The Return of Hope

The State of Play:  Brett Kavanaugh is now sitting on the Supreme Court. He was sworn in twice, first on Sunday and then again last night in front of the cameras giving Trump a prime time opportunity to remind us all of his awesome success in stacking the court with his kind of judges.  Trump also used the moment to publicly apologize to Kavanaugh and his family for the “terrible pain and suffering" they were "forced to endure" during the confirmation process.  As to the accusations that caused Kavanaugh so much pain, Trump wants us all to know that Kavanaugh was “proven innocent” even though he wasn’t.  That’s the  message Trump is going with, that and the message that the accusations against Kavanaugh by Dr. Blasey Ford and others were all part of a liberal hoax propagated by radical liberal Democrats and funded by George Soros. Trump’s message has already gained traction. North Dakota Representative Kevin Cramer who is running against Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp attacked her vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation by arguing that voters in his state reject the idea that “you’re just supposed to believe somebody because they said it happened” implying that women who are abused should just suck it up and remain silent.  He went on to say that his female relatives are pioneers of the prairie and that they were too tough to ever be abused.  Heitkamp responded that her mother was tough too, but that hadn’t stopped her from being a victim of sexual abuse.  Sadly, at this point Cramer is significantly ahead of Heitkamp in the polls and she remains the most vulnerable incumbent Democrat.  In Montana  Matt Rosendale, the Republican state auditor trying to unseat Democratic Senator Jon Tester, is also trying to benefit from the Kavanaugh affair.  He questioned the whole “me too” movement and slammed the accusations against Kavanaugh as a “liberal smear.” Rosendale, who has been lagging Tester by just a few points in the polls is trying to use Tester’s vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation to his advantage.  As to Trump Jr the whole “me too” movement offends him terribly and leaves him very concerned that his sons might someday face false assault accusations, he’s not all that concerned about his daughters. Why isn’t that surprising?  For his part Trump senior is milking the Kavanaugh confirmation for all its worth, so much so that his communication guru former Fox executive Bill Shine pushed off questions about the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change’s newest conclusions because the White House is too busy to address any such nightmare especially during Kavanaugh week.  As to that nightmare 91 of the best minds from 40 countries have concluded the world is on the fast track to irreversible damage — and a child born today will suffer the effects of climate change before he or she turns 23.  They paint a stark picture of what the world will look like by 2040 if we fail to act against global warming. The report concludes that seas will rise faster than previously thought, that droughts will last longer than previously thought and that the “tipping point” will come sooner than previously thought. It’s highly unlikely that Trump would have responded to the report’s warnings even if he wasn’t all tied up celebrating Kavanaugh’s confirmation. However, the Nobel Prize Committee does get the concern.  Yesterday they awarded this year’s Prize in Economics to Yale economist William Nordhaus who has spent the better part of four decades trying to persuade governments to address climate change, preferably by imposing a tax on carbon emissions.  Nordhaus points out that environmental “policies are lagging very, very far — miles, miles, miles behind the science and what needs to be done.  Adding “It’s hard to be optimistic. And we’re actually going backward in the United States with the disastrous policies of the Trump administration.” Professor Nordhaus shared the prize with Paul Romer, an economist at New York University whose work has demonstrated that government policy plays a critical role in fostering technological innovation. The Trump administration is moving ahead with plans to allow year round sales of fuel with higher amounts of ethanol, a move that pleases farmers but that will contribute to higher levels of air pollution.  That plan together with Trump’s push for more coal production pretty much typifies that backwards movement that Professor Nordhaus is talking about.  Shifting gears back to Bill Shine, a while back he was forced out of Fox in response to that company’s “me too problems” now it looks like Fox has found his replacement.  Yesterday they announced that Hope Hicks, Trump’s former communications guru and pants presser is joining them as an Executive VP for Communications.  How nice for Trump, just when you thought that his relationship with Fox couldn’t get any cozier, it does.

Mueller Update:  We haven’t heard much from Special Counsel Mueller lately but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t moving forward with his investigation.  The Wall Street Journal reports that Mueller is continuing to investigate the story behind Peter Smith, the anti-Clinton Republican political operative who committed suicide last year right after telling one of its reporters about his efforts to retrieve the elusive Hillary emails from the Russians who he thought might have them or who he thought might be able to find them.  Smith who told the WSJ  that he had coordinated some of his efforts with one time national security advisor Michael Flynn, solicited and obtained $100,000 from wealthy donors to aide in his efforts.  One of his emails referred to those funds as donations that were to be sent to a Washington, D.C.-based scholarship fund for Russian students.  Mueller isn’t just focused on Smith, yesterday the NY Times reported that he is also looking into Rick Gates efforts to engage Psy Group, an Israeli intel intelligence firm, for social media manipulation on behalf of the Trump 2016 campaign.  It’s not clear that the firm was ever engaged though, together with another one of those unusual Trumpian player George Nader, its representatives did meet with Donald Trump Jr in Trump Tower.  Mueller is specifically interested in a $2 million payment that the company’s founder reportedly received shortly after the 2016 election from Nader who was a senior adviser to the government of the United Arab Emirates.  Stories about the unusual amount of communication between a Trump company server and servers from Russia’s Alfa Bank have also resurfaced.  That communication took place during the run up to the 2016 election and though Alfa Bank insists that it was a big nothing burger and the Trump organization has floated several “innocent” explanations for why the two company’s server were in regular communication, technology experts suspect that their communication was no cooincidence.      

Other Awful News:  Though it will ultimately be hard to prove, it appears that the Saudi Arabian government has killed  Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent journalist and critic of the Saudi government who most recently was a contributor to the Washington Post.  Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul to obtain the documents he needed to be able to proceed with his plans to marry his fiancée.  She was waiting for him outside of the embassy and when he didn’t return she reported his disappearance to Turkish authorities.   Turkish officials now believe that a team of “security officials” from Saudi Arabia who had arrived in Istanbul right before Khashoggi went to the embassy ambushed him within the building, chopped him up into little pieces and disposed of his body. Turkish officials are searching for the vehicle that they believe was used to carry his remains away from the embassy. So far, Trump has only said that he’s “concerned” about this and that he doesn’t “like hearing about it and hopefully that will sort itself out” though its not clear how such a horrific occurrence can be “sorted out.” Trump went on to say that “right now, nobody knows anything about it." Neither Trump nor Turkey leader Erdogan are all that fond of journalists but chopping one up would be a step too far even for them and could turn into a bigly problem for US-Saudi ties.  Secretary of State Pompeo who has been busy shuffling back and forth to North Korea and claiming progress there though there really isn’t much to report has called on Riyadh to investigate Khashoggi’s disappearance.  Really, what are they going to report?