Trump Has Been Bragging About HIS Foreign Policy. Meanwhile America's Foreign Policy Is A Shambles

Last week, anyone who didn't think "foul play" by Putin after reading reports of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny falling into a coma is either terribly naïve or a Trumpist Republican. And sure enough, after he was rescued an flown to Berlin, he was diagnosed with having been poisoned with a cholinesterase inhibitor, a family of central nervous system toxic agents.

Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released copies of Trump's pre-presidential love letters to Putin as part of their investigation into Trump's collaboration with Russia during the 2016 election.

Trump’s pandering to the Russian president was on full display in a 2007 letter congratulating Putin on being named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. The letter read, “Congratulations on being named Time’s magazine ‘Man of the Year’-- you definitely deserve it. As you probably heard, I am a big fan of yours!”

The phrase “I am big fan of yours” was emphasised by the now US President with a thick underline.

The praiseful content doesn’t end there, with a 2013 letter containing an attempt by Trump to persuade Putin into attending a Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, an event owned by Trump himself.

The letter asked Putin to be Trump’s date for the evening, reading, “I want to take this opportunity to personally invite you to be my guest of honor in Moscow on November 9th. I know you will have a great time.”

In an attempt to double down on the persuasion (in true all-caps Trump-style), an added hand-written message read, “THE WORLD”S MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN!”

Putin did not attend the contest.

The letters are part of a more serious issue surrounding the 2016 election, with key findings from the Senate Select Committee revealing that Putin had weaponised the hacking of Democratic campaign emails, with Trump receiving assistance from various Russian pass-throughs.

Further findings reveal that former campaign chair Paul Manafort was deemed a threat to US intelligence due to his contacts with Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik.

The report essentially confirmed that the president had lied in a written testimony about not remembering a conversation with Roger Stone, who utilised his Julian Assange WikiLeaks back-channel to access Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails.

While Trump’s unwavering love of Putin was put on full display, the report all but confirmed something more serious. Trump and his officials sought out and accepted Russian interference during the election.

Last week Juan Cole had a typically Trump-era headline at Informed Comment: Trump Walks Alone: Former U.S. Allies Britain, France, Germany Join Russia And China in Forcefully Rejecting Trump Iran Sanctions. The European countries hit Trump with a strong rebuke, thoroughly sick and tired of Trump's dysfunctional policies, and they sound more like Russia and China. Trump and Pompeo are now running around screeching that they're going to sanction the rest of the world. Trump should be dragged out of the White House and put in an insane asylum.

Nebraska/Russia-- Ricketts/Putin

Different politicians are handling the pandemic in different ways. Denialism has been pretty rampant though. And it doesn't work. Nebraska's crackpot governor, Pete Ricketts, is unquestionably one of the worst governors confronting the coronavirus-- and his state is starting to suffer in a really major way now. Because Ricketts, always the sociopathic ideologue, refused to issue a stay-at-home order or take the pandemic seriously, Nebraska is on the top of every list of the states heading into a horrific Wave II. Monday, the Omaha World-Herald reported that Ricketts "rejected a call from AARP Nebraska Director Todd Stubbendieck to name long-term care facilities that have had coronavirus cases. Stubbendieck said the disclosures are needed to protect public health and to protect people who live and work at nursing homes and assisted living facilities. As of Wednesday, 455 residents or staff of long-term care facilities had tested positive for the potentially deadly virus, while long-term care residents accounted for two of every three deaths from the virus. Nebraska is one of 13 states in which half of or more deaths are nursing home residents, Stubbendieck said." Instead, Ricketts announced that he would allow dine-in restaurants, hair salons, massage therapy and other close-contact services to reopen Monday. Next Tuesday is primary day in Nebraska-- with in person voting, of course.

Of all the Wave II disaster-zones, Nebraska is looking the worst-- with 4,431 cases per million, far more than other phase-two hot spots like South Dakota (3,976), Iowa (3,922), Indiana (3,658), Colorado (3,452), Mississippi (3,251), Georgia (3,202), Tennessee (2,276), North Dakota (1,992), Utah (1,984), Florida (1,908) and Texas (1,409). These are states that can look forward to unnecessary suffering because they elected bad leaders.

Another right wing authoritarian with zero empathy for his people, Vladimir Putin, has also denied, denied, denied until it was too late. Actually he's still in denial mode and on Monday announced that Russia was ending whatever little there was of an economic shutdown across the country. Russia now has the third most total confirmed cases in the world-- following the U.S. and Spain. Russia, which has been reporting about 11,000 new cases per day for the past week, spent the first half of the pandemic gloating and sneering at the U.S. and western Europe. Yesterday, anti-empathy heads of states had catastrophic increases in cases in their countries. These were the contemptible national leaders who brought on the most new cases yesterday:

• Señor Trumpanzee- 18,196
• Vladimir Putin- 11,656
• Jair Bolsonaro- 6,444
• Boris Johnson- 3,877
• Narendra Modi- 3,607

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has been hospitalized with COVID-19. He's a key Putin crony who's been working for him for two decades. Another close Putin crony, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, is also in hospital being treated for COVID.

Reporters from the Kremlin pool said on Twitter that Peskov was last seen in public on April 30 “at a meeting with Vladimir Putin.” It was not clear whether it means the two were in the same room, as Putin has been conducting all his meetings via teleconference in recent weeks.

Since early in the outbreak, the Russian president minimized meetings and switched to holding daily video calls with Cabinet members and aides.

Peskov’s announcement comes just a day after Putin said Russia was successful in slowing down infections and announced easing some of the nationwide lockdown restrictions.

Russia has reported more than 232,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 2,100 virus-related deaths, as of Tuesday. Hours before Putin made televised remarks Monday about ending the country’s partial economic lockdown, health officials reported a daily record of over 11,600 new cases.

Russia's statistics are not considered to be accurate and it is widely assumed that Russia's deaths are being drastically under-reported.

Foreign Policy reported Tuesday morning that "Like many of his counterparts at the outset of the pandemic, Russian President Vladimir Putin may have underestimated how bad his country’s outbreak could get. 'The situation is on the whole under control,” Putin said on March 18. “Russia looks much better compared with other countries.' Since then, coronavirus cases have steadily increased. Russia now has approximately 220,000 cases. Only the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom have more. If trends continue, Russia will have overtaken the United Kingdom by the end of today.

Russia’s handling of the coronavirus has not helped Putin, who was planning for his next few terms in power just before the pandemic struck. While still high by Western standards, his support has declined to its lowest levels since he was first elected president. A recent poll by the Levada Center showed a 59 percent approval rating among the Russian public. The Kremlin said it was “not inclined to fully trust” the poll results.

It’s perhaps with these ratings in mind that Putin has ordered an easing of the country’s lockdown restrictions, starting today.

On May 7, Foreign Policy asked 11 Russia experts for an assessment of Putin’s 20 years in charge and what the future holds. Susan Glasser sums up how quickly things have changed for the Russian leader. “May 2020 was meant to be a 20th anniversary party for Putinism, but the party has been canceled,” she writes.

Putin Is Probably Worse Than Kushner-in-Law

Yesterday, the Washington Post published another piece on the deadly dysfunction the Trump Regime has brought to the pandemic response. "By the time Donald Trump proclaimed himself a wartime president-- and the coronavirus the enemy-- the United States was already on course to see more of its people die than in the wars of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined." Every step of the way, Trump has dragged his feet 'til his two-little-too-late policies meant next to nothing in the battle, where a courageous and dedicated leader was desperately needed. Because of Trump's timid cowardice "the United States will likely go down as the country that was supposedly best prepared to fight a pandemic but ended up catastrophically overmatched by the novel coronavirus, sustaining heavier casualties than any other nation."

Trump's latest solution? Putting his unaccomplished and farcical son-in-law in charge. NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez explained that Kushner is an executive in his father's crooked real estate firm "with no public health expertise. [He] generally works behind scenes at the White House. So, critics have been curious about his role in the administration's efforts to confront the coronavirus pandemic. He has emerged with a central role working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to oversee the distribution of vital medical supplies to hospital and health care providers. On Thursday, he explained that Trump and Vice President Pence came to him looking for new ideas and 'outside of the box' thinking. But his lack of experience has drawn scrutiny, especially when he referred to the national stockpile of medical supplies as 'our stockpile. The notion of the federal stockpile was it's supposed to be our stockpile,' he said. 'It's not supposed to be states' stockpiles that they then use.' The backlash was quick and harsh."

Trump is desperate to get get Anthony Fauci-- the most trusted pandemic-related leader by the American public-- off center stage. Even though Kushner is a failed clown with no qualifications whatsoever except for his proximity to the Oval Office, Trump is hoping he will draw attention away from Fauci and his politically-difficult recommendations. Eventually Trump will fire him. The firestorm won't be less hot with the cloddish son-in-law in charge.

Morons by Chip Proser

It could have been worse. Trump's role model Vladimir Putin has demonstrated that again. Russia has been hiding it's COVID-19 numbers from the public. Anastasia Vasilieva the leader of the Alliance of Doctors, an independent doctors’ union, was arrested and tossed into jail when she talked about the fake numbers the Putin Regime is handing out. Andrew Higgins, reporting for the NY Times wrote that she was arrested while "traveling from Moscow to an impoverished rural town to deliver masks, gloves and other supplies to a local hospital." I bet Trump would love to arrested Fauci.

The detention of Dr. Vasilieva, an eye specialist who has been highly critical of Russia’s response to the pandemic, added fuel to already widespread skepticism, particularly among Kremlin critics, about the accuracy of official figures showing relatively few cases of the virus in Russia. Her detention also increased skepticism about the readiness of Russia’s health care system to cope with the pandemic.

A group of doctors at a hospital in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second biggest city, released a video on Friday appealing to the public for help in obtaining the protective equipment they said they needed to treat coronavirus patients.

Maria Bakhldina, the head doctor at the hospital, speaking to Fontanka, a news site in the city, dismissed the doctors complaints as “untrue.”

Views on how far the virus has really spread in Russia and how prepared the country is have been largely determined by political leanings. The general public, which mostly supports President Vladimir V. Putin, has voiced little concern while many of the Kremlin’s opponents suspect a cover-up.

Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, recently accused the authorities of lying about the number of tests carried out and suggested that, as a result, the number of cases could be much higher than reported.

Russia has sharply stepped up testing and now says it has conducted more than 575,000 tests, but this includes cases of multiple tests on the same person, lowering the head count.

In an address to the nation on Thursday, President Putin, holed up for most of the past week in his country residence outside Moscow, praised health workers for “holding the line of defense against the advancing epidemic” but acknowledged the worst is yet to come.

Russia has been far more open in confronting the pandemic than many other former Soviet countries, some of which insist they have no cases now and can keep the virus at bay with quack remedies.

A sudden large surge in cases would likely break Russia’s rickety medical system and undermine Mr. Putin’s already declining but still robust approval ratings, especially as state-controlled media has bombarded the public for months with gushing reports about how the president is improving health care across the country.

The virus has also slowed Russia’s already sluggish economy, posing another problem for the Kremlin less than a month after it pushed through constitutional changes to allow Mr. Putin to dispense with term limits and stay in power until 2036.

Dr. Vasilieva, the detained physician, set up the Alliance of Doctors last year in part to counter the Kremlin’s claims of dramatic improvements in funding and other support for hospitals. She has treated Mr. Navalny as a patient and affiliated her group with his. The authorities arrested her last year for rallying opposition to the closure of a tuberculosis clinic in a poor region of southern Russia.

Mr. Putin’s approval rating, according to a recent survey by the Levada Center, a respected Russian polling organization, fell from 69 percent in February to 63 percent in March, near to what it was in 2014 before a surge in the president’s popularity after Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.

In his last public outing early last week, Mr. Putin visited a new state-of-the-art infectious diseases center, Hospital No. 40 in Moscow, escorted by its head doctor, who this week tested positive for the virus. The Kremlin said that Mr. Putin has been tested regularly and that “everything is O.K.”

Russia on Friday reported 601 new infections, down from 771 new cases reported on Thursday, bringing the total number to 4,419. This is a fourfold increase over the past week but still far fewer than the more than 245,000 cases reported in the United States and nearly 118,000 in Spain and 115,000 in Italy.

Critics of the Kremlin, however, have questioned the official figures. Dr. Vasilieva, the detained doctors’ union head, said in a video late last month that authorities were lying about the true number of infections, accusing them of deliberately misclassifying people who had developed the disease as victims of ordinary pneumonia.

A few days later, she said she had been called in for questioning over her comments, declaring defiantly in another video that “You can send whomever you want to get me-- the Federal Security Service, the fire service-- but the truth will not change.” The real number of coronavirus cases, she said, “is much higher than the authorities say.” She provided no evidence of any cover-up.

Her medical workers’ union, warning that Russian hospitals were desperately short of masks and other protective equipment, recently started a fund-raising drive online to raise money from the public to buy supplies for hospitals and clinics.

The government, too, seems worried that it may need to do more to control the virus. On Friday, it suspended the last remaining flights into the country, halting even special flights bringing Russians home from abroad, the Interfax news agency reported. All land borders have already been closed.

Moscow, St. Petersburg and many Russian regions this week ordered residents not to leave their homes except to buy food and medicine or walk their dogs close to their residence.

Dr. Vasilieva was stopped by police officers on Thursday while attempting to deliver supplies by car to a hospital in Okulovka, northwest of Moscow, according to Natalia Kolosova, a colleague who was traveling with her. “They were clearly waiting for us,” Ms. Kolosova said, noting that police officers had set up a check point at the entry to Okulovka but stopped no other vehicles.

Dr. Vasilieva appeared in court on Friday charged with disobeying police orders and violating quarantine restrictions. She was released on Friday evening after being ordered to pay a small fine.

Natalia Zviagina, director for Amnesty International in Russia, condemned the detention, saying in a statement that: “It is staggering that the Russian authorities appear to fear criticism more than the deadly Covid-19 pandemic” caused by coronavirus. By detaining Dr. Vasilieva, she added, the authorities show “they are willing to punish health professionals who dare contradict the official Russian narrative and expose flaws in the public health system.”

Dmitri Sokolov, a paramedic at the Okulovka hospital and the head of the regional branch of Dr. Vasilieva’s Alliance of Doctors, said that the hospital had not yet admitted any patients confirmed as suffering from Covid-19 but that staff members were deeply worried because of severe shortages of masks and other equipment.

Okulovka hospital’s head surgeon, Yuri I. Korvin, also a critic of the authorities, had been ordered to stay away from the hospital and self-isolate for two weeks because he had had contact with Dr. Vasilieva, Mr. Sokolov said. Police officers involved in her detention, however, were allowed to keep working, he added.

Mr. Sokolov said “nobody knows the real number of infections” and added that residents in Okulovka were alarmed by a recent flood of people arriving from Moscow and St. Petersburg. Fleeing quarantine restriction and high infection rates in their home cities, urban residents have been fleeing to rural towns like Okulovka to take shelter at country homes.

“None of us know where these people have been or whether they have been tested,” he said.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Putin's Russian mob is no different than the Cosa Nostra. They'll always want more and more favors for their election aid and money. They'll just keep pushing and they'll keep on escalating their demands. Ask yourself what they will demand of Moscow Mitch and Traitor Don after Mitch has orchestrated an acquittal for the Manchurian President.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

"Getting along with Putin and Russia is a good thing. It is for me anyway. Me. Me. Maybe if I do a tremendous bigly job shining Mr. Putin's shoes with the American flag, he'll hack right into the voting machines this time. Doesn't look like anyone's going to stop him, or me. And Mitch and Lindsey and all my supporters will love me even more. Ivanka, too!"

Will The Whole GOP Go Down With The Good Ship Trumpanzee In 2020?

Sunday morning, we took a quick look at the Republican power play in Wisconsin, where, having lost complete control of the executive branch, they have now called a special lame duck session before Scott Walker is shown the door, to hobble Democratic governor-elect Tony Evers and attorney general-elect Josh Kaul. A couple of hours ago, the Associated Press reported that they were moving full steam ahead and damned the torpedoes voters, shifting power to the GOP-controlled Legislature and allowing Walker to make one last major mark on the state’s political landscape after he lost re-election. Classy as always. And it isn't just Wisconsin. The Republican legislature is up to the same bullshitin Michigan. There, Republicans in a legislature they control only because of gerrymandering, they're working to cut the legitimate power of the just elected governor Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. An editorial in the Lansing State Journal yesterday urges the Republicans to not use a lame duck session to override the will of the voters. "Another legislative lame duck session; another ridiculous power play by Republicans. The bills currently being decided in darkness-- with little to no transparency and insufficient time for public debate-- are too important to ignore. The Michigan Legislature is blatantly ignoring the will of the people." And this one isn't just about screwing over the newly-elected executive branch.

In September, the Republican-led Legislature voted into law two citizen-initiated statues-- one raising the minimum wage to $12 and another to require all employers provide paid sick leave. The Legislature effectively blocked the decision-making power of the electorate on these issues with the full intent of dismantling them post-election.

That dismantling is happening now, with a false urgency and secrecy that sends a clear message to every voter: What we, the Legislature, want is more important than what you want.

That's absurd. And every Michigander should be outraged.

This behavior is unacceptable. Regardless of where people stand on issues, bullying through controversial legislation in a lame duck session is not the appropriate way to legislate.

  Among the most offensive changes being pushed through the Legislature:

• Bills effectively gutting the September laws by moving the minimum wage date back to 2030, separating out tipped workers with a raise to only $4 per hour and halving the requirement for paid sick leave passed the Senate Government Operations committee with a 3-2 vote along party lines and the full Senate by similar majority.
• After less than an hour of testimony, the same committee passed a bill to complete a deal with Enbridge to build a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac and place authority over Line 5 with the Mackinac Bridge Authority, again, with a 3-2 vote along party lines.
• Proposals to undermine powers of the incoming Democratic Attorney General, Secretary of State and Governor-- including provisions to remove oversight of campaign finance law from the Secretary of State’s office and allow the Legislature to intervene in legal proceedings directly instead of through the Attorney General.
• Introduced legislation to undo certain provisions from all three ballot proposals-- recreational marijuana, redistricting and Promote the Vote-- that were passed by a majority of Michigan voters only last month, including prohibition of growing marijuana at home and limiting voter registration to within 14 days of an election.

These are all important issues. Why the hurry to pass them now?

The House and Senate will have Republican majorities again next session. Yes, they'll have to contend with a Democratic governor come Jan. 1. But if these bills truly are in the best interests of Michiganders, let legislators work for them in open sessions in the spirit of collaboration and representative government.

Instead, the Republicans opted for a mean-spirited, heavy-handed approach that clearly shows their disdain for the individual voter.

Yesterday, Jonathan Martin wrote in the NY Times that though, they suffered a grievous defeat at the hands of the voters last month, the Republicans have no intention-- or even ability-- to institute any kind of a course correction. "[N]early a month after the election," wrote Martin, "there has been little self-examination among Republicans about why a midterm that had seemed at least competitive became a rout." Trump is the albatross around their necks. When will they throw him overboard?

Despite the nice drawing by Nancy Ohanian, the answer is probably "never." Thye'll go down with him again in 2020. "The quandary some Republicans acknowledge," wrote Martin, "is that the party’s leaders are constrained from fully grappling with the damage Mr. Trump inflicted with those voters, because he remains popular with the party’s core supporters and with the conservatives who will dominate the caucus even more in the next Congress. But now a cadre of G.O.P. lawmakers are speaking out and urging party officials to come to terms with why their 23-seat majority unraveled so spectacularly and Democrats gained the most seats they had since 1974."

Republican women-- the ones Martin spoke with are Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Susan Brooks (R-IN), Ann Wagner (R-MO) and retiring Trump critics Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)-- think it's because their party hasn't been welcoming-- to put it mildly-- to women. "If we don’t learn some lessons from this election we will not be a majority party," said Wagner, who represents suburban St. Louis, calling for a caucus that "looks more like America." But the GOP problem goes beyond the knee-jerk party sexism. The sexism doesn't cover the outrageous attitude behind the power plays in Wisconsin and Michigan. That mindset, more than anything, is what seems to have soured independent voters on Republicans.

Many of the lawmakers who lost their races or did not run again say the party has a profound structural challenge that incumbents are unwilling to fully face: Mr. Trump’s deep toxicity among moderate voters, especially women.

With most of the Republicans who lost hailing from suburban seats, those who remain represent red-hued districts where the president is still well-liked.

“Now the party is Trump,” said Representative Tom Rooney of Florida, who at 48 decided to retire, “so we follow his lead.”

Or as Representative Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania, who is also retiring, put it: “It’s clear to me why we lost 40 seats; it was a referendum on the president, but that’s an extremely difficult proclamation for people to make because if they were to say that they’d get the wrath of the president.”

Beyond the eggshell-walking that Mr. Trump demands, the depth of the Republican defeat was initially obscured because of the late counting in some House races, and because the G.O.P. gained seats in the Senate while some of the Democrats’ most-heralded statewide candidates lost.

Yet there is a deep reluctance among the leaders to discuss what went wrong.

...One who did was Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois. “That was disgusting,” he said, recalling how other presidents acknowledged defeat after their party lost the House. “I think back to Obama and Bush, both admitting it when they lost, accepting that with some grace.”

There has not been, Mr. Kinzinger said, “any party lookback or leadership lookback and it does worry some of us.”

What alarms Republicans even more is that the possibility that disgust with Mr. Trump will be uncurable in 2020, when he will likely be on the ballot, no matter the party’s agenda.

“It was a personality vote on the president, not an issue vote, and that doesn’t change,” Representative Kevin Yoder of Kansas said of the affluent voters in his Kansas City-area district who voted him out.

This sort of cold-eyed assessment has Republicans already expressing concern that more of their colleagues may retire rather than run again in 2020-- and that recruiting top-flight candidates could prove even more challenging going into the next campaign.

Yep... that and more premature retirements. And a party that becomes increasingly radicalized-- pleasing the hardcore base and rapidly turning normal people off. Obviously it's early, but it's hard to see 2020 shaping up to be anything but catastrophic for the Republicans. Even if the GOP isn't, Putin may be in the middle of a Trump course correction. As reported Sunday by the Daily Beast, Veronika Krasheninnikova, Director General of the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies & Initiatives, Advisor to the Director General of Russia Today and a member of the Kremlin-appointed Russian Public Chamber, wrote for Arguments and Facts after Trump canceled his meeting with Putin in Buenos Aires that Russia can now give up on the U.S. and "should have never trusted Trump to begin with." Krasheninnikova opined that "as long as Trump is in power, nothing positive can happen in the relations between the United States and Russia," concluding that "Trump is a rock hanging around Russia's neck." Nothing like that gets published without explicit approval of Putin.

As Sean Sullivan pointed out in the Washington Post this morning, Jeff Flake had admitted, if ruefully, that "This is the president's party now. It really is. I don't think you can read it any other way." He mused that embracing Trump after his 2016 win would have been the "path to re-election, but I couldn't do it... Whether I accomplish anything or not by my opposition to some of his policies and some of his behavior... I just couldn't do that."

The electoral contours of 2020 are expected to prompt Republican senators to keep relations warm with the president. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his top deputy, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) are both up for re-election in states the president is an early favorite to win.

The risks of crossing Trump are in plain sight. He has aggressively targeted his GOP critics. "I retired him. I'm very proud of it. I did the country a great service," Trump said of Flake the day after the election. He has mocked Corker on Twitter as "Liddle' Bob Corker."

The threat of a Trump-backed primary challenger also looms over Republicans inclined to call out the president publicly. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) experienced this in June when he was defeated by Katie Arrington, a state legislator Trump endorsed hours before the polls closed.

Sanford is spending his final days in Congress warning that turning the GOP over to Trump could lead to the party spending a long time in the House minority as it abandons its principles in favor of pleasing a base of voters deeply committed to the president.

When Arrington lost to Democrat Joe Cunningham in the general election, Sanford quickly drew attention to the upset in his conservative district. He labeled it a "wake-up call" for the GOP and urged Republicans to step away from Trump in a New York Times op-ed that was published the week after the election.

"I continue to believe that the Trump phenomenon is a temporary phenomenon," Sanford said an interview. But he added, "I woudn't have guessed it would last as long as it has."

Asked what he felt he accomplished by taking on Trump, Sanford replied, "Not that much-- I lost." Like Flake, he said he felt it was the right thing to do given his issue with Trump's behavior and policies.

"It's my belief that where he's taking our party is in a dangerous direction, both in electoral consequence, which we saw with the midterms, and, more significantly, with regard to the conservative movement," said Sanford.

Democrats gained at least 39 House seats in the midterms, as Republican candidates fared poorly in many purple districts where the unpopularity of the president and the GOP brand dragged them down.

The Republicans who won will mostly represent conservative districts where the president is well-regarded. House Republicans picked Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is friendly with Trump, to lead them next year.

Even before the election, the ranks of House Republicans criticizing Trump started thinning. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, one of the most vocal Republican Trump critics in the House, resigned his seat earlier this year.

Some Republican activists who do not like Trump have expressed frustration at his enduring command in the party. Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire Republican Party chairman, said he was hopeful that Trump critics like himself would be on the right side of history, but that "history is moving really slowly right now."

It's unclear who, if anyone, will emerge as the leader of the Republican resistance to Trump next year on Capitol Hill. Sens. Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Tim Scott (R-SC) and Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX) have spoken out when they have disagreed with the president. Flake said he believes Sen.-elect Mitt Romney of Utah will be willing to call out the president when he thinks he is wrong.

But Romney has not been as sharply critical of Trump as he once was. And the political risks of developing a reputation for challenging the president are as acute as ever.

"I'm still hoping the party is going to come back to its senses one day, but I don't see it happening in the near term," said Cullen.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

In government, corporations, and political parties, it's always good to know everyone's specific role. I've worked at four corporations where some people who were keen observers of corporate ass-kissing kept similar charts, if only in their minds. It provides a way to see and understand bizarre agendas and relationships. I encourage anyone who works in a corporations to do the same.

Not that we don't already know what is depicted above, the flowchart that serves as tonight's meme provides some clarity. In these times when we live under the insanity and fascism of Putin's Puppets, it's just good to see the why and how on paper, as it were.

Time For Another Russian Revolution?

Who's the richest person on earth? It's not a spoiler to say it's a ruthless crook, right? How's this for a spoiler-- the runner-ups, according to Forbes? Jack Ma ($39 billion), Mukesh Ambani ($40.1 billion), Ma Huateng ($45.3 billion), Alice Walton ($46 billion), Rob Walton ($46.2 billion), Jim Walton ($46.4 billion), Sergey Brin ($47.5 billion), Larry Page ($48.8 billion), Michael Bloomberg, currently up at Bohemian Grove bragging that he's running for president ($50 billion), Larry Ellison ($58.5 billion), David Koch ($60 billion), Charlies Koch ($60 billion), Carlos Slim ($67.1 billion), Amancio Ortega ($70 billion), Mark Zuckerberg ($71 billion), Bernard Arnault ($72 billion), Warren Buffett ($84 billion), Bill Gates ($90 billion)... and, according to Forbes, number uno is Jeff Bezos ($112 billion). OK, but where are the "royal" families that own countries? And where's the Russian mafia that pillaged the collapsing Soviet Union? Modest about reporting their loot. Leonid Blavatnik, who bought Warner Bros Music to launder Russian money claims to be worth a mere $20.8 billion. Alexexy Kordashov, a steel oligarch, claims he's worth about the same as Blavatnik. Vladamir Potanin, who stole a lot of everything says he's worth about the same as the other two criminals. But what about... ssshhhhh. Well, it's a secret, but "everybody" knows Putin is the richest person on earth (i.e., the man who stole the most). Fortune asserted last year that Putin is worth more than Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos combined-- something like $200 billion. No wonder Trump, who aspires to be on these lists, licks Putin's ass.

Putin was born in Leningrad (once again, St. Petersburg) in 1952, son of a naval conscript (a submariner) and a factory worker. He studied law, graduated in 1975 and then worked as a KGB officer for 16 years, first in counter intelligence and then spying on foreigners. You've heard of kompromat, right? That was his thing. He says he was a Lieutenant Colonel when he retired in 1991, just as the coup d'état against Mikhail Gorbachev began. Putin was clear that it was anti-Communist which he saw as a dead end. In 1996 he moved to Moscow. In 1998 Boris Yeltsin first appointed him head of the FSB, the new KGB, and then Prime Minister. A year later he gently pushed Boris Yeltsin aside and took over the presidency, immediately dropping corruption charges that Yeltsin and his family were certainly guilt of. So when did Putin have the time to accumulate more wealth than Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos combined?

And how? After the Soviet Union collapsed it dawned on everyone-- including Wall Street-- that the government owned virtually everything-- and certainly everything big. The decades of accumulated state wealth was quickly privatized-- by a criminal gang: Vladimir Putin and his ruthless cronies, although mostly Vladimir Putin. Oligarchy? Kleptocracy? Plutocracy? Kakistocracy? All that and more... and everything that Trump longs for.

Forbes had a funny headline yesterday: Russian Commies Try Staging A Comeback. Well, not exactly... but just what a Forbes headline writer would get a woody over. You heard about how Putin is trying to redistribute the wealth of Russia even further upward by raising the retirement age, right. People-- poor people-- have been flipping out all during July. It doesn't really have that much to do with the Communist Party, a Putin house pet... it's pretty organic.

If there is one thing you can bet the house on, it's the fact that people will take to the streets if you change the rules of retirement. A politician or a party that messes with social security is destined to lose popularity.

Over the weekend, the Russian Communist Party staged their anti-pension reform protest, something that has been in the works since the celebratory grand finale of the FIFA World Cup on July 15. The no. 2 party in Russia filed their paperwork for an organized street rally, keeping the rules in mind, and got a few thousand people to show up.

They had help from Vladimir Putin's new Public Enemy No. 1, Alexei Navalny, who got his followers out with ease. "A trillion in savings will come from pension reform, but guess where that trillion in savings will go?" he told his followers on social media. "Yes, you guessed right." Navalny thinks the money will be squandered and used by the ruling United Russia party to pad their pockets.

He's probably right. Russian GDP has fallen by over $1 trillion between 2013 and 2016, more than any of its BRICS counterparts.

Navaly ended up in jail last night following another day of protests. He has since been released.

"Pension reform should come as no surpise," says Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's Prime Minister.  "We are approaching this just now because conditions have been met for life expectancy within the framework of the 80+ program," he said, about the official policy to care for aging Russians.

While Navalny was the rockstar of the protest, as always, it was the old Communist Party that took this movement as their own. Or at least wants to. The public is largely against pension reform. The new changes would mainly increase the retirement age. The Communist Party is the biggest party in Russia after United Russia, led by Putin. And if they can galvanize support from people who hate the "R" word-- reform-- they might be able to become a real opposition when Putin fatique sets in.

That's silly... but perfect for Forbes-- and for Putin. A recent poll shows that 90% of Russians oppose the "reform" and an online petition opposing it attracted 3 million signatures. 6,000 people showed up for the rally on Sunday, where people opposing the raising of the retiring age held signs saying "stop stealing our future," not "workers of the world unite" nor "no war but class war," "capitalism kills," "socialism or barbasism" (let alone "the only church that enlightens us is the church that burns"). What Putin wants to do is raise the retirement age, to 65 from 60 for men and to 63 from 55 for women, even though Putin promised to never raise the retirement age while he was campaigning for president.

Because the stolen wealth of the oligarchs-- including Putin, of course, is untaxed, there is a strain on public finance and the oligarch-owned government says it can't afford the pensions. Sound familiar? Putin, sounding very Republican: "The moment will come relatively soon when the number of workers will equal the number of retirees and will then continue to decline. And then either the pension system will burst or the budget of the reserve fund used to finance the deficit in the pension system will blow up." No chance of taxing the stolen trillions?

Netanyahu, Putin And Trump-- Jockeying For Power In Syria

by Reese Erlich

Russian bombs rained down on towns of southern Syria as an estimated 320,000 civilians fled for their lives. Over the past several weeks tens of thousands walked to the Jordanian and Israeli borders hoping to escape the onslaught.

Rula Amin, a spokesperson for the UN refugee agency UNHCR, based in Jordan, told me the displaced people left their homes with few belongings and are sleeping in the desert. “They need shelter, food, drinking water-- and mostly, they need protection.”

“We appeal for an immediate cessation in hostilities and for a safe, unimpeded access to the displaced population that desperately needs assistance,” she said.

The crisis began in June when Syrian President Bashar al Assad, along with his Russian and Iranian allies, sought to recapture southern Syria, which has been under rebel control for five years. Russia negotiated the surrender of some rebel groups in early July. It’s not yet clear, according to the UNHCR, whether significant number of civilians can return to their homes.

Five countries are currently fighting in Syria. Russia, Iran, the United States, and Turkey have stationed troops. Israel regularly drops bombs and fires missiles.

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss Syria at their Helsinki summit July 16. The Trump administration is pressuring Russia to reduce the Iranian role in Syria, but will not likely succeed, according to Professor Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

“Iran is there to stay,” he told me. “Russia is not going to kick Iran out.”

A visit to Daraa

To understand the current crisis, let’s go back to 2011 when I reported from the southern Syrian city of Daraa. I tagged along with some Ukrainian TV journalists on an official tour of the city where the uprising had begun. Government minders claimed the Syrian people supported Assad and that Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States had instigated the rebellion.

We visited an elementary school where adorable children recited their lessons in unison. Then, seeing the foreign reporters, many began chanting, “Freedom, Freedom,” the slogan of the anti-Assad opposition. Teachers led other students in chanting “Syria, Syria,” to show support for Assad.

The Assad officials blanched as the civil war divisions were on full display for foreign reporters. “The political chasm has reached the schools,” my government translator said. “First graders are now politically motivated.”

For roughly that first year, the Syrian government faced a popular uprising from a broad spectrum of religious and political opposition, part of the Arab Spring. Foreign powers did not create the rebellion, but they were very happy to take advantage of the regime’s lack of popularity to push their own agendas.

CIA steps in

By 2012 the CIA coordinated with Jordanian, gulf states, and Israeli intelligence to fund rebel groups known collectively as  the Free Syrian Army. The United States set up the secret Military Operations Command in Amman, Jordan, and by 2013 was providing an array of arms, ammunition and supplies to the FSA.

The CIA spent $1 billion per year arming rebels in southern Syria. The Pentagon spent another $500 million per year in northern Syria. Washington claimed to be training only “moderate rebels.” But the US-backed militias had no popular support. In several incidents US-trained rebels turned their weapons over to al Qaeda affiliated insurgents.

Nabil al Sharif, a former Jordanian media affairs minister, told me, “This whole program of aiding moderates has failed miserably.”

Israel’s role

As darkness fell one night in 2014, I drove along a dirt road and stopped at a spot in Israel overlooking the Syrian border fence in the Golan. Israel had seized the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War and illegally annexed it in 1981.

On the night of my visit, artillery and machine gun tracer fire illuminated the fighting among three opposing armed groups: the Syrian Army, the FSA and the Al Qaeda affiliate known as al Nusra. At that point Israel was backing the FSA against the other two forces.

Israel always claimed it was neutral in the Syrian civil war; it only provided humanitarian aid and treated wounded Syrian civilians. In reality Tel Aviv backs rebels who can be used to help Israel keep permanent control of the Golan.

Rainfall from the Golan area is critical to replenishing the Jordan River and supplies one-third of Israel’s drinking water. “The Golan is key for Israel’s water supply,” noted Professor Landis.

Building on the Trump administration’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, Israeli leaders now want the United States to formally recognize its annexation of the Golan, which is seen as illegal by other countries.

“This is a moment of tremendous weakness for Syria and Israel wants to take full advantage,” said Landis.

Initially Israeli leaders backed the FSA to keep Assad from coming back to power. When the military tide turned in Assad’s favor in 2015, Tel Aviv sought to prevent Iran and the Lebanese group Hezbollah from establishing a military presence close to the occupied Golan.

Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Research Fellow at the Israeli think tank The Forum for Regional Thinking, wrote “Israeli policy-makers would be content with a Syrian regime takeover of southern Syria, as long as Iranian proxies are kept from the border fence.”

Backroom deals

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met three times over the past six months with Putin to work out a deal on Syria. So far the Israelis have continued to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria, and the Russians have not responded militarily. I think that’s angered the Iranians.

The Iranian military sees its presence in Syria as a deterrent against a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. It continues to arm Hezbollah with Iranian made missiles.

”This is part of Iran’s homeland security,” said Landis.

Of course civilians in Syria don’t care much about Iran’s internal security, nor that any of the other intervening powers. Nobody has clean hands in Syria. The outside powers push their own interests to the detriment of the Syrian people.

We’ll see if anything significant about Syria comes out of the Putin-Trump summit. But don’t hold your breath. While foreign powers continue their squabbles, Syrian civilians pay the price.

Reese Erlich’s syndicated column, Foreign Correspondent, appears every two weeks. He is author of Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect.

Follow him on Twitter, @ReeseErlich; friend him on Facebook; and visit his webpage.

The Truth Behind the Bombardment of Syria

Oops-- might not be a chemical facility after all

-by Reese Erlich

In 1998, al Qaeda killed 224 people when it attacked U.S. embassies in east Africa. In retaliation, President Bill Clinton ordered a missile strike against what he described as an al Qaeda nerve gas factory in Sudan. For years, he insisted that the attack had dealt a tough blow against terrorists.

Turns out the chemical weapons factory was a pharmaceutical plant. Journalists who arrived at the scene in protective clothing expected nerve gas fallout. They found aspirin scattered among the wreckage instead.

Now it looks like history is repeating itself.

In coordination with the United States, Israel bombed the Syrian T-4 airbase on April 9. On April 13, the United States, Britain and France bombed three sites in Syria that were supposedly key to Syria's chemical weapons program.

Western missiles flattened the Barzeh Research Center in Damascus. Washington claimed it was a lab used to make chemical weapons.

Turns out it may have just been a research facility making such products as antidotes for snake bites and children’s medicine. After the missile strike, the Assad government took foreign reporters to the site. The building was still smoldering but no chemical weapons fumes came from the structure.

Said Said, an official at the center, told the international news agency Agence France-Presse, “If there were chemical weapons, we would not be able to stand here. I’ve been here since 5:30 am in full health-- I’m not coughing.” CBS News produced a similar report.

Such contrary evidence didn’t prevent the Pentagon from boasting of success. Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, said the attacks are “going to set Syrian chemical weapons program back for years.”

President Donald Trump led the cheerleading, tweeting “Mission Accomplished,” a declaration that immediately reminded everyone of George W. Bush’s premature 2003 pronouncement regarding his failed war in Iraq.

In fact, the attack is unlikely to have an impact on Assad’s war plans.

“I can’t believe that the Pentagon seriously thought that this wimpy missile attack would actually serve as a deterrent,” William Beeman, professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, told me. “This was a cosmetic strike. The Russians were warned, and it didn’t come close to attacking the full range of suspected chemical facilities.”

So what actually happened?

On April 7, the White Helmets and other groups posted videos from the Damascus suburb of Douma showing people dying from what they described as a Syrian Air Force chemical attack. They said the attack was likely chlorine gas or possibly the far deadlier nerve agent, sarin.

Douma is controlled by a rightwing political Islamist group known as the Army of Islam (Jaish al-Islam), which has been accused of using chemical weapons against the Kurds. It has a vested interest in discrediting the Assad regime.

Robert Fisk, a journalist with the British Independent, raised serious questions in his first-hand reporting from Douma. He interviewed a doctor who said people died from a lack of oxygen in underground tunnels, not chemical weapons.

The air attack happened just hours before the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was scheduled to inspect the site. Later, the inspectors were blocked by Syrian and Russian authorities.

Inspectors are hoping to gain entrance to Douma and if allowed in should be able to determine if banned weapons were used. The organization does not seek to determine who, if anyone, unleashed the chemicals.

It may be as difficult to determine what happened in Douma as it has been in previous alleged chemical attacks. Both sides have used chemical weapons in the past. Rebel groups such as the al Qaeda affiliated al Nusra Front used sarin to attack Syrian troops in 2013, as I described in my book Inside Syria.

United Nations chemical weapons inspectors have verified cases of the Syrian air force dropping chlorine gas. Assad’s military has been willing to face international condemnation because chemical weapons are a relatively cheap method of killing, wounding, and demoralizing an enemy.

Regardless of what happened in Douma, the United States has no legal or moral right to bomb Syria. The U.N. Security Council did not authorize this or other recent U.S. actions (Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, or previous attacks on Syria). The Trump Administration is also violating the U.S. War Powers Act, which prohibits the President from waging war without Congressional approval.

The most recent missile attacks had less to do with chemical weapons than sending a message to Assad, who has defeated insurgent groups throughout his country with crucial help from Russia and Iran. Top Washington leaders care little about human rights in Syria but very much want to control the country for geopolitical reasons.

Syria does not have significant amounts of oil, but it does occupy a strategic location bordering Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Jordan. British and French empires competed for control of the region before World War II, and modern day imperialists are doing the same.

The United States now has more than 2,000 troops in northern Syria and is allied with a Kurdish group. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which often represents the views of the ultra-conservative business elite, now advocates intensified bombing and creation of a no-fly zone in northern Syria, which would effectively carve out that region from Syrian government control.

The Journal also reports that Trump is asking Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Sunni Muslim countries to send troops to the Kurdish region to replace those of the United States. It’s an absurd proposal. Assad and the Kurds will certainly oppose it. Egypt is consumed with fighting terrorist groups in the Sinai; Saudi Arabia is already losing another war in Yemen.

Russia has its own imperialist interests in Syria. It occupies two large military bases in western Syria with leases that won’t expire for another half century, and that can be renewed for another 50 years. The base agreements give Russian citizens extra-territorial rights; they can’t be tried in Syrian courts for crimes committed in Syria. With Syria as a permanent ally, Russia seeks to block U.S. influence in the region.

Vladimir Putin has “the same goal as Peter the Great,” says Beeman, “a permanent warm-water port, an outpost in the Middle East, [and]... a watch post for U.S. activities in the area.”

The missile attacks on Syria lessen the already remote chances of a political settlement in Syria’s civil war. At the moment, four countries have troops in Syria: United States, Turkey, Iran, and Russia. All foreign powers will need to pull out if the people of Syria are to determine their own future.