instead, Democrats should focus on getting an amendment to the state constitutions to require an independent redistricting commission on the ballot in every state possible. In addition, Democrats need to highlight the violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's principle of one person, one vote that currently occurs by limiting the number of seats in the House to 435, paving the way for the longer-term project of creating an expanded and more representative body.

The centrists in the punditocracy constantly complain about the hyper-partisanship of today's political environment. Yet they somehow seem oblivious to the fact that extreme partisan gerrymandering and certain undemocratic structures of our electoral system actually feed that hyper-partisanship. It is not too hard to see that eliminating these barriers will create more evenly contested electoral districts and therefore less extreme and more centrist candidates. But maybe, in today's environment, that fact can only be seen by the fresh eyes of politically active youth. Let's hope so.

March For Our Lives

Our local version of the March for Our Lives was a late-day vigil down in Westport. Based on the turnout and the apparent change in route, I'm guessing that the crowd was larger than they anticipated. Senator Richard Blumenthal was there and made two critical points - the only way to stop the NRA is to win at the ballot box and that gun laws are only as strong as the laws in the weakest state. The second point is a lesson that New England states and cities like Chicago know very well. Their strict gun laws mean nothing when guns can be bought legally in nearby states and then transported into and sold in those cities and states.  Here are a few photos from the event:

Natural Weekends - Orchids

Yesterday's post was about the last real snow storm of the winter (hopefully). Today we brighten things up with some of our orchids which are now blooming in the stronger spring sun. And the surest sign that spring has finally arrived on the creek is that the neighbors report the osprey have returned.

Uber's Toxic Corporate Culture Kills...Again

Last weekend, an Uber autonomous vehicle with a single emergency driver struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. Dash-cam video from the car shows that the pedestrian, who was actually pushing a bicycle, seemingly appeared out of nowhere on the darkened street, raising doubts about whether a human driver would have been able to react in time.

The problem for Uber, of course, is that autonomous vehicles are supposed to be far safer than human drivers and should have easily identified the presence of a bicycle and pedestrian. Instead, police report that the vehicle did not slow down at all before hitting the pedestrian, suggesting that the car's sensors' were totally blind to the pedestrian and bicycle.

In addition, the safety procedures that Uber supposedly had in place were clearly not being followed. According to the NY Times, the dash-cam also "showed the safety driver looking down, away from the road. It also appeared that the driver’s hands were not hovering above the steering wheel, which is what drivers are instructed to do so they can quickly retake control of the car".

More disturbingly, however, but truly typical of the criminal corporate mentality at Uber, is what the Times reports about how Uber has cut corners in its autonomous vehicle program. Uber's "cars were having trouble driving through construction zones and next to tall vehicles, like big rigs. And Uber’s human drivers had to intervene far more frequently than the drivers of competing autonomous car projects. Waymo, formerly the self-driving car project of Google, said that in tests on roads in California last year, its cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to steer out of trouble. As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per 'intervention' in Arizona".

In addition, Uber originally had two safety drivers in each autonomous vehicle, one to "intervene" in dangerous situations and another to focus on the computer information coming from the vehicle. But Uber recently reduced the number of safety drivers to one, requiring them to handle both tasks. Worse, they installed an app in the vehicle's middle console for the drivers to report problems. Of course, it was then impossible for the driver to use the app to report problems and maintain the required vigilance as a safety driver at the same time, unless the vehicle was completely stopped, which Uber apparently did not require in order to report problems. Some Uber employees expressed concerns about these changes but were rebuffed by management.

The reason is that Uber sees their autonomous vehicle program as the lifeline to save the company. Again, according to the Times, "there also was pressure to live up to a goal to offer a driverless car service by the end of the year and to impress top executives. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s chief executive, was expected to visit Arizona in April, and leaders of the company’s development group in the Phoenix area wanted to give him a glitch-free ride in an autonomous car. Mr. Khosrowshahi’s trip was called 'Milestone 1: Confidence 'in the company documents".

This isn't the first time that an Uber vehicle has resulted in a pedestrian death. Back in 2014, an Uber driver killed a 6 year-old girl crossing the street. Because the driver was not logged in to the Uber app, Uber tried to claim it had no responsibility before essentially settling with the victim's family. As it turned out, the driver had been cited for reckless driving in the past, something Uber somehow did not pick up in his background check. A few years ago, Olivia Nuzzi, then Daily Beast and now New York magazine reporter, detailed some of Uber drivers' worst abuses from rape to simple assault, including being stalked by an Uber driver herself.

Yes, accidents will happen and no company is immune from bad employees. The specific problem with Uber is its cavalier attitude toward any restrictions or regulations at all. It only started to vet drivers when it was forced to do so. It routinely avoids responsibility for its employees' actions. It cheats its employees and hides behind the fiction that they are "independent contractors". It brazenly violates local laws all over the globe. It steals from its competitors and lies continually. And now its willingness to cut corners on safety has cost an innocent life.

At this point, Uber more resembles a Ponzi scheme than a real company. Its core business is a money-loser as it requires a nearly 60% subsidy from the company to make it competitive. Last year, it lost $4.5 billion, yes, with a "B". Because of that, the company is desperately searching for another business that can make the company viable. Autonomous vehicles are an obvious solution because it eliminates the cost of a driver in its core business. But the company needs continual new investments in order to keep it afloat until it "perfects" its autonomous vehicles. That means there is pressure to show progress in the program and that means releasing technology that's not ready and cutting corners on safety. In other words, employing the usual Uber approach. Dara Khosrowshahi may have replaced the odious Travis Kalanick at the helm, but it's obvious that the toxic corporate culture at Uber remains. And someone may have died because of that. Again.

Natural Weekends - White Rain

Another Nor'easter blew through this week and once again we managed to avoid the worst here on the creek, with snow totals well below the minimum predicted. And, like a most late March snowstorms, it amounted to "white rain" as the snow was virtually all gone within a day.

Astronomy Adventure - Orion Nebula

Here is another photo of the M42 - the great Orion nebula. In addition, you can just make out M43, the little "haze" around the star to the "finger's" immediate left.

Technical Details:

Scope: Starblast 4.5; tracking on

Magnification: ~30x

Camera: iPhone6 using NightCap Pro; ISO 8000; 

Photo: 8x~35secs.

Processing: Stacking best 6 photos on Deep Sky Stacker; adjusted curves and cropped with GIMP

Trump Prepares For War

You wouldn't exactly know it by reading the front pages of the newspapers today, but I think history will show this as the day that Donald Trump decide to go to war on multiple fronts. With the announcement of new tariffs on around $60 billion of Chinese goods and the promise of retaliation from the Chinese, Trump has essentially declared a trade war, a war that will especially hurt our allies in Japan and South Korea as well as American businesses and workers. And in choosing John Bolton as his National Security Adviser, Trump has essentially declared his intention to militarily strike North Korea and withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, prompting a nuclear arms race in the Mideast and potentially another military strike against Iran.

The tariffs, in particular, are just another example of policy-makers fighting the last, lost war. The Chinese subsidies, massive trade surpluses, and currency manipulation that decimated American jobs and manufacturing all occurred primarily occurred in the first decade of this century and has largely ceased. Yes, there are certain industries, like steel, that China still subsidizes, and China still engages in massive intellectual property theft. But the majority of goods we import from China are just finished products based on components that China has imported from other countries. But the response from China will be to retaliate against America's own subsidized agricultural and livestock industries in the Midwest and Great Plains. Americans in those industries will basically be asked to pay a price in order to try and protect the intellectual property rights of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. If protecting Hollywood and Silicon Valley was the idea, then the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Trump withdrew from was actually a better vehicle.

Now it's possible that Trump will decide not to actually wage this trade war. The steel and aluminum tariffs that he announced with great fanfare a few weeks ago have been watered down with so many exemptions that over half of steel imports are now covered. Instead, the administration is considering a quota system that will simply raise prices for all imported steel.

The appointment of John Bolton as National Security Adviser is even more concerning, to use Republicans current favorite phrase. Bolton believes in launching a first strike against North Korea and has advocated not only withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal but also launching a first strike against Iran as well. And, of course, advocating for reneging on the Iran deal makes it highly unlikely that North Korea will believe we are negotiating in good faith. Withdrawing from the Iran deal on its own will simply create a nuclear arms race in the Mideast, with Iran restarting its nuclear program and Saudi Arabia beginning its own. And launching a first strike against Iran will just further destabilize the Mideast and result in an increase in global terrorism.

As one New Zealand academic and North Korea expert says, "Bolton isn’t just a run-of-the-mill hawk; he’s a kind of warmonger. He’s never seen a foreign policy problem that couldn’t be solved by bombing". And, while Bolton also believes that Russia is a bad actor, I think we can be sure that Trump will ignore him on that issue. Bolton's extremist views and his excessively abusive behavior as a manager prohibited from being confirmed as George Bush's UN representative but, as National Security Adviser, he will not need Senate confirmation. That abusive behavior will make Bolton fit right in in this administration.

The one thing we do know about Donald Trump is that he is full of bluff and bluster. He prefers to essentially negotiate as an extortionist. In so many instances, from his threats to sue the women that claim he sexually harassed and assaulted them to the watering down of the steel and aluminum tariffs, Trump has continually shown he is bluffing. And it is possible that Trump believes that Bolton will provide the extortionist threat that he prefers to both North Korea and Iran that will allow him to successfully negotiate with them. That would be consistent with Trump, unrestrained and relying on his own instincts. It would also be a massive miscalculation. North Korea and Iran are not some fly-by-night contractor that Trump can intimidate and threaten and they will react extremely negatively to that approach.

To move into a more speculative area, you have to wonder if Trump is, at least on some subconscious level, trying to extort us all, in the sense that he is indicating he is willing to destroy the international trading system, willing to risk nuclear war, willing to totally shut down the entire government (based on his latest veto threat of the just-passed budget deal) because of his aggravation with the Mueller investigation and the lawsuits brought by the women he has harassed and assaulted. He is the man-child with a temper tantrum who has the power to destroy the world as we know it. And he is showing he may not be afraid to do just exactly that.

Our Colonial Masters, Disdainful Of The Rule Of Law And Democracy Itself

The disdain that our elites have for the rule of law and the pillars of our democracy is truly astounding. In general, these elites are accountable to nothing and no one anymore. In the corporate world, executives are accountable only to their shareholders and no one else, allowing them to rationalize their criminal actions as being purely in the interests of their investors. In the political sphere, the elites are accountable only to their donor class while the benefits of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and incumbency rarely make them accountable to voters and virtually never to the justice system. And for the mega-rich, democracy has merely become another property to acquire, with President Obama noting back in 2012 that "you now have the potential of two hundred people deciding who ends up being elected president every single time". And the rule of law can always be avoided or delayed simply through the power of money and privilege.

Let's start with the latest bombshell in the Russian collusion investigation, namely that Cambridge Analytica (CA) had illegally secured the private information of 50 million Americans obtained from their Facebook profiles. It received that data from a Russian academic who was required to keep the information confidential and it appears CA was aware of that fact. The payment to the Russian academic for that stolen data was apparently signed off on by Steve Bannon who ran CA at the time. In addition, CA then passed that illegally obtained data on to some of its "clients", including the Trump campaign. An ITN undercover report also shows the head of CA boasting about dirty tricks including honey traps and viral propaganda that they had used in elections elsewhere. In addition, there are indications that CA may have passed that illegally obtained information on to the Russian oil company Lukoil, a notorious front for Russian propaganda. That is especially disturbing when we know that Russia successfully hacked into certain states' voter rolls, which would provide the data needed for the Russians to match up the Facebook data with the voter rolls in order to identify targets for its propaganda.

Facebook itself was apparently aware of the breach but made a minimal, less than even half-hearted effort to make sure the stolen data was destroyed, simply requesting that the data be deleted and then taking CA's word that it had without doing a real audit. Worse, Facebook employees worked side by side with Cambridge Analytica during the Trump campaign and surely must have wondered how the company obtained such detailed information on Facebook users, especially since Facebook was well aware that CA had stolen that data and supposedly destroyed it. If they noticed, they certainly did not care.

That lack of concern may cost Facebook dearly because of a 2011 consent decree with the government that required Facebook to obtain explicit permission from each user in order to share data that exceeded their privacy settings, For each subsequent violation of that consent decree, Facebook would pay $40,000, meaning that Facebook's potential exposure in this CA breach is an unimaginable $2,000,000,000,000 (if my math is correct) for the approximately 50 million users who had their privacy violated. Of course, we all know the violation of that consent decree will not be enforced. Instead, as usual, there will be another fine, merely the cost of doing business, and another consent decree that can be violated in another few years. It will probably be the same for CA.

According to a British MP, Facebook's auditors and lawyers were discovered inside Cambridge Analytica's UK offices on Monday night before they were asked to leave by the UK's Information Commissioner who is leading the investigation of the CA breach in Britain. Considering Facebook's obfuscations and denials about how its so-called "platform" is used to influence elections, Facebook's belated audit of CA looks more like a CYA maneuver and investigation into its own exposure, if not something more sinister.

Of course, the backdrop of all this is that Cambridge Analytica is essentially a Robert Mercer controlled enterprise that was run by his crony Steve Bannon. There are indications that CA illegally interfered in the Brexit referendum and UK authorities are currently investigating. In addition, CA was used extensively by the Trump campaign, often hand in hand with Facebook specialists, in its media strategy run by Brad Parscale. Yes, the Trump campaign paid CA over $5 million for its services but the fact that some experts estimate the value of the stolen data to be over $100 million opens up an enormous federal elections violation, which, again, we know will never be pursued and investigated, and only possibly end up with a fine. It does, however, expose Facebook to the wrath of its other customers that pay the company handsomely for the type of information that CA stole, an anger that my take the form of legal action and again illustrating the fact that companies have more to fear from other companies and the elites behind them than from ripping off the public.

Beyond the illegality of CA stealing personal information from 50 million Americans, beyond the fact that Facebook didn't give a damn about protecting the personal data of its users because that data is its product and CA and others like it are their real customers, beyond the fact that sending a letter asking that the data be deleted met the minimal requirement for Facebook's legal protection, beyond all that is really an utter contempt for democracy. CA was willing to use stolen data to help influence an election in the United States may have also violated the law during the Brexit referendum. It was willing to run covert operations, dirty tricks, and voter suppression tactics, creating divisions in any country where a politician was willing to pay for its services (or whom Mercer/Bannon approved). Facebook was willing to accept political ads paid for in rubles and to turn a blind eye to CA's theft as it pocketed a few more dollars from the Trump campaign. And worse, even after the election, both CA and Facebook refused to come clean about what they had done.

But Facebook has never had any interest in protecting or promoting democracy, despite its wonderful slogans over the years. It has modified its platform and procedures in order to satisfy authoritarians in Russia, China, Turkey, and elsewhere in order to facilitate the government's propaganda machine and control over its own citizens.

In the political realm, the corruption in this administration is deep and wide. Every day, Trump himself directly benefits from his violation of the Emoluments Clause. David Fahrenthold reports that over 80% of the money spent by the RNC on catering/ballroom rentals in the last few months was spent on Trump properties. Trump's cabinet is full of people engaging in petty graft and outright self-dealing. From Ryan Zinke's and Steve Mnuchin's fondness for private or military planes to Scott Pruitt's secure phone booth to Ben Carson's dining set  and back to Zinke's $140,000 door, the petty graft is both pathetic and outrageous at the same time. The self-dealing by the Trump family on a scale we've never seen, Jared Kushner's multiple attempts to use his position to secure funding for his failing 666 Fifth Avenue venture, Carl Icahn's attempt to change EPA rules to benefit his refinery business as well as his remarkable prescience in dumping his steel interests right before the Trump tariffs were introduced, Tom Price's combined petty graft of private air travel and insider trading, Mike Flynn's treason and corruption, and so many more are indicative of a class of people who have no respect for the rule of law or the office that they hold.

Jeff Session, Steve Mnuchin, Jared Kushner, and others go before Congress and lie under oath, yet they continue in their jobs as though it had never occurred. Donald Trump, Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, and Harvey Weinstein have sexually harassed and abused women for decades but managed to avoid detection due to payoffs, NDAs, and an infrastructure of complicit enablers that sometimes provided for and always protected them.

Today, even direct orders from the judicial system can be ignored and at least delayed indefinitely. The judiciary really has little capability for enforcement without the consent of the executive branch and is hamstrung by process issues that make it easy to delay justice. In Kansas, Kris Kobach is facing a contempt of court hearing because he has specifically refused to follow the orders from a judge back in 2016. According to the Kansas City Star, "[Judge] Robinson in 2016 ordered Kobach to fully register thousands of Kansas voters who had registered at the DMV but had failed to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, as required by a Kansas law that Kobach crafted." Koback has continually failed to comply with the full implementation of that court order and it seems like the judge has finally reached the breaking point, saying, "I've had to police this over and over and over again...The real question is why has the secretary of state [Kobach] not complied with it until he's called on it. ... There's been no change of rules. There's been no ambiguity".

In Pennsylvania, the State Supreme Court ruled the 2011 Republican gerrymander as an illegal partisan enterprise on the grounds it violates the state's constitution. The Republican in the Pennsylvania legislature responded to this ruling by trying to impeach the justices who ruled the gerrymander illegal.  In North Carolina, certain voters in that state have had to vote in districts that have been ruled by courts as an illegal gerrymander since 2012.  When those districts were ruled an illegal racial gerrymander, the state would constantly delay redrawing the maps with appeals up to the Supreme Court. When, after years, they were finally forced to redraw the maps, they drew what a court has ruled an illegal partisan gerrymander. The state again appealed that ruling up to the Supreme Court which stayed the decision to draw new maps again until after the Court makes a decision on the constitutionality of partisan gerrymanders.

Of course, the actions that Kobach and the Pennsylvania and North Carolina Republicans are trying to protect by defying the courts are in total opposition to the concept of democracy. Kobach is attempting to make it as difficult as possible for certain people who are eligible to vote to actually be able to vote. And the Republicans are defending a partisan gerrymander that, in Pennsylvania, awards 72% of the seats to the party that won around 50% of the actual vote.

The corporate culture only demands accountability to the shareholders and these companies and the executives running them know they will not be held accountable for fear of a redux of the Arthur Andersen collapse. Uber, a serial criminal enterprise that has violated laws in countries all over the world as well as in many states here in this country, still manages to stay in business and its executives, past and present, still have faced no accountability for their actions. Yesterday, one of its autonomous vehicles, perhaps running on stolen technology, ran over and killed a pedestrian in Tempe. Does anyone believe that any Uber executive and not just the emergency backup driver, will be held accountable for this supposed "accident"?

Wall Street firms' illegal and unethical behavior crashed the world economy and not one executive, virtually all of whom understood and at least silently approved of the massive fraud their firms were engaged in, was even accused of a crime. Wells Fargo, another serial corporate criminal, continued to steal from millions of customers even after the financial crisis ended. Again, so far, there have been no criminal charges against the executives in charge. And the Wells case illustrates the truism that ripping off the public is perfectly acceptable but ripping off other members of the elite, such as the investor class, will not be tolerated, as Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos will soon discover.

Purdue Pharmaceuticals falsely marketed its OxyContin drug with fabricated test results created by their marketing department. When discovered, three senior executives pleaded guilty to a criminal misdemeanor and the company continued to market the drug almost exactly the way it had before. The cartel of prescription drug wholesalers then flooded certain markets with millions of opioids with clear knowledge that those drugs were being abused and ignoring federal and state regulations requiring the notification of excessive drug shipments. The result is the current opioid epidemic and a massive public health crisis. Again, none of the executives of any of these companies have been held to account.

Mitt Romney showed his disdain for the electorate with his claim that 47% of the country are freeloaders. You could say a similar thing about Hillary's deplorable comment, but, based on the racism and xenophobia of Trump's alt-right supporters, her point actually contains more truth than many care to admit. Donald Trump half-jokingly talks about becoming president for life and his well-heeled supporter not only laugh but give him an ovation. Trump lies about his discussions with Trudeau and the crowd laughs when he says that America is always stupid. And let's not forget Bush and Cheney who lied to us and the world in order to invade Iraq, creating a disaster in the Mideast that has potentially cost millions of lives and whose terrible consequences we are still living with today. The Bush/Cheney regime illegally tortured and held prisoners in violation of our Constitution and the Geneva Conventions.

Yesterday, Trump and Sarah Sanders both refused to condemn the fraudulent election in Russia. Sanders said, "We don't get to dictate how other countries operate. What we do know is that Putin has been elected in their country and that's not something that we can dictate to them, how they operate. We can only focus on the freeness and fairness of our elections". In other words, America has thrown away a couple of hundred years of foreign policy based on at least paying lip service to the idea and the ideal of democracy. As of today, we no longer believe in the concept.

Conservative Mike Lofgren has written that our elites are secessionists from their own country. "Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; if one owns a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension—and viable public transportation doesn’t even show up on the radar screen. With private doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the Mayo Clinic, why worry about Medicare? Being in the country but not of it is what gives the contemporary American super-rich their quality of being abstracted and clueless". And, like the British in India, they look at their own country as just another place for them to extract wealth.

Peter Thiel has already bought his reclusive farm in New Zealand and has his private jet all warmed up at the ready so he can escape whatever disaster befalls the US. Since Thiel already has his escape plan, there's not much need for him to focus on actually responding to the variety of challenges and threats this country faces. As I've written before, the elites ability to essentially buy "apocalypse insurance" has made them incredibly cynical and lacking in any faith in the future. Thiel himself gave up on democracy a long time ago, writing in 2009, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible… Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron". Yes, how dare poor people and women actually be included in democracy! The privilege of class and overt sexism in Thiel's statement, as well as the total disdain for what American democracy actually stands for, is astounding and frightening. But it is also reflective of the elites in this country and elsewhere.

I could go on (and I probably have for too long). But you get the point. For the elites, that certain and select group of economically and powerful people, there is no more accountability. They show their disdain for the rule of law every day, epitomized by Donald Trump and his family. And they certainly have little regard for democracy as it remains one of the only methods where their power and privilege can be challenged and constrained.

Trump Unconstrained

Reporting over the last few weeks as well as the actions of the President himself seem to indicate that Trump has reached the "screw it" point in his term. He has clearly decided to do things his way, without consultation from his advisers, a group that only seems to be shrinking to almost nothing as it is and pointedly not including his own family.

Maggie Haberman ascribes Trump's new-found, shall we say, freedom to his finally feeling "comfortable" in the job of President. Others have linked Trump's seemingly increasingly impulsive behavior to the closing in of the Mueller investigation. I have suggested the Stormy Daniels' case is also creating more pressure than we think on Trump. The reality is that it is probably a combination of all three. It is also a reality that the pressure on Trump seems to be building by the day.

Certainly, the reports that Mueller has presented Trump's legal team with at least areas of questioning, if not direct questions, as well as subpoenaing Trump organization documents clearly precipitated Trump's tweets this weekend demanding the end of the Mueller investigation. The call for Mueller's head was originated by Trump's attorney John Dowd, who then claimed he was only speaking for himself. That statement was immediately rendered inoperative when Trump sent out his tweets.

According to the president of one of Trump's failed Atlantic City casinos, "When he's under pressure is when he tends to do this impulsive stuff. That's what I saw in the business. When he began to have pressure with debts, when the [Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City] was underperforming, is when he began acting very erratically."

That impulsive behavior is reflected in his decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum over the objections of his senior economic adviser and without any consultation or coordination with the federal agencies involved. It is similarly reflected in the decision to meet with Kim Jung-un, without understanding the ramifications of taking such a meeting and without preparing the groundwork for it. It is reflected in the decision to fire Rex Tillerson and now in the direct attacks on the Mueller investigation.

Trump's reckless behavior is compounded by the fact that there is no Republican agenda. Having passed the tax cuts that provide one of the greatest transfers of wealth to the top 0.1% in recent history, there is virtually nothing on the Congressional agenda until the fall elections. (Of course, that may be the GOP agenda in toto, passing tax cuts, funding the military, rolling back regulations, and doing nothing else for the rest of government). Moreover, Republicans look set to get overwhelmed by a Democratic wave this November, possibly flipping at least one house of Congress. It that were to happen, Trump knows that the next two years would be filled with investigations, subpoenas, under oath Congressional testimony, and possibly even impeachment.

Faced with that prospect, Trump realizes that the key to his political survival is to turn out the Republican base in the fall elections. That means that Trump feels compelled to constantly play to the most extreme elements of the party. The tariffs on steel and aluminum were an example of that, seemingly designed to influence the special election in Pennsylvania. In addition, Trump will soon propose additional tariffs on Chinese goods. It is also reported that Trump wants Congress to give him sole authority over setting tariffs, a move that would essentially sabotage and end the World Trade Organization agreements. Trump is also using these tariffs as a way to blackmail Mexico and Canada in the ongoing NAFTA negotiations and will probably eventually follow through on his promise to abrogate that agreement. By the time the fall elections roll around, it is quite possible that we will be in a global trade war, unless the Republicans in Congress somehow restrain Trump, something they have shown no interest in doing.

That is also why Trump continues to float the idea, probably insincerely, of trading security for DACA recipients for funding for his beloved border wall, despite that idea being constantly and totally squashed by Republicans in Congress. Trump is also putting forward the idea of a death penalty for certain types of drug dealers.

That same play to the base is why, according to Bob Corker, Trump will pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement in May. And pulling out of the nuclear agreement with Iran will certainly discourage the North Koreans from coming to any agreement themselves which will probably give Trump the excuse for some military strike against that country.

Trump will probably make new attempts to restrict immigration from predominantly Muslim countries and play more footsie with the alt-right, as well as more (usually bogus) claims about all the jobs that are coming back to the US. If things look really bad as we head toward the fall, attacks on judiciary and the electoral system are certain to come. After all, Trump admires authoritarians and has expressed a desire to do away with elections altogether, even if it was in a joke. In general, Trump will be playing to the worst instincts of his base and relying entirely on his own, with virtually no input from informed advisers, advisers who he is determined to ignore anyway.

This also means that the chances that Mueller will be fired between now and the fall elections are extremely high. Trump knows that the Republicans in Congress will not restrain him. After initial, albeit tepid, opposition to his tariffs, there is no legislation to prevent them. And the lack of response from the Republican leadership, which itself is complicit in allowing the Russian hacking, after this weekend's attacks on Mueller are another green flag to Trump. McConnell has issued no statement on Trump's threats at all and all Paul Ryan could muster was a pretty weak statement of support for Mueller through his spokesman. Aside from the usual suspects like Graham, McCain, and Flake, who have proven to be all talk and no action, the rest of the GOP has been remarkably silent.

Since we are talking about Trump, it is possible that he will be more bluster than substance on many of these issues. On the death penalty for drug dealers, for example, there are indications that he will merely be more aggressive in pushing for the death penalty in cases where the law already allows it.  His constant hyperbole is just PR for his supporters and a way to provide signals for his low-information voters. On the other hand, his imposition of the tariffs, his meeting with North Korea, and his firing of Comey, Tillerson, and now McCabe show that there are certain areas where Trump is truly determined to act.

For the foreseeable future, then, our country, our democracy, and the world in general will be in greater danger than we've seen in many decades. Trump is now unconstrained and uncontrolled and his narcissism and egomania will feed his belief in his own reckless impulses. As I've argued before, we are already in a slow-moving constitutional crisis that is occurring on multiple levels. With Trump unconstrained and apparently under pressure, the pace of that crisis is likely to pick up in the coming months and, with a complicit and supine Republican party, the outcome is very much in doubt.

McCabe Just The Latest Victim Of Trump's Authoritarian, Political Purges

The timing of Jeff Sessions' firing of Andrew McCabe late on Friday night and just two days before his retirement smacks of political motivations. But it is just another example of the Trump administration politicizing the civil service.

The Inspector General's (IG) report that recommended McCabe's firing has yet to be made public and is not scheduled to be released until later in the spring. That report is a broad investigation into how the FBI handled the Clinton email server case. And it is quite possible that McCabe was not totally forthcoming with that investigation as has been alleged. It is also probable that James Comey will also come under intense criticism in that report because he clearly did violate DOJ rules and guidelines with both his July and October actions in regard to the Clinton investigation.

But the fact that McCabe's actions were segregated from the IG's report as well as the fact he was given minimal time to prepare for his hearing with Sessions to argue his side of the story indicates that at least the excessive speed at which the process moved was largely driven by political considerations. In terms of the need to protect the country at large from whatever breaches in protocol or law that McCabe has engaged in, there would be no harm in letting him retire on Sunday as planned and to wait for the entire IG report to come out.

According to McCabe's lawyer, "Mr. McCabe and his counsel were given limited access to a draft of the OIG report late last month, did not see the final report and the evidence on which it is based until a week ago, and were receiving relevant exculpatory evidence as recently as two days ago". As many have pointed out, John Woo, the author of the Bush administration's infamous torture memos, was given six months to prepare his defense in front of the Attorney General. McCabe was given less than six days.

Of course, the backdrop of all this has been the incessant rantings from David Dennison (aka Donald Trump) that McCabe is part of a broad conspiracy against the President and needs to be fired. Those rantings are part of a general attempt at intimidation and obstruction of justice against those who are potential witnesses against Trump in the Russia investigation and now directly focused on the Mueller investigation. In fact, with McCabe's firing, Dennison (aka Trump) has fired two critical witnesses to his obstruction of justice, Comey and McCabe. And, as Benjamin Wittes notes, "It is possible, after all, to politicize law enforcement by repeatedly propagating the lie that the law enforcement apparatus is already politicized." And that is exactly what Dennison (aka Trump) is doing and thereby creating the excuse to taint or eliminate every one who threatens him, even Mueller eventually.

In fact, Bill Kristol was on Last Word last night and theorized that Trump gave Sessions an ultimatum, either fire McCabe or get fired himself. Confronted with that horrific choice, Sessions, knowing that his firing would mean the end of the Mueller investigation, chose to essentially "sacrifice" McCabe in order save Mueller. While that is certainly just speculation at this point, it is a conceivable theory, especially considering Dennison's (aka Trump's) attacks on Mueller this weekend.

Now McCabe may end up with the last word in this case. Dennisons's (aka Trump's) demands that he be fired and the short-circuiting of the full investigative and administrative process creates a strong case for McCabe to sue for wrongful termination in order to receive his full pension.

The politicization of the civil service and law enforcement by Dennison (aka Trump) began all the way back in the 2016 campaign. And the firings of what were believed to be "political opponents" in bureaucracy began from the very start of this administration. On Thursday, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees accused the Trump administration of coordinating with outside conservative groups to basically "purge" the State Department of civil servants they believed were political opponents.

One target was a career civil servant and Iran expert, Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, whose tenure at the Policy Planning Staff was cut short after the administration took over, apparently for clearly political reasons. One White House official falsely claimed that Nowrouzzadeh was born in Iran and was visibly distressed by Hillary Clinton's loss, despite the fact that she joined the State Department during the George W. Bush administration. Conservative groups accused her of promoting the Iran nuclear deal under Obama and implied she was almost an Iranian agent, saying she had "burrowed" her way into the State Department. They demanded she be fired, writing to the administration "I think a cleaning is in order here...I hear Tillerson actually been reasonably good on stuff like this and cleaning house, but there are so many that it boggles the mind."

Nowrouzzadeh was not the only one apparently targeted. From what the Democrats on the committees have uncovered, it appears that a list was exchanged between the National Security Council and the State Department that described a certain career civil servant as a "turncoat" and another as a "leaker and troublemaker".

The politicization of the non-partisan civil service under Dennison (aka Trump) is just the culmination of decades of attacks by the Republican party on the idea of government at all. It is also the result of a party that has convinced itself that it is continually under existential threat. And, in Dennison (aka Trump), we actually have a President whose livelihood and reputation, what little of it is left, is actually under existential threat from the Mueller investigation and elsewhere and whose authoritarian tendencies are only enhanced by his need to have enemies he can "conquer".

As Dennison (aka Trump) becomes more and more unhinged and, in a sense, "liberated", those authoritarian tendencies will only get stronger. Already he and his lawyers are calling for Mueller's investigation to be shut down by Rod Rosenstein. And as each day passes, Mueller's investigation will become more and more threatened and more and more non-partisan civil servants will be targeted for politically motivated attacks.

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