Deviancy

Environmental Superhero:  Trump’s campaign advisors have finally woken up to the fact that a significant number of Americans are concerned about the environment.  To be clear it’s not that those advisors are concerned about smog, pollution,  floods or climate change, it’s just that they are concerned that some swing voters are so they recommended that Trump deliver a speech highlighting all the good things that his administration has done to improve the environment, really.  And since Jared and Ivanka, those ineffective advocates for staying in the Paris Climate Accords, agreed, Trump followed through.  Yesterday he delivered his speech, one full of deception and derision but with lots of omissions.  Among other things he claimed that the US was number one in “access to clean drinking water.”  We’re not.  He celebrated the absolute decline in carbon emissions since 2000, failing to note that they went up last year and that his advocacy for increased dependence on coal and easing up on EPA policies limiting carbon emissions will reverse the overall trend.  He again weighed in on forest management, blaming California for failing to rake and sweep away their fire problem, the one exacerbated by that unmentionable global warming problem.  He also failed to note that most  California forests are on Federal land and outside the state’s jurisdiction. He took credit for cleaning up superfund sites this time failing to note that virtually all of the progress in that area predated his administration and that his budget proposals have called for decreased funding for clean ups.  Of course, he pretty much avoided mentioning global warming.  The list of his lies goes on and on, but the speech made for some powerful soundbites that will undoubtably show up in campaign ads, especially those directed at millennials and suburban mothers. And that of course was the whole point of the exercise.

Fine People:  Yesterday’s news cycle was dominated by stories about disgraced multi-millionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein. After Epstein’s Sunday night arrest, prosecutors raided his New York mansion, seizing a  "vast trove" of lewd photographs of young-looking women or girls, a bigly problem for anyone but especially for Epstein given his prior sex crime convictions. Yesterday Federal Attorneys from the Southern District of New York charged Epstein with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors. If convicted, he now faces up to 45 years in prison. US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, a Trump appointee, accused Epstein of creating a “vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit, often on a daily basis.”  As to that network, it likely expands far beyond the US mainland to his other homes including one on the US Virgin Islands.  No comments from Trump about his long time friendship with Epstein who was a member of Mar a Lago until he was asked to leave for ogling a member’s young daughter (ugh).  Also no comment from anyone in the White House about Labor Secretary Acosta’s handling of Epstein’s earlier Florida conviction, the one where he got off with a one year sentence in a halfway house that he was allowed to leave so that he could continue conducting his investment business. Though Trump has remained unusually silent, Bill Clinton did release a statement that acknowledged his prior friendship with Epstein, denied prior knowledge of any of his crimes and said that the four times that he traveled with Epstein on his plane were in connection with Clinton Foundation trips where he was accompanied by staff and his usual coterie of secret service agents.  The statement says that Clinton hasn’t spoken with Epstein in over a decade.  A number of other high profile individuals are probably working on their own versions of that Clinton memo.  For his part, Attorney General Barr announced that he has recused himself from the Epstein investigation due to the involvement of one of his prior law firms with Epstein. Curiously, years ago Barr’s father who was then the headmaster of the Dalton School hired Epstein, a college dropout, to teach calculus and physics at the school.  Makes you wonder if any other teachers at the $50,000 plus per year Dalton were unaccredited dropouts who grew up to become convicted sex traffickers or if that was just one of those odd one-off things.  During the same interview where he disclosed his recusal Barr said that he believes a legal pathway still exists to including the citizenship question in the 2020 census because “The president is right on the legal grounds. I felt the Supreme Court decision was wrong, but it also made clear that the question was a perfectly legal question to ask, but the record had to be clarified.” He didn’t explain that legal pathway to that clarification and inclusion nor did he provide any explanation for why all the trial lawyer experts at the Department of Justice have completely withdrawn themselves from the citizenship question case.  Neal Katyal, Obama’s one time Deputy and then Acting Solicitor General, called that move unprecedented, “a canary in the coal mine” an indication that some career prosecutors are refusing to further damage their reputations for Trump.  Those attorneys have now been “replaced” by a team from the Justice Department’s consumer protection division, a group who ordinarily work on other things and little expertise in the relevant area.  Barr also said that he doesn’t see the point of former Special Counsel Mueller’s upcoming testimony, adding "To me the only reason for doing that is to create some kind of public spectacle, and if Bob decides that he doesn't want to be subject to that then the Department of Justice would certainly back him." Despite that obvious message to Mueller that Barr would prefer he stay home instead of testifying, Mueller is still scheduled to appear before Congress on July 17 and the only spectacle expected is the one that Trump loyalists like Congressmen Jim Jordan, Louis Gohmert and others of the same ilk are likely to cause.

International Kerfuffle:  In a series of leaked diplomatic cables, Kim Darroch, Britain's ambassador to the United States, described the Trump administration as "dysfunctional," "diplomatically clumsy and inept."  Trump’s response is that “we are not big fans of that man and he has not served the UK well so I can understand and I can say things about him but I won't bother.”  Trump went on to say that he had no interest in ever meeting with Darroch, who despite Trump’s slam, has become friends with Ivanka and Jarrod, again. Darroch was uninvited from last night’s White House dinner hosted by Treasury Secretary Mnuchin with Qatar’s Emir. Trump, Ivanka and Jarrod were all present. Trump also managed to slap down outgoing UK Prime Minister Theresa May for her failure to complete Brexit while once again complimenting the very gracious Queen Elizabeth, his really good BFF, or BFF in his mind only.  Mostly the Trump-Darroch cat fight is a sideshow, because everyone, well everyone but Trump knows that he and his administration are dysfunctional and inept, the bigger question is about how the diplomatic memos were leaked in the first place. In other news of more concern, the Iranians are now exceeding the limitations on uranium production that were imposed by the JCPOA nuclear agreement, an outcome that isn’t surprising given the US withdrawal from the agreement but that is very problematic and is likely to lead to some very, very bad things.

2020: California Congressman Eric Swalwell has pulled out of the presidential race, rumors are the billionaire Tom Steyer, the impeachment advocate, may enter and progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren who has been steadily rising in the polls raked in an impressive $19 million last quarter.